World of Warcraft’s mistakes revealed
Unless you’re new to the industry, you already know World of Warcraft is the master of the Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMO) galaxy. Fans, former players, and forum police constantly throw their opinions out on how the most successful game of all-time could have been even better. Director of the game, Jeffrey Kaplan, has heard those cries and chose to speak at this year’s Game Developers Conference in
San Francisco, California about the mishaps of WoW. And speak he did, but Jeff is a busy guy and seemed to forget a load of material. Let’s give him a hand shall we?
When WoW released back in 2004, it revolutionized the MMO genre. A game so streamlined and user-friendly had never quite existed and with Blizzard taking everything two levels above the rest, nothing could compete. Massive, sprawling cities accompanied by iconic visuals and an exceptional art-style were just a few of the features that left players without words. However, with millions in possession of their share of Azeroth, it was only a matter of time when changes would come and influence the rest of WoW’s lifespan. Come several massive updates, two expansions, and another on the way (you know it’s coming), WoW has changed tenfold.
It’s arguable that change is for the best, but despite the pleasantries people have spoken out. During his talk, Kaplan went on record stating that WoW certainly had made a great many mistakes including:
- Overabundance of quests in a single area
- Misleading players by not informing them where to go
- Tedious and repetitive quests
- Items/vehicles required to complete a quest that don’t function well
- Extensive amounts of text
Funny enough, all of these points he brought up are warranted to some degree, but they’re really all pertaining to the same category. Let me simplify Jeff’s words for you; WoW sometimes is an assembled gallery of misleading, tedious quests which occasionally utilize a rather large amount of text and can require the use of shoddy items or vehicles. Mr. Kaplan speaks the truth, but if these are the only things he believes were mistakes I’ve got some news for him and the rest of the community; it’s time to wake up.
WoW killed itself by doing a lot of different things, one of which was changing the experience output. With their expansions advertising such beautiful new content to explore, Blizzard opted to increase the overall experience your character generated while in the old-world. Now this seems like a well-played move since it’d get people to the new content faster, but it ended up being a shot to Blizzard’s own cranium. There’s no reason for anyone to explore or do anymore in the old-world than they have to. This includes experiencing old-school raids like Zul’Gurub or Molten Core. Why bother doing them and wasting time when you’ll find material in the new areas that are twice as good. Sure, you could explore the land and complete other quests and dungeons, but everything you get is so short lived it’s just not viable.
Capital cities like Orgrimmar were also hit hard by the expansions. The only reason people still visit these once glorious hubs is because of the presence of the auction house. Even Shattrath, the major city introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion is a ghost town. It’s not news that people flock to the new content, that’s the way expansions work. Even still, it’s strange to see all the work Blizzard did go to waste as it sits in its derelict state. What’s even stranger is that WOTLK bases its end-game around a pre-existing dungeon, Naxxramas. Blizzard, you give us new content, decide to bring back old content, beef it up, and then neglect the rest; make up your mind.
Like all MMOs, WoW has a ceaseless grind. Want to create an item or looking for a certain something to drop? Kill this particular monster, fly around looking for these herbs, or run this instance again and again until you see results. I’m not a robot, and I don’t appreciate being run in circles of monotonous grinding just for boots that increase by strength by five more points. This becomes substantially worse when you reach the end-game and are spending hours upon hours in a solitary place. Wait, your warrior has to take the dog out. Oh, now your healer has to take his sister somewhere. Can’t go yet, it’s time for a smoke break. It’s a straight-out nightmare and it becomes even more apparent when you’re doing the same dungeon every week and the equipment that drops is for a class that isn’t even in your party.
Participating in end-game events is an exciting experience at first, and when it goes well it’s an incredible feeling. However, success comes at a price practically every game helps you with; every single one except WoW. There’s no instruction anywhere on how to take down bosses in dungeons. Go ahead, argue that the bosses are easy, and then wake up and come to the realization that you’re the ones who checked the strategies on wowwiki.com or youtube. Seriously, there’s nothing in the game that gives you any kind of hint on how to kill a boss. Instead, Blizzard and the hardcore fans feel that they should waste an exuberant amount of time dying just so they can figure out how to win.
if you want to succeed in WoW, you need to make sure you have a balanced group and the required classes to perform the task at hand. The problem is, healers and tanks are forced into a position they might not want to do. It’s bad for those classes because if they want to do something else, they have to collect an entirely new set of gear to be able to perform. If that happens, well, you’re rewarded by having to go through the same dungeons again to acquire gear. It doesn’t help either that Blizzard constantly changes the talent trees for each class. It’s aggravating to see classes go from good to bad to unparalleled so often. Finding good people can be tough enough, hell; getting people all on at the same time who are committed to at least a few hours is hard. The last thing anyone needs is their class being tampered with again and again; decide already! WoW’s end-game is a job within a game and if you want to succeed you put the rest of your activities on the back-burner.
As you can clearly see, WoW has issues, many more than listed here. There’s no denying that Kaplan and the rest of the Blizzard team have done a hell of a job, but let’s be realistic here; WoW caters to the fanatical. The end-game is deadweight and full of mistakes that unsurprisingly have stayed the same. Despite the changes Blizzard constantly doles out, they aren’t going to change the core of their gameplay. After all, 13 million players can’t be wrong… right?
