The primary issue with content below a certain area/level is that it’s generally seen as being interim and will not suit the player for a significant amount of time. When the goal is to either A. hit max level (obtain “end game” status) or B. play with others, who quite possibly had goal “A” then everything outside a certain level range is just something you intend to push through and be done with quickly.

As I tend to fall back on in these situations is the belief that there’s a right way to do exactly what you’re saying, but I just don’t know if anyone knows/uses it yet. Most commonly I find that new content inserted into old areas out dates the old content not reviving the area but rather killing older parts of the area off almost completely.

Personally I like to pretend that I enjoy the road to the end and I am not just playing because I want to reach the end, but in all reality I really think reaching the end is all most people really want, myself included. If it’s not the end then generally it’s at least a specific goal, the constant search to see if the grass really is greener over there.

I’d like to build a graphic game that continually inserts new content into old territory to keep society fairly centered while adding real estate intelligently; that doesn’t mean it’s a small world, but a world set up so that social hubs are never too far from anyone’s reach. This is probably because I can’t stand taking 10 minutes to cross a valley just to retrieve an herb or fish, or living in an empty city because everyone else has moved to higher ground.

(Also: Hi, Wayne! Long time no chat!)

The actual size of the landmass isn’t the topic here, it’s what designers do to make the area seem “larger”. In the case of the Linken quests, you have to travel all over the place, one assumes to show the player, “Hey, look at this huge world that takes several minutes to traverse, even in flight!” One of the major problems a new game has to tackle is how do you compete with all that content in other games? One way is to make what content you have seem bigger.

That’s my problem with Ashenvale. I agree, it’s an interesting area with a lot of hooks back into the Warcraft lore, but it’s also a really long zone. A few quests on the Alliance side have you running from the central area (Astranaar) back to Darkshore or almost to Azshara. The later addition of a second smaller Alliance camp over on the east side makes some of the travel a bit less pointless, but it’s still a lot of running to do. Especially if you’re working on an alt and used to fast travel. I think originally this was intended to be a hot PvP zone. Not sure how it worked out on PvP servers, but I gotta assume it was a lot more frustration if you fell prey to gank squads.

Brimoonfang wrote:
…[T]his brings up one of my few complaints about WoW — its inability to take itself seriously.

Some people think this is a benefit. A lot of other games tried to keep things a bit too serious. The pop culture references help the game appear a bit more smart and casual. If you want to do serious role-playing, I don’t think WoW is the game you want at any rate. I thought some of the pop culture references were kinda cute, but Ungoro Crater did seem to be particularly thick with them. Perhaps I just got more of the video game references.

Babs wrote:
In the ol’ MUD days room descriptions were tasked with providing length and breadth as part of the player experience. Five rooms had to sound like 50 because who wants to travel through 50 rooms of forest? It’s what I taught our designers, this “making the world larger” stuff. But in reality, as large as you made it sound, it really was small enough to navigate easily – and complex enough to tarry in should the mood strike you.

On the other hand, you had a lot of MUDs that took pride in bloat. “We have 5 races, 10 classes, and 2000 rooms!” “Oh yeah? We have 50 races, 100 classes, and 20000 rooms!” “Noobs, we have 500 races….” Never mind that most of this was the result of cutting and pasting. :P

I think the same thing has infected graphical games. Players look at a game and make judgements based on how much content it has. Look at AoC where they really worked to put a lot of content in the game. Of course, most of the content is at lower levels, and the upper levels are not finding that you have to grind out levels instead of doing quests. But, I haven’t heard complaints about a lack of content like I’ve heard people complain about in other games.

I don’t care much for bigger, larger graphics driver-imploding worlds that take time to navigate (except that they provide the most excellent opportunities for bio breaks). The older I get the more I find myself wanting my old “gold ring” that let me set a bind point wherever I needed one, or my “instant travel” spell so I could hurry if I needed to. Mounts and flights and boats are cool but they’re often inefficient in the immediacy of LFG/LFM. I just flat-out don’t have an hour-plus to travel to where I want to go.

I’m not sure why immediate travel is such a bane in MMOs. We could certainly use more of it in all kinds of games. I’m pretty sure I’ve done the quest you’re talking about a few times in WoW, mostly as something to do rather than out of necessity. Hit the bird, go make a sammich, watch an infomercial… =P

Blizzard recently purchased the domain registration for http://www.diablo3.com

So maybe it’s not a pipe dream after all.

I feel I should point out that Diablo 2 had instant travel between zones (i.e. waypoints)
and yet this world never felt “small” to me.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I am only playing WoW until
Diablo 3 ships, and then I will cancel my subscription and go back to my SP/coop LAN games.
Sadly, this appears to be extremely unlikely to ever happen.