Dignifying the Dollars

I feel I need to clarify my intentions of my previous post a little. So here goes;

World of Warcraft is a game...... OK, everyone still with me? No-one died of shock yet?... Good.

Therefore surely the point of playing the game is to be challenged and have fun with freinds.
No-one wants to play a game that's too easy, it gets boring when you always win. And no-one wants to play a game that's no fun because then it's not a game, it's a job.

Yes, some lucky b*st*rds out there, get to play the games that they love for fun, and for a job. but 99.99% of us don't, so I think I'm covering the majority here.

We pay our money to Blizz every month / quarter / year and for that we expect something in return. But I don't think it's what neccesarily everyone instantly thinks we expect;

If all you wanted was to be able to go into a new dungeon, find some new armour, or become the most powerful person on the planet... there's better ways to do it than WoW.

Any single player RPG will make you feel more powerful, and epic than anything WoW has to offer. And if you want new content, go and look in a bargain bin for some of the non-MMO RPG's, you'll find plenty of them I garauntee you. Some of them are even multi-player, so what's not to like?

They're not social. To play on them with your freinds, even in a single dungeon, you need to find the freinds first and then organise yourselves, and then at the end of it, all is usually lost and you've all got to start again from scratch next time you play.

What Blizz (and other MMORPG developers) do is to deal with all that tricky stuff for you. No set-up problems, plenty of things to experience together, occasional new challenges, persistent worlds. And provide the tools for you to do it in a social environment.

I'd bet there's very few people in the world who have actually seen all there is to see in World of Warcraft. Yet many complain about the lack of new content.

I believe that the reason we keep paying our money, and certainly the main reason I pay my money, is for the social aspect.
No freinds = no fun. If I just wanted to go into dungeons and kill stuff I'd play something else, likely without a subscription fee.

But I get the impression that the whole of the WoW player base is becoming too focused on achieving something. And I'm not talking about collecting points that you can't spend.

Everyone seems very eager to be the best, or to conquer the next big thing. But to be honest.. what's the rush?
Once you've done it, you've done it. Hooray! Now what?

Whereas if you play the game simply to do things with people you like it has a lot more life in it.

Don't believe me? Want an example?

Chess.

How old is that game? I bet there's never been an expansion for it. You only have about 6 different characters in the whole thing. But millions of people play it. And probably millions more have tried it. Because the idea isn't to be the best, although some people are exceptionally good. The idea is to do something social and challenging with similarly minded people.

Want another? Cards. Another? Monopoly.

Allright, those games aren't exactly the same as playing WoW, but they've managed to maintain a player-base of millions without all of the bells and whistles that people seem to expect from WoW.

Prior to the pre-WotLK patches, most of the Munquis had never dreamed of setting foot in Zul'Aman.
But were they bothered by that? I don't think they were.
Blizz spent months, if not years, designing the place, so has the content in Zul'Aman suddenly got worse? I doubt it.
So how many players do you think have been back to clear Zul'Aman, and experience all the hard-work that was put into it? You might, only just, have to take your socks off if your the sort of person who counts on their fingers.

The point of all this is that it's not new content that drives WoW. It's the social aspect of it. If people want to be the best, then that's fine... good for them.

But who usually sticks around longer, the ones who are in big social groups like the Munquis, or the ones who are seriously hard-core and 'finish' the game as quickly as possible?

Achieving is good, but imagine the guy who works all his life and dies a lonely old millionaire, with no family and freinds.
He might get to be a regular at the playboy mansion, and he might drive a sports-car, but on the day he dies, all everyone can say is "Oh, he died?... How much?". With Wow, once that player leaves there isn't even a funeral, or a will to argue over, they're just gone.

So let's focus on doing the fun and sociable stuff. And achieve only if it's fun.