Dumbing down WoW

Okay I get it, Arena is where its at, e-peen vs, e-peen with QQ for the loser. Its Blizzards baby and the holy grail of Warcraft is the eternally shifting class balances that keeps people interested and desperately trying to level the superclass of the month. No biggie; its obvious that the PvE game has be relegated to a simple, ‘how-you-get-to-Arena-and-End-Raids-process’ and that its been made so simple that a six year old could do it between naps.

I get it. PvP is the Blizzard cash cow. It’s what most of the players want, and its where all of the development focus goes. That doesn’t mean I haven’t got an axe to grind though… in fact I have many axes, swords, and daggers and I have a surplus of whetstones to boot!

Do you know why?

You probably do but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because nothing friggin sells, nothing sells because the levelling process happens so quickly and easily that you never have to gear up. The sporadic quest greens you get are more then enough to push you along in turbo-levelling mode, and heavens forbid that you actually might have to complete more then 50% of the quests in a zone before you DING!

Remember when the quests sent us to strange new places, funky new bits of scenery and pop-reference? Remember when you followed a quest chain for the story rather then abandoned it halfway along because it went grey? Remember when levelling gave a sense of accomplishment rather then the mildly irritating calculations of X more till level 80?

Zul-frak had a hammer once, you had to go to an out-of-the-way but extremely scenic area call hinterlands to get it… in order to summon the mommy hydra. Now? Just ring the damn gong… who needs to go to a place that looks cool and who needs an item that makes this a living world rather then just a long version of mario-kart. Mauradaron (crappiest dungeon ever, but that’s not the point) you no longer have to slog through those first two painful areas to get the sceptre that allows you to start at the halfway point from then on. Yes the instance is easier now, yes it’s less annoying. Downside is that there is less of a sense of achievement, and content is simply ignored.

I know WoW has never been exactly challenging, but we don’t have to be spoon fed every-bloody-thing. There were once cool quests to get class-specific powers and items. There were elite zones outside dungeons Horde and Alliance were distinct. Now the new-and-improved World of Warcraft is far more vanilla then Vanilla WoW ever was….

Sweet leaping jebus blizzard! I come here to immerse myself in a game world, to escape from life. If I wanted to battle other humans in a small area without story or context I’d play a FPS. If I wanted to spend all my time getting the right set of gear for the right encounter I’d play Dress-Up Barbie. Sure Arena’s are nice, but why does WoW have to become another starcraft. Lots of combat but no world to speak of.

Give me back my fantasy world, give me something to challenge me, give me back my MMORPG.