World of Warcraft Watch

[Head Mutant]

With the new beta patch, they added this feature to the game, and I've got to say, it seems like a really cool idea:

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Rest State, Inns & Hearthstones:
To broaden and balance some of the gameplay elements, we've incorporated a few new features. One of them is the Rest State modifier, which gives players a time-limited bonus to combat (PvE) experience. This frees up time for exploring other aspects of the game without penalty, such as tradeskilling and social activities, and helps players avoid level-grinding. We've also added Inns, which serve as a good place to hang up your sword or staff for the night because they confer special bonuses. Inns also act as home locations, which our third new feature, Hearthstones, take advantage of. Hearthstones provide a speedy way to travel back to an Inn when you need to take care of business in town or when you're ready to check in and call it a night. The basics of these new features are covered below.


Rest State

The Rest state modifier only affects experience earned from killing monsters. It does not affect experience earned from quest rewards or other experience rewards in the game (such as future PvP experience rewards).

As players kill monsters and gain experience points, they become increasingly tired. Their rest level reflects this tiredness in five tiers: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued and exhausted.

Well-rested players receive bonus experience points for killing monsters. Rested players receive a smaller bonus. At the normal rest level, players receive no bonus experience points for killing monsters. Fatigued players receive half of the normal experience points from their kills, and when exhausted they will receive a quarter of normal experience from a kill.

To become well rested and start earning bonus experience from killing monsters again, players must either log out or rest online at an Inn (see below) for several hours.

Thanks to the comforts of a warm bed and a hearty meal, players who rest or log out at an Inn can regain energy up to the maximum level: well rested (it takes 8 hours to go from exhausted back to well rested). Players who log out anywhere else in the world will only regain energy up to the normal level.

Note that while your character is resting at an Inn, you can play other characters on your account. The rest state is per character only.
Inns


Players can rest or log out at any Inn in the world.

Inns will be located in all major cities and some towns.

Whenever players enter an Inn or log out at an Inn, they will effectively be "resting," which is indicated by their portrait flashing yellow.

Players can leave an Inn at any time and continue fighting monsters; the experience they gain will be based on the Rest level that they have rested up to.

If players log out in an Inn, they will be able to instantly exit the game as opposed to having to wait 20 seconds before exiting.

When players log in to play the next day, their well-rested characters will have slept off the ill effects of any nasty debuffs from the day before.

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I'm sure a lot of people will moan about that, but having a functional purpose for inns in such a game is terrific. Plus it'll encourage people to play a few different characters, or do something else than straight-up grinding. I'm all for that.

[PoolMan]

Head said:

Fatigued players receive half of the normal experience points from their kills, and when exhausted they will receive a quarter of normal experience from a kill.

Wait a minute... they want to give you LESS experience for doing something MORE difficult? (killing a monster while exhausted)

Hm.

[Head Mutant]

No no no... being fatigued only impacts the XP you earn on combat kills (not quest XP). You fight the exact same, same strength and whatnot, as before.

Basically, Blizzard's just trying to promote its other strengths and encourage its players to experience more of the game instead of hunkering down for mindless grinding. If you use Inns, you get an XP bonus on kills for a while, but after a number of kills (XP earned from kills based on your level) you get more and more fatigued, lowering the bonus, then finally taking away from the XP.

Naturally, the WoW forums are just all rankled and up in arms -- it's a pretty bold move on Blizzard's behalf, but everyone's coming out to judge it before it's even been tested for a day. As I said, I think it's a grand old idea. You can still grind, just not 24/7. You need breaks. And while your kill XP is lowered from fatigue, you can work on tradeskills, do quests, or do quite a number of other things in the world. Even for hardcore players, I'd think they'd take a shine to it. Once their character gets tired and they need to shack them up in an inn for 8 hours, they can just log on with a different character -- play two or three characters ongoing, instead of one. More gameplay experience.

We'll see how it bears out. Anything to draw me into the world and to edge away from the typical MMORPG grind is great with me.

[PoolMan]

But what if (and believe me, I know I'm not speaking from experience here) people just want to do the MMORPG Grind? I mean, they're so damn popular, and they've all featured the treadmill in the past, why break it?

I see your point about wanting to be more immersed in the game, but I genuinely believe if people want a dramatic, immersive role playing experience, they should be playing a table top RPG. No video game will provide that experience.

[Head Mutant]

Then they can do it. They just got to take a break after 8 straight hours or something. The other thing is that Blizzard is obviously going after the power levelers, who will make it to the top level way too quickly and unbalance the game.

And yes, yes, you're a purist, we get that. But I disagree with you; video games can provide a different type of immersiveness -- but just as powerful, and usually, more so -- than tabletop RPGs. I've heard the argument many times from purists, that just because a computer RPG can't offer every single option a largely imaginary game can, then it doesn't deserve to wear the RPG mantle. Shrug. It's role playing for me. Defined role playing with structure can still be role playing, but not to those who wave their 20-sided dice and claim there can be no room for other than paper and pencil.

[PoolMan]

Well now hang on.

A) I'm not a tabletop or RPG purist.
B) I never said videogames can't be RPG's.

All I said was the videogames (a media/entertainment form you know I love) cannot be as immersive as sitting in a room with a group of friends actually taking on roles.

I do, actually, struggle with applying the term ROLE Playing Game to a videogame. Especially all these newfangled FMV-filled creampuffs, because I don't truly believe most players actually assume the character's characteristics, you're just trying advance a predetermined story. When you play FFXII, are YOU a pretty girl trying on clothes and singing in concerts? Of course not! And I doubt you're trying to be.

Um... right?

[Head Mutant]

Can you pretty please use the word "creampuffs" more often from now on?

Point(s) ceded. But there are two types of RPGs, the ones that put you on a tightly-bound "rail shooter" system to lead you from A to B to C to make sure you experience the story the way they intended, and there are the loosely-knit rail RPGs that allow you to make your own story within certain guidelines.

The FF games are the former type. The story is going to happen a certain way, more or less, no matter who plays it. Some people would be more comfy labelling it an interactive novel than an RPG. Depends on how you define an RPG. If I'm going along with the story, getting sucked into caring about these characters and -- in my mind -- acting like I want to protect them and see the best for them, isn't that role-playing of a sort? Yet then, you could just go ahead and extend that to pretty much every other video game that draws you into a plot and conflict.

Ah. I don't have a point. Just rambling. For me, a game becomes an RPG the more it does little things to take away the game feeling and inject my persona into a character. Samus is gonna be Samus whether I play her or you do, but when I can make my own character from scratch, put them in a living, breathing, persistant world, and guide them on the path to growing, to exploring, to adventuring... that's role-play to me. The more unique the experience is to me and me alone, the better. The more the game does to provide me freedom of choice, the better. I loved KOTOR's evil/good change, in just that decisions you made would eventually alter your character, in more than just dialogue choices. We need more of that. We need less of skill and hit points, and more of genuine choices and stories.

I'm tired. This will make NO sense to me in the morning.

[Head Mutant]

Yeah, that now doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, Blizzard posted some more explanation about the rest system:

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Why was Rest State added:

1) Increase some sense of realism and role playing in the game by incorporating the concept of Inns and characters sleeping

2) To try to balance the speed at which various play styles level in the game. Even though WOW has a faster level curve than many games, we found that casual players were still feeling the "grind" in later levels. We didn't want to make the level curve even easier, since many other players would zoom through the game too fast.

3) Rest State, Inns and Hearthstones do all go together. We wanted to give people some limited teleportation around the world to elevate some of the long travel complaints, we wanted to encourage people to go to towns and cities through Inns, and we wanted to balance the level curve.

4) It does give people an in-game alarm clock where each time you change a rest state, you can decide whether you want to log, continue or do other activities (trade skill, pvp, etc).

5) It reduces the pressure for every area to be perfectly balanced experiece/balance wise. For example in EQ, it was common during any level range to go to the "perfect" grinding spot. With rest states and questing, the world should stay more evenly distributed.

Reasons why it was NOT added

1) To prevent players from getting to the "end game" in X time.

We KNOW that power gamers are going to get to max level in a fraction of the time of everyone else. We KNOW that we need plenty of end game options available. We INTEND to provide these when we release the game, not buy ourselves an extra month or two to get them done.

2) To force people to sit in Inns.

We intend just for people to log out at Inns naturally at the end of their play session. You can only rest online at Inns so that you don't accidentally log a character on that isn't rested and then lose your "rested" time. Also, for some people it does give them the change to chat and roleplay while "resting". We have also given some thought to let you "rest" while in cities.

[PoolMan]

Creampuffs! Or, rather, Penny Arcade.

You are, of course, correct, it's a matter of interpretation. The definition of RPG over the years has come to mean a game where you manage a complicated series of numbers, not a game where you play a role. And don't get me wrong, I'll play a current RPG, there's nothing wrong with that. But I just feel like we need a new term, and it's way too late to invent one.

That's a good point about KOTOR, but even the good/evil part of the game is a wee bit hollow. You can ACT good for the entire game, make ONE late-game decision, and get the dark side ending. And vice versa, I'm led to believe (only played it light side so far). So I agree on the surface, but the designers of the game give you a trapdoor to go through in case you chicken out and decide to switch allegiances.

[dajaymann]

Ever thought that perhaps the reason computer (and console) RPG's are really nothing more than number management (which I very much believe) is that computers are nothing more than 0's and 1's strung together. You can't get an immersive, intelligent system because that requires an intelligent, creative mind to guide the story and the action. And when you get that in a computer, then *BAM* you got the Matrix. And then we'll all be screwed. Until Keano saves us.

[PoolMan]

Save me, Keanu, save me from Final Fantasy X3: Pretty Pretty Princess!

[DarthToad]

Well, I actually like FF:X-2, because when you go beyond the annoying parts of it (which don't happen as often and aren't as bad as you'd think), there's a great job system, and it's hard to avoid if you liked X (I thought FFX was one of the best RPGs ever. Bring the sphere grid back! By the way, where is the sphere grid? Is it physical?)

But anyway, even though WoW sounds like it's going to be pretty cool, there's another MMORPG, www.cityofheros.com that, from this site and Brian Clevinger of 8-bit Theater, sounds like it's going to be awesome. You must check it out. (Come on, everyone on this forum would make great superheros)

[PoolMan]

I am a fan of 8 Bit Theater, and I have been keeping up with City of Heroes. I can honestly say it's the one MMORPG I've given any serious thought to playing. It just looks so fun.

[Head Mutant]

www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/index.php?t=archives&date=last

I'm FANCY!

[Head Mutant]

It almost goes without saying that I'm really, really enjoying this game (a dwarf with a gun, a bear, AND a mechanical squirrel? That's firepower!), but last night I made the fatal mistake of letting my fiancee play. She's not a gamer by any means, but she got sucked into a three hour session:

ME: So, that purple bar is your experience...

HER: Hey! What's that! Is that a bunny?

ME: Yeah, this game has a lot of little critters walking around...

HER: Can I kill it?

ME: Um... well you don't get any experience for...

BUNNY: URK! [dies]

Her: [manic laughter] That was so cool! Where's another bunny?