For quite awhile now people have been split on opinions of World of Warcraft. There’s the hardcore crowd that has cried foul over the ever increasingly casual changes and, of course, the casual crowd that welcomes it. When it comes to sides, I place myself on the hardcore side of field but with reservations of opinion. Now I have played WoW off and on since launch day. I myself loved vanilla WoW and even enjoyed BC, albeit not as much. My personal interest started its downhill slope a couple of months after BC launched. I could see where the game was headed in terms of playability and difficulty. Gaming was becoming mainstream with gamers becoming marketable. This eventually brought a slew of horrible games made by companies just trying to cash in our area of life. However, that’s a different discussion entirely. Back to my original thoughts, WoW started to cater to the casual side as that was where Blizzard realized that their biggest fan base, not to mention paying customers, was headed. What followed was a series of changes and improvements (Dungeon Finder *shudder) that ultimately “dumbed” down the game for the casual gamer. Flame and troll all you what but we all know it’s the truth. This left a lot of the hardcore, RP, and even PVP’ers scratching their head going, “What the hell happened?”. Of course, I still have to recognize the true fact of the matter. WoW has accomplished many things in its time. For what it sets out to do, it does amazingly. No one can argue that.

 

That all being said, why can’t we compromise? I am sure this is has been said and even posted about before, but why doesn’t Blizzard have their cake and eat it too? I am proposing that Blizzard invest in a series of progression servers. These servers can roll back all the way to launch day. Original difficulty, original level curb, original “pull your hair out yet can’t stop playing” excitement that hooked millions. They can let the players go forth and conquer the land for a few months, maybe even a year. During this time, Blizzard can alter their expansions with a different rule set concerning leveling, difficulty, etc. When they feel the time is right, they can release the new “hardcore” expansions in due time. This way, you have your “casual” servers, as well as your “hardcore” servers. That way, everyone’s happy. The casual and hardcore gamers each have their own servers and Blizzard conquers both areas of the MMO world. I know that leaves out sandbox gamers but I don’t think even Blizzard can be that much of a miracle worker. My apologies to sandbox gamers out there as I don’t think you should be excluded. However, changing the rule sets is one thing. Changing up the game mechanics entirely is a whole different animal.

 

I don’t know if something like this is realistic or not as I know hardly a thing about creating/developing MMO’s or games in general. But a guy can dream right? There are plenty of other MMO’s that could run with this idea as well but that’s a discussion for another time.