Tag Archives: Game Design

Random the Third

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Time spent leveling to 85? Three days. Time spent grinding dungeons to have enough gear for heroics? Four days. Time spent grinding heroics to get enough gear for raids? Two weeks. Time spent learning a single boss in a raid and finally downing him? Two weeks.

Finally downing a boss only to have him drop THREE pairs of plate tanking boots? When you have a single BEAR tank? Skull bashing frustrating.

Random is not fun. I have said it before and I will say it again.

So if random is so terrible, why is it used so WIDLY in Massively Multiplayer games? It is an archaic and ancient method used by designers to increase difficulty, include “surprise”, and artifically inflate playtime.

My Issues with Random Drops in WoW:

1. Random is a complex idea, frequently misunderstood.

Casinos are completely based on the misunderstanding of random. People pay money into a slot machine believing they will eventually hit the number needed to win.

I frequently have to explain the difference between random chance and probability to players. So why stick to this misunderstood random? We are not trying to con players out of their money. If they are playing, we already have their money. If the general group of players don’t understand random then when they hit a bad streak they will feel a sense of betrayal, like the game is cheating. Or that the game “hates” them. One of a designers common issues is how to match player expectation with what is happening in the game. Why not remove this and instead put in a progressive random, or a even a weighted random that takes into account the player’s time and dedication to the task? This falls in line with player expectation.

2. Random is not fair.

Quell the urge to say life isn’t fair. Games are not meant to parrot life. Even the Sims did not stay true to life. When the player is competing against an AI or the game there is no reason not to be fair. It has a dedication to be fun. I don’t want to endlessly make futile attempts at something while watching another player succeed with seeming ease. This creates a stepping away point, where player one says, “Screw this, I can go play a better game.”

In a game where the acquisition of the newest thing is the goal and success identifier, the player who gives the greatest amount of effort should be rewarded first. If a player spends all their time focused on a single goal, and then spends a great deal of time, proving their dedication, shouldn’t they be rewarded, as opposed to someone who accidentally stumbles on it through a mathematical coin toss?

3. Removal of Random allows the experience to be defined.

If we remove the random element we can truly design the experience the player has. We take control over the fun and can tailor it to be precisely what we want for that point in the game. Also this allow a definable goal or time line to completion. The player knows how long they will be at a task.

The ability to determine the length of time allows the player to set goals and builds excitement towards the reward. As a player gets closer to a reward, they work harder, faster, and more diligently to get closer to it. As I near the required number of badges to buy an item I am far more likely to persist and keep coming back every day to get my daily dungeon done.

4. The inflation of time is unnecessary.

Portal proved a game doesn’t have to be long to worth it’s cost. I would even go so far as to say Portal is so exceptional because it’s experience is so cunningly condensed into it’s purest form then spread over an appropriate amount of time. As the industry gets better at making games, there are more games worth the time to play. But our time is limited. We don’t need artificial inflation of time to keep the player playing. Make each experience engaging and worth the time spent to play it.

In MMOs, it is all about keeping the player playing and thus paying. Interestingly, using rng to artificially inflate the playtime of the game actually drives possible customers away. It also makes the game stale for older customers. If I got 1k gold for every time a friend of mine quit playing WoW because they just didn’t feel like doing the grind any more, I could open my own gold selling business.

The interesting thing is seeing people who will grind on a dungeon for an item for 2 or 3 weeks and never get it. They invariably cancel their account and then return at a later date, only to get stuck in the same situation. I also see where people reach this point of frustration, get convinced to run it one more time, and then get the item, at this point their interest is renewed.

5. Blizzard is ALREADY combating this problem, just not consistently.

One of the big themes that was beat into us at the Guildhall was make your design decision consistent. If you can’t do x in the game, that’s fine. Explain it, and go on, but don’t change the rules, without re-teaching the player. If a barrel that explodes is red, it needs to be red the whole game. You can’t change it to blue without telling the player and giving them a reason why.

Blizzard already has a progressive random integrated for their quest items. They already use badges, crafting, and reputation rewards as partial backup for bad drops. They just need to make it consistent across the board.

There is no reason to cling to this outdated design idea. The difficulty should come from challenges, not in gearing. The surprise comes from new experiences, new raids, new classes, and maybe getting that item early. With the sheer size and scope of classes, raids, professions, dailies, quests, achievements, and even pvp, there is no reason to artificially inflate the playtime. The play time on WoW is already insanely high and they add new content every few months. Even with tweaks to speed old content, there is still more here than a standard player could ever hope to experience. So why not at least give them the chance to see more of it?

It may take a bit more code and a bit more design thought, but doing away with rng would also make a better game. And isn’t that our goal as designers?

What’s in a Name?

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Writing for video games is one of the hardest mediums to write for. Bypassing entirely the fact that development teams think they don’t need a writer, the writers being brought in exceptionally late, and/or assuming that anyone on the team who can put words on paper counts as a writer, there are a ton of minor issues with traditional writing that make writing for a game difficult.

One major issue that is very common is the assumption that story can only be told in text blocks. Bioshock has proven this to be completely untrue. Story can be told using models, textures, sounds, and even enemy set ups. This is part of an idea that when making a story the designer is also making a world. Everything in the game has to be a part of the world and a part of the story. Nothing should be put in the game that doesn’t support the world and the fiction.

If the design of the game requires something like zone or area names, then it logically follows that each of these names should be selected to support the fiction. Brand names, character names, place names… every single proper name in the game should be carefully considered and chosen to support the fiction. Nuka Cola in Fallout 3? Perfect. Pokeball to put Pokemon in? Perfect. Sinclare Solutions? Spot on. Each name supports the world.

That means the person on the team who knows the world best (hopefully an evil overlord of design), if not a writer, should at least be working with the writer to generate proper names for every single thing within the game. From characters to unique items. From places to technical terms that need to be renamed for the players (eg spawners). These molecules of flavor are just as important as a good footstep sound effect and a well placed combat area for making the world feel real, consistent and coherent.

Not about WoW, but rather about Games

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My inspiration for posts often comes from a news article I read. Today’s comes from a member blog post on Gamasutra. It is a QA Tester who believes every company should have a mandatory play hour every day. To play their game. I laughed a bit, started to navigate away and decided to take a moment to read the comments. Imagine my surprise that people were arguing against his point.

I’m sorry… but WHAT?

Were there seriously *game developers* saying we *shouldn’t* be playing our own game? Excuse me while I boggle at that absurdity. If someone had come in and said, I do play our game, more than an hour each day, because I am testing things I am putting in, there might have been a valid point. But these people seemed to have missed the guy’s point. Let me see if I can nail it down a bit better.

When designing, arting, programming a game, the designer, artist, programmer is the FIRST person to see it. I build a level, I put it in. I should immediately be applying values to the level. Is it fun? Does it hold to the spirit of the design? Is it fun? Does it fit in the framework of levels? Is it fun? Does it fit in the game? Is it fun? Is this a treasure area or a combat area? Is it fun? An artist or programmer will likely ask their own barrage of questions (Is it pretty? Does it fit with the theme? Is it optimal? Does it work as intended? Does it work as a system?) but they are the first people to experience the game.

It doesn’t exist unless it is on screen. I first heard this at GDC, and I cannot express how much I love that sentiment. It doesn’t exist unless it is IN THE GAME. Once you can play your game, your daily focus, beyond tasks, is finding the worst thing in your game and fixing it. How do you find the things that are bad and need to be fixed? By playing your game. How will you know what systems are currently in place to use for the best effect? By playing your game. How will you know when the exact piece of art you need already exists, it just isn’t in your level? By playing your game. How do you know it is fun and you are on the right track? By playing your game.

Play it early, play it often, and play it as oddly as you can. Once you feel you have exhausted *every* possible bit of creativity you have, get someone else to play it and watch them. Don’t help them, but watch them. Play it when you are tired. Play it when you are inebriated. Play it when you are caffeinated. Try to play an entire level without killing anything. Try to run past enemies. Try to only use alt fire attacks. So on and so forth.

I love the idea of sitting down and playing something from the game every day. Gather up the design team, sit them down in the conference room and play the level we haven’t seen in the longest. Or the level with the most changes. Talk about it. Just talk out loud. Make different people play it. Attempt to identify where it went right and where it is going wrong. (Here’s the trick, don’t come up with solutions, let the designer think about that later and talk about it later. You’ll get bogged down in problem solving then.) Now, to be fair, no, I don’t think you should base all your opinions on your game off your own design team, but they are the first line of defense against a bad game.

Not playing your own game is almost as absurd as being a game developer and not playing games. As a designer, I try to play new games or significant games every so often. (Or at the very least watch other people play games I am terrible at.) I was once told about a lead, who was interviewing a design candidate. They asked him what he was playing. He responded that he hadn’t been playing games recently but rather had been focused on getting a job. (He, not too shockingly, didn’t get that job either.) When designing games is your career, playing games is the equivalent of taking a refresher class. Taking a certification course. Attending a seminar. More importantly, you have to do it with games you would never play in the first place.

This is why I am so thankful to have family members who play games. I can watch them play, and excel, at games I am abysmal at. I can watch them and determine why they are fun (despite not being fun to me) and then apply that later.

As I boggled over the seemingly absurd responses, I did note one thing. Several people assumed because he was QA that a. he was talking about focus testing or b. his point was invalidated because he was QA. If there ever was a time i wanted to reach through the internet and slap someone, it would be now. Never discredit an idea because it comes from an unexpected source. A shocking number of design ideas I have had come when doing something completely absurd, or talking about something not even remotely close to the issue I solve. If an artist comes up with a great gameplay idea, I am not going to discount it because it’s his job to make the level pretty. If it makes the game better, use it.

That’s why they are called “heroic”

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The great race began at midnight, then barreled on into Tuesday morning. Camping spawns, blitzing from zone to zone, barely reading quest text. All in the hope to be 85 as soon as possible. Of course, it isn’t just getting to 85, it’s all about the epics. Those lovely purple items that make a character so powerful and makes them truly feel like a Hero. This means getting what gear is available and running dungeons until the player’s eyes bleed. In true Blizzard fashion, dungeons come in two flavors, Regular and Heroic. Heroics drop better gear and points which can be exchanged for gear.

In Wrath, many players complained that Blizzard went too far into the “welfare” epics. Implying that by having an epic item drop off the last boss of a heroic instance, allowing players to buy epics with badges dropped from heroics, and having “major patch” dungeons drop the mid level of epic, they had made epics less awesome and amazing.

First off, the belief that something in the game is “rare” or “special” is a fallacy. Nothing is difficult to get, provided sufficient time and persistence. Want all ICC 25 gear? Join a guild that has ICC 25 on farm and show up every run. Want Kingslayer? It was sold on many servers for less than 10k gold. Also rarity in this game is completely relative. Take the Celestial Steed and Rivendare’s Deathcharger for instance. The Celestial Steed is obtained from the Blizzard Pet store for $25. Rivendare’s Deathcharger is a notoriously low drop rate mount from Stratholm. The average number of Stratholm runs to get the mount is 100. Most players give up after about 20, especially since it is not a guaranteed drop after 100 runs. Pinecone of Echo Isles will point to his 242 runs to acquire this mount as proof of the vileness of the RNG. (Random Number Generator.) Logic dictates that the Celestial Steed then would be more common, thus less rare than the Deathcharger’s Reins. Over the entirety of the game, this is likely true.

However, the player base is split across four regions, hundreds of servers, and two factions. So in reality, the rarity of something in relation to a player is really only drawing from a few thousand players at most. In Booze Hounds, of Echo Isles, the Celestial Steed was dubbed “too expensive” for many of the adult players with children. To that end, only 4 of the guild members had the purchasable mount. In contrast, many of these same players were completely willing to spend downtime in the game farming Stratholm, and as a result there were no less than 8 of Rivendare’s coveted mount. In this small sample the Celestial Steed was more rare than the Deathcharger, despite the ease of acquiring it. In the end, when playing WoW, it doesn’t matter what the entirety of the game has, it matters what you, as a player has and the people you play with (generally your guild). The rarity is relative. Was Kingslayer rare? Not in BH, where nearly everyone, including a few alts had the title.

Now, having explained this odd view of rarity, back to the epics.

In Cataclysm, Blizzard returned to the “older” way of thinking. Epics no longer drop in Dungeons, Heroic or otherwise. Epics can no longer be purchased with badges (though likely this will change when the second raid tier is implemented). And Heroics are… frustratingly difficult. The key word is frustrating. Something can be difficult or challenging, but not be frustrating. In the Lich King fight, Defiles made the battle difficult, as the players have to spread out at just the right time, in the proper fashion to prevent chaining the effect. A challenge, with 10 people, but if the effect did chain, everyone knew why. It was obvious.

Heroic Deadmines presents a boss, Admiral Ripsnarl, who spawns adds after he reaches 75% health. These adds have 60k health and must be killed within a few seconds or they double in size and health. If they double 3 times, they explode, wiping the group. Logically, the dps roles all turn and burn these adds down as quickly as possible. When attempting this with my dungeon group we repeatedly failed miserably. In an attempt to understand what was happening, I looked at the various people in our group. Every single member was over the 329 item level required to queue for heroics. Most members were even up in the 340 item level range, in addition to 3 people having the achievement for Cataclysmic Superiority, meaning all of their gear is the blue level to start this expansion. We were a full guild group, with vent, and understood the mechanics of the fight, but it was very clearly beyond our ability. It’s possible we needed more burst dps (with 2 warlocks, we were in the killing things slowly but surely) but hasn’t Blizzard’s motto been “Bring the Player not the Class”? Our tank was well geared, even gemmed and enchanted. Our healer was well geared and healing efficiently. All our dps was doing 10k+. It felt absurd that we couldn’t take this boss down.

The frustration of this fight ruined the night. There was no explanation for why we failed. Everyone was geared at the level the game said we should be. Everyone was playing efficiently, avoiding damage, and fulling their role. This lead me to one conclusion. Either the gear requirements were “off” or the boss was. The boss needed a nerf, or the item level required to queue for the dungeon needed to be higher. With a well coordinated group, on vent, well balanced, we should have been able to succeed with minimal wipes. According to Wowhead, Ripsnarl is a gear check. Does your group have the gear needed to succeed. Blizzard said yes, the boss said no. The inconsistency needs to be addressed.

I don’t think heroics should be easy, I do think they need to be doable, with an understanding of why you fail. I do think that the gear required needs to be clear. In Wrath, a stair stepped gear requirement for harder instances was implemented and understood. Perhaps they need to revisit it for Cataclysm. The worst part was, when someone pointed out that we were wiping more than we had in Heroic Raids in Wrath. And even so, we weren’t fighting for Epics, we were fighting for blues… The group almost immediately fell apart due to the morale dive bomb. Say what you will about Wrath welfare epics… At least the game was fun and I didn’t go to bed more bummed than when I started playing that night.

WTS Level 25 Guild, 250k, PST.

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Guilds have always been a huge deal in World of Warcraft. As a long time player, both in and out of guilds, I can vouch for the fact that a good guild makes *all* the difference when playing. WoW is an interesting game, but is a great game when playing with other people. Of course the reverse is also true, other people can make this game terrible, but I want to focus on guilds.

Want to run a dungeon? Sure, it can be pugged through the Dungeon Finder, but having a guild run serves multiple purposes. First, you are playing with people you know. No drama over who pulled. No drama over who’s fault a wipe is. Also, you tend to work better as a team. Second, loot is so much easier to deal with. Players who will fight tooth and nail over the smallest upgrade in a pug will gladly hand over that same piece to a guildy. Not to mention that if all the people in the run are guildies, then every drop that is used is one more drop making your guild stronger. Add to this three – ventrilo is usually usable, four – breaks are generally accepted easier, and five – it’s just more fun to play with people you know, and there is really no reason to run in a non-guild group if you can get into a guild group.

In Cataclysm, they added a whole new level to guilds. Guild levels. Each guild can earn 25 levels. Each level comes with some special reward or perk. Everything from faster leveling to mounts and pets to increased skill ups and gathers! It is enough to make even the most anti-social want to join in and contribute. Also, contributing is simple. Every thing you do, very nearly, increases the xp of a guild. Leveling? 25% of your xp counts as guild xp! Battlegrounds? Kill those Horde for the good of your guild!

Now, many of the initial nay-sayers piped up with, “But that means mega-guilds will level faster!!! NO FAIR!” Well, yes, a guild with 70 active members is going to level faster than a guild with 7 active members. Logically that makes complete sense. So, Blizzard instituted a cap on the amount of guild xp earned each day. The daily cap on guild XP is 6,246,000 xp. That’s about the amount of personal exp it takes to level from level 83 to 84. No small feat.

I am currently in two guilds. One, a rather large progression raiding guild with about 40-50 active members. For the first week of guild leveling it takes about an hour, on average, to reach our daily xp cap. Even with the nerf (previously 100% of earned player xp went to the guild cap, now it is only 25%, when the 100% was active it took about guild about 30 minutes to hit cap, sometimes less). My other guild is a friends and family guild, that is literally me, and two other players. Now to be fair, I haven’t been playing those toons, and they didn’t have Cataclysm until Friday night, BUT regardless, on our best day, when all 3 of us were on, playing for a few hours, and leveling like mad we earned…. about 19% of our daily cap. This was post nerf, which means pre-nerf, just the three of us would have reached almost 76% of our daily cap. I am willing to admit that I still think these numbers are fair. We are 3 people. By no means a “real” guild. And my larger guild is the very definition of a guild, and an active one at that.

It never occurred to me that this would become a limiting factor. I mean, yes, I was aware of the desire to join a larger guild that had multiple perks (after all who can pass up 20% exp from mobs?) but I never really considered how long it would take to bring a guild up to max. I assumed that a large guild could do it quickly and a small guild it would just take time.

The total XP required for a guild to level from 1 to 25 is 845,670,000 – which translates to 136 days assuming the cap is reached on a daily basis.

136 DAYS. Meaning my little guild, playing our hardest, would be 680 days. THAT’S ALMOST 2 YEARS of solid play from 3 people. 2 YEARS?!? ARE THEY KIDDING ME?!? Now previously, we could “pad” our numbers by running old world stuff with a “guild” group and earning the achievements. But they removed that, so now, we can’t even do that. 2 years.

I was annoyed at this, until I was in Stormwind and saw someone selling a guild. Level 2 guild for sale, 6 tabs, 50k gold. Suddenly I had this image of end game guilds, creating a secondary guild, moving enough players into it to keep it capped every day, then SELLING it for huge sums.

The sadness is, this will limit the number of new guilds formed. People won’t want to be in a newbie level 1 guild. People will flock to the high level guilds to get their bonuses. People will put up with bad situations to stay with the perks a large guild has. Something like when a few friends of mine and I splintered from a dying guild to form our own won’t happen as often. I could see us staying in a negative guild just for the perks. Of course, this negative environment would make it likely for us to have bad experiences and end up leaving the game all together.

There needs to be a change, an adjustment, and some kind of account given to small guilds. You should chose a guild for the people, not for the perks. And yet, Blizzard is rewarding perk seeking behavior, for all their “bring the player not the class” they are now saying “seek out the bonuses instead of having fun”.

Finding the Fun – Facebook Edition

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Recently I decided to wade back into the putrescent and vile waters of Facebook gaming. I clearly did not have high hopes. Most Facebook games seem to be a small step above Progress Quest with monetary purchases that either completely unbalance the game to those who buy or have no worth. It seems to be an all or nothing deal which I believe is indicative of an overabundance of marketing/business people and a dearth of true game designers. The thing is, I can *see* the potential. Much like I imagine early game designers saw the potential in 3d graphics, online multiplayer, and motion control. This *could* be the next great stage of gaming. This could be the thing that pushes gaming into the wide main stream and silences all such arguments about the “outcast violent gamer” stereotypes.

I don’t even want to say how disappointed I am that such a cultural shift might come from something as absurd as Facebook or even any other social networking site. It feels like a thing that should come from the indie community, or from a AAA publisher. But I will take it any way I can get it.

Square Enix released a Final Fantasy “Mafia Wars” type game. I did not believe that this game would be true FF quality, as I was fairly positive it was outsourced to some for hire studio. But it was possible it had at least improved upon the quality of Facebook games.

To begin with, this game has very little to do with Final Fantasy, with one major exception. You have classes, and each of these classes are able to be changed out as you play. It seems even like one of the major goals is to gather new classes. The art is simple drawings, without a single animation. You go on accept quests, with no narrative and collect gear that simply allows you more access to new accept quests. You collect 7 of randomly dropped items for collections which are then converted to a new class medallion. They could and should take this about 10 more steps forward in complexity and make class decisions an actual choice with independent leveling in true FF style.

The interesting thing was, not much varied from other games of it’s ilk, except for a bug. This bug allowed you to add “companions” of other players without adding them to your Facebook friends. It allowed you to ask for help on click quests and such, without having them be friends. Now, you couldn’t send free gifts to each other, but you could send items you had already acquired.

And I was having a blast. I had added almost 400 random people from the discussion boards and was merrily tromping through quests and pvp fights with the greatest of ease. I didn’t know any of those people, but I gifted extra items, clicked on chest links, clicked to help with quests, and gifted action packs. I was wildly enjoying my progress quest, even though it meant very little, because I had all these friends helping me.

Of course, the company eventually fixed the bug and I lost all my ill gotten friends. Now it is me, and the lowly 4 people I managed to convince to play with me. And to be honest, it isn’t as fun or as consuming. I can still win at pvp, I can still quest with the greatest of ease, it’s just not as much fun because I don’t have 400 people to share it with. I don’t have 400 people to share items, help on quests, and give power packs to. I had found the fun in a game that had no business being fun. Then the developer ripped that fun away.

Now the true question is: How do I replicate that in a game, while still retaining the marketing desire for you to peer pressure your friends into playing?

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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Game designers love surprising the player. They call them “Gotcha” moments. The general assumption that this means the death of the player is not always true. A treasure or cutscene can be a surprise. The thing is, most designers are the diabolical type. A tad masochistic and definitely sadistic, we like watching player struggle on difficult tasks. Well, most of us do anyway.

One common surprise tactic is to have the “BAM, you’re dead” moment. This can be a falling rock, a hidden sniper, or a bridge that falls when you walk across it the seventh time. My level design professor once said that we should always be careful with such moments and make sure the player receives plenty of clues. If you are going to have a sniper hiding to get the player, have bullet holes on the wall, or dead corpses in the street. Then, from that point onward, you can play on the player’s fear. Want them to slow down and stop? Place some bullet hole decals and a corpse. Even without the sniper, a player who has died that way before will stop in their tracks and look around before proceeding.

World of Warcraft does this same thing, in a slightly left handed fashion. When the player begins leveling, the areas are safe, contained, and kind to the player. Once they hit about level 20, Blizzard slowly introduces the idea of “danger” to the player by having mobs tied to other mobs, so when you pull one, you always pull several. Nothing drives home the idea that you are not safe more than the random wandering Elite monster.

Elites are super strong monsters, generally named, that are designed to be killed by a group of players. This can be anywhere from 2 to 5 players. Commonly they are the goal of a long and complex quest chain in the area as well. As a designer, I can see that the point of such mobs is to teach solo players they can’t do everything alone. They need help. As a level 20 player, soloing and exploring, wandering across one of these Elites means certain doom.

WoWInsider posted about revenge being a dish best served cold at level cap. They talked about the various elites they encountered as they leveled that created interesting reactions in level capped players. As soon as I read the title, I smiled. They were talking about the Sons of Argual. Oh, not specifically, perhaps (the writer stuck to Mord’lam, an monster in Duskwood), but as a young leveling mage, the first time I ever encountered such a creature was a Son of Argual, in Silverpine forest. He had a tasty mage snack that day.

I learned to be careful. I learned to watch mobs that were moving. I learned to zoom my camera out as far as I could. And I learned that sometimes your only option is to run like hell for the road.

Much later, after two expansions, several level 80 toons, and a faction change, a friend and I were riding through Silverpine to go to Undercity to steal the fire for Fire Festival. As we passed the Sepulcher, I started looking for him. Sure enough, as we crossed the bridge, there he was, in all his level 23 glory. I dotted him with all my most powerful spells. His death was almost immediate. I mounted up to my friend asking, “What was that about?” “Just some unfinished business.” I responded. As an Alliance player, born and bred, he wouldn’t understand the hatred of this mob. But he would understand if it were Mord’Lam, the Fel Reaver, the Storm Giant, or any one of the other dozens of such Elites that patrol the world and make it perilous.

It is worth noting that this post has 9 pages worth of comments, an excessive number for WoWInsider. Many of which are a single name or “This” as a statement of agreement.

Yes, revenge is a dish best served at level cap. But even after 3 years, my anger at that NPC wasn’t cold. It was still red hot. But the wondrous truth is, we level, they don’t.

A Love Letter to a System Design

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Dear Dungeon Finder-

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways….

Before you came into my life, the world was boring and depressing. Hours were wasted begging, pleading, and bribing tanks and heals to come and play in the wondrous dungeons of Azeroth. An entire day I would waste, just to see a single set of bosses, perchance to dream of seeing a single piece of loot. The grind was truly heinous. Gearing a single character was a nightmare of Sisyphus, and nigh impossible without the kindness of others.

Then, like a white knight on a armored steed, you rode from the aether of Patch 3.3 and into the World of Warcraft. You changed all the rules, DF. What was once an ordeal, took but mere heartbeats. Suddenly a world of peril, adventure, and epic loot was opened to those who had long since lost hope. Mountains of loot could be won for those who took but the time to open your frame and click Join Queue.

Listen not to those who complain of 15-25 minute queue times. Such time is insignificant when compared to the hours wasted beating the guild bushes for an unsuspecting tank. Listen not to those who complain of the faults of Need Before Greed. You award badges like beads from Mardi Gras. And even if loot is lost unfairly, you console the needy and offer them endless chances to earn more. Listen not to those who speak of bad experiences, for the good you bring to the world, far out weighs the bad.

It is impossible to fathom improving your already supremely exceptional functionality. You truly changed the world. You changed the way people played. You made the game better, so exceptionally so that even those who did not play could see the marvelous wonder you were. Suddenly nothing was beyond a character’s grasp. The highest teirs of gear, the shiniest of gems, the rarest of materials. You put them all within easy reach.

But then, the unthinkable happened. You evolved. You ascended even further towards the divine gift you were intended to be. Suddenly, Holiday Bosses bowed to your will as well! No longer are we subjected to liars and cheats trying to steal our summons. No longer must we win rolls against others, but rather treasures are handed to us in a neat little bag. Once more you took something painful, difficult, and complex and made it so blindingly easy and fair that it is a wonder the world did not sigh in contentment.

I sighed. I am content with your impartiality and speed. I am stunned by your ingeniousness and practicality. You are truly a design system for the ages to point to and say “Here, here was a perfect example of how to add something truly game changing.”

Ignore the naysayers DF. You are truly a wonderful system. A game changing idea that increased the enjoyment and accessibility of Warcraft in spades. I can only hope to design a system that can compare to your awesomeness one day.

– Joyia, Warlock of Echo Isles.

The Wrathgate

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As a game designer, one should always be on the look out for really good ways of doing things. Always playing new games to get new ideas and learning new tricks. Each exceptional game you play is merely a lesson in how to (or sometimes how not to) do something.

It also shows the mark of a good company when they are able to take a tried and true formula and improve on it. Blizzard did this with a sequence of quests in the most recent expansion of World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Now there is still the standard fetch and fed-ex quests, but then there are quests that are clearly the main course of this expansion. One series of quests leads the player through the Dragonblight and hits several minor lore points before culminating in the event of the expansion.

Not only do they reward the player for their persistence with a glorious cutscene but it is followed up with a quest where the player attacks Undercity alongside King Varian and Jania, if you are Alliance, and with Thrall and Sylvannas if you are Horde.

Wrath of the Lich King, as an expansion, very much seemed to have the design philosophy “Make it feel like you are changing the world.” Phasing, a technology that allows the developer to change an area for each specific player was widely used in the expansion. As a player completes quests in a zone the NPCs, locations, even enemies change and shift to reflect the actions of the player. Quests chains tend to be much longer, far more lore steeped than before.

In the Battle for Undercity, it uses phased zones of the three major cities: Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Stormwind, to keep the player from being distracted by standard gameplay. It also pushes the player to complete the event immediately, as they can’t choose which phase to enter. Once completed, the player receives an achievement, Veteran of the Wrathgate. Then from that point on, the area surrounding the culmination of the quest in the Dragonblight is forever changed. Fire burns, bodies are strewn about, weapons lay alongside the fallen. It looks like a battle has been fought, of truly epic proportions, and your character participated.

It should say something that I always make the effort to complete the Wrathgate series on every character I level in Northrend. The lore, the cutscene, the sheer beauty and poetry of the quest line and event is a treat I am unable to pass up. And I have done it 5 times. Each time I revel in the quests and get very excited as I approach the end. I watch the entire cutscene and feel the tears prick my eyes.

Blizzard has managed to take a standard formula, make it exceptional, and make it endlessly re-playable. It leaves my appetite for Cataclysm whetted, with the hope they not only continue to do this kind of thing, but expand and improve it.

(Note: This is also very true of the Death Knight starting area. I honestly wish that people could get a trial version of the game and just play a Death Knight until they were out of the starting area. Yes, many of the jokes and references would be missed by new players, but it is still one of the most well designed and interesting parts of the game. The starting area does many of the same things that the Wrathgate does, minus the cutscene. Unfortunately one must have a level 55 character and Wrath to be able to even start a Death Knight. My fingers are crossed hoping that the starting areas in Cata are at least similarly well done, if not exactly like the DK starting area.)

Rejection

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So in all my positives, and believe me, I look at the world in the best positive light, there are negatives. Despite the best efforts ever and despite being the best person for a job there is the mistake belief of the people interviewing you that you aren’t quite what they need.

It SUCKS.

You want to scream. You want to shout, give me the chance! I will PROVE TO BE THE BEST DECISION YOU EVER MADE. And yet, you are left rejected, turned down from the perfect job that you could do exceptionally well.

This is especially bad after a “perfect” interview as far as you can see. From your point of view, it was nigh on PRISTINE. You are then left with a sense of doubt, self loss, and worry. Are you truly in the right field? Are you good at what you do? Are you worth the time and amount of money spent in school?

On the eve of such a rejection, for the weakest of excuses (yes, even weaker than “Your test was weak”), I have to say…

Yes. I am GOOD at what I do. I build levels with speed that makes Mario Andriette look like a sloth. I devise ways to do things that other designers and programmers literally say to my face CANNOT BE DONE, and then… I do these things. I look at a problem from all points of view and try to devise multiple solutions to this problem so as to give my lead a multitude of options to solve said problem. I try to apply my unique vision as a girl to game design to solve the question how do we make this awesome for all audiences? I never accept “it cannot be done” as a possible answer. I see the layers of the Matrix and the world that lies under underneath.

It is sad that I cannot convince leads and companies that I am worth the investment. But at the same time, I see these people have a bias. A belief that experience and certain “pedigrees” matter. These pedigrees mean more to them than anything else and they honestly believe that they need someone who fits it to make them happy. I understand this bias despite disagreeing with it.

In the words of one of my favorite writers: If you can quit, do it.

I cannot imagine myself doing anything different, and as such look forward to many indie games from me, as I refuse to let such setbacks stop me. At the end of the day, even this does not deter me. People can say what they wish. Companies can turn me away. But until I give up; the fat lady has not sung. Creating a game is painful and hard, and when you are done the community and Internet at large rips apart that baby you spent all your time, blood, sweat and tears on. It hurts and it sucks… but at the end it is not as bad as being turned down for a job. At least the game ripped apart on Kotaku got made, the company won’t even give you the chance.

But if I let that stop me, well clearly I wasn’t a very good designer to begin with. Roberta would be proud, I think.