MMO Gaming

Well, we’ve made it to the final set of responses, coming from Barb Dybwad, the Producer for the Engadget and Joystiq networks, which I take to be important because she’s the only one who attached a title to her name. For this very special set of responses (being the last posted as well as having a title) I’ve decided to move the interview picture to the left side, also known as “the good side.” This is to show special appreciation for her taking time out to answer the questions.

But enough of that, thank you to Barb for answering, now let’s move ahead!

1. What game(s) (aside from WoW) are you currently playing?

I play games like I read books, so about a zillion at any one time. I just (finally) got an Xbox 360 and there I’m playing Viva Pinata, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Gears of War. On the Wii I’m playing Rayman’s Raving Rabbids, WarioWare, and still working my way through Twilight Princess. On the trusty PS2 I’m working (slowly) through Dragon Quest VIII, Psychonauts and Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. On the Nintendo DS it’s Final Fantasy III and Elite Beat Agents, and on the PSP it’s LocoRoco and PopoloCrois. On the PC, other than WoW I’m playing LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (old skool!). And no, I don’t ever sleep.

2. As a player of World of Warcraft do you think the success Blizzard has enjoyed is good or bad for MMOs in general?

I think it has to be a good thing that WoW is essentially a “crossover� hit, in that a lot of my friends who don’t really identify as gamers are nevertheless playing it (and not only just playing it, but are really into it). The game is diverse enough to appeal to different kinds of people for different reasons, and once you’ve brought a new face in the door it opens up a new world of MMOs in general to that person. Those people are far more likely now to have an interest in MMOs in general than they were before they played WoW, and I think they’ll be far more likely to try other games in the future – that’s good for the industry as a whole.

3. With the expansion just released what are your initial thoughts? What is your favorite addition so far? Least favorite?

Consider me impressed with the Burning Crusade launch – yes, there were some server stability issues and miscellaneous other glitches but, on the whole, far less than I honestly expected from such a massive technical challenge. Beyond that, the actual content itself is pretty awesome. I’ve spent some time in Outlands and rolled both a Blood Elf and a Draenei alt so have had a chance to see at least a small cross-section of the new areas – it’s difficult to pick a favorite but I really enjoy the ambience of the Blood Elf starting area in Eversong Woods and the crazy trippy scenery in Zangarmarsh. I’ve been having fun exploring the new cities, too, with The Exodar being particularly cool. I haven’t found too much to dislike yet, although I could complain that my least favorite bit is the lack of an Auction House or class trainers in Outlands – it’s way inconvenient. Then again, I’m sure Blizzard implemented it that way to prevent the old cities from becoming even greater ghost towns than they already are.

4. Which unfinished quest line would you be most interested in seeing completed (King of Stormwind quest line or Uldum quest line for instance)?

This isn’t necessarily BC-specific, but as my main is a rogue I’ve always been curious to know if/when the Ravenholdt quest line is going to continue.

5. What is your biggest problem with WoW and how would you fix it?

I think the realm sharding is both a blessing and curse. It’s a blessing because each server develops its own unique culture and economy to an extent, and because you can go and be anonymous on an alt somewhere completely different anytime you want to. The flip side is that I have friends spread out across dozens of servers and there’s just no way I could ever play enough alts to get to spend play time with all of them. Choosing a realm is a huge decision, and in some ways I wish it could be more flexible. How to fix it – perhaps someday it would be possible to scale a single server enough to hold 8 million players (or whatever it will be by then), or develop a workaround via distributed computing somehow. But I’ll leave that to the Blizzard engineers, who are surely already losing enough sleep at the idea as it is.

6. The launch of World of Warcraft in ‘04 was riddled with problems, did you feel that Blizzard learned from that with the Burning Crusade launch? What problems, if any, did you run into on launch day?

Oh, absolutely they must have walked away in ’04 with a treasure trove of worst and best practices for the future, and I think the BC launch shows that they applied what they learned from the initial experience. It took a few extra minutes for me to upgrade my account during the install because I couldn’t access the upgrade server right away, and one of the servers I play on (Bronzebeard) had some crashes and rolling restarts during the first week (although I haven’t seen any problems since then) – but other than that it has been fairly painless. I can remember very minor Tuesday patches that caused more problems than this, back in the day. So on the whole, I think Blizzard pulled off a truly massive project quite well.

7. What is your favorite quest/instance/zone in the game?

Hard question. I have some fond memories of leveling my first character (Alliance) and hanging out in places like Westfall and Loch Modan. But if I have to pick one, I think some of my fondest memories are from Zul’Gurub, back when my guild was still cutting its teeth on raiding. There’s a lot going on in that instance, some great gear for its time, and some of the boss encounters are pretty cool. Plus the memories associated with learning how to get 20 people together long enough to figure out how to cooperate and progress through the content is pretty priceless.. And… there’s the fish boss, which engendered an entire tongue in cheek fishing culture in my guild for some time.

8. There are a huge number of UI modifications available. What mods, if any, do you use? Also, how do you feel about Blizzard taking functionality from some mods and implementing it in the basic UI?

I use CTMod and CTRaid, Titan Panel, ArcHUD, Auctioneer, Atlas and AtlasLoot. For raiding, DamageMeters, KLH ThreatMeter and GEM. Some others that I’m hoping get updated are Item Rack (thinking of switching to Outfitter), Recap, and CCWatch for rogue stuns.

I think it only makes sense that Blizzard will incorporate the best of available mods into the main code. Companies like Apple do this on the desktop, Yahoo, Google and AOL are doing it in web services, and look how much success Counter-Strike has had – all similar concepts. If you allow your fans to interact with your API or your source code or provide some hook into your system for them to play with, they’re going to come up with something cool you hadn’t thought of – that’s part of the point. So why not bring some of the best back into your core business? That’s a smart move, imo.

9. What is your fondest WoW memory?

So many! Should I pick my first mount, my first purple, my first raid, first exalted reputation, first downing of Rag… or should it be the more subtle pleasures like staying up til 8am on Vent just horsing around at the Darkmoon Faire, the fishing raids in WC, the 108th stealth run that finally netted me my freaking Shadowcraft gloves, the time our guild PvP group kept beating the best Horde PvP team on the server in AB all night long? Too hard to choose!

10. Now, the most important question of all; Horde or Alliance?

Both! J

Final comments:

It was a pleasure to do this interview and think back on a lot of great memories from my time spent in Azeroth (and beyond…). Thanks for the opportunity!

Once again thank you to Barb for her responses.

WoW Insider, Barb Dybwad, Joystiq, Engadget, world of warcraft, burning crusade, interview