Making WoW Easier
I understand and respect gaming masochism. But, I think that changing mechanics to be more reasonable and less punishing is an improvement, not a detriment, to games in general. Many of us Original Gamers pine for the days of D&D-based yore when games were seemingly intended to break us down into sobbing masses created by an uncaring necromancer of pain and suffering, or at least didn't try to avoid it. Overcoming all of the obstacles (I CHOOSE NOT TO SHOOT HER WITH THE SILVER ARROW... NOOOOO) was a big part of what gaming (I HAVE 1 LIFE!?), and especially PC gaming (HOW DO I LOAD MOUSE DRIVERS?), were about. But, I feel we're lucky to now be in an age where those ideals (intended or not) are giving way to actual fun, actual challenge, and not fabricating it through high-reach requirements (I NEED A FAIRY MONK WITH A MAGIC LOCKPICK?).
What we've always been trying to do, what WoW has always been about (and to which much of its success is due) is to make an accessible MMO. Anyone that looks back at the game at launch and wishes it was as challenging now as it was then is not aware of the painstaking effort put into making this game accessible as compared to its predecessors. Since release we've refined that intent, eventually evolving the very few masochistic designs WoW actually ever started with, but ideally still offering those same prestige goals that give that feeling of achieving something great if you're able to pull it off. We've made a lot of progress toward striking that balance and continuing to evolve the game, but it's not something we're ever likely to perfect, and we'll be constantly working to hit that elusive goal. Hopefully it's to the benefit of everyone playing and enjoying the game, and they'll continue to enjoy the journey that a living, breathing, persistent universe will take us on.
The person who first got me into gaming was my 75-year-old arthritic, Yiddish-speaking, half-blind grandmother (who has since passed away) when she gave me a classic NES as a Hanukkah present when I was eight years old. She had previously purchased a Master Set for herself as well. Of course, because of her age and weakness, she couldn't play the game very well; getting past World 1-2 was impossible for her. When she watched me play through it after a few hours' practice, I still remember her saying, "My god, he's so smooth..."
Even I wasn't very good at Super Mario Bros. I wasn't able to consistently make that big jump in World 8-1 and didn't get past World 8-2 for many years. Still, the fact that we both middled along at certain levels of mediocrity didn't prevent either of us from enjoying the game for what it was: an entertaining novelty with mass appeal.
What is important to understand here - and Bashiok does not - is that winning, progression, is not the point. The best video game is that which very, very few people can "beat" - but everyone enjoys just playing.
At the far other end of the spectrum are games like Tomb Raider. I remember reading an interview with the developer when the game first came out in which he remarked, "The key to making a good game is to make it easy." Even at the time, I remember thinking, "This guy just doesn't get it." And it's true - games that are designed to appeal to those who have something to prove in the game itself (that they can beat it) will always have a narrower appeal than games that are made to be great and rewarding in their own right. People who aren't hardcore play games for enjoyment - not because they need a sort of virtual punching bag.
Moving forward a few years, I took up Magic: The Gathering in elementary school. I started playing during the Fallen Empires expansion. Early Magic: The Gathering paralleled vanilla WoW in many ways. Profound immersion. Emphasis on "feel" or "adventure" over balance and game dynamics. Early Magic, like early WoW, had terrible balance, a host of cards with TLR game text and lore; some were insanely OP, even more were almost useless except for flavor. A lot of early Magic cards had complex mechanics that lent themselves to creative application outside an overall game strategy. And so The Duelist featured bridge-like puzzle scenarios in each month's issue. There were also a lot of really weird, wonky mechanics that almost no one really understand ("Banding") and cool cards that were almost totally unplayable (Legends).
Early Magic, like early WoW, had a fairly broad appeal. The emphasis on flavor and experience meant that being the best wasn't necessarily the point. You could have fun messing around with "joke" or "theme" decks, or decks that would needle your opponent to death. Kids played it, teens played it, young adults played it, a lot of girls played it too.
This wasn't good enough for Wizards of the qCoast, so what they ultimately did, was reconceive the game to be more competitive, while also oversimplifying it and watering down the immersiveness of the game to suit munchkins without imagination. They implemented the "Block" system, which started out as a means of ensuring game balance and evolved into a shameless effort to bilk hardcore players at the expense of those who might prefer to play the game casually, without going out and buying a booster box every three months. They replaced the "Vintage" look with the more streamlined, anime-style "Modern" look, and lore became more stereotyped; most lore on Magic cards (like WoW: TCG) consists entirely of witless, stereotyped superlatives.
Magic: The Gathering is still around today. I'm pretty sure the franchise is still lucrative. But the appeal of the game is very narrow. A couple of years back I considered taking up the game again, and visited a tournament. It was hosted in this non-alcoholic bar with blaring, 110-decibel music, so no one could hear others talk. And no wonder; the crowd was divided pretty evenly between these young teenage munchkins and some creepy yuppies in their mid-20s who obviously had something to prove. I didn't even stay to collect the reward at the end.
You see the same sort of thing in WoW. Efforts to broaden the appeal of the game, at the expense of the game itself, inevitably have the opposite effect; all you have are the clueless munchkins (the GS-bro crowd) and hardcore players (cagey oldschoolers too rigid to go do something else). Eliminating the "flavor" or "intrinsic challenge" of the game - contrary to what Bashiok claims - narrows the appeal not to hardcores, but to the general population.
I remember my MC guild in vanilla - like most - had on its roster, of course, the gamer types, but it also had a diversity of housewives, busy professionals, and other individuals outside the typical 16-35 male gamer profile. Many of these were not stellar players and could never be. In better-progressed guilds, these people would often simply not raid. And that was fine, because WoW had more to it than progression - this is where immersive world environments and shared efforts came in.
"People? People were always lousy. But there was a world, once..."
-Solomon Roth, Soylent Green
Today, I study classical culture. A remarkable, recurring theme in that field is how human stupidity rears its head time and again and people continue to make the same mistakes. Invariably, the reason behind those mistakes is, as Hippocrates said, "people who think they've discovered something truly new, in reality, know nothing at all." Reading Cicero's remarks about society in the late Republic or Thucydides' incisive observations about the motivations for the Sicilian Expedition beg comparisons to dilemmas we face today.
Growing up, my parents taught me to write, and the first lesson I was taught, is that the best way to learn to write well, is to read abundantly. People who are great - especially creative artists - do not have difficulty acknowledging or respecting others' accomplishments. People who are ignorant of past greatness - or don't appreciate its value - are invariably the most petty, untalented, insipid writers and artists - those people who think Paradise Lost should be taken off reading lists because it's "just another old book written by some white guy".
Now that doesn't mean that everything that could be said or done already has, and everyone here today on God's green earth has to commit himself to slavishly emulating the past. Going forward to WoW today: Was DnD or Final Fantasy IV or EQ the pinnacle of video game development? Of course not. Was vanilla WoW (or TBC) in all respects the apex of this game? No. But a vain effort to make one's own wanting creations look better, by saying that nothing that previously existed had any value - or something to teach, or did something right - shows a profound ignorance and incompetence at one's own craft.
"Genius and crime are incompatible."
Mozart, to Salieri
If you need to resort to PR stunts, endless gyrations in theme and intent to pander to the lowest common denominator, silencing anyone who doesn't agree with the assumption that "Cataclysm will fix it" or what have you, every variant of doublespeak and euphemism in the service of the mythos of Blizzard infallibility, or mistaking cronyism with loyalty (e.g., the change in management at Wowhead, or losing CMs to Sega), then you are, quite simply, doing it wrong.
Things that are great or work well truly do sell themselves. This doesn't mean a certain level of salesmanship or flexibility isn't necessary, or that at least some "h8rs" won't always be hatin'. But if you have to go so far as to say that everything that isn't yours was inherently flawed and that therefore you are right in the here and now...you are doing it wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment