Talking Game Design - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 64

force with half the coordination of the attacking force will win . . . If you're
going to attack, you'll need to coordinate with your team and fi ght a little
(or a lot) smarter than your opponents. Until Blizzard delivers a fi x, you'll
need to grit your teeth and fi ght harder on of ense.” 59 As players quickly
learned that they had an uphill battle to win when on the attack, participa-
tion in the battle lagged. Because the participation in the fi ght was fi xed at
a one-to-one relationship, if one side did not show up, no one got to play.
Blizzard attempted to fi x the problem by radically increasing the rewards
for winning the battle, increasing the honor points rewarded for winning by
tenfold. 60 This provided incentives for attackers to participate, but players
immediately realized that the most likely result of the change would be that
“the controlling side will be encouraged to just let the other team capture
the zone, in order to retake the zone themselves the next cycle. This back-
and-forth swapping will give the greedy person . . . the most reward.” 61
Players quickly exploited the system, taking advantage of a design that
“clearly encouraged players to win-trade Tol Barad back and forth, negat-
ing the whole reason for a PvP objective.” 62 Within weeks it was clear that
this was not the answer to fi x Tol Barad and the decision was made to of er
a premium for succeeding as an attacker, but one that was small enough to
curtail win trading. Additional changes were made, with the general guid-
ing principle that developers are “reading your [player's] feedback, watch-
ing trends across our global realms, and fi ghting plenty of battles in Tol
Barad ourselves to get a feel for what's working and what isn't, and we're
committed to making Tol Barad a fun and engaging zone.” 63
Regardless of whether or not Tol Barad is ever 'fi xed,' the player response
to the zone shows their power in crafting and adapting video games to suit
their needs and interests. As soon as it became clear to players that the
battle was unbalanced, they stopped playing and articulated why. Rewards
were increased to get them playing again, but they were so extreme that
players responded in the optimal manner for them, by trading wins. Devel-
opers felt that was not appropriate, so the change was reverted and the cycle
between developer intentions and player actions restarted. Both players and
developers have the power to shape the games they play or design through
a collaborative process that is ensured by modern channels of communica-
tion where players talk back to designers.
Beyond the direct feedback guiding developer action in a game like
WoW , players can also force changes through the modifi cations or add-ons
they write for the game. Players in WoW are able to write add-ons or mods
that alter game play in WoW in a number of dif erent ways. By so doing,
players are able to reshape aspects of what it is to play the game and, as a
result, what the game is. This allows players to redesign the game in such
a way that developers are compelled to react, deliberately breaking certain
add-ons or shaping the terms of engagement for others. One of the fi rst
limitations for add-on developers was the stipulation that they could not
charge a fee for their programs, under the threat of a lawsuit from Blizzard.