Chapter 1097: Riding Skill (Second Update)
It’s not really about being conscientious or not; World of Warcraft’s approach is more about showing confidence.
Is it really that hard to make a few extra maps or a few hundred more quests?
Of course, it’s not easy, but to many people, it might just seem like a matter of scaling up. If it takes me fifteen days to make one map, then making ten maps would just take a hundred and fifty days, right?
The key issue is that other games don’t do this precisely because they lack confidence in their own designs.
Why do they use fragmented main storylines? Isn’t it because players don’t care about the story and just want to grind monsters and level up?
Why don’t players care? Because the story isn’t well-made.
For many other MMORPGs, it’s precisely because they know they can’t craft a good story or build a solid world that they opt for this fragmented main storyline approach, using the safest method to ensure players have a decent main quest experience.
So, this only highlights how well World of Warcraft’s quest system is designed.
This feeling isn’t about being blown away the first time you see World of Warcraft’s quest system; it’s about how, after playing World of Warcraft, when you go back to other MMORPGs’ quests, you can clearly feel the gap between them.
The second point is World of Warcraft’s very well-developed commercial system.
In this commercial system, players can choose certain professions as their trade skills, like gathering skills such as skinning, herbalism, and mining, or crafting skills like blacksmithing, leatherworking, tailoring, and engineering.
These trade skills form a complete closed loop, requiring a large number of players to support them to ensure the entire commercial system remains complete and balanced.
The whole commercial system is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. For example, if too few players learn mining, ore prices will go up, which affects the prices of finished goods from upstream blacksmithing and engineering. Then, a batch of players will switch to learning mining, gradually bringing the ore prices on the server back to normal levels.
In this dynamic cycle, some specialized “goblins” can get rich by hoarding goods and flipping them, amassing large amounts of gold. Of course, they might also lose everything in a trade war if they make a single wrong move, ending up with a pile of unsold stock and losing their shirts.
It can be said that World of Warcraft’s commercial system is part of the overall world design. Many players, when they have nothing to do, browse the auction house or scan for cheap items as a habit when logging in or out. And when something sells, receiving that mail notification is just as exciting.
The reason World of Warcraft could create such a robust commercial system isn’t just about the system’s solid architecture; it’s also because World of Warcraft is “very generous.”
It’s generous enough to stuff very valuable items—like motorcycles, the most sought-after bags, high-level gear, special damage items, and so on—into various trade skills, which barely boosts the game’s own profits.
To put it simply, in other games, how would these items be sold?
Very simple.
Bag space is never enough. Want more space? Pay up.
A cool mount like a motorcycle—how could you buy it with in-game currency? Just throw it in the cash shop and make players pay.
Many games choose to cut out these complex trade skills and directly sell these valuable items for real money.
Of course, the advantage of this approach is that it’s simple, crude, and mindless. Players think less, developers earn more, and even if players complain a bit, it’s not like the developers lose any skin, right?
But think about it carefully: the game maps shrink, quests are fragmented, and the player-to-player commercial system turns into a forced transaction between players and the developer. If your game claims to be an MMORPG, how much MMO is actually left?
MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, emphasizing interaction between players.
If everything is scaled back, does just grouping up online to run dungeons count as interaction?
So, even though there were already all kinds of MMORPGs in the parallel world, World of Warcraft still sparked a craze when it launched.
Various sections of Azeroth National Geographic were discussing every aspect of the game, and more and more players started posting guides on quest leveling, dungeon strategies, battleground tactics, trade skill explanations, and so on.
World of Warcraft’s brilliance isn’t just in its story; many of its aspects are worth learning from for future MMORPGs. Unfortunately, most games trying to ride World of Warcraft’s coattails can’t grasp even a shred of its essence.
…
Zou Zhuo tremblingly reached out and handed 100 gold to the riding trainer.
It hurt!
This wasn’t just all of Fatty’s savings; part of it was borrowed from the guild.
It had to be said that even when playing the same game, some people had a knack for making money, leveling herbalism and mining early on. Zou Zhuo had been focused on leveling up before. Although the gold from dungeon runs wasn’t bad, without trade skills to back him up, he was still broke.
The riding trainer beamed as he took the gold from Zou Zhuo, then raised a hand, and a golden light flashed over Zou Zhuo.
“Congratulations, young kodo rider. You can now go over there and pick a kodo you like. Do you like this white one? Or this gray one? No, no, the one with armor requires expert riding skill. You’re still too green to handle those.”
Zou Zhuo suppressed his pain and observed the kodos behind the mount vendor.
There were kodos in three colors. Zou Zhuo preferred the white one. He also wanted to touch the armored one, but the vendor told him that armored kodo was faster but required expert riding.
Zou Zhuo picked an ordinary white kodo and paid for it.
That left him with not much of the original 100 gold. Luckily, he had done a lot of quests, so his reputation with Thunder Bluff was at Honored, giving him a discount on the riding skill.
In Chen Mo’s previous life’s World of Warcraft, the cost of riding skill was always a hurdle. Initially, at level 60, the basic riding skill plus mount cost 100 gold, and expert riding plus mount cost 1000 gold, hence the term “thousand-gold mount.”
Later, as versions changed and various flying mounts boosted speed to 280%, the thousand-gold mount, which only increased speed by 100%, became very low value for money. So, riding skill prices kept dropping, and the required level dropped from 40-60 to 20-40.
Zou Zhuo went to an open area and used the magic reins in his hand.
With a low roar, a sturdy kodo appeared directly beneath Zou Zhuo, lifting him up.
“Whoa!”
Zou Zhuo was startled and quickly grabbed the magic reins tightly.
He gently flicked the reins, and the kodo started running forward.
A slight tug to the left, and the kodo turned left.
A gentle pull, and the kodo stopped.
“Oh my god! I… I’ve become a cavalryman!” Zou Zhuo said happily.
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