[10 Years of World of Warcraft]

In honor of World of Warcraft's tenth anniversary, Raph Koster has written an essay on the inspirations behind and the affects of this massively influential MMORPG:

"These days, so many more people have passed through the gates of Azeroth than ever played its antecedents that many don’t even know the deep wellspring sources from which it came. Most of the defining characteristics of WoW are from a long tradition that started around 1990. WoW represents the (perhaps final) evolution of theDikuMUD model."

WoW was my first MMO, and my first real foray into PC gaming from my gaming origins with single-player games on consoles. I played it for 7 years, with the same guild of friends, some of whom I am still in contact with today. If it wasn't for WoW, I wouldn't have experienced the full range of good and bad online experiences that eventually shaped my views on feminism and gaming inclusivity. For most longtime MMO players, love it or hate it, it's impossible to deny what an impact it's had on millions of people and the genre as a whole, beyond simply as a market and genre force but also in terms of human relationships. My various experiences in WoW inspired me to start blogging about MMOs to begin with, so it seemed fitting that it also be the topic of my final post on this blog.

[Gaming Also Brings People Together]

It seems a common cliche in the media for the past few years to talk about how online gaming destroys various people's lives. Since the days of EverQuest almost every mention of MMORPGs that you see reported is a tale of dysfunction being presented as if it's normal for players of these games to be damaged by them. I think the fact that that MMORPGs also bring players together and can build new friendships and communities should be brought up more often in response.

MMOGamerChick posted one of these stories about how playing WoW changed her life for the better. It's a good read. =)

[Interview With a Goldseller]

An oldie (2010) but a goodie, and still relevant to many games today:

Despite the vitriol with which most MMORPG players attack goldfarmers and the whole concept of RMT, the fact is that this market has existed since the birth of the MMO itself and in many ways is actually -enabled- by many of the conventions that oldschool players have held dear since day one (such as monthly fees).

[Goldfarming: Cruel and Unusual Punishment]

I was aware that the Chinese prison system was known for some shady practices, but this is something else: the new 'hard labor' in many Chinese prisons is virtual, not physical.

“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

It goes to show just how much money is tied up in RMT for games... and the more I learn about the infamous 'Chinese Gold Farmer' the less I resent them and the more I feel sorry for them. It seems like many are people just trying to pay their bills and put food on the table, if not outright forced to farm games for hours a day against their will. It's hard to demonize these people once you realize there are real human stories on the other side of the screen. In a way, people who pay for these goldfarming services are not simply cheating at a computer game, they may also be contributing to the exploitation of other human beings. If anything, it goes to prove that gamers should care about where their virtual goods and services are coming from.

[What About Jaina's Story?]

Just as a random thought I've had, since the end of WotLK:  Does anyone else find it strange that the woman who has had a history with two major characters in the Warcraft storyline (Arthas and Kael'thas) had almost ZERO plot involvement with their stories in either BC or WotLK? Jaina never got a mention, cutscene, or any closure after the death of Arthas... she's never mentioned at all, and we're never shown her feelings about the whole thing.

I could understand not really involving her in BC, since Kael'thas' crush was pretty one sided, but come on; Jaina and Arthas were pretty serious about each other before Arthas went all evil.

Its disappointing that Blizzard didn't think she was important enough to give her a role in either of the two important plotlines in the game that she had the strongest personal connections with. I think it was really a missed opportunity to flesh out one of the least developed WoW faction leaders.

[Male Avatars and Stereotypes in WoW]

Righteous Orbs tackles the reasons why male avatars tend to be less popular than female ones in WoW, and dissects the really obvious 'macho' fixation the devs at Blizzard have. For example, on the Blood Elf males model:

"Signs that your game might have unrealistic ideas about the human body #27, the characters who everybody says look too tiny and effeminate to carry a sword are built like f*cking Conan."

This is something I've noticed since the very beginning of the game (and really, does ANYONE think Human males look like anything other than dumpy goons?).

[ESRB Rubs Salt in Some RealID Wounds]

Well, crap.

/facepalm

[We Are Not the Customer Anymore]

  Even though the RealID blowup is over, I think it's brought to the foreground a fact about the relationship between gamers and their game developers that I think most people (especially those with an emotional attachment to a particular game) find disheartening.

  It began after this post brought to light the timeline of developments after the Blizzard-Activision merge, which put into a larger context the attempt to integrate real identities into the forums (no, it was never about just 'stopping trolls').

  For insight into the character of the man that the CEO of Blizzard has to report to, here are some choice quotes:

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks [people not part of the gaming culture] into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

"[Y]ou know if it was left to me, I would raise the [game's] prices even further."

  And in response to why Kotick got rid of several popular Activisiion game franchises:

"[They] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. ... I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus... on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we'll be working on them 10 years from now."

  And finally, Escape Hatch sums it up nicely:

"We, the players, are no longer the World of Warcraft's customer base. Advertisers are."

  In the past, when MMOs were a niche geek hobby, the gamer WAS the customer. This connection between dev and player was reflected in how loyal people got to a certain company, how invested they were in the game's wellbeing and success. But it was only a matter of time before the businessmen saw this attachment as the potential for huge profit. This is why you have Robert Kotick bragging about taking the fun out of making games, of how he wants to turn game-design into an assembly-line of franchises and sequels churning out products filled with as many microtransactions and advertisements and profit-expanding features as he can get away with. Because he doesn't give a crap about the players. To him, we're just geeks whose emotional attachments to our games and the devs that make them makes us vulnerable to being exploited by guys like himself. To be fair, it's not all this one guy's fault, but it reflects the kind of attitudes that start cropping up when a company quickly shoots up into becoming worth billions of dollars like Blizzard did after it made World of Warcraft. The bean-counting vultures start circling.

  However these kinds of guys control future of the 'modern AAA MMO'. This is the kind of guy dev companies have to impress to get initial funding, to survive (i.e. get MILLIONS of players as fast as possible or else be labeled a 'failure'), and to be considered 'successful' on the business side of things in a world where having 'only' 3-500k players is considered 'not profitable enough'. However I think for many of us, this change from 'small tight-knit company to mega giant' is a sad one, especially if you've been in MMOs a long time and remember when things were smaller and more personal. It's the price we've payed for embracing the MMORPG 'going mainstream'.

  This is why I'm starting to prefer the smaller F2Ps, and indie games. They're lower budget, sure. Not so shiny as the 'big games', rougher around the edges. But a lot of times, when things get bigger they don't always get better. And I think we've finally crossed that line in the MMORPG sphere. Sure, it means bigger budgets, flashier graphics, bigger expansions and tie ins, and more prestige. But I think the MMORPG as a genre has lost a part of it's soul; a part that had originally appealed to many players in the first place.

[Playing Alone, Together]

An interesting paper talking about the oft-lamented trend of modern MMORPGs being designed for gamers to 'play with millions of other people (that they never need to interact with)', and how that affects the longterm health/viability of a game's community:

'Alone Togther: Exploring the Social Dynamics of MMOGs'

A choice line from the paper is: "One of the core game mechanics in MMOGs, leveling, has damaging impacts on the game's social fabric". Many people have been saying this for years now. While I don't mind leveling, there REALLY needs to be ways ingame for people of different levels to be able to group up and play together, and things like 'rest exp' don't really do a good job of achieving that. It'd be nice to see games actually coming up with some new ideas in that area.

[Blizzard's RealID Fiasco]

Will I quit WoW permanently over this change? No. But I will also never again participate on any Blizzard forum. Scott over at Broken Toys sums up my feelings pretty much, and presents a reasoned defense of online anonymity.

The folks running around calling people who have a problem with this change 'irrational' and 'paranoid' must be really happy in their privileged denial bubbles where the world is always safe and where losing your privacy online couldn't possibly have any negative repercussions.

Plus there's the fact that MMORPGs were originally based around creating an 'alternate persona' separate from real life, so why would folks be surprised that a lot of people who enjoy that aspect would consider bringing RL into their game as a sort of violation?

EDIT: Oh look, Blizz made a deal with Facebook to share RealID info across platforms. So at least now we know the monetary reason for this change -- the claim that it's all 'to improve the forums' is just PR bunk. You don't need to strip away pseudonyms in order to properly moderate an online community.

EDIT2: After the enormous outcry provoked by this announcement, Blizzard has pulled the idea.

[Keeping the Glass Half Full]

It's been a few days since I've come back to WoW, and I realized that I really need to outline to myself what aspects of the game keep me coming back, and what aspects keep disappointing me. I've decided that I need to come to terms with what the game IS and what it ISN'T and dwell on the parts I like rather than always on the weaknesses of the game. Because it's too easy to always see the glass half empty, which I think is unfair to the game.

I think I need to take a page from Beau's book and learn to let go and not treat 'fun' like such serious business.

So I narrowed down the things I like most in WoW:

1. The story/world (including quests)
2. My character and developing her (so far, that's been solely by gear and achievements)
3. 5 man dungeons
4. Collecting fluff (pets, mounts, titles)
5. Playing and socializing with my guild/friends ingame.

From now until Cataclysm, I'm going to try and get the most out of those aspects of the game. I'm going on hiatus from the gear treadmill and raiding all together, and I'm even considering moving to an RP server/guild, at least on one of my characters. It's harder in WoW than in some other MMORPGs to find things to do outside the gear/PvP grind, but I really feel I need to start focusing on that or else I'm just going to fall into burnout mode again for the umpteenth time.

[A World or a Lobby?]

I've come back to WoW after having been gone for around 6 months or so. There are many new things added since I've been away, not the least of which is the much-touted 'Dungeon Finder' cross-server LFG tool. Since I wanted to get the achievement that gives a pet Pug, I've been using the Finder pretty much constantly for the past two days.


Now, when the cross-server LFG was first announced, my first feelings about it were mixed. On the one hand, I understand how hard getting a group can be depending on a server's population and class balance. But also, I worried that it would erode the already tenuous community that WoW servers have. When you're instantly teleported from anywhere in the world into a dungeon with 4 people from different servers that you'll most likely never see again afterward, it's hard to justify the effort to get to know them, talk to them, or to even have patience with the slightest mistake. I observed people leaving after one bad pull (and why not, when many can easily get another random group via the Finder). There's no incentive to really care about the people in the group other than as efficient loot farming aids. And there's no way to blacklist the asshats.

Whereas an unsocial attitude was present in many cases even before the Dungeon Finder, whenever you found a 'cool' person when pugging you could friends them and build groups via the Friends list (the original purpose of the list). In BC, I had a long list of cool non-guildies I knew on the server, and could put together groups rather regularly. But there's no need for that kind of effort now. There's no need to even walk to a dungeon's physical location anymore. They've been basically severed from the game world. The 'world' of Warcraft is now just a graphical lobby you hang out in to pass the time while waiting for your insta-port into a dungeon with people you have no incentive to ever get to know. For PvP I can understand the benefit of such a system, but for 5-man instances I think it does more harm than good. I mean, sure it's now simpler and faster than ever to 'grind badges for loot'. But I think making that process even more mechanical than it already was, is a step in the wrong direction. It's easier and faster, but not better ('Better' would be adding some variety in content to the game besides loot treadmills). Has Blizzard's goal of increasing the efficiency and speed of gear achievement finally trumped the gameplay and original premise of the game as an RPG? How far does a game have to go before it totally loses any semblance of the 'RPG' aspect of 'MMORPG'?

Though honestly, I don't know how else (barring server transfers/mergers) to solve the problem of difficulty in forming instance groups. But even so, I still feel like this latest development has diminished even more of the 'world' in World of Warcraft.

[The Good Old Days]

Gestalt Mind takes us back to his first memories of EQ and how they revisit him to this day.

Your first MMORPG really does seem 'magical' when you look back on it, doesn't it? Stepping out as a freshly-minted newbie in a world that seems so big and strange and cool, and your first days exploring and learning all about it. Halcyon days, those were! I think that's seriously why WoW has that affect on so many people -- the affection of your first MMO stays strong for a long time.

It's WoW's fifth anniversary, and I've been in Azeroth from day one on the same server in the same guild -- I've seen many changes both ingame and 'IRL' across these five years. It's kind of overwhelming to look back and realize how many memories and adventures I've had in this one game with the same group of people. Some of those people left long ago, but others are still there and still going strong. I stepped away for other games several times, but always came back to WoW in the end. So many memories and friends are hard to make a break from. But those games showed me, a newbie MMORPG-player, other ways of playing and other types of communities. They helped me discover my 'true playing style' and affected my view of what the 'perfect MMORPG' would be. It's a testament to how important I think free trials are, imo. =P

I don't know if I'll be coming back to Azeroth anytime soon. But I will never be able to look back on it without affection born from many happy memories of playing with great people. In the end, they're what make MMORPGs so special and so lasting in our minds, regardless of whether it was WoW, EQ, or any other game. That's the reason we take pictures of our guild's first kills -- not to brag and show off to others (though many do) but so we can look back and remember how exciting it was, and who was there with us when all that group preparation and effort has paid off. And THAT feeling is the true magic of MMORPGs.


Above is a shot of my guild's first Magmadar kill, way back in the MC era. Many folks in that pic that no longer play WoW, but I still recognize their avatars. Those were good times with good folks. =)

[Don't Date Noobs]

Srsly. =P

[The B-Squad]

Elder Game has made a fascinating post talking about the obvious shift to the 'B-Team' running WoW, and the side effects that are the result:

"When we say that WoW is “polished”, what we mean is that it is surprisingly clean of linty little bugs... But that’s changing.

More and more little mistakes have crept into the game recently — changes that are positive on the surface, but have not been implemented with the finesse that makes them worthwhile. Mana expenditure rates have changed, rules for dungeons have been tweaked, the cost of items has fluctuated. It all seems useful. But it’s usually full of little side effects. Worse, it doesn’t take the human equation into account: it doesn’t counter-balance for the actual needs of the players very well. There are ways to meet both goals, but you have to try a lot harder at it than WoW is."

  I have to admit, reading the analysis of someone who has worked in the industry before and who can recognize the signs of the 'B-team' influence really cleared up a lot for me. That vague feeling of things being 'off' for a while makes a lot more sense now.

[The Slow Decline of WoW]

So Jeff over at MMO Weekly wrote a pair of articles outlining the self-destructive pattern that WoW is falling into. His critique, however, is two expansions too late. The problems he's talking about were strongest in Original WoW, reduced in BC, and are even further eroded in WotLK. In reality, I think the destruction now is coming NOT from making the endgame 'too exclusive', but by making everything before the raid endgame too easy.

I loved The Burning Crusade's 5 and 10 man dungeons. I loved the Heroics, even though they didn't offer upgraded gear at that time, only badges. Both heroic and regular 5 mans required teamwork and strategy, and people had to learn the fights and utilize crowd control effectively. Even though they were 'only 5 mans', they were fun, and Heroics required some work to succeed in. And since 5-man dungeons are my favorite part of the game, I was happy. I could log in, run a heroic or two, and have fun.

Then WotLK came out. The instances were now super short, easy, with tiny loot tables that ensured you got everything you wanted in perhaps 3 or 4 runs, tops. Crowd control was basically rendered useless (my Mage and my trap-savvy Hunter wept), as now every tank could 'aoe tank', and most groups just rained aoe on group pulls without any need to think. Trash mobs were just that -- trash, with nothing needed to learn or beware of. Just shoot 'em til they were dead, and move on. Heroic dungeons are virtually indistinguishable from their Normal mode, aside from the upgraded drops and badges.

WoW's problem is not that 'reaching endgame raids are too hard'. Their fatal mistake (in my opinion) is that Blizzard tried to make endgame more 'accessible' by completely trivializing all aspects of the game that lead up to it. Therefore the entire game experience is now watered down and rendered pointless, since Blizzard has basically admitted that it's all just a speedbump, and not content that has any intrinsic value, or that should be enjoyed on it's own merit.

And THAT is what destroyed most of my interest in WoW. I was never a hardcore raider, nor was I a pure 'casual' player. For someone like me, WotLK's 'easy mode' style of play is a waste of time for me. I've been reduced to running once a week 25-man raids with my guild as an excuse to even log in anymore. Since the game has nothing in it that isn't built directly around the watered down 'speedbump/treadmill' that is now meant to feed playerfodder into the 'endgame', it's just plain boring. This is why immersive worldbuilding, RP tools, robust crafting mechanics and community is something so important in an MMO. Because without any of those things, I'm quickly losing any interest in continuing to play the game... since there is basically nothing in it for me anymore.

Gear drops do not provide a tie to the game world, or anything lasting (since gear is invalidated so fast and even if you like the look of it, you're 'not allowed' to equip your character according to aesthetics). If it wasn't for my guild, which is made up of great people and holds a lot of happy memories for me across the 5 years that I've been a member of it, I would've quit months ago.

[How Not to Write A MMO Quest]

Via Shacknews: At the GDC, WoW's Jeff Kaplan did a panel talking about how NOT to write quests in an MMO:

“This is the worst quest in World of Warcraft,” he said. “I made it. It’s the Green Hills of Stranglethorn. Yeah, it teaches you to use the auction house. Or the cancellation page.”

“So I’m the asshole that wrote this quest. My philosophy was, I’m going to drop all these things around Stranglethorn, and it’s going to be a whole economy unto itself… It was horrible.”

“It was utterly stupid of me. The worst part… one of the things that taxes a player in a game like WOW is inventory management. Your base backpack that the game shipped with only has 16 slots in it. But basically at all times, players are making decisions. For a single quest to consume 19 spaces in your bags is just ridiculous.”

“So it’s a horrible quest, and I’m the only who made it, and somehow I am talking to you guys today.”

At least he admitted it. I never finished that quest on any of my four characters... =P

"Basically, and I’m speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a f*cking book in our game, because nobody wants to read it."

You know, I actually don't mind 'reading a book' in my games, only in 99% of MMOs the story, quite frankly, is stupid. At worst, the lore makes no sense or goes on for miles on cliched world-building minutiae that serves no purpose.

I actually enjoy reading many of the WoW quests. But seeing as how WoW as a MMO is not really about the world and immersion in it as it is a fun treadmill game on rails, that kind of creative effort is pretty much wasted on most of the players. Because they're not playing the game for that purpose, nor does the game encourage them to (and it has no real tools for it, anyway).

[Moral Ambiguity, or Lazy Design?]

So Richard Bartle makes a comment about quests in WotLK requiring players to torture helpless people for information. This kind of squicks him out.

Broken Toys then accuses him of overreacting. The ensuing discussion thread there is kind of interesting, with some people actually seriously discussing the concept of moral choices in games.

The first quest I ran across in Northrend that made me stop and go "WTF, how is this not kind of effed up?" was one from a Tuskar asking me to kill members of a rival tribe and kidnap their children for him. I still am not really sure why anyone would think that somehow makes killing tribespeople okay, as long as you have their kids as prisoners in a sack somewhere (yes, you actually put the babies in a bag) so technically the race won't go extinct. A bit insane as well as something really wierd for a 'hero' to be asked to do as if it was the most normal request.

But then in Dragonblight I was given my first torture quest, to use a branding iron on a Scarlet Onslaught member to gain information, and then to kill him afterwards. Okay, I was kind of squicked out, but the Scarlet folks have been pretty big bastards to everyone, and it was a Forsaken quest and they sort of specialize in being bastards themself, and it was part of a chain (and xp) so I did it. It's not like NOT doing it would have made a bit of difference, anyway, as there is no real choice or value to choosing not to do a quest for moral reasons in WoW.

But now knowing that there are several other quests requiring you to torture helpless people makes me really stop and wonder what the Blizzard devs were thinking. Apparently, there are other quests where the devs seem to have completely lost any kind of concept of the morality they're pushing as normal here: Killing an ally because she was being brainwashed and threatened with rape (Keristrasza, with the rapist being Malygos himself) ('a fate worse than death' and all that, I suppose is the justification there). Waving a white flag to lure out an enemy leader to kill them, etc. Torturing prisoners (and never once is that torture result in anything other than success -- they never lie or valiantly die without ratting out their allies). Can a game really claim to be about making the player a hero, when it has you doing very un-heroic (or even evil) things, though?

There are some class/race situation where I could see how these quests could work -- Warlocks and Death Knights are pretty evil, after all. Forsaken characters tend to be bitter and vicious to the living, so I could see certain race/class quests that would make make sense in those contexts -- but asking a life-affirming Druid or righteous Paladin to do such things? An honorable Tauren or a devout Draenei? Most of these quests are chains or offer only a lose/lose result for not doing them -- you never gain anything for choosing not to do them, you only lose out on xp, loot or story progression.

Chris Metzen, when talking about the theme of WotLK, said this: "We want to add some layers of psychology that put you in strange moral situations of how you fight the good fight that mimic some of Arthas’ own experiences…. By the time you reach level 80 [the expansion's new level cap], by the time you stand toe-to-toe with this bastard, do you still have your pretty principles and highfalutin morality, or is it a mirror reflection? Arthas is after that as much as global domination. It’s a hook that makes it personal that Burning Crusade didn’t have.”

But the way they went about it was a lazy design choice -- Blizzard should have made moral choices in Northrend actually MATTER, so that the decision to do something immoral for loot or convenience actually had an impact, instead of basically expecting people to play all the quests regardless how bad those quests made them behave, and then wag their finger at us afterward for being so 'amoral' when we were never given a real choice to behave otherwise.

I think it's a blatant show of how Blizzard disregards the player's own feelings about their character and how they have personalized that character in order to facilitate Blizzard's idea of the story the way THEY want it to be experienced by us (instead of letting the player make their own path), and I think that's a violation of the entire concept of a MMORPG. To attempt to add 'moral ambiguity' to the game simply by adding quests that make people behave reprehensibly without any real consequences or internal conflict about it was a very poor way of going about adding 'moral ambiguity'.

EDIT: Raph Koster weighs in his opinion.

[User-Created Content and the WoW Killer]

Tipa of West Karana has made a post about my own pet topic, user-created content, and ties it into the whole 'WoW-Killer' speculation discussion. And I agree, that the greatest threat to WoW would be a game of equal quality that also allows players to customize their own experiences. The Shut Up, We're Talking podcast has a great segment on it and on the feasibility of freeform user-creation in MMOs and the future of content in the genre.

[The RL Grind]

I've talked about this before, how the continued emphasis on heavily-scripted game content instead of developing tools for user-created content is a bad thing for WoW. Basically, that the constant race to create new scripted content for people who chew through it 100x faster than it can be produced is a destructive, unwinnable cycle. A quote from a recent interview with Frank Pierce has confirmed my opinion:

Question: How interesting has it been for you to watch the success of World of Warcraft?

Frank Pearce: I don't know if I'd describe it as "interesting" as much as exhausting. We've got almost 3000 employees worldwide now, and the majority of that growth is due to the success of World of Warcraft.

As a company we've found ourselves spread very, very thin - because the World of Warcraft community has a voracious appetite for content. That development team is 130 people, they're working on content patches, they're working on an expansion set, they've got their hands full - and then we've got the other development teams that we need to continue to support as well.

So it's great, it's a great problem to have, but it is a lot of work. We've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. It's been good experience for us, I wouldn't say that we've regretted it... but "interesting" isn't how we'd describe it necessarily.

And they can't ever lessen the breakneck pace, until they shift the focus of their development to longer-lived mechanics that allow people to make their own content and experiences. As long as WoW players are stuck waiting for handouts from Blizz for their fun, that 'real life grind' won't end, and I worry about potential burnout of the devs.