Loving the shows again Lore! All these reward / mandatory activity discussions really make me feel old because I am so use to rewards being behind specific activities in older MMOs like Everquest and FFXI, that I am of the opinion that some content should simply not be accessible for everyone. If you cannot complete or simply do not want to do the specific activity then I feel(or rather am accustomed to) that those rewards are not attainable, and THATS OKAY! /end old man yells at clouds
I'd agree with this, as long as we draw the line in a place where there is plenty of content for everyone. You mention Everquest. That game was so restrictive in gameplay times that new games (like Wow) stole its thunder overnight. Too much content blocked by specific activities will make the game niche.
here are some games that I think are going to give us some really great experiences: - Elder Scrolls 6 and/or The Wayward Realms (will the single player RPG be the next big thing? many MMO's feel like single player games now) - Stormgate (will the RTS ever make a comeback??)
Speaking of Greg (Ghostcrawler) What are your thoughts on his studio's very open discussion of the game they are developing? Is being that transparent good for a studio or could it lead to issues or pitfalls?
Hi Lore, I really appreciate you taking my questions and answering it. I guess I will say that I just disagree with your assessment. The very nature of an MMORPG, like Wow, is that there are a ton of different activities that cater to different players and some of them will have absolutely no appeal to other players. I've personally never enjoyed pet battles, my guild master loves them and has nearly ever possible pet you can collect. I think it would be unreasonable for me to expect to unlock the larger pet stable (?) by PvPing or some other gameplay option. I don't really think it's unreasonable to expect people to participate in Plunderstorm to receive rewards from plunderstorm, nor do I think it is at all reasonable to put in another avenue for players to earn these rewards. I think it's okay to tell players that certain content is just not for them, and as a byproduct, the rewards aren't for them. In your discussion, I know you said the real issue is 'the nature of the content'/''how bad is it' - and I would agree with you, perhaps maybe you misunderstood the point I was getting at, because that was really what I was trying to say. I think the playerbase has to realize that there are a multitude of directions Blizzard has to take the game in order to appease everyone to a certain extent. And maybe not every piece of content is relevant to you, but in order to get the rewards, you have to do the content. Maybe you don't like the 20 minutes of Torghast you have to do a week, but the other 9 and a half hours of gameplay can be M+ and raid. Or maybe you don't like Mythic +, spend your 40 minutes in key and the other 8 hours can be raiding and professions. I just think part of the discussion around 'mandatory content' has to be "well how big of an issue is this actually?". And the playerbase has absolutely made mountains out of molehills for a lot of these 'issues'.
Its funny to me that anyone would call the current time in gaming as a "lull" between eras. The post-2020 era has been an absolute surge of games albeit from not-AAA developers. In particular, the two genres that I have seen at the forefront are souls-like games and survival crafters. I think the main difference between this era and ones of the past is that these style of games aren't new, but rather have just hit the point of maturity. Dark Souls may have come out in 2011, but Elden Ring has certainly had a bigger impact than anything that came before. Also, ARPGs are obviously a huge market right now with D4 and LE having released in the last year with PoE2 and No Rest for the Wicked coming soon. As far as the next big gaming trend, I think you hit the nail on the head with Hero Shooters, but I think we are going to see some AAA publishers working on CRPGs for the next few years in an attempt to capitalize on BG3. BG3 captured mainstream media attention in a way we haven't seen since Pokemon Go or maybe WoW before that. I would be really surprised if we dont have news by this time next year from WotC and Critical Role about new CRPG games in their respective systems and world.
@Goblingraphx I think there was a lot of legal ambiguity about where CR ended and where D&D began. The shift to the Daggerheart system will make it much clearer and distinct. Although I have no idea how well DH will translate to a video game
I disagree about plunderstorm. There didn't need to be an alternate way to get rewards. People have to make a choice. There is a reward. This is how you get the reward. Am I willing to do said thing for said reward?
I'm going to offer my idea of mandatory content, by using two times in Wow that made me rage-quit for extended periods of time. My content of mandatory content is locking what i consider to be core gameplay behind requirements to play the game in ways I don't want, or can't play. My first example was (In legion? I forget now) the requirement to do a dungeon to obtain a cork to advance alchemy beyond the first set of alchemy recipes. If you wanted to even start advancing alchemy, you needed that cork, and as far as I know, there was no other way to do it. I get gating some of the top end of a profession with raid content say, or requiring raid drops to construct top tier items, and that's fine, but to block an entire professional t the start was, frankly, asinine. That design decision was incredibly toxic to solo players. The second was locking an entire race behind dungeon content. I consider new races, always a great addition to the game, as core content. Not only was it dungeon blocked, but that particular dungeon was difficult for solo players well after that expansion ended. I was so angry over that it took many months before I could talk myself into going back to Wow for any reason. Forcing me to PvP...something i really used to enjoy early in Wow's history, is never going to go right with me now. That's what I consider to be mandatory....requiring players to engage in content they don't want to do to activate core gameplay features.
"That's what I consider to be mandatory....requiring players to engage in content they don't want to do to activate core gameplay features." This is kind of where I start to have a problem with the premise. You've clearly been playing WoW for a long time and the game has always been an MMO, even more so in it's early days. But now, for whatever reason, you (and a lot of other people) feel like they should be able to access a lot of the core aspects of gameplay without actually having to interact with other people. And to me, it's like, why are you playing an MMORPG if you don't want to ever have to play with other people? I've just never really felt like it was unreasonable to expect me, as a player in an MMO, to group with other people to achieve certain things. That isn't to say that there shouldn't be avenues for solo play, but they should be far more limited in my opinion.
@@mooninites755 I will remind you that one of the prime features of wow when it came out was its soloability. Said so right on the box. I would also suggest that professions advancement, at least to some end game point, or new races are core content, whereas tier sets, high-end gear, vanity items, and power progression beyond open world content is not.
@@jeffwhiting4237 The original box makes a single mention to solo content, and it only does so in regards to exploring the world. "Play solo or enlist fellow heroes to join forces with you as you negotiate the vast, battle-scarred landscape of a world at war". That's hardly an endorsement of solo play, nor would I characterize early WoW as being 'notable for solo adventurers' - it was quite the opposite. Vanilla or classic WoW had a multitude of quests that required you to group up with other players to complete as early as level 10. I would generally agree that things such as new professions, races, etc. should not be locked behind end game content though. I can't really speak to the whole alchemy situation because I don't remember.
Some players will alway try to find the best method for something so I get not having 1 currency across everything. I think that is less bad than having to do Torghast and really the solution is in between. Just make sure there are a few ways to acquire that currency so players can mix and match. Even if I felt like I had to run Torghast for 70% of that acquisition, just being able to earn the other 30% elsewhere is big IMO.
