Avian Gamers Network

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/kunark.php

a little dated talking about Kunark but still an interesting read.

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Moge

Good stuff. I've long been thinking about the level "Treadmill" issue. In hindsight, I very much enjoyed SWG's solution of having skills be the main decider of opponent levles... though the spawn method of camps/lairs was less than ideal.

I'm enjoying the WoW levelling "treadmill" approach -- mostly because it's well balanced (though feels a little slow to me as a semi-casual gamer). I'm just afraid that we'll see a repeat of this problem once everyone caps out on the WoW levels.

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--The Hermit

So far, for me, WoW has disguised its treadmill. In fact I am not sure it is safe to call it a treadmill in that game. Are you doing the same thing over and over? Well yes you may be, but they wrap it up in a story with enough variety that it does not feel like you are doing the same thing over and over again. If you are kill for the sake of killing, you must be doing that because you like it… because you don’t have to in WoW.

SWG: there was NO content, so we did things over and over and there was no disguising it. The mission were destroy X, Deliver X, and the dungeons all looked the same. I bet a rollypolly could come up with better storylines than the Devs in SWG.

WoW: the content changes and stories disguise the fact that you are collecting X of Y, killing X of Y, bringing X to Y. Just last night my brother took me to an instance in the barons and the dungeon was a giant briorthorn maze. The roof was sky and briarthorn tangle, the walls were earth or briarthorn branches, the floor was earth, but sometimes you crossed on briarthorn bridges. Ok, maybe I am an herbalist nut, but this place was amazingly creative. Despite the fact we where there to kill X of Y, I was totally blown away by the scenery. That is content baby at its most elementary form, that is plain old visual content. Don’t get me started on the intricate storylines that have or are playing themselves out for me, a level 28 Dwarf Priest. They are deep and engaging, they are feel like they have an effect on the region and they fit the subject matter of a WarCraft world.

What should game developers do to avoid “The Kunark Problem”? They need to do what they are paid for and create content to fill the worlds they are creating and selling to us consumers. We play for a good time and for a distraction from the real world. We are buying content in one form or another. If the game gets old because people are board of trying to level up… if gamers are focused on level number rather than the stories and events in the world they are paying for… something is fundamentally wrong with the game and that something is the fault of the game developers lack of creativity.

Boring treadmills should not exist.

I think the WoW solution is its number one playing point for me.
Easton (level 50+) says you will 'grind' out your last few levels but for me right now it is quite fun.

I have never felt like I was grinding. I have never camped a spawn (for longer than it took to collect X number of Y). I have never really killed the same thing for longer than an hour.

I love this system. I understand the need to Level in an MMO and I really appreciate the system Blizzard came up with to make that process a fun and interesting one.

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Moge

Very good point, Cyrus. WoW excels because of great content, great storylines, good balance.

I guess I'm just trying to think of a non-level-based way of playing a large game like this. I wonder if the game progressed on a timeline, with content being released based on times corresponding to a deep story... that might be an alternate solution to people drinking all the content too fast.

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--The Hermit