Comments on: Casual Friday

By: Taemojitsu

Taemojitsu — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:50:47 +0000

Or they could make raiding more accessible to the casual player….

…naw, that wouldn’t work. WoW clearly needs to get more “world-y” and less “game-y”, otherwise it is doomed to failure.

By: Design Progression in World of Warcraft, An Illustrated Guide « Broken Toys

Design Progression in World of Warcraft, An Illustrated Guide « Broken Toys — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:27:51 +0000

[...] makes some people unhappy. Raiders denigrating casual players in WoW has a long, storied tradition, after all. But casual players pay the bills. I fully expect Wrath of the Lich King to have a [...]

By: New Games Guide

New Games Guide — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:40:03 +0000

New Games Guide…

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

By: Kill Ten Rats » Blog Archive » City of Casual Players

Kill Ten Rats » Blog Archive » City of Casual Players — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:31:32 +0000

[...] of Heroes] Lum has some good thoughts about casual vs. raid content in WoW. I have some scattered comments from a City of Heroes/Villains player’s [...]

By: The Game Chair » Tales From Azeroth 3: The Deadmines

The Game Chair » Tales From Azeroth 3: The Deadmines — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:46:29 +0000

[...] I don’t like feeling that I should rush to compete with all of the player-characters who are at a higher level than me. They have their cool gear and their epic mounts, but they spent the time to grind and quest for those things. I’ll have a mount when I am level 40 just like them when they reached 40. I’ll be level 60 after I accumulate about 20 days of gameplay time like they did. I don’t need to rush through to reach the endgame because at the end, apparently there isn’t much to do for casual players like myself. [...]

By: Iron

Iron — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 07:15:19 +0000

Wow…, I must admit I ended up in this place totally accidentally. I have read the original blog and some folllowing it and can only come up with thie conclusion. What person in their right mind takes up all this time to write, and the rest of you to respond to, about this nonsense. Its a GAME, go out and be productive instead of worrying if your ogre can beat the other guys wizard or some shit. Now look what you did, I’M responding to this shit now. Grow up people, and get a real hobbby. I build cars, you should try building something too. Iron over and out.

By: A Clockwork Mind : Stuff Shortage Explained By Really Smart Guy

A Clockwork Mind : Stuff Shortage Explained By Really Smart Guy — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 11:15:41 +0000

[...] Stuff Shortage Explained By Really Smart Guy No, not me, this is somebody much smarter.Nick Yee, master of the Daedalus Project sheds some light on why people seems to like levelling games and static content. I referenced this a while ago myself pointing you all to a post by Scott Jennings which explains what the problem is, but not why it is.Nick Yee’s recent presentation to PARC on MMOs in general included very many wise words (and i’d strongly advise you to watch it, video can be found here). But it’s his comments on the motivations of players that i wanted to address here and how those motivations can be hell for the developer to cope with.Nick says, and i feel with a great deal of justification and the stats to back it up, that players like the predictability of a linear game. He uses the analogy of school. In school, you always know what comes next. You know that working to achieve X test results will result in Y class placement or Z college offer. You are rewarded by classic Skinner Box food-pellets in the form of merits, demerits, gold stars, etc. You collect those and are sometimes offered the opportunity to redeem them for a reward which has a more material value to you.And that’s what linear games give us. You know what to do next. Your quest-log tells you or you can check thottbot.com and the reward is obvious – you collect the XP to gain the level. Most of us are already conditioned to work this way (from education) and we’re comfortable with it.Compare and contrast this with the office job where nothing you do seems to advance you in any noticeable way and you don’t have a given direction in most environments. People who provide direction are always popular, we call them demagogues and they tend to include people like politicians and church leaders – they sell a vision, a direction. Usually, it doesn’t exist or the reward is unprovable but people buy it anyway because that’s how they’ve been conditioned.In WoW, they’re bringing in a new level cap of 70 with the forthcoming expansion. So everyone who got to 60 and felt lost and directionless now has a goal again. Conditioning. Food-pellets. Direction. Level-games are popular because of all these things.We have sandbox games as well, but those are usually less popular in real terms. They don’t provide the direction so clearly, it can feel a bit too much like real life. Okay, so you don’t run out of stuff, but you don’t know automatically what stuff you need to do and even what you can expect for doing so.With that said, you’d have to be an idiot to be developing a sandbox game, right? Like we are?I don’t think so. If you want to make “al the monies”, sure, make WoW all over again. But remember that WoW already exists and gamers have a remarkably strong brand loyalty. Throw in a quick 50 million US to remake WoW and they might very well stay exactly where they are, because hey, they’re already playing that game.I don’t really know how to end on this one, except that i think we have a good game here. I don’t think it’ll be 6-million-subs successful, but i strongly believe that it’ll turn a good profit and make many gamers very happy.Without food-pellets.Go watch Nick’s presentation already. Published Thursday, August 10, 2006 12:51 PM by Cael Filed Under: Design [...]

By: [MMO Theory] The End of Tank/Nuker/Healer roles

[MMO Theory] The End of Tank/Nuker/Healer roles — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:25:21 +0000

[...] Lum was fucking right. http://www.brokentoys.org/2006/01/30/casual-friday/”>They made this game TOO accessible. J Arcane 02-02-2006, 02:08 PM Yeah, that last line’s gonna go over real well, and do great for improving my assesment above.\’c2\~ [...]

By: Peter’s Blog » Blog Archive » MMOs

Peter’s Blog » Blog Archive » MMOs — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:14:58 +0000

[...] There’s a good blog post and comment discussion about raiders vs casual gamers in World of Warcraft (WoW). While I have never been a paying MMO customer, I have participated in many of the major betas (Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, WoW, Matrix Online, etc). That, combined with the fact that I think these games are really interesting, means that I’ve been following MMO scuttlebut for quite some time. And of course, like every ignoramous, I have some ideas… [...]

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 18:56:52 +0000

What interesting to me about most in MMORPG's is that they feel the total need to become the most powerful. Everyone wants to become stronger and stronger as time goes on. If they can't get stronger, they lose interest.

As it is no one can continue to get stronger and stronger. Some decide to live the raiding life and get some of the better stuff, but eventually many of these fizzle out because they are 'done' with the game.

I think Bliz should give people the options of 5, 10, 20, and 40 man raids. They could just adjust drops rates so that a 5 man takes 8 times as long to get whatever gear you want than a 40 man. This would make somewhat of a balance between groups of 5 and 10 and guilds with hundreds running 40 man raids every night.

Eventually, we all have to realize that there is an end. Eventually, you will have the best stuff to only realize that you still aren't the best.

Enjoy yourself while you play and when it feels like work - do something else for your own sake.