Well, it's been almost eight months, but I have finally gotten tired of World of Warcraft.
It's been a great ride. The world is well put-together, the graphics are excellent, the gameplay is good. Most of all, the quest system is fantastic; because of it, there is always one more thing to do, one more reason not to go to bed on time. If I had to attribute one particular strength to World of Warcraft, it would be the quest system. Yet even the mighty quest system is finally failing to hold my interest.
Nothing better has come along, at least nothing that tempts me with its gameplay goodness. Guild Wars is the only recent rival, but it's not a strong enough lure to get me to cough up the $50 and time. As with all good consumers, I am fascinated by the future - the Conan MMORPG and Dungeons and Dragons online, in particular - and will be waiting with my pocketbook for it to arrive.
So I'm stuck with World of Warcraft for the time being. And I say "stuck" because, as I say, the charm has worn off. I have encountered enough aggravation and frustrated desires that I would rather play something else, if only something else were there. I could go back to City of Heroes, but it lost me already, and I doubt that my grievances with that game have been fixed either.
What bugs me about World of Warcraft?
I'm glad you asked.
1) The game's pro-asshole stance.
Like Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft is a game that goes the extra mile to cater to assholes. In both games, you just pick the class that can go invisible, and get to work killing people who can't fight back. Undetectable by any means? Check. Massive damage output? Check. Anything that prevents you from jumping people much lower level? Not in the slightest.
The asshole demographic must be a large and wealthy one, because game designers sure do seem to flatter it. What possible reason is there to have classes so well suited for nothing better than harassing other players? I mean, seriously? And then to kit them out so perfectly. A high-level rogue hanging around inside an opposing low-level area can loiter in perfect safety, killing people for ever, and nothing short of having not one but many players his own level just hanging around guarding people can stop him. Not catch him, mind you, just deter him until their backs are turned.
WTF is that?
High up in my list of MMORPG rules: No invisibility without easy and common counters. No killing opposing players who have no chance of fighting back without penalty. World of Warcraft went exactly the wrong direction on both of these.
Of course I play on a PvP server. I like PvP. Bumping into an enemy warrior out in Desolace and fighting a desperate battle for survival is fun. But PvP ought to be honest. If both sides have a chance, it's satisfying even for the loser. Otherwise, you're just catering to assholes.
World of Warcraft has embraced them like favorite sons.
I'm also put off by 2) the nature of the game's high-end content. The content up to the top level (60) is great; I can't praise the quest system highly enough. But once there, and your goals change from experience to ever-swankier loot, the game utterly fails the casual player. Which is frustrating, as casual play had been one of its key strengths; pre-60 you can play a couple of hours a night and make reasonable progress, achieve goals, have fun. But once you are sixty no time commitment less than two hours will let you achieve anything at all; the average time needed for a high-end dungeon is more like four hours, and to tackle any of the epic content you need six or eight hours and forty people.
Yeah. Forty people. Just assembling a group that size, to say nothing of screening for idiots, takes hours. I have a life - so I am basically limited to playing my lower level alternate characters, and maybe tackling one of the high-end but not epic dungeons on the weekend. Meanwhile the no-lifes and college students amass breathtaking gear.
So Warcraft is losing me. Sure, I'm still shopping there, but I am eyeing the new construction across the street covetously and making my plans.
It's been a good seven months though.
- Sun Ra
P.S. I had advocated the use of instanced dungeons years ago, and I'm happy to see game designers move that way. Something else I'd like to see are instanced monster spawns. The Guild Wars paradigm of an instanced world where players only meet each other in cities is fine, but I like running into other players out in the countryside. However, knowing that the gnolls are here and the orcs are here and if you wait a few moments they'll be back shatters the illusion that you are a Hero and are having some effect on the world.
I'd prefer something akin to the old Gauntlet monster generators. You are in town, you get quested to defeat the goblins from the Bone Hills who are raiding the town. You head out to the Bone Hills, find some goblins, and the closer you get to their lair, the bigger and meaner they are. You destroy the boss, and the lair becomes abandoned. You have beaten the goblins!
And the next time someone gets that quest, the goblin lair reappears somewhere else in the Bone Hills. So if you are just running through, you will encounter seemingly random goblins. But if you set out to defeat them, you can actually get a sense of defeating them. If you go back to that particular lair, it will be empty (at least for a small amount of time, enough for you to have moved on to other areas and quests).
So how about it, designers? You're doing well on the instanced dungeon thing. Lets see some instanced monster spawn points.