This is the second half to the article from last time, you should check it out if you haven't already though it's not important.
I'd like to consider another of the major differences between cataclysm and mists. We knew what was coming for cata. We knew ragnaros was coming. We knew deathwing was going to try and destroy the world. We "knew" that the abyssal maw was going to be a feature once we got through the zone. The entire expansion had this build up and a lot of player foreknowledge.
Mists doesn't do this. Sure we know who the eventual bad guy of the expansion is, and sure it's not that hard to guess even if you don't already know. That said there is relatively little knowledge on how we're getting there or exactly what's going to happen in between.
I think this is a pretty big deal for a lot of games out there. How many games do you know that had promised certain features early on in their development cycle only to cut them later on because they couldn't get it done or found it was a lot more complicated than imagined or just didn't get around to it until it was far too late to do a good job of it so they dropped it from the game?
If we didn't expect the abyssal maw, we would never have been upset about not seeing it. I really do like the way mists is playing out in that I have absolutely no idea what the next raid tier is going to look like. I don't know what instance it's going to be, where on the continent we'll find it or even what sorts of enemies we'll be fighting. My first guess is some faction related thing like champs from ToC but for an entire instance but I have absolutely no basis for that aside from the feeling of escalating tensions between the factions and the content coming in 5.1.
I think this is an important part of MMOs specifically. This is because MMOs are constantly "updating." They are evolving and changing. We need to keep the mystery alive the way mists has been. I really think that not divulging things to the audience is a great way of keeping them engaged and excited. A little bit of knowledge is ok, take a look at the Wrathion legendary quest chain. I'm super excited about demons now. The conclusion I've drawn from that quest line so far is that I should be expecting demons for the next expansion. I am likely to be really disappointed when it hits should it not be demons but the next expansion is a topic for another day.
I know today's post is brief compared to others but I just wanted people to think about how much they know before hand. This can apply to anything including the encounters themselves. If you're a progression guild you really can't afford to ignore the PTR or previous strats but you can try and avoid spoilers plot wise. I try to avoid spoilers wherever I can. Sure I want to know real bad what's coming down the pipe but I find it so much sweeter when I take things in as they are meant to be revealed by those who are producing the content.
Lets hope mists keeps delivering the goods. Now that the biggest part of the progression race (the extra nights) part is over I should get back to a "real" update frequency.
23 November, 2012
13 November, 2012
Didn't make the cut
Early on in the cataclysm expansion cycle the players were curious about a place known as the abyssal maw. Shortly we all learned exactly what that place was meant to be. A raid instance. The events in the nearby zones of vashj'ir set up a clear story of what was taking place and a bunch of possible bosses, or rather some possible posses.
So what happened, why did we never get the abyssal maw as a raid instance. Why was it that we only got Firelands, as nice as that place was?
The short answer, is development time. It's something that comes up with almost everything I try and discuss related to the game, specifically with things related to projects the developers would need to undertake. This is a commodity. It is extremely scarce and extremely valuable. If something takes a small amount of dev time, then it's much more likely to get into the game. There's a lot that goes into how long it takes to develop a piece of the game, and one of those pieces is how far along you already are in the game.
Imagine you're writting a story. You have an assignment for class or perhaps taking part in NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month). You get pretty far along over the first half of the month and then come up with a phenomenal way to change something have already written. You could have this exact same problem when writing any sort of essay for a project. It's much harder to change things once you've already started it. If you had the idea earlier on, not saying that you're bad for not having done so but inspiration isn't something you can control, you could have integrated it in your original design.
When designing a game this problem explodes and fractures into a thousand other problems. In a way it invalidates some previous time spent on the game, and in the game world, especially in an MMO where you are literally racing against the attention span of your audience, you need every moment you can get your hands on. As great as the people at Blizzard are, they are still human and have needs outside of running their game.
When it comes down to it you are left with a couple choices. You can delay the release of your content to change or improve what you have, but you can't do this forever. You do have deadlines and you do have to beat that attention span of your audience. You can drop the change or improvement you want to put in, provided it's not vital and you have the time for it. This is what happens a lot and while it's unfortunate, it often leads to better games. You can sometimes put it on the side-burner and work on it later. This is what they're doing with things like character models.
So unfortunately, as we saw, the abyssal maw was dropped from the raid release schedule. I'm not entirely sure I buy the whole "we wanted to see if 7 bosses would last people 5 months" argument because clearly that's absurd. There just wasn't enough time for the developers to bring enough new fights to cover two instances, at least not to do that and have it up to the same standard of quality we had been used to before then. Dragon soul was really a let down. In addition to the dev time to design fights for the raid, there was art time to make a cohesive set of armor for both instances. Sure they had the fire and water thing going on between the two, but that really restricts what you can do and forces you to make a lot of decisions that a lot of people might not be too happy with. The artists likely didn't want to create and entirely new zone that already has a fairly set theme to it. That's still a lot of work.
I haven't actually worked for or on any games that got past the "this is a great idea" phase, but my understanding is that this happens all the time. It's hard to see in games because part of their job is to make the game feel complete, to avoid making it feel like something wasn't included. It's really a shame because a lot of times some small adjustments might take a lot of work and there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done.
Hopefully when asking for content in the future we can all be a bit more understanding of what goes on behind the curtains. They aren't trying to cheat us out of game material and they aren't slacking at their jobs. They work just as hard as you would, and are trying to put out the best game they possibly can.
I think there's more to this topic than what I've mentioned already, and specifically regarding the abyssal maw and firelands, but I'll save that for next time. Next week is rough with Terrace launching but I hope to have something more for you guys before too long.
So what happened, why did we never get the abyssal maw as a raid instance. Why was it that we only got Firelands, as nice as that place was?
The short answer, is development time. It's something that comes up with almost everything I try and discuss related to the game, specifically with things related to projects the developers would need to undertake. This is a commodity. It is extremely scarce and extremely valuable. If something takes a small amount of dev time, then it's much more likely to get into the game. There's a lot that goes into how long it takes to develop a piece of the game, and one of those pieces is how far along you already are in the game.
Imagine you're writting a story. You have an assignment for class or perhaps taking part in NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month). You get pretty far along over the first half of the month and then come up with a phenomenal way to change something have already written. You could have this exact same problem when writing any sort of essay for a project. It's much harder to change things once you've already started it. If you had the idea earlier on, not saying that you're bad for not having done so but inspiration isn't something you can control, you could have integrated it in your original design.
When designing a game this problem explodes and fractures into a thousand other problems. In a way it invalidates some previous time spent on the game, and in the game world, especially in an MMO where you are literally racing against the attention span of your audience, you need every moment you can get your hands on. As great as the people at Blizzard are, they are still human and have needs outside of running their game.
When it comes down to it you are left with a couple choices. You can delay the release of your content to change or improve what you have, but you can't do this forever. You do have deadlines and you do have to beat that attention span of your audience. You can drop the change or improvement you want to put in, provided it's not vital and you have the time for it. This is what happens a lot and while it's unfortunate, it often leads to better games. You can sometimes put it on the side-burner and work on it later. This is what they're doing with things like character models.
So unfortunately, as we saw, the abyssal maw was dropped from the raid release schedule. I'm not entirely sure I buy the whole "we wanted to see if 7 bosses would last people 5 months" argument because clearly that's absurd. There just wasn't enough time for the developers to bring enough new fights to cover two instances, at least not to do that and have it up to the same standard of quality we had been used to before then. Dragon soul was really a let down. In addition to the dev time to design fights for the raid, there was art time to make a cohesive set of armor for both instances. Sure they had the fire and water thing going on between the two, but that really restricts what you can do and forces you to make a lot of decisions that a lot of people might not be too happy with. The artists likely didn't want to create and entirely new zone that already has a fairly set theme to it. That's still a lot of work.
I haven't actually worked for or on any games that got past the "this is a great idea" phase, but my understanding is that this happens all the time. It's hard to see in games because part of their job is to make the game feel complete, to avoid making it feel like something wasn't included. It's really a shame because a lot of times some small adjustments might take a lot of work and there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done.
Hopefully when asking for content in the future we can all be a bit more understanding of what goes on behind the curtains. They aren't trying to cheat us out of game material and they aren't slacking at their jobs. They work just as hard as you would, and are trying to put out the best game they possibly can.
I think there's more to this topic than what I've mentioned already, and specifically regarding the abyssal maw and firelands, but I'll save that for next time. Next week is rough with Terrace launching but I hope to have something more for you guys before too long.
09 November, 2012
Been away for a while
Been a couple weeks since I posted. I'm pretty swamped lately with raid and the rest of real life. I'll be back in a bit.
In the meantime you should go check out a channel on youtube called extracreditz. If you enjoy what I have been writing about at all it's is more than worth your time to check them out. They are phenomenal and are talking about, what I believe to be, extremely important topics.
I promise there will be more in the next few weeks once the big progression race is done.
In the meantime you should go check out a channel on youtube called extracreditz. If you enjoy what I have been writing about at all it's is more than worth your time to check them out. They are phenomenal and are talking about, what I believe to be, extremely important topics.
I promise there will be more in the next few weeks once the big progression race is done.
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