What EVE can learn from WoW

Having been a WoW player since the beta, I know the game in the beginning wasn’t what it was right now. Take the honor points system for example, the launch did not have this and since it has been added it has been improved upon over and over. Certainly a lesson for CCP and faction warfare there.

I think Blizzard also does fixing old things better, as they cleverly package them into fixes + new additions. The fact there are new additions, even though they are small, is sometimes enough to make you able to advertise it as a new feature.

Also, I’d be very happy with an authenticator for EVE. Or any mmo for example. Actually, make a universal authenticator for everything that uses password logins and I will be very happy.

I’d no idea you played. Do you still?

On-topic: yes, I’ve noticed that, when reading on various game topics for WoW, I can see lots of discussion of constant iteration on various things. That’s a good track record to have…

The customizable UI and add-ons for WOW is really something I could go for in eve. There just isn’t the level of client customization in eve that should be available in a sandbox game with such varied professions and user base.

Yep, still play, actively raiding even. Now I am curious about your class and such. Should exchange armory links at some point.

As for addons, I’m not sure if I would like EVE to have any. Can work out both good and bad. However I do think building up the UI from scratch again is something to look into for CCP. If only because one should not need addons to play an mmo.

EVE can learn to have a huge warchest of money from previous blockbuster games. Blizzard got that right, why can’t CCP?

Seriously, the UI in EVE needs to be customizable, especially for those with lower graphic settings. I never played EVE, but I played WAR where you could use third party add-ons with reckless abandon. That came in very handy when it came to fighting. In EVE, there’s just too much useful information you want access to which winds up crowding out the actual game.

“In EVE, one system tends to look like another.”

Well, yes it does. Space is like that. Sort of like Iowa with stars. One look out the window as you pass through is pretty much like the next. One system looks an awful lot like all the others.

I know, there are some beautiful sights in the universe. But space so really, really big that the travel time between them really kills the tourist industry.

This might change with Incarna. see http://www.fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/2010/08/fashionista.html

I agree Authenticators are a no-brainer.

No MMO should ever try to emulate WoW in any way shape or form. It may be the biggest MMO on the planet and it may set the standard in a lot of areas, but just because its the biggest that doesn’t necessarily make it the best.

Yes, their expansions are highly polished. but they are also not free. You have to pay extra for them. There are also plenty of other games out there which are highly polished that aren’t MMOs. why not look at some of them?

Yes there is a definite sense of place wherever you go in WoW, but this is true of many other games, MMOs and otherwise.

I agree on the authenticator front though. Though the only reason they brought it in is becasue WoW is so big it is an obvious target for hackers, much like windows is.

The UI question is a different thing. Many of the addons and customizations in WoW I have noticed give a distinct advantage to those that use them over those that don’t. In a PvE game like WoW this isn’t as much of an issue but in a PvP focussed game like eve this could cause imbalances and other nastiness. There is also the question of how much customization should be allowed and to what level. We’ve seen from recent dev blogs that reducing the amount of traffic on the cluster and calls to the database is a big part of what CCP are doing to reduce lag. What would thousands of clients asking for extra data for all their addons do to that effort?

I woulod agree that the UI is in need of a complete overhaul. But as was said at the CSM summit, this is not going to happen. The current UI team is going to focus on improving what we already have as opposed to redesigning from scratch (which would be a massive undertaking). The main problem with UI is that alot of what it is capable of is not intuitive at all. There are alot of useful bits and peices that new users are unaware of simply because there are no guides and no manual to tell them that they can actually change their overview settings, for example.

Chatting in EVE should require you to press “enter” first, which would allow CCP to let players use the whole keyboard to customize keybinds. That’s how it’s done in WoW, and would be a pretty nice improvement to EVE with little to no effort on CCP’s part.

This is a good one. I’d also like a choice between separate windows for each chat channel, and having a window in which multiple chats can go together. You would have to do something with portraits though to identify who is in which channel or multiple channels at the same time.

As much as I want to agree with you initially, that’s an emotional argument rather than based on anything remotely objective. I don’t like the quest design that much, for example, and I prefer skill-based rather than level-based systems (not to mention sci-fi over fantasy), but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at what someone DOES do well.

Of course WoW didn’t invent many of these things, just like EVE didn’t invent the concept of full world PVP nor skill based training nor many other things we love about our favorite game. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use WoW as a rhetorical device to illustrate good examples. I’m interested to know what other games hold up in this regard, though!

I’m on the fence about the add-on issue myself. I can see both sides of this discussion.

Seeing improvements to chat, whether of the modal variety or otherwise, really would help. Maybe as part of allowing an IRC-like interface from outside the game client to IG channels.