design – Page 6 – Kaylriene

World of Warcraft, Content “Noise,” and the Endgame of Shadowlands

Recently, I rewatched FoldingIdea’s excellent video on the allure of WoW Classic through the eyes of someone who played the original release, plays the live retail game,… Read more “World of Warcraft, Content “Noise,” and the Endgame of Shadowlands”

I’ve been talking a lot for the past few days about things in the World of Warcraft Shadowlands beta that irk me. Whether it is the meandering,… Read more “Torghast in Beta – It’s Really Good, Actually?”

One thing I tend to enjoy a lot at the beginning of an expansion lately and then fall out of over the course of an expansion, dungeon… Read more “Shadowlands Beta Dungeon Impressions – 5/8 Dungeons Complete”

My post yesterday sparked a lot of great discussion about Blizzard and balancing that I think are worth looking at in detail and via comparison to other… Read more “On Balance and Choice – The Difficulty of WoW’s Legacy Systems”

One of the more broadly contentious aspects of the Shadowlands design paradigm is the use of Covenant abilities. Rather than building a spec-based system like Legion Artifacts,… Read more “The Paradox of Choice: On Covenant Abilities and Community Reactions”

In my Shadowlands media blitz recap post, the most text for me was devoted to The Maw. There is a fairly simple reason why – the design… Read more “The Maw In Focus – How To Design Unwelcoming, But Fun, Spaces and Why It Seemingly Falls Short”

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a while! Through the Sidenote series, something that comes up as a recurring theme of sorts is how… Read more “Sidenote: PS4, Xbox One, and AMD – The Dark Decade of Gaming Hardware”

I just watched most of the Sony livestream for the PS5, which included a handful of brief game trailers and then the thing I actually really wanted,… Read more “Immediate Impressions – The PS5 Future of Gaming Event”

(Editor’s note – hey, so…uh…this was gonna be up last week, but between capturing a lot of screenshots and then being moved to work from home due… Read more “Raiding Difficulty – A Re-Evaluation of the Endgame Differences of WoW and Final Fantasy XIV”

Something I keep coming back to as a theme in my head lately is gear and gear progression in MMOs. One of the key opportunities I find… Read more “Rewards and Progression – Looking at Content Models from Classic WoW to Modern Final Fantasy XIV”