This week, in his World of Warcraft editorial, Joe Iuliani poses the question: What keeps players interested in playing WoW and what draws new players to a game where so many people have already reached max level?

World of Warcraft is closing in on its three year anniversary.  There is no doubt that WOW had taken the gaming world by storm.  Their sales and subscriptions have been nothing less than extraordinary and nobody can really argue with their statistics.

In fact, they are many MMO players out there who never played anything but WOW (you really need to feel bad for them). Additionally, they have become the hurdle that almost every new fantasy based MMO must jump, so much so that most emerging games are accused of being “WoW clones”.

Even with these credits, the question is “After three years can WoW still hold a player’s interest?”

With more and more subscribers keeping their eye on the next MMO, how will WOW stay competitive in an evolving and expanding MMO world?

Read the whole thing here.

That's an interesting approach but on the contrary, will it not decrease the time spent on or in the game?

To my experience so far, there are many customers who deem the grind to max level as content per se. Then they reached that goal, it's void. There's nothing to take your hand and 'guide you through enjoyment' so to speak. Given that one may level yet another alt easier and faster tho.

Now then! It is not like that for any and all players mind you. What I look at, is a fraction or part of the customer base and nothing more. Nevertheless not less interesting in my opinion as there is one major interesting trick to it. It will benefit the host of the game and not any and all of the customers. Short time subscriptions anyone?

Easier to level, less time invested in the long run and less overall staying time. Sure it is highly likely that new as old customers will stay longer to / and enjoy the end game content. Yet this is not my point.

As I said, I do only look at a selected, specific part of the customer base. What I do question is the intention of these changes. Be it good or bad is up to everyone him or herself to decide. I certainly am intrigued by the 'true' origin of this idea. Who benefits most and why? Blizzard or the (ordinary) player?

I think that increasing experience for people leveling 1-60 is a beneficial thing as the game exists today. Ideally, the non-lazy man's route would be if Blizzard added NEW CONTENT for players level 10-60 with each expansion so those first sixty levels don't just become a game of catch-up with the veteran players. With WoW, they have a formula that seems to work so I understand them approaching things from an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. On the other hand, as a WoW devotee for a year and a half, I didn't even bother giving BC a chance because it seemed so uninspired and more of the same old stuff (same faction grinds, same kill-and-collect questing, same raid content) with different skins.

I think they may be adding a little something new into their proven formula with the introduction of siege zones, but again, is this something that will only be accessible to higher echelon players? And will this be as tacked on and haphazard as the world PvP towers were during the twilight days of the original game?

While at its core WoW is very casual and solo friendly, BC and the coming expansion seem only to be fueling the grind towards max level rather than enriching and expanding the existing world and giving ALL players something to get excited about. I think rather then revisiting the same old gimmicks they've used for 3+ years again and again, something like siege warfare could bring something fresh to the existing framework without compromising what already works. There's that old saying, "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey." If Blizzard devs adhered to that philosophy, I think they could breath some life back into the game.

Not that i play WoW anymore, (though it was my sole MMO for about 1.2 years) but it is nice to see that they are constantly adding new elements to the game. grant it, alot of it has been focused on PvP, wich alot of people complain about, but whats to be expected from a game based on a RTS?  even the pvp content over the last couple years was sorta exciting, it was over whelming when they brought in the first battle ground, and im almost sad i didnt stick around for arenas, now the siege zones, as much as people bash WoW( ill admit, i do bash it a bit) blizzard is putting forth an effort to maintain is spot in the upper echelon of the mmorpg gaming comunity. the only reason i got away from it was I got a bit bored before burning crusade hit, well ok, really bored, but im more of a role-player than a 'i got sweet lootz" player. kinda why im stickin with eve right now, because i get the role-playing feel from the game even though none of hte players around me intend for it. But gratz to you WoW, you are keeping my lil siblins and my mother entertained for sure, i apreciate it!!

This move alone might bring me back in to the fold. I played Wow from February of 2005 right up until July 2007, and left the game due to an increasing unwillingness to waste my time leveling alts forever.....

I had no trouble leveling 5 alts to 60 back before TBC came out...(and several others into the 40's) so this move really wouldn't encourage me to come back.

I was firmly in the camp that once I got to the end game...there was nothing fun to do. Oh sure, I tried the raiding scene, and while first time killing bosses was fun, sometimes the weeks of work to get there and the subsequent re killing bosses ad nausem certainly didn't qualify as fun.

So if you want to race through the mid-game so that you can quickly get to the end game raiding or arena's for PVP...then experience acceleration is a great idea...other wise I don't think its that good of a move.

you have a point, it did almost encourage me to give the burning crusade a try, lvl up and catch up with my friends that are still in the loop, or "aquire a toon" around lvl 50 or so so i dont have to go thru the lvling that i have done so many times before.. but how long till I get bored again? is it worth the sub fees?

One solution found on the WOW forums is: Level 20-60 Quest EXP has been increased, while EXP to Level has been decreased

This will allow you to blow past that pesky Content of the game, and get the the PvP gind , and forum posting about nothing to do and how the grind is unbearable!!

WEEEEE!

I am among the many that are NOT convinced that WoW is going away ANY time in the near future.  Let me tell you why.

WoW has something for ALMOST every type of MMO player out there.  I've been playing since the beta, three years ago.  Now, admittedly, when I reached 60 with my first toon, and made a few alts (the highest being 34)....I did take a "break" and go play EQ2 for about six months.  Why did I do that?  I was stubborn about trying anything NEW in the game.  I was "sworn to the Alliance," would not even CONSIDER playing Horde to experience the other half of the quests, and PvP was just not "my thing," although....I had never tried it in an MMO.

So after 6 months of EQ2, I got bored with EQ2.  I had a level 61 and 30 something there, as well.  I returned to the whimsical World of Warcraft because I missed the comical nature of it.  I remembered it being, at one time, more FUN than EQ2.  I started analyzing WHY.  Then I remembered the way it felt exploring the world for the FIRST time.  I started thinking about the FIRST time in each dungeon, the first guild I was in, the first raid on Orgrimmar where we downed Thrall and the Horde retaliated with a MASSIVE raid on Ironforge that effectively killed the server for a hour or two.  I remembered seeing that SEA of yellow names coming toward Bronzebeard's chamber and the adrenaline rush of ....O M G....  LOOK AT ALL OF THEM!

I returned to WoW and decided to confront my gaming prejudices and play Horde, and investigate this entire PvP thing.  I also rolled a toon on an RP server to see what THAT was all about.  I began to try ALL of the things in the game that I had resisted before and guess what?  I FOUND that sense of excitement again.

I began to do more creative things at 70 than re-running the same raid instances again and again and again.  I started walking around town in a tuxedo and Stylin' Jungle Hat passing out bouquets of flowers and food buff foods to n00bs.  I started helping people who were new.  I found a practical life's WORK of teaching hunters who were completely clueless about how to train their pets in new skills and how to place their pets "talent" points.

Our guild started going on world excursions where we would go "hiking" out into the wild, finding places where the game world ended and "worm holes" where you could fall through the game world into an area under Stormwind, for example, where you could begin a raid on SW from INSIDE the town....magically appearing in the middle of SW much to the shock of the Alliance.  We took screenshots of our adventures and made a "vacation album" on our guild site, showing our wild adventures around Azeroth and the Outlands.

I made an alt of EVERY class, so that I could better understand how each class is played and how they "fit" with each other.

I made a "spy" on the Alliance side of my Horde server, and a "spy" on the Horde side of my Alliance server, and began wrecking havoc by playing detrimentally to my "own" side in BGs and being a raid "informant" to the "opposing" faction during raids.  Still...no one has figured out WHAT character keeps doing this on EITHER server.  LOL!

In other words....a game is what YOU make it.

I think part of the problem is that very young people have lost their imaginations.  I'm 44 years old.  When we were children, we used our imaginations.  Everything in games was not "spoon fed" to us.  For god's sake....we found ways to make PONG and Atari games fun!  We grew up reading books (LOTS of books) where you had to IMAGINE things in your head!  O.O

I'm sure I will play other games as they come and go.  I've been actively gaming on a PC since 1997, and don't expect to stop.  It's my hobby.  I enjoy it.  I've played every genre of games, and I even own 2 consoles.  But I find that a game, if it is good at the core, will give you as much enjoyment as YOU invest imagination.

And as far as adding new things...oh yeah...love it, look forward to those things, and enjoy them.  For example....I got totally obliterated at BREWFEST yesterday.  Drank until I literally PUKED (in the game)...yes, you can drink until you throw up.  And thoroughly enjoyed Drunken Ram Racing.

I'm still finding that there is MUCH to do in World of Warcraft.  You just have to LOOK AROUND...be imaginative...experiment with things you don't THINK you "like," and have a youthful inquisitive nature.

Just my two cents (more like a dollar looking at the length of this, sorry). :D

Great post girlgeek

People here are missing the big picture. Increasing the EXP from 1-60 has a greater net effect than simply making the game seem shorter. Overall people will be creating more alts, it will accelerate character progression, and for 99.9 percent of players it will actually increase the longevity of the game.  IT will completely rework the dynamics of PVP and it will allow for better world pvp should BLIZZARD decide to go that route, which they will most likely and put WAR out of business. Nothing wrong with war but right now technology wise you can't have a pvp game with better graphics than WOW, which is another reason why it will last longer than any new mmorpg released in the next couple years, because, not gameplay wise, tech wise they cater to the common denominator. BLIZZARD UNITES players and emphasizes unity where as games like  EQ and DAOC emphasize difference and that's why they all fail. I consider an mmorpg that doesn't last 10 years a failure, Ultima online has set that bar.

I honestly just think one of the main reasons World of Warcraft is always used as a "hurdle" isn't due to creativity, or anything "new" other than quests. The number one main thing in World of Warcraft is the ability to level compeletely from 1-70 PURELY from quests. WoW spoiled us when it came to no longer having to kill the same mob over and over again. WoW also spoiled us by making us WANT to farm mobs later on when we already hit the level cap, that way you were able to apply to those high end guilds that had certain "epic, spell dmg, healing, etc" requirements. The only "new" thing in this game, is quests and real-time avatars. Many other games have better customization, better PvP, better character possibilties [housing, etc]. Blizard was just smart about findly addressing concerns people always had, grinding. You still end up playing the game for just as long, but it doesn't seem as prolonged - even though it is. I miss the game dearly, was playing since Beta and Dwarves were Mages. It was time to let it go though, I have money to make doing other things -- people soon realize the game, and many others, are a waste of time. It took me years to realize I can spend time playing other games, or actually begin all my research on a game I hope to release within 6-10 years. Might as well get a head start on life.

Ps. Nef fight, I miss you Pre-BC. =[

While there have been some very fine points brought out in the previous posts I feel that the change was implemented out of necessity. Since BC and now with the up and coming expansion the game really doesn't begin until level 58 when one can enter the Outlands and do some really fine quests that give out pretty damn good gear and coin as a reward. You really  can't find that in the lower levels. I play on two different servers one alliance and one horde and on these servers the gear that is being sold on the auction houses between levels 35-58 are  very sparce since the zones where that type of gear is usually  farmed for those levels are being blown through and basicly ignored in a rush to reach max level cap.  On the servers I play on it is not to uncommon to see level 50 people playing their toons in level 38ish gear. So for what they are doing I'm glad that the are giving out higher exp for quests and lessen the amount of exp that one will need to level because now the game really does begin at 58.

Fear and pressure for catching up? are you serious?

I love to catch up, then turn around and own them for owning you at a lower lvl lol

who has fears of catching up DX

I'm a new WoW player, about 3 months, and I'm also playing EvE. Now after 2 years of playing EvE, I'm canceling my account and probably stay with WoW. And yeah, I'm enjoying playing WoW than EvE...sorry. In addition to this, most of my buds from EvE had already transfered to WoW. I'm not sure why but imo some game like EvE had become stressful, by this I mean the daily ranting of FC having your a$$ to show in CTA is just not fun anymore. Also, the Russians are running the show in EvE.

Does anyone remember leveling alts to 20/30 in DAoC if you had a level 50?  That changed DAoC forever, the player base was bored faster, you missed out on the baby BGs if you did the /level command so for the non Vets of the game there were less people to play with. 

Time will tell if this is a good thing for Blizzard to do or not.

I just wanted to say that as I play WoW with my top character being lvl15, I couldn't care less for another player with a lvl 60 character. I play my game, not everyone else's.

This is a welcome change.  With the rep and faction grinds that came with Outlands, rolling an alt from 0-60 got you only half way there.  Once you get the alt to 70 you still face a gruuling grind to get the rep and faction needed to raid.  Add another 10 levels and the task becomes overwhelming, not only for new players, but for existing players who want to try out an alternative  playstyle.

Now if they would add a little side game that isn't quest or instance driven.  How about instanced villages to support roleplaying?  House decoration?  Creative outlets combining ordinary objects to create items like fish tanks or grand pianos?  World of Warcraft has a seamless introduction to the game that other games now strive to copy and they managed to make the leveling process feel like much less of a grind.  Now they need to look at Ultima Online and ask themselves why with clunky graphics and a dated game engine is this game still going after 10 years. 

I can definately seen a big problem with this, a gold farmer can get from 0-to in 7 days under the old xp system, if they are giving even more xp out with quests does that mean it can be done in 3-4 days?

If so bad news for everybody out there who hate farmers for spoiling the game, I have 7 lvl 70's and I just gave up on the game, in my mind it was too easy to level and I got my Drenai shaman to lvl 60 in 3 weeks and that was with a huge stuggle from lvl 45-58 due to the absolute lack of any good mail armor dropping, I was still wearing some lvl 25 stuf when I hit 58 and got a lot of better stuff from my alts.and then it was an easy 10 days to hit lvl 70 and I wasn't even considered a "hardcore" gamer.

Due to being disabled I cannot go on long multi hour raids and have very little intrest in PvP and I must have found every quest in the game and I even maxed out every profession avalible.

If Blizzard want to attract new players they need to have new lvl 0-16 content and open up new servers and not allow any character transfers to them and perhaps stop the extremely frustrating regionlistion that is going on, I get better ping and latency from the US servers than the rubbish ones in France, and most importantly have a lot faster investigation of gold farmers when I was last on a few months ago it took Blizzard Europe over 2 months to investigate a bot farmer and so by the time they were banned the gold had been moved on and they had made their money on the account.

I have a lv 70 night elf hunter and I quit WOW for now for the simple fact that i dont have hours of spare time to wait around for a group JUST to keep progressing. Im not really hardcore because I have a pregnant gf and a 7 year old son but i made the run to 70 in less time than many in my guild so I know im good and I really found it frustrating to have to group just to keep accomplishing goals. I found myself thinking about all the fun I could be having playing all the new 360 games and experiencing them WITHOUT waiting around for hours just to get a group to move along the story. They need to add some endgame content for people who dont pvp or that dont have the time to wait around as i mentioned above. Now I'm not knocking on wow as a whole its the best looking, easiest to learn hard to master mmo out there. I just think they would keep more people around that are like me if they let you feel like your accomplishing something in the endgame by yourself.