Most of us here are long time MMORPG players. Some of us have been playing for over 25 years at this point, within the genre. What makes a good MMORPG? Well many will say it's the community, and the friends you make while playing. Others will say it's the endgame and the challenges you face. All of us will have differing opinions on what does and does not work within the MMORPG space. What I think I can say what's pretty clear is the market has moved past Blizzard at this point. Recently went back and watched this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BazitK-ZgDk
This highlights all the changes that went on from Blizzard's meteoric rise to it's complete and utter collapse, and yes I'm sorry the company was performing financially well, but within the space of the market and the confidence of MMO players this company has collapsed under it's own ego. What changed? Was it the evil money making activision? Sure, you can argue that. Was it the fact that for decades Blizzard probably covered up
multiple sexual harassment scandals? Sure you can argue that too. What I like to think changed is us as players is the single greatest reason why this game feels like it's in a tailspin. Players, the vast majority of them, got better at playing video games.
Last night I was talking to my roomate about MMORPGs. He played classic WoW from Vanilla till mid way through Wrath. I played EQ from 2001-2007. Suffice to say our experiences were slightly different. WoW at the time had a ton of features I thought were ez mode. Then when I heard a player hit max level within a month of playing after WoW launched, my guild and I laughed about how WoW was the ez mode MMORPG. My roommate told me about the leveling process and how wanted to play that in a modern MMORPG. It dawned on me then that really the vanilla versions of WoW, and EQ too, aren't hard games. Honestly go play classic WoW right now and tell me that is a hard game? P99 is very much even more guilty of this "faux difficulty" I mean your Action Per Minute is what 2-4 keys at most? The most difficult aspect of these games is you need other players to do content to
level (in EQ's sense absolutely, WoW lesser, but still relevant). This is where most people met their guilds, played with players, and found groups to run content with. The mechanics of boss fights back then were simplistic.
Problem WoW faces, and I think this is a broader conversation about video games in general, but it's particularly relevant for MMORPGs, is that there's no happy medium that casuals engage in this long process but do so with numbers that players having the opportunity to game together are abundant. Sure you can say well the endgame has tons of players! But we all know based on the forum posts here this what I've established:
•M+ is not casual content, it's not designed to be.
•Heroic Raiding, and especially Mythic Raiding is not casual content
•Ranked PVP is not casual content
LFR, Mission Table, LFD, and WQ are all casual content. But this content isn't actually challenging. Many will say players are expected to auto-win on this content because it's queued, or it's demanded otherwise forum traffic will be all hell. Now I find this argument to be silly. It's childish to think players whining on the forums have any ability to alter the actual design schedule of developers. I either get told the devs don't look at forums, because it's small microcosm of players, or that all the calls for nerfs from the forums will lead to devs nerfing your favorite content! It's like please make up your minds as to what it is because if one is true then it implies the other is not. But to the larger point which is we're at a crossroads with MMORPGs right now. How are we at a crossroads? Well it seems the old MMORPG formula from EQ has run it's course in the gaming market. What do I mean by this? Well any single-player, open world, RPG does what MMORPGs used to do exclusively well for so long, it's just they do it better. Take Skyrim as an example, arguably one of the best RPGs of the past decade, I'd argue--It's an open world RPG where basically anything you do in the game is going to be rewarded. Want to play a fighter, well the game won't punish you for that. Want to play an alchemist, well the game won't punish you for that. Meanwhile back on the MMORPG ranch if you're not the optimal spec for the encounter you're not going to be doing that content. If you fail to meet a timer you're punished for failure. Take Souls games, while notably difficult, the penalty for death is just that you die and you go and repeat what you just did all over again. No punishment for failure, respawn and try again, maybe at worst you have to go through an encounter that you already did, but after enough tries you figure out what will and won't work. MMORPGs though, well there's other people and you could be wasting their time.
Problem I see with regards to casual play and why the game feels bad is a three-fold problem:
•The story isn't worth the time. If WoW had a good story the complaints you'd see would be very minimal I feel. This story is so convoluted that players don't even want to know what or where the lore is headed because honestly who cares at this point. WoW will comes up with a dope CGI trailer that looks awesome, and then you get plot points like Sylvanas commits genocide, then betrays her faction, then betrays Azeroth, then realized why she's bad, then flips in the end. Wooooo haven't seen that one before anywhere, ever..../s
• The content gear shift from leveling is so extreme. Even if you were to level this off I think a big problem the game has right now is the endgame is this massive system upon system, and during your leveling process there's next to no instruction on what the endgame actually looks like. I'm sorry but WoW at this point if interrupts are going to be so critical should update their UI to show who's not on CD, I know add-ons do this, but again add-ons are outside the base game, which again proves as a barrier to entry. If the game is going to be designed around these mechanics the devs need to implement a system during the leveling process that instructs players about this, and this is only just one example. Soaking, gathering, and just basic coordination mechanics have to be taught from the game at this point, because
there isn't the numbers and the community size that exist to foster this type of learning.
• Professions are a joke. They know it that's why they're focusing on it next expansion, so we'll see what and where they fall.
For example to illustrate my point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AZmuZNu5LA
That's the new Harry Potter game scheduled for this fall/winter. Literally why does that look like MMO concepts in an open world, and looks like it'll be a blast. Although--I have my doubts because HP seems to be a fad that we grew up with versus a long lasting IP that's comparable to SW. But that's another topic. Point is notice how that game feels like an actual breathing living world. Most open world RPGs today have. The problem WoW faces right now is that players became
more skilled and with that skill they became less
patient. This is the problem casual players face. So MMOs right now are trying to adapt to the increasing skill demands of players; And this is the hottest of hot takes:
The worst player right now is probably more mechanically skilled at WoW than some of the best players back in vanilla. It's like arguing who's more skilled Lebron or Michael-- which is a pointless conversation to have because the two of them play in two completely different leagues. Would Mike dominate in today's league? Maybe, would he be Mike compared to everyone around him, probably not. Would Lebron do well in Mike's league, probably, but he wouldn't be playing until he's 35 like he is right now. So you have to apply the standard in which you're in currently. Which to me had me thinking is the game designed around the top 5%? Overall probably not; but the only thing that's consistent in terms of making people happy are these over-the-top mechanics that depend on add-on support. It keeps a niche crowd happy, that's why you see so much pushback from people because the people who do this content are typically very happy.
But where does that leave the company? Honestly after watching Pandora's Box I'm not sure how you can make the argument that Blizzard was an asset MS was targeting. Think of it this way from 2016-2021 the majority of senior leadership at Blizzard had either resigned and gone elsewhere, or got canned because of sexual misconduct. Like what company would want to buy a ship that looks to be sinking from leadership. I know it's profitable, but the quarterly's don't lie, the gem in Activision is CK.
What I think happens from here? DF tries it's hardest to appease everyone. It tries to service the community Ion acknowledged they currently left. It tries to service it's most dedicated hardcore gamers, but only finds itself bending over backward to slow them down for fear they'll leave. And really I think this maybe the last post I make on this topic because I've been up and down and all around this topic and I just can't think of what WoW offers that'll innovate the formula. I think they've reached their endpoint. The only thing now that can change WoW and the MMORPG landscape in it's entirety is an advanced AI that has the ability to break out of a "scripted" mode and alter the world as you play. But we're a few years away from that even being attempted.