How come WOW development isnt like SC 2's

#0 - Nov. 16, 2009, 3:52 p.m.

In SC 2 the PVE campaign seems to be diverging from the competitive PVP, such that the PVE experience is more robust than PVP and with more abilities. The PVP portion seems to take some of those abilities and units away for competitive balance. I think that is fine.

Why can't we have that in WOW? Why not more robust PVE abilities that are really powerful and fun? How come we do not have abilities that are only limited by the raids , 5 mans, and the mobs we encounter?

During Beta I know locks lost a lot on the cutting room floor because some of the abilities were way too powerful for PVP. I am fine with that. But AOE corruption and cripple would be of incredible use for PVE and raid encounters. Chaotic mind would really spice up dps rotations for the destruction tree. I know they would be waayyyy too over the top for PVP. But they would make the game waaayyyy more fun over all.

In some ways we have something like this in place already. There are already a list of spells and abilities that are not active in PVP for fairness and other reasons. I say let the developers make each class as incredible as they can and let the raid or 5 man encounter be the only limiting factor. Then nerf the abilities into oblivion or outlaw it all together in PVP.

Just my opinion... Cheers!

Ghostcrawler

#46 - Nov. 16, 2009, 7 p.m.

Couple of things....

SC2 is being developed from day one as a multiplayer and single-player game. WoW added Battlegrounds and later Arenas after it had already shipped. That's a little bit about what Rob is talking about -- the difficulty we have had retrofitting WoW's PvP. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I don't think he is saying Arenas were a mistake. It's the way we introduced Arenas that has continued to cause ourselves a lot of work and occasionally caused frustration for players. We like the Arena gameplay though or we would have cut it or overhauled it long ago. We do think we have shifted the PvP attention a little too much towards Arenas and away from BGs, and yes we understand that loot rewards are a big part of the reason why. We aim to fix this with Cataclysm.

Starcraft is also just a fundamentally different game. You aren't taking your campaign character into competitive multiplayer. In fact, there is no multiplayer character per se in the sense that you can grant your character more power over time. You start every map with the same base and units as everyone else. Starcraft also isn't going to change over time except for whatever balance or design changes the team makes. There is no equivalent to the new gear or whatever that suddenly shifts the balance of power.

We make PvP-specific rules when we think it's appropriate. Resilience and diminishing returns are two obvious examples. SC2 does the same thing. Not everything works completely differently between the two halves of the game though.

Ghostcrawler

#57 - Nov. 16, 2009, 8:26 p.m.

Q u o t e:
so what you're saying is...

PvP is good in a game designed for PvP.

PvP is bad in a game designed for PvE.

No, we're not saying "bad." We're saying "hard to integrate."