纽约时报：杀死大坏龙（配合是必须的）
Kill the Big, Bad Dragon (Teamwork Required)
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: January 28, 2006
Jeff Kaplan knows what it‘s like to try to please all of the people all of the time. Don‘t envy him.
As a lead game designer at Blizzard Entertainment for World of Warcraft, the ridiculously successful online PC game that now has more than 5.5 million subscribers, Mr. Kaplan, 33, is a combination of long-term planner, whipping boy, police chief and deity for a rabid global player-base that is about as large as the populations of the cities of Chicago, Houston and Detroit combined. Earlier massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest, which topped out at around a half-million users, appealed almost entirely to hard-core young male players. World of Warcraft, however, has shattered the expectations of just about everyone in the game industry because it also appeals to a broader, more casual audience. And one of the biggest reasons for that appeal is that much of the time, World of Warcraft is a relatively easy game.
That ease of play has made the game fantastically successful, but it has also created what has become almost a blood feud in the game and on Web message boards between the game‘s casual users and more serious players. The issue is that once players reach Level 60, if they want to keep fighting bigger and badder monsters and if they want to get rarer and more powerful loot, they must start to work in teams, perhaps of 10 or 20 players. The most epic challenges, like conquering Blackwing Lair and its master, the black dragon Nefarian, require 40 players to work together with the coordination of synchronized swimmers.
But because the game from Level 1 to Level 59 is so easy, there are a ton of Level 60 users who don‘t know how to be team players and don‘t have the time or inclination to learn. And that is the root of the current conflict. Casual players complain that they can‘t get rewards comparable to those earned by hard-core raiders, like the Claw of Chromaggus or Mish‘undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer. Raiders like me often respond that casual players just want a handout.
And caught in the middle are Mr. Kaplan, known online as Tigole, and the rest of the Blizzard team. For the game‘s newest high-end area, called Ahn‘Qiraj, they set up a system earlier this month that essentially requires most of each server‘s population, casual and hard-core, to work together to amass huge amounts of war materiel like bandages and metals before the gates to the dungeon will open. Naturally, the population on some servers has responded by pulling together (much respect to the Medivh server for being first to open the gates), while on dozens of other servers, like mine, the war effort is progressing more slowly because casual players don‘t care about opening a high-end zone.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Kaplan took time to discuss World of Warcraft‘s high-end content, including new details about the game‘s next hard-core dungeon, the Naxxramas necropolis, home of the undead Scourge. (There is also an additional retail expansion expected later in the year, probably in the fall, that will increase the level cap to 70.) Here follow excerpts from the conversation:
Q. Tell me about your general approach to top-level content and how you can appeal to such a diverse user base.
A. What we constantly do is look at the whole picture. We need to address an audience like my mom, who plays once in a while but still manages to get to Level 60 and doesn‘t raid, all the way to people who play 14 hours a day who need less sleep than the rest of us. People talk about the game fundamentally changing at Level 60, and they are right. There are people who are seeking that hard-core endgame experience, but to people who casually follow the quests and just ended up at Level 60, it can be very jarring to them. We‘re trying to put in more content for them, like the Field Duty quests in Ahn‘Qiraj, but the resolution we‘re all hoping for is the expansion, which will give those players more WOW as they know it. [Mr. Kaplan also said that the game would soon add a new casual-player-friendly armor set obtained through a multipart quest. The first parts can be completed by a solo player, he said, while the later parts will require a group of no more than five people.]
Q. Why not just let casual players get rewards comparable to those from raids?
A. It would be almost impossible for us to do, and this is a philosophical decision. We need to put a structure in place for players where they feel that if they do more difficult encounters, they‘ll get rewarded for it. As soon as we give more equal rewards across the board, for a lot of players it will diminish the accomplishment of killing something like Nefarian. My favorite times in the development cycle are when there are encounters that are close to being defeated but have not yet been beaten. It really creates a sense of awe among the players that there is something big and truly dangerous in the world. But it would be very disappointing if the items found on Nefarian were the same thing you could get in your nightly Stratholme run. [Stratholme is a much easier five-person dungeon.]
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Forum: Gaming
Q. What is your reaction to how the efforts to open Ahn‘Qiraj are going?
A. This is the first time that we‘ve really put all of the power in the hands of players. So you see some really interesting things going on. In some places, you see multiple über-guilds that have treated each other with respect, or who have called a truce, and are engaged in some massive collective farming. You see a lot of guilds setting up contests to encourage others to participate. The event really comes down to the politics and diplomacy on each realm. But we don‘t want to punish players on realms that aren‘t cooperating, so in a week or two the resources will start to just come in on their own. So we gave just enough time to let all of the servers show their feathers and strut their stuff; this is the time to see which servers can really put in the effort.
Q. How long do you think it will be until the top boss in Ahn‘Qiraj is defeated?
A. My estimates are in the one-to-two-month range, but my expectation is that it could happen today. I‘ve learned that as soon as something is in the game, you have to expect that it‘s going to be beaten.
Q. What can you tell me about Naxxramas?
A. Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it‘s absolutely massive. You‘ll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It‘s a 40-man raid zone, and it‘s bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we‘re up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it‘s going to be hard. Really hard. We‘re hoping to release it in the spring.
Q. Will we need to open Naxxramas with a big farming event like Ahn‘Qiraj?
A. No. Naxxramas will just be open. But we do want to do a world event, which we want to call the Scourge Invasion, or hopefully something cooler than that, that would basically be something for everyone who‘s not going into Naxxramas. So they would see the impact without having to actually go in. [In other words, get ready for undead to pop up in some unlikely places.]
只挑重点翻，那些抱怨是不完全翻译成中文的请离开，没有人有这个义务。
第一段话，大概介绍，Jeff Kaplan，这个家伙是wow的主设计师，wow拥有超过550w的玩家，玩家把Jeff Kaplan当成神，“老大”或者替罪羔羊看待……，又说，blz在休斯敦，芝加哥，底特律都有自己的分支机构，然后jeff说wow是受早期eq的影响，eq带来了理念也带出来一批硬核玩家，jeff说他们只不过把wow做的更大，但是又简单容易上手。
第二段话，jeff大概是说，做游戏不想想象那么简单，比较麻烦，虽然在游戏中有阵营对立，但是游戏外大家通过互相网彼此交流。站在发行商的角度看，当一个人物到了60级，他需要面对更多的挑战，和更强的敌人交手，他们想得到稀有的战利品或者更强的战利品时就必须组队，有时候可能就是10~20人。更多的史诗任务，例如去bwl撒野，干掉他们老大nef，就得需要40人团队在一起协调作战。
第3段话，是说1~59太简单了，通常可以solo，这导致60级的时候很多玩家没有团队意识，或者就更本没有时间学习团队意识。这个是目前冲突的根本。普通玩家抱怨没法获得和硬核raiders那样的奖励，例如黑龙之爪，米莎的心灵惩罚头饰等等。
第4段话，这个月我们更新了wow，开了新的地区aq，游戏理念又回到过去，就是全民总动员，普通玩家，硬核玩家不管哪种，都要参与其中，收集各种资源，才能打开新副本的大门。好多服务器之间会竞争（服务器与服务器之间，阵营与阵营间），尤其是热门服务器（例如麦迪文，最先已经打开大门）。也有一些服务器，资源收集的很慢，那些普通玩家根本不会在意是否开辟新的高端地区
第5段话，在这周3早上，jeff花了一些时间透露wow以后的内容，游戏下一个更新将会有一个新的硬核级副本出现，叫做the Naxxramas墓地！！！是不死族的老家（这个内容很有可能在秋天资料片70级时才被加进来）以下为摘录的问答
q：你是如何吸引不同玩家群的？
a：大概是说1天14小时wow的玩家到了60没有raid是不可想象的。游戏到了60确实是分水岭。我们需要让普通玩家体验更多的高端内容，例如aq
q：为什么不让普通玩家得到比那些raiders更多的奖励呢？
a：这简直扯淡，我们不可能那么做，这是一个哲学问题。我们只是为玩家创造一个模型，他们会遭遇困难在此，也就是说为他们想要的东西付出代价。如果所得奖励平等，那样会减少很多成就感，例如干掉nef。如果把bwl设计成像stsm那样跑刷型副本，显然会让人失望。
q：对于打开aq大门你怎么看？
a：首先，我们真正把权力交给玩家。因此，你可以看到些有趣的事情在发生。在好多地方，很多工会开始互相协调，休战，大家开始集体farm！！！一些工会已经出台一些鼓励政策（我猜是在说NA）这个已经涉及到政治和外交领域了。我们不会对此进行什么干预
q：干掉aq中最顶级的boss需要多久呢？
a：我估计是1，2个月吧，也许就在今天！
q：和我谈谈the Naxxramas吧？
a：the Naxxramas是资料片出来前最难得副本！！是个40人raid区域，坐落于东瘟疫的一个漂浮的大型墓地……比幽暗还大……有些设定还会改动，不过我们会往里放18个boss（少林寺看多了）……！！！他们每个都会很酷并且有型，并且会很难很难……估计会在春天放出来（猜测会在4月1日-_-！）
q：去the Naxxramas会像aq那样全民farm开门么？
a：不会，那里随便进。但是也会弄成世界事件的，还没想好叫什么，天灾入侵？恩，也许有比这更酷的名字……基本上会让服务器上所有人参与到the Naxxramas
自己翻的，大家凑或看
