How Blizzard and World of Warcraft Ruined Everything1

No matter how you feel about World of Warcraft, there is no denying that it is now the ultimate power in the (gaming) universe. No, wait. Let's back up a bit first.

Waxing Nostalgic

I've been playing video games and role playing games for long time now. When I first got a Nintendo, I played Mario Bros. just like everyone else, but I never beat it. No, while everyone else was busy rescuing the princess from a hammer throwing dinosaur, I was busy helping Lord British or fulfilling the prophecy regarding the light warriors^2,3. It wasn't long before I was playing any RPG I could get my hands on. I played them on consoles and PCs; I played them when I should have been doing homework and when a young person with any social skills would have been doing...I don't know, something social. I spent time walking across the Clouds of Xeen and then across to the Darkside. (Pause for a year and a half to play Doom and Doom II.) This has continued on over the years and moved into more recent RPG series like Neverwinter Nights or KOTOR. While I have supposedly matured, my love for video games in general-and specifically the RPG-has continued. No matter what system a game was played on, no matter when it was played, my favorites have always been those which had a solid story and more freedom to make choices.

Logging On

Games like World of Warcraft are hardly the first roleplaying games to be played by multiple players using a network. By the early 1990's more and more people were connecting their computers to the internet, and bringing games with them. Most of us weren't connected to the internet proper, but rather to horrible (by current standards, at least) services like Prodigy⁴ and AOL or maybe to a local BBS. Nevertheless, there were online games even then. When I was in college in the mid-90's, I played a bit on various Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs. I never got too into these games, however as they were not nearly as complex as free-standing RPG options and despite being entirely text-based, these were the 2400-9.6K (or 28.8 if you were lucky) modem days, so lag was still a problem. As online technology improved at an exponential rate, a crop of new games emerged that incorporated the same principles of multi-user dungeons but with impressive graphic interfaces, and the MMORPG as we know it was born. There have been several generations of MMORPGs now, but none have hit the mainstream jackpot like WoW. It's influence can been seen everywhere from other games to television to, potentially, the movie theater.

Changing Landscapes

So, what's the problem? Games are now online. This is a good thing, right? Yes and no. The allure of these games is easy to understand, but they are not without their faults.⁵

-One of the great strengths of the MMORPG is people, but the anonymity of being online does funny things to people (John Gabriel has a theory about this, but I'll let you look that one up on your own). Lack of knowledge in any facet of the game is likely to get you branded as a noob and excluded from the cool kid's club, as is disagreeing with another player or simply be around to take the blame when things go wrong. If you didn't enjoy being mocked for what you wore in elementary school, it's highly unlikely that you'll enjoy being mocked for what you wear (or wield) in a game. Even worse, I do make mistakes from time to time, and the last thing you ever want to do in one of these games is make a mistake where someone else can see it.

-Even when players aren't openly trashing other players, there is still the non-stop chatter. Sometimes it is harmless, though both irritating and ignorant. Other times, it is simply unbearable. (Playing a game with public chat on during election time is only slightly preferable to a knife to the eye.)

-Believe it or not, sometimes I like to do a quest on my own. It's great that quests and other parts of games are designed so that people can work cooperatively, but for many of us standing around asking for other people to join is not exactly the most enjoyable activity, so needing to find those other people can be frustrating.

-Time. Seriously, time. I'll spend a lot of time playing a game if I like it, but I do have other things to do like work or sleep. In most MMORPGs, I'm automatically playing catch-up if I didn't have a game on its release date and every minute I'm not grinding or farming is putting me further behind. Since having better gear and more experience allows you to get better gear and earn more experience, the differences only increase over time. Soon, those who play non-stop have tremendous advantages and there is little skill or decision making involved. They may be against the rules, but it's easy to see why people create and use bots in these games.⁶

-Story is another part of the game that really suffers. If people are going to come back to a game day after day, it's hard to create a storyline that continues to advance and be interesting for that long, so the main choices are to abandon any sort of real story for a little background and quest-related stories or to have a story that goes for a while, but may end months or years before a player stops playing. Neither of these are really ideal, but I don't think anyone has found a better way to solve this problem yet.

-And of course, it wouldn't be right to talk about these games without fees. Fees suck, there's no doubt about it. No one wants to pay for one more thing, especially not now. Even more than that, I don't need something charging me $15 a month and making me feel guilty if I don't use all of my leisure time to get my money's worth. I already have a Netflix membership for that.

The biggest problem that I personally have with these games is one that becomes evident when you look at the shelves of the gaming store. When a company considers making a new game, they can create a game and sell it to lots of people or they can sell it to lots of people and then charge them to play it. As much as I hate the idea, I can't really blame them for choosing the gift that keeps on giving. The problem is that the options for non-online gaming are disappearing. Everyone always copies the most popular games. Look at the number of life simulation style games that have come up after the success of The Sims, or the rapid proliferation of "play an instrument" games, and i have a feeling we're only at the beginning of that curve. It is to be fully expected that when a game is as successful as World of Warcraft, that others will want to follow, and that is without a doubt what it happening. I said in the title of the post that World of Warcraft is ruining everything, but in reality it is their success and the desire of other companies for that same success that is changing the landscape. There is no denying, however, that the traditional RPG as a computer game is dying. Search the stores, you know it to be true. There may be some series hanging on because they have been around forever and there may be new games, but more and more of them are disappearing or coming out with new MMO versions of their games (or they may evolve into Hack'n'Slash platforms which is definitely not the same). The genre will not go quickly, but it has already become a shadow of what it once was. Soon, there will be nothing left for the nostalgic RPG player to do but break out the 12-sided die and head on over to The Android's Dungeon, but for now I'm still raging against the dying of the light.

One final note: After much of this post was written, I found this article over at Wired, which doesn't say all the same things, but certainly says some of these things more succinctly.


¹ Ok, about the title. I was a little worried that, despite the fact that it was said facetiously, it might distract people from the main post. I had at one point decided to say they "changed" rather than "ruined" everything, but decided to go back to the original. Either people will detect the tongue-in-cheek tone of the title and read on or they won't.

²Timelines compressed for convenience and to fit childhood memories.

³ I was almost certainly playing computer role playing games prior to this. One could make an excellent argument that despite not fitting many of the rules (experience points, gaining levels, etc.) King's Quest was an early rpg. You played the role of Graham, were faced with near-infinite options and a long story with many side-quests. (Man, I loved that game.) Even if you consider that an adventure game, there were also the roguelike and text-based RPGs.

⁴Seriously, let's not even discuss how much time I spent on Prodigy discussing various epic fantasy series. Let's just say it was a lot and leave it at that. But if anyone out there used Prodigy in the early 90's and used to be involved in discussion groups for The Wheel of Time...Hi. Long time, no see.

⁵This is where I think it's important to be clear that I'm not pointing out WoW flaws, but genre flaws which may or may not be applicable to every game. WoW is simply the biggest game in a large genre. I do however think that the success and size of WoW is responsible for my final and primary complaint.

⁶Cheating, hacking, gold selling and several other things can and probably should be considered in a list of complaints about the genre, but this post has taken long enough to write and those could take forever.