This article is written from the perspective of a World of Warcraft player but extends to other MMO's as well.
Everyone puts on the rose-colored glasses when remembering World of Warcraft in its early release "vanilla" days.
The truth is, the early launch days from an outsider's perspective were an absolute disaster.
Classes weren't balanced, the game was full of glitches, servers weren't ready for the huge influx of players, and almost no one knew what they were doing or the "correct" way to play the game.
What people remember most fondly, perhaps without being aware of it, are the memories that they made exploring this world with other players, and making new friendships, many of which continue to this day.
Reminiscing with anyone in game about old content (e.g. Blackrock Mountain, Onyxia, Naxxrramus, Ahn'Qiraj) the next thought shared will be about how awful that experience was.
We spent long nights wiping and re-wiping, for minimal rewards, and yet remember the ordeals fondly.
Why is this?
- The game was so new that everyone was eager to explore it and enjoy it to the utmost, making them far more willing to overlook hardships along the way.
- The relatively new concept of an "MMO" made one of the most exciting parts of the game making new friendships and finding comrades to overcome struggles with together.
- For many players, there was no other similar experience to compare the game to, and stepping into a virtual world for the first time was a landmark experience.
Fast forward 14 years, and the current recent release of "Battle for Azeroth."
We are looking at a massive world, spanning 7 additional expansions, 12 playable classes, and the recent addition of 4 unlockable "allied races."
There are almost too many playable dungeons, raids, scenarios, battlegrounds, and island expeditions to count.
There is a practically impossible number of achievements to unlock and quests to complete.
And yet, player dissatisfaction is at an all time high.
Why is this?
Again from an outsider's perspective, the game is a masterful accomplishment: polished, smoothly running, infinitely entertaining, well-supported, and approachable from any skill level or time commitment.
From an insider's perspective, I have never seen the game so bemoaned and besmirched by its own players.
I run a guild on a large server, and have the unique perspective of having a small community looking toward me for a large portion of their in-game experience and satisfaction.
Guild membership is an ongoing battle as players look for new communities to supply a fulfilling atmosphere.
Losing a member to a guild that promised a weekly raid spot was once a common occurrence.
However, this past year membership loss has not been from guild-shifting but rather game-quitting.
(And the expansion has just recently had the first full raid unlocked).
One player quit the game and let us know that it was because everyone in his rare-farming group had received a piece of gear off the RNG loot tables and yet he had not and considered this experience infinitely and incurably game-breaking.
Our leadership works hard every week organizing events only to have few or none show up, including the people requesting those events.
Gone are the days of dungeon groups struggling together for 4 hours to complete the content. It is common after one wipe for an entire group to dissolve, even if they have already spent an hour together.
Common complaints are
- lack of class balance (despite every class being within very close range of each other on almost all levels)
- content that is too hard to run (despite content being scaled to gear and character level)
- lack of things to do (no answer)
I have a few theories on how player blasé and trollishness has reached such epic proportions.
we asked, and the developers listened
Those of you who have small children might understand the phenomenon of "gimmee."
I don't claim to be an expert parent by any stretch (and a fairly new one at that) but what I have noticed in my son, is that the quicker he is given an object/privilege that he clamors for, the less he enjoys it and the more quickly he will be wanting something else.
Blizzard is getting really good at giving the player base what they want.
And we, spoiled children that we are, are finding out that the more the game is custom tailored to match our own levels of laziness, the less appealing it becomes.
The mind of a gamer is tuned to seek out an obstacle and surmount it: to find a puzzle and solve it.
When the prize becomes more and more attainable, it also becomes less "special" and desirable.
the gaming market has boomed
There weren't a whole lot of options in MMO gaming in the early launch days of WoW.
These days, the options are almost too many to count.
Much of in-game chat these days I observe being about other games.
The allure of discovering "the next great thing" for many is too much, and they never end up experiencing any game beyond the most superficial levels.
In return, the gaming industry is matching itself to these gamer trends, and switching to content that is released more rapidly and that is easy to jump in and out of.
Blizzard remains one of the few studios claiming to force slow game development in the interest of quality, but only time will tell whether this continues to pay off for them.
online friends
In early MMO days, finding that special someone online who was willing to stay up late and battle along side you built strong bonds of friendship. You would find that person's real name, end up talking with them often in voice servers, and in many instances end up being RL friends.
I was in guilds where guild meet-ups in RL were a regular occurence, taking turns traveling to different members houses for weekends of couch surfing and same-room gaming.
Guilds would travel together to Blizzcon, and if one member of the guild was struggling IRL, then the rest would rally to support them.
Earlier this year, my guild had a member that complained of financial hardship and said that she couldnt' afford her subscription.
We pooled resources, and bought a game token for her; less than a week later she stopped playing and the couple of times I've seen her online it has been on a different server.
Blizzard's pride and joy is Battle.net that makes meeting new friends and keeping up with them supposedly "easier."
However, what it has really done, is devalue friendship by watering down the definition of a friend.
This, to a larger extent, I see as a trend being caused by social media platforms all over.
The easier it becomes to reach out and interact with one another, the less we value that interaction.
The more friends we have on our "lists," the less likely we are to interact with any of them.
So, @archdruid, I put forward my theory that the biggest villain in gaming these days, is not a mythical creature, but instead the darker side of our own human nature.
Who knows, maybe we will gain some degree of self-reflection and come full-circle and enjoy a new multiplayer gaming heyday.
Time will tell.
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I know that feeling when people claim they want something to do and then can't be bothered to show up and always have an excuse. You would think we learn to just not plan anything; expect, that is when people would show up.
Having "real" friendships online gosh that is something I really miss these days. Everyone always running around wanting to play so many games you never see people again. I have a couple of people I say like 1 word to most of the week. Maybe once a month we go play some game or a server is rented out for a few weeks. Otherwise you just acknowledge the other person is still breathing and move on with the day.
I do miss the 54 man raids in Everquest where you could not wait to finish whatever stuff IRL you had to do and then got go play the night away with friends. Weekends, holidays, summer, any extra moment was spent with those friends and most of the time having a time of your life. Bit of simpler times back then as well which was part of that magic.
Well looks like at least you got something for being a late entry. Gratz!
Next one should be Monday. Have a great weekend
I got sucked into WOW back in the Lich King days. My brother and I had a lot of fun playing together for a good year or so until he got burned out and quit. I loved playing solo. It was my Zen time. If I needed to do a raid I'd hang around the entrance and jump in with someone. Eventually I got to that point in the game where you couldn't get anything done unless you were in a group. I wound up quitting because I didn't want to deal with the other players because they were obnoxious or needy. I suppose I could have searched long enough for a group I meshed with, but I just didn't want to.
The game is still very enjoyable for the solo player. All of my top favorite activities are solo: in game fishing, battle pet collecting, and soloing old content. The premise I built my guild around was "friendship and community first everything else second." Which is definitely not how it is usually done. Usually guild attitudes are: we are competing to push end game and expect everyone to line up to fulfill a guild leader's ambition no matter how much their game experience suffers.
World of Warcraft is something that I hear on and off from my son, he loves to play it, I remember when he and his neighbors started initially and nowadays they have more players outside of the neighborhood. For me it is difficult to imagine but again I was another generation. But it was very sweet to hear recently when there was a Storm in California my son knew that because one of his friend was from there and he was really worried about him and his family. That is another good side of such games. Just wanted to mention. Thank you for your review, it was interesting to hear your opinion and to learn a little more about games :)
Yes, despite increasing percentages of player burnout and discontent, there are still plenty of players enjoying online gaming and one another's company. One thing that isn't going away is our reliance on the internet for communication. I think what we'll see more of is groups of online individuals forming that are no longer tied to a specific game. Already personally, I see myself logged into Discord pretty much 100% of the day, chatting with friends, while only logging in to play games in the evening.
Thanks for sharing your views! Do you think that in the future people will be able conquer their darker nature or they become dumber and dumber and the games will become shallower and shallower?
It's a hard question. Part of it will depend on people working to define what "fun" is for themselves, and whether mingling with random people and exposing themselves to "pug" (pick up game) members is something they are willing to tolerate/make the best of.
Blizzard has actually responded in a big way this past year to this huge division opening in their player base by announcing the release of "WoW Classic," (re-release of the original WoW game on separate servers) trial playable at this upcoming Blizzcon.
However the way that they are going about this is already making for a greater controversy, by forcing the already-existing long time classic privately owned servers to shut down, and the large communities of like-minded players on them to disperse.
One big element that is permanently changing MMO gaming is Discord voice/text servers, which allow communities to develop outside of a game platform, and have communities of like-minded gamers form and play between different games with each other as the common enjoyed element.
We should thank Jason Citron who invented Discord then!
One of the MMO's that I really loved was Ragnarok Pre Renewal ( For some reason when they added the 3rd jobs it became crappy because of all the unbalanced characters and skills). All I can say MMO's are really fun you get to meet a lot of friends and have fun altogether. I'll never forget all those sleepless nights grinding to become one of the strongest when it comes to PVP hahaha. Thanks for sharing all your inputs. Have a wonderful day!
I think that with the release of "WoW Classic," we will end up seeing re-release of a lot of older games, with the hopes of allowing people to recapture the nostalgia. I remember the pvp grinding days!
That has been a good analysis of the situation. What you say makes a lot of sense to me. Before, when I was a child, I remember that at the beginning I did not understand the logic of some sports, but by learning the rules of each of them, I could understand the games much better, but at the same time it was harder to enjoy them, Only when two very good teams played could I have fun, otherwise, it would not be like that. In a certain way, when we understand something in its entirety, it loses part of its magic. On the other hand, it is true that when we receive what we want in an easy way, it ends up losing the attraction that it previously had for us.
Good points here. Something that has changed massively over the years in this game is the "gear stats" on armor. Armor penetration, MP5, hit rating, elemental resistances, and spirit have disappeared. The need for theory crafting, and following number crunching sites such as "Elitist Jerks" has disappeared. Instead, armor has practically been simplified to intellect, strength, agility, and stamina, with all of those automatically switching depending on the spec/class equipping the item. Yes, it could be a pain in the ass to figure out creating a perfectly balanced character and attack rotations, but it also added to the intrigue of the game, and the challenge.
Instead of spending time perfecting a mastery of a class and how it is played, using dps meter addons and training dummies, players now just complain in forums or give up on their character altogether if they are not seeing numbers that are competitive with other team members. And this isn't a trend just happening among new players to the game. I see this behavior most of all among the players who have been around the longest.