About a month ago, my younger brother, a few friends, and I dropped back into one of the larger private World of Warcraft classic servers, Turtlewow. I have been absolutely hooked. I never really played WoW growing up (I went the Runescape route instead) but it was always in the periphery of my online spaces. Its design and scope have had a titanic influence on RPGs in the modern day - for better or for worse - and so going back to a version of its original style has been a great opportunity to dig into some early modern MMO and RPG design.
Almost certainly anyone who’s made it to this blog had the spectre of 4e discourse pass by them at the mention of World of Warcraft. I’m backing away slowly from the topic. We are here for something else. Rather than looking at the playloop within a single combat, I think there is a lot to gain looking at the larger style of play throughout early and mid-game World of Warcraft.
In brief - Players have two major options once they leave their tutorial area - Quest and grind, or run dungeons.
Quest and grind - The well bemoaned playloop of MMOs, Go to a point A, get a fetch quest (or three) that ends at point B, kill everything in sight on your way there. Can be done solo or grouped, repeat until game is over.
Dungeon Running - Similar to the above, but instead of doing a different quest zone every level or two, you do laps of a single dungeon for four or five levels (sometimes more)
Most players will move fairly organically between the two modes, entering a new zone, completing quests, which eventually converge at the zone's dungeon. Solo and small group play leads naturally to group play, and that group play fades out into open ended solo play again.
This loop has been so fun to wander through as a new player. There’s a lovely flow to a zone as you go through it moving from areas of high traffic to quiet areas and from solo play to group play. This is often obscured by the vagaries of early 2000s MMO design, but I really think it has something to it for a TTRPG structure. Players alternate between longer sit-down sessions as a whole group, and solo or small group sessions individually.
This isn’t a new idea. In fact structures that allowed for this kind of play were definitely in use in the early days of D&D (Matt Colville has a video discussing this exact kind of structure) and it seems like a valuable solve to at least part of the scheduling difficulties surrounding campaign play. Rather than ten or twenty sessions (or more!) that have to have full or nearly full attendance, what about three to five? Then one on one sessions until everyone has finished what they are interested in doing alone, and then reconvening as a full group for another adventure.
The game would have to be designed with this loop in mind, with individual goals and good GM practices for the differences between solo and group play. I’m not sure if I have any ideas for making a game like this currently, but I know I’ll be thinking about while trekking through Stranglethorn Vale!
