(The following is my individual feedback regarding changes to World of Warcraft that have had a negative impact on the game’s identity as an RPG. I speak for no one but myself. To anyone posting in this thread, please feel free to agree, disagree, or post anything you feel has detracted from the game’s identity that I haven’t.)
World of Warcraft is an RPG, not an E-Sport.
While I can only speculate on what has led to the changes to World of Warcraft that we’ve seen over time, from my perspective most of them seem to derive from a need to make the game into an E-Sport by designing it for increasingly competitive gameplay. Unfortunately, RPGs have rarely, if ever, been a competitive gameplay experience. The two gameplay philosophies often-times conflict with one another.
What changes have been made to WoW to detract from it’s RPG identity:
- Scaling
- Timegated Content
- Borrowed Power Systems
- Exclusivity/Removed Content
Scaling
Of all the changes to this game that have been the most damning to it’s RPG nature, Scaling is the most egregious and damaging one.
Think back to any classic RPG you’ve played in the past. Perhaps it was a Final Fantasy game, or Super Mario RPG or one of it’s spin offs such as Paper Mario. Perhaps it was a JRPG such as Chrono Trigger, Suikoden, etc… A common aspect to any RPG is developing one’s character in terms of power. The steady progression of power is important and vital to the character the player uses to experience the story.
Imagine for a moment you’re playing a game of D&D. Your party has been playing for years. Everyone is level 20. You’ve killed gods, you have equipment and spells and such that makes your characters borderline gods. You’re about to start a new campaign that is going to deal more in politics. On your way to the capital of the kingdom you’re currently in, your party stumbles upon a small village being raided by a bunch of level 1 or 2 goblins. You all smile at one another, remembering that one time in the past your group almost wiped to them, before you got a solid grip on playing together as a party. You prepare to unleash cathartic hell upon these unfortunate creatures.
Your DM suddenly says, “Okay, you’re engaging the Goblins. Every Goblin is now level 20, is assigned a prestige class, and is given powerful equipment. Also, the Wizard and the Paladin, you two have some really OP stuff so for this fight I’m making it weaker.”
Does anyone think the people at this table will be anything other than outraged? Justifiably so, at that? Players worked hard for their levels, their gear, and the DM has decided to invalidate all of that. Why? “Because this makes it more interesting! You’re not just going to wipe them out and move on, the fight will be more fun!”
Except it’s not fun. It’s tedious.
That’s World of Warcraft thanks to Scaling.
We play in a game where you’re more powerful between levels 50-54 than you are at levels 55-60 while leveling, that you grow weaker as your level increases. Worse, we play in a game where a piece of gear that is an upgrade might cause all enemy NPCs to also upgrade, making you weaker for equipping that superior piece of gear.
I don’t know if Scaling was implemented to keep players bogged down to increase the /timeplayed metric by increments, or if it was because people were complaining about enemies dying too fast to tag, but it’s been extraordinarily harmful to the game. Scaling needs to go. If enemies are dying too fast, let players tag a corpse for up to 10 seconds after it dies to get credit.
Timegated Content
This is a subscription based MMORPG, a game where we pay for time to play. There is nothing more disrespectful to your customers than timegating content.
Imagine for a moment if you’d be so kind. You’re playing Super Mario RPG. You’ve just defeated Mack, gotten the first of the Seven Stars, and have been instructed to head for the Kero Sewers. You leave the Mushroom Kingdom and… you can’t go to the next map. A little window pops up saying, “Sorry, you need 5 hours of game time on this save to continue.”
Absolutely absurd, right? Welcome to World of Warcraft.
The main focus of an RPG is to tell a story which players can immerse themselves in. Stopping that story abruptly with a, “stay tuned for next week’s installment of Dragonball Z,” breaks that immersion. Imagine reading an E-Book and your app only lets you read one chapter a week.
Yes, an MMORPG is not the same as a singleplayer RPG or a story, but you won’t find other RPGs (or at least successful ones, especially those with subscriptions) doing this. Take a look at your top competitor right now, FFXIV. When they release a patch, the main story quests with it have a very definite beginning and end which players can go through on their own time. They can complete it in a day, or spread it out over a week. They pay for the subscription, and how they choose to pace their play is respected.
It’s time for WoW to stop breaking apart the content of every patch into tiny crumbs. Yes, we’ll all be aware of just how little content there is in a patch if you do that. Not being able to put out more content is not an excuse to flagrantly disrespect your customers and spit on the RPG aspect of this game.
Borrowed Power Systems
As noted when addressing Scaling, the power/strength of a player’s character is directly a part of that character’s identity and the player’s immersion in the game.
Borrowed Power Systems are anathema to this. They give your character power, and take it away at the end of an expansion/start of a new one, leaving classes broken and weak until they hit max level and get started re-earning everything they already had with the current expansion’s borrowed power system. Worse, you take away every tiny iota of meaning those systems had when you remove them.
Legion is often remembered fondly as a good expansion, and one reason why is because it actually touched on the RPG elements remarkably well. Class Order Halls, Artifact Weapons, these are borrowed power systems, but they were implemented so well that they became iconic to how players identified themselves and their characters. To this day many players happily transmog those artifacts because of the meaning they had. It’s only a shame those whom never got to play Legion will ever had a chance to understand that love, because the system for Artifacts was removed to make way for the Heart of Azeroth.
As more and more expansions are released, it becomes a tricky balancing act to make each class have new skills/spells to keep them growing, but this growth is necessary. Borrowed Power Systems aren’t growth; they’re artificial stagnation that ruins any attempt at growth or immersion because no one expects them to remain anymore. No one allows themselves to grow attached to them.
The very least that could be done here would be to make some kind of, ‘Legacy System,’ where players can select one or two active abilities and three to five passives that have existed in past borrowed power systems. At least in that way no one needs to feel as if there is no point being invested in these systems, and who knows but that maybe, just maybe, classes won’t start an expansion hopelessly broken and unplayable until they earn back old power through new borrowed power systems.
Ideally, just stop borrowed power altogether and give players options to change the effects of spells/skills to provide new gameplay options. Maybe let fire-mages have some variations of fire spells that do less immediate DPS but focus more on DoTs or such, just as an example. But, these are choices; they can choose to remain with their current immediate DPS payout options if they want.
Exclusivity/Removed Content
Playing on consumer’s Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO as it’s commonly known), exclusivity and the removal of content necessary to artificially generate it are a major detractor to the RPG experience.
The legendary Cloak from Mists of Pandaria, the legendary Ring from Warlords of Draenor, Artifacts from Legion, etc… experiences and stories largely removed from the game. Content that has been removed from an RPG, leaving gaping holes in the story. Why? To make players who were there while it was current feel superior to players who either took a break or hadn’t even starting playing during that time?
This game’s story is hard enough to follow what with multiple Warchiefs and a leveling experience that does too little to properly help a new player understand the narrative of each expansion properly. For those whom are interested enough to try and play through this, in order, they find major gaps in the experience because of removed content.
Worse, you might have players who see a piece of transmog someone else is wearing, love it, and wonder how to get it. It doesn’t show up in their collections tab, and only after using an external website such as wowhead do they come to learn that it’s no longer available to obtain.
That’s nothing short of frustrating for a player, and for a new player who hasn’t even gotten thoroughly invested in the game, that might be enough to turn them away.
This is an RPG. I’ve already discussed how the individual’s character is paramount to their experience in this genre through power, but the same holds true in how one customizes their character, whether that’s by racial aesthetics at character creation, or the gear they wear.
Put back the removed content. Goodness knows this game has little enough new content to enjoy with each patch, spread out over fifteen weeks, at least give your players something to do while waiting for the next episode of Warcraft Z.
It’s time that this game reconnected with it’s identity as an MMORPG. WoW is not an E-Sport, no matter how profitable E-Sports may be. Trying to make it into an E-Sport just changes it from it’s RPG roots, and what we’ve seen over the years with declining interest and subs, and more players going to other MMOs for a true MMORPG experience, should be evidence enough that this design direction has failed.
Drops two coppers onto the table.
