When my peers of the class of 1995 were choosing the location of their next academic foray, they used rather diverse metrics.

Most sought qualities of a scholastic nature: professor/student ratio, program depth, academic reputation, etc. Some looked for the legendary appellation of “party school,” seeking to broaden their social horizons. But another quality, perhaps less obvious and rarely listed in brochures, was the diversity of peer groups.

I went to a big state school with 26k students, so finding a group that fit me wasn’t difficult. The internet was just getting its legs – chat rooms, email – these things suddenly became pastimes, though there were still few of us aware of it. Somewhere in my Sophomore year, my friend started playing Ultima Online – it had a small online population then, and I doubt many students of West Virginia University were playing it.

Things have changed. Not only do universities probably boast a rather large number of World of Warcraft’s 8 million players, but now you can actually get a vague idea of what schools have the most players.

Are we seeing another new metric for selecting college? Are you, gentle reader, planning on enrolling in Washington University because 1.7% of the traffic to Mapwow.com originates from its servers?

If so, you should probably not tell your parents.

[Cross posted from my blog]

Chris Anderson asked me to participate in giving a toast at the Wired Rave Awards dinner about why WoW was so great and giving a Raver award to Rob Pardo, Lead Game Designer of World of Warcraft (WoW), and his team. I had my own opinions about what made WoW so successful, but I asked Rob with whom I had the opportunity of sitting next to at the dinner. We had a longish conversation about games and WoW and was impressed by Rob’s insights and practical experience.

Rob was a guild leader of a hardcore raiding guild on Everquest. Rob is a hardcore gamer. He loved the game, but realized that there were things that could be better designed. He looked at all of the MMOs and together with his team, built a game that was better in each of the different components than any of its competitors while keeping the core culture and functionality of MMOs. They added some important new features including the rest system, team PvP without segregating players from the opposing factions, and a completely quest driven experience, which were new innovations. They also paid attention to issues that existing games experienced or they anticipated would experience and designed WoW to deal with them.

For instance, WoW does not allow buying and selling game gold. However, according to Rob, it doesn’t break the economy as some people think. The game is designed to minimize the negative impact of “farmers”. The quests and and equipment are designed so that there are many key things that you can’t buy with game gold. The issue of gold buying is primarily a matter of players feeling that it is unfair – the great thing about WoW and similar MMOs is that everyone starts equally regardless of what they do in real life.

Although Rob was a hardcore player in Everquest, he designed WoW so that it allowed casual players to have as much fun as hardcore players. It really shows and as a guild custodian of a guild that has many casual players, the ability for casual players to have fun in WoW is very important. Rob mentioned that one of they keys to success of a game is to make sure that the game is fun in the first 5 minutes. I think many game developers forget this and focus on gamers who are “serious” and willing to invest significant time to learn to play or wait a long time to have their first “fun event”. I think it is the breadth and diversity of the players that Rob tried to appeal to that is the key to success of WoW and he did it through attention to detail and trying to get each part right rather than focus on a single killer feature.

It reminds me a bit of the book “From Good to Great”.

In addition to the screenshots I took of Blood Elves at e3 yesterday I was able to get one of the Blizzard guys to show me some of the production art for the racial specialties, such as the Blood Elf specific mount. This is concept art but you’ll get the idea, I think it’s pretty much what we were expecting but very cool to see it actualized like this. And no, there is no way I’m giving up the name of the leak for fear of his job and future tips. So anyway, here is the image.

The Death Stories Project has gotten some airplay on Warcry and WOW Insider, but it deserves a further mention. Should the administrators of this project hold up their end of the research bargain, the results should be terribly interesting. Anyone can talk about virtual gross domestic products and social interactions, but it takes some dedication to seriously consider the ramifications of online fatality.

Compared to other MMOs, death in WOW is relatively pain-free. Sure, if you take the Spirit Healer’s offer, your equipment is going to take a sizable hit. If on the other hand, you buck up and make a ghostly corpse run, the damage is practically negligable. When next you’re in town, pay for some repairs and you’re on your way. Of course, I offer this from the perspective of a cloth-wearing priest. Those of you sporting the heavier armor probably pay a prettier penny.

Now, compare that with old EverQuest. Death in EQ had far more of a sting. Your weapons didn’t suffer damage … because they were still out keeping time with your mouldering body. If you wanted to get that Screaming Mace back in your hot little hand, you were going to have to go get it. With any luck, you had some spare armor and weapons in the bank, as well as some pocket change. You needed that handful of gold to pay whatever kind shaman felt like bestowing upon you Spirit of The Wolf and Levitate. If you had neither equipment or cash, then it was down to a matter of getting your naked toon from point A to point B without dying again. And to add insult to injury, death meant a loss of XP. A loss of too much XP resulted loss of level.

So … go visit Death Stories. Tell them your tales of woe.