There’s been quite a lot of discussion lately over the current state of WoW — most of it centered around how it has become too easy.  Tobold recently posted a great commentary on its current state of failing to challenge people.  And GameSpy posted a very similar article on not just twinking your character, but on the myriad of ways that are available to players to make the game easier to them.  From extensive online databases (thottbot, wowhead) that answer every possible question for every quest, to mods and addons that point you directly to where you have to go at every conceivable moment.  And you can’t hardly swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting another blog from someone who’s fed up with how easy the end-game content is screaming about moving on.  Even Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler, has recently posted on the WoW forums that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if some of you that consume every bit of new content we can produce take a break and try something else for awhile.  Now I worked with Greg for quite a long time over at Ensemble, and when I read this post, I can fairly hear the frustration in his voice at the throngs of forum posters standing beating down his virtual door waving pitchforks and shouting MORE MORE MORE!  So what’s going on here?  Hit the break to hear my thoughts..

 So what’s going on here?  Have the designers over at Blizzard really watered down their experience to the point that it’s not worth playing anymore?  Actually, I don’t think so.  At least, it’s not entirely the designer’s fault.  Rather it’s the players — though it’s not really through any fault of their own.  It’s just that Blizzard’s design decisions lately have only exacerbated the problem.  Okay so what the hell am I talking about?

What’s going on over at WoW is that the game has matured.  And surprisingly enough, it’s the exact same process that just about every successful MMO goes through.  The thing is, there’s never been 10 million people playing any previous MMO, so the process has never happened on the scale at which it’s happening right now.  But trust me when I say the process is a familiar one.  Every MMO goes through two primary phases.  There is the growth phase, and then the mature phase. 

During the growth phase, gameplay is characterized by a constant influx of new players, and the vast majority of the player population is leveling their characters.  Content is, by far and large, consumed by the number of player’s the designers intended, working at the level they intended.  A level 22 to 28 instance is run by a group of 5 player’s at level 22 to 28, and the rewards they get are specifically tailored for those players at that level.  Quests work the player’s through zones that are meant to be challenging for the levels of players that are there, and when its well designed, the player runs out of quests and missions in a particular zone at just about the time they’ve exceeded the level range of that zone, and there is content directing them to some other zone.   This is a great time for MMO’s because player’s are, by far and large, playing the game as it was designed, and they will almost inevitably have the best play experience.  After all, professional designers spent many years trying to ensure just exactly that will happen.  Eventually though, player’s reach the level cap of the MMO, and they start to participate in the content designed for them at the level cap.  If you’re a good developer/designer, you’ve planned for this and have content there ready to go.  If you’re not, well your players will either  roll alt’s if they like your game, or go to some place else if they don’t.    But when your game is successful, and you do in fact have things for player’s to do at your end game, as Blizzard has done a great job of doing, at some point the majority of your player base is at the max level in your game. 

And when this happens, the MMO moves into the mature phase, and for all intents and purposes, it becomes a completely different game.  And sadly, in my opinion, it’s usually not the game the designers have intended, or are ready for.  It’s the game played by playing the metagame.  That is, most of the player’s are now playing around the game, and playing game’s with the game.  For instance, open world PvP is now characterized by max level players camping out and killing the few new players that are making their way through the zone.  Battlegrounds and so-called “controlled” PvP is characterized by players decked out in impossible gear, sitting at the level cap for the battleground range, using enchants and other buffs made possible by limitless funds and a large guild.  Inflation in the game has usually run rampant by this time, because of the sheer quantity of coin in the game.  Knowledgeable players make a killing selling low level resources (be they bat wings and bonechips, or copper ore & peacebloom), while the few new players wonder why they can’t afford even the most lowly of swords on the auction house with only the money they’ve received from quests and monsters.  Instances are no longer run by 5 man groups, if they’re run at all.  Rather an alt uses funds from his high level to pay another high level player to run through the instance killing everything, while he trots along behind picking up loot.  This isn’t fun, but it’s the way things are done because it’s the most efficient.   And with twinked gear, experience perks, and motivations from designers to level even faster, often times much of the best content from these lower level instances is skipped altogether, because you’re already more powerful than what you’d be if you recieved those rewards.  Furthermore, at least in the case of WoW, because of the changes in the levelling curve they’ve implemented over the life of the game, most of the quest lines are now broken, because you exceed the level cap intended for the zone before you’ve even completed half of the zone’s quest content.  And this may be okay if this is your fourth time (or 20th, as is the case for some people) through that content.  But if it actually happens to be your first, if you really are a new player to the game, well then for you it’s just broken.  Plain and simple.   To make matters worse, all of this works against allowing new players to enjoy the game. 

Right now, if you and a friend just bought the game together and are actually playing WoW for the first time, this game is broken for you.  You can’t enjoy the game the designers intended for you to enjoy, because the mature player base pretty much owns the game.  The friends and family levelling pact will have you out-levelling the quest chains, so those will be broken.  You won’t be able to run instances, becuase no one runs them any more.  Unless you joing a guild right away and convince a high level player to run it for you, which is still a broken experience.  And if you participate in battlegrounds, you’ll be slaughtered by players parked at the level cap with crazy gear and enchants. 

So it’s important to understand, while WoW  may not be broken, per se,  it is a different game than the game it started as.  And this maturing process for an MMO is as inevitable as old age is for us.  So what can you do?  So far, Blizzard’s answer has been, by far and large, try to give us another dose of that great “growth” phase every two years by building ten more levels of content, and raising the level cap by ten levels.  And while this does provide a dose of comfort for those of us that enjoy that growth phase, it’s also marked by a number of disadvantages:  The game gets harder to balance.  The trip from level one to level cap is even longer now, and so you have to compensate in ways that break your game in other places, so players can more quickly play with their friends.  And worse, what do you do when players consume that content.  When in two weeks time they go through what you spent two years building, and then scream MORE MORE. 

In my humble opinion, Blizzard has got to stop expanding vertically, and start expanding horizontally.  They did this in Burning Crusade, by introducing two new races, and the accompanying zones to play them in.  And there was some horizontal expansion with the new glyphs, and the deathknight class in Wrath.  But there is much more that they can do.  New types of PvP play at the lower levels.  Different interactions between classes as you level, and not just focus on the end game balance.  Give me reasons to play your game over again, and give me incentive to do it the way the designers want me to do it, instead of providing incentive to skip the very content you designed.  As I mentioned in this post, implement a system that teaches players how to group and how to play in instances from the very beginning.  And place level caps on instances so they can only be run by players within a certain range.  And then revisit the rewards granted by those instances to make them current with where your game is now.

The game has changed.  The price of success is that you get to live, but living means maturing.  It’s up to the designers of blizzard to stop trying to gloss over the changes in how the game is played (by just dumping more experience on you as you level, so you can get to 80 faster), and take steps to address them.  And no, that doesn’t mean give me ten more levels of content.