EQ2 and WoW came out at roughly the same time. Back in 2011, Sony released the Dungeon Maker system in EQ2. There were a certain number of dungeon layouts you could choose from. You could collect mobs to add to your dungeons. You can chose if they are aggressive, and even what their aggro radius was. You could choose their dialogue. You could collect props, vegetation, etc.
While building the dungeon, you could visit it with your character, and even invite others to bring their characters to check out your progress.
Once you published your dungeon, people could join them solo or as a group. Once you finish running someone’s dungeon, you get to rate it, which becomes public information on a leader board.
I made one called “Don’t Kill the Bear.” It was a nondescript dungeon with normal mobs, but there was a little bear cub right at the end on the way to the exit portal. If you exited, you were good. If you attacked the bear cub, a train of like 50 mobs would be on you in no time.
It was a lot of fun. I believe it was built upon the housing framework of the game, where you could have a home with some props, pets, etc.
I wish Blizzard would add something similar to this within WoW.
I’m trying to find it, but I remember back in 2016 seeing a Dungeon-maker panel at Blizzcon where they were using the proprietary software to show parts of the design process. I’m sure it’s possible, but I don’t know if I’d necessarily want that within WoW itself. It’d be cool if it were something like a separate game mode with its own dedicated server so you could import character data over to give it a go.
A dungeon maker would be fun, but only if they had very strict standards on which dungeons to publish.
Most people are not map designers. Putting a long hallways with lots of monsters does not make a fun map, but that’s what 99% of the output would be.
It’s honestly a lot of work to put out playable maps. I’m not just talking hot air. I have designed actual published levels for a commercial FPS game.
Right. Scenario and encounter design also isn’t something a lot of folks have as a skill under their belt. Then again, I’m sure something like a dungeon maker would be a great gateway to getting people to rethink what makes a well-designed level a well-designed level. Most of the people I know who work with virtual environment design got their start messing around in Unreal or Unity.
And the better you are at designing one, and the more people you draw to your dungeon (leader board based on votes), the more rewards you get, like experience and gold.
Whoa now, I’d say keep the rewards out of it. You shouldn’t be able to get gold or EXP in droves from custom maps, otherwise people could make maps that are purely farming machines, lol.
Something like community rankings could be a bit more appropriate, like how Mario Maker handles theirs.
I remember discussions about this in the WoW forums back then. That’s when the mindset of WoW players was that anything was possible. Now the mindset is probably more never happen. So it goes.
Exactly. Every enemy placement, line of sight, door, window, etc has to be strategically placed. It’s definitely not a skill most people have.
At the same time though, I bet there’s a lot of creative players out there who would create some really cool levels.
They would definitely need a quality control team in place to only publish the best of the best though, otherwise it would just be overrun with poorly planned maps - the aforementioned long hallways with too many monsters lol.
Man, if you gave me those tools with something that could let me write my own scripts with customized methods and all that jazz, I would probably be designing special or goofy fights all day, lol.
Star Trek Online used to have the Foundry where you could create custom missions. The way they handled xp and drops was that you could only get a set amount in a 24 hour period, after that the mobs wouldn’t be worth anything.
Also, if a map was too easy, then it wouldn’t be eligible for the daily quest to do a foundry mission.
I would love for a Map/Dungeon maker for WoW. It would be fun to set up a series of Dungeon maps that function as a mini-campaign when played in the right order.
The only reward from it, though, should maybe be a cosmetic… perhaps a Dungeon Master’s Robe or something, but nothing that gives any actual power.
Preventing abuse would be… challenging, though. I don’t know if there would be a good way to do it pro-actively without severely limiting creativity.