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Mists of Pandaria Beta: Of replays and linearity
One of the most common complaints surrounding Cataclysm is the extremely linear nature of questing, both in the 1-to-60 experience and from 80 to 85. For levels 1 to 60, this linear nature almost works for me, largely because presumably new players heading through this content would like to do so as efficiently as possible. With a multitude of zones to choose from, the replay experience with Cataclysm isn't too bad -- particularly because it's really not that hard to level from 1 to 60 at the moment. And that's especially nice for new players trying to get the hang of the game. However, when you hit level 80, there is one distinct path to follow to level 85, and each zone in that path has been carefully laid out. Quests are divided into hubs, and each hub must be completed in order to move on to the next. If you're taking an alt through these areas, you must replay through the same set of hubs and the same set of quests. If you're replaying several alts, this gets incredibly tiresome incredibly quickly. Thankfully, we're about to say goodbye to that leveling model. Let's look at Mists, shall we? No spoilers, I promise!
Blizzard seems to think that Cataclysm was too linear
Designing MMOs is often the art of shepherding players in a given direction while at the same time giving them a sense of freedom. Even in a themepark environment, players want to be invested in areas, to have reasons to come back and explore and go off of the rails should they want to. World of Warcraft's most recent expansion, Cataclysm, has frequently been accused of giving players nowhere to go but a series of rails, and according to a recent response from a community manager, Blizzard agrees. A very long thread on the official forums has spawned some interesting discussions about the game's overall endgame philosophy, with community manager Draxxari stating that Cataclysm's tightly linear design was an "error" on the design level. He goes on to state that Mists of Pandaria is meant to give players more reason to venture out and explore the world, although players will have to wait to see whether that promise holds true or not. [Thanks to SgtBaker for the tip!]
Lost Pages of Taborea: Improving versatility in RoM's content
I'm bouncing off last week's Lost Pages of Taborea to elaborate on why Runes of Magic's content is lackluster, especially in light of the ability to over-gear but also to come up with some ideas to keep it from becoming meaningless and boring. It's not absolutely necessary, but it will help if you've read last week's article. RoM's gear-system ensures that you get a lot of variety in choosing what kind of character to make and how you want to play it, but there's a threshold at which the only way to allow for even more diversity among class builds is to offset the linear difficulty of new content by replacing your stats with more powerful versions of themselves, adding refinements and tiering, upgrades that just up your sheer power. Players get funneled into more restrictive builds as they gain levels. The downfall is in the content itself because it becomes super-easy-mode killing after over-gearing. It's turning on a cheat code. Any need -- or desire -- to manage blood bars or skill rotations gets thrown out with the trash. It's a foreseeable issue in just about any game across any platform or genre in which you would allow the players to gain extra amounts of power. But is there a way to allow for it and keep in some challenge and variety? Some solutions might be to slow down the pace of combat, stretch the utility of player bars, make content more dynamic, or throw in some sandbox behavior.
