[ post edited by Caydiem ]

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Q u o t e:
Have you considered only doing it every now and then and making it a special event, similar to the Lunar Festival, Noblegarden, etc?

For example: similar to the "Fight Blizzard in BG" event you could occasionaly announce on the web page that on X date at X time X raid boss will be controlled by a human. Anyone that succeeds in killing the boss during this time gets a special reward.

As a side-note, it'd be a way for people to vent their frustation after waiting in queues or getting steamed up over the forums.

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• Developer Time vs. Player Time; the Repeatable Content Factor. Any sort of event like this takes time to create and execute. No company has infinite resources, and it's important that the talented staff work on projects that will make best use of their time. When working on a persistent world such as World of Warcraft, where no one actually finishes the game, repeatable content is a must. Players, by nature, devour content far faster than it can be implemented. Therefore, repeatable content is key. Dungeons are an example of this. Battlegrounds are another. They're features that are used by players over and over again.
  
  Now, world-changing events tend to be one-time happenings that may take a month to create but only two days to occur for players. The question comes into play... which is better? A one-time event with all the bells and whistles, or a new dungeon? Which would best utilize the developers' time? The answer, more often than not, turns out to be the one that pertains to repeatable content.
  
  
• Dynamic vs. Scripted; the Manpower Factor. The question then comes into play... all right, if you'd rather have the developers work on repeatable content, why not hire people specifically for world events? As someone who has done precisely that job for two other games in this genre, again, I'm fairly knowledgeable regarding the pros and cons.
  
  Let me define a term before I delve deeper: 'dynamic event', in this case, is a term for a world event run and executed by actors in the world playing the NPCs or controlling the monsters in some fashion.
  
  Now, developers implementing world events are more akin to actual, coded game interactions -- true NPCs and scripted occurrences patched in. Since that takes more time to create and test than players take to exhaust it, naturally the next progression is to consider a troupe of dedicated actors and strategists to do these events on the fly, without need for developer support. There are many problems inherent with this setup as well, however. First, you need to make certain you have the right people. The individuals need to be fast and efficient typists with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of game lore. They also must be trustworthy enough to be given tools that could cause any number of cancellations if abused to the fullest. Once you start hiring these folks, keep going -- you'll need enough to effectively man over 100 realms. And that's only in the North American offices -- the international teams would naturally need their own dedicated crew.
  
  The number of realms is a clear detriment to this style of event. Now let's say you want to run a dynamic event. Ideally, you want the event to occur at the same time. Internationally. Staggering times is an alternative, but unfortunately brings with it spoilers and potential technical problems that will affect everyone on the realm regardless of whether or not they're participating (I'll get into this later). So it's a simultaneous event. You therefore need at least one person per realm if it's a simple event -- that's 100 employees dedicated to this alone. If it's an extremely simple event you may be able to pull it off by two-boxing, but 50 is still not an insignificant number.
  
  The problem is that the overall effect on the game is very small in the long run; most people probably won't even know the event occurred, regardless of what sort of in-game or out-of-game messaging used prior (to a point -- again, I'll cover this later). The cost, ergo, to maintain such a force of actors is not worth it. GMs couldn't do it -- they need to be focused on supporting players in-game. There is never a slow time for them.
  
  Ahhh, but volunteers could do it, you think. This comes with its own serious issues as well. Volunteers are long-distance and extremely hard to manage -- coordinating one hundred of them to execute an event is nigh-impossible. Inevitably something comes up. Also, maintaining the quality of the event is much more difficult when you cannot manage them as intricately. (I wish I could share the stories. :P ) Lastly, giving that kind of power to someone with very little accountability in the long run is a truly dangerous risk. And overall, again, this sort of thing does not have much impact unless you have a large amount of actors working the realms often; and that sort of system simply isn't financially feasible.
  
  On a side note, I know many people have brought up the 'you are swimming in money, finances are no excuse' line, but you're not considering what I'm saying on the whole, specifically in terms of business. In any business, it's important to get a decent return from the money you invest in something. The sheer amount of funds requires to do true dynamic events would not return the investment well in the slightest. The overall impact on the game would still be relatively small, and then the company is out cash they could have been using to pay some more content developers. (If I spend money on a musical ice-maker, it might make the act of making ice more pleasant, but considering the overall impact it has on my experience as a whole, it really isn't worth the monetary investment.)
  
  
• Latency and Crowds; the Technical Factor. Another serious consideration, not to be overlooked, is the technical limitation of the server infrastructure. Huge crowds in a small area can cause problems. Huge crowds actively doing something in a small area is liable to cause something that leads to a realm restart. (Anyone who has participated in an Ironforge raid will be well aware of this.) Therefore, when considering world events, it is important that no event cause people to gather in such a way that would compromise playability from a technical standpoint. While not really a consideration anyone wants to make, it's nonetheless necessary that players not be drawn to one particular point.
  
  This is also why simultaneous events are important. If they're staggered, word-of-mouth travels quickly. More and more people end up waiting for the event in that area when it happens, thus leading to the technical issues.

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Q u o t e:
I disagree with the dismissive blue postings. Here's how to make it work:

Hire 2 people to perform this event. (1 Horde and 1 Alliance)

Each day, 1 server gets "attacked". The event is spread out over all the capital cities of the faction at the same time so as to prevent MASSIVE lag. However, the dates and times are pre-announced in advance, so you can reasonably expect this to be a massive lag-inducing event. Hopefully, with the new servers, this wouldn't be so bad.

The idea is that you script waves of mobs and NPCs to coordinate the attack against the cities. The GM would control the raid "bosses" who appear at all cities in some form or other.

So, one cycle of the event across servers takes roughly 4 months - ie this can occur 3 times per year on a single server.


Now, onto the AI issue. There are two factors to consider.

One - if this is a world event taking place in capital city zones, people are respawning very quickly so even if he IS selective in his targets, he isn't necessarily making a terrible dent.

Two - you can modify his targeting code so that he can only select from a list of twenty targets at a time. He can't pick out anyone he sees and target them for attack, he has to target someone on his "aggro list". Only the top 20 on the aggro list are targetable. Healers should be able to avoid getting on the aggro list if they do their job.

To make things interesting, the GM would need skills such as a self-heal / mind-control / and other cool abilities.

Aside from the lag concerns, that's it! A very cool event, occuring 3 times a year, and you only have to hire 2 people! I think you can afford that, since it'd be about $100K investment and you get 70X that each month from us =P

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Q u o t e:
That looks really familiar, was that posted before somewhere?

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Q u o t e:
Cay why not think small and so little GM based events like I proposed? Sure you wont hit everyone but again not everyone gets a chance at the raid bosses that spawn in the world. Not everyone gets a chance at the Razza in Dire Maul arena when he or a friend spawns due to having no warning and not being in the area when it happens.

Dynamite comes in small packages. Heck I bet the player base would be more than happy to make a thread with susgestions for small script/life GM events. The GM's dont have to know lots of lore.. they can have a simple little bit they could cutNpaste from notepad with general info.

(small note gonna post my susgestion in the susgestion forum)

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Q u o t e:
Doh :( Ignored by blue again.
/sigh

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Q u o t e:
We're just asking for anything Cay. A raid on the XR for an hour or two with some GM controlled Alliance NPCs every other week would be huge. Would affect around 100 people every time and take next to no effort on your part.

I don't see how that would be hard to do in any way, shape, or form.

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Q u o t e:
I think you may be underestimating the ammount of impact it would have. And, as has been mentioned a few times in this thread, other less lucrative MMOs seem to be able to handle this kind of interaction with their player baes.

Perhaps have GMs do this at the same time they respond to tickets with macros?

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