World of Warcraft continues to show everyone why they have eighty six million subscriptions and you don’t -- by patching in one of the most hated features from Modern Warfare 2.
Want to go kill things in a dungeon? Sure you do. Just click the button.
BAM. Go. Kill. Get loot. Get bonus loot. Get a DOG.
Come on. Look at that dog. Just LOOK AT IT. You just can’t let that dog down, can you? BAM! GO! KILL! LOOT! DOG!
See, most hardcore forum posters are going to be complaining about Icecrown lockouts and how out of whack itemization is and how arena teams are completely broken now and what the hell, I have to wait a month to 5-man Arthas, come on WTF GG BLIZZ.
Meanwhile, the great majority of players, who are at raiding level but not in a hardcore guild?
BAM! LOOT! DOG!
What really makes this feature special isn’t that it’s new -- it’s not, particularly. Among other implementations, Final Fantasy XI has had random pickup groups since the game launched, and even World of Warcraft’s first iteration of meeting stones tried to do the pile-everyone-in-a-group thing. No -- what makes this version of the matchmaker work is that World of Warcraft has such a critical mass of players that at any time, at almost every level (a level 65-ish alt I was levelling up got groups quickly for instances I had never seen the first time around), you can push a button and get instant -- well, if not gratification, progress. Sure, pick-up groups can often be mindbogglingy hellishly wrong, because people are involved, and sometimes you get the people who just haven’t really figured out the whole process of hitting-buttons-making-things-fall-over ’skill’ in this sort of game. But most of the time? It’s perfectly tuned to -- dare I say it? The casual player. The guy who gets home from work and just wants to kill things in a dungeon. BAM! LOOT! BADGES! REP! STUFF! It’s a feedback cycle that is so quick and painless, it’s easily one of the best ways to get more people into the core gameplay of dungeon raiding.
(Also, the dog.)
And, the best part? Blizzard already had the code sitting there from Warcraft 3.
#1 by Vetarnias on December 17th, 2009
“Ah, Mr. Jennings’ column is up at MMORPG.com”
Ha! Beat you by about five minutes!
#2 by Guy on December 17th, 2009
You expect comic strip characters to age? *confused*
Although, to be honest, since those two characters are based on the creators, and they get a lot of their ideas from their own lives, but exaggerated, and being in your thirties but not being totally serious about everything is pretty common, I don’t actually see a problem…
What I like about Penny Arcade is that both the writer and artist keep striving to improve their craft and explore new ideas. Something that stale, repetitive strip comics don’t even attempt.
#3 by Drey on December 17th, 2009
And today’s lesson derived from Penny Arcade is: different people like different things.
I like the comic but the verbal eloquence Tycho demonstrates periodically in the news portion is what keeps me coming back to the site. The man can turn a phrase.
#4 by Mahkno on December 18th, 2009
If you are a tank or a healer, or someone leveling up then this feature is for you. This feature has not improved my ability (as an L80 Rogue) to find pugs one bit. The wait times are still ridiculously long, topping out at 90 minutes on a Saturday night. My battlegroup must have a severe disparity between DPS classes and Healer/Tanks. On another night, I partied up with a healer and we had groups instantly.
The most annoying thing about the current implementation is that you can’t queue for BGs, Raids, and 5 mans concurrently. I used to be able to pass the time in battlegrounds while looking for groups. No more. My time window to play is too narrow to be dithering and waiting. So now.. after 30 minutes or so pass I just log off.
#5 by Viz on December 21st, 2009
@IainC:
The lab supervisor at one of my summer jobs once complained that he had to program his from punch cards while he waited for me to rewrite programs from more modern programming languages into K&R C so he could understand them.