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This will get swamped if it is posted in the other thread.
Well, I’ve been playing WoW for about three months now. I really like the game. One reason is that it appeals to me as a philosopher, since many of the problems that afflict the real world have simply transported themselves in amplified form to the game world. You can learn a lot about how ordinary communities fail by playing a MMORPG. I think it proves once again that Hobbes was fundamentally right.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how the game could be tweaked to make it better. As far as I am concerned the game is excellent with regard to mechanics. Blizzard have done a really excellent job of making it fun. The problems I am interested in are the social and economic problems. The only real problems with the game are caused by people abusing the game mechanics to grief or otherwise gain an unfair advantage over other players. This makes the game worse than it could be.
I’ve posted some thoughts on the official site, but to be honest over half the people on there are incredibly stupid and incapable of anything more than one line abusive responses. Many of the others suffer from appalling personality disorders – egomania, sociopathy, etc. I only hope they don’t act like that IRL. It’s made me appreciate Apolyton as a gaming site. It’s hard to think of a better one.
Anyway, I thought I’d post some ideas. I just like thinking about this sort of stuff and it is wasted on the official forums, and I would like to see what WoW players here think of them.
First. The WoW economy is completely screwed. Inflation has made the AH a joke. A large part of this is caused by goldfarmers. The economy in WoW is not really a free market. All the quest rewards and sales to vendors of soulbound equipment have fixed prices. I imagine Blizz calibrated those prices so that players could afford reasonable stuff from the AH if they did their quests and perhaps sold some stuff they made and farmed a wee bit. The problem is that goldfarmers have introduced far more gold into the game than was intended, and so the value of the quest rewards has lowered relative to the amount one gets from farming. This is perverse. It means that people have to spend more time farming than having fun just in order to have competitive equipment. I’ve seen lowbie blues in the AH going for many times the price that a character of that level could expect to earn in its lifetime. If you are a legitimate player, your only response is to farm and farm instead of having fun, or cheat and buy gold from one of the gold selling sites. Of course if you do that the pressure increases on other players to do the same, and you either cheat or spend hours of worthless labour farming in order to stay competitive.
Goldfarmers are one cause of this, but the other cause is people twinking their alts. This also tends to raise the price of lowbie gear to astronomical levels (my 25 Shaman has Feet of the Lynx. I got them as a lucky drop. I’ve seen them priced at 20 gold in the AH). The solution is simple: set maximum prices for all gear except the very very high end stuff. Make sure that this extends to trade windows as well. Of course people will try to swap money for items without a direct price swap, but this will be insecure, since you will have no guarantee on being paid on either side. The game would be a lot better if it simply discouraged excessive farming and the professional farmers would have nobody to sell to, since it would simply be cheaper to buy stuff and more a matter of luck.
Now for the twinkers. The other day I took my 28 Hunter into WSG. The first Horde I saw was a Troll Rogue dual-wielding with two fiery enchants. I’ve seen those offered for 25 gold on occasion and never less than 10g. That is a pretty powerful enchant for that level. If you can trick out a 29 character in that kind of gear, you have a massive advantage over everyone else. It makes the game stupid. It means that lower level BGs become the province of alts of high level characters who are kept at the maximum level for that bracket. These people need to piss off and play in the 60 bracket, although I guess their appearance in the 20-29 bracket is evidence they can’t hack it with their peers.
Again, there is an easy solution. Simply allow each character 10 goes at a given BG per level. After that they will have to level up in order to get back in. This has the added benefit of screwing over the honor farmers too. It would mean the end of ridiculous low level BG twinks, which can only be a good thing. And it means that you get 20 goes a level, which is more than enough for most players.
One of the good things about PvP servers is that you can’t create characters on both factions. This should be extended to all servers. People just use this to grief others. That’s about the only good thing about PvP servers. I’d hoped that there would be good competitive world PvP at all levels. There isn’t. There’s either nobody around or just a few high level griefers camping Menethil or Hillsbrad. PvP tends for the most part to be either being ganked by a skull, or watching as a skull from your side one shots the players of similar level to you. Most players don’t do this kind of thing, but there is a hardcore minority as usual who ruin the game for everyone else. I don’t mind the occasional one shotting. It adds spice to the game. But the people who do nothing else are simply a nuisance to both sides. Frankly, PvP action is better on Greymane (PvE) than it is on Spirestone (PvP). I have a sneaking suspicion that Blizz created the PvP servers as is to keep the ***** away from everyone else. I know that the level of chat on PvE servers is far more mature than on the PvP servers I’ve been on.
There was supposed to be a dishonour system to prevent the worst abuses. The one described in the manual clearly won’t work. The current one is pretty daft too. I think the best way to deal with the problem, and encourage PvP among similar levels (which is the point of any dishonor system), would be to offer incentives for players to police it. In other words, if you attack anyone that is a grey or skull to you, you get a 10 minute flag that marks you for a substantial honor bonus to the other side (even if you are grey). You can never pick up the flag for attacking a player already with the flag, and AoEs are modified to not hit lowbies unless you switch that on. Problem solved. The hardcore griefers will spend most of their time running away from the “police” of the other side. It won’t make a difference to large raids because no one gives a damn about honor for those anyway, and it will bring back some semblance of world PvP.
Anyway, what do you think? I just am interesting in it from a problem solving point of view. All criticisms that aren’t “Cry more noob” accepted.
Well, I’ve been playing WoW for about three months now. I really like the game. One reason is that it appeals to me as a philosopher, since many of the problems that afflict the real world have simply transported themselves in amplified form to the game world. You can learn a lot about how ordinary communities fail by playing a MMORPG. I think it proves once again that Hobbes was fundamentally right.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how the game could be tweaked to make it better. As far as I am concerned the game is excellent with regard to mechanics. Blizzard have done a really excellent job of making it fun. The problems I am interested in are the social and economic problems. The only real problems with the game are caused by people abusing the game mechanics to grief or otherwise gain an unfair advantage over other players. This makes the game worse than it could be.
I’ve posted some thoughts on the official site, but to be honest over half the people on there are incredibly stupid and incapable of anything more than one line abusive responses. Many of the others suffer from appalling personality disorders – egomania, sociopathy, etc. I only hope they don’t act like that IRL. It’s made me appreciate Apolyton as a gaming site. It’s hard to think of a better one.
Anyway, I thought I’d post some ideas. I just like thinking about this sort of stuff and it is wasted on the official forums, and I would like to see what WoW players here think of them.
First. The WoW economy is completely screwed. Inflation has made the AH a joke. A large part of this is caused by goldfarmers. The economy in WoW is not really a free market. All the quest rewards and sales to vendors of soulbound equipment have fixed prices. I imagine Blizz calibrated those prices so that players could afford reasonable stuff from the AH if they did their quests and perhaps sold some stuff they made and farmed a wee bit. The problem is that goldfarmers have introduced far more gold into the game than was intended, and so the value of the quest rewards has lowered relative to the amount one gets from farming. This is perverse. It means that people have to spend more time farming than having fun just in order to have competitive equipment. I’ve seen lowbie blues in the AH going for many times the price that a character of that level could expect to earn in its lifetime. If you are a legitimate player, your only response is to farm and farm instead of having fun, or cheat and buy gold from one of the gold selling sites. Of course if you do that the pressure increases on other players to do the same, and you either cheat or spend hours of worthless labour farming in order to stay competitive.
Goldfarmers are one cause of this, but the other cause is people twinking their alts. This also tends to raise the price of lowbie gear to astronomical levels (my 25 Shaman has Feet of the Lynx. I got them as a lucky drop. I’ve seen them priced at 20 gold in the AH). The solution is simple: set maximum prices for all gear except the very very high end stuff. Make sure that this extends to trade windows as well. Of course people will try to swap money for items without a direct price swap, but this will be insecure, since you will have no guarantee on being paid on either side. The game would be a lot better if it simply discouraged excessive farming and the professional farmers would have nobody to sell to, since it would simply be cheaper to buy stuff and more a matter of luck.
Now for the twinkers. The other day I took my 28 Hunter into WSG. The first Horde I saw was a Troll Rogue dual-wielding with two fiery enchants. I’ve seen those offered for 25 gold on occasion and never less than 10g. That is a pretty powerful enchant for that level. If you can trick out a 29 character in that kind of gear, you have a massive advantage over everyone else. It makes the game stupid. It means that lower level BGs become the province of alts of high level characters who are kept at the maximum level for that bracket. These people need to piss off and play in the 60 bracket, although I guess their appearance in the 20-29 bracket is evidence they can’t hack it with their peers.
Again, there is an easy solution. Simply allow each character 10 goes at a given BG per level. After that they will have to level up in order to get back in. This has the added benefit of screwing over the honor farmers too. It would mean the end of ridiculous low level BG twinks, which can only be a good thing. And it means that you get 20 goes a level, which is more than enough for most players.
One of the good things about PvP servers is that you can’t create characters on both factions. This should be extended to all servers. People just use this to grief others. That’s about the only good thing about PvP servers. I’d hoped that there would be good competitive world PvP at all levels. There isn’t. There’s either nobody around or just a few high level griefers camping Menethil or Hillsbrad. PvP tends for the most part to be either being ganked by a skull, or watching as a skull from your side one shots the players of similar level to you. Most players don’t do this kind of thing, but there is a hardcore minority as usual who ruin the game for everyone else. I don’t mind the occasional one shotting. It adds spice to the game. But the people who do nothing else are simply a nuisance to both sides. Frankly, PvP action is better on Greymane (PvE) than it is on Spirestone (PvP). I have a sneaking suspicion that Blizz created the PvP servers as is to keep the ***** away from everyone else. I know that the level of chat on PvE servers is far more mature than on the PvP servers I’ve been on.
There was supposed to be a dishonour system to prevent the worst abuses. The one described in the manual clearly won’t work. The current one is pretty daft too. I think the best way to deal with the problem, and encourage PvP among similar levels (which is the point of any dishonor system), would be to offer incentives for players to police it. In other words, if you attack anyone that is a grey or skull to you, you get a 10 minute flag that marks you for a substantial honor bonus to the other side (even if you are grey). You can never pick up the flag for attacking a player already with the flag, and AoEs are modified to not hit lowbies unless you switch that on. Problem solved. The hardcore griefers will spend most of their time running away from the “police” of the other side. It won’t make a difference to large raids because no one gives a damn about honor for those anyway, and it will bring back some semblance of world PvP.
Anyway, what do you think? I just am interesting in it from a problem solving point of view. All criticisms that aren’t “Cry more noob” accepted.
because if you include it, every prat and his dog will use it
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