For those who don’t know me, I am a 55 year old woman, straight, no kids. The first two Diablos and WoW I got into when I was in a relationship with a much younger man (someone I actually MET playing Tele-Arena, interestingly…) who was a super-hardcore heavy duty gaming addict. But I did the same thing all by myself a year or two ago with Diablo 3. In case any of that helps with your ideas about his.
So do I just have some unique vulnerability to the way Blizzard designs things? I don’t think so, because rattling around in my head is some vague recollection that I am not the only “non-gamer” who finds themselves sucked in by Blizzard. But I’m not in any position to say for sure.
If this is some widely-observed phenom, does anyone know why? Have there been published theories or discussions about it? What IS it about Blizzard? (And by the way, I know Blizzard has other games, but they have never had the same effect…I would have said it’s only Diablo, but then I got sucked into WoW…which I still think of of as Diablo Jumbo) And what is it about the gameplay itself… why in the world does anyone ever find it so compelling to essentially do the same thing over and over: “kill supernatural stuff, dress up in newly found or purchased outfits, then kill more supernatural stuff”
There have been a few studies and lots of articles about the reward structure in WoW and how it very heavily reinforces endless playing. Blizzard is very, very good at pacing rewards in such a way as to make it hard to stop playing at any particular point in time.
It’s actually not dissimilar to how gambling addictions can form, IIRC.
Yep. In Warcraft, you get to level 2 in about five minutes play. You get to level 3 ten minutes after that. Level four, fifteen minutes. It’s basically teaching you to play longer and longer in between giving you rewards. Very compelling.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to read up on heroic tactics for Sha of Pride…
I don’t know about WoW, but one of the tricks the Civilization games use to get the “…just one more turn” effect is to have many different kinds of rewards, so that any given kind of reward is rare enough to remain meaningful, but there’s still always something or another just around the corner. Just three more turns until I finish that tech… Then just four more turns until I can finish construction of that wonder… Then just two more turns until that settler gets where he’s going and I can claim those wines… Then just four more turns until I finish that road between those cities… Now there’s just five more turns until I finish that other wonder…
I guess WoW would have levels and quest completions, what else? Item drops, maybe, but since those are unpredictable I’m not sure if they’d have the same effect.
Leveling (new abilities and talents every few levels come with that), quest rewards, faction reputation, achievements (complete X quests, gain N rexalted reputations, kill Y bosses), profession skills, definitely item drops/raid loot.
They also have the nefarious “daily quests” where you can literally do the same thing (or similar things) every day for the reputation/reward/etc.
I have no doubt they have very good internal numbers on just how frequently and varied the rewards have to be to keep people playing.
I do think they lost track a little bit by making the reward scheme a bit too regular. Now you can often basically calculate exactly how long it will take you to achieve certain things, and often that number is big enough to make it obvious up-front that it’s not worth the effort. One of the many reasons I was finally able to break the habit.
Most of those these days are chosen from a menu of daily quests, so, for example, the daily cooking quest in Thunderbluff (or any other faction city) is actually one of five quests so you’re probably not doing the same one two days in a row, and certainly not over and over and over and over without variation.
And when you do each of those five quests at least once each you get an achievement.
So yes, they’ve got a system going. You know what? I’m still enjoying it 9 years down the road. I don’t obsess over it, and I’ll sometimes go a week or two without playing because of one thing or another, but I always go back.
I can’t speak to Diablo, having never played it. But WoW has, in my opinion, a much lower barrier to entry than most (perhaps all) other MMOs. Blizzard caters far more to casual gamers than any other MMO I’ve played. Leveling is straight-up fun–at least the first time, which is enough to get you hooked. In most other games, leveling feels like a terrible slog. Blizz doesn’t take itself too seriously–there are shitloads of quests and world-building, but a lot of jokey stuff too.
There’s a **huge **community (of dubious quality, but it’s huge) so there’s always something to do. The ability to queue into and regularly succeed at dungeons or raids, at any time of day with random players, is easily taken for granted. But it’s truly amazing.
WoW also has graphics that scale down well. Computers that can’t run current games–even at minimum settings–can still run WoW.
And there’re just so many gameplay options. Do you like to PVP? To level alts? To play the auction house? To raid? To do 5-mans? To do dailies? To solo old raids for transmog gear? To collect battle pets? It’s rare that a day goes by when I don’t want to log in for something.
I’ve never played WoW, but I did play FFXI for several years (and having it turn into an addiction at one point). It’s interesting what you all say about the reward structure of WoW. FFXI’s was completely opposite. Forming parties sucked, XPing sucked (unless you managed to get into a fantastic group or permagrouped), hunting spawn items sucked, and Notorious Monsters (NM’s) were a flurry of death and misery, with a win resulting in only one or two nice pieces of equipment for a group of usually 18-36 (or more) people. But sometimes nothing worthwhile dropped.
Basically, it was the opposite of WoW. Instead of consistent rewards on a variable ratio schedule, it was grind, grind, grind, plan, plan, plan, then maybe, just maybe, you might have a shot at getting those relic gloves you always wanted. That maybe was what kept us playing.
And the fact that it was so poorly-executed with such niggardly rewards is why, even in WoW’s poorer expansions, FFXI has never come close to touching WoW’s number of subscribers.
Not to hate too much, insert winks and nudges here. But I have tried FFXI and it was, frankly, a horrific game compared to WoW.
