D&D 4E What D&D 4e Should Learn From World of Warcraft

[PeterWeller]

I love WoW. I'm probably going to run some quests after posting this even, but to say that WoW or any other MMO supports more playstyles than D&D or any other PnP PRG is simply ludicrous. Group and solo PvP and PvE are still just hack, slash, and grab gameplay, and aside from exploration, trading, and some investigation lite, that's all you can do in an MMO. You can't carouse, you can't build, you can't redeem villains or turn them against each other, you can't create new and unique spells or items, you can't conspire, you can't start or stop a revolution, you can't be sailors, merchants, or rulers, you can't own slaves or free them, and you definitely can't effect the world in any lasting or meaningful way. WoW is fun, but it and every other MMOs' great weakness is that they can't replicate the great variety of gameplay that D&D or any other PnP RPG can.

 

[Raloc]

Perhaps tabletop players should descend from their pedestral and realise that things are not always as they see,ed....

Or, WoW fans could try not to claim that their PC game can do everything a human brain can and more, which is clearly false.

 

[Raloc]

I love WoW. I'm probably going to run some quests after posting this even, but to say that WoW or any other MMO supports more playstyles than D&D or any other PnP PRG is simply ludicrous. Group and solo PvP and PvE are still just hack, slash, and grab gameplay, and aside from exploration, trading, and some investigation lite, that's all you can do in an MMO. You can't carouse, you can't build, you can't redeem villains or turn them against each other, you can't create new and unique spells or items, you can't conspire, you can't start or stop a revolution, you can't be sailors, merchants, or rulers, you can't own slaves or free them, and you definitely can't effect the world in any lasting or meaningful way. WoW is fun, but it and every other MMOs' great weakness is that they can't replicate the great variety of gameplay that D&D or any other PnP RPG can.

Thank you Peter. A non-extremely-biased WoW fan. Amazing to see some sense among the madness.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You can't carouse

You can. You can drink (and it even causes the screen to blur - realism!), dance and make merry with other players. I remember having a party in the pool in Ironforge after we'd killed some boss or other. Yes I am sad.

you can't build

You can create your own guild.

you can't redeem villains or turn them against each other

You can if they're players.

you can't create new and unique spells or items

You can be the first one on your server to craft a new item. That's pretty cool.

you can't conspire

You can. Guild politics.

you can't start or stop a revolution

Guild politics again.

you can't be... merchants

Auction house. I knew a player who did nothing but crafting and trading, stayed at level 7 the whole game. He said he didn't have time to go questing but he found the economics of the game intriguing.

or rulers

Guild leader.

you definitely can't effect the world in any lasting or meaningful way.

Mostly true. The game would be better if you could build houses for example. But you can have a big effect on the other players and you could open the gates to Ahn-Qiraj, changing the world.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I am pretty sure you can do all of those with D&D.

And yet three of the four are very rare. D&D is very much geared to supporting one style of gameplay only, group PvE. In WoW otoh all four are common because the game was built that way.

 

[Khairn]

I love WoW. I'm probably going to run some quests after posting this even, but to say that WoW or any other MMO supports more playstyles than D&D or any other PnP PRG is simply ludicrous. Group and solo PvP and PvE are still just hack, slash, and grab gameplay, and aside from exploration, trading, and some investigation lite, that's all you can do in an MMO. You can't carouse, you can't build, you can't redeem villains or turn them against each other, you can't create new and unique spells or items, you can't conspire, you can't start or stop a revolution, you can't be sailors, merchants, or rulers, you can't own slaves or free them, and you definitely can't effect the world in any lasting or meaningful way. WoW is fun, but it and every other MMOs' great weakness is that they can't replicate the great variety of gameplay that D&D or any other PnP RPG can.

As a huge fan of MMORPG's, I agree with you completely.


Doug, you can throw out a few limited examples of a couple of MMORPG features that can poorly imitate the virtually limitless amount of possibilities inherent in a table top game, but you really are comparing apples to bananas when you make the claim that table top RPG's are more limited than WoW.

And yet three of the four are very rare. D&D is very much geared to supporting one style of gameplay only, group PvE. In WoW otoh all four are common because the game was built that way.

They are rare because the players have made a decision not to play that way, not because the option is not available in table top games. I've played arena games, had year long 1 on 1 adventures, and had campaigns where multiple groups waged a secret theives war against each other.

 

[Raloc]

As a huge fan of MMORPG's, I agree with you completely.


Doug, you can throw out a few limited examples of a couple of MMORPG features that can poorly imitate the virtually limitless amount of possibilities inherent in a table top game, but you really are comparing apples to bananas when you make the claim that table top RPG's are more limited than WoW.

Exactly. "Guild politics" is not "influencing a villain for good or ill". Claiming meta-game elements as an argument for WoW being equivalent to but a few examples of things you can't do in PC games is specious. Half of what Doug mentioned aren't even remotely similar. Also, "influencing a [player]" has no meaning in WoW, beside that derived from any vague roleplaying the person might do (which tends to be zilch in almost any MMOG except maybe Runescape, or something).

Thus far, I haven't seen a single fact that substantiates the wild claims of the WoW fans in this thread, and most of their statements actively debunk what they're saying.

They are rare because the players have made a decision not to play that way, not because the option is not available in table top games. I've played arena games, had year long 1 on 1 adventures, and had campaigns where multiple groups waged a secret theives war against each other.

You could definitely play D&D solo. It'd still be less limited than WoW could ever be, but would be boring as heck.

 

[Raloc]

You can create your own guild.

He said "build" not "guild". You cannot build a house, a boat, a mansion, a fortress, a flying city in WoW. Period. A "guild" (a pre-defined social construct which has no presence in the game) is none of these.

You can if they're players.

This is basically false, since what he said would depend very heavily on whether there were meaningful consequences of the internal feelings of said character. WoW, being an entirely static world, has no consequences for player actions. Every wolf you kill in a shower of pretty sparkles will shortly reappear. Unless you're speaking of some abstract mutual agreement roleplaying on the part of both players(which hardly every happens in any MMOG), I see this as totally false.

You can be the first one on your server to craft a new item. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's mildly cool, sort of. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with creating spells, unique items (that aren't just static effects stitched together as in WoW). It seems to me that you're just replying with whatever you think is cool, basically constructing a strawman in order to divert attention from the fact that you don't have a reply to "You can't do ABC through XYZ through A1 through A1million in WoW." You didn't even address 99% of the points that people have been posting, since you simply can't, or you'd be making stuff up.

You can. Guild politics.
Guild politics again.

Again, this has nothing to do with the example posted.

Auction house. I knew a player who did nothing but crafting and trading, stayed at level 7 the whole game. He said he didn't have time to go questing but he found the economics of the game intriguing.

A GUI is not "being a merchant" by any stretch of the imagination. See above about making inadequate replies and/or completely ignoring the question.

Guild leader.

Again, this is basically meaningless in the context of the game. So you're leader of a name that hovers above some peoples' heads. Big deal. This != leading armies into battle, or constructing a nation.

Mostly true. The game would be better if you could build houses for example. But you can have a big effect on the other players and you could open the gates to Ahn-Qiraj, changing the world.

No, completely true. WoW is a static, unchanging world in which your only contribution is crafted items, or temporarily dead NPCs or PCs. There's no "mostly" about it, at all.

 

[Incenjucar]

Huh.

Now, mind you, I haven't had a steady D&D group since 2e, but...

About 1/3 of the gaming I did was "solo." The DM is the equivalent of the WoW world, and it would be one player (with varying numbers of characters), and the DM. My fellow DM and I would switch off back and forth. As we were both DMs, we tended to get on each other's nerves quite a bit (he presented me with a tower, I knocked the tower over, etc), but I'm planning on introducing someone to 4E who has no experience with PnP, and with many more years under my belt (IE: Not a goofy teenager anymore), it should go rather well.

So, yeah, Solo PVE? Easy. Heck, didn't they have solo adventures in 2E?

Group PVP? Oh we had plenty of that. Once had a tiefling threaten to drop my ranger's animal companion into a chasm, and there was a good and hardy slug fest over the matter.

Solo PVP? That concept doesn't even make sense. If you have a P to V at, it's group play.

And, of course, playing the game without a second person, even as a world?

Can you play WoW without logging in? No. Can you play adventures as your own DM? People do it all the time for test scenarios.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The folks asserting that one can't build anything in an MMO need to play more than WoW and a few other games. Ultima Online, Horizons, Shadowbane and Star Wars Galaxies all offer those options, as do others.

What WoW offers is by no means the entirety of what MMOs offer, and it especially isn't representative of what MUSHes or MUDs can offer.