The End of the World (of Warcraft)

It has been taken as an article of faith for the last few years that Blizzard's MMORPG juggernaut is unstoppable. With (at last count) 10 million active subscriptions, and a second expansion pack due next month, I'd wager that the titan could run strong for another year on inertia alone. For some reason, WoW's success has a sort of aura about it, as if, buried deep in the recesses of the code, there is a subliminal dispenser of some sort of brain heroin. The real reason, of course, is that Blizzard just cranked out another Blizzard game. Their attention to detail, and their ability to create enduring games that appeal to a broad playerbase virtually guaranteed that WoW would be a hit.

But WoW will not stay this big forever, even despite having the seemingly omnipotent Blizzard at the helm. All games fade away, this is fact.

"But," you might be thinking, "no game has even come close to destroying WoW, nothing could possibly take it on!" You would be correct. Just like previous empires that seemed invincible, this one's seeds of destruction will be sown from within by the very people that compose it.

Already it can be seen with the PvE vs. PvP debate. These two disciplines, once linked by the requirement of high-end raid gear, have now separated into two warring factions, each asserting in a cacophony of forum posts that one is somehow actively working to destroy the other. A similar fissure has long ago appeared between the so-called "casuals" and the "hardcore". And among these factions are almost countless sub-factions, divided by class or race or a myriad of other factors, each one shrieking out in unison for more. More dungeons, more maps, more rewards, more buffs, more nerfs, and all of it done exclusively to their own desires.

The fact is that Blizzard cannot keep up with all of this, at least not without sacrificing quality. Balance changes rushed out the door in a vain attempt to placate angry players, ever vigilant with their calculations that show exactly how horrible their class/race/faction/spec/hair style is, how much better everyone else has it. And there has been a dramatic departure from universally enjoyed content like battlegrounds and the old 20-man raids. Instead, we get closely tailored content that its small target audience will enjoy and all others will view with disinterest or disdain. But even this is not enough, no. Lest they run out of content and start angrily chirping at mother Blizzard again, artificial barriers must be put in place to slow progression. Rep grinds, personal ratings, random loot, point grinds, badge grinds, massive gear treadmills, hard barriers to instance progression that are removed with time. All of this detracts from the fun, and builds animosity for those other bastards who caused this problem with their selfish desire for more. If only Blizzard would just ignore those tiny minorities and focus on us, their true customer base, the drivers of their success, their whole raison d'etre! We deserve more, are entitled to it. They do not, are not.





(breathe)

Eventually, niche games will swoop in. We already have the first, with the arrival of WAR, aimed at those of us who enjoyed vanilla WoW's mix of battleground and open-world PvP. There will be more. Each will latch on to one or two of these segments, siphoning off half a million players here, another million there. The combined force of this parasitic onslaught will slowly bleed Blizzard's behemoth away, until only the die-hard WoW fans, the hardcore casual solo raiders who love to gank in arenas across Aezeroth remain.

At that point, I just might renew my subscription.