What’s Wrong with World of Warcraft?

Some shit has been going down with Blizzard this past month.

For those who don’t know, Blizzard are one of the most prolific and well beloved game developers to come out of America in the past 30 years. If you haven’t heard of them, you’ll likely have come across one of their games. They effectively redefined the real time strategy market with their Starcraft series which has gone on to become a recognised E-Sport. Their electronic collectible card game, Hearthstone, has recently clocked over 50 million registered players and ruined any chance of me meeting my writing obligations this month. And, of course, they are responsible for the infamous World of Warcraft and my countless missed lunches, tardy arrivals and sleepless nights. Whether you are a fan of Blizzard or not, no one can deny the success of their output.

So why has the CEO of Blizzard been handed a 250,000 signature strong petition, written by disillusioned and impassioned players, complaining about World of Warcraft – their most historically successful product? It’s a long and frustrating story but, in my opinion, a good place to start is what World of Warcraft used to be like compared to what it is now.

To provide a bit of context, I started playing WoW as a talentless nipper in 2004 when its original (vanilla) version was released and it didn’t take long for the addiction to take root in my puberty addled mind. Like many people when the game first arrived, I was captivated by the colossal virtual world Blizzard had carefully realised over the years working on the game, stepping out of the mass grave in Deathknell as a level 1 Undead Rogue because fuck playing Alliance. After a couple of hours, I’d started to accumulate some extra abilities and earned a couple of levels and was feeling pretty chuffed. I figured I’d be seeing the end game content in a couple of weeks time.

Poor, sweet, naive child that I was.

It would be about two months before I’d even make it to level 40 – exactly 2/3rds of the way through the levelling grind and not an end-game raid or boss in sight. When a player eventually made it to level 60, you had to accumulate decent enough gear from the normal 5-man dungeons before you would even be considered for the 10 and 25 man raid guilds that were out there. What dropped from a boss was randomly selected from a lootpool so there was every likelihood you’d complete a dungeon and get jack shit for your character. Plus, coming across a decent raid guild was hard and you’d normally have to patiently help other players accumulate their gear as spots on the team were often decided through a inconsistent mixture of seniority and necessity. If you played a class the guild had six of already, and one of them has been there since the guild started, then you could expect to be running the same 5 man dungeons and doing busy work for other guildies for a good while before you’d even be considered for an end-game raid spot. Essentially, progressing in World of Warcraft took time.

A lot of fucking time.

When I think about how much time I sunk into WoW and the fact I never even managed to get into an end-game raid in Vanilla, it legitimately makes me reach for a whiskey.

So, I took a break from WoW for a couple of years – partly out of frustration, mostly out of necessity – and managed to hoodwink my way into university. Around the time I was moving out of the house, I heard WoW was releasing a new expansion, ‘Cataclysm’, that was going to, as well as increase the level cap and provide fresh new end game content, completely re-design the levelling experience from the ground up. I figured I’d buy the game, make myself an Orcish Shaman and see if I could reach that intimidating new max level cap of 85 and maybe, just maybe, experience an end game raid.

Within 2 months I’d hit max level, completed most of the raids and quit the game for good. I’ve never touched WoW since.

I wasn’t the only one; player subscription figures from Blizzard show that since Cataclysm’s release the number of active WoW accounts have steadily declined. Barring brief spikes of interest after the release of new expansions, players have been steadily leaving Azeroth at an increasing rate. So what’s the issue? There’s a tonne of potential culprits: other competing MMOs on the market have split player interest; the world has been completely changed since the third expansion leaving players nostalgic for the old content; the levelling and talent systems have been simplified so there’s arguably less options available to fine tune your character compared to the old systems back in the day. But honestly, I think what’s been a problem for WoW, aside from the fact the game is now over ten years old, is its own quality of life improvements over the years have actually damaged the gaming experience.

One of the first things you learned about WoW was that the best stuff; the best loot, the best weapons, the quickest way to level up and the most interesting experiences, was stuff that you couldn’t do on your own. The dungeons are filled with tough enemies that needed to be fought two or three at a time with a balanced group of players – each filling a specific role. You essentially need a tank to take all the damage and keep the enemy’s attention, a healer to keep him and the others alive and three other characters to dish out the damage while the tank kept them busy. This meant that players were always watching the chat to see if a group was being put together for a dungeon they wanted to complete and would contact one another if they were. If the group was successful with no habitual fuck ups or people ninja’ing loot they can’t even use (honestly I cannot tell you how fucking frustrating that was) then you’d be incentivised to play with the group again. Since it was hard to get groups together where everyone clicked, you’d probably add them to your friends list. You’d then run out back into the world, resplendent in exciting new gear and quest on your own until you could all run a dungeon together again. You might even form a guild to try and find likeminded people. You’d make connections, play together and form some legit friendships. The community aspect of WoW broke up the often monotonous levelling experience and meant players banded together to support one another in the face of the world’s difficulty.

Then, Blizzard implemented one of the many quality of life improvements into WoW: ‘Group’ finder and its raiding counterpart. The intention was to make it easier for players to actually complete dungeons and find a group to run with. It utilised a unique cross-server system so players who weren’t actually from your server (hence not playing in the same version of WoW as you are) can form a group and run dungeons together. You’d just open the group finder, choose the dungeon you want to run, select what roles you’d be happy to fill and then wait for the group finder to match you with the right group. When an appropriate match was found, you’d then be teleported straight to the dungeon and then straight back to your original position when you were done. You’d even be provided with a loot reward and bonus experience for using the group finder to complete the dungeon. It all sounds like a pretty good idea in terms of helping players to circumvent one of the potentially frustrating parts of the game.

However, the end result is players level normally until they can run their first dungeon, then they sit in one of the capital cities and run dungeons over and over again. The fact you now have access to all the online players on every single server means you’ll never wait long to get put in a group. You’ll boost through the dungeon, get all the loot and exp then rinse and repeat. The shortened levelling requirements and the wealth of experience dungeons provide mean you can level very quickly and the exciting loot you’ll get is likely to be replaced before too long. Since players run dungeons so often, everyone is a seasoned hand at completing them. You’ll likely tear through it without saying a word to one another. You don’t even need to go out into the world to find the dungeon. You can hit max level without ever really needing to leave a city. Honestly, it’s really inefficient to level any other way and if you try, you’ll likely be the only one. Running around an empty world.

This isn’t the only issue with the game, but it’s emblematic of why I think most people are disillusioned with WoW – the game is much easier and time efficient to solo on your own than it used to be. Yes, you run dungeons with people, but you don’t interact, you don’t communicate beyond a ‘hi’ ,’heal plz’, ‘ty’ and ‘fu’. You feel like you’re playing on your own. And when you’re alone with WoW you start to notice the archaic mechanics, the repetitive combat and the dated graphics. You realise the world feels a bit hollow without the people in it.

Folk were crying out for a return to the old kind of WoW. A return to the kind of experience that only games like Vanilla WoW could offer.

Then a little French developer by the name of ‘Nostalrius’ answered.

But we’ll talk about that next week.

Correction: Raids in Vanilla ran from 10 to 20 to 40 man, not 10 and 25 as originally implied.