MMO Gaming

It’s safe to say that I’ve officially cried about the new Looking for Group System long enough. I’ve mocked, degraded and insulted the system and those who defended it, but I also haven’t really said anything about how to fix it. That’s about to change in the first installment of Repairing Gears, the weekly look at fixing problems that plague MMO games.

To start I’d like to point out a post over at WoW Insider that I think did a good job of highlighting some problems (though I may not agree with what they recommend for fixes).

Now taking that bulleted list of fixes and extracting the problems from it isn’t that difficult so I’ll not reiterate them, I’ll trust that your reading of the post and my covering of the points will be sufficient.

Let’s get right into it now. How to fix LFG in WoW. I should mention, this is a multi-part article, because as I began writing I realized just how long this would be, so I broke it up a bit. This first part will cover changes to the quest log.

For one thing, I find it amazing that Blizzard decided to go ahead and try to re-invent the wheel with this system, when using and extending the capabilities of a mod like Call to Arms would have worked wonders. It is quite clear that Blizzard has no problems with taking mod functionality and making it default behavior, they have done this with many updates, particularly in relation to raid interfaces and the like (I’m also not saying that doing so is a bad thing on Blizzard’s part).

So why did they decide the circle wasn’t the optimal shape? I can’t say but for some reason they wanted to go ahead and do something different.

But I fear that I digress so back to the topic at hand, fixing it.

One big problem is the Auto Join option, in itself it is not bad, but it is misguided on Blizzard’s part to believe that players want the game to play itself by default rather than let them play it. Fix #1 is simple, change this to default Off, not on and you have already made the system better. This allows players to have a greater control from the start, rather than be subject to being stuck in with the first people that come along.

The second thing I would recommend is a more ingenious delivery on the whole. This is a multi-step process and involves quite a variety of changes.

Step 1 would be to, in the quest log, allow a person to flag any number of quests as LFG/LFM. This would be done in much the same way as the current shift+click to add quests that you are currently working on. Change this to be a 2 box system next to the title of every quest. If you check the first box, it puts it on your screen as a quest you are working on (as shift+click does now) and if the second box is checked it flags that quest as LFG/M (there is no great desire to differentiate between the two at this stage because of what will be added later as I will detail in the post).

This does have the unfortunate effect of possibly needing extra screen space when you open up your quest log, but expanding the log a little seems like a small price to pay for a better system.

Of course, the question may be asked of, why do I need to look for a group for normal quests/non-elite quests? It appears Blizzard believes this and thus didn’t even add an option to look for non-elite quests at all. But I believe that thinking is flawed because it forces people to do only quests which are yellow/green for them (most orange or red are to hard to complete alone since the level difference is so great) and it denies the thought that a normal quest is still best done in a group setting simply because of difficulty (quests such as escorting Corporal Keeshan out of the cave in Redridge Mountains are a good example of this, it is much easier to complete in a group, and, depending on class, necessary to group for anyway). Now, normally I am all for players completing only those quests within their level range (yellow/green ones that is) but there is a time and place for a person needing/wanting to complete a quest that is orange or red to them, such as when it is the last quest in a particular zone they have to do. I know for myself I hate having that one left over quest from the zone I was at previously because it is still slightly to hard (this is especially annoying before level 40 when traveling between and within zones can be an arduous task). So, that is my reasoning for allowing any quest in the quest log to be flagged LFG/M.

Now then, further improvements are necessary to this system, and that takes place in the other tabs of the revised quest system. First up on this tab, is advanced options, this will cover a few things, and really replace the idea of LFM with the way it is designed, thereby getting rid of the need for that on the whole. First up is a class priority listing, classes 1-9 are listed and allowed to be moved up and down (a bit more about this will be discussed in a later part of this posting series). On the side/below this is a box for putting in how many players you are looking to quest with (any number from 1-4 more (a party in Wow is limited to 5 players)). If you are just looking for a buddy to help you out, put in 1 other person you are looking for, if you really want to blow through some stuff, say you are looking for the full 4.

Now, already I can put improvements on to how that works, but I’m trying to keep this fairly basic in it’s complexity, I have plenty of other options that I will keep stashed away in my own mind because I don’t want to make people feel this system is overwhelming, when, really, from a user’s standpoint it would be a lot easier than it may come off being written.

Now that the Advanced options tab is completed, let’s look at the final necessary tab, the “Index of Groups” tab. This is where it lists the players who are looking for groups for the same quests as you are, along with pertinent info (class, level, which quests, etc.). This is where you will be able to go through and find the people you want to group with and is the main driving force behind this system.

Now, I don’t want to ramble on for to long, so I’ll stop it there. I’d love to hear questions/comments on this part of the system, and I’ll answer them if I can, and if it’s something I haven’t thought of yet, I’ll try to come up with a way of working whatever you mention in as well.

For the next part, we will cover enhancements to the social tab as they relate to my Looking for Group system.

Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment, Vivendi, Looking for Group, Patch 2.0