WoW Is Not Killing Itself

15 Jul 2009 at 12:25:07 by Bill Vaughan

Being an avid World of Warcraft player, I felt the need to respond to Jeff's latest MMO Weekly, which discusses WoW, its various supposed pitfalls and how the game is, in the author's words, killing itself.

There were many examples given in this week's article to back up the claim that WoW had gone off the track and made the same mistakes that other MMOs had done in the past, but quite frankly I found nearly all of them invalid. I'll tackle the main issues that Jeff brought up, and tell you the way I see it.

Firstly, to say that Blizzard is only catering to 5% of the game's playerbase is way off. This 5% figure comes from a report so old, I can't even find it anymore. It referred to the amount of WoW players who were at true end game, i.e. raiding the very hardest content at the time. When the news came out that such a small fraction of players ever got the see WoW's hardest boss, it was a much-needed slap in the face for Blizzard. Players wanted to see end game content, and they didn't want to have to be in the world's top raiding guilds to do it. Blizzard also stated that they wanted players to see it too. Raid sizes were reduced down from 40 man to 25 man, making it easier for smaller guilds to attempt top end raids, and heroic instances were introduced, some of them rewarding raid-quality loot, but it didn't end there.

In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard really went to town and introduced 10 man raids alongside 25 man ones. When this announcement was made at the WWI in Paris last year the cheer from the crowd was deafening. Bleeding edge guilds certainly weren't happy with losing their exclusive access to the hardest encounters in WoW, but this change meant the majority of level cap players would finally get the chance to see end game content.

So in fact, far from alienating the majority of WoW's players, Blizzard opened the end game up to them. If anything, some people complained that WoW was becoming too easy when WotLK launched and groups had completed the raid content within days. But since then,  Ulduar has been added which has stepped up a difficulty level. Players need to have gear from the starter raid, a re-vamped Naxxramas, to be able to progress in Ulduar, and gear from that raid is needed to tackle the upcoming raid, the Argent Coliseum. This keeps the latest content challenging without making it inaccessible. It's up to individual players if they find raiding a chore or a grind, but it's so popular right now, I really don't think that's the case with the majority of players. Join the LFG channel at any time and you'll see pug raid groups looking for more members, even to Ulduar.

The article also states that 'hardcore' players who see end content aren't any more skilled than casual players, they just spend more time playing, meaning that Blizzard rewards players with epics for simply 'grinding'. Having been an active raider for a while, I can confidently say that raiding, and more importantly being successful at it, is most definitely not grinding. A tremendous effort goes into learning the tactics and usually dying week after week until you and your guildmates finally beat that boss. It's a learning process, which takes time, obviously, but there is indisputably skill involved. Often, group members that aren't up to scratch have to be replaced with others, people have to work hard to get enchantments, flasks and the best possible gear before being considered for the raid – that's not grinding, grinding is killing a mob over and over again to level up, while eating a Mars bar and watching TV over your shoulder. Progression raiding requires 100% concentration and effort. So is raid loot disproportionate? I say no.

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