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« on: November 08, 2006, 09:02:52 am »
I've found myself quite bored with WoW, may move along to something else like Warhammer Online. However, it leave the question that need be asked... what causes boredom in some online games and not others? As a programmer interested in game design, and a consumer who has experienced this first hand numerous times, I honestly think this is an interesting thought. How do you keep players interested for long periods of time??
Now my ideas on some of the things happen to do with social interaction. In WoW, the social interaction is pretty much limited to a bare minimal. Usually when it comes down to it, I think raiding is actually very bad for the game itself. Having content that players need to go through repeatedly 100's of times just doesn't seem like it'd be the greatest of designs to keep players truckin on through and happy.
Aside from that, I think it's the general look of the game itself. While Ragnarok Online (a former game I played) had a bright and cheery graphic set, WoW has an always rather dull and boring graphics set. Pretty much all the color tones get to a dark and dismal look for almost all the end game content (which is pretty much the entire gameplay for WoW). It's like they're limited to a palette of dark grey, brown, green, and orange colors... for EVERYTHING. It's really rather dull after awhile. For anyone who's played WoW, you'd know what I'm talking about. You never at any point see some nice bright sunny green fields, vast blue as BLUE water, or anything like that in the game. It's always the same, no matter where you go.
Lastly, guilds... have no point in the game. The general function of the guild in WoW is for a large group to organize things. Rarely do you see a lot of interaction within the guild itself, and due to the game design, there isn't a whole lot of things you can do "as a guild".
These are just some late night rough thoughts on this, anyone else care to add some to it?
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