Longasc, I’m not sure about flying mounts. I love the freedom to explore that they offer, but yes, they have introduced some unfortunate side effects. It makes me wonder how Aion will work, where everyone just flies anyway.

And yes, the current implementation of the range of challenge is busted. I cite it as an ideal, not an example, and GW’s Hard mode and WoW’s Heroic modes as small steps in the right direction of a better gradient… that don’t work as well as they might, as it happens. That doesn’t mean the idea is unsound. Implementation is hard sometimes.

Interesting point about the Heartstone. Does having one really make the game less challenging though? Does cutting it’s timer from 60mins to 30mins actually have any impact on challenge?

You mentioned the concept of removing the cooldown completely and letting people teleport anywhere. But what about going in other direction and removing it completely.

Look at the original Everquest where only caster classes could bind themselves to a location and there were no mounts at all. If that was implemented in WoW would it make the game more challenging? I think it would remain at the same challenge but just become more frustrating.

Reasons?

Well, flying is AWESOME. But does this outweigh the fact that it was one more nail in the coffin of open world pvp? It was quite dead before, it just worse, IMO. Still, I hope you get my point. But this is not the only problem.

Difficult or dangerous pathways now suddenly simply do not exist anymore. Just hop on your mount and fly away. Gathering resources also got so much easier, just patrol the ore node spots on your map from above.

The slow turtle ship in Northrend is very fun, you can start fishing and socializing there. Or murder another player, as I did. We were two Alliance Warlocks and he was a Horde Rogue, and Warlocks have issues with Rogues. We decided to kill him before he even gets the idea to attack us.

A lengthy boat trip or even taking players with you on your transport mount is very cool and a good opportunity for socialization indeed!

But who does take the turtle ship when he can 1. use his flying mount and 2. has a 30 minute or maybe even zero hearthstone countdown?

The “do not use it if you do not like it” argument does not really apply there IMO.

Talking about the “bell curve”: Catering to most of the players, basically the “middle”, is the economical choice. Hardcore and ultra-casual players would lose, of course.

But today we have a designer mindset that goes for the very lowest common denominator. The left end of the bell curve. Not only hardcore players lose out, the huge customer potential in the middle also gets dissatisfied.

And I think this what happens nowadays, not only in WoW.

The idea of optional challenge is sound. But the implementation currently is not. Many optional bonus achievements (and this opens up another discussion, the achievement craze – but I won’t talk about that now), this is the way almost all optional challenges are presented, require players to do things is a very dumb and artificial way.

It is like asking a table tennis or soccer players to use the left hand for playing or only to kick with the left foot.

Guild Wars/ArenaNet had a brilliant idea with “HARD MODE”. It is basically the same as HEROIC difficulty in WoW.

What happend? HARD mode was hard at first. You could fail, too much failures and death penality and you were done. The rewards were better than in normal mode. Risk vs reward and it was HARD.

And this is what happened to HARD mode: Everyone felt entitled to reap the benefits of hard mode drops, but … it should not be that hard. Even if it is called hard mode.

ANet some time later the lowered difficulty of Hard Mode to Normal Mode. They introduced so-called consumables. Items that powered up the abilities, hit points, armor, energy, attack speed and all that of the person or even the whole party. Items that removed all death penalty.
Normal Mode became the option to allow everyone to progress. It became Easy Mode.

What did Bartle once say in his infamous article MMOs are designed by noobs? It seems he was right.

Note that I do not consider myself hardcore and do not feel much love for hardcore raiders or PvPers, I do not like the Darkfall “hardcore player” mindset at all.

But in my opinion the very lowest common denominator is a much more serious problem for all MMO players. We are not divided 50:50 in “Hardcore” or “Casual/Noob”, whatever.

Most players are not THAT hardcore, nor THAT casual or noobish. They have no use for extra hard or punishing content, nor for content where everything is handed to them on a platter.

Finding the middle ground is more difficult than finding the extremes. Yet it is of prime importance, as I believe this is the way to make MOST of your players happy players.

People can always make a game harder for themselves if they really want it that way. There’s a whole subculture over at GameFAQs that finds ways to make Final Fantasy games harder, for instance. (Just like there’s one that finds ways to beat Emerald Weapon with level 7 characters. People are weird sometimes.) It doesn’t work the other way, though; if the UI and gameplay pacing of an MMO are onerous, there are no legal ways around them.

It’s a bit like warm and cold weather. You can always add another layer of clothing if you’re too cold, but you can only take so much off if you’re too hot. And everyone has their own comfort temperature.

And yes, fighting the tide is sour grapes at this point.

That said, I’d encourage those who want that sort of abusive experience to find a niche game that offers it and support it. Darkfall, perhaps. It’s not a game that I’d ever play, but I’m glad that it exists, because it shows that the market is more mature and can support divergent opinions and playstyles. One size most certainly does not fit all (even notably in the monetization strategy), so yes, we really do need a more diverse set of options.

Let’s look at the hearthstone as an example. 30 minutes is better than 60, right? Well, really, why have a cooldown at all? Why limit the hearthstone to one location? Why not let people teleport around anywhere they want? Some people would find this to be a great change, but others who chose a class built on specific powers (like Mage teleportation to major cities) may not be so thrilled. Or, people who want the chance to run into other players doing quests in order to group up and find cool people are not going to have that opportunity. Instant, free teleportation means less chances to run into someone else.

Yes, you’ll say that we’re not to that point yet in the game. But, in some ways we’re already well past that point. As some of the recent nostalgia for EQ1 shows, some people actually did like the social opportunities that gameplay introduced despite the “I’d rather pound nails into my genitals with my forehead” glacially slow, forced-grouping gameplay it had compared to today’s games. Some people see the faster hearthstones and quicker mounts as more nails in this coffin, but in reality the coffin was already measured and cut years ago.

So, from my point of view, the point is kind of moot. If you try to start the game now without having friends, you’re not likely to break into any social groups anyway. WoW has shown that convenience trumps accomplishment all through its development, and that process has only gotten more streamlined as the game progresses. The people complaining now are way late to the party.

I firmly believe that there should be easy and difficult content for all skill levels, and that everyone should be able to access all of the content they paid for. Ultimately, I’m convinced that such means scaling dungeons (even for soloers) with concurrent rewards, and even user-chosen difficulty settings (not unlike the Heroic mode for raids).

Until that desirable game design happens, I’ll happily cheer for better UI and playability, while I let those of you who have a horse in the game fuss over the Carebearification of the overall game. I am sympathetic to the call for more skill, certainly… but do I think that maintaining access for the whole spectrum of players is a higher priority. If that means the outliers on the bell curve, the hardcore and the complete incompetents, wind up a bit underserved, it’s understandable.

Lamentable, certainly, but understandable.

More on DKs later. Overall, though, yes, I’m impressed.

Fun goes down once you enter Outland. They managed that you do not have to use colorful clown gear, as you can use many items and weapons and especially trinkets even in Northrend.

For veterans, one must note that the mobs got nerfed, still it is amazing how Death Knights TEAR through them and end up with more life and rune power than before the fight.

No wonder Death Knights and Paladins are the most played classes at the moment. I think you remember the statistics that were posted on “I Has PC”. They are good for soloing, good in groups and got the most goodies with the 3.x patches.

You are right that Blizzard made the game easier to play in the sense of improving the interface, skills, controls, tooltips and all that. I still have to tell you, the hellboars on Hellfire Peninsula were a lot more scary and interesting to fight when they had the potential to rip me to shreds! Yeah, running away in a futile attempt to escape death adds to my gaming experience.

Pulling a hellboar to you with the force grip is for sure fun, too, but it is still lacking in comparison.

Good game design also ends in the dungeons. They are set up with so much love and details, and then all that tanks and damage dealers do is spam AoE taunts and spells… thi is just bad!

Magister’s Terrace demanded a bit more than that, stuns, snares, teamwork – this got lost. Naxxramas was no that bad, on the other hand. It might have been easy, but it was for sure better as entry raid than Karazhan was.

The Hearthstone buff to 30 min cooldown is definitely good, as is earlier mounts for players. My warlock always envied mages. I just could not teleport to Theramore in the blink of an eye and back. Because I am a jealous person, I always molested them with the thing Mages and Pallies hate the most. It is not “fear” or the Warlock, it is the lovely Felpup and its spell-lock!