5 ms·

To be fair on the Blizzard example, I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by, doing as your quote said, understanding the underlyi

To be fair on the Blizzard example, I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by, doing as your quote said, understanding the underlying problem. It wasn't only a "we want WoW classic bug for bug," it was "the modern game has become so unrecognizable that it's basically WoW 2.0, you ruined it with the modern systems" Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. Classic will only save them for so long without them making new content, but using classic's systems. So in a way, I think the point still stands, you have to understand what the underlying problem is. Users do generally know what they want, but they don't always know how to ask for it.

jasonlotito 8mo ago
> Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. 100% nope. Classic is what we wanted. All of what you just said is you saying: "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."
- GolfPopper 8mo ago
  Agreed. Current WoW has done some similar things to what the prior poster suggested, and while I personally find the current game better that it was for a while, it remains a very different experience from Classic.
- bombcar 8mo ago
  Classic is what we wanted, not that we wouldn't want "other things added in Classic-style" perhaps, but the problem with that is it becomes a whole new ballgame. Classic WoW wasn't perfect, but it was amazing, and it's NOT all just nostalgia-glasses.
adampunk 8mo ago
They knew exactly what they wanted and they knew exactly how to ask for it. That’s the point. engineers love announcing that nobody but engineers knows what’s important in software; that’s complete and total bollocks. wow classic is a perfect example because it is exactly the sort of thing that the business unit and the engineers and the designers would not want to do. We don’t need to assume that because we have hundreds of Internet posts indicating exactly that. Not only did they not want to do it, but they argued that users didn’t know what they wanted for the sheer fact that making it was not something that was desired by either the business unit or the engineers. Also, the point is not that classic saves them from making new content. It’s probably the case that the more content they make the more of a value proposition classic appears to be. Is there some new race in the new expansion that’s stupid? OK hop on over to classic. Kill the part of your brain that makes you assume users are stupid.
- masterlee_fn 7mo ago
  [dead]
lemagedurage 8mo ago
We shouldn't discount nostalgia. Sometimes an otherwise objectively worse product is better because it reminds people of the past.
- bigstrat2003 8mo ago
  But there are people who didn't play WoW back in the day who still love classic, so it can't just be nostalgia. Vanilla WoW really did have a different design ethos than the later expansions did, and some people prefer that experience.
  - thewebguyd 8mo ago
    > Vanilla WoW really did have a different design ethos than the later expansions did, and some people prefer that experience. Right, and that's my point. When you take away the nostalgia for the content, you reveal what players are asking for, which is a reversion to what is effectively a previous game as modern WoW lost all of what made it a good game, to those players, in the first place. So yeah, there was definitely a group of players that literally did want Classic WoW, original content and all, but I also feel like Blizzard would have saw success continuing that Classic formula with new content. Blizzard sucked the soul and charm out of WoW. For all intents and purposes, modern WoW is a completely different game.
    - josephg 8mo ago
      Yes. I've watched some videos on wow by Kevin Jordan, who was on the original team. He said the original game was built on 3 pillars: 1. Advancement over time. 2. Player interaction. Hard content should be hard in order to push players into working together to overcome challenges. 3. The world is a character in the game. Even when you eventually got mounts later in the game, they made it so mobs can knock you off & daze you. The world is big and full of wonder. Especially at earlier levels, just getting from point A to point B can be a journey in itself. Wanna play with your friends who started in a different zone? Fine, but just getting there will be an epic journey. They abandoned those principles later on. Eg, by adding "sidekick" characters you can summon when you're playing on you own, to overcome hard content. The point of that content was to push you into making friends with other players. Flying mounts made the world small and safe. Just point in the vague direction you wanna go and go AFK for a few minutes. They also added more and more teleports, so you don't have to schlep overland yourself. And the LFG system. It was a really different game back then. I didn't get that much out of classic wow. But I'd enjoy playing a new MMO built around those same principles.
hinkley 8mo ago
I spent some formative years helping people run MUDs and applying my pattern matching brain to the problem of how to make a multiplayer game succeed. I played WoW precisely because they dodged the first bullet, which is inflationary or deflationary economies caused by each content creator trying to leave their mark by making better gear for their quests than are already available. The whole thing with used equipment only being for to be scrapped guaranteed that low level characters weren’t all carrying the third best helmet in the game. But they still had the same problem with expansions - the need to change things in order to declare, “I made that”. They wouldn’t have needed classic if they followed your conclusions. However, without those changes would they have stayed on everyone’s radar as long? Hard to say. Balancing in LoL and friends seems somewhat easier because the mechanics change less frequently. So maybe they would have been fine or maybe they’d be on WoW 2.0 now.
- masterlee_fn 7mo ago
  [dead]
plorkyeran 8mo ago
Other than a brief huge burst of interest at the launch of WoW classic, retail WoW has consistently been significantly larger than Classic. Classic WoW has been a success, but killing the modern game in favor of something more like Classic would have been an astoundingly bad idea.
mechanicalpulse 8mo ago
> I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by [...] understanding the underlying problem. I'm reminded of the 1995 interview in which Steve Jobs elucidated the fundamental reasons that Xerox missed its golden opportunity to own the computer industry and why former PepsiCo CEO John Sculley later ultimately failed at the helm of Apple. It's fundamentally the same issue with a number of gaming conglomerates nowadays. These companies are more interested in increasing the sales of sugar water than making great games. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising in the least to learn that former Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick was on the board of Coca-Cola for a decade.
- masterlee_fn 8mo ago
  [dead]
vbezhenar 8mo ago
> Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. That would be a tremendous failure. There are millions of players who love LFR/LFG, who love somewhat balanced nature of the game, etc. You would lost all of them in favor of Classic players. The truth is, a lot of changes Blizzard made to the game, were good ones. If you would browse WoW Classic forums, you'd find plenty of players requesting retail features to be added to Classic game. They want LFD because they're tired sitting for hours being denied for dungeons, because their class is not very good. They want class homogenization, because their beloved class is genuinely lacks tools to be useful. When you make any change to the game, some player will love it and some player will hate it. Over time more and more players will feel alienated. But other players will come and they won't know other game. There's no simple solution here, other than maintain several versions of the game for different players. One size does not fit all.
intelVISA 8mo ago
To be fair to this example it was also an tough situation: imagine MS trying to release W10 Classic with W11 still in prod! E.g. the older ver may well be better, and even what most users want, but pulling off the optics of selling both without damaging the modern variant is difficult if you're not c-level. The internal champion would basically be ending their career with "yeah I messed up the product let's roll back". Also sends a very interesting signal to shareholders and competitors about the direction of the corp.

jasonlotito 8mo ago

> Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. 100% nope. Classic is what we wanted. All of what you just said is you saying: "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."

GolfPopper 8mo ago
Agreed. Current WoW has done some similar things to what the prior poster suggested, and while I personally find the current game better that it was for a while, it remains a very different experience from Classic.
bombcar 8mo ago
Classic is what we wanted, not that we wouldn't want "other things added in Classic-style" perhaps, but the problem with that is it becomes a whole new ballgame. Classic WoW wasn't perfect, but it was amazing, and it's NOT all just nostalgia-glasses.

adampunk 8mo ago

They knew exactly what they wanted and they knew exactly how to ask for it. That’s the point. engineers love announcing that nobody but engineers knows what’s important in software; that’s complete and total bollocks. wow classic is a perfect example because it is exactly the sort of thing that the business unit and the engineers and the designers would not want to do. We don’t need to assume that because we have hundreds of Internet posts indicating exactly that. Not only did they not want to do it, but they argued that users didn’t know what they wanted for the sheer fact that making it was not something that was desired by either the business unit or the engineers. Also, the point is not that classic saves them from making new content. It’s probably the case that the more content they make the more of a value proposition classic appears to be. Is there some new race in the new expansion that’s stupid? OK hop on over to classic. Kill the part of your brain that makes you assume users are stupid.

masterlee_fn 7mo ago
[dead]

lemagedurage 8mo ago

We shouldn't discount nostalgia. Sometimes an otherwise objectively worse product is better because it reminds people of the past.

bigstrat2003 8mo ago
But there are people who didn't play WoW back in the day who still love classic, so it can't just be nostalgia. Vanilla WoW really did have a different design ethos than the later expansions did, and some people prefer that experience.
- thewebguyd 8mo ago
  > Vanilla WoW really did have a different design ethos than the later expansions did, and some people prefer that experience. Right, and that's my point. When you take away the nostalgia for the content, you reveal what players are asking for, which is a reversion to what is effectively a previous game as modern WoW lost all of what made it a good game, to those players, in the first place. So yeah, there was definitely a group of players that literally did want Classic WoW, original content and all, but I also feel like Blizzard would have saw success continuing that Classic formula with new content. Blizzard sucked the soul and charm out of WoW. For all intents and purposes, modern WoW is a completely different game.
  - josephg 8mo ago
    Yes. I've watched some videos on wow by Kevin Jordan, who was on the original team. He said the original game was built on 3 pillars: 1. Advancement over time. 2. Player interaction. Hard content should be hard in order to push players into working together to overcome challenges. 3. The world is a character in the game. Even when you eventually got mounts later in the game, they made it so mobs can knock you off & daze you. The world is big and full of wonder. Especially at earlier levels, just getting from point A to point B can be a journey in itself. Wanna play with your friends who started in a different zone? Fine, but just getting there will be an epic journey. They abandoned those principles later on. Eg, by adding "sidekick" characters you can summon when you're playing on you own, to overcome hard content. The point of that content was to push you into making friends with other players. Flying mounts made the world small and safe. Just point in the vague direction you wanna go and go AFK for a few minutes. They also added more and more teleports, so you don't have to schlep overland yourself. And the LFG system. It was a really different game back then. I didn't get that much out of classic wow. But I'd enjoy playing a new MMO built around those same principles.

hinkley 8mo ago

I spent some formative years helping people run MUDs and applying my pattern matching brain to the problem of how to make a multiplayer game succeed. I played WoW precisely because they dodged the first bullet, which is inflationary or deflationary economies caused by each content creator trying to leave their mark by making better gear for their quests than are already available. The whole thing with used equipment only being for to be scrapped guaranteed that low level characters weren’t all carrying the third best helmet in the game. But they still had the same problem with expansions - the need to change things in order to declare, “I made that”. They wouldn’t have needed classic if they followed your conclusions. However, without those changes would they have stayed on everyone’s radar as long? Hard to say. Balancing in LoL and friends seems somewhat easier because the mechanics change less frequently. So maybe they would have been fine or maybe they’d be on WoW 2.0 now.

masterlee_fn 7mo ago
[dead]

plorkyeran 8mo ago

Other than a brief huge burst of interest at the launch of WoW classic, retail WoW has consistently been significantly larger than Classic. Classic WoW has been a success, but killing the modern game in favor of something more like Classic would have been an astoundingly bad idea.

mechanicalpulse 8mo ago

> I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by [...] understanding the underlying problem. I'm reminded of the 1995 interview in which Steve Jobs elucidated the fundamental reasons that Xerox missed its golden opportunity to own the computer industry and why former PepsiCo CEO John Sculley later ultimately failed at the helm of Apple. It's fundamentally the same issue with a number of gaming conglomerates nowadays. These companies are more interested in increasing the sales of sugar water than making great games. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising in the least to learn that former Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick was on the board of Coca-Cola for a decade.

masterlee_fn 8mo ago
[dead]

vbezhenar 8mo ago

> Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. That would be a tremendous failure. There are millions of players who love LFR/LFG, who love somewhat balanced nature of the game, etc. You would lost all of them in favor of Classic players. The truth is, a lot of changes Blizzard made to the game, were good ones. If you would browse WoW Classic forums, you'd find plenty of players requesting retail features to be added to Classic game. They want LFD because they're tired sitting for hours being denied for dungeons, because their class is not very good. They want class homogenization, because their beloved class is genuinely lacks tools to be useful. When you make any change to the game, some player will love it and some player will hate it. Over time more and more players will feel alienated. But other players will come and they won't know other game. There's no simple solution here, other than maintain several versions of the game for different players. One size does not fit all.

intelVISA 8mo ago

To be fair to this example it was also an tough situation: imagine MS trying to release W10 Classic with W11 still in prod! E.g. the older ver may well be better, and even what most users want, but pulling off the optics of selling both without damaging the modern variant is difficult if you're not c-level. The internal champion would basically be ending their career with "yeah I messed up the product let's roll back". Also sends a very interesting signal to shareholders and competitors about the direction of the corp.