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General: Redundancy, Repetition, Grinding
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
In this Week's WoW Factor, Joseph Sanicky takes us inside his own personal bout of Warcraft-fatigue... and how he found a way to rectify it.
As I slowly work my way towards the fabled max level I’ve inevitably hit my personal low point in both interest and incentive to play. As demoralizing and depressing this feeling is for me as a gamer, I know it will not only pass, but after it is over I’ll be even more hyped to play the game. However if you sat me down at this point in time and said “Joe, play an MMO this instant, right now!” I’d invariably open up one of the other handful I’ve been testing out. Why is that? I’d have to say it is the utter redundancy of gameplay that I’ve encountered so far within World of Warcraft. This “gamer’s block” made me consider my difficulties on a wider scale, which eventually led me to consider the topic for today’s column.
Read the rest of Joseph Sanicky's The WoW Factor: Redundancy, Repetition, Grinding.
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Comments
It's much like a job: you can only be told what to do, where to do it, and how to do it so many times before one just rage quits.
This is why additional sandbox elements are needed in theme park games. "I'm max level now. What do I do? Do I just play the same Battleground over and over for gear?" "Do I keep raiding the same monster over and over for gear?"
There needs to be more. They need large chunks of land for player cities, houses, and self-sustaining mechanisms.
Theme Parks are boring.
Sandboxes are too hardcore.
SandParks are the future.
I liken your experience to following a set of footprints in the snow. Imagine you come across a area that was once heavily trampled and you have deduced that a major event when down at that location. A little blood spilled and then you see a lone set of foot prints leaving the area. Since you were not actually there for the scuffle, you cannot really know how it turned out or who survived and walked away. All you know for sure is that you are standing at the ebb of what was once the site of a major throwdown.
So you gathers your wits and continue on. Now imagine doing this for the next serveral hours coming across more and more incidents but are not able to catch up to the actual action. Suddenly your realize that it's not as exciting as when you first discovered these footprints nor is it as exciting as when you came aross your first scuffle. And you now feel like it's a big fat waste of time to follow these footsteps with no hope of ever really catching up to be part of the flow. This is what I feel most players who try to run through past content in established mmo.
Sure you can get devs to sometimes revisit old areas in the hope of making them more exciting. But in reality they can only modify the trail of footprints so far back and it would be a wate of time to redo the whole thing as you would never be able to give the full expereince to those who are playing catch up.
(Note: you can compare events to expansions)
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Isn't there quite a bit of lore in the quest text?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yea, but you know, its cool to flame WoW.
I'm not sure about all this is all due to Wow. What I mean is that i played the new dungeon siege or Crysis and its the same thing..
In Crysis go there , do that.. yes it's an amazing game , an amazing interface and good action game , its still Go Y Kill X , oh you can now stealth! Games are created that way.
We often talk about how to change things, sandbox games or watever but the gameplay will remain the same, Maybe you are just bored of gaming.
Go do sports and you will see, play baseball : hit a ball run for points. Or soccer maybe : kick the ball and run for points ..
Even if you start traveling around the world, you will see new things everyday but some schematic will start to appear and some days will look boring and normal, so you would want to head back home and do something else
Gaming is like that. When you get bored of something do not blame that thing . Rather go do something else and when you get back to it, it will be amazing again. I play WoW a lot, I play since its release , but I stopped sometime for almost a year , its just normal , it's not Wow fault ,and others arent like that because they Copy wow
I agree with you. I've been gaming pretty hard for a little over a decade now. I'm now 31 yrs old and I can't seem to find a game to satisfy me. I'm just bored with gaming. I used to be able to switch genres to mix things up and maintain my interest in gaming, but now I'm just used to all the mechanics, so no matter what new game I play, regardless of the developers new twists on the mechanics, I still get the "been there, done that" feeling. I like games, but it's good to take a break and come back when the batteries are refreshed. I quit playing MMO's after getting bored with RIFT the first week in, and single player games after beating Dungeon Siege 3 a few weeks ago. I think I'm gonna take a break for a few months to recharge my batteries.
I person who doesn´t think questing is fun doesn´t like a questing game? wow, big shock
A person who doesn´t read quest logs complains about thier not being enough lore in game? wow, big shock.
Here is the thing.. everything you said about WOW can be said about every other game out there (MMORPG wise). WOW has done a much better job at questing then most games... there is phasing, vehicle fights and just a ton of ´tech´things that are added to the game to separate the necessary ´go here and kill 10 boars' quests.
You went and bought chocolate ice cream, then complained because it tasted too chocolatey... WOW is a questing game, and it does questing better than any other game.. but if you hate questing, you are never going to like wow or any other mmorpg.
Carefully choreographed dances (raids), semi passable excuses for fantasy writing (quests) or playing on the second hand game that feel stacked on called pvp.
Or grind like you are a bot.
TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues!
Are you lacking content for your blog? When it doubt, just flame World of Warcraft, regardless of whether the subject is tired and the same issues are rehashed over and over again.
Thank you for the post, and I salute your metaphor, well done. Your points are all logical, and I completely agree with you and Blizzard in their ideology that old content holds no monetary gains for them. They themselves have proven this by stating repeatedly they'd never release "classic" servers for the xpacks or vanialla WoW.
Going through this content with no real context feels much like running around blind in a snow storm.
Yes, there is quite a bit of lore. Let me give you an example of some lore from a quest I passed up quite a bit ago but still happens to be in my log!
"I do not know you, stranger, but I ask for your help. I feel shame for this, but I am only one orc.
Emotions have surfaced that I have never felt. I... I seek vengeance. Blood for blood. Do your people ever feel this? I wish to pick up my axe and split my enemies in two. To swing the weapon until my arms fall lifelessly at my sides, exhausted.
Sunspring Post is directly south of this procession. It is there that you will find our enemies... Kill them... Kill them all..."
This quest description riles up emotions in me, even though I don't know the orc or anything about him, the text alone succeeds in stirring an emotional response from me. However it doesn't necessarily make me want to do the quest. Is the orc of some renown that I should know him? And if so, why? And if so again, how could I know? Was he referenced in another quest tidbit somewhere that I missed?
How about this one...
"Kilrath sends news of the Boulderfist leader: He is an orc! An ancient orc that passed through the Dark Portal in the time of our fathers and has since returned to his homeland. I wish for you to track down this orc and try to convince him to pull back the Boulderfist ogres. He resides on an upper platform in the Burning Blade Ruins to the southeast near the border of Terokkar. Good luck, <name>!
Be warned, he is a blademaster..."
My reaction to reading this? Okay, so this ancient orc is of some vast import it would seem, and obviously the Boulderfist leader and his underlings are problematic in Nagrand (because I've been killing them ad nauseam for some time now), but I couldn't tell you quite why. What is this Dark Portal? Why is it important? Also this guy is deadly, okay...
I'm sure you'd counter "Of course cherry-picked quests won't make any sense!" Naturally, but if a quest in and of itself has no real value lore-wise on its own as pertains to the over-arching criteria/mission of the expansion/main game, of what value is it beyond pointless side-story chaff?
Furthermore, why am I even in Outland? The intro movie shows me Illidan, and from what I've read on WoWwiki he needs stopping because he has committed terrible crimes many times, is a turncloak to the night elves, etc etc. Great. If I dig deeper and deeper the lore just branches out uncontrollably until I get to the genesis of the entire WoW universe, and before long I'm vastly beyond the point of the lore at where my character is at. If I look to my starting race video it gives me information I knew after reading the wiki and understood only after reading the wiki, but the importance of those events remain lost to me. What exactly is the Horde's goal? The Alliances? The Burning Legion? Et cetera. Do I have to play an orc or a human and hope their starter video gives me more insight? Am I missing some key, obvious quest/movie/cutscene/event from the original 60 levels to clear this up, or were all the quest blurbs un-broken from then to now meant to be the complete explanation? From what I remember before I stopped wasting my time reading the quest blurbs, most are like the above, hardly relevant to the actual story. Even if the writing stirred my emotions or was interesting, it didn't draw back into the actually events until you complete some major quest chain for the main area, which isn't even necessary to level anymore, which means I'd never get the full picture even if I only quested!
You all must understand, I do like questing, I like the lore, I like playing the game quite a bit, and as I said originally in the article I "stopped" reading the quests. Past tense implies I did at one point in the past. So to the trolls you should refresh your knowledge of the tenses and do your best not to just jump on the "LoL he flames WoW for attention!" That is hardly the case. The lore is wonderful, and being a fan of fantasy authors for nearly my entire life I'm more than happy to read hours of wiki to understand things, but also as an MMO player I expect the "best" mmo to do something more with its presentation. I hear WotLK has some nasty cutscenes and story events, which I look forward to, but why isn't the story presented in a more obvious, accessible way?
Also, just because one admits that something is redundant, repetitive, and grind-inducing, doesn't mean one does not like those activities or condemns them whole-heartedly. I encourage posters to remember that this is the third part of the column, I praised WoW plenty so far along with criticising it.
If any of you have proposals for what I should write about next column, please feel free to inform me, I'm open to all manner of suggestions! Just remember that criticising at one turn and praising at another doesn't mean anything in and of itself.
Most of us orginal Wow players from day one got tired of Wow long ago. I go back somtimes to try and grind out that last level 65 alt, but it got old fast. I choose not to cut it down and just move on or wait for a new game. Wow is a good starter MMO now. It teaches people new to the genre how to quest and group. It can offer allot to someone who has never played before.
But beyond that for me, I can't find a reason to log in anymore. Contray to popular belief it's still number 1 MMO on the planet and will remain that way for many years to come. it offers allot for nubs and that really about all you can say.
I don't think you can judge his playing skills by a column. I understand his position. I stopped playing when i reached level 85. I needed to gear myself for heroics and the queue was minimum 30 minutes for a dps class. How did i level to 85? full my quest log. Do all quests. Turn them in. Did i read all of the quests? No ... i read 20 or 30 quests total in the game... maybe. Why? Thousands of quests which half are about some random people wanting random stuff which has nothing to do with the main story. Let's call them side quests then. But i was a bit generous with the game... it's more like 80% side questing and 20% related to the lore. All those quests don't necessarily follow each other either. It's hard to follow a story when it's all over the place. Now i'm not flaming the game. Mmo wise, few games were able to steal so much of my free time. The world is gorgeous, the combat mecanics while not perfect(how can it be anyway... it's almost impossible)are awesome even if repetitive(can't get more repetitive than a fps... but there is more live action to compensate). I agree with the guys that taking a break is the way to go. I have not played since last winter not because the game is not fun... but because it made me wait too much and because the content is pretty limited once your high level. You have pvp... i suck real bad at it and i'm rarely geared enough because i take too much breaks, raiding.... never geared for it. There isn't much more to do except maybe crafting and reputation grind. It's too bad... my impatience made me miss out on almost all end game content for each expansions.
Who knows... maybe i'll give the game another try. Maybe i'll just wait for swtor.
I think the problem with WoW is that Blizzard wanted to avoid grinding so much what they did was make the emphasis in the game on reaching max level as soon as possible . Because they thought thats what people wanted ( and to some extent it is ) . Trouble is once you get to max level then your stuck on the grind wheel anyway and the world pvp that made the game less of a grind and fun does'nt really exist anymore because of the easy access to instanced play . When it was released it took time to level a character in WoW , people quested formed friendships through the players they met through months of questing with that character , if I were to pinpoint the moment WoW started to change its when they made leveling 1/3 rd faster about 6 months after the Burning Crusade was released .I went back for 7 days recently and did a bit of questing in the wide world of Azeroth which is now pretty devoid by players who now favour doing one dungeon after another . Its a shame really because its nicely designed but barely used . Needless to say I did'nt see anything worth going back for . For what I enjoy in an mmo the game has long since gone down the wrong path . I'll leave it to the people who enjoy the instance grind and one mad mush to the end game . In the unlikly event that Blizzard decides to open up advanced difficulty servers with no fast leveling , no access to raid through a cross server looking for a group tool and xp from battlegrounds ( and a bunch of other changes that make the game way too easy too numerous to mention here ) I would happily return . Sadly the game I enjoyed is gone for good I think . Whats left is a shell of the game it once was and is nothing like the game it could have and should have become .
To keep things rolling keep in mind WoW has been around for 6+ years now. They just added more incentive for guilds and still NO housing or city building. It is sad that most of the new things Blizz has offered to players is a better guild setup and more achievements that amount to chat link gloating. Lately I have found myself playing LOTRO again because at least there is more of a story driven questing and meaningful crafting in the game.
I'm always amazed at the players that say "just take leveling out of the game" so they can just play the end game. Why? There is very little variety and redundancy becomes an issue. Some people may enjoy doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over. . . Well you get the point. Dailies were one of the worst things introduced to MMOs in my opinion.
I just hit max level in Rift two weeks ago. I ran the warfronts enough to hit R2 and that was enough of the same for me. One warfront over and over and over and over . . . (yes I did it again) again. You can run some T1s over and over again then some T2s over and over again, then the same raid instances over and over again. You get the trend here? IT IS BORING!
Just my perspective anyways. I suppose I enjoy a good community driven game where I can just relax, hang out with other people, strike up a conversation or two, kill some mobs, and maybe get some loot while doing it. Everything is rush rush rush now. No more crowd control is necessary because if it was at one point the community complained of the difficulty and it was removed. You pull mass groups, aoe, play the "watch the hp bar game" / heal, and rush to the next group.
It's like sex. Take your time, explore, and enjoy the ride. Don't rush to the ending. =P
I am part of the minority, I know.
Nah you are probably just part of the more experienced gamers that remember what a game is supposed to be: challenging.
" All I know is that there are sidequests to do, generals to kill, bosses to kill and summon, forts to burn, and reinforcements to slaughter. A bit more complex than “hold three bases for 20 minutes” I’d wager."
There is, in theory. None bothers with it however, everyone just rushing to see who can kill the end boss first.
Personally, I think they made the system worse by adding perks. It promotes guilds that have already been around while discouraging smaller, younger guilds from gaining steam.
Also, it incentivizes you to join a guild when that should definitely be an unbiased decision. It also makes things like Rated Battlegrounds, and Guild Raids a REQUIREMENT if you want to stay competetive or get the "gewd lewts" at the end of guild progression even though there's so many other ways to enjoy the game. Everyone knows someone who doesn't like to raid all day. There should just be achievements, no perks, no guild rewards.
yes mmo's are redundant, but WOW at least keeps that redundancy interesting. I cracked pc gamers october issue today and all i saw was redundancy. same old games just redone with a II or III after the name. it appears that the publishers are afraid to go after anything new and interesting or adult. it is tiring endless updates to old games. for now i will stick with WOW a game i love to play and that does everything that the other games do.