8 ms·

The repetitive and boring gameplay in WoW is probably intentional.

34 points by amichail 17y ago

iron_ball 17y ago
I discussed this a long time ago in a comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226688 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226688 The reward treadmill is the secret to retention. Get 'em hooked with quick rewards in the early part of the progress curve, then string them along at the highest levels. Otherwise people will quit in droves before the expansions come.
- zephjc 17y ago
  I remember someone mentioning that WoW (and other good MMOs) have a 30 second rule, in that you can run 30 seconds in any direction and find something to do (even if its killing more mobs) in order to keep the player's attention
  - loganfrederick 17y ago
    Bungie, the Halo developers, as well as many other developers follow this philosophy. How can you take 30 seconds of fun and repeat that throughout the entire game? That's what many studios strive for.
    - zephjc 17y ago
      That's true too, but what I meant was more specifically for MMOs (and games that have the player move in similar ways) - any bits of fun in the game should be not more than a 30 second drive/walk/run from another one. Imagine, for instance, a map of Elwynn Forest (if you've played WoW) and construct a graph over it of all the quest-related things to do or see - none of them should be more than a 30 second run from the nearest neighbor. Whether this is actually the case is an implementation issue :)
Alex3917 17y ago
Pretty much all modern video games are designed to exploit the same four or five cognitive flaws. The best way to see this in action is to sign up for Idle RPG: http://idlerpg.net/ http://idlerpg.net/ The one thing video games are good for is learning to recognize these patterns. That way at least you'll have a fighting chance at avoiding people who use this stuff to try to exploit you in real life.
- zephjc 17y ago
  IdleRPG sounds like http://progressquest.com/ http://progressquest.com/
- rms 17y ago
  Can you list those cognitive flaws?
  - Alex3917 17y ago
    A full explanation would take a while, but here are a few points: 1) Reality is generally continuous. Anytime you see a discontinuity in life, it means someone is probably skimming off the top. (e.g. leveling up) 2) We're all basically the same. Anytime you do something in return for social status, you're probably getting fucked in other ways. (e.g. going to law school) 3) Wealth is generally abundant. Any time you're doing work to get something scarce, someone else is probably making money off what you're doing. (e.g. buying limited edition stuff.)
    - rms 17y ago
      Thanks. Do you know if anyone has written about this more extensively?
      - Alex3917 17y ago
        Not really. Alfie Kohn does have a book called No Contest, where he mentions in passing how competition is used to control people. But it's not really more than a couple pages out of the whole book. And there is another book called Measurement in Psychology that talks about how what most people think of measurements aren't; but that's not really about social control either. The topic really deserves its own book, but none exists as far as I know.
DarkShikari 17y ago
I came to the conclusion long ago that the only effective way to have effective non-grinding gameplay in an MMORPG is to base the game around competition between players. It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay. What can break this barrier is interactions between actual people, which are far more interesting and variable than anything a developer can put together himself. The purpose of the game world should be to facilitate competition between players as best as possible. Finally, a game should also be based around an activity that is inherently enjoyable without the existence of progression. For example, Team Fortress 2 is a lot of fun to play even though you're not "leveling up" or getting "epic equipment". World of Warcraft, by comparison, wouldn't addict anyone if there were no levels or equipment. I can recall many games that have done either (or both) of these to some extent and were far more fun and interesting than any WoW clone: 1. Planetside. Not merely an MMOG first-person shooter, but one in which the primary content of the game consists of player combat. Shooting people in multiplayer games is fun, and doing it for territorial control with your friends in a persistent world is even moreso. Global Agenda looks like it might be bringing this concept back in 2010. 2. Shattered Galaxy. One of those games that got great review scores in every magazine and then disappeared off the map. A somewhat flawed but still very fun MMORTS, it was a blast to play even ignoring the progression aspect, and consisted entirely of player-vs-player team tactical combat with territorial control aspects. Incredibly addictive despite the pretty minimal progression system. 3. EVE Online. Failed miserably at the "base itself around fun activities" moniker, but based itself almost entirely around player-vs-player combat, empire-building, and market-based competition. To this day, it has set a bar for epic-scale player competition that no other game has gotten near. Basically all of the game's content was entirely player-generated: wars between player-run alliances over player-built space stations using player-built spaceships constructed using player-mined minerals. In short, make it fun, and make it about competition between people, not between people and Orc NPCs.
- amichail 17y ago
  What's interesting here though is that grinding seems to be a great way to build a successful (MMO)RPG. This is counterintuitive.
EvilTrout 17y ago
As the creator of a MMO, I can tell you it's absolutely intentional. Our initial design document had the word "grinding" it in many times; I'm sure theirs did too. If you want people to sink hundreds of hours into a game, the gameplay is going to include a LOT of repetition. The tricky part is to keep it fun and engaging despite this.
- algorias 17y ago
  If a design document of mine had the word "grinding" it in many times, I'd do something else instead. Another way to make people sink hundreds of hours into a game is to make it play well competitively. It's surprising that one of the prime examples of this (StarCraft) comes from the same company as WoW.
  - pwmanagerdied 17y ago
    MMORPGs and RTSs aren't directly comparable. Due to nature of the genre there's no long-term reward possible in RTSs outside of self-improvement, whereas this is generally the focus of RPGs, massive and online or not.
  - albertsun 17y ago
    There's a fair amount of rote and practice involved in becoming good at StarCraft. The "grinding" in WoW can also lead to subtle and gradual improvement at the game that makes you better at it.
  - rikthevik 17y ago
    Sure, Blizzard made Starcraft, but everyone forgets they also made Diablo. Diablo II was grind central.
- 4chan4ever 17y ago
  I doubt you can extrapolate from your experiences on a single MMORPG to the industry as a whole. Grind may well be intentional in your case, or in WoW; but in (many) other MMORPGs, the designers put a lot of work into reducing grind. Grind is always a double-edged sword, and rather than focus on grinding for grinding's sake, I recommend you focus on creating a compelling gaming experience first; worry about metastructure when you've managed to do that.
scotty79 17y ago
Aversion to grind is why I prefer Diablo 1 to Diablo 2. First one is hard enough to be adventure. Second one is just a grind. My aversion to grind might be also the reason why I don't seek daily job.
DLWormwood 17y ago
Given my experience with many solo RPGs and with a couple MMOs besides WoW, I'd say modern WoW is actually pretty gentle on the grinding curve than most games. (Try playing Etrian Odyssey or FF XI, gads...) I stopped playing after WoW after about a year not due to boredom, but frustration with end game content and game play emphasis during holiday events due to the new achievements system. It really ruined what really was, for me, a laid back, semi-relaxing game turning it into a grunt fest. For some, the "boring" content is more meditative instead.
Luyt 17y ago
While it is certainly possible to grind in WoW, it's not mandatory or necessary. You can get well along doing instances, quests and player-versus-player, and even get good items on the way. No need to grind 1000 trolls to get a good sword or staff ;-) I myself prefer doing instance groups more than anything else in WoW.
flamoot 17y ago
http://freshmeat.net/projects/telepathic-critterdrug http://freshmeat.net/projects/telepathic-critterdrug
chrischen 17y ago
"Thus, by creating a direct correlation between in-game power and time spent grinding, every player will at least have the potential to reach the top 20% (although the Pareto principle will still apply to the amount of time spent grinding)." This is like translating your time and effort into worthless in-game currency (reputation in game). At least if it was based on real life skills like accuracy and response times, you could train these real life skills and get benefits in and out of game. Call of duty rocks, no need to grind (as long you're not trying to level up). I can just hop in and dominate. I imagine that people who play Call of Duty online are the least likely to also play World of Warcraft regularly.
dubcomesaveme 17y ago
subscription fees + time invested in leveling = sunk costs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_th... players will spend more time playing than they would otherwise want to due to their perception of sunk costs, hours of gameplay provided expands to meet this demand with a grinding mechanism being the cheapest type of gameplay to offer
bretpiatt 17y ago
Grinding is only boring and repetitive if you just try to be average while doing it allowing for a huge margin of error. Compare this to playing chess or poker, is it "grinding" there to play the same thing over thousands of times? If you are just mindlessly shoving pieces around a board, going "all in" every hand without looking at your cards, or if you just randomly "grind" -- yes all 3 of those activities sound horribly boring to me.
elai 17y ago
I can't stand WoW. I try playing for 30 minutes and just quit.

34 points by amichail 17y ago

I discussed this a long time ago in a comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226688 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226688 The reward treadmill is the secret to retention. Get 'em hooked with quick rewards in the early part of the progress curve, then string them along at the highest levels. Otherwise people will quit in droves before the expansions come.

zephjc 17y ago
I remember someone mentioning that WoW (and other good MMOs) have a 30 second rule, in that you can run 30 seconds in any direction and find something to do (even if its killing more mobs) in order to keep the player's attention
- loganfrederick 17y ago
  Bungie, the Halo developers, as well as many other developers follow this philosophy. How can you take 30 seconds of fun and repeat that throughout the entire game? That's what many studios strive for.
  - zephjc 17y ago
    That's true too, but what I meant was more specifically for MMOs (and games that have the player move in similar ways) - any bits of fun in the game should be not more than a 30 second drive/walk/run from another one. Imagine, for instance, a map of Elwynn Forest (if you've played WoW) and construct a graph over it of all the quest-related things to do or see - none of them should be more than a 30 second run from the nearest neighbor. Whether this is actually the case is an implementation issue :)

Alex3917 17y ago

Pretty much all modern video games are designed to exploit the same four or five cognitive flaws. The best way to see this in action is to sign up for Idle RPG: http://idlerpg.net/ http://idlerpg.net/ The one thing video games are good for is learning to recognize these patterns. That way at least you'll have a fighting chance at avoiding people who use this stuff to try to exploit you in real life.

zephjc 17y ago
IdleRPG sounds like http://progressquest.com/ http://progressquest.com/
rms 17y ago
Can you list those cognitive flaws?
- Alex3917 17y ago
  A full explanation would take a while, but here are a few points: 1) Reality is generally continuous. Anytime you see a discontinuity in life, it means someone is probably skimming off the top. (e.g. leveling up) 2) We're all basically the same. Anytime you do something in return for social status, you're probably getting fucked in other ways. (e.g. going to law school) 3) Wealth is generally abundant. Any time you're doing work to get something scarce, someone else is probably making money off what you're doing. (e.g. buying limited edition stuff.)
  - rms 17y ago
    Thanks. Do you know if anyone has written about this more extensively?
    - Alex3917 17y ago
      Not really. Alfie Kohn does have a book called No Contest, where he mentions in passing how competition is used to control people. But it's not really more than a couple pages out of the whole book. And there is another book called Measurement in Psychology that talks about how what most people think of measurements aren't; but that's not really about social control either. The topic really deserves its own book, but none exists as far as I know.

DarkShikari 17y ago

I came to the conclusion long ago that the only effective way to have effective non-grinding gameplay in an MMORPG is to base the game around competition between players. It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay. What can break this barrier is interactions between actual people, which are far more interesting and variable than anything a developer can put together himself. The purpose of the game world should be to facilitate competition between players as best as possible. Finally, a game should also be based around an activity that is inherently enjoyable without the existence of progression. For example, Team Fortress 2 is a lot of fun to play even though you're not "leveling up" or getting "epic equipment". World of Warcraft, by comparison, wouldn't addict anyone if there were no levels or equipment. I can recall many games that have done either (or both) of these to some extent and were far more fun and interesting than any WoW clone: 1. Planetside. Not merely an MMOG first-person shooter, but one in which the primary content of the game consists of player combat. Shooting people in multiplayer games is fun, and doing it for territorial control with your friends in a persistent world is even moreso. Global Agenda looks like it might be bringing this concept back in 2010. 2. Shattered Galaxy. One of those games that got great review scores in every magazine and then disappeared off the map. A somewhat flawed but still very fun MMORTS, it was a blast to play even ignoring the progression aspect, and consisted entirely of player-vs-player team tactical combat with territorial control aspects. Incredibly addictive despite the pretty minimal progression system. 3. EVE Online. Failed miserably at the "base itself around fun activities" moniker, but based itself almost entirely around player-vs-player combat, empire-building, and market-based competition. To this day, it has set a bar for epic-scale player competition that no other game has gotten near. Basically all of the game's content was entirely player-generated: wars between player-run alliances over player-built space stations using player-built spaceships constructed using player-mined minerals. In short, make it fun, and make it about competition between people, not between people and Orc NPCs.

amichail 17y ago
What's interesting here though is that grinding seems to be a great way to build a successful (MMO)RPG. This is counterintuitive.

EvilTrout 17y ago

As the creator of a MMO, I can tell you it's absolutely intentional. Our initial design document had the word "grinding" it in many times; I'm sure theirs did too. If you want people to sink hundreds of hours into a game, the gameplay is going to include a LOT of repetition. The tricky part is to keep it fun and engaging despite this.

algorias 17y ago
If a design document of mine had the word "grinding" it in many times, I'd do something else instead. Another way to make people sink hundreds of hours into a game is to make it play well competitively. It's surprising that one of the prime examples of this (StarCraft) comes from the same company as WoW.
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  MMORPGs and RTSs aren't directly comparable. Due to nature of the genre there's no long-term reward possible in RTSs outside of self-improvement, whereas this is generally the focus of RPGs, massive and online or not.
- albertsun 17y ago
  There's a fair amount of rote and practice involved in becoming good at StarCraft. The "grinding" in WoW can also lead to subtle and gradual improvement at the game that makes you better at it.
- rikthevik 17y ago
  Sure, Blizzard made Starcraft, but everyone forgets they also made Diablo. Diablo II was grind central.
4chan4ever 17y ago
I doubt you can extrapolate from your experiences on a single MMORPG to the industry as a whole. Grind may well be intentional in your case, or in WoW; but in (many) other MMORPGs, the designers put a lot of work into reducing grind. Grind is always a double-edged sword, and rather than focus on grinding for grinding's sake, I recommend you focus on creating a compelling gaming experience first; worry about metastructure when you've managed to do that.

scotty79 17y ago

Aversion to grind is why I prefer Diablo 1 to Diablo 2. First one is hard enough to be adventure. Second one is just a grind. My aversion to grind might be also the reason why I don't seek daily job.

DLWormwood 17y ago

Given my experience with many solo RPGs and with a couple MMOs besides WoW, I'd say modern WoW is actually pretty gentle on the grinding curve than most games. (Try playing Etrian Odyssey or FF XI, gads...) I stopped playing after WoW after about a year not due to boredom, but frustration with end game content and game play emphasis during holiday events due to the new achievements system. It really ruined what really was, for me, a laid back, semi-relaxing game turning it into a grunt fest. For some, the "boring" content is more meditative instead.

Luyt 17y ago

While it is certainly possible to grind in WoW, it's not mandatory or necessary. You can get well along doing instances, quests and player-versus-player, and even get good items on the way. No need to grind 1000 trolls to get a good sword or staff ;-) I myself prefer doing instance groups more than anything else in WoW.

flamoot 17y ago

http://freshmeat.net/projects/telepathic-critterdrug http://freshmeat.net/projects/telepathic-critterdrug

chrischen 17y ago

"Thus, by creating a direct correlation between in-game power and time spent grinding, every player will at least have the potential to reach the top 20% (although the Pareto principle will still apply to the amount of time spent grinding)." This is like translating your time and effort into worthless in-game currency (reputation in game). At least if it was based on real life skills like accuracy and response times, you could train these real life skills and get benefits in and out of game. Call of duty rocks, no need to grind (as long you're not trying to level up). I can just hop in and dominate. I imagine that people who play Call of Duty online are the least likely to also play World of Warcraft regularly.

dubcomesaveme 17y ago

subscription fees + time invested in leveling = sunk costs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_th... players will spend more time playing than they would otherwise want to due to their perception of sunk costs, hours of gameplay provided expands to meet this demand with a grinding mechanism being the cheapest type of gameplay to offer

bretpiatt 17y ago

Grinding is only boring and repetitive if you just try to be average while doing it allowing for a huge margin of error. Compare this to playing chess or poker, is it "grinding" there to play the same thing over thousands of times? If you are just mindlessly shoving pieces around a board, going "all in" every hand without looking at your cards, or if you just randomly "grind" -- yes all 3 of those activities sound horribly boring to me.

elai 17y ago

I can't stand WoW. I try playing for 30 minutes and just quit.