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World of Warcraft: WoWs Challenge
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
One of the more interesting facets in World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion Mists of Pandaria is Challenge Mode. In our latest WoW Factor, we take a look at Challenge Mode and what it means for players. Check it out and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
Instances by their own right are fun. They are a quick way to pass the time in an MMO and usually don’t take too long. Challenge Mode now comes in to give players an even faster reason to finish instances. I cannot really say how I feel about this idea in WoW. I don’t think it is bad for the game, and if anything it is one of the pieces of Pandaria that I truly like the most. The faster your team can complete a dungeon the quicker you are to getting a medal. Gold, Silver, and Bronze make up the winnings. In some ways I definitely like the challenge that this presents to players. There are several catches though.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's The WoW Factor: WoW’s Challenge.
Comments
I think Blizzard is on to something with these 'mini-games'; the entire industry is starting to realize the popularity of the pick-up and play gaming that comes from Facebook, phones, etc, and there needs to be more of that within an MMO now to be a financial giant.
Whlie I haven't played Blizzard's monster in quite some time, I give them props for giving players another thing to do within their game. These challenge dungeons seem like they might be things that are done solely for the purpose of having fun, rather than gaining some arbitrary level of progression, and we all know the genre needs a little bit more of that.
Great ... another reason for players to flex thier epeens and harass other people who are just trying to play a game as opposed to save the world.
stopped playing a while back .... and while I originally wanted Pandaren monks long ago, not sure even this would be enough to make me look back.
too many other good titles out there that have surpassed.
It's one thing a lot of themepark games overlook and subsequently find themselves hemmoraging subs quickly.
If you went to a themepark that had 2-3 rides, how long would you stay? Exactly.
WoW certainly isn't a sandbox, but it is a themepark with a ton of rides.
I remember when i enterd numerous dungeons and before i could say Hi i got told to stfu and GOGOGOGOGO.
This will make it a joke to any player and it destroys any communication within WoW, if it still had any sence of socialising it sure ends with Pandaboy's and Pokoboys expansion.
You said it best bro... Mmo if they are to survive financially, they will have to start mixing with other genre and add stuff that are changing with times..
@ Mothanos
Also with time, every mmo community tends to get worse, I guess you can then say to yourself it's time to change game..
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The article is right though.. Pugs who plan ahead will find it
Abit easier, but as with most pugs, they will kick whoever they feel is making the most mistake, instead of talking it over and try to improve..
I'm looking forward to mists, as I like the beta and the direction it's going, but this mode i'm skipping all together regardless how cool it sounds..
After playing the beta for MoP, it's plain to see that Street's development team have been allowed (or ordered) to completely reinvent the game. If this expansion goes through as it is, player choice will be a thing of the past. Blizzard will make most of the tough decisions FOR YOU! The developers have now chosen the path of least resistance and made the game easier for THEM to maintain. World of Warcraft has been completely Activisioned.
Instead of expanding the game, Blizzard seems bent on re-inventing it time after time. It's almost like they are sabotaging it to make way for the Titan project.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I can already see the major flaw with the system. It will only encourage the "perfect" class makeup to run the instance.
From a design efficiency point of view, it's a lot easier to just add a competitive clock than to add/balance new tiers of difficulty or dynamic content. It may not be the ideal update to the dungeon system, but it's probably a mechanic that can be added at a much lower cost of developer/QA time than a lot of the more fun ideas floating around.
True, but some will go against the curve and try crazy combination.. Think 4 mages with one healer.
Just like 5 man arena, first time I faced off against a 5 man rogue team, I was like WTH just happen..
I am going to play GW2 anyway. However, Blizzard had to deal with so many problems created by their holy gear-progression, that this does not really surprise me. Obsiously, they played GW2-beta and are very impressed by what they have seen. Now they start to copy certain stuff.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
It could be interesting if blizzard try some changes but do you have any link to enforce what you are saying?
did you read something about it or do you assume ?
thanks
Diablow 3, it sucks ...
They started designing the "scenarios" as a direct response to dynamic events in GW2. Of course, one "cues" for these scenarios like anything else and they are instances, but they don't require a trinity to complete.
To enter a scenario, you'll queue up for it a lot like you would a dungeon. Each scenario is designed to take roughly 10 to 30 minutes to complete. Most are some slice of the world that has been carved out, to give you things to do as a group that you normally wouldn't be able to do while questing.
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
In this topic: people bash WoW without even bothering to discuss the article at hand.
Its a great idea and it will reward skilled players, not people that out gear the dungeon.
I think this has more to do with the need to make heroics easier for a majority of the base that wasn't happy with heroics in cata, while giving the hardcore players something they can do so they feel like they are somehow "better" than others cause they put in some extra effort into this dungeon that other people put into stuff like college, or work, children ect.
Not saying that some good working parents are just superb gamers, but lets look at the treand you know, It's not that I am not good, its just I don't care. I stack stam on my dk tank cause it's cheap not cause I think its the best, but I can still get the job done, not so some peoples expectactions but f em.
Yeah this isn't about anything other than when the elitist go whine, blizzard can point over to challenge mode, and say "you always say skill is more important than gear, go prove it and leave the other paying customers alone"
Thats my opinion anyways.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
I am interested to see what direction Blizz takes in their unannounced upcoming mmo. It seems like WoW is becoming more and more instanced/mini games and less and less of a true MMO while many upcoming titles (GW2/Tera/TSW) are , for the moment, going in a very different direction. We will see which one Blizz puts their stock in.
Scoobin it up on the daily.
I was wondering about this too. Another reason for the boards to be flooded with 'nerf this, buff that' garbage.
I wonder about opinion pieces like this and the bloggers who write them ...
WoW has long become a hub and spoke, lobby and instance game. While certain meta objectives have been added, WoW is much closer now to a loot based dungeon crawler than a true MMO. In going that route, WoW's instanced / phased a lot of content in order to cater to ts many differt player types.
Second, it's good that WoW is trying to get away from stat-enhancing loot since that's its largest problem and core feature it'll unfortunately never fix. The imbalances in gear generally render PvP obsolete because of the slanted playing field and render a lot of content irrelevant since it can be overgeared.
Basically, WoW dumbed down the entire game industry and catered to Blizz kiddies rather than challenging people and providing a framework for people to get better. Good business, just like Zynga games, but it doesn't provide an incredibly rewarding or enjoyable experience, which the community is finally figuring out.
If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.
WoW has clearly taken the tons of mini games into one big game approach. This is not necessarily bad. Lately I've been having more fun with games which are not so engaging and immersive. Being able to play on and off for short periods of time is big plus for me now. I can't play a game for hours on end and sometimes the constant immersion, story and all those other fillers are simply exhausting for me nowadays. I just want to kill stuff and get on with it
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
what they needed to do was upgrade those shitty graphics back when they released cata instead of remodeling nub zones that people spend a total of 20mins in if even that much since its better to just sit in town and q for dungeons
I cant help but chuckle at the irony. The same people who used to tell EQ fans "The industry is changing. Deal with it or GTFO!" when expansions like LDoN came out, are now upset because its their game's turn to change and they dont like it.
The cycle continues.
This sounds so stupid. Seriously, if you are bored enough that you find yourself wanting to go through another dungeon for the nth time with inferior gear, log off the video game and go exercise, read a book, go outside, call up some friends, garden, walk the dog or something constructive other than something as asinine as trying to complete a dungeon as fast as you can with bad gear.
The issue is that the only reward for doing them are the cosmetic sets. This immediately limits the audience. Then once you consider that there with bank space at a premium collecting all the outfits you can is pretty much out of the question, so people are only going to want to hang on to the really really really awesome outfits. From what I have seen so far, only a couple classes have really awesome challenge sets. That means you are likely only going to see a lot of people of the same class running these, and trying to get a balanced group together is going to be a challenge. The problem is that since gear level is meaningless, having a balanced group is going to be pretty important, so it is going to be hard for the people who actually want to do this to get the groups to do it.
There are 2 things that have completely ruined any of my interests in 5man's:
* big assholes that in first sec just start running through instance causing wipe in next 10 secs
* players (mainly tanks) with gear level of 9999999 that enter normal 5man or hc's, ruining completely any enjoyment for rest
Until Blizz is able to fix this somehow, they are not getting my money for sub after I have leveled all my 10 alts to max.
First step could be this idea of challenge mode, hopefully all that big as.... will go there.
I totally agree with this.