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March 20, 2005
More World of Warcraft
OK, so now I've played enough WoW to really have some comments about the gameplay. First of all, I think WoW is a great MMORPG. Compared to Star Wars Galaxies, it's actually a better game playing experience.
This is because SWG's environment rendering isn't as rich. For example, when running through Tatooine, the scenery was so ho-hum at times. Except for the occasional tumbleweed that pops up, I would sometimes see no creatures or buildings at all. The WoW environment is richly rendered. There's almost always some sort of creature camp or another off to the side of the main roads. There's also mining and herbalism things to gather as well. Granted, I wish that different items would be available depending on which city I'm in. For example, there should be different recipes in different cities, which would give me something to look forward to. There's just too much of the same items. I was pretty excited when a new area yielded new fish while fishing yesterday.
Oh the other hand, I thought SWG was far better at preventing leakage of game environment objects into eBay. Really, the fact that there are people who sell items from MMORPGs to others is not new. It's especially notable in EverQuest, so I've heard. However, I'm a big proponent of keeping gaming objects purely in the gaming world, and this 'outside trading' irks me to some degree.
I'm noting this because I heard that there are players who 'farm' high level areas in WoW, and make a lot of game currency in the form of gold pieces. They then turn around and sell those virtual gold pieces on eBay to other players that cannot wait to make their own living in the game. I've heard that most of the offenders who sell the gold pieces are based out of the People's Republic of China.
There are a couple of things I think that can be done to prevent this from happening. The servers are linked to the origin of the game. If you buy the game from the US, you will only be able to link to a US server. So, the answer isn't to separate the servers by country - that's already happening. What players are actually doing is buying copies of the game from say, the US, and logging into a US server to 'farm' for lucrative objects. There's probably a way for Blizzard to monitor and correlate actions of the players such that those people can be caught. For example, if some number of players team up constantly in a high level area, use macros all the time, then sell in the auction house, then a flag might be raised. However, I think this correlation would be a non-trivial task.
Another thing that might help remedy the situation is if prices were not so ludicrous in WoW. For example, buying a mount requires 80 gold. This is assuming that the player has already reached level 40 proficiency. First of all, reaching level 40 isn't that easy. It'll probably take me about two months to reach level 40, playing several nights a week, and at least one weekend day. I'm almost level 20 in the game now, with the mage, and still only have 5 gold pieces. As you can see, it will be a looong time before I get 80 gold pieces. So, I think 80 gold pieces for a mount is completely ridiculous.
To be fair, Blizzard has actually revoked accounts of those who are suspected to be 'farming' high paying areas in the game. Players who get quests to kill certain creatures would show up in the area and never have the chance because of these people who would squat there constantly. There were enough complaints that Blizzard decided to do something. But, who knows if the owners of the revoked accounts can just go buy another copy of the game?
Anyhow, that's my $0.02 for WoW so far. Great game, but needs some trimming.
Posted by Kathy at March 20, 2005 08:55 PM