It occurred to me while replying to a recent post at "A wall of Text" on the changes to Wintergrasp, that World of Warcraft is to the MMO community what Putt Putt is to the golf.
I mean, Blizzard has slowly turned WoW into an easy entry point for newbie people who want to dabble in the Virtual world. Sure, some of it's hard, like the windmill on hole 15, but some of the course is just a few rolling hills that with the right amount of aim, can put your ball in the hole with one easy hit.
Wow has become an easy game for beginner MMO players. The management and design team at Blizzard have removed most of the depth and difficulty that was originally associated with the core game, pre BC and made it a grindless, bonus xp questing ground, where you never really touch anything of importance in any zone because your leveling so blazingly fast. It's a drive by and I haven't figured out who is getting shot.
A new player and guild mate, who use to be an avid Guild Wars player, told me that WoW was great and he enjoyed all the mob killing and ganking, but he wasn't being driven throught the game by the story line and he missed that aspect from his days of playing Guild Wars.
Apparently, Guild Wars had the questing and story set up in such a way that it flowed very nicely through the leveling process. Not unlike the way Lotro works with it's vast history and the books of the series. Events were scripted and worked with what the player was doing as he or she leveled up.
I told him that he was in error, that, in fact, WoW had a well crafted story arc designed specifically for each zone and that he had been adventuring in it. He wasn't being driven by it because, with all that fantastic extra xp for turning in quests and the fact that he was in the R.A.F program with a friend, he was only going through, on average, maybe, 1/3rd of the quests in each zone before moving on to the next zone. Therefore, he wasn't getting the entire story arc through the games questing system. He was missing pieces of the story puzzle, so he wasn't seeing the entire picture.
But who needs Lore and history at the lower levels when Lich King is all that matters now. Getting to that end game content where, apparently, it's just so easy to raid the 10 man heroic dungeons that Blizzard had to quickly introduce Ulduar to keep players in the game and happy. What a shame they needed to do this so close after the release of WoTLK. Course to hear them tell it, this was all planned. I just can't buy what their selling anymore.
I don't hate World of Warcraft, I just hate what Blizzard has done to a fine and wonderful game. They have been pounding the crap out of it with their famous Nerf bat that the entire game is spitting up foam every where you look. I don't mind if they put in a Putt Putt course or two, all I'm asking for is a place to play some real golf.
