At approx. 2:20am, the "Corrupted Blood" plague reached IronForge, spreading quickly. It was a minor annoyance for some and instant death for others. Somehow, this disease was brought back from Zul'Gurub, but after almost an hour of constant deaths in and around the bank and auction house, it finally subsided. Our sources say however, that it's unlikely to have been completely eradicated.

Aftermath photos: Mailbox, Auction House & Bridge

Update (Sept 17, 2005): Blizzard is curing the plague by removing its existence from anywhere but the Zul'Gurub instance. A rolling restart of all servers is set for 4am. The Great Azeroth Plague of Sept '05 lasted approx 2 days.

Update (August 22, 2007): Corrupted Blood has resurfaced in the news.

Update (March 23, 2008): Corrupted Blood is back again.

I hadn't really planned to examine the 2004 box art of World of Warcraft so deeply, but take a look at this portion. It's lacking in detail, but I think you'll see the same thing I'm seeing:

When WoW was released, I had a hard time convincing my girlfriend to switch. One of her comments was a lack of classes and in a related note she pointed out that there was a race ("with horns") on the box that wasn't in the game. I looked at this little screenshot on the back and brushed it aside as a helm.

Now hindsight is 20/20, I see a female Draenei casting next to a Tauren. Maybe they were meant to be female Tauren at some point? I don't know, I'm not going to read too much into it other than when the game was released, what was in this image didn't make it into the game.

That's not a critical observation, much the reverse.

Yeah, I'm using this in my leverage against the 'polish' catchphrase. To me, this is what polish actually is, Blizzard cut things from their game as late as the box art going to press. They stuck with what was working and they shelved the rest for a later date.

Is this any different from other games? I don't think so. Blizzard had a smaller audience examining their pre-release, plus their PR team knows how to keep things under wraps. There's this myth that they had no beta NDA, but they segmented concurrent betas for PR: the more public one with no NDA, the closed-beta for real testing and even a friends-and-family server in a state between alpha and beta.

Even WoW's public test servers now are notorious for not so much testing (because invariably, most every mistake on PTR will make it to Live) as advertising upcoming changes.

That's the sort of misdirection that Age of Conan, Warhammer and other upcoming MMORPGs are lacking. Hide what you're working on, trickle out the good info and save the hype for what's actually going into the game.

It's pretty hard to do, because people rarely recognize what it is.

Blizzard wasn't perfect at it either, they had features anticipated that never arrived, but they also didn't have the same massive community of anticipating fans that have followed in WoW's wake.

Sooner or later I was bound to take this snapshot, because it's been nagging at me. This is my 2004 World of Warcraft retail box:

A whole lot of people either have selective memories, or they arrived on the scene later, but the release of WoW was not 'polished'. It had numerous bugs, abysmal server stability, barely passable Endgame and virtually none of the faction-PvP features that were highlighted during pre-release.

Sieges of course, were not included. Nor was the "mighty Dragon of Blackrock Spire", although Nefarian did arrive 7 months later.

It was still a great game.

Accolade it for what it was and what it became, not what it wasn't.

Found a link to Blizzard's forums which led to this:

Sure to be removed quickly, because I don't recall a Blizzard employee that has ever referenced another MMORPG on their forums before. They corporately maintain some kind of fog-of-war over that stuff.

It's perfectly sane and reasonable of course, you can't expect people to play their own game much, if at all, but they've got an interest in these kind of games so there has to be an outlet in competing products. There's a bunch of other normal reasons, too many to list really.

Much of the fanboi trash talk seems so silly when (during the trade-shows especially) it's probably usual for the devs, CMs and employeees of these companies to sit down together over coffee to discuss what they have in common. Many of them have worked together in the past, the talent is related and interwoven this way. You can catch competing devs smiling at each other on discussion panels and they're honest smiles at that.

I've always liked Eyonix, even back when Warlocks saw no love and as the Warlock CM rep he was too busy enjoying his Mage. =P

I found the link for this on the AoC forums in a thread with the sensationalist topic "Even Blizzard employees play AOC", right underneath "AoC is the Ralph Nader of MMOs" and right above "Is Funcom Gutlessly Caving In To The Prudes..?" which just goes to prove that regardless of any differences in the games themselves, the general forums are exactly the same.

All of the examinations over WoW's success gets pretty tedious at times. Some people are still baffled by it, many have mistakenly taken it as everything Blizzard does is golden. It makes me weep for the designs of future games, because the WoW-cloning (and itself a clone of EQ) is going to get tired really fast.

Want to know the real secret? I'm not just rambling here, flat out I'm completely positive this is the very core of WoW's breakthrough mass-market success:

WoW was the first MMORPG that wasn't ugly.

That's it. All of it. Right there. Go ahead, list a bunch of other features, they're important too and some of them no doubt keep people playing, but that reason right above is the only one that matters when it comes to explaining how WoW captured such a huge audience in the first place.

The MMORPG genre was all set to take off, it had since before it's conception, virtual worlds are a blessed idea straight from the gods themselves. It didn't have to be done right, that's bonkers, it just needed to be pretty. I'm painting with broad strokes, there are parts of other MMORPGs that were nice to look at, but they've been horribly inconsistent in their styles until WoW. Blizzard's art direction was notable at a glance.

Never underestimate the ability for screenshots to sell a game.

Presentation is everything.

I didn't come up with these tenets, they've been widely known since the dawn of videogames and probably could have been theorized before they existed. We're a visually obsessed species. Sure, gameplay is king once the game is in the hands of the gamers, but in order for gameplay to sell games a namebrand needs reputation first. Blizzard had that too mind you, but seriously, it wouldn't have sold a tenth as much if it was as ugly as EverQuest.

I'm thinking the same thing with Spore. A few months back, I was wondering if it may flop even after all the hype and press. Then the creature creator came out and there's no doubt to me that Spore will be a runaway success, because you can't make a creature that isn't cute. Even the phallic ones. Damn cute.

It even affects why we leave one game for another. I had all sorts of gameplay beefs with WoW after 3 years of Blizzard's blandification of their best property, but in the end the main reason I left for Age of Conan? I was sick of staring at elves, dwarves and orcs. Evem the best graphics can feel shallow after a long while and I've had my fill of WoW's cartoonish style.

Feel free to keep debating the gameplay features tho. =)

With an audience of 10 million, what's so bad about World of Warcraft?

Last night I defended Richard Bartle's stance that MMORPG games could be so much better. He uses World of Warcraft as his example in a rambling sort of way, but this part is key to me:

Forgetting the specific example of Kharazan for a moment, there's the pissing on the players quote and it's bang on the money. Exact. I don't need to pull a bunch of Tigole faux pas quotes from Blizzard to tell you that there's a hamster wheel grind intentionally inherent to these games and WoW specifically.

When WoW was released, it was heralded as the solution to the grind in MMORPGs. What happened? It wasn't, that's what. Blizzard applied bandaids like removing XP loss on death, but then kept the base model of Everquest with "The Vision" still at its core, refining it even deeper in their Endgame as time went by. They discovered very quickly that it was cheaper to stretch content than provide as much as players wanted.

The defining part of "The Vision" is that the game's progress traps the player in, making them continue playing not just for fun, but for rewards that lead to further rewards.

It's no mistake that these games are often labelled as addictive, because from an outside perspective there's wonder that people will play past their enjoyment. Gordon Walton has summed this up:

Just like Everquest, mark my words, if Blizzard continues to inflict tasks on players without enough corresponding fun, it will slowly move from accolades to vilification. I've become jaded about the game myself and I encounter more and more other players that feel the same way.

Now I'm going to *gasp* say something positive about WAR. Mythic has focused much of their development efforts on reducing the grind. They've specifically catered to those that want satisfying PvP combat from level 1 up. They've improved many of the "oh god, not this again" moments in questing. They are in the good space that Blizzard was 4 years ago. If this stuff bugs you but you still want to play MMORPGs, then WAR may be your best tonic.

But I do wonder, with this push to improve, why are they still on the base model of Everquest? The same goes for Age of Conan, where the attitude at Funcom is that of course you have to start with that, it's the base right? Thank goodness for the awesome combat in AoC.

As much as I'm enjoying these games, I think evolving on the EQ model is an uphill battle against what its core design principles stood on. Standing up and questioning the trappings is something players should do if they truly want to see the grind go away.

The MMORPG playing field has suddenly become very competitive.

I've heard from various friends and acquaintances who've just been invited into the Warhammer Online Beta, plus I suspect Mythic is handing out select invites to bloggers and press. Apparently Blizzard isn't the only one that sees Age of Conan's release window as fair game to kick up some interest.

WAR is looking bright.

Mythic deserves the attention mind you, by most accounts WAR (Warhammer Online) looks slated to kick some ass.

I distinctly recall Marc Jacobs saying in an interview they were shooting for second or third position in the market, but that was before the EA buyout. Now, I'd put good money that they're aiming to dethrone WoW as the top MMORPG. It will take them some time to pick up the steam, but I think WAR can actually do it.

It would be fitting really, given the borrowed look-and-feel of the Warcraft universe.

Age of Conan goes over the top.

Age of Conan has gained a lot more traction than expected, it's definitely a success and I think what Funcom fully intended to be a niche game has broken into the mass-market.

As a player, I'm pleased that Funcom will have significant leverage to improve the game. It has more than its fair share of rough edges to round out, although I think the core gameplay is solid.

Reaction within my own guild is good. There are some grumblings about a few shortcomings, or changed expectations, but each of these is tempered with happy cries of surprise at other details and features better than expected. Mind you, I think we're Funcom's target audience, because WoW has bored us and WAR doesn't seem our thing.