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Nerf the End Game
By Corvus | January 26, 2007
The Burning Crusades expansion for World of Warcraft has raised an interesting point — what do you do with your old end game when the new end game makes it completely irrelevant?
In creating a whole new area to explore, with quests beginning at level 58, and crafting rewards which will carry players 10 levels beyond the old cap, the game designers have made the old, very difficult to acquire, loot… rather beside the point. The instances which required massive coordination and endless struggle in order to hopefully, maybe, win a roll on a drop and get the piece of armor you needed to complete your set, aren’t compelling once you can run an errand or two and pick up something stronger, with better buffs, and which certainly looks flashier. I haven’t been to the Outlands, but from the armor I’ve seen I imagine them to be made exclusively from neon tubes and digital glitter. Sort of the like the Vegas movie set of Azeroth.
A great number of people are suggesting how to best compel people to visit Molten Core again. How to revitalize the late summer years of the character grind. They’ve suggested changing the instances, adding tap dancing clowns, and modifying the loot which MC houses (buff or nerf is a matter of debate, I believe).* Frankly, I haven’t been paying much attention to the end game discussion, beyond noting that the arguments invariably end in the opinion that, “Blizzard doesn’t care, they’re too busy taking baths in their money.” You see, what to do about the old end game isn’t the question we should be asking. What we should be asking is, “What’s an end game?”
Frankly, one of the largest psychological turn offs of WoW for me was (and is) — what do you do once you’ve “made it”? Run the same instances over and over? There’s PvP, sure, but I don’t like PvP very much and as a PvE style player, the thought of turning 60 and then standing around in Iron Forge or Orgrimmar waiting for an expansion, or the next holiday theme event left me rather cold. Why bother? More endless grinding tedium to reach 60 and then… nothin’. Well, now if I buy BC, I’ll have another ten levels of grinding to do, but hopefully I’ll be distracted by the new artwork and mob models for a few levels. Effectively, the WoW story ends with, “and then the heroes, having just saved the world from evil, sat around and waited for someone else to discover the next big evil… oh, and and re-fought the evil they’d already destroyed a few more times… just because they were bored.”
That’s not exactly the most compelling end to a tale, eh? So what’s to be done with the end game? What happens next year when Blizzard releases another add on, as they’ve indicated they will? Or the year after that? The problem of course stems from the very approach of WoW’s core game design (which Craig recently talked about quite insightfully link). It’s a very vertically stacked set of repetitive actions and it’s designed to appeal to the obsessive compulsive tendencies in gamers. Once you’re tired of reveling in your OC, there’s not much left to enjoy.
I can think of any number of approaches which would create a more satisfying end game and redirect the player right back into the game, as can a great number of other people. Some solutions which have been offered are: character mentorship, retirement to a Hall of Heroes, world management duties, etc. Of course, do you really want the guy who speed leveled his Draenei shaman to 60 performing any world management for you?
The problem comes down to this though — without dramatically overhauling the very fabric of your multiplayer environment, you’re always going to run into end game issues. You can either go the direction of having no end game at all, which would probably necessitate the removal of levels, or in the direction of having an end game which actually ends the game, at least for that character.
Having reached this point, I realize that the topic now branches off into a few different paths and requires more thought and page space. So next week I’ll continue to wander the vaunted halls of the MMO end game and discuss a few approaches which might result in a more satisfying experience that didn’t suddenly invalidate old content when new content is added.
* There’s also the very real concerns that new players are going to find the start areas empty, lifeless, and completely uncompelling. This is a very real concern. Ms. Knittiot and I have decided that a monthly WoW charge is the best entertainment to dollar ratio while she’s unemployed and have resurrected our accounts. Once you hit 30 or so, there’s still some light activity on the servers, but the under 30 areas are completely empty. We’re meeting with a friend once a week or so to play some n00b alts and with the exception of an occasional run-by of a Draenei or Blood Elf on their rapid way to 60, it’s been pretty quiet. Fortunately, the three of us are pretty good players (and excellent role players), so we ought to be able to make our own way without extra help for the lower level instances, but if you’re new to the game, I can imagine it will begin to seem pretty daunting and un-fun very quickly.
Tagged:Carnival, Design, end-game, Games, world-of-warcraft. |
January 26th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Yes, and… pardon me while I ramble on for a bit and agree with you in different words.
Is the creator of a game obliged to (a) provide a satisfactory ending to a character’s story? or (b) provide an infinite storyline?
“End Game” as a concept is fine for games with a defined end - chess, Zork, Ultima IV - but must it really apply to every game? What was Elite: Frontier’s end game? Is there a suitable end game for The Sims? Space Invaders? Grow RPG? Was Diablo II’s end game defeating the big bad demon, or did that mark the beginning of the end game (revisiting the same country, fighting the same monsters again for valuable prizes)?
“End Game” as used in a MMORPG setting is another way of saying, “I have experienced this game’s finite amount of content. Now what?” Isn’t the appropriate answer going to occasionally be, “Good for you. Play a different game.”? Isn’t that what we do with those other fine storytelling mediums, books and movies? “Well, I’ve finished the Picture of Dorian Grey. I guess I’ll keep reading the last chapter over and over again until the author writes some more.” “Well, those three Lord of the Rings movies were good, but I can’t wait for the next one: 60 Years of Gardening with Hobbits.”
As you point out, what’s missing in nearly all of these games, and perhaps what our characters feel incomplete without, is life’s own end game: death. Imagine WoW for a moment where your character has an expiration date 6 months from creation; you’ll start out strong and kind of dumb, but will end up wise and kind of weak. Suddenly, there’s more content than any one character can experience - just like life - and you have a charcter arc. How will you end your days? Are you still sitting in your home town, disenchanting a few odds and ends for distant relations? Did you actually get to fight the evil necromancer that almost no one lives long enough to challenge? Have you seen the flowers that bloom at the ends of the earth, or were you too busy defending the homeland? When your time came, were you relaxing in your private villa with friends, or did you fall with a sword in your hand fighting to the end?
Of course, we’re told that no one wants a game where their characters die a permanent death. Where our items eventually wear out and break. Where we can’t seamlessly pick up where we left of a few months ago. Perhaps it’s too much like life, or maybe some companies are disinclined to do anything that doesn’t keep the player locked into their world.
I think ultimately the “end game” problem is a problem of definitions. When we can define the experience that we think “end game” is supposed to offer, we’ll better know how to bring that to persistent worlds.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Hey, I was gonna leave this on my blog as a reply, but wasn’t sure if you’d see it. I’ll probably be on Fenris for a few hours today (saturday). And if you see me on and want some help questing, just let me know. I’d always prefer helping someone out than soloing my own quests alone.
I’m in agreement with your post. Of course, I never hold interest long enough to get to the end-game, so it hasn’t been a problem for me. And I don’t run instances much. I certainly won’t ever be part of a 40-man raid. Doesn’t really bother me. I’m always pissed that they don’t add more low-level content. Or at least change some of it. Advance some of these quests a bit. Barrens is huge - add another outpost or an open cave dungeon. Just like any big-world game, the company focuses on size, not content. They have some great plot elements in the game - it’s just the plot never advances. You help the Undead work on their plague but then it never has any noticeable effect. It should decimate Dalaran and as a consequence infest it with spirits. Or the Scarlet Monastery could break away from its perch and slide toward the ocean - suddenly it is twice as large and filled with nasty sea creatures as well as the Scarlet Monks.
MMOs should be embracing the notion of micro-episodic content. Little events they can trigger in-game that will happen at different times on different servers or in response to in-game actions. AQ is a good example, except that it completely excluded lowbies and probably a good portion of casual players.
January 29th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
…and the musing continues (link).
February 1st, 2007 at 3:27 am
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