In World of Warcraft, a little social warmth has been lost over the years. With Warlords of Draenor, a new group finder comes to make the game a bit more social again.
Veterans who have turned their backs on World of Warcraft often complain about two disturbing elements in the “new” World of Warcraft: Anonymity through the LFG system and the “simplification” of the game through the loss of abilities. The lead designer of Warlords of Draenor addresses both issues in an interview.
Pre-Made Group Finder is meant to bring back social warmth and conversation culture
In an interview with eurogamer.net, lead designer Ion Hazzikostas spoke about the new group finder that will come with Warlords of Draenor. While the old one was efficient, it was cold in that efficiency. The new “Pre-Made” group finder is intentionally meant to represent a step back. Even if one ends up with a completely unfamiliar group in an instance, one had to address and manually invite them beforehand.
This helps, Hazzikostas found, to ensure that more talking occurs in the instance: “There is something in this process of writing to someone or inviting them manually that leads to more conversation. Suddenly, one is reminded that they are dealing with real people, not faceless robots.”
If World of Warcraft is so simple, why do the same teams always win?
Hazzikostas also has an answer to the accusation that World of Warcraft has become simpler and easier over the years. “If that were really the case,” he asks, “how can it be that the very best arena players are still significantly better than even the top one percent of the others?” How can it be that it is always the same top guilds that prevail against the competition in the top 100?
Even today, there is still an enormous depth in the game and opportunities to get the most out of one’s characters, to be creative, to find solutions. Systems like “Reforging” have disappeared because they ultimately raised questions that had only one correct answer, and that was not easy to find. One had to use a tool, visit another site. This made swapping items a lengthy process.
One of the main goals with Warlords of Draenor is to bring the game as close as possible to the point where players are in a raid or instance, and an item with a higher item level than what they are currently wearing drops. Then they take the drop, equip it, and are happy.
