Kaplan already throwing WoW under the bus for the new MMORPG?

[Arcdelad]

good reading here!

http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1096

[Nasanna]

So wait... In the first point, he's lamenting that players don't read quests, so we should spread quest NPCs out more. In the second point, he says that no one reads the quest text, make it shorter.

And then...

Basically, and I'm speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a book in our game, because nobody wants to read it.

Make the quests simple to read. Make the first line of the quest text the instructions. "Kill  Chief Evil Furbolg in the cave southeast of Astranaar" and then add the quest text underneath. Don't get rid of the lore 

What does this have to do with throwing WOW under the bus? Most of the stuff in there has already been improved upon in WOTLK except for the vehicles from what I can tell.

[Kothnok]

if you ever want a case study, just watch kids play it, and they're just mashing the button. They don't want to read anything."

I think we should be encouraging kids to read more, not giving in to the "just mash the button" behavior.  I like to play this game precisely because it does not cater to the "all action" crowd of kid gamers.  If you want to give those kids a way to level without doing any quests at all, let battlegrounds give you a small amount of xp or pvp-like instances where players wade through scores of attacking mobs for xp (like joining the front line against the Scourge or npc Horde attacking a town).  No thinking or reading is required for that, just jump in and kill kill kill.

Basically, and I'm speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a book in our game, because nobody wants to read it.

I cannot disagree with this more and sincerely hope no one takes him seriously on it.  I have really liked the quests in WotLK. If WoW degenerates into "Kill Bob." and "Gather 5 orbs", then it will be time for me to find something else to play.

[Belandand]

Is this the same Kaplan that makes those aweful SAT/ACT prep courses/books that promise to raise your score by some points but in reality it makes you more confused that if you just studied by yourself?

Two bicycles travel toward each other. Bike A is goes at 10 mph and bike B goes at 20 mph. They start with a distance of 500 feet between them. A bee comes along and sits on bike A's handlebars. How any times can the bee fly, at a speed of 5 mph, between each handlebar before the cyclists crash?

My answer? Who gives a damn.

[Kothnok]

WARNING, PROGRAMMER-ESE AHEAD!

[programmer-ese]

For those wondering why he mentioned "quest text is 511 and not 512", there's two traditions going on.  512 is a useful size because it is exactly 2 to the 9th power.  Using sizes that are powers of 2 can help optimize reaction time and speed things up without much overhead or waste.  The reason 511 is the text limit is because in order to store all that text, one byte at the very end of the text is reserved for storing a NULL byte, indicating the end of the text.  No, the computer isn't smart enough to know that 512 is the maximum and therefore can be left off so the maximum size the text can be is 511+1 for the required NULL byte.

[/programmer-ese]

[Arcdelad]

the reason i think hes throwing wow under the bus is becuase hes saying now "we did x, y,and z wrong"...which paves the way for "we improved on all that and OUR NEW MMORPG is WAY better!"

[Grendeel]

WARNING, PROGRAMMER-ESE AHEAD!

[programmer-ese]

For those wondering why he mentioned "quest text is 511 and not 512", there's two traditions going on.  512 is a useful size because it is exactly 2 to the 9th power.  Using sizes that are powers of 2 can help optimize reaction time and speed things up without much overhead or waste.  The reason 511 is the text limit is because in order to store all that text, one byte at the very end of the text is reserved for storing a NULL byte, indicating the end of the text.  No, the computer isn't smart enough to know that 512 is the maximum and therefore can be left off so the maximum size the text can be is 511+1 for the required NULL byte.

[/programmer-ese]

Heh i always thought it was because they were saving memory space.   If they went to 513 then they were effectively going to 1024.  Back in my  learning  days memory space was always an issue.  With terrabytes and beyond, i guess in this modern age, memory isnt an issue anymore