MMO Champion, one of the biggest MMO resource sites, released yesterday an interview with WOW Lead Quest Designer, discussing the Cataclysm questing experience post mortem. You can find the full article here: Cataclysm Post Mortem Quest Design I found it very interesting, having played the Cataclysm since launch day and considering I really enjoyed the experience. I think the Cataclysm, mainly the old world redesign was a very big step forward for WOW at the time, making many significant improvements to the questing experience. I intentionally don't call it "leveling experience", because this implies that the goal is to progress through the levels, while I consider the goal to be enjoying the experience. If it was simply work that was needed to get to end game and not a fun experience I doubt many people would've spent 20-30-40 hours doing it. Regardless of what you think of questing, whether it's a fun game, or a chore on the way to the "real game" at max level, an MMO can never succeed without a good and enjoyable questing, simply because most of the people will never get to the endgame.
I found some of the things he said at the interview very interesting, I'll sum it up for you:
"Leveling up a new character to 60 nowadays is a great deal of fun. Every zone has stories to play out, with interesting nooks and crannies and plenty of hidden gems"
"the quests have a modern feel, with lots of action and storytelling."
"We feel the storytelling in Cataclysm was strong... there’s a strong sense of plot in every zone."
"a terrific story that’s propelled forward by the quests."
This made me think back to the days following the release of the Cataclysm. I couldn't agree more with everything he said there. I was having a great time questing with my goblin and wargen, as well as finally getting every class to level 60 or higher. The Cataclysm was a huge step forward for WOW, making the questing experience much better than anything WOW had before.
If you played the Cataclysm as well as couple of characters in SWTOR you can guess where this is going. If the Cataclysm was a step forward in engaging and interesting questing, SWTOR is 5 steps ahead of that. The exact same words he said, which were very true for the Cataclysm "modern feel", "storytelling in Cataclysm was strong", "strong sense of plot", "terrific story" sound almost ironic today for someone who plays SWTOR. Bioware basically did the exact same thing Blizzard were trying to do and did it 5 times better. There is simply no way WOW can currently compete with SWTOR in the area of fun, plot based, storytelling experience.
Many people complain that it's unfair, because Bioware took a lot of what WOW was doing, this argument is wrong, WOW also took a lot of what Everquest did and made it better. If companies weren't building and improving other companies' formulas, FPS fans would still be playing Doom and strategy fans would still be playing Dune. This is how the industry works, a company makes a great game, make a pile of money from it and others take the good ideas and make them even better. Gaming evolution at its finest. This is how the fun games we are playing are created, this is why the industry is doing so well.
Thank you very much WOW for a huge amount of really fun gaming experience. This was top quality gaming of yesterday.
Thank you SWTOR for a great gaming experience, that seems far from over. This is the top quality gaming experience today.
And finally, a thank you for the next giant MMO to come, who will bring us the incredible gaming of tomorrow. I'm sure I'd enjoy the next step of gaming evolution when it comes, making the fun games of today a nostalgic memory.
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