Jeffery Kaplan Share "World of Warcraft" development experience
Jeffery Kaplan £¬ As for as the first "World of Warcraft," the core of the development of the characters Jeffery Kaplan, he
is the new Blizzard is developing next-generation online games, most recently at Game Developers Conference (GDC) in order to
share the experience of game development, a very frank description of the " World of Warcraft, "the main problem facing.
However, he also mentioned that "World of Warcraft" R & D team has already begun to carry out amendments to address these
issues.
First of all, Kaplan said that in November 2004 "World of Warcraft" was first introduced, about 2600 mission, "Burning
Crusade", more than double to about 5300, and "Wrath of Lich King" has been published, you can enjoyment of the 7650 mission.
To North America, from June 30, 2007 to March 5, 2009, a total of 8,570,222,436 mission was completed, the daily average
number of mission finish 16,641,209 times.
[Warcraft in every day tasks have been completed 16,640,000 Total 8,500,000,000]
Christmas tree effect
First of all, "World of Warcraft," the question is "Christmas tree effect", that is, the mission to explore the design of
games and lack of coordination, leading to a small map in the game was a mission of symbols decorating the Christmas tree
lights look like a general, internal Blizzard was known as the " Christmas tree effect "; He said that despite the fact that
many players enjoy all of a sudden to see a large number of tasks, but the game was out of control, sometimes it can not be
true and guide players to experience game content very interesting. This allows the players do not want to go read the
actual contents of the mission, do not bother to remember which NPC in the end give the mission, and even forget the order,
such as the entire mission. In his view, the best Game slowly be able to design and guide the players to experience fun
experience. He says with a laugh, and some "World of Warcraft" Designer mission you want to put a lot into a single mission
NPC found at the scene showed him an NPC has a total mission package of eight. At present, the game has been amended at the
same time in a single region will not show more than 7 mission.
Another problem is that it is mission overelaborate, the number of players in the end will be carefully watched. Kaplan
Kaplan explained that the old days, because of some of the more vocabulary Edit mode network, making the "World of Warcraft"
has become the mission statement overelaborate. "World of Warcraft" design mission was asked to only 511 characters to use in
order to meet the data input methods, and some researchers complain that there is more room for hope, but Kaplan believes
that North Korea should be the other direction, he should consider further reduce the space, and then allows developers to
consider more in the end what kind of text to attract players to watch. In addition, he believes that the Games is a
revolutionary interactive entertainment, each art, whether literature, music, movies, songs are a way for their unique story,
but sometimes the game developers have forgotten to fit the Game way to tell a story. Therefore, he is the developer Blizzard
said, "We have to stop writing in the game, because no one wants to watch," Games need to fit the way the game to deliver R &
D players who want to tell the story by allowing players to be feeling become a hero or villain or victim, to make players
feel pleasure. In his view, the Games remain mission to explore the mysterious pleasure, but you can not just say "Elwin
forest scene, and go put it to solve it!" Games should be the story of a mysterious, but the mission statement in the final
or go down to say The pig's head, What can go. If the goal of the mission, location, contents, so that players can not be
easy, but you desperately want to become a network on with this point of view there is the issue of game design. However, he
hoped that in the "World of Warcraft" mission in action, or allow players to experience gaming enjoyment, rather than
thinking hard to accurately resolve as soon as possible what their want.
Some long mission design
Kaplan-site to display the "World of Warcraft" Myzrael and explain the mission, which is a 30 start from the mission, all
the way to cover the 14 Level, you must kill all the way into the elite 40 until Myzrael. This is basically put in the
players in front of a wall, although this itself is rich in content and cool mission line, but in fact it is not designed
well, there is too much or it is difficult to explore the mission, it will lose the game confidence, when the players lose
confidence, you may do not want to cause the next player to carry out this mission, or play to half-forgotten lines to
continue the mission. Kaplan followed by a display of vehicles for the mission of the foundation said that some poorly
designed vehicle mission, so that players feel that they do not know if they used a vehicle in the end at what to do, it
seems that when the shooting does not feel right, a lot of set Seem to be a mission designers feel more interesting than the
players.
He then cited the "World of Warcraft" happen once the issue of "chaotic flow", on-site operation of the screen appears Loch
Modan flow sheet to show the enemy mission red, green shows the collection of tasks, such as blue for the mission extension.
He said that the results of players do not have a lot of Loch Modan at the mission selection, although the focus of the
mission, but the player received a four or five enemy mission, mission to collect a pile after the play up the entire process
has become very confused, but also the Christmas tree effect side effects.
Kaplan talked about the last mission to collect regular problem that may occur, such as biological questions such as the
density of an area to collect items will be falling biology too little, too scattered, or the need to fight too many
varieties, such as biology. He said that if there is too much the same area of biology, then as long as the players had a
strange play, he must be possible to loose another three, four biology. He cited difficulties Valley mission to collect that
it was "World of Warcraft" mission in the poor, and are responsible for him.Mission to go to collect a pile of players, but
player's backpack is limited, but these tasks also accounted for a pile of Items lattice, simply to cause a lot of gamers to
buy the auction market, or simply mission, this is a horrible task of super - , which is to make himself the mission.
In addition, he also mentioned that sometimes they will consider why the players want to collect these things. For example,
players have a mission to go kill 8 werewolf, he will sometimes ask ourselves why it is necessary to put the claws werewolf
back to the NPC, in the end the significance of the collection of these things where.