So I watched a video the other day where your boy Asmongold the OC wow content creator was reacting to someone reacting to something that had occurred with the recent wow expansion and it kind of just made me sad.
Games launch in different ways, for instance we plan on first launching @holozing in private alpha only and inviting a few people we know have experience not only with such games but also to test them and help balance them out. Other games may have these "early access" events as well, players can help do the same there, decide on what's working and what isn't and what they'd like changed and then check what the wisdom of the crowd thinks about it.
After that you may do something like a "public" alpha where you open the doors to a lot more people, this is kind of both like a stresstest on your servers but with more eyes and attempts you also start finding the rarer bugs that may not occur with only a few people trying the game out.
While we hope that with @holozing we still have interested people in attempting to help out with the private and public alpha when the time comes, we won't be doing things as were mentioned in the video.
Primarily, we won't sell different tiers of starter vials or healers based on if you pay more you get some additional items. While this version is fine and kind of a default in the space it usually involves some additional collector items. I think the latter is okay for those who really want to pay more for their favorite game and franchise to get some extra things. While we're not really there yet as this is our first launch of a new game so it wouldn't make sense to sell different tiers of it to people, it's not something we may shy away from in the future.
Okay so the other thing on top of the different tiers they offered people and kind of is the real package deal here most were looking for, is earlier access to the new content of the game if you paid for the higher tier. Players got to enter the new zones and level up 4 days earlier than the others I believe.
In some cases even that might be okay, but it doesn't work with all genres and games, especially not MMORPG's in my opinion and it definitely isn't something that's going to work for @holozing.
As it turns out, players who bought the expensive tier (up to $90), leveled quick and easy from lvl 70 to 80. It's no surprise that some people spend a lot of time on games like WoW so I reckon that some of them farmed and explored everything in those 4 days. Now what they decided to do next is not in Blizzard's hands, I can't blame them fully for this but at the same time if I remember correctly it's an opt-in thing where if you have "war-mode" option selected you are opting in for open-world PvP, meaning players of a different faction can battle and defeat you while you are busy exploring the new zones. So, naturally, these people who were now at max level with potentially much better gear formed groups to start killing all these newcomers who only paid the default amount for the new content.
Now you may be conflicted or wondering if it really is that bad, but we haven't gotten to the worst part yet.
All that aside, a day or two into the new expansion, the team behind the game decided suddenly that the content was too easy. I heard someone had leveled from 70 to 80 in only an hour for instance but generally it didn't take too many hours even if you didn't attempt a world record. According to the video it had gotten so bad that players couldn't even tag mobs because they'd get 1-shotted, i.e. someone would basically just look at a monster and it'd instantly die, not giving the option for others to be included in that kill for their quest. This lead to them deciding, a day or two after the game had launched for the higher paying players, to balance the game out to make it harder.
Now again, Blizzard probably only has the best intentions in mind but holy shit how this comes off to the players. Not only are they now getting farmed by max level players that were able to play the game with a 4 day jumpstart, basically ruining their experience (if they have war-mode on and/or are playing on PvP enabled servers), but it's now going to take them way longer to level up to catch up to them.
As Asmon said, this sets a precedent that if you don't pay more you're generally going to have a bad time because that's literally what is happening here. They took some good ideas from other games and the name "early access" and made it a living hell for the rest of the community as long as they get more money out of it. He also mentions that power corrupts, if players can do this, of course they're going to - when it comes to killing lower level players that don't have a chance.
Anyway, just a good example of shareholder greed taking it out on players yet again as we see often in the web2 and web3 space.
It's unbelievable to me that no one noticed or bothered bringing up the issue that monsters are dying too quick before the actual game launched. Especially considering how many testers games like these have, they're literally the leading franchises in the world in this genre and no one thought about the issue that tagging mobs in time won't be possible and that potentially fast spawns won't be enough for everyone if some are going around 1shot tagging everything to take quest objectives from lowlvl players while at the same time getting killed by others? Geez.
Some things deserve their time and proper testing, and I don't know, people actually thinking a bit forward and speaking up about it.
Lastly, I want to make it clear that people playing on the private and public alpha version of @holozing won't get any advantage towards everyone else in beta. All progression will be cleared and restarted, everything will be running on a beta site with test assets only. The max testers and players in alpha can expect to get out of it is a soulbound NFT for having been part of it and active, that may get them some zing as collection rewards but nothing else. Others not playing will be able to learn and watch gameplay videos I'm sure alpha testers will share so they won't get the advantage to "know more about the game" than those who don't get access to the alpha, even though we'll attempt to give testing access to everyone interested eventually.
It is happening to a lot of games even if the games are not PvP oriented. I remember playing Warframe and while the game is PvE you can still help new players clear out levels and stuff. It has gone really bad that some players with insane build will clear entire rooms in a sec while the new player is left shocked and it is not the same experience as playing it on single player mode. Balancing a game is not an easy thing for sure.
It would be interesting to test it and try to break things... (which I do to all the things I do...lol)
I remember when Blizzard was a good company...
Or at least it was thought to be a good company.
They've always worked their employees to the bone and expect x10 the effort.
Everyone who's ever worked there says it wasn't worth it.
Pretty sad.
I haven't been a fan of blizzard's moves for years now. I still remember their botched Warcraft 3 Reforged/Remaster. WoW and Diablo has their own share of issues as well, and they stopped the updates of HotS which has its own following, although not as popular as other MOBAs.
I'm happy that you are looking out for the players, and are not giving unfair advantage to alpha testers. Looking forward to more updates.
When I was younger, I used to think Blizzard was a great company. However, as I've learned more, it seems they've always treated their employees poorly.
Unfortunately, many games give an advantage to those who are willing to spend extra money to get a head start over others. I wish it would stop, but it earns the companies a lot of money so I'm not sure it'll change much in the future as long as people keep supporting games and companies who do this.
Yeah I guess it's all about morals, while they do make good money from cosmetics from their shop they just couldn't resist on the early access boost of money since they don't wanna make it fully pay2win I guess. Then again you can literally officially buy gold nowadays with players being able to sell it for subscription time, so dunno how true that is any longer either.
I remember this happening a lot in the old days of Tibia Online. Where the frustration of having no chance of defending yourself against a group of high-level players made the game difficult and often abandoned by beginners. Until they came up with some proposals to combat this through discussions and more discussions.
Money drives a lot of things... lels... what is most of putting is the monthly price for Wow... it's not that much but considering that I might only play it for 2 or 3 days of the month it really isn't worth it for me.... although I wont mind playing it... casually but I do have a life and it's just not that easy to put in 5 hours a day
I was just thinking the other day that I really miss playing WoW, but after seeing this I am not so sure anymore! It's good to know that you have a solid plan moving forward for Holozing and that you have taken things like this into account!
This must be the kind of post I'm to rich to understand. (I bought the 90€ package).
This is exciting to hear. So, we will have the opportunity of trying out Holozing game first on a private alpha. That's good because it is taking away the fear of losing and have loses.
Not everyone will get access to the private alpha but the public yes, then everything resets for the beta and everyone starts playing and progressing at the same time.
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It is true that power corrupts and even more so in games where by paying a certain amount of money you can obtain more benefits in the game and thus quickly increase the levels.