How to Rule the World (of WarCraft) - 10 Lessons 140
The Austin Game Developer's Conference, now under new management, kicks off today with a keynote from Blizzard President Michael Morhaime. He started off the event with a discussion of the potential of gaming in the 20th Century, and the lessons his company has learned from the long trial that has been World of Warcraft. Read on for notes from his presentation.
Morhaime takes the stage to applause, and begins by expressing fascination with the possibilities of the modern era. Right now, he says, the ability for people to connect is unprecedented in the history of humanity. Looking back on the 20th century, this puts us now in a very unique situation. Advances in transportation, communication, and information storage have made the world a far smaller place. The rate of change is so fast that we have a hard time coming to grips with it. Future shock is everpresent, but he (at least) views this as a good thing.For a moment, he takes a steps back to look at the world as of one hundred years ago. In 1907 there were only 8000 cars in the US, with no airforce, and only 8% of homes in the states even had a phone. In comparison, recent years have seen the density of transistors (as described by Moore's Law) increase exponentially. It makes for a really nice graph.
This is the context in which we're looking at online gaming this year, at the conference. The online gaming market is still very much in its infancy, many things are still possible, still unrecognized in the world. The goal of designers, studios, and publishers, should be to live up to that potential.
His focus during the talk itself will be World of Warcraft, the history of Blizzard, and lessons that the online games industry can take from their successes (and failures).
A trio of UCLA grads started the company in 1991, with little more than $20,000 and a pair of PCs. Both were 386s, without CD drives and 'mighty' hard drives that could be counted in the dozens of megabytes. Their first jobs were conversions; PC to Mac or Amiga translations. They learned much from this process, getting a real feel for how games were made. They made a racing game for the SNES' launch, which they completed in about four months.
With the fruits of those early payoffs they pulled some more people in and began to make new console titles. Eventually, with the decline of 16-bit consoles, they turned to the PC for their first RTS: Warcraft. The rise of the Internet made them think hard about players collaborating, competing online. Their sale to Davidson, an educational software company, led through a series of alleys and buyouts to their current relationship with Vivendi. Their initial relationship with the Davidsons has been maintained through all those buyouts, allowing them to keep tight control of their IPs.
WoW has just been their most recent success, though Morhaime admits it has changed the company in ways they never could have imagined. Through buyouts and company modifications, their fundamental concepts have stayed the same. Gameplay comes first. He pulls the 'it all starts with a donut' slide from Rob Pardo's talk last year. The center of the donut is the hardcore gamers, and the casuals are the sweetness all around. To this end, they make an effort to ensure that system requirements are low. "Easy to learn, difficult to master" is also a concern; he mentions Guitar Hero as another title that nails this feeling.
Outside of design, they see the Blizzard name as their most important property. "Blizzard", for gamers, should equal high quality, fun, and polish. A gamer walking into a store should be able to see the Blizzard name on a title and know that they can trust the game will be fun. They only want to make "brand deposits", not withdrawals; they only seek to add value to their name through choices in pricing, polish, and experience.
The biggest pressure is resisting the urge to release early. There is pressure from all sides; budgetary concerns, programmers tired of working on the game, analyst expectations, consumer expectations. They see this as a huge danger. You only have one chance to make a first impression. Missing that opportunity is not something you can get back. They try to think long term. Don't mortgage the future to meet the quarter goals, as it were.
Diablo was their biggest trial. Back in the day Diablo was in danger of 'missing Christmas'. When the time came to make the final call, they held it back to December 31st. Even though they released the game late, that's not how it is remembered. It sold great, and is now an amazing brand. They now point to that as an unqualified success. Most recently they had to do the same thing with Burning Crusade. After the problems with the initial WoW launch, they wanted to really nail that rollout. They were rewarded with the fastest selling PC title of all time: 2.4 million units in one day.
Another pressure they have to deal with is the concept of 'doing everything at once'. The company instead tries to focus in on the truly important things. Build on successes, gain expertise, and then once that's under your belt go for the more ambitious stuff. WoW was a huge undertaking, but it wasn't their first online game. They built on experiences with Battle.net to create that title.
The success of StarCraft and WoW has turned Blizzard into a global company. This necessitates a number of considerations. The games can't just be geared to the US market. Initially they were very much a states-oriented organization, and this led to some frustrations with launching titles in localized languages. Grey market imports of the US version of the game led to lack of interest in brand new launches in Europe. In Asia, meanwhile, the importance of game rooms makes the market completely different than in the west. Accounting for all three of these markets is required for a simultaneous worldwide launch.
A slide showing the global launch growth of their titles shows a huge spike in Asian interest around the time of StarCraft's launch. To this day there isn't a Korean version of SC; they're all playing in English in those well-publicized online matches. They managed worldwide launches with Diablo 2 and WarCraft III, but held back for WoW. They'd never rolled out a Massive game before, of course, so they really wanted to make sure they had successes under their belt before taking the show abroad.
What they don't do is localize games to 'regional tastes'. They see gamers as having different styles of play, but they exist in all regions. They don't make different versions with each being tailored to a specific area of the world. Instead they make sure that all players find something to meet their gameplay style needs. Blizzard is very much their target market; if they like it enough, odds are (they think) that others will feel the same. Just the same, they do need to be culturally sensitive. The Pandarens from WarCraft III were an oopsie along those lines. Pandas dressed in Japanese clothing and having Samurai sensibilities did not go over very well. They responded quickly, changing the image of the Pandaren to a more culturally appropriate style.
By the time WoW was in the works, they had already started to think globally. They identified North America, Europe, and South Korea as the three areas they wanted to target directly for WoW's launch. To do that, they established a full control center, with customer support, server infrastructure, marketing, sales, and administrative control in each area. Other areas saw them teaming with companies that have strong understanding of local customs. The9 in China, for example, handled localization of the game for that market, as well as server maintenance for the game in that country.
Their big challenge for WoW was determining the demand for such a title. He quotes Tom Watson, CEO of IBM in 1942: "There is a worldwide market for perhaps five computers." How much infrastructure do you need for a Massively multiplayer game? How many units at launch? The local Fry's launch tipped them off that things might be different with WoW. Way too many people showed up for their local meet and greet and launch party. "Wow. We might need more hardware."
They had sales information for WarCraft III, as well as the stats for EverQuest's lifetime. They thought of WarCraft as a ceiling, and were dead wrong. At several times in WoW's early lifetime they had to stop shipping boxes to retail because they couldn't have supported the new players.
H.R. is really important, they learned. The company needed to scale up across the board starting in 2004; they went from under 1000 employees to over 3000 in the three years since WoW's launch. They needed more IT folks, additional sales, marketing ... they didn't even have the capacity to hire folks as fast as they needed them.
The big lesson: running a MMOG is not just game development. It's also a service. They thought they had enough experience running Battle.net to handle WoW, but moving to a subscription service was a very different experience. These backend elements are just as important as game design, if they impact the player's experience.
Communication was one of their other big learning curves. They need to make sure to communicate with the players, or 'people would make stuff up.' The Community team needs a process for keeping players informed, and keeping international staffers on the same page. This is especially important when there is a 'fire'. This lead to silence on their part when there was a problem, because they didn't want to say something 'wrong'. As a result, they developed lists and staffers that would ensure less 'wigging out'.
Morhaime briefly delved into the dark underworld of gold selling, credit card fraud, and trojan-laced websites that steal user information for WoW accounts. They see this as a core part of their mission: this adversely affects players across the board, and has to be stopped as best they can.
Testing is all-important to the company. "Never trust version 1.0." Everyone at Blizzard tests, as a result. Public Betas ensure that they eliminate 'cheese'; boring ways to play the game that are most efficient. WoW launched without a test site, and in retrospect they regret that. Patches are now thoroughly reviewed by a wide player audience before they go live. When Burning Crusade rolled out, they took the lessons from WoW's launch to heart. They upgraded their entire infrastructure for the game, and ensured they had extra capacity for their first day of new gameplay. The servers withstood the extra load well, and CS folks said they viewed it as a 'smooth patch release.' This time they did a worldwide release, with midnight openings of the game all around the world. 'Every hour they opened a new market.' They viewed it as something of a New Year's celebration for the folks at Blizzard.
To close, Morhaime displays a video showcases the colorful characters that showed up for the midnight launch of the game in Europe, everywhere from London to Stockholm, from Paris to Dublin. "It's an exciting time to be in the game industry. Good luck."
Strange game... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?"
My take on how to rule world of warcraft (Score:3, Insightful)
2 - profit !!!1
especially after they turned the game into a timesink/cashcow by introducing 10 new levels, endless reputation -> item -> item set grinds, by deciding to introduce an expansion each year.
now people who bought tbc are going to go into a new zone without ever seeing endgame tbc instances and being able to complete half of a set with wotlk.
I really have to ask this question. (Score:5, Insightful)
We can learn a lot from what these companies do right and wrong. Amazingly they are pretty open with many failings. Its important to understand what they think went wrong because we on the outside never have the big picture. We tend to focus like a laser on our one little issue, find a 3 or 4 more people and declare it a national emergency.
Diablo and WOW are impressive feats. I don't think we will see another WOW for some time. Its one of those seminal moments in gaming history, when a company just "got it right". It was the right game at the right time. Pretty much the same with Diablo. I doubt they can do it three times but they might just be the only people do so.
I have to laugh at all the people who claim they are quitting over change X or how many people they know who are quitting because if I had a nickle, well you know the story. The same goes for competitors to WOW. I laugh at the claims "we aren't here to compete with WOW" or "we don't consider WOW competition" . This is almost like an admission of failure. If your not going to aim high why bother taking the shot? This is especially true for known names who are releasing new games.
Too many games have tanked for the simple reason they released when they were not ready. They most likely failed to clamp donw on features and design and got bit in the ass by feature creep and the fuck up fairy - she loves to poke her head in when you change things. I have played MMORPGs from Yserbius, UO, EQ, DAOC, AC, AC2, LOTR, and yes WOW. None compare to the polish that WOW has. While there are those who legitimately can say they don't like the graphic style of WOW or the class play or even the raiding you cannot fault it for the polish and stability it has.
Why is it strange? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact the only people I observe who don't tend to have fun are the ones that try to win, the ones that are convinced they need to have all the best items in the game, they need to be more powerful than everyone else, etc. They ones that essentially turn it in to a job, a lifestyle. Especially since you are in for perpetual letdown because if you ever did achieve your goal of getting everything, they'll just introduce more stuff.
For those of us who it isn't about being better than everyone, an unwinnable game is quite fun. Log on and play when you want, there's always stuff to do.
Few reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
In the specific case of WoW there's hatred for it because it isn't the kind of game that caters to them. WoW is extremely casual player friendly, as I'm sure you've noticed. Even if you play on a PvP server, the game doesn't penalize you for death. This burns many "hardcore" gamers as they derive pleasure form making others miserable. They want to be able to stomp on people who aren't as good at them (read the EVE boards sometime to see what I'm talking about) and WoW just doesn't allow that.
Also WoW doesn't allow you to become way more powerful than a normal player. There's severe diminishing returns on effort. Even if you have all the top raid gear, you can still get your ass kicked by some guy in blues because your gear is better, but not decisively so. So even if you spend your life playing the game, you can't become a god, there can still be some smartass that plays just on the weekends, but really is pretty skilled, that comes and beats you up.
Finally WoW isn't winnable. Some people really seem to think that the point of playing a game is to be uber, to have the best of everything you can have. They want their character to be in every way maxed, to have all the best items. Well, that's impossible to do because Blizzard is growing WoW all the time. Even if you managed to achieve that, which would be an amazing feat given all the different things there are to do, they'd just add more content and you'd have to do it all over.
WoW is a game that really appeals to the masses, and that just burns some people. Thus, they hate on it.
Re:My take on how to rule world of warcraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... You're upset that they're introducing new content? What are people supposed to do after they hit 70? Just sit there until the end of time? I'd rather have something new to do than do the same thing over and over again for eternity, personally.
People complaining about "grinding" to 70 are usually the same people I see in 70 PvP battlegrounds wearing their level 60 PvP (or even worse, level 60 raid) gear. The "grind" from 60-70 was less than two weeks of real time (not in-game time) for me, as a casual player, and I'd only quested in half the new zones in Outland and run 1/4 of the instances.
A MMO is not meant to be winnable. You don't get to the "end" and sit above everyone, unassailable. The game moves on. You move with it. If you want a game where you can be permanently better than everyone else, go somewhere else.
What they really did that really matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Way too many games are designed just kinda based on what the developers feel is right and based on what plays well in testing. That works ok for single player games, but not really multiplayer and especially not MMORPGs. You need an extremely well thought out, well balanced system.
The game to really look at for this is Starcraft. Here was the first ever game I can remember that had three sides that were very different in operation, but yet truly equal. I never saw a side that had an advantage over any other. That was important, because otherwise that's what everyone would play and it'd get boring.
Well that same kind of design has to be applied on a massive scale to an MMORPG. You can't create items arbitrarily or you WILL create things that are unbalanced. WoW doesn't do that, you'll find if you search around that there's a mathematical formula that determines how good something can be. If it is this level, and this quality is has X many points that can be put in things and different things cost different point values.
Blizzard really put a hell of a lot of thought in to the balance like this, and they keep working on it. They don't just sit and say "Eh it's working fine," they keep re-balancing, making sure that if something is found to be out of balance, balance is restored.
That is extremely important since people have a need to feel things are fair, and since if they aren't people will discover and seek out the advantages, and the game will become a boring monoculture.
Also they've done an exceedingly good job of making it so that whatever it is you like doing, WoW has plenty of that for you. It isn't a game that says "This is how it has to be played," it is a game with lots of options. Want to do nothing but play alone doing quests? No problem, tons of that. Want to play occasionally in small groups, no problem. Want to do hard content requiring large, well organized groups? Again check. Want to fight other players? Got that. Want to never have to fight other players? No problem. Want to play dressup with your character? Yes you can even do that.
Basically, the game is extremely diverse and it's not a situation of requiring you to do things you don't like to do the things you do.
Finally they've created one of the first MMOs that doesn't feel like they want to punish you. So many games, Everquest being the best example, seem to really want to punish people. Death has severe consequences, getting started is very confusing and very hard, there's plenty of ways to get in real trouble, etc. Blizzard took all that crap out. The start is extremely friendly, it's real easy to figure out what to do and who to talk to. Death is similar to what you'd have in a single player game, you just get set back to an earlier save point, but since there's no saves just a walk back to where you were. And no matter how lots you are, no matter how screwed up the situation, the very worst it can ever be is wait an hour, spirit rez, hearthstone and you are back to familiar territory.
WoW is just extremely well designed. That doesn't mean in terms of art assets or any of that, that mean in terms of actually designing a working system, the same way you'd say that a good assembly line is well designed. They took the time to figure out what people hate about games and not do it, and how to keep their game balanced and do that. Which, though it might sound simple, is a first for the MMO industry as far as I can tell.
Re:My take on how to rule world of warcraft (Score:3, Insightful)
It's as if some WoW detractors start out with an Olympic sprinter, a middle aged jogger, and a crippled kid with down syndrome on crutches, and want to figure out a fair way to hold a race where everybody actually gets challenged, then wonder why nobody but the kid in crutches thinks it's the resulting race rules will be a good idea.
Why is this "insightful"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would they not see the endgame for a zone? It's not going anywhere.
Unless, of course, you're one of those of players who consider WoW a footrace to gear, so that you can stand around in the major cities flexing and showing off your digital attributes.
Those people are very much the minority. The casual gamers are far more numerous, and our choices in the game aren't driven by what gear we need, but by which areas we haven't explored.
I just got a level 60 character for the first time (I've had the game since launch). Eventually I'll see the new content, but I'm in no rush. The plaguelands, winterspring, and now the outlands have been new and fun for me, and I never had to resort to grinding for anything.
I swear sometimes I think the hardcore gamers consider themselves the elite that Blizzard should cater heavily to - but they provide the same revenue stream as a casual gamer, use more resources, and are far less numerous.
Plan or accident (Score:4, Insightful)
If you played WoW from the start as I do (atleast in Europe) you might find this particularly hard to believe. The servers at the start were absolutely terrible with 30-60 minute queues, very bad latency and frequently the scheduled maintenance went on for 2 days. I think the more truthful version is "We didn't realise how successful it would be, scrambled to get the infrastructure in place while at the same time made a mess of our customer support" (which is still terrible in Europe in terms of getting the actual truth, maybe this isn't the case in Europe - the chairman of Blizzard had to actually apologise to the EU market for the service).
Re:Why is this "insightful"? (Score:4, Insightful)
From your posts, you seem to indicate that you're an experienced gamer, but also one who doesn't have vast amounts of time to dedicate to the game, and thus is incapable of really experiencing most of the end-game instances (although this doesn't strictly hold, and is certainly nothing like the "omg 8 month constant grind" or precisely calibrated gear sets you paint in one of the sibling posts, it's sufficiently true for most people to not be worth arguing). Hence you feel like the game is ripping you off, with all this new content which just streams by and is inaccessible. Roughly correct?
The thing is, you're a particular type of gamer who is rather ill-suited to playing WoW long-term. You don't have the time (or, alternatively, the desire to spend the time) to play through the high-end instances, but you're a sufficiently experienced gamer that you can tear through the single player content pretty quickly and reach that vague limbo between level 70 and the end-game, which isn't particularly compelling, I'll have to agree. Hence you get the impression the game is solely tailored to the hardcore people with lots of time to grind, and express this view with great vigor.
The thing is, WoW's playerbase is not just made up of the "real hardcore" and people like you - there's a non-trivial fraction of players (the GP probably being one of them) who play the game in an extremely casual fashion, ambling through content as the mood strikes them, who would likely take years to get through to level 80 when the next expansion comes out, who don't give a damn that there's some raid instances they're missing out on at levels 60 and 70, because it's simply not part of the way they play the game. And yet, most of these people quite often feel like they're getting their money's worth out of the questing and 5-man instancing available, which is fine, is it not? Particularly on the expansion servers, which have a relatively young population, so there's still an availability of people to instance with and the like. The fact that you want to attack these people for playing the game "wrong" is rather baffling.
Re:Why is this "insightful"? (Score:3, Insightful)