Blizzard considering procedural generation for wow

[Cosmos]

Looks like people are watching our little venture here. Might Frontier have inspired Blizzard re this approach?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...d-of-warcrafts-procedural-future-warcraft-iv/

 

[Darren Grey]

More likely inspired by EverQuest which is doing procedural content in a much more central way. Elite's PCG is mostly a form of compression, not a way of having repeatable randomised content.

More PCG around is always good though

 

[Cosmos]

I'm not sure I agree with your understanding that PCG in ED amounts to compression. It is about creating a large amount of content that would otherwise take thousands of man years to produce.

 

[Darren Grey]

I'm not sure I agree with your understanding that PCG in ED amounts to compression. It is about creating a large amount of content that would otherwise take thousands of man years to produce.

I suppose I'm more thinking of the earlier games. It's not clear yet how much of the gameplay will be dictated by procedural, hand-crafted or multiplayer elements in ED.

 

[DraQ]

Blizzard should have stuck with procedural generation since Diablo 1.

 

[Kerrash]

I think EverQuest Next is based on the Voxel Farm technology which I think this guyhas been building. I have been following his blog for some time, fascinating stuff.

 

[SuperG]

I think its more a cost decision vs the massive amount of content and the workforce needed. Games get very expensive to make each time the hardware gets more powerfull.

The dev's can do more. But tha tmore need to be created.
Procedural is a way to up the kwantity with lower cost.

So I think it more a cost driven need. Some thing are better suited to do procedural while other you want to take in creative master hands.

WoW as a MMO is very content heavy concept.

 

[Dejay]

Looks like people are watching our little venture here. Might Frontier have inspired Blizzard re this approach?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...d-of-warcrafts-procedural-future-warcraft-iv/

“People just burn through our content so fast,” lead content designer Cory Stockton lamented to RPS. “If we could build enough content, we would. Procedural content is totally something we’ve talked about.

Ouch lol. What an idiotic thing to say. Blizzard still doesn't get it. People don't want more of the same. They want new things to do! They are finally doing something interesting, and that is the "Castles" for the new expansion you can build up, defend etc. But they focused too much on core gameplay and content churn that they don't see that people want variety in gameplay.

The cool thing about procedural generation is that you can theoretically code a new feature that affects and if needed adjusts all the content in the game. Like making procedurally generated missions more engaging or complex.

 

[Kipper]

It does make me giggle how everyone all about the procedural generation as though it's a new thing and not something that was used thirty years ago to ram 8 galaxies into 28k of memory.

For a game on this scale, the generation will of course be needed to make those millions of stars/planets without having to have a hard disk the size of one, but personally, I'm just as interested in how it can be used to make the galaxy feel alive by making sure things like economies and missions aren't static.

There is probably going to be a certain amount of repetition with missions since there are only a few possibilities (go here, kill this, take this, bring it here) but that's fine as long as each time somebody does an action, it has consequences that change the state of the universe.

I really hope that we'll see possibilities such as say, a natural disaster on a major agricultural or trading centre have an effect on the whole sector.

 

[Mazhurg]

I'm not sure I agree with your understanding that PCG in ED amounts to compression. It is about creating a large amount of content that would otherwise take thousands of man years to produce.

Agreed. I read this article as Blizzard attempts at creating ever changing content for a location (al la Diablo maps - Specifically Diablo II); not generating a stable location that is then available for all.