World of Warcraft Evolution
World of Warcraft rewrote the book on how to make a massively multiplayer game and continues to evolve the genre. From the original World of Warcraft to the Burning Crusade to the impending release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard continues to set the standard on how to build a massively multiplayer online role playing game.
Controversy surrounded World of Warcraft when it was initially announced. At the time, Everquest ruled the scene and had made a name for itself by catering to the hardcore crowd. Levels could take days to gain. Groups could take hours to form and with death came the possibility of losing a level. Blizzard saw what the competition was doing and decided to deviate from the standard.
Gone would be the days where death would cost you several hours’ worth of experience. Gone would be the days where groups would be required in all facets of the game. The promise that zones could be traveled between seamlessly was made. Gathering professions would finally see resources populate the world rather than only exist as text messages in your log.
These promises would all be delivered upon when World of Warcraft went live and the public responded. Everquest 2, releasing at the same time as World of Warcraft, believed they could capitalize on the success of Everquest and the experience they had gained from it, but they would only see failure when facing WoW. Not even Blizzard could foresee how popular their plan would be as copies of the game became impossible to find and their servers were always operating at maximum load.
While it was the most fun massively multiplayer game, it would still face problems. The best gear could only be had by people that invested 20+ hours into the game, money would be a struggle to get and content was limited at the end game for those that didn’t raid. Blizzard intended to address those issues with the launch of the Burning Crusade.
The Burning Crusade offered the promise of more fun elements and for the most part it delivered upon those promises. The old honor system that required players to play 20 hours a day was finally removed. No matter how much time you could invest in the game you could advance towards an honor reward. The arena system was introduced that allowed players to advance by only having to play ten games per week.
The problems of gaining gold were largely removed with the introduction of daily quests. These were quests that could be repeated once per day that offered a standard gold reward. Players would no longer have to look to farming as the only reliable way to gain gold.
The raid system was revamped with the requirement reduced from 40 man raids to 25 man and some 10 man raids. This reduced the overhead that was required from guild leaders to run their raids and made the raiding system more personal. All of these changes would be welcomed by the majority of players.
Blizzard has proven themselves to understand what gamers want. With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will once again show that they are the leaders of the mmo market by introducing more fun elements and removing more grind elements.
October 01 2008 03:12 pm | Uncategorized