Play, Don't Tell: wow gold
Players should be playing as much of the story as possible, and text, voiceovers and movies should be used to enhance the story as it moves along. He cited the death knight starting area as a success, the introduction of phasing allowing the zone itself to change around the player as the story was played out, with players having a very 'real' impact on the world around them. What was interesting was that he spoke about the tendency of players to simply skip over or skim quest text. He asks quest designers, "If you make a quest, and players don't read any of the quest text, would they have a basic understanding of the storyline?" and tells them to keep that in mind, adding quest text after the quest has been developed. Quest text shouldn't be necessary to understand the story -- it should be there to enhance the story that's already obviously playing out. Make it a Bonus: Players respond better to incentives than to punishment. That's a no-brainer, but Pardo had a couple of funny stories from the WoW beta to back it up. He said that originally the Rest System in WoW worked like this: You started out gaining 100% xp, but the longer you played, the more that percentage dropped, eventually falling to 50%. This was to discourage players from playing more than a few hours at a time. Beta players hated this system -- so Pardo changed it by doubling the amount of xp required to reach maximum level in the game, starting players out with 200% xp gained, and slowly dropping it to 100% xp as they played. Same effect, same numbers, the only difference was the way the numbers were presented -- and people applauded the 'change'. He also said you don't want to fight player psychology. In the gjlnsppl original beta, when a player was inspecting you, you'd receive a notice about it. The thought of being inspected creeped players out, and they said they didn't want people to do that. So rather than remove the inspect system, they simply removed the message, and everyone was happy. Control is King: Controls should be as responsive as possible. While players have clamored for different animations and effects, Pardo gave some very specific examples of why they simply wouldn't work. As it stands, when you summon a mount it simply appears beneath you in a puff of smoke -- the animation department suggested that it would be really cool if you'd actually call your mount and have it run to you so you could hop on it, going so far as to mock up the animation for it. But there was a downside to this -- it took several seconds for that animation to play out, and if say, a rogue jumped out to stun lock you, you probably didn't want to be stuck stunned and rapidly dying while watching your horse gallop up to meet you. So they settled with the puff of smoke we're all familiar with.
They could build a portal, independent from wow gold Facebook, or even a competing
wow gold social network to become their own platform. Alternatively they could invest in larger, better games or more complex and complete virtual worlds. They could broaden
wow gold out to smaller, more indie and creatively-oriented developers and become an aggregator or partner network. Such a strategy would result in better and more diverse content.
Realistically though, I think they plan to do none of those things. I think what they will actually do is spend the $180m on trying to replicate
wow gold their previous viral success through increased advertising spend. Maybe Zynga can figure out a way to leverage Facebook’s own ads to target to players as reminders. That would be much more in-character for a company as competitive and in-the-now as Zynga has proven itself to be.
Zynga’s coffers are deep, as are Playdom and Playfish’s, but at the heart of their model are some deep weaknesses that are going to let a lot of
wow gold the air out of their Fast Food business models. The audience expectations are going to shift, the key factors enabling the business model likewise, and while it’s been a great short term success this year, viral gaming doesn’t seem to have any more easy wins left.
Now comes the hard part. Diversification, experimentation and deep design
wow gold breeding interesting ideas do not grow on trees and companies need to commit to them to see them through. Right now that’s not the Zynga way.
Twelve months from now it will be the companies that have managed to diversify, build strong followings and create real value that will be the new
wow gold darlings of the scene. Those that do not adapt will still be there but their story will be one of difficulty. As social games come to the end of their beginning, Zynga is increasingly look like an Atari-era publisher leading the charge but unlikely to capitalise in the longer term because they’re too busy thinking they’re in the burger business.
Tuning It Up: Pardo noted that tuning is easy to do, but hard to do well -- that you have to keep in mind who you're tuning your game for. With World of Warcraft, they succeeded in matching the level curve to the level of content, making it so that every player can solo all the way to max level if they want to, adding enough quests that it didn't feel necessary to grind along the way. Pardo also noted that there was a myth about reaching max level -- that players would simply quit the game once they reached the level cap. Blizzard took the stance of 'if the game is enough fun for someone to get to level 60, they'll want to play the game again' -- a stance that seems to be working remarkably well for them so far.
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