MMO Weekly 14/07/09

14 Jul 2009 at 10:49:02 by Jeff Hollis

Hello there, my fellow gamebois and gamegurls, and welcome to the most recent, up to date, and cutting edge edition of MMO Weekly.  You'll remember that last week [Ed: Well, not last week, but yeah, we remember], I stirred the pot, upset the bees nest, and got Blizzard fans all up in a tizzy by suggesting that WoW was killing itself.  I argued that WoW was following in the footsteps of its predecessors, making the same endgame mistakes, and thus is ripe to be replaced by the next good MMO to come along.  If you'd like to do a bit of catching up, you can read what I'd written right here.  

Essentially, the problem is that WoW has gone off the track.  The game gained popularity because it appealed to normal gamers, willing to devote a few hours a day running dungeons and completing quests in a game they really enjoyed.  However, WoW has evolved.  The game is now catering to a small minority of so-called 'hardcore' players - according to one developers' research, these make up less than 5% of the overall population.  The WoW developers have repeatedly discussed the fact that the hardcore players experience is the best, most challenging content in the game; have more skills than 'casual' players, and therefore receive the best rewards.  Even normal, average players now accept these ideas as fact.

This entire premise is, in fact, a mis-perception.  These 'hardcore' players aren't any more skilled than normal players.  They are simply willing to devote huge amounts of time to the game.  Further, any content that takes huge quantities of time to complete is considered 'elite'.  Consequently, the willingness to participate in extremely time-consuming endgame content is mis-perceived as skill, and these players are given disproportionate rewards as a result.      

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