I actually got one of those opinion surveys from Blizzard today. It wouldn't make for an exciting reddit exposé because the questions were all over the place (though the one that asked whether a MoP Classic would make me more likely to spend time in Classic was certainly something to take note of), but one subject it asked about in particular was something I've been meaning to write a post about anyway, namely how I felt about the new solo/story version of the Nerub-ar Palace raid.
WoW has long had a reputation for being both a solo player's game and yet all about raiding. I certainly think that both of those play styles can coexist peacefully, but as Blizzard has put more and more emphasis on storytelling, this dichotomy has certainly presented a bit of a problem: Over and over, you'd go through this whole intricate storyline by yourself just to have it end at the entrance to a raid, with nothing but a breadcrumb quest telling you to go do the raid now. By the time the next patch came around, it was on to the next storyline and solo players were largely left in the dark or confused about what had actually happened at the end of the raid.
The devs tried to alleviate this problem a little by adding an NPC after a few weeks that would let you watch the raid-end cut scene regardless, but that only worked to a limited extent. I thought Amirdrassil was a great example of this actually, as the story leading up to it ended with big baddie Fyrakk entering the raid and needing to be stopped, and then the cut scene you were allowed to watch afterwards was just a few seconds of the aspects looking surprised while their eyes glowed. I believe my initial response to this was something along the lines of: "What is even happening?" (I did eventually get more of a resolution through LFR, though that took more than one attempt as well.)
Being aware of this problem, Blizzard decided to try a new approach with The War Within's first raid by adding an actual story/solo mode. It's not the whole raid - only the last boss - and you won't get any loot out of it, but it should provide more context for what's going on. Naturally, as someone who's been following the in-game story through LFR for the last couple of expansions (or at least trying to), I was very interested in this.
So how does it work? A week after the raid opened for group play, a new quest appeared for solo players that had completed the campaign story, asking them to meet a contact in the City of Threads. He gives you a couple of tasks to help out people in the city, which culminate in a mission that tells you that the time has come to strike against the queen. Another NPC near the raid entrance "smuggles" you inside... along with nine friendly NPCs, the same ones that help out Horde and Alliance in the follower dungeons.
You then get to meet and fight Queen Ansurek in what I can only call a weak imitation of a raid fight, with some flashy mechanics going off that don't really seem to do anything and the NPCs mostly just forming a big pile. If you're a tank or a healer, the game doesn't even trust you to do the role you signed up for, as you'll be slotted in as the sixth dps regardless. But you do get a (very) vague idea of the fight and can watch the little cut scene at the end in peace. The reward for the quest also includes one of those rare crafting materials for a high-level item, which I actually used to place my first ever public crafting order for an epic belt.
I still wanted to see the whole thing in LFR too though - more than usual in fact, because while I'd appreciated the opportunity to see the story conclusion at my own pace, it did feel a bit "off" to me to just "sneak up" on the queen like that and face so little resistance. It made me go into LFR with a different attitude than usual, in the sense that I knew exactly how it was going to end this time, but I wanted to see more of how you're supposed to get there. Even if LFR fights are also mostly unorganised mayhem with extremely toned down mechanics, it does feel more epic with real people, and it's certainly possible to wipe.
I also found myself paying more attention to the bosses. I was happy to get a proper conclusion to the last fight of the Dawnbreaker dungeon for example (the boss runs away at the end and you don't get to take her down properly until the raid), and I found myself wondering just how the Ethereals will play into all this, as they were featured in the pre-expansion quest line and one of the bosses is a "Nexus Princess" who also makes an escape after you defeat her. These may be minor, but there are still story threads leading both into and out of the raid that you don't get to see in solo mode.
Overall I'll say the new story mode is a big improvement though. Its biggest weakness this time around was actually just the bad signposting. I was looking forward to checking it out, but I would not have known when or how to start it if a headline from Blizzard Watch hadn't caught my eye on my Bluesky timeline.
Blizzard is usually quite fond of just auto-granting you new story quests, but not only did they not do that with this one, it's also marked as a side quest - in an expansion with about a million of them. So unless you'd already cleared your map of all side quests before this one came out or used some sort of map filter, odds were high that you'd simply miss this new exclamation mark being added in town.
The other issue I had is that the WoW community is still absolutely atrocious about spoilers. The cut scene at the end of Nerub-ar Palace doesn't exactly contain any major plot points, but I still tripped over it left and right mere hours after solo mode was released and before I'd had a chance to see it in game for myself, as multiple YouTubers I watch used it as background footage for their videos while talking about something else. Like, come on, dudes. Is it that hard to show your viewers a little bit of courtesy by holding off on doing that kind of thing?
As far as Blizzard themselves go though, I think story mode is a good addition and didn't even turn me off LFR. I'm generally not a huge fan of LFR - I don't dislike it by any means but I also find it a bit tedious as a way of just seeing the end of the story, so I was wondering whether this new story mode would make LFR feel redundant to me. Surprisingly that hasn't been the case though - if anything, it kind of made me appreciate LFR more for what it is. Like a side quest to the final boss fight that I'm happy to check out, but I also appreciate that I don't have to do it to understand what's going on.
It's worth noting that the overall structure of the storyline also felt a bit different in this first tier of War Within than it usually does, as the raid is really more of a side story. Not to downplay Queen Ansurek's importance, but we know from the beginning that she's not the one in charge. The solo campaign also has a satisfying ending of its own (for the moment), so the pressure to go see the raid to understand how it all wraps up is actually lower than it would usually be at this point in an expansion. And I think that's a good thing as well.
What was your experience of the Nerub-ar Palace raid storyline?
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The more I hear about WoW these days, the more obvious it becomes that Holly Windstalker is slowly turning it into EQII. This is a prime example. For years every expansion storyline started solo and ended in a raid. I used to just ignore the story altogether but later, as levels piled up, I would try and solo the raid once it had become trivial.
ReplyDeleteEven then, it often wasn't possible due to mechanics and of course I'd forgotten the rest of the story by then anyway so it was a huge improvement when there was a complete change of approach and expansion storylines became soloable all the way through to the end. I'd have to check the dates but I think that change was implemented fairly early in Holly's tenure as Producer. She's always had a strange, mixed approach to accessibility, wanting content to be relatively challenging but also available to everyone, regardless of playstyle. These days even pure crafters who don't do combat at all, which is a significant demographic in EQII, get their own, complete expansion storyline that mirrors the combat one.
I think it's a mistake to think that multiple paths to the same goal will dilute the experience. Players generally have a clear preference that they'll follow and they'll be much happier if they can go the route they prefer rather then be forced down another. Better still, plenty of them will follow different paths on different characters so the content will last longer and feel more satisfying.
I get the feeling that under a previous administration, WoW had become very dirigist, with strong expectations that players should play a certain way. That seems to be loosening and that can only be good thing.
Oh definitely! It started with the Classic progression and seasonal servers, and now we're seeing the same "Everquestification" in retail. The much faster pace of updates is noticeable as well. I would say there is one downside as it does seem to me that there are now also a lot more bugs and instability than there used to be, but I've got to admit it still feels like a worthy trade-off at this point.
DeleteAs for the previous administration being dirigist, also 100%. Even the current devs have admitted as much (as politely as possible). I think Ian Hazzikostas said something in an interview along the lines of: The old guard had very strict rules for how things should be done, based on years of their own learnings, but maybe it's time to acknowledge that after twenty years, the world has changed and it's time to do some things differently. Holly herself said in an interview that in the past, game development was more of an art based on gut feel based on what you'd personally think would work best, but nowadays you have so much more data about what players actually do and want, and you've got to be able to respond to that.
I haven't done any of the endings yet, but I'll probably do the story mode on several characters this weekend, if only for the crafting mat. I'll do all the LFR wings on my priest as she's going to be my LFR hero and my monk will be healing with my guild as they are going to start normals Saturday.
ReplyDeleteI've gotten used to seeing the end-of-raid cinematics (because my guild's raids died out early to mid-expansion) that I've not been bothered to actually go do the raid. Which is a bit goofy since I enjoy a good story, but I find with all the poor (to me, at least) story decisions over the last few expansions that I have no strong desire to actually see the story content when it is current. Maybe if there's some consistency and decent writing these next few expansions that will change.
Which isn't to be all negative about Wow, far from it as I'm actually enjoying the game, but story just isn't one of the pulls it has on me. Unlike, say, Swtor or Secret World (when they had new releases).
I've completed the whole thing on Normal. We had a few wipes here and there, but for the most part it was a reasonable step up from LFR. The scaling wasn't bad, but the mechanics started ramping up on the last two bosses. Which is to be expected given they often are the lead into the Heroic raids.
DeleteFor me, this was the most enjoyable first raid of an expansion in a long time. The fights felt good, they were reasonably challenging as I got used to playing a new class (Mistweaver Monk), and the final cinematic seemed a reasonable conclusion for the zone story arc. While my guild can burn out when the game isn't fun, I do have a good feeling that we might just be raiding for longer than the past few expansions. :)
I still need to do the story mode to see that and run my Holy Priest through all the LFR tiers, but so far things are looking good. I'm enjoying the game in a way I haven't for some time now.