So there has been a bit of a kerfuffle over in the World of Warcraft world, which is a bit like saying that the Earth is continuing to rotate around the Sun. This time it’s about a guild of high-profile streamers on a WoW Classic hardcore server who were apparently being targeted by a server-wide DDOS attack and Blizzard’s subsequent decision to avoid letting those characters (and all other affected characters) stay permanently dead, which has started a tempest in a teapot and leaves me feeling pretty sympathetic to Blizzard because… like… this is an unwinnable situation. There are no answers here that work well. The studio is going to face criticism no matter what choice is made.
However, the situation got me thinking about challenge servers as a concept. Progression servers are another matter altogether, but challenge servers with different rules are a fun thing that I have previously expressed my admiration for. And yet they don’t tend to show up all that often. Progression servers, yes, but challenge servers, not so much. Why is that? Well, I think a big part of why is that challenge servers are actually really hard to run even without looking at the technical load of developing for one. So let’s look at that.
1. It requires a challenge that alters how you play the game
Here is my suggestion for a Final Fantasy XIV challenge server: You get no experience from quests or killing monsters, only for completing instanced duties. Oh, what’s that? I have been informed that what I have just described is basically “how the game already works” and therefore this does not qualify as any kind of a challenge.
You might think that this is really easy to do in terms of coming up with a challenge that alters how you play the game, but a lot of challenges that technically alter how you play the game do so by basically making a totally different game. The original Defense of the Ancients mod changes how you play Warcraft III, but it changes it so much that you functionally are no longer playing the game in a recognizable form.
2. It needs to be actually doable
There’s an interesting challenge for Super Mario Bros. in which the entire point is to speedrun the game without ever pressing the B button, meaning you can never run or shoot a fireball at all. Interesting challenge! But this does not extend to the game’s direct sequel because you just… cannot clear the game that way. There are no workarounds. If you try, you will die at the same place every time. Having a new challenge server means you still need to make sure the challenge is something actually possible, not “play WoW without ever looking at anything blue.”
3. You need to work out the edge cases
The basic idea of hardcore servers is understandable and doable (don’t die), but it does require dealing with the edge cases. What happens if you die because of an internet failure? What about resurrection spells or the ability to self-resurrect like the Shaman? It’s a lot safer if you just always level in a group; is that allowed or not? What about if existing high-level characters carry you? The list goes on.
My point is not that you cannot plan around these features because you absolutely can, but you do need to figure them out first and plan for them ahead of time – otherwise people are absolutely going to find obvious exploits and just go to town with them.
4. You need to test it and develop the specific rules
Yes, there is actual time-consuming and expensive technical work that needs to go into these servers, and it’s silly to pretend there isn’t. And because this is the fourth entry on the list, you can probably imagine that there are a lot of other conditions here, too.
5. Players need some kind of reward
Some players will absolutely do things just for bragging rights and to see if they are possible; I have a friend who comes up with absurd challenges in FFXIV because she finds it fun. But you still need to give them a platform to brag! I’m not kidding. If this becomes a big thing, you need to make sure players get some kind of reward for it, which is also tricky because if you make it too rewarding, players are going to optimize the challenge run into its easiest version, but if the rewards are nothing, you’re also going to make some of that work done in testing completely pointless.
6. You have to decide the boundaries of the mode
So you know what the challenge is for this particular challenge. Great. When is the challenge done? When can players say that they’ve successfully cleared it? If you have a challenge mode where every second characters have a 1% chance of dying permanently from a heart attack, how long do players have to keep rolling the dice and succeeding before they can say that they won the Heart Attack challenge?
7. It has to give players a reason to keep trying
So maybe your first attempt to clear this challenge did not work. Fine, that’s all right, sometimes your first go is a failure. The real question is why a player would try again. Heck, that’s even true if the first time was successful. Often in games like RuneScape this is aided by time-limited or seasonal servers, so you don’t have the Challenge Server sitting fallow for ages, but if players finish and then never do it again, well, that is going to cause some perverse incentives.
8. It has to actually be fun
“Fun” and “challenge” interact in weird ways. Speedrunning as a concept is about trying to pull off dozens of weird tricks over and over in order to make a number go down, and as someone who has speedrun certain categories before (not to any great success but just for fun), I can say it is a tricky operation. But the point is that you need the challenge you are undertaking to be fun on a fundamental level. Players have to want to play this challenge! It’s one of many reasons that the aforementioned Heart Attack challenge is a terrible idea.
9. You have to make all of the minute calls for circumstances
So you have successfully navigated all of the above issues. Good work! Your challenge server has gone live, players are enjoying it, and then you get a bunch of people who die because of a DDOS attack that isn’t your or their fault. What do you do? You could roll back the servers and say that didn’t count, but then that’s going to raise questions of favoritism. You could just shrug and say that players have to play it where it lies, so to speak. You could even consider more targeted intervention. But there is no single right solution.
Fair or unfair is going to be difficult to figure out and always will be, but however much planning you do ahead of time for a challenge, there will always be edge cases that come up after the fact. And as the studio running the server, you have to make the call, and some people will be unhappy about it. Full stop.
10. It needs to actually make more people play
If all of that work doesn’t end with people actually wanting to log in and play the challenge, it was all a bunch of wasted time. Why did you even make the Heart Attack challenge server a thing? That was never a good idea. What if you go start a potato farm? People always need potatoes.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
