World of Iterate-craft

I've had a few people over time ask me to write my thoughts on World of Warcraft for various reasons: some were curious of what I thought about it, some wondered exactly how I would tear it down and some just wanted me to write about games they had actually played so that they could agree or disagree in the comments.

I've had a really hard time figuring out exactly how to do this. How does one write a review about a game that is evolving and expanding so quickly and so much that after as little as 2 years the game has been altered on almost every level? Reviews like this become stale and meaningless in a world where the game doesn't remain constant. That's not to say that snapshots in time or thoughts on a current direction aren't warranted, but for someone like me who invests his time in this only to still be behind the times by several months, it seemed like an impossible task. There are also so many aspects of the game that I don't play or particularly care about (like arenas, battlegrounds, 25 man raiding or dps) that overall the review just wouldn't be very interesting to a very large audience.

I, however, am not one to back down from a challenge and so I'm going to attempt to do my best to cover a bit of the general game's history and current condition, as well has how it has evolved itself - and the genre - over time. I don't really feel this will be a terribly useful review for someone who has never heard of WoW or mmos at all, but for someone who is at least familiar with it it may provide some insight as to just how far Blizzard has taken their mammoth mmo in the past 6-7 years, and perhaps where they could be going or areas I feel they could still improve.

When it first started, World of Warcraft was known (and highly praised) for taking a lot of the grueling punishment and work out of an mmo and instead attempting to streamline it for a slightly more casual audience. I say 'slightly' because most people who are only familiar with Wrath of the Lich King and beyond have no idea of much much MORE streamlined the game became in the 4 years following its already impressive launch. Reputation grinds were far more common (and more tedious) in vanilla, raid content was 'gated' to players both inside (staggered numbers available per week) and out (strict limitations for 'earning' your ability to get into an Onyxia, BWL or Naxxramas instance). The game was a HUGE time and gold sink by today's standards, even though it was better overall than most other products by not severely penalizing you for death and even adding 'dungeon' tiers for people who did not often raid. As it moved forward, Blizzard eventually began adding 20 man content (instead of the current standard of 40) to promote a smaller guild and smaller team environment that were unique from their 40 man counterparts, and updated 5 man gear to give even smaller groups something to work on.

Original WoW also saw a few iterations on a 'PvP' style system. While they had no reward structure to speak of at launch, they started by offering rewards for simply killing one another but eventually added more goal oriented 'battlegrounds' such as Capture the flag (Warsong Gulch) or Capture/Defend (Arathi Basin). PvP was excessively grindy and the absolute best rewards were only given to those capable of dedicating the highest amount of time to it. Being a top-tier PvPer in vanilla almost assuredly meant you did nothing but play WoW (or had multiple people playing the same account).


The Burning Crusade moved everything one step further, adding new 'tiers' for players that helped to segregate content out a bit more by skill or dedication. Dungeons would have both a 'normal' and a 'heroic' mode, which would allow leveling and 'casual' players to experience all 5 man content without feeling too overwhelmed by difficulty or time commitment (though many normals were still considered quite a challenge when under-geared). 'Heroic' dungeons added the next step up in difficulty and gave the more dedicated player a place to go for pre-raid gear that also allowed you a way to farm reputation for different factions while you played. There was a sort of 'gate' to this content in that you needed a friendly reputation with specific factions to unlock those heroics, which made gearing up alt characters or players who joined a bit late difficult.

Blizzard also began a movement forward with TBC of completely abandoning the 40-man raid model and instead focusing on smaller 25 man groups. Blizzard also offered an olive branch to even smaller guilds by starting the expansion off with a 10 man raid: Karazhan. TBC would eventually also see a 2nd 10 man raid in Zul'Aman, but otherwise the rest were 25 man raids.

Raid gating was more abundant but (somewhat) less difficult depending on the place. Karazhan had a fair amount of 5 man content that was required to complete before being unlocked, but only 1 person in the group would need it to open it for everyone else. 25 man content had a more fine-grained content lockout system that generally required guilds to defeat easier bosses before they could unlock harder ones, but this really only became a problem as newer guilds formed later in the expansion and had to go redo content over again to unlock it for newer players. (Fun fact: Blizzard actually poked fun at themselves that year with an April Fools joke detailing a laughably ridiculous set of rules and circumstances required to get Black Temple Attunement). It did, however, help keep older content 'relevant' later into the expansion, even if only by force.

TBC added some new PvP toys - Arena matches (2v2, 3v3, 5v5 deathmatch) and a new battleground, removing much of the absurd grinding requirements while pushing WoW towards a more 'esport' style pvp system while still allowing for more 'casual' battleground style pvp.

Wrath of the Lich King, to me, feels like the first time Blizzard really started taking this plan of 'give everyone something to play' to heart. Building on the popularity of Karazhan and Zul'Aman, blizzard made EVERY raid in WotLK both 10 and 25 man capable. The new 'path' was meant to be: Level --> Normal dungeons --> heroic dungeons --> 10 man raids --> 25 man raids, and as such, 25 man content still contained better gear and (debatably) harder content. Blizzard also introduced a boss (Sartharion) that had variable difficulty depending upon how many drakes you left up, rewarding you more for doing the harder versions of the fight. This proved an incredibly popular concept and, thus, the next raid included a slew of bosses that could have their difficulty increased in a similar matter. By the last raid, every boss had a 'heroic' mode on offer and essentially doubled the amount of content available to players. It also ended a problem that blizzard had significant issues balancing for some time: How to make something everyone could see and do while still offering a challenge to those who have seen and done everything.

Not everything was coming up roses though - while initial raids were EXTREMELY easy and had record numbers of people participating in them, later tiers were more appropriately tuned and many were incapable of playing at that level. These people were left in a strange state of 'limbo' for a good portion of WotLK, as almost no single or small group content was added to the game during this time, and normal/heroic dungeons were so quick and effortless with the new Dungeon Finder system that many people were left with nothing to do. By the end of the expansion, new daily quests were added and even 4 brand new 5-man dungeons, but in 'internet time' this felt like eons. Add in problems balancing healer and tank classes (especially the new Death Knight), burst PvP woes, issues with gear scaling and the painfully short 5-boss raid 'Tier 9', and WotLK can be remembered for about as many ups as it had downs. Perhaps the worst part of WotLK was the fact that it's final 'tier' raid was released 1 day shy of a whole year before the next expansion, meaning that aside from a single extra boss you were facing the same 13 bosses for 12 months straight. Not exactly the best way to keep players hooked, and certainly not a way to drum up much excitement.

But that's ok, because the announcement (and plethora of changes later) of Cataclysm gave many a fan hope where once only a cold, undead shell remained (see what I did there?). Blizzard promised (and delivered) huge systems changes designed to solve a fair number of problems that really stuck out during the WotLK days. Things like significantly larger health pools (to cut down on 2-shot scenarios in PvP and PvE), stat re-balancing (to fix problems with heroic gear scaling seen in ICC), a significant overhaul to the healing playstyles (to reduce the 'wack-a-mole', single-spam feel), as well as a MASSIVE change to nearly all level 1-60 content.

In 'The Shattering', the entirety of Azeroth as we knew it was forever changed and Blizzard took this opportunity to go back and try to clean up nearly all of the 'old world' Vanilla content that had grown stagnant compared to more recent content. Nearly everything was changed. Thousands of quests were added, changed, or updated to provide a better play experience. Quest flow was substantially improved to prevent having to constantly fly across huge continents to find level appropriate content. Many zones had updated looks to provide a more interesting visual experience (leaving many names like 'Barrens' or 'Desolace' being much less appropriate titles). Political control ebbed and flowed across continents to provide new points of contention and make old battles feel like that had some amount of impact. Talents and skills were rearranged to give classes 'core' abilities earlier on while still adding complexity and unique abilities at later levels. To many players of 'Vanilla WoW', the game seemed almost entirely different and often times worth another playthrough; to new players, content was updated to be far more modern and to take into account many of the features and design choices created out of nearly 6 years of evolution.

Cataclysm is interesting to me in that despite the fact that Blizzard has dominated the market for over 7 years now, they are still making tweaks, iterations and overhauls to their own game design. Watching how people reacted to the difficulty level of heroics raids and taking that to heart in the Firelands patch and again in Dragon Soul, the HUGE daily quest hub zone in the Molten Front, the addition of Transmogrification (the ability to visually wear one piece of gear while getting the stats from another) and LFR (Looking-For-Raid, an easier difficulty, dungeon-queue style raid), revamping the Darkmoon Faire, and even more subtle differences like the Vengeance changes all prove that Blizzard is not one to rest on it's laurels.

And rest, it is not! Deathwing may have fallen already, but new adventures await Azerothian heroes (and heroines) in Mists of Pandaria, and while the details are obviously anything but finalized, the current plans certainly seem to indicate Blizzard is once again trying to shake things up. Sure, you'll get a new level cap, spells and raids, but there's also a new class (monk), a new 'neutral' race (Pandaren), a dungeon challenge mode, small group 'skirmishes', and a pet battling system. On top of all of this, they say they have learned a great deal from how they did questing/zones/dailies in Cataclsym and will be working on fitting these lessons (such as not allowing flying until max level or relying less on world phasing) into the new zones to improve the overall player experience with them.


So there you have it. My thoughts on the past 7 years of life on Azeroth. If nothing else, Blizzard has taught us that trying to make something for everyone ('casuals' and 'hardcore' alike), coupled with a very iterative design process and a constant strive for perfection, can create a game that can be enjoyed by millions for over half a decade. With the MMO space having grown, well, massively in the past 7 years and many companies looking to try and muscle in on Blizzard's turf (RIFT, SW:TOR, GW2, etc) or going Free To Play and being handsomely rewarded for it (LOTRO), it will be interesting to see how these outside forces affect Blizzard's decisions for how to continue to move World of Warcraft forward. And let's not forget that they are still working on their brand new MMO, Titan, which will obviously release soon (tm) and promises to flip the genre on it's head again. Though if you think about it, doesn't that mean it will just be back to being right side up...?