The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul

Growing up did you ever have a friend that you got along with swimmingly and had some amazing times and then something changed.  You aren’t exactly sure what changed but there was a shift where they moved from being this loveable goofball that you cherished time with, to being something that just could not ever seem to get their shit together.  You would try and go hang out with them again, but you always felt worse about everything after spending a significant amount of time in their aura.  You would try and offer advice or attempt to help them get their shit together, but it always ended up backfiring somewhere along the way.  Eventually, you found yourself distancing from them just to keep your own hopes and dreams from coming crashing down around you as they pulled you into their void.

I’ve had that friend, actually more than one of them over the years.  I’ve also had a very similar relationship with Blizzard and more specifically World of Warcraft.  When you are in this situation you want the world for this person that you love, but also know that it is actively harmful to have them in your life.  The thing is I have learned to cut myself off from those influences in the real world, or at least significantly distance myself from them to where they are no longer impacting me.  I’ve never really managed to do the same with World of Warcraft because even though I know it is bad for me…  I still care.

So as a result it hurts a bit when news comes out that they are flailing and are not so great condition right now.  In part, I am talking about the supposed leak that was circulating or the long-winded rant thread by Grummz the other day adding to it.  Side note…  that is not a leak friend.  That is not something that came from official company emails or documents that were then circulated without the permission of Blizzard.  That is someone having a rant and while I don’t know the circumstances of that rant, it was purposeful and very much not something that leaked out.  I am not sure if it is real and someone thought they were venting in a safe place…  and someone copypasta’d it onto Imgur or if it is corporate cosplay.  Whatever the case it is still a bad look at a bad time when World of Warcraft is seemingly already reeling.

I’ve been following this drastic turn from the zeitgeist on their opinion and general sentiment about World of Warcraft.  The thing is it isn’t like we have not been collectively “mad” at the game before.  This always seems to be a cyclical happening and there is always something in every single expansion cycle that pisses someone off enough to start sharpening that axe.  However this time it feels a little different.  For years on the podcast, we have raised the question of what happens to Warcraft when they release two poorly received expansions in a row.  Blizzard had been on this cycle of a good expansion and a bad expansion and the goods are always high enough points to pull up the public sentiment creating a mindset of “just wait for the next expansion and everything will be alright again”.

Battle for Azeroth was not well received and for me personally, it was the doubling and tripling down on the big dumb Red versus Blue narrative of factional conflict.  I enjoyed the storyline Horde side quite a bit but never could seem to get into the Alliance narrative in spite of on paper it seeming to have a bunch of elements I would care about.  Shadowlands had moments of brilliance like the Maldraxxus but zones I had to force my way through like Bastion…  which unfortunately was the very first zone of the expansion.  Normally I manage to level my main and an alt before bouncing from World of Warcraft but I only actually made it to the new level cap on a single character before tossing the game aside.

I am not a proponent of Classic World of Warcraft because it creates this revisionist narrative of the past.  Coming back and playing that game made me realize that so many of the elements that I deeply cared about and remembered fondly…  specifically involved the people that I remembered them fondly with.  There is no going back to a better time in World of Warcraft because you will never actually capture that lightning in a bottle that was gaming at that exact time in history.  However, I do look fondly upon the first trilogy of World of Warcraft like a magical time and I have been trying to understand why it felt so much better back then at least compared to the more modern incarnation that really started with Cataclysm.

The thing is if you follow the arc from World of Warcraft to The Burning Crusade and into Wrath of the Lich King not only did you have a strong narrative path that connected directly to Warcraft 3, but also a game that was built on constant and iterative improvements to the existing formula.  Sure there were some wild changes here and there, but for the most part, each expansion added to the things that were available to the player base and offered not only quality of life improvements but also changes that enrich the existing systems rather than radically changed them.  An example of this is Gem Sockets, which is a system that layered on top of the existing gearing systems and enriched them adding another layer of customization to something that already seemed to be working.

With Cataclysm we started what I will refer to as the “Wild Moodswing” era of World of Warcraft.  This is marshaled by what seemed to be a desire to erase the past and create something completely new.  They were not going to actually create a Warcraft 2.0, but with each expansion, it felt like they were making radical enough changes that they might as well have called it that.  Cataclysm started this off by quite literally nuking the world and replacing almost every single old-world zone with a slightly different version.  It was ambitious as hell, and while it didn’t work for me I think the concept was cool.  For me, it was oversteering while you are already hydroplaning and I think the game ended up in the ditch as a result.

The problem with radical change is it ends up creating a vastly unpredictable user experience.  We all have a love for World of Warcraft and all of this nostalgia…  but end up having them try and apply those feelings to a game that no longer feels like we want it to feel.  The end result is you wind up with great vacillations between moments of unexpected brilliance like Legion and extreme low points like Warlords of Draenor.  So the thing with WoD is that on paper it seemed like everything going into that expansion was going to be awesome.  I actually greatly enjoyed the leveling process, but the huge gaps between content after the initial burst left a bad taste in so many mouths.  I will always remember it fondly because it gave me the one-player fantasy I have always wanted…  DPS Warrior with Sword and Shield.

After years of gnashing my teeth about what makes an MMORPG great, and I think I have ended up with a basic template.  Here are the bullet points I have boiled it down to:

• Small iterative changes over time that feel like they improve not only the quality of life for the player but enrich the existing systems and build upon them.
• A predictable release cadence that allows your player base to know when then the next content drop is going to happen so that they can play their schedule around it.  Additionally, the content quality needs to be consistent and meet most of the player’s expectations.
• Support multiple styles of play so that your raider, pvper, crafter, and your extreme cosplay aficionado all have a home and feel like they have equal footing in your game.  The content drop should give each of the groups of players something they feel is theirs and can be excited about.
• Make additive content not subtractive content.  The world should feel like it is getting bigger and there should be systems that make the older content evergreen and still relevant in spite of times changing.  The alternative makes you feel like the world shrinks each time content drops as this new thing is the only part of the world that now matters.
• Catchup mechanics that allow new players to easily slide into content if they have walked away for a while.  Games need to support the ability to fade in and out of a game as your life changes and not feel like the player has sacrificed too much in the process.

The thing is there are a number of games more or less following these bullet points.  You have games like Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV that have slowly been building momentum for years.  There is also Guild Wars 2 that is doing its own thing but should probably be mentioned even though the thing that it is doing is not really in my wheelhouse.  The problem is there are two games that I love that are absolutely NOT doing these things…  namely Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft.  I struggle in both cases because the world seems to shrink each time a content drop happens as the players are funneled towards this new thing that just got added in, with no real reason to keep doing the older things that were still enjoyable.  That is something that Final Fantasy XIV has excelled at is bribing players to keep doing the back catalog of content because it is good for the health of the game to make sure everything stays active.

I think another important note we should talk about is console support for games.  World of Warcraft does not have console support, nor does it appear like they are heading in that direction.  Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online both jumped early on the console bandwagon, and while at least in the case of FFXIV system design being initially limited because of the PlayStation 3 I think that flexibility has paid off in other ways.  Folks might have been PC gamers in their High School or College years but found as an adult that sequestering to a dedicated room of the house to play games no longer fits their way of life.  Having the flexibility of still playing the MMORPGs that you loved in your younger years, on the console that is more practical in your older years is a big boost in the total pool of players that you can draw on.

So I have said a lot of words today and unburdened myself with a lot of concepts I have been thinking about.  I want to close things out, but I feel like I need to draw back a specific point that I feel is extremely important to underline.  I do not want World of Warcraft to fail.  I do love and want Final Fantasy XIV to be successful, but I do not want it to be entirely due to the failure of what was a long-time friend of mine.  World of Warcraft is that friend that cannot get their shit together, but even though you have been distancing yourself…  you still really want to see them succeed.  I would love for us to tell in a decade’s time the riveting tale of the revival of World of Warcraft and how it is the second greatest comeback tale of all time…  because let’s be honest no one is going to outdo the FFXIV 1.0 to FFXIV 2.0 story.  As much as I want this success for an old friend, I am just resigned to the fact that we are going to get more of the same with an added focus on mobile game mechanics and alternate streams of monetization.  I want World of Warcraft to be a better game than it is today, but I have lost my faith that it can be.