Playing a Role
Looking Back to Go Forwardโ
Recently, I decided to check back in to Retail World of Warcraft (for research purposes), which seemed to be a pleasant experience. I found much of the convenience available to a veteran account to be respectful of time, but, of course, retail hasn't been where most of my hours in this game were sunk.
I wallowed in Classic World of Warcraft and its many community-run offshoots, private servers - the most prestigious of these being the great passion projects, Ascension WoW, Turtle WoW, among many others - which encapsulated the passion felt by the receiving end of this masterfully crafted entertainment product, even extending upon it with their own content and systems which catered to an audience deprived.
In 2013, J. Allen Brack took to the stage of BlizzCon and addressed the community's want for a return to World of Warcraft Vanilla, saying: "You think you do, but you don't".
Yes, he was wrong. As were all of the suits who thought that gamers didn't want gaming systems like what FromSoftware injected into gaming with titles like the original Demon's Souls and later Dark Souls.
The Modern rendition of WoW is akin to a food hall catering for many different flavours, but overall focusing on the idea of inclusiveness and accessibility. This slopcore is "good" for the casual player base, the gamer dads and the support role GFs, the "players in name only" who use WoW like they do reddit. It could also be considered good for business.
What it is not good for, is respecting the foundations of what made World of Warcraft Vanilla a game that is still ruminated over, and played extensively by Gamers, 22 years on from launch. I have lightly studied the great masters of the Blizzard of old - Tigole (Jeff Kaplan), Kevin Jordan, Rob Pardo, Pat Nagle and Chris Metzen, the few named of the many.
The quote above from Kvadra highlights the paradigm shift that occurred in the lifespan of the ancient MMOs to the current survivors. The element of danger has been removed, thusly impacting the sense of adventure. Convenience and comfort has allowed for an experience kinder to the casual player and more respectful of their time. The hardcore player base scurries away to their mythic+ and gladiator stinky gamer dens, while the gamer dad romps around the world smacking giant creatures in a story quest where he is the ultimate champion hero.
Both factions are isolated, low fantasy has been killed, and the 'midcore' is lost in the sauce.
Quality of Life isn't a bad thing, nor is convenience let me be clear. One thing I took away from listening to Kevin Jordan's interviews is his design philosophy:
The Greatest Content in an MMO is the Players.โ
Player-driven interaction is akin to the flow of liquidity in a financial instrument, it is the lifeblood that defines whether a product is alive or dead. The team behind World of Warcraft Vanilla made explicit decisions to not implement certain systems - i.e. DKP (Dragon Killing Points) to assign gear drops during PvE content, Rolling for gear vs. loot councils, handling of player reputation and social filtering.
Player interaction is what brought about the legendary moments: Funeral PvP, Leeroy Jenkins, Onyxia Raid Wipe, Ninja Looting et cetera.
Onyxia Wipe Animation - YouTube Approved Edition
Instead of implementing the rigid systems to define fairness, they provided the tools for players to define their fairness, which includes the ability to exploit good will with the retribution of being a server-wide pariah. It is the social friction which enables the memories that linger, the times you overcame, the times you won the roll (and all of your friends cheered for you), the times you were wronged.
The veil of mechanic obscurity enables social friction, inducing experimentation that leads to engaging disasters.
After the nth time, even Vanilla can become systematized. Spreadsheets are shared and the Best-in-Slot meta declared. There is the other path, a world of whimsy where people set out to exploit these systems for personal gain, be it a 'twinked out' gnome rogue stomping a battleground, or a healer class somehow managing to play the role of a tank.
Returning back to retail irks me with respects to itemization. The level squish normalized gear and content, in a way it is all equal and thus 20 years or so of history is compacted into another set of IDs in the database table.
Part of what made Vanilla great was the quirks, the lack of equal balance. Nine classes were devised which served to fulfill a fantasy first, then a situational role... in a role-playing game...
In retail WoW, you will find flavor of the month specs dished between the Tank/DPS/Healer trinity, the fantasy aspect still mostly served towards in most classes - but their identity has been slightly washed in the name of standardization.
The Shaman is a class that fulfills the support role, vanilla gameplay enabled you to make use of certain totems to buff your group or defend yourself. In retail, one of the three available specs make use of these totems which are all dropped at once.
The competency has been dulled for smoother gameplay, at the expense of the skill ceiling - the 'oh nice' commendation of a group member for reacting to a specific situation leaves the room.
Now weaving back into itemization, with the systems of old, it was possible to play roles outside of your pesky developer-defined boundaries. A rogue can sprint and go fast, but with a Skull of Impending Doom any class could dart across a battleground and become a viable flag carrier.
Quirky items would lead to exploits of disastrous effect, but also enable what I consider to be the holy grail player-defined design.
Player Driven Designโ
'Meme Specs' are the defilement of convenient boundaries cohesive to smooth gameplay, they can evolve into challenges that refresh content into group endeavours, social friction is alight.
You see a message in city chat: 'Priest Tank...', 'Shaman Tank...' - it makes no sense, a Healer or a DPS class? What they are asking is for you to embark in a player-defined challenge. They may have put in the work, mastered the mechanics of threat, using strange gear and down-ranked spells to do vile experiments.
Player-defined challenge is graduation of an impassioned casual player into their own strange beast. We see this with speedrunning, hardcore classic, ironman runescape, blind playthroughs.
The extra dimensionality of enabling player-driven design enables engagement that goes beyond, reinforces the players stamp on the game world and their bond with the product.
Role asymmetry, as well as the unintentional tooling via itemization to deliver alternatives opens up emergent new gameplay. The Paladin AoE Tank, Windfury dagger spam, Shadow Priest sustain.
These were rewards of game knowledge, reinforcements of design rule compliance.
A healthy balance can be reached by incorporating scenarios in play which enable considering these alternatives, fostering it and inducing it in the community. Finding flexibility in the constraints of a system led to creativity.
Beyond just XP and gear, Vanilla rewarded familiarity, game and social knowledge. The modern approach elects to tutorialize mastery and normalize asymmetry, the veil is not present. Dark Souls delivered on rewarding the player's own reinforcement learning, RuneScape used to achieve the same until it was fine-combed. Player-driven economy used to prosper prior to the Grand Exchange, knowledge was a commodity.
Let players teach each other, fail and grow, earn reputation for their expertise. Self-organization and self-policing leads to meaningful choices being made. Cohesion may shatter, trust may be formed. Modern MMOs assume a protectionism, that systems discourage bad behaviour, players are protected and friction is inherently a negative thing. It is important that good community health is fostered, abstraction and support can be one of the mechanisms to achieve this.
World of Warcraft's Most Famous & Infamous Players
Design Manifestoโ
I would like to paint this article as some sort of weak-sauce manifesto, everyone has an opinion.
I was inspired to write amongst the discussion of a possible Classic+ announcement from Blizzard, but I wonder if they have what it takes to fully embrace the possibilities. In my research and discussion, I have found many principles that can be used to inform our future game design:
- Enable systems without replacing players
- Asymmetry is a beautiful, natural thing
- Discovery and reinforcement drives engagement
- Knowledge is meta-progression
- Friction is a natural side-effect that should be embraced, not quelled
Vanilla was far from perfect, but it was perfect enough to build and simultaneously destroy a whole genre. It spawned numerous 'WoW Killers' that, for their own reasons, seemed to fail the test of time. There was a seemingly immutable formula devised by these illusive archons that graduated from EverQuest and RTS game development in the WarCraft series.
Instead of crooning for the old days, let's bring them back in new games of our own.
When did player trust evaporate?