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A little background information:
I'm the guildmaster of the Black Label Assassins on Burning Legion, a pretty sizable (~160 unique accounts), reputable, predominantly (virtually exclusively) adult Horde guild on Burning Legion. The following is a digest on some major shortcomings in World of Warcraft, and the opinions here are reflective of the bulk of the people I represent. I'll attempt to be as brief as possible. This discussion is meant to incite some headsense into a company which is abysmally failing to address the needs of it's community.
FAILURE: The Honor System
Now, here's something that I imagine started out as a good idea from a talented group of individuals who wanted to create a unique reward system for the player-vs-player side of their online environment. Unfortunately, good ideas don't always result in good implementations. There are a large number of issues with the current implementation of the honor system, in terms of both concept and design. Not only is the system outright broken, but it's just blatantly unintelligably designed. The honor system has failed to provide people with adequate remuneration for ther PvP efforts.
Issue - People are finding it nearly impossible to ascend in rank due to what I can only assume was a horrible oversight into the methods which calculate/determine a person's rank. This is a game which has publically made the claim of having appeal to the casual gamer, though it appears that the honor system wasn't intended to be made feasable for your everyday WoW'er. If the intent of the honor system was to ensure that a few people who commit more time to WoW than their real life get some compensation for their time, while largely shafting the rest of the public on any of it's rewards, Blizzard has succeeded with flying colors. It's been stated that the people who will obtain the highest ranking/stature in the honor system will be only an extremely small cross-section of players. What they didn't tell you is that you've to be a Korean WoWaholic to obtain that rank.
The current honor system is based upon laws of averages. This is ASININE. Such a system only serves to exclude people from content, not include them. It ensures that there will be those who never see the most lucrative rewards the system has to offer, because there are people who aren't prepared to commit the majority of their leisure time to a VIDEOGAME. (which it appears as though Blizzard is beginning to forget, among others) No matter what the methodology used to account for the inflation caused by the most hardcore of powergamers, as long as the system is still based upon constantly recalculated averages, it's akin to holding an impossible-to-reach bar above the casual gamer's head.
"You're not a l33t enough PvP'er. Go home, noob."
What is this really? - A system that makes a lot of promises and gives players fantifical hopes, and completely fails to deliver. Blizzard should spend more time finding ways to include people on content, rather than exlude them.
Issue - Dishonorable kills don't work in an environment where everyone/everything is a potential contestant. People are losing all their rank/honor over a dishonorable kill bug which seems to instantly rob someone of their reputation. More specifically, I'm hearing reports of people in ALTERAC VALLEY obtaining dishonorable kills, and instantly losing their reputation.
This .. is .. utterly .. absurd.
I can understand the desire to try and stifle the rampant newbie-PKing/town camping behavior by implementing losses for dishonorable kills. A lot of people want their cheesy, carebear, Nabisco-brand PvP, free of risk while in their character's "development stages". Now, the reality is that while the intent was right - the implementation is all wrong. ..and I'm even doubly as frustrated that they'd do something malicious like this to those of us who play on PvP servers, for which many people have dreams and visions of being able to assault enemy towns no matter how small/inadequately defended, but now those dreams have been tossed aside as it's impossible to orchestrate any kind of town PvP activity without accruing DKs. Loss, with regard to DKs, might be a satisfactory solution on PvE servers - where majority of PvP should be isolated to the Battlegrounds in the first place, but those of us who elected to play on PvP servers have done so knowingly that it's a violent and contested venue where the odds aren't even remotely fair.
Afterthoughts - Thanks, Blizzard. You've singlehandedly ruined my ambitions of becoming a well-ranked PvP combatant, in addition to being a ruthless, merciless, notorious guildleader. You listened to the carebears, and ****'ed things up royally for those of us with competative spirit. It appears as though I'll never see anything above Rank 6. So, until such a time that the honor system is made feasable for the general public, I'm going to forsake it altogether, and become the most merciless newbie-murderer known to Burning Legion. I intend to orchestrate elaborate newbie-camping endeavors to cease Alliance activity on the server to a grinding halt. People will leave our server (or the game, altogether) in droves, in lieu of a FAILURE to make WoW's PvP scene appealing.
FAILURE - Meeting stones.
Another would-be good idea, except the lack of popularity couldn't be accounted for this one. The meeting stones are very much an afterthought implemented mechanic (to solve a traditional MMOG problem), rather than something that was decided upon as an intregal component to group mechanics in the game. There's a lot of people who simply don't know what they do, or care to use them. More conventional approaches in the past have been things such as /LFG flags, or even complicated/powerful player searching systems. I might understand if there were some reservations about creating a highly elaborate system due to trying to maintain an uncomplicated stock UI (to add incentive to the community to develop the functionality independantly), but really.. this can be CONSIDERABLY more intelligently done. I realize that game developers certainly reserve the right to use "devices" pertinent to the game atmosphere, to try and maintain a status quo on the theme element for the game without becoming too "technologically topheavy", but this happens to be one of those small things for which a little inginuity and a lot of liberties with the client could go a long way with the playerbase.
*pause for breath*
I mean, the functionality lies within the WoW API to create a more sophisticated system to obtain groups, but the catch is getting everyone to use "your thing". This isn't something the community to solve, though. This could be very simply solved by appending a tab to the /who list for "groups", which would contain a list of instances, and a list of people who are looking to do that instance. ..but I'm sure there's some deeper reason why something this utterly simple is impossible to implement, due to game politics/bureaucratics. (Indy gaming 4tw.)
I'll tell you what. Blizzard, I've been developing MMOG's since internet gaming was the domain of the reclusive BBS'er and MUD going type. You pay my consulting fee, I'll write you an all encompassing player matching suite that'll clear this right up, using your own API. You integrate it as a standard part of the package, and everyone's happy.
It's disappointing that after two patches, this issue isn't being addressed as critical. This reeks of lack of professionalism, in terms of unfinished content. This product is supposed to be contending on the big-boy's ballpark of games. It might be time to start acting like it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't blame the developers, or the community managers, or the people who put their hard time/work/effort into maintain what has the potential to be the best MMOG on the market.
I blame middle management, the bureaucratics, and Electronic Arts (whenever I get the chance, not that they've anything to do with this).
FAILURE - Group looting rules and Ninjalooters
So, this is another fickle subject. Among the myriad of things that are "broken, pending (x)", there lies a small community of unscrupulous people who enjoy capitalizing on the lack of a failsafe loot system. (As evidenced by http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=1934, or the personal experiences of hundreds of thousands of players.) Now, this is another case of something that could be solved very, very simply by having a more featureful master looter mode that's able to very specifically designate who gets what loot (using associative checkboxes attached to the loot panel; click a checkbox next to a player, click on a piece of loot, the loot goes to that player). ..but again, I'm sure it's something that's getting shafted in favor of new instance dungeons.
I know the issue is being addressed, but in the meantime it would be perfectly appropriate to become brutally strict regarding reprecussions for ninjalooting.
FAILURE - Group mechanics, instances, and role dependancy (particularly, priests)
So, I'm one of the 1,000,000 people who decided to roll an undead rogue. Actually, originally, I was a gnome rogue on Allaria, playing with my old Asheron's Call - Frostfell guildmates (Hi, Jon!), but the PvP scene was too stale for my tastes.. so I moved to Burning Legion to start a PvP guild.
Little did I know that in doing so, I was going to permenantly attach myself at the hip to a priest to get anything accomplished in late-game play.
Now, I'm not one who usually has difficulty finding an instance group. I'm pretty well known, I've got lots of folks who know me to be a capable groupmate/leader, and I've gone out of my way to be in good standing with a number of priests on our server. Whenever I can't find a party, I tend to form one pretty quickly with folks I know. ..but the fact is, a group never gets off the ground without a priest/warrior combo if you're a horde. The alliance have the option of bringing one or two paladins (which with some support healing can do just fine in anything short of UBRS). While I understand that instance dungeons are meant to be a more difficult dynamic in the game, what I don't like is being second string material in an instance group. Priests are a mandatory asset for us, seeing as how shaman's can't provide the healing neccessary to keep us alive, and druids are still a distant second next to their religiously inclined counterpart.
I'm not going to go so far as to call rogues, or any other class useless, because we're far from it. In fact, I seem to recall a video of Ragnaros getting smashed with ~20 rogues up-front and getting personal with his fiery butt. Though, on the other side of the spectrum, I've seem MC groups which absolutely refuse to take rogues. I'm not jumping on the "I <3 rogues" bandwagon either, which would have us become the ultimate I.W.I.N. button class. I think our class is perfectly fine as it is (though, replace wound poison with something useful, rather than blatantly disregarding the fact that an ABSOLUTELY USELESS POISON exists), but I think that perhaps it's time to investigate creating some instanced material that isn't horribly contingent upon a specific group formula. My guild is heavily laden with rogues, and it's disappointing that when time comes for us to do Molten Core, I'm going to have to leave some of them behind. Again, though, this is Molten Core we're talking about, so I can give some understanding where this is concerned. However, the fact that there's not a thing in the world that five rogues can do besides die (or farm bosses) is sorely, sorely disappointing.
How difficult would it be to create an instance that isn't completely riddled with elite creatures which decimate lightly armored/low HP classes? I wouldn't expect such a thing to be on the same field as your garden variety instance dungeons, but it'd be nice to have a system designed to provide entertainment for any group you could throw at it. There's always the "randomly generated dungeon" route, using interconnected prefabricated crosssections (much how Asheron's Call's dungeons were all designed - like legos), which would be able to create a unique experience for whatever you'd bring. That's probably wishful thinking, given the current state of affairs, though. At the very least, it would be nice to see an instance or two where not everything is elite, and could be completed with less strict group dynamics.
With as few priests as there are, there's always the likelyhood that it's absolutely impossible to find one to come on an instance run. Was it intended to place an entire community of players in the indebted servitude of a bunch of religious zealots?
Here's a thought; Give us monks. Decent innate armor rating, decent healing, crowd control, stuns.
FAILURE- Administration, censorship and moderation - MOVED TO PAGE 4.
FAILURE - Battlegrounds - MOVED TO PAGE 7.
FUTURE FAILURE TOPIC - Crafting, tradeskills, and the WoW economy
FUTURE FAILURE TOPIC - User interface API
[Note: This is a continuing post that will grow as I've time available to post on the variety of issues worth discussing. I'd like to encourage people to post regarding their own thoughts regarding Blizzard's heaping (Yet inadmissible) failures. The first step to change is admitting there's a problem.]
I've been with the game since beta, and while it's shown a lot of promise, my hope for the game is wavering. New content doesn't fix existing problems.
FIX THE GAME.
~D[ post edited by Destach ]
Guildmaster of B.L.A.
http://www.bla-guild.org
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