General Discussion

I believe it is of utmost importance for any mmo to cater to both the hardcore lvl cap racers, as well as the more casual laid back crowd. Unless your ambition is to become a niche product of course. The problem is, in most cases, the mmo community at large is an extremely fickle crowd. What one person may love, another person may hate, and as a result it creates an extreme challenge for developers to strike that golden "balance".  For the past several years I have been an mmo player, I have read countless forums on countless sites, and have noticed a recurring theme.

 Changes and/or additions brought on by new content or expansions, and the effects on said games community:

I don't know how many times I have read several posts from disgruntled players, about their "MMO of choice" screwing them over in the latest expansion pack or patch. "They nerfed my toon!", or "The pvp/economy is broken now!", and of course the age-old "The new classes/races are crap and/or unbalanced!" Even the world conquering monster World of Warcraft is not impervious to such criticisms. Here's a post from the World of  Warcraft general discussion forum right here on mmorpg.com as an example:

I want to know your opinion was it a mistake that blizzard raised the level cap to 70 (and pretty soon 80)? For me i thought it was a mistake. The days of level 60 were uncomparable IMO. Doing Molten Core, Onyxia's Layer and Other end game instances was fun as hell. When blizzard came out with burning crusade a lot of people joined and a lot of people left. They did make a shit load of BC sales though and it was a good move on their part to up the cap. BC was fun and all, but it just doesnt have the instansity of the good ole level 60 days of MC. Blizzard says they have 9 million player, but you have to subract the players with more than one account, chinese farmers (they just dont count), and inactive accounts. World of Warcraft is on a slow dicline and when they come out with the new expansion they are going to see a lot of players quit. My brothers whole guild is quiting. In my opinion they need to start from scratch and make a whole different game and not the expansion shit. Being the makers of one of the most succesful MMO ever the game would definitly get a lot of players. Leave your opinion ~Radiator~

And here's a couple of the replys this op got:

Raising the level cap in virtually all MMORPGs is a terrible idea, and an unnecessary one.

Raising the level cap instantly trivializes and/or destroys old-world content. So, all developers end up achieving is making sure few people, if any, enjoy the content they already produced. You do not want this to happen.

Why would someone waste time running MC now? There is no point - spend an extra week or two getting to 70 from 60, and instantly get gear way better, not even from raids. Or, do old raids with twice the strength you should be doing them at, bore yourself to death, and do not get a worthwhile reward since you already have better stuff. At any rate, that MC raid they spent weeks or months developing is rendered obsolete. This is a destructive mechanic. A developer should never strive to make working content obsolete, but most do, and Blizzard is the worst offender by far, as old-world does not even compare at all to the new-world, and they have stated WotLK will be similar (in other words, as bad) - Blizzard basically admits they are on a mission to make every expansion an entirely new game that makes everything before it an exercise in pointlessness.~Sornin~

You're also forgetting about the destruction of replayability.  I agree that increasing the level cap is a bad move.  DAoC never increased its level cap and it did extremely well until WoW came out, but it also had more dynamic pvp that kept level 50's happy for a long, long time. 

Anyway, when you increase your level cap to 70, the people that are bored with their current character will look at the old world and say, "I've got to go through all that again?"  If they're not feeling this already, they surely will when they have to reach 80 instead.  I would much rather be told at the beginning of the game, "The top level is 80 and getting to it is a bitch."  Than, "You reach the top level! Great!  Now here's 10, 20 or 30 more levels to go through!"  C'mon.  If you keep doing it, eventually everyone will quit.  If the next expansion STILL doesn't have more class options (Shadow Knight. . .yay. . be still my heart ) and they increase the cap again to 90. . would you stay?  Every time they do this, they strain out their playerbase a little bit more.  Sooner or later, the only people that will be playing are the people that have the 70-80's anyway. 

The only thing that is keeping WoW in such great business is that everything else out there right now is either crap or too old to make a comeback.~puma713~

So as you can see, no matter how sterling a product you put out, you are beyond a shadow of a doubt going to have at least a few detractors. And, when the eventual expansion/content patch comes out, expect at least a few more. Another example can be taken from any one of the many mmos out there. In the end, changes to an mmo, usually creates a rift between those who like the new stuff, and those that don't. And most of the time forum flame wars erupt, with neither side giving way.

I would like to know what evryone's thought's are on this subject.  Thanks for your time. ~Joeyboots~

Personally I agree with the posts you listed. In my experience with MMOs raising level caps just makes it a mad dash to farm xp to be back at the top. It usually doesn't allow for much fun in my experiences as I have always felt like I can't take my time to enjoy the new continents ect. as I want to get to max level quickly so I don't fall behind my friends and guildies.  As far as making dungeons and what not out of date and pointless it is 100% true...why would anyone waste their time? WoW is indeed an excellent example of this.

Very interesting viewpoint.  Anyone else agree or disagree?

I just closed all four of our household World of Warcraft accounts earlier this week.  It was bad enough that most of the raiding content required well-geared players that were thoroughly organized, which in turn ruled out any casual raiding groups from standing a snowball's chance in Hell, and it was bad enough that most of the playing servers had severe faction imbalances that caused nothing but embittered strife (Yes I played Horde on a 3-1 Alliance to Horde ratio server), but the game offered little in the way of reward to those that fit into Blizzard's buzzword "casual" gaming playstyle.

I had joined WoW the day that it first released in 2004.  I tried sticking with it through it's growing pains, quickly realizing that Blizzard had made WoW with one too many ideas in mind, and they became stuck not knowing which way to run.  The World PVP factor never amounted to anything significant, the idea of 40-man raid content just wasn't palatable to the masses, so smaller instances were being introduced, but with smaller and less significant rewards, and PVP Battlegrounds quickly became fodder for people that sought to exploit the Honor System, with the unfortunate side-effect of "AFK Campers" farming "honor points".  Blizzard never bothered to remedy the situation until recently, with the upcoming 2.2 patch.  Even still, it's too little too late, and the rewards for the Battlegrounds are trivial compared to those offered through Arena play, which is really only suited for the very well-geared and dedicated PVPers of the game.  Nevermind that Battlegrounds and Arenas still had absolutely no significant contribution to the well being of the player's faction as a whole.

What's even worse is the way the latest expansion trivialized all previous efforts of even the most dedicated players of WoW, quickly diminishing powerful epic gear to substandard or completely useless items taking up virtual bagspace.   Then along comes the new 25-man raid content, and of course the one that almost every WoW player focused on; Karazhan, the 10-man instance.

Karazhan was the primary stepping stone for most guilds to focus on, utilizing it to gain gear that would prepare them for the more "hardcore" 25-man content.  This one instance alone quickly decimated the organization and structure of larger guilds formed during the original WoW days, reducing them to squabbling, bickering hateful masses of internal strife and in-fighting to determine the "elite" players that would have the privilege of joining the latest 10-man KZ run, and who would be relegated to the waiting list, or the "crap" team.  With an incredibly ramped up difficulty level, Karazhan had all the makings of a larger raiding instance, but the imbalanced raid size requirement made it the bottleneck that filtered out the "casual" players from the "dedicated" and "hardcore".  In this one move, I personally feel that Blizzard shot themselves in the foot.

Players that had successfully maintained a presence in 40-man raiding guilds were suddenly pushed off to the wayside, imbalanced difficulty levels in the new "Heroic" dungeons rendered them almost useless to guilds that chose to push forward into KZ and beyond, thus leaving those "casual" players to fend for themselves in Pick-Up Groups (PUG's).  If there was ever a sign of "burnout" amongst WoW's player base, The Burning Crusade was sure to push them beyond the brink.

My guild's morale quickly dissolved into a lot of in-fighting, my friends started getting left behind or shoved off to a waiting list, and our guild quickly broke off into one of those "elitist" messes where one group was pitted againt another.  I soon realized that this was not a pleasurable gaming experience at all.  As more of my friends left the guild, I didn't really see a need to continue playing.  I left my guild shortly after.  My playtime in WoW had become less and less over the last few months, to the point where I only really logged in to say a quick "Hello!" to old friends, then logged back out.  I had more fun on the Public Test Realms, where people didn't have to bother fighting over gear and instance scheduling because they could hop onto a pre-made character fully geared out in tier 6 armor.

I had to step back and realize that this was a pretty sad state of affairs when I find more joy playing on a test server among complete strangers than I did on my live server.  With that in mind, it was time to leave WoW, and cancel my accounts.  So, to the original poster, I'd have to say, "Yes, I think drastic changes in player content can have very lasting and negative effects on the game and the player's feelings towards it."   It's happened in the past to other great MMO's, such as Dark Age of Camelot when they introduced the "Trials of Atlantis" expansion, or the many dramatic changes to the PVP system that Ultima Online encountered, or the endless changes introduced by just about every expansion for Everquest that they ever made. 

Fans of MMO's settle in faster than I think game developers realize, and once they settle in, you need to watch very closely that you do not disrupt their environment too much, or you may as well plan on suffering the consequences for it.  I've heard horror stories about the way Star Wars Galaxies completely overhauled their profession system, driving players away in droves, or the massive changes made to Anarchy Online in it's early years, quickly turning off it's earlier fanbase.  This must break the heart of every major game developer out there, but they are in part to blame. 

Usually what we buy off store shelves when games are first released are really still games in Beta form.  Everyone that's been playing computer games for a fair amount of time knows this.  Publishers and investors are usually pushing the developers to hurry and get the game out so they can see a return on their investments.  I think this is especially true with MMO's where a true sense of game balance isn't fully realized until customers start  sending in their complaints, and developers start to see patterns in the complaints made by the players.  MMO players have a chance to "compare notes" as it were, basically putting a magnifying glass over more obvious problems in the game.  Any changed made during the early life cycle of a game are completely understandable, but once a year or more has passed, any new changes should really involve vast improvements that are focused on satisfying the ENTIRE player base. Tweaking game balance and introducing extreme makeover changes to the game two and a half years into it's life cycle is just asking for trouble.  players have already invested deeply into their characters, and they've grown accustom to their playstyles.  In WoW's case, not only did they reinvent the wheel, they expected everyone to learn how to drive differently at the same time, and they expected them to like it.

Very well said. That was quite insightful. So, do you think that Blizzard is just doin it all over again with wrath of the lich king?  By this I mean are they once again going to trivialize things that players worked hard for in outland? And if so, do you think it will affect Wow's future, and current grip on the mmo market? Or will everyone continue to play, grit and bear it, while Blizzard laughs on their way to the bank? It seems that even though a lot of players seem annoyed at the current expansion Burning Crusade, the subscription numbers haven't seemed to be affected. Matter of fact, Blizzard would tell you it's better than its ever been, with new subs still on the rise.

EVE Online usually has balanced expansions. Well, it was a bit unbalanced when everyone who had a Titan could blow hundreds of ships with 1 shot. Anyway, people learned to hold 1 shot of a Titan. And in the new expansion they added several ways to trap capital ships in a system.

Originally posted by joeyboots

Very well said. That was quite insightful. So, do you think that Blizzard is just doin it all over again with wrath of the lich king?  By this I mean are they once again going to trivialize things that players worked hard for in outland? And if so, do you think it will affect Wow's future, and current grip on the mmo market? Or will everyone continue to play, grit and bear it, while Blizzard laughs on their way to the bank? It seems that even though a lot of players seem annoyed at the current expansion Burning Crusade, the subscription numbers haven't seemed to be affected. Matter of fact, Blizzard would tell you it's better than its ever been, with new subs still on the rise.

I agree with this....there's alot of "WoW is doomed because WotK is coming out" talk, but look at BC, it was hardly original and there was lots of moaning and groaning by minority raiders and everyone it seems, but it's hardly made a dent in the subscription base. Still, I'm praying WAR will make Blizzard kick itself into gear and add something fresh and interesting with Wotk.