MMO Gaming

Working our way through them now we get to the responses from Eliah Hecht who holds the much sought after position of “person who gets responses posted second to last.” Congratulations to Eliah on this achievement (the amazing ability to be the fourth file I happen to open is a feat that should not be taken lightly). Thanks to Eliah for taking the time to answer my questions and blah, blah, blah (it’s not easy to come up with a different opening for each of these, if the final interview posted has only “Yeah, thanks, now let’s get to the questions, you’ll know why). Anyway let us keep moving ahead to the interview!

1. What game(s) (aside from WoW) are you currently playing?
Ocarina of Time and DDR. But WoW definitely occupies at least 90% of my gaming.

2. As a player of World of Warcraft do you think the success Blizzard has enjoyed is good or bad for MMOs in general?
Good in the long run; not particularly good right now. On the down side, Blizz is taking up a large chunk of the MMO market with WoW, making it ostensibly hard for anyone else to break in. But on the long view, WoW has unquestionably popularized and legitimized the MMO as a game form. Nobody thought the MMO market could get this big. Furthermore, bringing the Blizz shine to a genre is never a bad thing — now everyone else has something to aspire to, as regards fit and polish.

3. With the expansion just released what are your initial thoughts? What is your favorite addition so far? Least favorite?
I love, love, love the level design in all three of the new starting zones. Hellfire Peninsula is a total blast as soon as you set foot in there, and having it super-saturated with quests was definitely the right choice. I enjoy how it feels both true to the WoW aesthetic and other-wordly, with its mechanical horrors (the Fel Reaver is a good HFP mascot) and such. The same pretty much goes for Azuremyst Isle and Sunstrider Isle, although I worry that over time the Sunstrider stuff is going to end up looking too cartoony. My least favorite thing, I think, has been running out of bag space and quest log space while cavorting around the Outlands.

4. Which unfinished quest line would you be most interested in seeing completed (King of Stormwind quest line or Uldum quest line for instance)?
I’d probably say the King of Stormwind line, yes. Old quest lines tend to slip my mind, though. Essence of Eranikus was also a disappointing drop-off.

5. What is your biggest problem with WoW and how would you fix it?
I have two major problems with WoW. The first is that the game has two faces: PvP and PvE. This makes it so every class and ability has to be balanced in both venues, which in turn makes it hard to fully realize some classes’ potential and the vision that I think the devs originally had for those classes. Priests and warlocks would be an example; I’m pretty sure non-shadow priests’ soloing ability would be buffed considerably were it not for the fact that this would imbalance them in PvP. The only way I could think of to fix it would be to take further steps in the direction of abilities working in PvE and not PvP, or vice versa, but I’m not sure that’s actually desirable, as it could get pretty cumbersome and confusing.

My other major WoW problem is often talked about, and that is sharding. WoW has several hundred servers, such that if you meet a WoW player in real life, the chances of him playing on your server are rather low. I feel that this really takes away from the persistence of world that Blizz have worked so hard to realize. Unfortunately, with a game with this many players, I’m not sure there’s any way to fix this either. However, I would definitely like merged auction houses, as well as completely cross-realm battlegrounds. I’m not sure whether that’s technologically feasible, but merged AHs would definitely go a long way towards stabilizing the economy and making it harder to game the AH.
(Ed. This note on merged AHs reminds me of why I love to get other’s opinions, it’s something I never thought of, yet simple and brilliant in so many ways. Even just doing merged AHs across battlegroups could help immensely.)

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?
I wasn’t around at the WoW launch, but I have heard horror stories. I’ve also heard some stories about the BC launch, but not nearly so bad. Personally, I got home at 1 AM or so and was in Outlands by 2:30. Installation was quick, patching was quick, and all the servers I play on were up. The weakest point I think was the web page for upgrading your account to BC, since it took a few minutes to load for me, as well as not working the first time. Since then, there’s been a bit of lag and crashes in Outlands, but nothing too bad. Overall, this launch was impressively smooth, and I think they have learned a lot.

7. What is your favorite quest/instance/zone in the game?
Pre-BC, my favorite zone, hands down, was Ferelas. It’s gorgeous, and great for leveling. I enjoyed the quest there where you shrink the elite giants, since I’ve been ganked by them plenty of times. In BC, I’ve really been enjoying Zangarmarsh, but I haven’t seen most of Outlands yet, so I’ll refrain from picking a favorite. My favorite quest chain is probably the Linken quests, starting in Un’goro. I’m a big Zelda fan and this may well be my favorite of Blizz’s many shout-outs in WoW. The bombing run quests in Hellfire Peninsula are also ridiculously fun. Where else can you do 5-digit damage?

I think my favorite instance would have to be the Scarlet Monastery. Its winged design influenced many later dungeons, including almost all of the instances in BC. In general SM’s four instances are cleanly laid out and very well-paced, with flavorful boss fights and just the right degree of frustration.

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?
Well, you asked for it. I’m a really big mod fan. I think that API was one of Blizz’s best moves in the development of WoW. A full list of all the mods I use would take up too much space, but here’s the key ones: ArcHUD, Atlas, AutoProfit, Bongos, Clearfont, CT_RA, EquipCompare, Fishing Buddy, FuBar, Grid, ItemRack, MonkeyQuest, Recap, ScrollingCombatText, TBag, TheoryCraft, and WoWEcon. I’m counting the days until FlexBar is fixed up again; Bongos doesn’t come close to Flex’s power (not that it’s trying to).

It doesn’t bother me when WoW takes mod functions and incorporates them; often enough, I still use the old mods, since they’re better for my purposes. Also, this usually spurs the mod authors to further improve their own mods. Examples of this include ScrollingCombatText and MonkeyQuest.

9. What is your fondest WoW memory?
My guild’s first Ragnaros kill. This was probably our second or third attempt; we were there on a dry run, not using any consumables to speak of. We definitely didn’t expect to drop him, but we just got into a zone of working together really well that night, everybody doing their job, and by the time the Sons were dropped and Rags re-emerged, it started to become clear that we were going to do this. The last few seconds in Vent were totally silent, I think out of respect for the moment. We weren’t a hardcore guild, we hadn’t been in MC that long, and overall we all just felt really good about the accomplishment.

10. Now, the most important question of all; Horde or Alliance?
Alliance, although one of the things I want to do after getting my old priest and new draenei warrior to 70 is playing more Horde, just to see how the other half lives.

Final Comments:
Thanks for the interview; this was fun. May your days be long and your hardships few.

Once again thank you to Eliah for the responses, but coming this close to the end, let’s not dilly-dally with my rambling, let’s keep moving forward.

WoW Insider, Blizzard, world of warcraft, Eliah Hecht, interview, burning crusade