My two cents on the State of Wrath of the Lich King
Most hardcore World of Warcraft players have already heard by now that over the weekend twentyfifthnovember, the uber-amalgation of the two best PvE WoW guilds in the world, successfully cleared all of the Wrath of the Lich King PvE content. While it was no surprise that this particular guild would be the first to accomplish the task (they are sponsored to play), it was completely stunning to find it already complete considering Wrath had been released Wednesday night/Thursday morning. My guess is that they took about 30 hours to level to 80, a few hours to sleep, and then another day of raiding followed by a nice screenshot and an official post from the guild:
We are proud to declare that all WOTLK PVE raid content has now been cleared. This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?
Malygos down…
Certainly, what twentyfifthnovember has done is remarkable – it’s a world first. What does this mean for everyone else though?
For all intents and purposes, World of Warcraft is a PvE game. Player vs. Player exists and is enjoyed by a portion of the player population, but the main focus of the game has always been to push the lore and that was always done through questing and raiding. Blizzard has actually stated on several occasions that they would like everyone to be able to see the content they produce – a statement which had prompted them to design twin versions of the same raid encounter for both the 25 man and 10 man demographic, with the former intended for the hardcore raiding community and the latter for the more casual pick up and play crowd. Traditionally, the hardcore raiding community spends somewhere between a few weeks and a few months developing and refining strategies for a particular raid encounter. Frustration is a natural piece in the puzzle and while it sounds a bit masochistic, the hardcore raiding community thrives in this environment. That said, this expansion’s content was completed in at most a day of raiding by the best guild in the world. The weeks and months spent refining strategies and theorycrafting was reduced to a microcosm. Which is ironic, because Wrath of the Lich King was targetted toward the core market and high end play – no new races and a new class unlocked through high level play. Somewhere in Irvine, a lot of balls were dropped. Or were they?
World of Warcraft is far and away the most successful MMO out in the market, boasting over 11 million subscribers paying 15 dollars a month. Last quarter, World of Warcraft revenue was 271 million – a higher GDP than 72 nations in the world. That is astronomical, considering the state failing global economy. A lot of that revenue clearly comes from the casual market. However, Activision-Blizzard seems to be falling into the same trap that Nintendo has gotten stuck in. The casual market is a rich, untapped market and yet they are rather fickle in what keeps their interest – one look at Nintendo game sales is all that is needed to support this claim. It is the hardcore that continues to play and encourage new content development. As stated before, World of Warcraft is primarily a PvE game and a lot of players play for that PvE experience. What happens when that hardcore has nothing to do at the end game?
Honestly though, the content was being beta tested on the official test realm for weeks in preparation for the expansion. To see the content being defeated quickly shouldn’t come as that much of a shock. Something still has to be done to extend the lifetime of this expansion, though. In order to ensure the longevity of Wrath of the Lich King, I expect as a minimum for encounters to be re-tuned to be more difficult. I would even go so far as to say that an artificial “progression” block such as an involved attunement quest is necessary, similar to what was done in Burning Crusade. Keep in mind, the Burning Crusade expansion lasted 22 months. Even if Blizzard was aiming for a 12 month lifecycle before the next expansion, WotLK won’t hit that mark. And that’s including the definite upcoming content patches with final showdown with the Lich King, Arthas. The World of Warcraft forums are already on fire with complaints from the folks that were expecting their expansion to last them a year. Clearly, Blizzard has a lot of work to do.
