900 seconds with Warcraft Rumble - The early days of Christmas Soup

UX and Game Design Lessons from 15 minutes of disappointment?

Hype, hype, hype!

Warcraft Rumble is a new mobile strategy game globally released by Blizzard last week. As a player, you will get to experience the complex world of Warcraft Universe in a Clash Royale’ish form. The game is currently trending as -surprise, surprise- #1 both on AppStore and Google Play. The strength of IP is real.

Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne is my all-time favorite strategy game, so I’m really looking forward to having a look at this title.

WHY 900 SECONDS?

Anytime I try a new game, I’m a bit worried for myself. If the game is well designed, I can easily spend a lot of time even in the first session.

To keep myself in check, I decided to put a strict timer for just 15 minutes and turn it into an exploration of game design.

The original question was: Can you learn anything insightful by just playing 15 minutes? Always.

So the real question is: What can you learn in just 15 minutes?

Let’s find out today with Warcraft Rumble. (You can Download the game at AppStore / Google Play )

GAME DESIGN LESSONS

Reminder: Game design (GD) lessons follow the principle of the Design Breadcrumbs newsletter which is to provide easy-to-digest insights.

1. EARLY TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

The first 15 minutes of my gameplay were filled with many bugs and errors. That is understandable with the title of such a scale and I have no hard feelings about that. The desire to experience Warcraft on mobile was stronger, so I persisted and tried it repeatedly to experience the game. I have to admit, that I wouldn’t be as lenient with other games and I imagine the dropoff of new players must have been huge.

1) “Something went wrong” - always try to provide an explanation what is the cause of the problem and try to offer the solution to the problem. 2) OK and RETRY basically do the same action 3) After retrying I was informed that I needed more space on my device. However, that was false information, since half of my storage space is free.

Lesson: Even though the start was rough, my desire was stronger and I kept trying to experience the game. However, there aren’t many titles that could get away with such problems.

Source for reading: 10 Usability Heuristics - #9 is about helping users to recognise, diagnose and recover from errors.

2. BLIZZARD’S ATTENTION TO DETAIL DELIVERS ONCE AGAIN

Intro video, animations, and design of the assets. It’s all there and straight away you can tell this is the signature work coming from Blizzard.

Lesson: I wouldn’t call this a lesson per se, but the level of polish that Blizzard is able to deliver is phenomenal. Every one of us should take this as an inspiration and example. We should hold ourselves to higher standards. Don’t slack the execution!

3. ONBOARDING ISSUES

Just as I praised the polish of the game, the actual onboarding experience was on the other side of the spectrum. In many cases, it almost felt like the onboarding and implementation of new mechanics was done by a different company. There were just so many unclear interactions, unclear wording, timing, and inconsistencies that after I was done with the Elvyn Forrest, I was left with so many questions.

The number of usability issues in onboarding combined with the complexity of the game would deserve an article on its own, but we need to keep it simple here, so let’s look at a couple of findings below:

Strategy games are dynamic. Often you need to make decisions in a matter of milliseconds. The current visuals of units in your deck are visually busy and it was very difficult to distinguish them quickly. It takes a lot of practice and recall to learn all the differences between minis, spells, and leaders which increases the difficulty of the game.

Red circle: Information about Goldtooth is presented once and only before the actual gameplay - the timing of presented information is “off”. This increases the information load of things that I should (probably) keep in mind. /// Purple: The visual on the pop-up screen looks different (even though it is a 3D model) from the model in the gameplay. Therefore making an easy connection between these visuals is compromised.

Lesson: Always review if the information you are providing to the player is essential and if the timing is right. Otherwise, you are just increasing the information load on the new player.

In the early stages of the game, I am supposed to make important decisions about my minis. Right screen: What I am supposed to do here and what is about to happen? I discovered this only after tapping one unit. Making such a decision early on is not ideal since I am not familiar with these minis, and there is not even any additional info to help me decide. /// Left screen: Selection of the FIRST LEADER is done via this pop-up screen. Three leaders to choose from and only three tiny “info” buttons to help me decide.

Lesson: Are you providing enough information to the player so that he can make an informed decision? Is it even important for the player to make a decision?

Well, yes Little Spark. This is literally 1:1 experience how I felt during my first 15 minutes of gameplay.

Main Lesson: A lot of small usability issues are often neglected because the impact of change is difficult to be measured, or simply is not regarded as an important matter. However once many of such issues stack up, you end up with a frustrating experience overall. It is really common to dive deep into details and forget about the big picture. It is important to have a look at the big picture regularly and to check if all the small parts work together as intended.

Challenge: Try to identify core sections of your game/product and put there that “one extra mile” of effort.

WRAP UP

Over the next couple of days, I found myself having a completely different experience as compared to my first days with Clash Royale. When the Clash Royale was released, I couldn’t stop playing it. Anytime, anywhere.

With Warcraft Rumble I found myself forced to play for the sake of this article rather than having an urge to play.

The steep pacing of new mechanics combined with not-so-clear information left me with many unanswered questions. I was left with no clear agenda on what I should do next in the game long-term.

Also from the strategic viewpoint, the gameplay doesn’t feel as good and easy going as compared to Clash Royale. The usability issues in the battles combined with large complexity of the game are making the strategic gameplay more chaotic and less enjoyable.

Scrollable map and 3D environment, problematic recognition of units (minis vs leaders), unclear aggro radius and varying unclear spawn points in PvE to name a few.

Due to the size of the map, it is difficult to monitor the situation on the battlefield which is essential in Strategic gameplay. The notifications (purple circles) are not solving this need efficiently. /// 3D environment creates situations where you end up with just silhouettes of the units (green circle). This decreases the clarity and increases the knowledge requirements on the player once again. /// The reduced price of the Leader (orange circle) is caused by playing Unbound troops. Can you tell which troops are unbound? Yup. You need to learn it outside of the battle and remember it.

Sure, now you might tell me, that this is a pure “skill issue” and I need to “git gud” (please do so in the comments below <3 ), but there is a difference between “challenge by design” and “challenge by poor usability”. The first one is difficult to pull off and the latter is an undesired side effect.

My prediction

My prediction is current version of the game will lead to a large drop-off of new inexperienced players to the genre, which will make the scale-up of this game challenging in the long term.

However, I do not underestimate the loyal fanbase of the Blizzard and the strength of IP, so the early numbers are already looking promising. However, the long-term chart will present many game design and UX challenges.

I expect there will be new iterations of onboarding implemented soon and the same will happen to strategic gameplay mechanics as well if they want to retain the high-level competitive players. Actually, I believe that they are already working on new iterations of onboarding and game design improvements.

WHAT'S NEXT?

For now, I would compare Warcraft Rumble to a traditional Christmas Sauerkraut Soup.

Feasting Orc. Source: civitai.com

First, you get all the best ingredients (and Blizzard has all the best ingredients!). You have the recipe ready, so you start preparing ingredients and then you cook the soup for a couple of hours.

Yes, you can eat the soup straight away, once the cooking is finished. But everybody knows that this soup is much better the next day, once all the flavors are developed and mixed up.

Dear Warcraft Rumble. I am very happy you are here! For now, I will be taking a break from you, so you can develop the flavor a bit more and we’ll meet again later. Till then, Merry Christmas!

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