In addition to a number of features that WoW will be bringing to the game or refining with Warlords, I think they are doing an admirable job of righting the ship for anyone who was put off by MoP. In the end I believe that is what Blizzard does best. Blizzard is phenomenal at iterating on ideas. Whether they came from other MMOs or from their own developers Blizzard can take an idea, strip it down to its basics, and refine and incorporate it into their game like the feature or system belonged there from the beginning. This is not something that is easily done and one of the keys to their long term success.
That brings up another topic. WoW is almost 9 years old. At what point do people just start to get burnt out on the same game? WoW has bled subs over the past year at a staggering rate. What percentage of that decline is from players just having their fill of the game and moving on compared to players that left because of a design decision they disagreed with is almost impossible to tell from the outside looking in. Blizzard does have exit surveys so I’m sure they have some awareness on what those percentages are but I doubt they will share them with us anytime soon.
So what are we left with? My buddy contends that WoW is watering down the genre. I believe they are refining elements of gameplay and give players what they want. Often times we look back and confuse things that were tedious as being difficult. I remember grinding out factions to exalted more times than I care to count. None of these were overly difficult. I was left with a certain feeling of satisfaction when I was done but did I really achieve anything besides wasting hours on end killing ogres in Nagrand for beads? When we opened the gates of Ahn’Qiraj did we really do anything? Or did we just gather hundreds of thousands of pieces of cloth as a server and turn them into bandages? Was this hard or was it just tedious?
I loved 40 man raids and I still miss them. Whenever we took down a new boss for the first time I was left with a sense of excitement and accomplishment. I think a lot of that had more to do with the camaraderie than the difficulty of the encounters. You could keep shaman or paladin out of combat and have them run around and resurrect players. I’ll be the first to admit that if they did start a progression server beginning at version 1.0 I would subscribe as soon as the server went live. I still think it was more that WoW was tedious and not “hard” and we mistake time consumption for challenge.
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With its success in the west WoW created a huge genre. It invited people to play an MMORPG for the first time on a grand scale. This influx of new players allowed other developers to make MMORPGs that may have never dared before. Would EA’s Warhammer Online ever sold close to a million boxes if World of Warcraft did not exist? Would any of the other AAA themepark MMOs that so many of us still love to this day exist if WoW wouldn’t have paved the way for developers to have these ridiculous budgets? While no one can say for any real certainty, I’m inclined to believe that without the success of WoW we would have far fewer MMOs to play today. They have also made it more viable for developers to create niche games. Take a look at the Game List on this website. There are over 600 games on there that cater to all different types of players and playstyles. If you play WoW or another AAA themepark and realize you like MMORPGs but you want more free from ability to forge your own story there are a number of sandbox MMOs that you may want to try. There are even more in development. I have hopes that Pathfinder is going to turn into a medieval Eve Online with a little more PvE mixed in.
Not everyone is going to be happy with WoW. I completely understand that. There are going to be some of you out there that agree with me 100%, some of you that agree with me on some of what I said but not all of it, and others of you are staring at your computer monitor or cellphone right now thinking to yourself that I have no idea what I’m talking about. It is really hard to argue that WoW is killing the genre. In fact I think the opposite is true. I think they helped define it for what it is and have pushed progress and made it so developers could not only make games that are similar to it but also make games that fit niches WoW doesn’t occupy. What about you? Do you think I’ve fallen off my rocker or do you agree with my line of thinking? I’d love to read from you in the comments below.
Robert Lashley / Robert Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can find him spending his free time in Eorzea pretending he is a Paladin in the Leviathan realm or you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen
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