WoW Games - War of Wizards

Hi Guys,

Good to see so many of you are still floating around and interested in the WoW project. I'm just finishing up an MBA at Oxford University, so hopefully I have learnt something useful to apply to WoW. Having had a break from WoW, it's really good to be able to have a fresh look at it. Technology has advanced somewhat since we started the project 14 years ago, so hopefully some of our old ideas may now be more realistic to implement. Some good points have been emailed through the WDG already and to summarise;

WOW’S WEAKNESSES IN 2009

- It is a text based game which may still appeal to some old school players but will not appeal to the modern masses.

- The reliance on manual processes to start and run games. This leads to delays and a loss of interest. We did promote WoW well to get players to sign-up and had over 10,000 on the list at one stage. Only a tiny fraction of these actually play-tested WoW and only 150 paid to play commercially.

- A large number drop outs in the free play-tests (and to a lesser extent in the commercial games). Drop outs significantly unbalanced the game allowing free-expansion for some players. Automated orders for drop outs were introduced to partially address this problem.

- Hard to bring new friends/players to game due to the gap between play-tests and commercial games.

- A turn around time of one week is too slow for many people. We did experiment with 2/week turns which works until later stages.

- Order generation system to complex to be learned quickly and too time consuming in later turns. One error such as in early expansion can be critical.

WOW’S STRENGTHS IN 2009

- Turn based game play is still attractive to people. The majority of on-line games are now real-time. I recently saw a hilarious South Park episode making fun of the imposter WoW (World of Warcraft), making out the only way to be competitive was to remove yourself from the real world and sit-in a chair 24/7 doing mundane tasks to gain enough experience to take on other players doing the same. Other than downloading reports/uploading orders you don’t need a lot of on-line time for WoW.

- On the same note with iphones/blackberrys /etc you can now interact with WoW anywhere/anytime.

- WoW had/has a great community. Starting from a basic 10 person play-test game in WoW 1.0, we had many people come through the entire process with us to the commercial WoW 2.0. A huge amount of the development was from player ideas and the community definitely owned part of the game. Hopefully, we can capture that again and getting so many people popping up again in WDG is really encouraging. Obviously access to and communication from the GM’s is a key part of this.

- Role-Playing with Blurbs and News was a great side-line for many people and enjoyable for us and many others to follow. Actively encouraging this with Gold rewards was a successful strategy in my opinion.

PLAYER ACQUISITION

- We had Free play-test games on the Arragoth map. I think we definitely need to do a 1st game free model. We need to address the delays between sign-up and start-up though and also the problem with drop outs (8 out of 10 in many play tests).

- 1st Experience needs to be quick, easy to learn and fun. I think a GUI would help address the drop out issue.

- We tried setting up a solo game as an introduction. The difficulty with this was still the inability to auto-run turns when orders were submitted and to manually set up a large number of solo games.

- With many new forms of social media, promoting WoW should be easier. Promotion via FACEBOOK (maybe even Twitter) could spread the WoW word to the masses. Which brings us to the point that WDG, as a yahoo group, may not be the most effective way to get people involved in WoW. We are looking at RSS feeds. Should WDG be an on-line forum, a Facebook group or through another medium. Ideally it can be a conduit for getting dedicated gamers interested in game development into WoW, rather than just getting WoW players involved in the games development.

- How do we time our promotion of WoW? The problem we had last time was 10,000 people signed up and no way to service them. What are the stages of the project moving forward?

INTERFACE

- It is a given that we will eventually require some form of GUI. What is the minimum (ie. visual display of explored territories) and what is the ideal (ie. drag-and-drop) order generation? We had a basic version which I used for creating maps but it never progressed. Some people in the past showed an interest in helping created a GUI. Does anyone out there feel like getting involved? If it becomes a best seller, I’m sure there will be an way to share the wealth,

- Should the GUI be an on-line interface or something you can download and use off-line.

- My ultimate vision would be an iphone application/ PDA tool which would allow you to look at your report/create orders on the go. My personal love of games like WoW is when thinking about them during bored moments such as traveling on the train to work, etc.

GENERATING REVENUE

- We want a cost structure so no players need to pay until after they are hooked.

- Ad Revenue was never a great earner for us. At most $50 came through every few months. Unless WoW reached a huge number of users, ad-revenue alone would not be enough to drive it. If we were going to use ad revenue we would need to restructure the site to get people accessing more pages (possibly through an on-line GUI, etc). Banner exchanges to promote WoW could be a better use of these spaces.

- Micro-transactions seem to be the way a lot of todays games raise revenue. I agree with a low cost/high player number model. I’m not sure about being able to pay for in game advantage though. It definitely should not be so unbalancing to allow players to buy success. That said, we did give GOLD for out of game actions such as writing blurbs.

- Offering other perks for commercial players such as guild pages, no banners ads, etc is used in other games and is a good idea but I’m not sure if it alone would be enough to get commercial sign-ups for WoW

- Free version slower turn rate, paid version faster turn rate is something that could be looked at when we manage to get a faster turn rate for commercial games.

- We had a points and rankings system for WoW commercial players, which then lead onto tournaments and advanced games. I think incorporating this sort of challenge into the new WoW in crucial. We also had the old Hall of Fame but again it was reliant on manual intervention.

- We had special scenario’s/win conditions on commercial maps which again could be a perk.

- We did save special races for the commercial games. We could also save rarer/higher level units/heroes for paid games.

- We did and still should try to grow content, new unit type, races, spells, maps every 6 months or so.

- Make each game unique, possibly limiting spells, etc to a random selection each game. Make sure there is no standard blueprint for success.

- The crucial thing with all of the above is maintaining game balance!!! How do we test all these new features as they are added without making all our commercial games, free play tests.

LIST OF CHANGES

- Automating the system is our 1st priority at the moment which should allow increases in turn frequency and allowing turns to run when all orders are submitted or everyone has checked their run-turn box. This could also allow tiered deadlines or entire games run in an afternoon. It would also relieve some of the frustration caused by delayed games by automating their management.

- Simplify the game set-up and signup process, so games can commence as filled.

- Make order creation a simpler process. Should we do this through a GUI which assists txt order generation or replace the text based system altogether with GUI? In the short term is it worth trying to improve the txt based system with advisors in turn reports giving hints for newbies, production queues for armies and buildings, etc.

- Start GUI design and development. Enlist help to speed up/optimize process. Possibly to play on mobile/iphone.

- Move this forum to somewhere more accessible to the masses!

I’m planning to write up a full business plan for WoW Games but want to get as much input from the WDG first. Thanks as always for your feedback. I’m really enjoying getting back into this after so long.

Regards

Harry
WoW Games