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The Reason Why World Of Warcraft Is Now A Horrible Game
This game used to be such a delight to play, enjoyed by serious and casual gamers alike, this game has managed to become the CEO as it were of the MMO universe, when you say MMO the first game you think of is Warcraft.
Many other developers creating MMO’s often use Warcraft as a template when creating something new and the vast majority of players will use Warcraft as a reference when playing any new form of MMO. Developers often give their games UI and gameplay elements that were created by Warcraft as players will be familiar with these mechanics and therefore have less of a struggle when getting to grips with a new MMO. Blizzard have had years to perfect this game and so far they have done a very good job, the game is fun to play and lore is extremely interesting.
However recently the number of players has been dropping drastically, many of them claiming that the game has been ruined, I myself share this opinion and the main cause for people leaving this game? Other players.
Warcraft seems to have developed an elitist culture, a lot of MMO’s normally have this. Players and guilds who believe, to put it bluntly, that ‘the sun shines out of their arse’. Surely these types of players are only a mild annoyance, everyone at one point has come across these types of players, they are very common that is true, but when there is enough of them that their attitude and outlook becomes status quo or a ‘hivemind majority’ type of opinion towards gameplay is when the problems that destroyed Warcraft began to arise.
Firstly we shall look at the way guilds are structured, when anyone thinks guild they think of a group of friends having fun, enjoying the game together and helping each other out in any way that they can. Back in the old days of Warcraft, vanilla and the Burning Crusade, this certainly was the case. Guilds were a lot closer and friendlier back then, guilds even arranged days where they would meet up in the outside world for nights out and such. Today on Warcraft that sadly is not the case. Many guilds now demand that you bring something to the table, it is all well and good helping out your guild, but when it is demanded from you it kind of takes away that feeling of accomplishment when you do something good for them. It almost feels like it is not a gesture of your kindness, but some sort of ‘belonging’ tax that must be paid before you can become part of this group. Are you a tank? No? You can’t join. Are you a healer? No? You can’t join. Can you be online between 8-11 on Monday, Tuesday and Friday? No? You can’t join.
That is another thing that I find truly puzzling about guilds, the demand that you be online at a certain time on a certain day, and if you are not online you are then told off by either the guild master or an officer, occasionally in front of everyone in the guild chat, an embarrassing affair, but what truly puzzles me is there are people who abide by this. There is this other activity that involves you having to be there for a certain time on certain days no matter what, and if you don’t you are told off by someone, it is called a job. Now who wants to play a game in shifts? That is when a game stops becoming a game, because you are not playing it at your leisure, you are playing it because you then have to, which totally takes away the entire ideology of gaming itself, I truly do not understand why this factor is enforced or why people actually abide by it. Yet sadly it is unversal throughout pretty much all of Warcrafts ‘serious’ guilds.
Another factor I do not understand is todays guild masters. They distance themselves from the guild socially, are often very dry or short when speaking to you or anyone that is not a guild officer. In the guilds I have been in, the guild master would only ever speak to a low ranked player when giving him into trouble about something. This entire ideology is used in a certain type of occupation, in fact they are specifically trained to behave in this way, management. Distance yourself from lower level employees, if you have to communicate do so through your supervisors, refrain from close personal relationships with them, however, always reprimand in person when it is deemed necessary. This form of behaviour is to show dominance and superiority in order to display your authority. Why do people wish to behave like this in a game? As one thing that every single person with a job can tell you, people do not like managers. I just do not see why guild masters cannot behave just like any other player but instead need to act with this air of superiority. Here is a crazy idea, why not drop the act and be friends with everyone? Or keep going the way you are going and spoil the mood of the guild? Your call.
This next factor is what I believe is the main cause of Warcrafts decline and is the reason I have left. Elitism. There seems to be an elitist attitude that transcends throughout all servers on Warcraft.
It is this whole attitude of being better than everyone and looking down on others who aren’t, and only forming a relationship with someone when you have something to gain from them. The achievements system greatly reinforced this, and was one of the nails in the coffin for this game. When someone is looking for players to join a raid, they always ask for the achievement, this piece of text apparently proves that you are capable of performing the task that is required of you.
Another thing they ask for is gear, to see if your armour, weapons etc. are good enough for you to complete the raid. This is an enormous catch 22 and I shall explain how. Basically, a lot of players managed to be the first ones to complete raids, and therefore get their achievements for that raid, so they now have a piece of text that says ‘I have completed this dungeon’. Why players think that this piece of text means they are capable of the dungeon is beyond me, for all you know it could have took them 40 tries to complete, maybe this player did not contribute at all and was just piggybacked by highly skilled players (also known as boosted). I have on countless occasions been on raids with players who possessed the relevant achievement, and they did not have a single clue what to do.
They did not know the correct tactics for bosses, they did not use appropriate techniques, stood in the wrong places and all sorts. So when 2 players possess the achievement, and one player is extremely poor at playing and the other highly skilled how would you know the difference? You don’t. Therefore an achievement in no way is a display of that players skill, yet elitist players base their decisions on this very flawed system. Another issue with this is that you do not exactly get a button that selects the games difficulty, sadly this is not a game where if you are struggling you can simply flick it down to the ‘easy’ setting, you have no choice but to be very good, which is a shame for people who really aren’t that great at gaming, young children for example (the audience this game was designed for) would not last for a second in this kind of online climate.
The main catch 22 of this game is that many of the elite guilds got in early and completed the raids and got their achievements, meaning that all the other players who did not have guilds or did not start raiding until later on in the game are..well…..fucked. If they ask to go on any raid they will be flat out told ‘no’ if they dont have the achievement or decent gear. So here is the catch 22, to go on a raid you need the achievement, but to get the achievement you need to go on the raid. Also to go on a raid you need good gear, but to get good gear you have to raid. This leaves all the casual players or players who have only just hit level 85 basically begging to get on raids but they can’t and this brings up another factor which angers me about the game.
This YOUR game, YOU pay for it, yet these elitist players dictate to you how you should play it. If they do not think you are good enough they will actually DENY you content in your own game, you will not be allowed on raids or to join guilds and basically not get the full enjoyment out of a game that you pay your hard earned money towards. This is a completely unfair and biased system that favours serious players over casual gamers. Guilds and players demand so much from you that it completely sucks the fun out of the game, and if you cannot meet their demands then you might as well not be playing it, because they will deny you access to all of the end-game content that you have every right to play.
Sadly this thought process is now shared by the majority of Warcraft players, the fact that guilds are run like businesses and other players will look down their noses at you, this type of online society will basically make sure that if you don’t deliver then you don’t get your moneys worth out of the game. Elitism has ruined a game that I once loved and in the next few years I can see the coffin lowering on World Of Warcraft, after all, what is the point of buying a game just to be denied half of it?
The game has become too serious, and when something becomes serious, it stops being a game.
