GameStudy

My little Gnome Warlock back in the beginning of World of Warcraft

As I am currently reading a lot about Game Design I stumbled upon an interesting article about the panel of Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment) at the Game Developers Conference. He was talking about the Game Design of Blizzard. He stated eleven elements, which are essential for a Blizzard game.
Gameplay First: This is an interesting fact as the game has to be fun and fun is hereby the way to direct the gamer into the right way. Additional fun is a great way to increase the long-time motivation for the player.
Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master: The game has to be simple, with simple mechanics and objectives, so everybody can play the game and everybody has an easy entrance to the game. However there has to be more depth to the game than easy learning, in World of Warcraft you see that raiding and arenas are more difficult to master.
What is Fantasy? Rob Pardo was talking about the look of the game, especially the UI in World of Warcraft. This was a failure for Blizzard, as the vast majority of the gamer customized their UI, instead of using the standard interface.
Make Everything Overpowered: I have to admit, I played a Gnome Warrior and tanked some pretty big stuff, and often I did not see the whole model of the enemy. But as Rob Pardo said, this made it extremely special to challenge those enemies and defeat them. Make it overpowered and it is an epic adventure.
Concentrated Coolness: There are only few classes in World of Warcraft, if you compare it to the classes in Warcraft 3, however Blizzard took only the best elements and concentrated them into the few classes in World of Warcraft.
Play, Don’t Tell: That is interesting, as players tend to not read the quest text, but still want to experience the storyline. So Blizzard has to find ways that the quest text is only an enhancement for the story. For example the death knight starting area is a good example for that way.
Make it a Bonus: Players don’t like punishment, however if this effect is changed into a bonus players like it. Rob Pardo stated the Rest System of WoW as an example. In the beginning players are punished for playing too long (drop from 100% xp to 50% xp) and the players hated it, however he changed it into rested players get 200% xp and not-rested players stay at 100%. From the math the same system, but somehow the players loved the change.
Control is King: Blizzard had to sacrifice some cool animations and effects for the game play. Rob Pardo takes for example summon a mount, which appears beneath you in a puff of smoke. However a different animation would be cool, the control for the player would be less.
Tuning it Up: “Tuning is easy to do, hard to do well.” Thus it is important to tune your game for an audience it is necessary to still have hooks and try to know why you are tuning it this way.
Avoid the Grand Reveal: That is something interesting, Blizzard tries to show their stuff early and not until it is finished or perfect. Game developers have to establish an environment where feedback is encouraged and you can fail.
Culture of Polish: Polishing is not only for the team which tries to make a good game. Blizzard also brings in so called strike teams, people from other teams. They test the game as well and give feedback and a fresh perspective.
Definitely an interesting panel and it gave me some interesting insights into Game Design.