Metrics: The Other White Meat

Posted on December 4, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 6 Comments

On November 30, industrious Warlocks in World of Warcraft created

2,797,184

soul shards.

That’s the kind of statistic that makes me want to huddle under covers with a nice thick copy of “Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard” and gibber softly while waiting for the mind flayers to come.

So, all you armchair designers out there, what can YOU come up? Because this is the sort of eye-in-the-sky view that is perfect for making uninformed decisions backed up by random data points! Note: Damion already picked up on how Defias Pillagers are in need of a good nerfin’. Goddamn caster mobs. Van Hemlock has some fun analysis as well.

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  • http://www.vinull.com Michael Neel

    Armchair designers, cute. Mind if we call you armchair programmers?

    Ideas are out there, no need to look for more. Marketing doesn’t think they are worth the risk, so you have to go to someone without marketing, i.e. the small shop.

    Richard Garriott was crazy for starting UO remember? The next evolution won’t come from big companies – they, and the people working in them just tell us how impossible it is to do anything that hasn’t been done before.

    We need armchair designers to stupid to know it can’t be done so they go ahead and do it.

  • Freakazoid

    The first 20 levels in WoW, while generally quick, are actually very dick levels. I don’t think it’s the defias’ fault really, as I had similar problems with horde characters at those levels. Could just be the monster curve is a little tough there.

    Those warlock shards: Imagine each shard taking up one bag space. Yeah, they really should just let them stack, even if it’s a small stack of 3.

    As an unofficially accredited armchair designer, I find that WoW is a great solo game, but the end-game raiding is far too caniballistic and socially repressive. Based not just on these numbers. I’m accredited, you know. It’s my job to know and opinionate on these things.

  • Evangolis

    As a longtime armchair designer, I can say with certainty that none of my designs has ever failed to perform as desired.

    Looking at Van Hemlock’s comments, I’m reminded of the rule that player’s always find the shortest path to the cheese. I wonder if focusing on whatever points on the WoW path are fuzziest would reveal whether that is a good or bad thing. Probably a good job to assign to an armchair database guru.

  • scottj

    I’m never going to live that phrase down, am I.

  • http://www.corpnews.com Andrew Crystall

    No probably not :)

    Although no, single-point data values don’t tell you much about anything.

    A…oh, no, I’m a professional game designer. My bad.

  • http://vengeance.parryfive.com Axecleaver

    Pop statistics are fun in MMO’s — DAOC broke a lot of ground with it, and we used them to prove whatever we wanted to on any particular day. It’s no different than how pop statistics are used on the evening news. They’re largely meaningless and easily twisted, but they’re fun and an essential part of the MMO experience.

    I think it _is_ possible to get meaningful data from some measures, but you have to work a little harder than this to get it. An example would be “top 10″ realm point lists by class in DAOC.