I will preface this entire post with saying this. The class design of the last few expansions has been absolute dog crap. The reason why is because of the philosophy that was created behind the class design. I’ll give a deeper description throughout this post.
I’m sitting here playing MoP. For me, this was the expansion where I became obsessed with the game. As time has gone on, I would always have nostalgic thoughts and memories pop back up about thousands of moments I’ve had playing MoP. Keep in mind, I’m someone that’s been playing every single class and every single spec since Cata. No, I’m not exaggerating. Every single one. Because for me, the combat and the immersion of the game is the most important to me. Always has been.
The reason I make this post is to make this point. I’ve been sitting idly by as a normal civilian as I’ve been watching these things unfold. I’ve seen the corporations learn this fancy new word called “Dopamine”. Ugh. Even typing that out irks me on the inside. I’ve witnessed most, probably 95% of the companies that use this tool to increase engagement get it wrong every single time. Look at people at a slot machine for example. There’s an immense amount of small dopamine hits there, right? Before I dive in much further I must explain what dopamine actually is and what it does.
When you get a dopamine hit, this signals to the brain that POTENTIALLY something good will happen so the instant you get that dopamine hit, you feel forced to take an action. What this dopamine hit does, is it increases cortisol (stress) as well as your heart rate because this is getting your body ready to move to take this action to the potential thing that your mind is focused on achieving. In order for your cortisol levels to go down, you must achieve Serotonin. This is where 95% of these corporations get it wrong. They never allow you to get to serotonin.
This is the point I’m making. When you have a system designed around constantly feeding people dopamine, what you’re doing is you are stressing people out cause along with that dopamine, you’re getting a ton of cortisol at the same time. If you don’t supply serotonin, what actually ends up happening is burnout. The entire reason people ever became obsessed with this game was because it gave an insane amount of serotonin. The REAL reward for taking any action on anything you do in this world.
Why is this a problem? I bring MoP up because oh boy… Thinking about it gets me excited. Yes. That excited. I’m playing my Blood DK as I’m leveling him up, I’m playing Blood and Frost and omfg… Every single pull I make, every single dungeon I do, every single everything. I am immensely satisfied. The entire rotation is rewarding if you do it correctly and all that dopamine that rushes through me always leads to an immense amount of serotonin.
The point that these corporations as well as Blizzard needs to understand, if they actualy read this, is if you can hone in on creating any kind of system around giving this much serotonin through the game play… That’s where you can get an insane amount of players in the game. It’s the reason this game used to be so popular. And the intense focus around only giving dopamine is the real reason people chose to stop playing. It wasn’t rewarding anymore. Any time you’d play, it led to burnout.
Take this for example. For the last few expansions, it’s been hard for me just to log into play WoW. I want to. The want is always there. But it’s difficult to keep me playing. Doing anything. Raiding, Dungeons, Leveling, Questing, anything.
Right now, for me, Just doing the simple quests and dungeons in MoP has given me more satisfaction playing this game since Legion. I’m not just trying to be hyperbolic. I’m trying to make an honest point. And I see and truly believe that if the design philosophy followed the points I lay out here, the stock price of this company would literally be double. It has that potential to be. I’ve been right about this game dozens of times before with things I’ve pointed out. Much like Asmongold. If people would listen to him more and if people would listen to me more, things would be much greater.
Side note here. The reason I know this is cause of the studies I’ve had in Neuroscience. So there ya go. Take it to the bank and we’ll see how long this post stays up. The higher ups don’t like that this info gets out. Kinda weird how that works.