The Shrine

In WoW there are very good tracking tools so you can see like your guild was #12893th guild to beat this encounter with a weighted score of 48.129 of uberness. At first I thought why would people care if they're that far out, but then it seems like this system is actually pretty good because it's consistent and not arbitrary. Before you'd get self acclaimed ranking like:

1st guild to beat encounter
1st guild to beat encounter without exploiting
1st guild to beat encounter with only 2 shamans
1st guild to beat encounter with only 1 shaman
1st guild to beat encounter with no shaman
1st guild to beat encounter with casual players
1st guild to beat encounter with trained monkeys

It's almost like watching ESPN when you see Lebron got 43 points, 8 rounds, and 11 assists and you see statistics say only 1 other guys have scored more than 42 points while grabbing at least 8 rebounds and 11 assists.

That said I think the system can be refined some. Obviously you can't change the ordering of ranking (#35289 is always #35289), there should be bigger numbers for the uber points. If your guild has 4.12 uber points that just doesn't sound very uber. I think Blizzard is putting a guild leveling system that sounds similar in Cataclysm. I'd say some number between a million and a billion would be about right for a 'high score' table. That's big enough to feel like you're awesome but small enough to still comprehend what it means.

Blizz has always been good at having rankings, it gives players purpose. Ladders in starcraft and diablo are the ultimate bragging rights and make people want to achieve the highest they can, and to do that they need to play, and pay, and play, and pay. In a game when you can cap out at a particular level and have nothing left to do, they have to implement something fun to keep you interested.

That said, guild rankings are kinda lame. I wish there was an MMO where one could become the ultimate solo'ist. I've always lost interest in any MMO when you get to the point where you have to party and deal with idiots on your team. Setting up play dates and relying on others in your guild is way too involved, which i guess is why it takes over some people lives.

I imagine a MMORPG for the soloist would look a lot like Diablo 2.

Don wrote:I imagine a MMORPG for the soloist would look a lot like Diablo 2.

Yeah and it ruled Cant wait for D3!

Flip wrote:

Don wrote:I imagine a MMORPG for the soloist would look a lot like Diablo 2.

Yeah and it ruled Cant wait for D3!

I'm almost thinking that's why D3 is delayed for so long because Diablo is basically just a MMORPG for 1 guy, that doesn't charge a monthly fee.

Why would that make it delayed? So they can continue to milk WoW players as opposed to stealing from their own fanbase with a free game?

Why not? I imagine a lot of guys in WoW would be guys who are fine with doing Baal runs over and over if there's any kind of persistence to Diablo 2. Certainly Diablo 2 fits the kind of profile for a MMORPG game player, so why risk it when you're the MMORPG market? Sure, as WoW's marketshare decline it'd make sense to try to get some of it back elsewhere, even if it's not on a subscription model, but while WoW dominates the subscription model, there's no reason to mess with the winning formula.

In some sense you can say the free to play MMORPGs are basically equivalent of Diablo 2 with more persistence.