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Content •Introduction 1 •What is MMO? 2 •Blizzard’s World of Warcraft 3 •Existing MMO Game’s Problems 4 •WOW’s New Concept & Features 5 •Details, the Art Design in WOW 8 •Player’s Identity in MMO 9 •Online Relationships in MMO Games 11 •MMO as Culture & WOW 12 •Conclusion 14 •Reference 16 World of Warcraft: MMO Game’s Future & Influence CTCS 564 Final Paper Xinghan (Jenova) Chen Apr 29th, 2004 •Introduction During the study in CTCS 564 Seminar in Digital Game Studies this semester, we expanded game design theory on different territories and discussed nature, history and aesthetics of games, which gave me a brand new perspective to analyze and enjoy the games I have played and am playing now. As a Chinese game developer, I am very interested in online games and their designs because of the existing market in China and the global potentials. Therefore, I kept trying different online game. And fortunately, I was able to become an alpha tester for Blizzard’s brand new game, World of Warcraft since early March this year. I spent hundreds of hours on this game through the two months and was completely addicted to it. This game changed my life style and my roommates’ life style. The potential influence of MMO is still unpredictable. And through this article, I will analyze why this game as a representative of a young game genre is so different from the other traditional
online games. Then I will talk about player’s identity and their relationship in online games and importance of online game’s culture. •What is MMO? MMO means massively multiplayer online games. Massively multiplayer games are a specific genre of online games which has thousands of players playing simultaneously on a relatively persistent game world. In MMO games’ worlds, players use alter egos and guide them to become more powerful or successful. (History of Multiplayer Environment. 2004) Interestingly, massively multiplayer games have existed for decades while most of the players still regard it as a new genre. Most early age successful MMO games are text-based. However, in 1997 Electronic Arts launched a new game named as Ultima Online, which redefined the whole MMO games market and still has over 200,000 subscribers. In 1999, Sony Online Entertainment launched Everquest in competition, beating Microsoft/Turbine title Asheron's Call to market. It now has almost 500,000 subscribers. Other successes include Mythic Entertainment's Dark Age of Camelot, which launched in 2002. But MMO market is a hit-and-miss market. In 2003, Sony's Star Wars Galaxies failed to meet the anticipated success. The recent Sims Online has not achieved the
World of Warcraft promises to be a revolutionary product in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game market. Blizzard Entertainment has made a number of design decisions to reduce or eliminate problems with gameplay experience that are prevalent in other massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Players will be able to enjoy the game without having to invest significant amount of playing time. So what are these features which make World of Warcraft different from any previous games?
- Existing MMO Game’s Problems Most MMO games are role-playing games. They all contain elements like experience and level. Unfortunately, nearly all these games require a magnificent amount of time to level up which is obviously for commercial purposes. Therefore, traditional MMORPG was time and level based. The longer a player play with the game, the higher level he or she has and the better item they can get, which gave the newbie players and the casual players a direct hit. When players from these groups came into the game, they have to confront the fact that they would not catch up with the other players only if they spend more time on the game. Such experience causes an impression that MMO games are fun only for people who have enough time to invest which waste more potential customer groups. Another problem is the addiction in MMO causes young players over-played and damages their health. In 2003, a Chinese teenager died in an internet cafe due to two weeks’ restless playing. The same year, Thailand planed a night curfew on online gaming to curb rising rates of addiction by young players, which mainly focused on Korean role-
playing game Ragnarok. Ragnarok is not a violent game. But the problem is that children are becoming too addicted and they don’t have the ability to control themselves. (Curfew for online gamers, 2003)
- WOW’s New Concept & Features Since WOW (World of Warcraft) is still under its beta test, all these features are not perfectly polished yet. From Alpha test to Beta test, a lot of game features have changed. But still, by looking at the Beta version today, numerous creative and time- tested design have already differ the World of Warcraft from all the other MMO games. Balance On Level Up & Faster Upgrade Curve Good quality games must be balanced. And all the Blizzard’s products are strictly following this rule. Both Dialbo II and Starcraft released their tenth update patch recently. As a game in its Beta test, World of Warcraft is updating everyday. Balance is a wide topic. It exists in every process of the game design. Instead of balancing the basic game mechanism like balancing the properties between different races, classes and their combinations in order to make the game fair to the players, Blizzard’s game designers spend countless time on reading player’s bug report and suggestions in order to reach a generally adoptable balance on players’ level up experiences. Their aim is to offer an upgrade curve faster than any other MMO game, where players do not have to spend hours of time killing tedious monsters repetitively. In order to let the players enjoy the game in a short period of time like two or three hours. World
player and penalty on over played player, Rest State helps reducing the level gap, which will effectively reduce the level “grind” existing in nearly all the MMO games. Meanwhile, it also solves the classic problem in EQ where player has to go to certain best camping point to level up because of the high efficiency which makes some game area over jammed. Additionally, Rest State also makes some sense of real and role playing in the game. Educationally, Rest State also give players an alarm clock reminding them they have played too much today. It is a wise solution to reduce the damages to addicted kids which overall does not reduce players’ addictions. Inn & Hearthstone Together with Rest State, Blizzard also added Inns and Hearthstones. Inn serves as a place to recover Rest State while Hearthstones provide an instant way to teleport back to an Inn when player needs to check in and call it a night. Because Hearthstones let players instantly return to town, players can easily log off whenever there is something need to deal with in the real life. If players use it wisely, they can also use Hearthstones just to return to town to sell items, trade, or train. However, Hearthstones can only be used once per hour, which gives people limited teleportation around the world to elevate some of the long travel complaints. World of Warcraft designers are now working on the second-generation talent point system and polishing their mount system and the balance in high level territories. Until now PVP (Player VS Player) is not open to the Beta testers. And the original Alliance VS Horde concept is still a mystery. Hopefully, with the progress in Beta test, more and more new design concepts will be exposed during this summer.
•Details, the Art Design in WOW Through certain number of interviews to the Beta players, the most impressive parts of the World of Warcraft which distinguish it from all the other MMORPGS so far are graphics rather than the game-play. “The quest system comes to mind as one of the best aspects of the game, but the thing that really impresses me the most is the attention to detail that has gone into building the world itself. In most other MMOG's, there are a few points of interest in every region/zone of the world map and the rest of the graphics are just bland overly repeated filler. In WoW, every square inch of the game world looks like it serves a purpose and is there for a reason. There are so many little details, in the terrain, fauna, objects and NPCs that for the first time ever in my extensive MMOG experience, I really feel like I'm in a fully realsized fantasy world.” - Yakmala Besides all the creative designs on game-play, Blizzard has a large artist team working on the game content. The whole world offers a reason for players to stay. It is artistically attractive. High saturated color with various landscapes and magnificent cities. Blizzard announced that there would not be two places sharing the same environment design. They also emphasized the importance of the detail in the game. In a recent interview, the spokesman from Blizzard said, “We
join any guilds. Even those who are the member of guild committee rarely talk about their social role in the game. One EverQuest player mentioned his understanding of the relationship between him and the MMO game: “I find myself much more satisfied venting my stress through repeated slashes of an imaginary sword on an imaginary creature and having someone there to listen without the face-to-face, truly personal connection other mediums of therapy offer. Plus it costs a lot less per month. And while this does certainly sound like a narcotic, I would rather be dependent on a game world than on a more damaging physical drug that wouldn't offer the same connection with others (hopefully!) nor the true tranquility I find, as opposed to an artificial hallucination as a result of some recreational pharmaceutical.” In this case, the peer group is both the problem and what aggravates for this case because the individual has no one to talk to. On the other hand, the game can offer solace and support because it gives player someone to talk to in a safe social environment. But spending more time with the peer group might be more problematic as the player implies towards the end. Players in MMO games are diversified. Some of them are fond of social works, like building guild and doing quest in team while the other players prefer soloing. The two existing entertainment media represent the same two areas. When people go to a theme park they prefer to have fun and communicate to each other, but when it comes to video games, they are mainly designed for individual entertainment. In World of Warcraft, both groups are able to find their tastes. “The fact that, while interaction with other players is nice, it's not absolutely necessary. Got a quest you can't complete on your own, but you
don't feel like asking for help? Abandon it... It's easy enough to level playing solo if you're in a bad mood that night.” –Wmoonfox •Online Relationships in MMO Games Normally, people will think of the worlds created by MMO games are totally isolated from the real world. "World of Warcraft is just a game”,” It is just a game!" Some players will use these phrases as an excuse for their avoiding responsibilities and pressures. But other people will use the phrase "It's not just a game.” Some none gamer took game seriously. However, they always put MMO games in association with a negative real-life situation like suicide, racketeering, familial irresponsibility, etc. Numerous people argue that some of the blame should be placed on MMO games. On the other hand, there are players who also say this phrase. “These are the individuals who believe that the worlds created by MMORPGs are not independent of the real world. In one way or another, their virtual lives have affected their real lives for better or worse.” Nicholas Yee wrote on his website. As a counter force, these players used their own stories to answer the critiques. To the players who say that MMORPGs are simple past-times, they show them that your virtual life is not always independent from your real life. To those who condemn these games, they tell some positive influences that the media will never care because nothing tragic happened. Here is a sample from Yee’s data: “I had a friend with me hunting at this village, and prior to that day he was just a friend, we had left an old guild and joined the same one, sticking together. It was 2 am at the time where I lived so I really had no one to talk to about my issues in real life, but I really needed to get them
would be a rejection of how MMORPGs are affecting the real lives of players, and a ignorance of the potential of these virtual worlds.
- MMO as Culture & WOW Most current MMO games in China are Korean games. They were made for Korean market. And Chinese publisher found the opportunity and introduced them into Chinese market. These games occupy the entire Chinese market instantly. Although they had relatively poor graphics and weird characters, they were much more competitive than the western style games like Stone of Darkness or UO. All the popular Korean games have no culture characteristics, they are non-Chinese, looked like Japanese, but the world background is kinda western. It is similar to the Dungeon & Dragon system, but has a lot of differences. These settings make Korean games fit everywhere. Their Ragnarok is overwhelmed on both Asian and Northern America. However, that does not mean a MMORPG does not need culture. What a good MMO game needs in-game culture. A lot of today’s games make people feel empty. Even people who played the newest Linage II which used Unreal Tournament Warfare Engine and had awesome graphics and designs still felt lack of something. That is in-game culture. The first successful western culture online game in China was EverQuest which introduced by Ubisoft on 2001. Although EverQuest is very old school during those years, it is very hard to find a game more addictive than the EverQuest. Because of the feeling of culture in the game which is contribute by the most complex D&D system and numerous epic background stories, EverQuest successfully grabbed Chinese player’s
falling of. Years after years, the only possible candidate is the online game based on the top real-time strategy game made by Blizzard Entertainment. It is World of Warcraft. Warcraft has more than 10 years old history. Its series have been popular on the whole world. With more than ten novels and seven games based on the warcraft setting, the culture has already formed. “My favorite part of WoW is the familiarity of the environment. It's very nostalgic to run into Gnolls, Kobolds, Dragons, Trolls, all the things that we've experienced in the Warcraft franchise before now. It's a fantastic genre that allows us to experience individual chunks of Warcraft history and the Warcraft world while supplying a online community. “- LoreWeaver As expected, Blizzard will release the World of Warcraft both in Asia and America, and later in European. They decide to spread this game to any corner where their warcraft world is nostalgic. •Conclusion Doubtlessly, World of Warcraft will change the criteria of first class MMORPGs. It is the first MMORPG that launched Beta test in both Eastern and Western countries simultaneously. Its commercial success will found a new era for the MMO games and compete with the other game genres. Because of the piracy problem in Asia, all the Asian game companies are developing MMO games which are impossible to pirate while in America and Japan, console game is still the mainstream. World of Warcraft may break this market structure and bring more and more studios into the MMO industry. With the MMO game market growth, more and more corporations will be willing to gain commercial benefit from
REFERENCE
History of Multiplayer Environments, New Media Age , London. Mar 18, 2004. P.27, ISSN 13647776 retrieved from ProQuest database. Obli, Apr 15, 2004, World of Warcraft, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft World of Warcraft Feature, Blizzard’s official website , last update Apr 2004. Retrieved from http://www.blizzard.com/wow/features.shtml Eno, 2004. Official Rest State discussion thread, World of Warcraft Forum General Topic , last update Apr 2004. Retrieved from https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ Curfew for online gamers (Aug 07, 2003). news, www.news24.com. Retrieved from http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13- 1443_1384471,00.html Nicholas Yee. (July 2002) Mosaic: Stories of Digital Lives and Identities. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/mosaic/home.html Salen. K. and Zimmerman, E. 2003, Rules of Play , published by MIT Press. VIRTUAL ADVERTISING: Digitopia, New Media Age , London. Mar 18, 2004. P.27, ISSN 13647776 retrieved from ProQuest database.
