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| Posting this here because it's been reported for deletion on the WOW boards. by Jhoh Cable o_O 04/18/2007, 1:33pm PDT | ||||
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| THE DOWNFALL OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT
It’s been two years since I entered World of Warcraft and now I have no choice but to say goodbye. Not because I want to leave, but because there’s no reason to stay. It has become painfully evident that the Burning Crusades designers took no heed of the warnings the players gave before release and turned the game into one where guilds have shattered under the weight of long key quests, cliquish 5-man grinds, and the complete inability to advance without assembling a group. Add to that the complete communication disconnect between the developers and the players (almost bordering on expressed distain for players), pithy and condescending comments about legitimate player concerns by the Blizzard representatives seeking to dismiss them, and the refusal to address or even discuss serious and game-breaking shortcomings in many class designs. “BURNING CRUSADE: IF YOU WEREN’T FIRST, YOU AREN’T WANTED” The expansion changed everything. Prior to BC, raiding guilds were built around 40-man end game raid contents. Blizzard announced the new raid cap of 25 players, immediately forcing guilds to start evaluating which 15 players to bench to keep a good core. Blizzard responded with “you can just make two raids” but the practicality of that was difficult given lockouts and basic human factors. Guilds shattered and fell apart leaving people unable to do what they once did. Burning Crusade also brought in a new era of grinding. End-game content was now restricted only to those who could reach revered with the various factions. The only way to get that faction was repeatedly slogging through the same 5-man dungeons multiple times, and once you got it, the last thing you wanted to do was to go back and do it again. Anyone who was slower to level, or like myslef ran up one of the new races, found themselves in outlands without guild support, because who would want to run Shadow Labyrinth for the umpteenth time when there’s nothing in it for them. But if you can’t get a run together, you can’t get the faction to do the heroic runs, so the game ends. We all know that pick-up groups are usually a disaster in the making, largely because the fights have become so technical and so dependent on specific classes and playing perfection. The keying quest for Karazan is another example of this exclusionary attitude. It’s bad enough that it is a 10-man-only dungeon with a 1 week lockout, but the keying process, especially the final part through Black Morass, makes it nearly impossible for anyone to complete. People who have completed it certainly don’t want to go back to that ridiculous fight again, and getting a pick-up group that has enough DPS and coordination is nigh impossible. After nearly five weeks of begging and pleading with my guild and anyone else I could find (the LFG tool being useless), I never could get anyone willing to go. Thus, those that made it first were their own clique and those that lagged behind, regardless of reason, were left holding a bag of manure. I play this game for the social aspects. I love my guild and the friends I’ve made in the game, but the mechanics of the game encourage us not to play together any more and when the game becomes a chore for them, it’s hard for me to expect them give up their time to help me. “THANKS FOR THE MONEY BUT THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS IRRELEVANT” There are some real problems with this game. Things that seem to work on paper don’t work in the actual game. Many classes need help; anywhere from minor tweaks to complete overhauls. Blizzard has set up forums for people to communicate and Blizzard has taken nearly every opportunity to indicate they really don’t listen. First, there are no class representatives. Blizzard has stated this. That means, however, that there is no voice or liaison between the classes and the developers. There are no two-way conversations. It’s been months since Blizzard has been in the Shaman forums and those postings contained little information and no dialog. Yet, the Shaman class has many very serious and real problems with no information as to what might be done to address them, or even if anyone is aware. So I have to ask, with now eight million subscribers, why can’t they spring for nine employees to actually talk to specifically with each class? Is Blizzard simply cheap or do they really not see it as important? No matter what, the current lack of communication, information and dialog, reminiscent of the early days of other MMOs, seems to be what Blizzard intends. Yet every other MMO that had this philosophy was eventually forced to change in the face of competition and declining sales. WoW isn’t there yet, sales are high and the money is good, but they will be eventually. When Blizzard does deem to communicate with the player base, it seems to focus primarily on dismissing the concerns of their customers, often through snide and condescending comments, deleting of critical postings or locking of threads, and banning players who are simply trying to express concerns about issues making their playing experience less than wonderful. What’s truly sad is that all this does is alienate your customer base. Is that really the intention? “AFTER TWO YEARS YOU STILL REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY YOUR CLASS” There are some serious problems with many of the classes. The primary reason for so many of these issues is the continued need to balance the Player-vs-Player game and Player-vs-Environment game. Those two styles of play have very different goals and approaches. It’s a rock-paper-scissors game in PvP to keep the classes balanced, where if everything was PvE you could be more liberal in how you approach things. Despite this ongoing clash of play styles, the forums are replete with hundreds of suggestions on how to improve the play of various classes while still maintaining class balance within PvP. However, the “no-communication” mandate mentioned above, coupled with concerns and suggestions being ignored in class reviews and patches simply seems to reinforce the idea that the players, despite all the time they have put into their characters, have no idea how to actually play. Thus, the classes stay broken. “ANYTHING TO MAKE THE GAME LESS TEDIOUS IS WRONG” Role-playing games, from the very first pencil-and-paper games to text MUDs to the modern million-player MMOs, have all had the basic element in them that progression should take time and that the reward was related to that time invested. Traditionally, this has been accomplished by the earning of experience and leveling. MMOs added other forms of timesinks. Farming for items or reputation, travel times, crafting and selling items are just a few. WoW has mastered the art of timesinking. How many HOURS are spent in your character’s life simply looking at your rear end on a griffin? Think about it for a moment before you answer. Why should 25% of a 2-hour play session simply be taken up simply getting there? Blizzard has said it’s to be “realistic”, but this is a game with dragons and talking trees and blue spacemen – it is NOT realistic. It’s an interactive story and a choose-your-own-adventure. Staring at your backside while the bird flies in circles for the 50th time isn’t fun, it’s unnecessary. The same could be said for boats. There are neat once or twice, but standing around for 5 minutes waiting for it isn’t. Other timesinks include reputation (how many times DO I have to kill Murmur before they realize I deserve to be a friend), selling enchantments (pointless they don’t have a way to put these on a gem or some such and sell them in the auction house). Anything Blizzard can do to slow you down and keep you paying and striving for that minor side-grade of gear. Eventually, though, and with increasing rapidity, the annoyance quickly overtakes the enjoyment. Oh, and I have to ask, why the heck isn’t there some form of character improvement for after you reach end game to convert XP from killing things into something tangible? Everquest had it right with their “alternate advancement”. Gee, let 250,000 XP give you one stat point or increase to crit or damage or something else to improve your base character. Then at least you always get something for running an instance or helping a friend, instead of always asking yourself “What’s in it for me” and finding there’s no gear or rep grind around worth doing that task for. “STOP QQ-ING AND PLAY” Any time legitimate concerns about the playability of this game are raised, the efforts spring forth to dismiss them as the rantings of one lone whiner. That’s the easy and cowards way out though. People raise issues because they are important, and any good student of business knows that when one customer raises an issue, they are speaking for hundreds or thousands of people who have the same concern but don’t speak up. To simply say “stop whining and play the game” is the sure way to not only alienate your customer base, but to eventually find yourself with a rapidly decreasing customer base. Blizzard, take this message for what it is, simply a list of concerns from a loyal but dissatisfied customer. I want to stay a customer, I really do. But with all the systemic problems in both the game itself and the way you treat your customer base with such fundamental distain, I find it hard to be willing to devote both my limited time and my money to you. I’m happy to have a dialog with you one and one if you’d like to. I can only hope you would. Thanks for your time. Robert Hayden aka Nerfherder II (70 Dranei Shaman) and Leary (62 Druid) and Nerfherder I (60 Hunter) -- Robert Hayden has been involved in RPGs since the mid 1970’s, having written articles for the magazines Autoduel Quarterly and Dungeon. He has also written supplemental materials for the games Car Wars, and Shadowrun, including being the editor of four electronic source books for the latter and the 10,000 page epic Shadowrun novel, Shadowtalk. Robert was also part of the two-man team responsible for the Thunderwalker CTF, an addon for the Quake and Quake II games that was a precursor for many elements seen in modern FPS games. Finally, Robert is also known as the author of the Internet Geek Code (albeit it is largely defunct and dreadfully in need of updating). Robert lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his fiancé Mindi and his three cats Gandalf, Dumbledore and Lily. He works in his day-job as the IT Manager for the Division of University Housing at the University of Wisconsin Madison and can be reached at rhayden@geek.net. |
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