Future Improvements To World Of Warcraft
- on January 19, 2010 13:37
A look at the upcoming enhancements and updates to the most popular online role playing gameA year has passed since Blizzards release of their massively multiplayer online role playing game, World of WarcraftOn release, there were a lot of mistakes, a lot of imbalances and a lack of high end contentSince then, Blizzard has fixed many of its issues, and added enough content to keep the hardcore gamers interested, for now.
The first month that blizzard had the game live was sketchy at bestThe realm servers were constantly being taken down for maintenanceThe player base was upset with the state of the gameProblems will be inherent in an undertaking as large as WOWTo those on the affected servers, the response time from Blizzard was abysmalSome servers were down for daysBlizzard made amends by giving free play time to the players with characters on those serversSince then, blizzard has picked up their service, and the only significant time the servers have problems is the day or so that a new patch comes out.
The raid content of the game on release was limited to The Molten Core and OnyxiaFor the first three months that was plenty, the most avid WOW players were still busy leveling and getting good gear from the high level five man instancesThe top guilds, however, would have these encounters mastered in short order once they got into themAfter two months of raiding nothing but these encounters they became tediousMany players lacking faith in Blizzard grew bored with the gameBlackwing Lair was released a few months ago, and has proven to be a sufficient challengeAhn'Qiraj was just releasedThose finished with Blackwing Lair will be looking forward to the new challenges it presentsAs long as Blizzard can keep up with the progression of best raiding group, no player can complain about lack of activity at level 60.
The honor system and battlegrounds released half a year after the game hit shelves brought more structure to Player versus Player interaction (PvP) by ranking and rewarding players for killing other players close to their own levelWhile it doesn't discourage ‘ganking,' killing a player much lower in level than the attacker, it provides purpose to fighting the opposing faction.
At the core of every good video game is a high quality user interfaceIt's the way the player interacts with the game environmentWOW provided a fine interface at the start, but as the game progressed, it became clear certain things were lackingThankfully, Blizzard supported Custom User Interfaces by allowing ‘add-ons' to be incorporated easily into their gameUsing these custom interfaces, players can get exactly what they need out of the game to play to the maximum efficiencyThe best of the interfaces have been incorporated into WOW's base user interface.
Blizzard does a lot to make sure their games are of the highest quality when they are releasedAfter a full year of beta testing, WOW was a much better game than when it startedThough at that time, the game was not perfect, and perhaps not quite ready for retailOver the last year, the game has made leaps and bounds to become the best massively multiplayer online game on the marketWith a larger test group, and user input, Blizzard has been able to shape WOW into the game it should have been on release.
The first month that blizzard had the game live was sketchy at bestThe realm servers were constantly being taken down for maintenanceThe player base was upset with the state of the gameProblems will be inherent in an undertaking as large as WOWTo those on the affected servers, the response time from Blizzard was abysmalSome servers were down for daysBlizzard made amends by giving free play time to the players with characters on those serversSince then, blizzard has picked up their service, and the only significant time the servers have problems is the day or so that a new patch comes out.
The raid content of the game on release was limited to The Molten Core and OnyxiaFor the first three months that was plenty, the most avid WOW players were still busy leveling and getting good gear from the high level five man instancesThe top guilds, however, would have these encounters mastered in short order once they got into themAfter two months of raiding nothing but these encounters they became tediousMany players lacking faith in Blizzard grew bored with the gameBlackwing Lair was released a few months ago, and has proven to be a sufficient challengeAhn'Qiraj was just releasedThose finished with Blackwing Lair will be looking forward to the new challenges it presentsAs long as Blizzard can keep up with the progression of best raiding group, no player can complain about lack of activity at level 60.
The honor system and battlegrounds released half a year after the game hit shelves brought more structure to Player versus Player interaction (PvP) by ranking and rewarding players for killing other players close to their own levelWhile it doesn't discourage ‘ganking,' killing a player much lower in level than the attacker, it provides purpose to fighting the opposing faction.
At the core of every good video game is a high quality user interfaceIt's the way the player interacts with the game environmentWOW provided a fine interface at the start, but as the game progressed, it became clear certain things were lackingThankfully, Blizzard supported Custom User Interfaces by allowing ‘add-ons' to be incorporated easily into their gameUsing these custom interfaces, players can get exactly what they need out of the game to play to the maximum efficiencyThe best of the interfaces have been incorporated into WOW's base user interface.
Blizzard does a lot to make sure their games are of the highest quality when they are releasedAfter a full year of beta testing, WOW was a much better game than when it startedThough at that time, the game was not perfect, and perhaps not quite ready for retailOver the last year, the game has made leaps and bounds to become the best massively multiplayer online game on the marketWith a larger test group, and user input, Blizzard has been able to shape WOW into the game it should have been on release.