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.