I was reading Larisa's post, a response to many other blog posts that are addressing the current WoW issue at hand:
- Is WoW dying?
- How is it dying?
- Why is it dying?
My Relationship with WoW
I've always found my relationship with WoW to be a little embarrassing. I am not naive enough to deny that playing WoW tends to have a negative connotation to it. Hell, players have negative connotations for each other within the game; the whole, "he must be fat, pimply and 12 years old" thought process.
It's funny explaining the game to my mom. She calls it "my little game" and although she respects the amount of time and effort I do put into it, she seems to always chuckle to herself.
Today, my relationship with WoW is going through a rough patch. Yet, despite everything, I still want WoW, and Blizzard to do well. And it's not because I know people who work for Blizzard, some closer to me than others. It's because I fell in love with this game, and even if we go through a hard break up, I'll still wish it the best.
Jacob "Modem", from WoWphiles, said it best.
"I have often said in private to Jason and others that I now feel like Blizzard/WoW and I are navigating a rough stage in our relationship. It’s like when your partner/spouse tell you that they don’t love you anymore but because you so deeply love them you want to try to work it out… I feel like Blizzard/WoW is the partner/spouse who doesn’t love me as a player and a consumer anymore. Yet, my devotion to the game remains even despite its best efforts to get rid of me."
I have to admit, with the recent Patch 4.1 notes coming out, I'm definitely feeling, if not cautiously, the love as a restoration druid. I feel that we all complained enough within the blogsphere that they somehow listened to us. And nothing is better than a company listening to it's community. But outside of that, I find my relationship with WoW to be lacking. I feel like I'm in a stale relationship, reminiscent of a two year one I ended about a year and a half ago, where we were just going through the motions, but without much depth. There's a level of commitment to each other, not out of love, but out of some sort of obligation that I can't really remember.
I am constantly being woo'd by someone else. Everywhere I turn there are ads for Rift, taunting me with that incredibly hated "We're not in Azeroth anymore" line. And what's sad is that, if it weren't for the monetary obstacle I can't overcome, I would probably cheat on WoW without much guilt.
Is WoW dying?
No. but, as Larisa said, the blogsphere is riddled with something more than"...'WoW is dying since I don't like the game personally' whining that has been going on since the game launched."
It's definitely real concern that is rearing its head. It's an odd thing to gauge because WoW isn't dying, yet there is a shift in the community where people are leaving and it feels really permanent. I've seen people leave and yet, in the back of my mind, I know they will be back. And they did come back.
Now, people are leaving, I really find its pretty predictable and I get the strong sense they won't be back. Many of my friends who have left for Rift were already leaving the game before Rift showed up. They were already a foot out the door, when Rift opened it's Ice Cream truck and they all ran up to it, their attention and money free to give to Rift.
It's weird to think WoW is not dying, when we are all being impacted in a "WoW is dying" way.
I guess if you look at it from a more realistic way, isn't everything dying once it is born. Humans began dying the moment the take their first breathe.
...I think I'm heading into water I don't feel like treading in.
How is it dying?
I'll continue this post with the thought process that yes, WoW is dying. In fact, it's been dying for a long time.
So how is it dying?
First off, casual gaming has taken a huge hit in Cataclysm. I once again bring this all up in the defense of the "wrath baby." A game should be played to enjoyment, not bashing my head against the wall. I honestly think that Blizzard got it right in WotLK, maybe with a few kinks to smooth out. To completely reset the levels of difficulty between Wrath and Cataclysm was a major mistake.
Wrath introduced fairly easy raids (Naxx and Sarth) before introducing harder raids. This catered to the casual gamer. They then offered hardmodes and heroic versions of later raiding content for the hardcore raiders. While I think some of the hardmodes were a little too easy, this was definitely the right way to go. It was able to please a wide range of their audience and offer progression to casual gamers without burning them out too quickly. That being said, Cataclysm raiding is really a bright spot in the expansion content right now. It offers a variety of different fights, each with their own unique mechanics. While I think the difficulty for casual gamers might be too high, I can't complain about the content itself being dull within raids.
Heroics and dungeons are a different matter. I remember first running through the dungeons and being really excited. I enjoyed them they were pretty. But then a month went by. Heroic dungeons in Wrath sustained my interest for at least a couple months before I felt that running them was no longer worth it. I stopped regularly running heroics in Cataclysm as soon as I grabbed the last set of Justice Point gear I needed. Variety is the spice of life, so maybe that's why WoW is so freaking dull. Add to that the problem that the Dungeon Finder has created and Cata heroics just aren't holding up to their own.
People are mean!
Incredibly elitist too. I have my own level of patience that can be broken, but there are nice ways and mean ways of expressing the frustration. This seems to be a theme floating around in the blog community lately, but it's also prominent in game now. Dungeon Finder has created the "who gives a shit, I'll never see these people again" mentality that is further making repetitious heroic dungeons even more unappealing. People are mean! They roll on stuff that isn't theirs. They cuss people out and call people names if a mistake is made. DPS, you wonder why your Q time is over an hour long? Heal or Tank a LFD group and you'll know why. The level of complete impatience and rudeness is downright discouraging. Add to that the level of difficulty and cooperation needed to get through heroics these days, and you have a recipe for disaster.
People are incredibly judgmental; there is no longer a focus on fun and good attitudes. You can have a shitty attitude, but if you have the right kind of performance, then it will be overlooked. That being said, you could be the nicest guy EVER, but if you don't conform to the incredibly shrinking "Rights/Wrongs" ways of doing things, you will be kicked quicker than you can say noob.
Jacob "Modem" says "Though I realize this is an ever-present and necessary trend in any group wanting to get stuff done, ratcheting up the game's difficulty has increased the amount of scrutiny given to players and even friends that you have raided with for 2 years...who are good players!"
Absolute boredom
Besides raiding, there isn't anything really to do. I've done all the Archaeology stuff, but that profession needs a makeover as a whole. I hate PvP, higher level alt-leveling is boring in Cataclsym (there isn't a lot of variety) and lower-level alt leveling is so easy it's ...boring. When we aren't raiding, most of my guildies are offline now, doing other things. Maybe secretly playing Rift (or Pokemon in my case :))
Why is it dying?
Ghostcrawler's post a while back, about WoW being hard had a lot of good points. But I think it revealed a lack of understanding the community at the moment. When addressing people complaining that Dungeons are difficult and people aren't having fun, he responds with
"First, let me state that we do hear you. We understand some of you aren’t having fun and preferred the Lich King paradigm, or at least something closer to the Lich King paradigm. We greatly appreciate the feedback and it always makes us sad when players aren’t having fun. We're not ignoring you. We get it. We may not always agree on every point, but we understand where you’re coming from, and we want to try to help you understand where we're coming from."
He then goes on to explain that dungeons and raids are supposed to be hard so that things aren't trivial, and while he doesn't say it, I'm sure he means trivial to the small majority of hardcore gamers.He then provides explanations that we've all heard. Tank, you need to CC. Healers, if you can't heal through something, it's because something is going wrong mechanically. If you're still having problems, check your gear. Life still sucks, run normals.
He also addresses the LFD problem, telling players its a great tool (yes, I can see why it is) but it doesn't promise a successful PuG group. This is why you should be in guilds. Using the LFD is better if you do it with friends.
It's a funny thing he mentions that Cataclysm is focusing on encouraging guilds, which yes, it is, and I think it's doing a good job, but at the same time, he also says WoW promotes a lot of single play.
As Larisa has said, Ghostcrawler represents the counter to the problem she brought up in her post. Blizzard does seem out of touch with their community, and Ghostcrawler definitely seems to be trying to create a very good bridge between dev and player.
That being said, I haven't read the new post he has up concerning raid difficulty, but I think the post about dungeon difficulty does show a bit of out of touchness with the community on his part.
I don't understand a developer who tries to make the game for casual gamers, only to take it back after they hit the 11 million mark. The inconsistency between Cata and WotLK is an understandable change, but I think it really put a barrier between hardcore and casual and I think they are losing players because of it.
Then there's the LFD system.
What's sad is that, while Ghostcrawler offers lots of solutions to that problem, he forgets that the majority of people are just ignoring him. I've still been in LFD groups where the tank loves going wild without CC and dps are still more concerned about numbers than threat. There's a big blame game going on too, where if a dps dies they blame the tank for not holding threat, or the healer for not healing them, and then is accused of not watching threat enough. There never seems to be a solution, just a lot of finger pointing.
In the end
It's difficult seeing my friends list so barren, but it would be wrong of me to not acknowledge that I am also contributing to other barren lists of my friends.
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