Off-TORpic: The Recent And Future Changes in WoW, Effects On MMO Gaming

Off-TORpic is our occasional peek outside the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Sometimes it’ll be Star Wars. Sometimes it’ll be games. Sometimes, something else all together. But all the time it will be Off-TORpic.

As MMO gamers, a vast majority of us have likely played World of Warcraft.  Whether you loved it or hated it, it set a new standard for the MMO genre.  This standard has created an atmosphere that has brought the development of many MMOs that have tried to emulate it in hopes of repeating its success.  One thing Blizzard isn’t afraid to do, however, is to make changes to its own tried-and-tested methods in order to stay ahead of the curve, and adapt to player behaviors.

Cross-Server Groups

Blizzard recently implemented a new change to their already innovative social system, RealID.  When this system was initially introduced, its intention was to allow players to talk with real life friends on any character, realm or faction, as well as the ability to communicate with people playing Starcraft 2.  With this new change, however, you will be able to run instanced dungeons with friends on any server, given that you are the same faction.  This is a welcome change in WoW, but most of all it would be a very welcome change in any MMO.  So far there are no announcement for a similar system to be in SW:TOR, but there really isn’t much of a need for it at launch because people will most likely join servers with friends when making their first character. However, BioWare taking a cue from Blizzard on this is very possible especially given the new Origin system.

Threat Or No Threat

On August 16th, the Lead Systems Designer for WoW, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, wrote a developer blog about an upcoming change to the threat system of WoW.

Ghostcrawler:

Here are the specific changes you’re likely to see:

• Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.
• In an upcoming patch: Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.

It’s an important distinction that the concept of “aggro” will still exist. If a DPS spec attacks an add the second it shows up, then the creature is going to come at her. However, if a tank gets an attack or two on a target, then the target should stick to the tank. Worrying about who has the creature’s attention should generally only be a concern at the start of a fight or when additional creatures join the battle.

Threat is being redesigned to be essentially unneeded.  This is a major change from WoW and could prove to to be a major failure on the part of the Blizzard design team.  This is contrary to claims that were made in December that “threat should matter“.  More importantly though is if it succeeds, what effect will it have on the MMO market?  Will developers of other MMOs adopt this system?  Will BioWare take a cue from this?

The problem with speculating on something like this is that we don’t know what threat generation will be like in SW:TOR.  It could be that once you have aggro, the mob will attack you until taunted or it could be something similar to what WoW threat has been like for years.  However it should be understood that the changes being made to threat in WoW are designed specifically for the casual player and not for the hardcore player.

As it has for 7 years, Blizzard continues to take chances with WoW, some for the better and some for the worse. Star Wars: The Old Republic has undoubtedly been developed with at least one eye on Blizzard’s behemoth, so it will be interesting to see post-launch what kinds of changes happen. I think I speak for all of us when I say that BioWare should keep an eye on trends, but shouldn’t be afraid to chart their own course.