What other games could learn from WoW

I sometimes see posts on other blogs by people who have spent significant time playing other games, talking about what WoW could learn from those other games and how taking up those aspects of those games could make WoW better. While they often make good points, I think we need to take some time to consider the opposite; the things WoW does well that other games would do well to imitate. After all, Blizzard did many things right in their design of WoW, things other developers would do well to take note of.

-Streamlining pre-playing processes
Games can throw a lot of obstacles in your way to prevent you from reaching your objective: enemies, puzzles, bosses, or even the level you are playing on, but the game itself should not be an obstacle. WoW has done a great job streamlining the things we need to do before we can play the game so we can spend more time actually playing the game. The dungeon finder is a great example of this. Say what you will about how it promotes trollish behavior and reduces the feeling of companionship among group members, but it definitely streamlined the process of getting a group for an instance run and made it much more convenient.

-Not denying content to less skilled players
Let's get one thing straight before we continue; I am not in favor of not rewarding skilled players for overcoming difficult challenges. What I am in favor of is giving the majority of players access to the fun rewards, and at least a good number of players access to the practical rewards. However, the big thing I am talking about here is content, the meat of the game itself: the sights to see, the things to do, the bosses to fight, etc. Raiding in WoW was once confined to the great minority because of the effort it took, and Blizzard has done a great job of making raiding easier for the more casual players to jump into, allowing more of their playerbase to see the content they make. Normal modes, 10-man raiding, the new emblem system--all of them made it easier for players to see the content, while the inclusion of 25-mans and the addition of hard modes ensured that the more dedicated players wouldn't lack for a challenge to overcome.

Most games do something similar in this regard in the form of difficulties, such as easy, medium, hard, etc., that scale the challenge of the game to the desires of the player, and that's a good thing in my eyes. However, what isn't a good thing in my eyes is when a game saves the best and most fun rewards for the people who beat the game on the highest difficulties, be it a special weapon, an extra level, etc. WoW is good about this in that, though the best gear is only available to the hard-core raiders, gear itself is not difficult to get, and the important things (basic mounts and the like) aren't denied to all but the most dedicated players. The only things that are denied to the less skilled players are better gear (which they don't need, after all) and cool-looking mounts, which are cosmetic, anyways.

-The ability to undo mistakes or misinformed decisions
I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and for that reason, I don't like it when a misinformed decision or flat-out mistake plagues me for the rest of the game. Because of this, when I play expansive and complex RPGs like Oblivion and Fallout 3, I often find myself replaying the first hour or two of the game multiple times because I don't like the way it played out or because I looked up a guide on the game and found out a way to make a certain decision much more intelligently. Perhaps I found out that making a certain choice during a certain quest would have been a better decision in the long run, or perhaps I chose a sub-optimal way to design my character. Either way, I often find myself restarting the game simply because I don't want one bad choice to hinder my future chances of success.

One of the great things about WoW is that that problem is not present. Make a bad talent choice? Pay gold to reset your talent points. Didn't like the pet you trained? Train another. Pick the wrong quest reward? You'll replace it soon anyways. Pick the Oracles but like the Frenzyheart more now? Do the quest to switch over. Pick the DPS Ashen Verdict ring but want the tank one now? Do the quest to switch it. Don't like the race you picked? Pay to change it. Don't like the faction you picked? Pay to change that. There are very few decisions in this game that will permanently hinder you for the rest of your time with that character, and the few there are can usually be undone with a ticket to a GM. I wish other games would take WoW's example on this, because it's one of the things I love the most about WoW.

So what about you, dear readers? What aspects of WoW do you like that you wish other games would adopt? Failing that, what mistakes has Blizzard made that you hope other developers can avoid?

A new kind of hard mode?

This post over on Restokin brings up an interesting point, especially in the comment section. It says that hard modes are uninteresting for players because they don't actually provide any kind of challenge to the players' skill; players like Lissanna feel that they are just running the same old content, but now its arbitrarily harder. Although I have defended hard modes in the past, I agree with Lissanna that they are basically a lazy rehash of the same content that players are forced to run over and over again. (Although that's another issue, entirely.) She complains that her guild thinks there is no real reason to run hard modes other than the achievements, and thus they don't want to run them.

So what's the alternative? Currently, most hard modes (as far as I understand it) pretty much involve more damage and more sources for that damage. What I think would be a better idea is hard modes that actually changed the fight. After all, I think Blizzard implemented hard modes to allow casual players to see the content while still giving hard core players a challenge, so rather than just adding more damage to the fight, why not make it require more skill? I'll give some examples bellow to illustrate my point. Because of my limited experience with raids, these examples will be from basic Northrend 5-mans rather than raids. These are just ideas, and I'm sure Blizzard could probably come up with ones that would be even more interesting and be enjoyable to play.

Imagine Ingvar the Plunderer in Utgarde Keep as a raid boss. His smash/dark smash ability could extend to the entire arena, and thus all players would need to run behind a column to avoid it. However, on hard mode, every time he does it, he could destroy the column he is closest to. If you didn't have a column to hide behind, the dark smash would probably kill your raid. In order to prevent people from just healing through it, each smash that hits could also apply a debuff that increases the damage of the next smash by 25%, stacking until the player dies. Now imagine Prince Keleseth from the same instance as a raid boss. What if, on hard mode, before casting frost tomb, he used an spell that pushed all of the players away from him and put a snare on them, so that they would need to bunch up on each other so that they could be close to whoever got frost tombed and they could free that person. Imagine a fight like Xevozz in Violet Hold. In VH, the orbs he summons just take the shortest path to you, following you wherever you go, making this basically a kiting fight. That would be fine on normal mode, but what if, on hard mode, they took different paths and tried to flank your raid, and you needed to be careful to make sure they don't? That would make an interesting fight, me thinks.

These are just some example, and my limited raid experience makes coming up with more example difficult, but I think you get the idea. What are some similar hard-mode fight-mechanic changers that you think would be fun to play?

Why hard modes are a better option than hard raids

Wrath of the Lich King brought many new things to WoW. One of them was the advent of Hard Modes. Although they became more prevalent with the addition of Ulduar, the original hard mode battle was Sartharion with three drakes. For those of you who don't know, Sartharion was the last Wrath boss before Ulduar was added. His lair contained him as the main boss and three drakes as sub-bosses. The drakes could be killed before Sarth, or they could be skipped. Each drake that wasn't killed would help Sarth out during the battle, making it more difficult as more drakes were left alive. If all the drakes were killed, however, Sarth became an easy run for easy epics. The rewards for leaving the drakes up were better loot, and if you left all three up, a chance at a drake mount and titles to show off just how badass you were.

Ulduar followed this model for many of its bosses, allowing 10 of the 14 bosses to be engaged in "hard modes," making them more difficult but allowing for better loot, as well as achievements, including this meta-achievement that rewards a cool-looking drake. This is a departure from the vanilla and BC model of raiding, in which the raid bosses were just very hard, meaning only well-coordinated raiding guild could kill them. It amazes me that this was Blizzard's design philosophy for raids for so long. After all, the majority of new content that we got from patches came in the form of raids, and yet raids were inaccessible to most people. This was especially true in the days of 40-man raids. Burning Crusade changed this somewhat when it allowed people to ease into raiding with the 10-man dungeon Karazhan and made the rest of the raids 25-man. Still, many guilds were not able to make the jump from Kara to the 25-man raids. Though organizing 25 people is significantly easier than organizing 40, the few people who knew that first-hand probably made the jump with no problem, while the rest of us were left behind in Kara. Thus raiding was still the land of the few.

Wrath of the Lich King changed this in multiple ways. First, Blizzard implemented two versions of every raid: a 10-man and a 25-man version. Although the belief that the 10-man versions are easier is debatable, that wasn't the purpose of implementing two versions of each dungeon. The purpose was to allow guilds to raid the way they are most comfortable raiding. Although the 25-man versions do give slightly better loot, the fact that these dungeons could be done in 10-man versions meant more people would actually see the raids. This makes a lot of sense from a design perspective. After all, why spend the majority of your time on content that the minority of your player-base is going to see? As I said in one of my other posts, Blizzard's main goal with Wrath of the Lich King seems to be to get more players into raids, and making each dungeon doable with ten people certainly makes that possible.

As I said before, Sartharion was also implemented with a hard mode so that casual players could enjoy seeing the battle while serious raiding guilds can still have something to brag about. Blizzard liked this idea so much that Ulduar got the hard mode treatment, meaning less serious guilds can still see the fights, experience the lore, and be amazed by the art design, while hardcore raiding guilds can still feel special about the difficult fights they have beaten. From a business standpoint, this is a really good idea, as it allows a wider swath of players to see the work that Blizzard puts into its content without completely taking out the challenge or denying the hard-core guilds the chance to show off just how good they are.

Some hardcore players felt quite indignant that raids, previously their own exclusive right and domain, were now being downed by more casual players PUG'ing their way through. I can understand their anger that raids themselves were once their exclusive right and no longer are, but I think they are being selfish. Asking Blizzard to continue to develop content for a small percentage of its player base is quite selfish on the part of those who got to raid in the old days. Besides, the one thing they always seem to complain about is that there is no more glory in being a raider. Now that anyone can raid, saying that you have full tier gear doesn't have the same impact it used to, nor does saying that you have finished a certain dungeon. This belief of theirs implies that there is less glory to be found in beating a hard mode encounter than simply beating a hard encounter. Perhaps this is true, but if you raid for the glory of it anyways, that's a pretty bad reason to raid. The true fun of raids is the personal satisfaction of defeating a difficult encounter, and I fail to see how defeating an encounter that is difficult itself is somehow less satisfying than defeating an encounter that you chose to make difficult. They are both equally difficult (I need a thesaurus, I know), so they should thus give raiders an equal amount of satisfaction. If they don't, I think the difference is really just in the raider's head.