New heights of Linear Game Design?
New heights of Linear Game Design?
So it feels like there’s some actual story element to the gameplay, and so players don’t feel overwhelmed.
That’d be my theory. Worked incredibly well for the death knight starting zone… in fact I’ve never seen it done better in an MMOG.
That was by far the most interesting tutorial zone I’ve ever seen too. But it was a tutorial zone.
I think BTundra was a bit better than some of the other zones. But even still the airport (by itself) worked exactly that way. Go do exactly this and come back. Now go do this and come back. Picking a random direction from the airport to go find a quest by yourself and you’ll usually end up far from your quests killing random kobolds.
Here’s the problem I’m finding though (in most of the game).
I arrive at a new town. I get the quest. I go to wowhead findout where to complete it. Then head back to town.
Get new quests. Go look those up on wowhead and go to that one spot to do three quests. Then head back to town.
Repeat.
Maybe I’m romanticizing the past but I recall heading into Crossroads and picking up 10 quests then picking a direction at random and finding a quest in that direction. I’d make a slow loop finding and discovering where my other quests where and maybe look up one or two that I couldn’t find.
That just doesn’t seem to happen as often in WotLK. If I head off in a random direction after picking up quests I almost always end up just farming. The quests are somewhere else; you aren’t supposed to be here yet. If I want to be anywhere near my quests I constantly need to go back to some source and look it up (or asking in chat).
The quests feel incredibly directed. Go here do this. Now go here and do this. It doesn’t feel natural and certainly doesn’t encourage randomly heading out of town to see what’s about.
Go to the quest. Go directly to the quest. Do not pass explore. Do not decide your own direction.
Filed under: World of Warcraft