There’s an aging corpulent MMO dinosaur that is lumbering under the weight of its own arrogance and sloth. This MMO has grown too big for its environment and is due for imminent extinction. This is the golden MMO that can do no wrong and even claims it has 12 million subscribers. If you haven’t guessed by now this MMO is called World of Warcraft.
For years now I have been warning the MMO community about an impending cataclysm resulting from misguided game developers who have seen fit to substitute fundamental MMO design virtues with dumbed-down game play and assorted parlor tricks. So it’s something of a fitting coincidence that we have an expansion by that very name.
I recently sampled a month of gameplay in Blizzard’s new WoW expansion Cataclysm and the result left me with all the exhilaration of riding an escalator in a shopping mall.
If you are acquainted with my past articles about WoW, you know this article will not hold anything back. Luckily, I’m not on the payroll of gaming magazine nor am I desperate for a job in the video game industry, so I can afford to be brutally honest.
Cataclysm as a Concept
Everything looks great on paper. Way back when Cataclysm was first unveiled to the public back at BlizzCon 2009, I believed the idea was sound. But the way things play out often differs from the initial concept. Briefly let’s examine the basis for this WoW expansion.
One of the major selling points for Cataclysm was that the original areas of WoW needed to be updated to reflect current design tools and the high level of craftsmanship of the quest team. It was also thought that creating a new WoW would provide more accessibility for future new players and ensure profitability for many years to come. Both admirable ideas if they could pull it off.
The problem was in the execution.
Designed by The Children’s Television Workshop
It’s almost as if someone has kidnapped the game designers at Irvine and replaced them with childcare workers. Azeroth which used to be somewhat exciting and marginally dangerous has become so kid friendly and idiot proof that you’d think you are wandering around in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood looking for a lemonade stand.
First you have the Worgen, Blizzard’s ace in the hole “cool” marketing feature. This new Alliance race that looked great in concept art ends up looking absurd and comical in practice. Imagine your family pet standing on its hind legs running around with full plate armor, sword and shield. Oops! The cartoon dog Scooby Doo looks more threatening than the Worgen which is really a nod to the popularity of the Underworld and Twilight genres. The fake British accents don’t help much either.
Then you have their Horde counterparts, the Star Trek Ferengi inspired goblins with their ridiculously flamboyant starting zone that puts a stake through the heart of any semblance of high fantasy that WoW ever had. At least the goblins don’t look as preposterous as the Worgen.
Just when you think Blizzard has jumped the shark they keep finding bigger sharks to jump.
Random Cataclysm Observations
Blizzard the world leader in MMOs has produced quite possibly the worst expansion in MMO history with levels 1-85 being utterly devoid of any semblance of challenge or intensity. Mob density has been nerfed to almost nothing in outdoor zones and in those occasional outdoor mini-dungeons; killing these mobs takes zero skill as player power has reached all-time heights in WoW.
Leveling too has become utterly trivialized. One of my characters stopped killing mobs completely and “earned” levels by gathering herbs and mining ore. It’s a wonder they don’t just start all new characters off at level 80. I’m sure this will be in the works for the next expansion as they unveil their new hero class as a final act of desperation to bribe players.
The new profession Archeology is so tedious and silly that it makes watching paint dry seem exciting.
Familiar and sentimental zones like Loch Modan, have been destroyed and replaced with desolate ugliness. The Forsaken lands have undergone an architecture makeover that makes them look like more like Disney’s Haunted Mansion then a maligned and tragic race trying to find its place in the world.
The new Uldum zone is highly derivative and comes across like some kind of Egyptian/Biblical theme park complete with every desert cliché found in those old Hollywood movies. I constantly found myself looking over my shoulder to see if Ben Hur was behind me in a chariot or Lawrence of Arabia was riding into battle.
What Goes Around Has Finally Come Around
The problems we see in Cataclysm didn’t transpire overnight. Like some deranged madman bent on suicide, Blizzard has destroyed everything that was good and noble about MMOs and seemingly wants to take the entire genre with it into existential oblivion.
Cataclysm is the end result of a MMO design by numbers philosophy inspired by the wishes of accountants and avarice of shareholders. This is one picnic basket of childish quests and facile gameplay expressly designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator out there.
Maybe Blizzard thinks that new players are rather stupid and need to be held by the hand as they progress though WoW. This kind of underestimation of the abilities of new players is so pervasive that WoW has devolved into a perpetual tutorial that lasts 85 undeserved levels.
But suddenly it changes at the level cap. WoW puts on the brakes and comes to a screeching halt. It reaches puberty and starts to become a real MMO that requires grouping — so much for a seamless transition.
For the vast majority of what constitutes WoW, the following is true: the challenge is gone, the risk is gone, the suspense is gone. the wonder is gone, and the immersion — well it left town years ago. It’s one big Bacchanalian orgy of advancement and rewards. Eventually players become immune to this mindless routine and have realized that gear and levels mean nothing. So they leave. This is why Blizzard needs a steady influx of new players to replace them.
WoW and the clones that it has spawned have become like whited sepulchers — pretty graphics on the outside and with precious little of value in the inside.
A Lesson in Unintended Consequences Blizzard Style
Recently flawed design including the Trojan Horse of all MMO features — the Dungeon Finder — has resulted in the mechanization and trivialization of the beloved dungeon crawl. Dungeons have become nothing more than mob and loot conveyor belts designed to dole out instant gratification to mute loot addicted participants culled from various servers.
But the greatest sin of all is that the Blizzard has single-handedly created the worst community in MMO history after all. Everyone’s a perpetual stranger in this strange land. Players no longer talk to each other and when they do it consists of trash talking because they can get away with it due to lax policy enforcement and “we want you back” Blizzard overtures to suspended players.
Players are wise to the reality that being outgoing, friendly and polite has no value in WoW all thanks to the geniuses on the Dungeon Finder development team.
You’d almost think that Blizzard feels that socialization and camaraderie are liabilities that should be removed from MMOs altogether.
Blizzard Has Created a Gamer Culture of Entitlement
It gets worse, it always does. The players through no fault of their own have become virtual slackers addicted to a steady drip feed of rewards. Shooting fish in a barrel would require too much skill for today’s average WoW player. People don’t want to work for anything anymore; they feel entitled. They want achievements for just showing up and Blizzard is only too happy to oblige.
To illustrate how bad things are, recently one of the lead designers Greg Street posted a blog article entitled Wow, Dungeons are Hard! where he responds to the thousands of WoW players that are finding heroic dungeons too difficult. While I have no personal opinion of Cataclysm’s heroic dungeons, Blizzard is finding itself suffering a major backlash from its subscribers. There have been over 12,000 replies to his blog article so far and for every one player supporting Street there are two opposing him.
While I agree philosophically with Greg Street that there should be challenge in a MMO it’s far too late to start implementing it now; that horse left the proverbial barn years ago.
Something tells me that the designers are Blizzard in their heart of hearts know that their MMO has become a joke, so in order to compensate for their guilt and shame they’ve create overly hard heroic dungeons to convince themselves that in some small little area of Toyland, there are still a few parts that are require skill.
I genuinely feel sorry for many of those casual gamers that are upset with Blizzard. It’s not their fault what has happened. They are hapless victims of the reeling excesses of Blizzard schizophrenic game design.
Blizzard you get the players you deserve. But they don’t deserve you.
Years of pandering to solo gamers at the expense of creating a cohesive community by discouraging grouping has created the least skilled players in MMO history. Shallow game design that sacrificed everything that made MMOs unique and special on the altar of profits and expediency has taken its toll.
If Blizzard applied the same principles that it used in the formation of WoW players and administered them to the military or any professional sports team, those organizations would have collapsed by now due to failure and incompetence. Every copy of WoW should come with this warning on the box:
Playing WoW will make you a worse gamer than you are now. After prolonged exposure players have been found to exhibit anti-social tendencies.
The Donut that Turned Into a Pancake
The real culprit here is a corporate philosophy that is based on growth. Subscriber growth. Blizzard’s policy has been to keep expanding the outer edges of its famous donut philosophy with marginal players of lesser skill and lesser time availability in order to get more profits. The result is a flattened pancake instead of a donut.
WoW is desperately trying to be too many things to too many people. There is no social or skill level cohesion in the current WoW player base and the middle can no longer hold as evidenced by the current player malaise and community disharmony. Communities cannot survive when their members have so little in common.
Figures Lie and Liars Figure
Sales figures do not accurately predict the quality of a product. In Blizzard’s case, the quality of this product was not readily apparent until the customer had purchased it, experienced it and couldn’t ask for a refund. This explains why so many WoW subscribers feel so betrayed right now. They realize they’ve been suckered and duped by empty promises and over-zealous marketing.
Some may legitimately say that I haven’t experienced enough of Cataclysm to prove my assertion that it’s the worst expansion in MMO history. I would reply that you don’t need to fall into a sewer to know that it stinks and is full of waste. While it may not be the absolute worst MMO expansion technically, there is no excuse for Blizzard as they should be held to a higher standard. They are the world leader in MMO production and have vast resources at their disposal to create the very best content possible and they have failed.
Conclusions Galore
Is Cataclysm the worst expansion in MMO history? To date, I believe it is. Only history can make that judgment. If anything, Cataclysm is the culmination and fruition of 6 years of Blizzard growing the MMO demographic by consistently dumbing-down gameplay and now the chickens have come home to roost with the current debacle that is WoW. Azeroth has become a consequence free wasteland of triviality where players have almost no way left to carve out identity and meaning for themselves.
Even if I concede that the original WoW was a MMO masterpiece in its own right albeit with flaws, the new version is akin to someone spraying graffiti on top of the canvas. Anything that was great about WoW has been erased and replaced with childish scribbling. The time has come to move on.
There’s a scene in the recent HBO series The Pacific where American soldiers who’ve been on a much deserved shore leave in Australia after some major bloody campaigns are one day summoned back from their leave and made to march 100 miles back to town. At the end of this forced march, the soldiers were exhausted, sore and blistered but were rightfully toughened up for the difficult challenges that their superiors knew lay ahead.
This is exactly what the MMO player base needs right now. We need a return to an mature adult MMO mindset that isn’t designed to appeal primarily to school children. We need to find and support a new MMO company that has the guts and leadership to do the right thing and puts the game/world first and profits last — don’t worry Mr. Corporate Suit Investor Guy — profits will naturally follow quality every time.
MMO companies need to stop insulting the intelligence and potential of their players. Stop creating single-player games and calling them MMOs so you can charge monthly subscription fees. Stop fabricating phony PVP contrivances like battlegrounds. Start trusting your players with more freedom instead of less. Start encouraging cooperation and socialization once again. Stop copying each other and come up with something original; game designers stop being so lazy.
It’s high time for the MMO industry to grow up.
While it’s far too late for Blizzard to change WoW, it’s not too late for new MMOs like RIFT, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, EverQuest 3 and even 38 Studios upcoming title to offer up a serious MMO experience. It’s time for the industry to man up, show some courage and start innovating for a change. It’s not going to be easy and you may even have to think outside the box but goodness knows this genre desperately needs it.
-Wolfshead
Despite still somewhat enjoying the game myself for the moment, I do agree with much of what you say.
Cataclysm is really such a mixed bag. You have the stupidly easy solo PvE content which has been neutered completely of all group quests. Quest mobs with ‘elite’ status are just slightly fancier normal mobs with a few additional tricks.
In that regard, you’re completely right. It’s a never ending tutorial. I could see the need for the first 10, perhaps even 20 levels to be a bit easier; particularly if their stats about 9/10 trials or whatever it was never making it past level 10. But surely after that the difficulty can be ramped up somewhat.
The dungeon content is more mixed. All the vanilla dungeons have also been neutered, dungeons or parts of dungeons that used to pose real challenges are slow and boring. In particular I’m thinking of that quest even to protect the guy channelling near the beginning of RFD.
That used to take some coordination, now you can literally kill an entire wave and then wait for the next. Ugh.
But then you get to the Cataclysm heroic content, which currently at least, can’t be said to be a faceroll. After 4.0.6… eh. We’ll see.
The difficulty curve isn’t even the biggest of issues, it’s just a symptom of the overall drive from somewhere in Blizzard to simplify, simplify, simplify, in an already rather simple game. Vanilla WoW wasn’t exactly rocket science.
But there’s been an increasing pace in the drive to make everything more accessible. Up to a point, I agreed. I did believe it stupid that only 1% or so of all players anywhere got to see raid content. I have no objection at all about the size shifts which have occured, nor do I have any problem with Cataclysm granting same loot to both 10 and 25m raids…
It’s just… Yeah. I think you’ve already said it fairly well. It is all just beginning to reek of a kiddy daycare.
I don’t think that Rift and co are going anywhere toward fixing the situation either. It’s certainly a tough time to be an adult MMOer, that’s for sure.
One thing I will say though; I doubt that WoW is going to flush the whole genre. Sooner or later something will break the mould and be wildly successful. I’d just rather it came closer to the ‘Sooner’ side of that spectrum. 😉
I seriously and solidly disagree.
Previously in my guild, we got into a pattern of preparing for the raids we do seperately, to then show up for them and have LOADS of fun together.
Now, we actually work together in our preparations and have loads of fun while doing that. Heroic Dungeons are quite alot harder than they used to be, meaning we have to work as a group to conquer them. We give eachother materials so we can work toward guild achivements together. I cant remember a time in WoW where I was this social with my guildies and with people on my server.
Yes, there’s alot of Solo play that’s easy as fuck. Yes there’s alot of things that can be done without looking at the screen… if you’ve done it before.
Blizzard has created a guide for the new players, letting them easily understand how the game works now.
For the older players, who know what to play, they’ve made cooperation more important than ever to achieve the hard stuff. Yeah, we can power to 85 quite easily, but after having played one class for god knows how long, older players want to try new classes. It’s still equally hard to to the hard stuff, once you start trying to do it.
Yes, there ARE alot of “Entitled” players, I do agree. But they were created by Wrath; not by Cata.
Anyways, you have your opinion and I have mine. I just wanted to express my utter disagreement.
I totally agree that WoW’s learning curve is more like a chest high wall. One that, when those used to casually wandering along encounter it, seems insurmountable, and those that do muster the tiny amount of strength required to scale it find the going just as easy on the other side.
I often wonder what the difference is between the top raiding guilds and the slower raiding guilds. Groups that play for the same amount of time, yet progress less. From what I’ve found, the encounters are simple enough to master, yet there’s always atleast one person who zones out, forgets a simple part of the fight, or forgets how to play their class, and who ends up ruining it, and are the first to complain when the group fail and feel that dying once is the worst thing ever.
But it wasn’t Cataclysm that brought in the sense of entitlement though, it was Wrath of the Lich King, where not only was everything easier, it was made progressively easier as it went along with +30% Damage buffs given to everyone in the ultimate end-game instance. Even my guild, who still have people who are troubled by heroics, squashed the final boss in Wrath.
God forbid any of these people ever try playing a single player indie game. They’d have trouble completing the tutorial levels.
It’s the Wrath sense of entitlement and ‘must raid now’ meaning that many players completely ignore the normal dungeons. Spending a bit more time questing and doing normal level 85 dungeons is the transition period between that and the harder heroics. And heroics are supposed to be the transition between 5 mans and the even harder raids.
It’s only a steep learning curve if you expect to ding 85 and go into heroics or raids the same hour.
While I don’t agree with every point, I certainly believe that Blizzard has created a culture of entitlement. What’s worse, however, is that their audience is simply so large and permeates to deep into the *entire* MMO audience, that I don’t know new themepark style games can get away with *not* designing to the Blizzard fundamentals. I mean, look at the games that have come out in the last few years and tried. They’re all floundering.
I honestly believe that the days of challenging leveling (outside of arbitrarily making them “hard” through grinding) and world-over-game development are behind us. The core audience has changed. Those of us that started in the days of EQ are now older, with less time to spend. We want the same things we always did, mostly, but now find ourselves in the minority to the players who started, and evolved, with WoW.
For what it is, I think WoW is fun and this certainly isn’t any fault of the players. I welcome our genre expanding and these new players with open arms — playing with others is *why* MMOs exist in the first place — but, in a way, I almost feel like WoW’s continued existence is more of a hindrance than a boon to the genre. If it wasn’t such a driving force, would players remain so set in their expectations for every future game to come out?
As always, well written Wolfshead. In a future post, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Blizzard’s story delivery in comparison to other games and traditional MMO narratives. It appears that they feel the best way is to tightly focus the character from points a to z, leaving no room for exploration in between.
I totally agree. But as you pointed out, especially regarding the feedback to Greg Street’s “Wow, Dungeons are Hard!” a lot of players seem to like it that way.
There is no common ground when people cheer at the Goblin/Worgen starter zone and questing revamp as the greatest thing ever. I believe exactly the opposite. The same for the “dungeons are too hard” debate. I think it was exactly the right thing to do after WotLK raids and especially dungeons became piss easy. But apparently around 50% if not even more of the players do not like the new Cataclysm dungeons for that reason.
2011 will see the release of many new MMOs, there should be enough alternatives. I wonder if Ghostcrawler and other designers will cave in and nerf the dungeons. I bet they will.
There are 12 straight nerfs at last count coming out with the next patch. Not counting bug-fixes that also make the encounters easier, Although there are bug fixes that make them harder, most are offset by a nerf that is supposed to balance the difficulty, but there are more nerfs than bugs so make of that what you will.
I think it’s too unfair an assertion to pin all this exclusively on Blizzard. If you want to see real inculcation of undeserved entitlement, why not look at the schools?
Every parent wants their child to stand out and be special, and this need has been addressed by schools who also believe that every kid should be given a chance to “shine,” sometimes just for building up their confidence.
This mentality is naturally carried in all these kids’ other activities, including gaming. Blizzard had a choice: Relent to a sweeping generational attitude or co-opt it in some way. And we all know how that decision went down.
All those statements about how entitled everyone else in the game seems to be (apart from you then of course), are they founded in your own in-game observations? Or are you just making the conclusion from what you read on the forums? The forums have a tendency to attract a certain type of players I think, not necessarily representing the vast majority.
About difficulty level and challenge. I would argue that the challenge whilst levelling is about the same as it’s been before. However the quests are way more varied and interesting than they used to be. No more boar intenstine gathering! I miss the group quests and I think the phasing and linearity has been drawn a bit too far, leaving little room and incentives for players to pick their own path in the game and explore the world. So I don’t think Cataclysm is flawless, far from But certainly not as bad as you claim it to be.
The graphics are absolutely stunning, such as in Vashj’ir. I’ve done a bit of snorkling in real life and they’ve really managed to capture the magical feeling in it. I suspect GC:s marine biologist background might have come to use?
The heroics are just spot on in difficulty level and I hope they won’t give in to forum complainers and nerf them to the ground.
You didn’t mention raids, but the encoungers I’ve seen have definitely been a step up in difficulty compared to Wrath – or even compared to TBC to be honest. I wouldn’t think of doing them outside of a guild, that’s for sure. And talking about guilds, they have done a lot to make players more motivated to join and stay in guilds and to group up, making WoW into a more social game.
As always you’re a brilliant writer Wolfshead. But I don’t agree with the reather nucance less bashing, where there’s only black and white and no shades of gray or color.
I think Blizzard has delivered way more and way better than I would have expected.
I agree that this is probably the best expansion in terms of new areas, dungeons and raids. They’re not actually that hard, like I said before it’s like a chest high wall, one you could easilly vault over with a modicum of will. Most of the players see that increase in difficulty and just want to walk over it, or worse, be carried over it.
It’s not the game that’s going to make this the worst XPac, it’s the people playing. As it always is with MMO’s, even the theme-park style ones, the players make the game.
Last time I commented here it was removed, presumably because I didn’t agree with you and challenged you. I’ll try one more time.
“Blizzard’s policy has been to keep expanding the outer edges of its famous donut philosophy with marginal players of lesser skill and lesser time availability in order to get more profits. The result is a flattened pancake instead of a donut.”
While I understand your point here it belies an understanding of the profit motive of business and reveals an elitist attitude that is at odds with a company being successful. How dare Blizzard invite players of “lesser skill” and with jobs and families who have “lesser time availability”?
Evidently in your world, MMO’s are for poopsockers who are bereft of real-world responsibility and have Greater Time Availability and therefore are More Skilled?
We get that you don’t like Blizzard and World of Warcraft and that it infuriates you that SO MANY PEOPLE like it. But posts like this just point out that you don’t have reasonable real-world expectations for a business to operate an MMO. I hope for the sake of the investors and stakeholders that you aren’t actively involved in MMO development.
I’m not, and for good reason. But I’ve been around these games and businesses long enough to know that reality and business needs are real.
Where is the outrage over what is going on at SOE?
I actually think Cataclysm is a very good expansion. It gives a lot of value for money and radically upgrades the game in a lot of areas. Quests are more interesting, the new races are very slick, the new talents are well balanced and there’s a lot do. Of course – and this is the overwhelming fact – it makes WoW even more WoW. And that’s very subjective.
I think for people who love what WoW is then it’s the perfect expansion but if you’re opposed to WoW then it’s probably the worst ever as it compounds years of slow progression by Blizzard in a particular direction. They want to offer quick, streamlined play to the masses and have really tapped into the psychological affects that motivate us and attract huge numbers of (dare I say it, younger and/or less MMO experienced) players. This mindset is very much at odds against players who experienced game like EQ and it’s strong, real virtual-world like culture. To me, WoW is a “MMO” and not a “MMORPG”.
I have a love/hate relationships with WoW and I’m probably one of the few people who likes the ease of play and high quality but misses the true social community that other games offer.
Ever Play Dark Ages of Camelot, Trial of Atlantis?….Now there was a crappy expansion.
Agreed. It nearly killed the entire game. I believe they lost 2/3rds of their subscribers due to that expansion. I think that is hard to beat as worst MMO expansion ever.
I agree 100% with your article Wolfshead, and the comment about the undead area being Disneyfied was spooky since it was exactly what I thought.
I joined up with my WoW friends just before catacylsm, and caved in to buy the expansion with just over a week of sub left. After one week I hit level 85 on my main and got within a few points of maxing my tradeskill out.
I could not remember more then 3-4 quests I did on the way though, and the only deaths I had were due to complacency, the next step I forsee in questing will be we automatically get quests given to us, and maybe a port to the quest giver…
After a few sessions with the guildies I logged on to play with we were at different stages so I ended up pugging. The criticism I’d give the dungeons was not that they were too hard, but more that there just isn’t enough to do. The artificial gear requirement to attain before entering the heroics requires endless running on the normal dungeons with only more running of the same but harder dungeons to look forward to.
The only thing I don’t believe in the article though is that future MMO’s will offer us anything different. Years after EQ2 launched some MMO’s are launching with worse graphics, and many are lamely trying to copy WoW by simplifying their gameplay (but missing the bits WoW does do right!). The end result seems to be these new MMO’s are just the same at best as our old ones, without the content.
Maybe its the winter blues, but I’m still waiting for something new out there to inspire me.
You’ve touched on solo play in the various parts of your post, but it deserves a rant all of it’s own. Not only are they making it drop dead easy to solo all the way to level cap, but they’ve even made it hostile to actively group. The worst offender is in the cata zones, where the constant phasing makes it nigh impossible to maintain a grouped experience.
I think you might need to remove this line from your Bio page:
“unswerving advocacy for the casual gamer”
as you seem to have taken up arms against the casual gamer.
Or does said advocacy include heaping scorn upon them based upon your opinion about alleged feelings of entitlement and using analogies, like the 100 mile march, to point out that they need to “toughen up?” Wouldn’t the latter seem to be counter to a casual play style?
You lash out against Blizzard for catering to “marginal players of lesser skill and lesser time availability.” Wouldn’t those, in fact, be casual players for whom you claim advocate?
Perhaps you had better define your terms.
That’s a fair point. But Blizzard has moved the definition of what a gamer casual wants — i.e. no challenge, easy leveling, easy progression. I’m actually more hardcore-casual. Even though I don’t have as much time as I used to I still like to have some semblance of challenge. Yes I should revamp my bio. Thanks 🙂
Just because you want a challenge doesn’t mean you’re hardcode. Setting aside a full night, atleast once a week, in order to play the game (IE PvPing, Raiding etc) is my definition of hardcore. Turning up when you have time and playing with whoever comes along (IE a pick-up group dungeon, or random PvP battleground, or – now defunct so far as of cata – Pick-up Raids) is casual. Either way you want something fun and challenging for your time.
>You lash out against Blizzard for catering to “marginal players of lesser skill and lesser time availability.” Wouldn’t those, in fact, be casual players for whom you claim advocate?
One of the main complaints some people have about current endgame content in WoW is that the ‘casual’ option of Heroics (as opposed to raids with scheduling required) can sometimes take as long as 2~3 hours for an inexperienced group.
But in response to the specific quote: lesser skill is due to either less experience, lack of desire to improve, or lack of opportunity to improve. Only the third is something Blizzard can fix, while the first is meant to be required from play so by definition someone who does have the time to play cannot complain that they don’t have time to learn how to play, especially if they have reached the level cap. If Blizzard addresses any problems with opportunity for improvement due to discrimination in groups, then there is no reason to say that casual means less skilled.
As for time availability, there are thousands of quests and dozens of instances spread thru the leveling process, not to mention professions and social activities, so someone with limited playtime cannot complain about not having anything to do. If they complain about not having a certain quality of items, then their desire to reduce the amount of progression in-game is in direct opposition to the majority of players who have more time to play than the person complaining, and reducing progression depth would not benefit other casual players who cares nothing about the quality of their gear.
Challenging gameplay is not discouraging for casual players. Not having the opportunity to improve in a game where groups respond to mistakes by kicking the player responsible is what discourages casual players.
I played MMOs when grouping was required and play sessions of less than an hour were fruitless. No thanks.
I’m from the same era.
I personally prefer being able to log into the game and start playing without all the extra hoops to jump through to get to the game.
Such games are nice. I play them, too. I loved tetris and still like chess online. But it is not what I want from a virtual world MMORPG with character developlemt.
I play in a virtual world with character development; every Wednesday I get together with some friends and play D&D (moving to Pathfinder actually).
MMOs don’t even come close. Even single player CRPGs don’t come close because you’re mostly limited by the mechanics they choose to implement rather than the imagination of whoever is running the game.
Firstly: title grammar. You used “is” twice., and for a minute I thought the title was totally different (i.e. you were defending WoW.)
You make some very good, and very agreeable points. It’s just a shame you’ve smothered all of them with this “WoW is teh suxorz” veneer.
Now: Worgen have been in the game since its inception. While their animations, looks and general aesthetics are pretty poor, I don’t you can say they were engineered to capture a new fad. Besides, I’d rather not have had another “oh wait there’s actually good aliens who have come to help you” scenario we had with the Draenei.
“Intensity” is dictated by you, the player. If you want to make it challenging, go nuts, level in half your gear (no heirlooms) and pull 50 mobs at a time. The option is there for you, is it not? You can ramp up the pace and difficulty as you see fit; the themepark is only on-rails if you let it be.
And here was me thinking that a no-combat option for levelling was a sandbox thing you would positively adore! You could now realistically reach the cap as a merchant/trader rather than a mercenary! Oh, wait, no. More choice = dumbing down the game. Gotcha.
As if any of WoW’s proffs are interesting? I wasn’t surprised at how bad Archaeology was; sure, it’s the collection-hunters gimmick this expansion, but it lived to expectations: boring, bland but kind of neat (with the little spyglass.)
Did you honestly think the new world would be all sunshine and lollipops and everything would be a bountiful bouquet of love and artistry? Hyjal is so much more beautiful than Loch Modan ever was. That’s a tradeoff worth making.
Yes, I agree, the Forsaken buildings are awful. Then again, I think the Forsaken have been basically made awful recently. Gone is the “have sympathy, we just want revenge then we’ll leave you alone” idea. Now they’re just generic evil arse-craps. Similarly, half of Uldum (the cat-people but) is amazing and really interesting. Harrison Jones, less so, although I couldn’t care less about the Nazi references.
No MMO has a point. No gear has a point. All you gain is friends and acquaintances. It’s ludicrous to lay this accusation at Blizzard’s feet, since every person realises this at some point, in some MMO. I’d hardly call raids mindless either, but then again, if we’re going to *judge every game by it’s levelling experience* then every game is shit. WoW is at least slightly interesting with the vehicle sections, more than I can say for anything SOE or Mythic have produced.
Another point I fully agree with: the dungeon finder is an abomination. I will forever oppose cross-realming and matchmaking in MMOs, but it’s a ship that has long since sailed. Dungeons aren’t fun anymore, they’re just incentive trains. They’re the most themeparky thing about WoW: deviating from the route, the safety precautions and the track will get you killed or you’ll simply never reach them due to invisible walls.
And WoW also produces some of the best PvE raiders, people so dedicated they gear alts up levels few could dream of just to wipe endlessly. It’s great to just focus on one extreme but not the other, eh?
I agree that Blizz don’t nurture social behaviour, and any idiot can tell you that MMOs live off relationships, be they friendly, less than that or more than that. Content is meaningless if there’s no-one to enjoy it with (which is why I despise SRPGs.)
WoW has a trial. Quality is an arbitrary, subjective word. Personall, I feel that WoW’s core element of combat responsiveness is still the highest quality to date; other things in WoW are close to that level, others are way below it (cut-scenes, blech.)
It’s high time the MMO players stopped blaming companies and started blaming themselves. It’s high time they realised that only their own lack of creativity makes most games a themepark.
It’s high time the MMO community stopped having delusions of grandeur and baffling hypocrisy and tried to figure out, finally, what they actually want.
Thanks for the grammar heads up. I fixed that already but something’s wrong with my WordPress install. I make changes and save them but they don’t always get saved. It was late when I made the post 🙂
Mmm late posting is never a good thing; worse, I normally forget I started writing a long response to things and then return to them, only to just give up and go to bed.
Any fault in WordPress is forgiven by the simple fact that this comment system is so nice, easy, remembers my field values AND has the cascading reply part. I hate having to trawl through blogger.com posts with loads of replies to try and find the person who replies to me ^^
It sounds like everything you are asking for is EVE Online.
Have you tried Eve?
“MMO companies need to stop insulting the intelligence and potential of their players.”
– EVE practically requires an economics degree…
“Stop fabricating phony PVP contrivances like battlegrounds.”
– Everywhere is pvp in EVE. It is up to players and corporations in how in depth they want their PVP to be.
“Start trusting your players with more freedom instead of less. ”
– In eve, you have to make corporations, and pretty much set up everything by yourself. The amount of freedom you have is limited only by the rules of the engine. And these continue to expand all of the time.
“Start encouraging cooperation and socialization once again. ”
– If you do not co-operate and talk in eve, you’re dead.
“Stop copying each other and come up with something original; game designers stop being so lazy.
– gah…
“It’s time for the industry to man up, show some courage and start innovating for a change.
“We need a return to an mature adult MMO mindset that isn’t designed to appeal primarily to school children.”
– A child wouldn’t stand a chance in Eve.
“We need to find and support a new MMO company that has the guts and leadership to do the right thing and puts the game/world first and profits last — don’t worry Mr. Corporate Suit Investor Guy — profits will naturally follow quality every time.”
– CCP is from Iceland… the whole country thrives on debt, not profit!
Why does casual have to mean easy?
“For years now I have been warning the MMO community about an impending cataclysm resulting from misguided game developers …”
Exactly how many “YEARS” equal impending? HAHAHAHA
On the contrary, I think Cataclysm is very well designed for its purpose. For new and returning casuals who are there to consume easy, piecemeal content (and quit at max level) – remember, they buy the box and pay 1-3 months’ subscription, it is a constant stream of income that supports the smaller hardcore subset. Similar to how the PvE hordes in Guild Wars buying boxes keep the game afloat for the smaller, competitive PvP crowd.
It may be antithetical to those who prefer to see MMOs ‘encourage’ socialization and grouping, to the extremes of whacking people with a stick if they don’t play in the ‘correct’ manner.
And it may be sickening to those who have already quested so much they can see through the metagame to identify the exact type of FedEx quest it is, ignoring the lore and pretty cutscenes and corny humor.
Sorry, you are not the target audience. All the easymode stuff, questing, soloing, Battlegrounds is keeping the money stream afloat by leveraging off the lowest common denominator of the mainstream masses.
But I do agree with the later part of your post, on unintended consequences Blizzard-style. I have been waiting for this fallout for years. I disagreed with some of Blizzard’s fundamentals and philosophy from the start – namely the obsessive focus on loot, gear as uber prestigious shoulderpad bragging rights, the endless raid progression ladder and level cap raises per expansion. Got drowned out by the majority at the time, few saw it coming.
What the above has done is created a TOXIC community, focused on pixels over people.
Then Blizzard made it worse by taking the admirable idea of catering to soloists and steering away from forced grouping, by moving to extremes of ‘ubereasymode’ and speed-power-leveling. Death Knights start at 55. Skip all the ugly tedious chores! Is the hidden message. The real game starts at max level! Steamroll heroics by outgearing them and AoE tank/blast everything down… not for fun, but for epic loot!!
Now the message is just confused. You can focus on inclusiveness and solo-friendly, but you have to then encourage people to group up because groups are more fun or interesting or complex and easy to form ie. through positive reinforcement (see City of Heroes.) Instead, WoW’s message was ‘We know some stuff is not fun. We will help you skip them faster. Here, have lots of loot. Oh, but when you cross this magic line, you have grown up and can enter the world of RAIDS, where you gotta man up and be all hardcore now.”
Whuh? So now you have built not just a toxic community obsessed on gear rather than interactions with people… you have made them impatient and feel entitled to STUFF. Monty Haul. Faster faster. Gogogo.
Then you slam down the brick wall of difficulty and forced reliance on coordinating 10 or 25 different people’s actions. Some people manage to learn and adapt, and others fall by the wayside. The folks that ‘got it’ get even more UBER loot. The folks that don’t often give up or quit or do the easy-peasy stuff. Now what you have done is created ELITISM. Haves and haves-not. Feelings of superiority and resentment, and hostility directed at both sides of the line with no willingness to understand the other party’s view.
Why is it any wonder that the devs (as so amply summarized in Ghostcrawler’s more recent perplexed blog and forum posts) are now struggling with a horrendous problem in terms of WoW’s toxic as hell community?
Now with the Dungeon Finder, and more balanced difficulty progressions in Heroics, it’s like trying to go the other way against the tides. An admirable effort, but they have a huge inertia hole they dug themselves into. No one wants to stop and teach in such an environment of potentially impatient, maniac strangers who won’t welcome anything that might maybe sound like an insinuation that they (or their gear) are not good and are just really out to get loot, not play with people to enjoy their company. So you end up with PUGs that keep running aground and happy to blamekick each other for what essentially boils down to failures to communicate and cooperate.
Blizzard’s tendency to fix problems via schizophrenic infrequent patching that sways things from one side to another with broad strokes doesn’t help either. People get doubly on edge for nerfs and game-changing ‘tweaks’ with every change.
“If you want to make it challenging, go nuts, level in half your gear (no heirlooms) and pull 50 mobs at a time. The option is there for you, is it not?”
Ah yeah, go ahead and do that in a single-player game if you want, but try it in an MMO and see how far you get. You’ll be kicked from pugs and even guilds.
Back in the day, when the first mount was at 40 my priest just didn’t have the 500 gold needed an so I continued on foot. By about level 45 I had saved up enough but by then I had decided to continue on foot .. all the way to 70. As a holy priest. I had no choice but to solo all the way as groups just didn’t want to wait for me to hike cross country, even if I was the healer.
So yeah, sure I have that choice, but it’s an ostracizing one in an MMO, which prompts the question of why even play in an MMO?
You are incorrect, sir. I humbly submit Shadows of Luclin as the worst MMO expansion ever.
I like Cataclysm and I’m enjoying it so far.
Leveling seems to be the lesser focus of the game – it is fun and enjoyable if you do it, not tough and trying. It’s a game, not a sentence or punishment. They’ve evened the playing field by letting casuals attain the level cap easier. It’s less vague in the quest descriptions and they’ve integrated a lot of what addons used to do for people to make questing easier (and a lot of games released have these as a base feature).
Reaching the PVE end game aside, they’ve also made it less likely casuals will be bullied on PVP servers. Time requirement to Level is no longer the obstacle it was previously. This makes the PVP scene a bit better.
I’ve been through all the Cata dungeons (successfully) and all the heroics at least twice – sometimes more. They’re challenging and unforgiving, more so with random PUG folk. But they’re not impossible, they require thought, coordination and awareness.
You could say someone half asleep could stumble through the leveling stage of the game and hitting dungeons is like having their head dunked in water. It’s a shocking change in difficulty. Heroics are even a step beyond that – for now. (I’m already starting to see things get adjusted, made more obvious and gear making things easier as could be expected).
I actually enjoyed the questing. I went back and finished off Twilight Highlands and Hyjal even though I was already level 85 but it was fun.
The biggest let down in Cataclysm, for me, is that there weren’t more zones and dungeons.
Otherwise, I’ve enjoyed it.
Oh Shadows of Luclin, even with how broken it was at launch and how it damaged EQ as a whole, I think it still pales in comparison with the Trials of Obi-wan, the final SWG expansion. When was the last time SOE gave people their money back for an expansion? For fail, that is hard to top.
I didn’t really get into SOE’s Star Wars MMO, but yes, the fact that they gave money back is a good metric of failure. hehe
I asked Tobold this the other day when he quoted Shadows of Luclin as one of the worst expansions ever, but he didn’t reply so I’ll ask here:
What was so bad about the SoL expansion?
I was playing DAOC when it launched. I came back to EQ a few months later and really enjoyed Luclin. It’s about my 4th favorite EQ expansion and I still have no idea what was supoposed to be so bad about it.
Gates of Discord was massively worse, in my opinion; loads of people in my guild and on my friends list left over that one. Planes of Power I disliked a lot too.
The challenge is gone?
Clearly you have not pugged a single Cata dungeon.
Started a comment, but it transformed into a post on its own.
“Good criticism differentiates. It does not claim that everything is bad about something, nor does it claim that everything is good. Having said that, I feel with Wolfshead. For six years now MMORPGs go into the wrong direction. From his point of view; from my point of view. They become less and less the kind of game we wish for. But criticism doesn’t work, if you don’t mention what is actually good about MMOs. In this case, we talk, of course, about World of Warcraft. …”
TL:DR version
” Wassaagh! My e-peen is sooo much bigger than you WOW players!”
Please it is an awesome expansion that millions of people love because it is fun. Remember fun? Here’s a hint it is the opposite of having to grind your life away only to get stomped by some no life loser over and over again.
Only real complaint is the ramp in difficulty between normal dungeons and Heroic. There is no excuse for not having multiple difficulty levels with scaling rewards.
Wolfshead, much of your writing resonates with me, even when I disagree. That includes much of this post. In fact, I hope it manages to reach a few Blizzard developers, because you touch upon some core issues with the game and supply a valuable point of view.
However, reading this post felt eerily like listening to Rush Limbaugh. 🙁
In my youth spent in the frozen socialist people’s republic of Canada I used to listen to Rush (both the music group and the radio host). Rush was sort of an antidote to the establishment and political correctness of the 1990’s. Now I’m more independent and less doctrinaire.
It’s quite possible that I’ve picked up some of his style in my articles. Thanks, I think 🙂
6/10 for my agreement level. 8.5 /10 for a fun read.
i cant say its the worst ever without having played every expansion ever (nor can you really) but i agree with the general sentiments, particularly concerning the non-social / anti-social aspects of the dungeon finder. I concede that i regularly kick people that dont perform well, where as back in the days of putting together a dungeon run in city chat i would take the time to teach someone on the run. Now im not saying that i used to be nicer, but what used to be most expedient was also the nice thing to do. anyway, nicely written, im sure you’ll get a billion comments and a bunch of h@ckz0rz trying to ruin you. enjoy infamy lol ;p
Amen!
Those of you defending WoW for it’s “fun” fact are obviously not the target audience of this article. In fact, you are more than likely, “The players through no fault of their own have become virtual slackers addicted to a steady drip feed of rewards.” I’m sorry if you have never experienced a truly immersive MMO before, but there is better out there. As Wolfshead said, until an MMO company is bold enough to accept smaller profits, albeit substantial profits, for the sake of a better game, MMOs will remain in their current state.
Sadly however, I don’t see this trend slowing down any time soon. Gaming companies have gotten a taste of what this massive casual market is willing to shell out and MMOs have become nothing more than an internet Fisher Price toy akin to Facebook games. For every one person who wants change, you have 5 more screaming over them to STFU… if they don’t like the games state, they can simply leave. You can see this behavior in almost every game available now whether it be EQ2, EVE, Aion, etc etc etc. Gamers have gotten so entitled to receiving rewards without trying, they don’t know what else there is/was before.
I hate to finish with such a cheesy passage but it really does fit the current state of MMO’s quite perfectly.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana (The Life of Reason, Vol. 1)
Thanks Jason, your post made me lol.
Any time someone characterizes a large group of people it makes it easier to dismiss their opinions. I’ve tried just about every MMO out there at some point. And the fact of the matter is, fun DOES matter.
Marching out the Santayana quote just shows that: a) you are taking yourself way too seriously, and b) you have no grounding in reality.
MMO’s that aren’t fun will be rejected. That isn’t Blizzard’s fault and it doesn’t make people sheep.
I’m not interested in playing a masochistic game. For those who are, more power to you. But don’t disparage people who want to play something lighter or more fun, just because it’s not what YOU want.
Likewise… don’t disparage people who want to play something more involved or more challenging, just because it’s not what YOU want.
Yes, fun does matter, problem is fun for you may not be fun for someone else… The sooner people realize that, the quicker MMOs can get out of their current rut. Many of the “majority” are so close-minded however, that I don’t see this happening anytime soon. It’s what YOU want, and nothing else. Apparently, only games that are considered a “fun game” by them, will succeed. Otherwise it’s almost assuredly doomed to fail.
This is the typical “STFU… if you don’t like the games state, you can simply leave” response I was talking about above.
My only question is “Why?” Wolfshead. You obviously retain a subscription to this game and still play it, all while ranting against it. I honestly don’t understand why someone would keep a subscription on a recurring basis to something they no longer seem to enjoy. Or has this expansion finally made you reach the same decision as I did?
Part of the reason I’m still playing is that I had a 6 month subscription that expires in February of this year.
The other reason is I like to know what’s going on in the world of MMOs just out of curiosity. The game designer in me is fascinated by the decisions that Blizzard makes with WoW and seeing how they play out in the player base.
It would be like someone studying journalism but refusing to read and analyze the New York Times.
Lately, seeing WoW’s popularity derail has given me a lot of what the Germans call Schadenfreude. I would be lying if I didn’t admit, that there’s a certain sense of satisfaction seeing a big company like Blizzard screw up.
As far as playing WoW, when I do I find the tedium painful and not enjoyable in the slightest. It’s more of a chore really. I consider it research. Writing about WoW has become far more interesting than actually playing it.
Yes it is interesting the mistakes they make. At the same time no one has been able to take advantage of those mistakes to gain a significant advantage in Western market for MMOs.
They are willing to change major components in a game contrary to the expectations of an article linked in the sidebar, but the question is always which is the most effective direction to go.
I wonder, is this thread still relevant to the current game of WoW?
More relevant than ever.
On the substantive point, I can’t really comment, not having played Cataclysm. Regardless of whether its good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, loved or loathed, however, I don’t think it makes a blind bit of difference to the future direction of MMOs.
Just look at how many MMOs there are now. Hundreds. A vast range of settings, styles, approaches, challenge, accessibility, whatever you care to name. And they will keep coming, just like novels and movies and bands keep coming. There will be something for everyone and for each individual there will be a whole lot more MMOs that aren’t fun than that are.
WoW is big and its gravity does pull some other MMOs out of their natural orbit, but in the end it’s only one big star in a vast galaxy of games. If you don’t like it, just move further away from it and turn your back on its glare.
I resubbed for 6 months due to all the pre-release Cataclysm hype. Have had absolutely no desire to log in for the past 3 weeks. :/
/agree with ya
Can I have your stuff?
I read the whole article, and obviously I understand your point that you’re looking for some challenge in the game (i.e. you are not the target demographic). What I don’t understand is how you believe the original WoW actually provided this. As far as I’m aware, mages used to just spam fireball spell all the way to level 60 or something like that and even during raids. Meanwhile, 95% of the quests were of the type “Kill 10 x, gather 10 Y”.
Sure there was more freedom, but more immersion? Phasing content actually makes it seem like you’re causing real changes to the game world, which is miles ahead in immersion compared to the old content, so I don’t understand that part either.
Leveling content was never intended to be challenging, ever (unless you tried to solo group quests, which is unintended anyhow). If you want challenge in WoW, why haven’t you been trying out the new heroics + raid content? There IS challenge in the game. Just because you choose to ignore it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
It’s really clear you did not play vanilla. And the things you have learned about it no doubt come from the community so I won’t fault you for that; there’s a ton of misinformation out there and even the good info is skewed by varying perspectives.
Phasing DESTROYS immersion. Because it forces the player on a singular path, which if the player refuses to follow they cannot even see the rest of the world. It decreases choice, which naturally decreases the amount of actual adventure the game can encourage.
Leveling content was absolutely intended to be challenging in the original iteration of the game. And it was, that is the proof. I do not know why you think otherwise except that you never played the original.
Despite class gameplay being somewhat shallow in vanilla, playing your class was not the glory of the game; playing your class in concert with other classes *was*. The difference is one in design philosophy. While vanilla aimed more at community cohesion, the current game does not. Sadly, the developers can’t seem to bring the two elements together in any satisfying way.
I’d say more but I’ve written about this already around the blogosphere. I think however your comments are very uninformed.
After reading this article, I have to ask… have you PLAYED Cataclysm? I was kind of hoping for a critique or some basic information or something, but you seem to basically be saying “I never liked WoW and it’s always horrible” over and over again. Given that the title mentions the Expansion and is posed as a question, I rather assumed you’d be addressing this question and talking a little bit about the expansion.
There is no way back to what you want. I accepted this some time ago and whilst I still come here and play the odd beta, it’s out of habit rather than hope.
The drip-fed reward system of old is still there but the rules have changed. Instead of nothing/nothing/nothing /win/nothing/nothing, it’s become small win/small win/small win/ big win/ small win etc.. It’s a fruit machine that wins on every spin, only the amount won differs.
I don’t believe the future will see people losing a nights experience for dying or being sat at level 49 for three weeks unless a very wealthy fan of the genre takes it upon himself to produce a game out of a passion for the idea rather than a passion for profit. It’s an unlikely scenario. Even if someone had the intent and the cash, you have to think they’d be tempted away from their goal through fear of nobody playing the game.
It’s a sad state.
One would think that after reading all the blogger replies out there that you were spewing falsehoods. I find this to be full of well founded opinions and I happen to agree with most of what you have said here. I think I have been expressing it constantly lately (not intentionally though) at my own blog, raiders-guild.org. I hate that even the blog community wants to divide into sides on the matter and can’t seem to find consensus about what is good and what is bad …but that is to be expected I guess.
I guess the ‘change’ was done by your character, not by your own avatar. Everything’s scripted and we cannot alter course by ourselves anyway. In addition, the phasing seems fit to a singleplayer game, not for multi-user (even massively) one. Lineage series and EVE online shows the immersion that MMO would pursue. Is it possible to control Goldshire as Horde? Is it possible to build a fortress after razing the Crossroads? Neither works in WOW.
Heroics and raids are a bit of challenge but not enough even with BC standards. Moreover, read on 4.0.6 patch note. They’re already nurfing these heroics down and it’s been around 2 months since the initial release, although they’re not saying the term ‘nerf’ themselves.
I’ve lost hope when Ghostcrawler said ilvl 13 as a rule of thumb in loot design. Is there any difference between this one and Borderlands? At least the FPS one doesn’t have subscription fee and free from e-peen nerds since you can drop the group any time.
I just realized that I have been trolled. Good job sir.
A little while ago I started reading this blog – the first post I ever read was the recent one about virtual property – and I thought it really helped me understand a point of view on MMOs and why WoW is so damaging to a certain segment of the gaming population. I’m glad I read that post first, and not this one, because if I had read this one first then I would never have learned anything here. I would have left thinking this blog was just a terrible mass of venom and bile with little reason or thought.
I think Cataclysm has some significant problems, and you even hint at a few of them here, but for the most part you seem too obsessed with complaining about everything to actually latch on to things that are really bad. Leveling by mining and gathering herbs doesn’t hurt anyone and some people will like it. Some people like archaeology and some people don’t – it is not objectively bad or boring. The “difficulty” of leveling in WoW has not changed at all from the original release. Hitting Moonfire every 12 seconds while I auto-attacked from level 1 to 60 with my first character was not hard, and left me probably even more woefully unprepared for endgame content than current content does for new players.
WoW has a community, but you don’t access it by logging on a few times just to find things to complain about. Trade chat is representative of the WoW community in the same way the internet forums are representative of the human race.
Saying that Blizzard’s quest for profits is ruining MMOs just sounds like teenage music fans yelling about people “selling out.” Blizzard has not ruined MMOs by trying to make something that appeals to everyone – even if that is a foolish thing to pursue. *Other companies* are ruining MMOs by thinking that the best way to emulate Blizzard’s financial success is to emulate their game. But this happens not only in video games but in nearly every industry. One company comes up with a good idea and makes lots of money, then dozens of companies try to copy it with minor tweaks to cash in. Blizzard is not to blame for making WoW, everyone who wants something else is to blame for not making not-WoW.
WoW needs to find a better gateway between the leveling experience and the endgame experience. It needs to truly separate its two difficulties of dungeons raiding so that people can play at the difficulty they want instead of having the game they play be just a stepping stone for the “real” players and so that those same “real” players don’t have to slog through content that wasn’t built for them. It needs to increase the number of things to do that are not daily quests and dungeons – most importantly by making the professions meaningful and engaging. All of these are real problems with WoW, the fact that WoW is not the MMO that a particular community wants it to be – and that no other game is either – is a problem, but it is not a problem with WoW.
When you say you dislike something but offer nothing to back it up then that is an opinion. When you dislike something but offer reasons for it then it’s an argument. I always try to back up what I say with reasoned thought and you are most welcome to disagree.
I agree with you. Much of the problem is that WoW tried to be all things to all people and the transitions from one part of the WoW experience to another part are horrendously inappropriate. It’s a mess.
I’m one of the biggest advocates around for other things for players to do in WoW such as player housing. I’m also a huge advocate that MMOs should promote that players cooperate with each other and that community is important.
Here’s is where I disagree: WoW *is* trying to be too many things to all people. Blizzard has created WoW to be this big net that catches all of the fish in the MMO and virtual world ocean but the net is not strong enough to hold all of the fish.
It is Blizzard’s fault that they have tried to craft a MMO that’s goal is to appeal to everyone. The reason they have tried this is all about making money.
You see 6 million subscribers just wasnt enough. So they made WoW easier. Then 7 million wasn’t enough, so they made the game even easier. And now we are here today.
It’s just like real estate prices here in the USA. This kind of growth is unsustainable. The bubble will burst and it is starting to burst right now with WoW.
Unless a major miracle happens, Cataclysm will be seen in history as the beginning of the end for WoW. Mark my words.
@Sthenno
Thanks for a well written and well reasoned perspective and counterpoint.
NO game is perfect, because everyone has different wants and needs.
@Genda
You do realize that responding to people with “Can I have your stuff?” is the signature trademark quote of a troll right? We get it… You don’t like people criticizing WoW. Given that, this is obviously not the blog for you to be reading. May I suggest you go check out Tobold’s blog however?
This is a blog forum where people can put their opinions to Wolfshead in writing, not a WoW forum where we come to get trolled. Your type of behavior gets old very quickly.
@Jason
It was a joke. No need to check your sense of humor at the door.
And I enjoy visiting a lot of blogs, I don’t really need any more suggestions but thank you.
On that note, it’s not that I don’t like people criticizing WoW, it’s the “OMG this game (any game) has no redeeming social value and in fact is precipitating the fall of the PC game business” posts that get me riled. As I mentioned in a post above, NO game is perfect and all of them are subject to review and criticism. It’s the bashing of a particular game over time that puzzles me.
I don’t revisit games that I don’t like or even despise in the name of research and I guess I don’t really understand those who do.
I will continue to read this blog for thoughtful commentary on other games when it appears as I enjoy that. I do agree with Wilhelm that this is no longer a bastion for the casual player though.
Wolfshead,
I do agree with some of your points but to be honest I think you are suffering WoW burnout. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that your time with WoW is now complete and move on to another game – MMO or not.
Believe it or not there are better MMO’s out there with far superior communities. Cancel WoW and move on to something else. Many of us have done just that and have not regretted the decision.
Part of the problem lies in pining down the definition of a casual player. Everyone’s definition of casual is different.
However, one cannot deny that Blizzard has pushed the definition in the direction so players who have lesser skill and time availability can now play WoW. This trend seems to compound which each passing year.
A casual WoW player in 2004 might be considered a hardcore player in 2011.
One thing is certain: MMOs are on a trajectory of being of having lower barriers to entry such as increased accessibility and lesser skill requirements and even worse less of a social fitness requirement (anti-social players and players with no manners).
If you wait long enough in the world of MMOs everyone will be considered “hardcore”.
As I stated in the article I believe the central part of the problem is that WoW is trying too hard to be all things to all people. The more Blizzard tries to achieve this, the greater the chance that the community will break down (we are seeing this right now) and the greater the chance that WoW will start to collapse. Nothing lasts forever.
I really feel for people who still love WoW and are upset at me for being down on their MMO. I also feel bad for people who have quit playing because WoW has gotten too hard.
WoW is both too easy and too hard. That may sound silly to say but this is a very complex problem once you dig a bit deeper.
WoW is far too easy and childish for the first 85 levels. Nothing is demanded or expected of players. You can solo all the way to the level cap without ever saying a word to another fellow player. No technical skill or social skills are required. Allowing players to get away with this is the worst kind of game design imaginable.
Blizzard has failed to properly prepare players for the challenges that await them at level 85. This is irresponsible and immature game design in my view. It’s like sending a teenager with a primary school education to college.
A well designed game increases the level of challenge incrementally. The history of WoW is full of blatant violations of this rule. I remember how Blackwing Lair was insanely hard after our guild farmed Molten Core for months. Nothing prepared us for that jolt.
A well designed game should make you a better player.
Then on the other extreme WoW has become far too difficult. Group dungeon content has become infected by a raid design ethos where bosses keep getting more complex and silly. All bosses now have to have all of these ridiculous abilities that require players to spend hours pouring over “how to” videos and strategy guides in order to have a chance at victory. There is little chance for error.
At this level success is the players ability to “learn” a strategy and perform it flawlessly. WoW at this level has more in common with Dancing with the Stars and children’s game Simon Says than the ability to think on one’s feet and improvise.
The Blizzard designers (both quest and dungeon/raid) have become in love with their own egos because they can no longer see this. They have become blind.
Great game design is all about creating reasonable challenge transitions. The brain trust at Blizzard has consistently failed to achieve this objective and this is why many WoW players are up in arms.
Finally we have a real “war” in World of Warcraft. But it’s not the war that the developers ever conceived or imagined. It’s player style against player style and players against the devs. Blizzard is not a likely victor in this conflict.
What is really missing in all of this is a overarching vision for what WoW should be. The player experience needs to be well-defined and tightned up by trimming off the ridiculously easy on one end and the insanely hard on the other end. This will help to create a more cohesive community instead of the wide chasm that exists now between both camps.
Saying that you want your players to experience “fun” and “cool” content is unambitious and simplistic. Real vision requires passionate leadership that sticks to its guns and doesn’t capitulate to Activision or shareholders.
@Stheno: Good counter argument.
Still, I can see the merit and points of Wolfshead’s arguments. Sometimes we get impassioned and just need to read between the rant and anger to find them. Besides, it is his style of blogging. I just accept it for what it is. Just because we don’t like how people say things, doesn’t devalue the things they say.
As for the profits ruining developer vision …I think we ought to ask that question, as well as all the others we are all asking. It’s not adolescent to do so. In the search for understanding, leave no stone unturned.
Lastly, the community is absolutely a product of socially unconscious game design. I don’t see how you are trying to separate the need for the devs to rectify problems of the game while excluding the feedback of a portion of the community.
>a trajectory of being of having lower barriers to entry
“Entry” is just that. While there are occasionally players who die in the first starting zone of WoW (I know I did :P.. oh, casters have spells?!) the market for MMOs without challenging gameplay is not likely any larger than the market for single-player games without challenge.
The key characteristic of original WoW was that people limited by playtime were able to feel they accomplished something, in the form of quests. If anything has changed, it’s only the social perceptions of what accomplishment is and the removal of challenge from earlier levels which instead of attracting, more often deters new players who have not been exposed to endgame culture and therefore do not see reaching the level cap as a significant goal in itself. This is mentioned in the original article, although without this specific interpretation of the effect this lack of challenge has on ‘casual’ players new to the game.
>trying too hard to be all things to all people. The more Blizzard tries to achieve this, the greater the chance that the community will break down . . .
The divisive point is not one of playtime. It is one of goals, whether “having fun” (possibly, in the sense of challenge) is the goal or whether “log in to collect rewards” is the goal. While hardcore and casual are compatible even in PvP if done right, overall goals are what cause conflict in design direction of a game, especially when certain types of personalities are less likely to express their opinion in a way which will influence the perception of the playerbase’s desires. In the article as well:
>While I have no personal opinion of Cataclysm’s heroic dungeons, . . .
The people who do not voice their opinions to Blizzard are exactly the ones who seek harmony with the rest of the community. Their loss is a major cause of the shift towards short-term goals, which are not viable in MMO design as it causes people to quit in Cataclysm “for no real reason just feeling burned out” in a way that Blizzard cannot address because the reason for playing was not consistent or understandable in the first place. Some people have a reason understood by themselves and understandable to others such as “kicked too many times in Heroics, can’t progress” but not everyone has such a reason understandable from the current context of the game, due exactly to the previous design and perceived method of “achieving” things.
The lack of challenge at lower levels is the direct consequence of perceived goals as well as the perceived job of “introducing new content” and everyone agrees that it’s bad for the level cap IF gameplay remains challenging (unlike WotLK faceroll progress); the question is just whether the discrepancy will be fixed or the game’s quality will continue to suffer. However, the type of challenge is more about the expectations of players of what to expect from the game. Some people want a greater depth of knowledge required to progress, even if that knowledge has no applicability for other game situations and zero relevance to anything outside the game. Others would prefer a more ‘realistic’ type of challenge, but at the same time the challenge may not be as important as the context of a story about that challenge and how it relates to other goals which may have non-game relevance even if the expression of the challenge itself does not. Unlike the goal conflicts of “challenge” vs “collect loot”, these preferences for the type of challenge might have a resolution.
>Real vision requires passionate leadership that sticks to its guns and doesn’t capitulate to Activision or shareholders.
No worries, the only capitulation Blizzard does is to whining on their forums. >.> (as well as to Korean legislative bodies)
Simple refutation. Prior to TBC, there were no major nerfs to the difficulty of 1~60 leveling (the balancing patches for specific patches had the main goal of making talents more fun, not more powerful… see new mage 11 pt talent for 2% physical mitigation only?!), and for casual players except for the few additions of small-group the game actually got harder as time went on as gear gap between casuals and hardcore in PvP increased.
Despite all this, WoW showed steady growth during this whole time period.
The bubble only burst after the difficulty decreased.
More like the bubble burst after the market was saturated.
Taemojitsu: and it looks like the bubble REALLY burst after they ramped difficulty back up a bit.
Wolfie,
Dude…. stop making yourself nuts in wowland. Here’s an Eve story for ya.
Last week, running a complex out in Great Wildlands, kinda like a heroic 5-to-8 man run with some boss drops. Destroyed and looted a Angel Cartel pirate outpost, when a hostile player in a Rapier cloaks off gate, obviously scouting us out.
Our small gang of corp and alliance members go about 8 jumps towards the next escalation, the term used to describe when killing one complex boss results in spawning a more difficult one. The Rapier pilot is stalking us the whole way. Meantime, our fleet commander (FC) is calling in additional corpies to see if they can catch this guy from behind.
We are holding on gate, because we don’t want to give away the location of the escalation, since an ambush during a boss fight would quickly become a bad day. Rapier pilot warps to us and lights a cyno field, which allows his buddies to instantly jump to him unless we take it down quickly.
http://killboard.benegesseritcorp.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7111
Our small gang of five overheat guns and fire. Rapier ‘plodes, but not before his buddy jumps in with a Thanatos carrier. He launches fighters, then begins chewing away at my shields and nuking my capacitor. It’s a race to see how quickly are reinforcements can arrive. We are pouring everything we got into him, but he’s a big ship 2 kilometers long tanked with over 150,000 armor, it’s going to take a few minutes…. Meanwhile, our scouts in adjacent systems still report no hostile activity.
I’m at 15% shields, when the Thanatos pilot switches cap neut to our tackle, then warps out. We chase, but by the time we catch up, he has cloaked, and all we find are a few of his fighter drones. We scoop them up for about 40 mil isk in loot. Not bad for getting hotdropped in a carrier while flying mostly carebear PvE fits for complex running.
We leave him there to lick his wounds, continue on our way, do the last boss, and make another 250 mil isk on faction drops over the next hour. Friendly alliance players watch surrounding systems to make sure no more surprises are headed our way. And that’s a day in nulsec.
Join us, Wolfie. Be a casual flyer, let the FCs be hardcore. Take a break from wizards and warriors, and mix it up in the black. We would love to have ya.
@ Taemojitsu
“The bubble only burst after the difficulty decreased.” – well said!
One could argue that WoW was its most successful (in terms of customer satisfaction and growth) during TBC. I say this because many people who chose to pass up on WoW for EQ2 in 2004 did so because EQ2 promoted more challenging gameplay in comparison. When both games released with a significant challenege to them, many EQ2 (and others) subscribers, myself included, gave WoW a try. This also happened to coincide with the end of vanilla and release of TBC expansion. If you look at the graphs/numbers produced by Blizzard you can see a steady rise in subscribers from the end of Vanilla to TBC. I have to admit, I was in love with WoW when I first moved over… Yeah, the graphics took some time to get used to, but you could definitely see that Blizzards cared for their game unlike any other company at the time.
Now when TBC started winding down, people started gearing up for WotLK and Blizzard started to shift their priorities to MORE subscribers at the sake of “game difficulty.” Those of us who were playing WoW as a more streamlined alternative to EQ2 / GW /whatever, decided to head on out. You can see this in Blizzards famous graphs also. This was the beginning of the end for WoW in terms of substance over subscriptions. WotLK steamrolled in and catered increasingly more to the “casual” player. Subscriptions skyrocketed but at the cost of a more mature, community-friendly game feel. It then became obvious that Blizzard valued subscriptions and numbers over substance. That “love” Blizzard once had for the quality of their game was simply gone.
At this time, Blizzard noticed they were losing older players so they decided to dumb down the game even further. They replaced those lost with an even more casual player. This has happened more and more times over the past few years. As those who “got burned out” or grew tired of stale content, left the game, Blizzards one-uped them replacing them with newer and newer demographics.
So Blizzard can go around flaunting their subscription numbers, but the fact remains that WoW has this reputation of being the rudest 100lbs. gorilla in the room, that no one wants to deal with. Believe it or not, Blizzard can impose it’s will on the industry whenever they choose. People say the reputation is unwarranted and unjustified, but it’s simply the reality of ths situation. This is exactly why people place the blame upon Blizzard. Is it fair to do this? Probably not, but it just doesn’t seem they take their responsibility of being a titan of the industry seriously anymore. Instead of forwarding the genre, they choose to stifle it with stagnant design ideas focused on killing communities and “increasing accessability” all for the sake of making an extra buck.