Happy anniversary, WoW!

You might think I'm a bit too early for this, World of Warcraft having come out in November. But one year ago I played WoW for the first time, in the Fileplanet beta. A few days later I wrote a two-part review of how the game works, and what I think about it. And except for a small Everquest 2 interlude, I've been playing WoW all the time since then.

In my original review I echoed a widely held opinion that WoW was not a very social game, which made its longevity doubtful. This was also the basis for Geldonyetich's famous doomcast of WoW, and it seems that Brad McQuaid from Vanguard still thinks so. But if I look at myself, and why I'm still playing after one year, in spite of having seen over 90% of the game's content, it is the social nature of the game that keeps me there. I couldn't possibly leave the game and start a new game without my guild.

So lets have a look at the theory of longevity, dating back to Everquest, which I still call "the vision". "The vision" says that a game has to have slow advancement and forced grouping, so that players band together against the difficulties of the game. This creates social cohesion, which makes the players stay in the game forever. According to "the vision", a game which offers fast advancement and soloability, like WoW does, will find people reaching the highest level without having made any lasting friendships, at which point they will quit, and the subscription numbers will tank.

Now obviously World of Warcraft has fast advancement, has soloability, but its subscription numbers are still growing, having reached 1 million Americans, and about 4 million players worldwide. Where is the forced grouping and glacial pace of advancement which according to "the vision" is needed for this longevity?

Don't worry, Brad McQuaid, your "vision" is safe and sound. Because looking at my level 60 warrior, Raslebol, I am forced to group (even raid group) to advance any further. And my pace of advancement definitely is glacial. World of Warcraft simply managed to offer both modes of gameplay in the same game. Theoretically you can solo up to 60 and then look for a guild to start raiding, but in reality the transition is a bit smoother than that. You need a group even for the lowest instances, and starting from level 40 the instances often require several visits to finish them, which makes going there repeatedly with the same group a really good idea. Thus guilds form long before level 60, and you rarely see unguilded high-level players. And while switching from fast advancement mode to raid mode isn't always easy, few players just quit at level 60.

In fact even the old Everquest was built on the same model, you could solo and advance relatively quickly to level 10 or so. World of Warcraft just moves the transition to a later point in time. And moves more smoothly from soloing, to advantageous grouping, to forced grouping, to raids. And even the fast leveling has its justification: Not only do players enjoy it more, but if your real hook is the high-level raid content, then it doesn't make much sense to prevent the slower players from ever getting there.

So is World of Warcraft headed for 10 million players still playing in 10 years? Not impossible, but there are some black clouds. Even at my glacial pace of level 60 consumption of high-end content, I still consume it faster than Blizzard is adding it. A new dungeon every 2 months, and the first expansion after 2 years, are just not enough. Blizzard has obviously planned to keep players occupied with PvP and battlegrounds, but that hasn't really worked out that way, as I predicted.

On the bright side I can now see why all of the dungeons to be added by patches are for level 60 players. I first thought that this would never work, as casual players would never reach the raid content, and so Blizzard was wasting time on creating content for a minority. But that was me lapsing into old-school thinking. The beauty of the WoW concept is that even casual players get to level 60. And while not everybody is going to end up killing Ragnaros and Onyxia, a dungeon like the upcoming Zul'Gurub could well be in reach of the majority of players. I still think they should add some more lower level dungeons as well, but that is part of my wish that they add more content faster.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:58 AM Permanent Link