Now That I Think About It... : WoW Classic

If there's one thing Classic's doing, it's generating a seemingly endless torrent of interesting, thought-provoking blog posts. Mailvatar, Marathal and Azuriel all put up pieces yesterday that really made me think.

I replied to all of them but I also wanted to move some of those thoughts over here, where I have at least a slim chance of being able to refer to them in future, rather than leaving them to sink into the Lost Swamp of Old Comments on Other Peoples' Blogs.

Apologies to anyone whose already read this stuff. I'll try to freshen it up a bit!

Marathal was pondering the effect Classic's popularity might be having on Retail:

"The problem is that even though we have seen a resurgence in players coming back for Classic, we are seeing a drop off in those logged into retail.  Where I might have seen 25 people logged into Retail, now I see 10 and 20 logged in over on Classic. "

While this is only anecdotal evidence, I've seen a number of Retail players making similar observations. I would bet that Classic's success is impacting many MMORPGs right now, but quite possibly Retail most of all.

There's a really unfortunate and quite ugly schism developing between a faction of Retail players and those playing Classic. Actually, I'm not sure how much the Classic fans care or even know about it - the vitriol and snark seems to come mostly from the other side.

Gnomecore, a blogger previously unknown to me, pops up on a lot of Classsic threads making the anti-classic case. "I’m amused by hypocritic duality of those who play Classic", he observes, wryly, going on to list examples, most of which appear to be either straw man arguments that I've not heard anyone express in game or straightforward misunderstandings of other peoples' perspectives.

He's very far from being the only voice taking this perspective but one of the few who comments on blogs I read. I imagine the bulk of that conversation is taking place in the Retail bubble, where I rarely set foot.
 
I believe the antipathy is driven by a quite unfounded fear. As I said on Marathal's comment thread:

 "It’s counterproductive to compare the two as if they were versions of the same thing. They are two different games, appealing to two different audiences. The negativity and competition between the two groups is unfortunate, but it only exists because one group feels threatened by the other. Should one prove radically more commercial than the other, everyone knows their personal preference could suffer as a result."

My feeling is that the more successful Classic is, the better it wil be for Retail, for Blizzard and for the genre. It's a massive data point for the industry that can and should lead to real improvement in developers' understanding of their audience.

Moving on to Mailvatar's post, in which he gives a very fair and considered "outsider's view", I wanted to quote a chunk of my comment, in which I re-iterate my long-held conviction that one of the biggest reasons why World of Warcraft broke out in 2005-6 was its very wide appeal to people who didn't think of themselves as "gamers":

"Around the time WoW was blowing up, with the South Park episode and all, I remember hearing a ten-minute piece on a BBC Radio 4 current affairs show where the interviewer talked very sensibly and unsensationally to a couple in their 60s who played WoW. Sounding like anyone’s parents or even grandparents, the two well-spoken, educated, middle-class, late-middle-aged adults explained what they did in game (levelled, crafted, chatted to people they knew), making the whole thing sound as natural and normal as an evening at the pub or a barbecue at a friend’s house.

I was struck at the time by just how ordinary their experiences were. I’d been playing that way for years in MMORPGs but I hadn’t yet played WoW. It reminded me strongly of a number of reports I’d read about Star Wars Galaxies, where many people famously spent their time decorating, dancing and hanging out in space bars chatting."

I have never forgotten that interview. It rang so true to me from the people I'd been guilded with in EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot and EverQuest II. I was forty years old when I started playing EQ in 1999 and over the next decade I found myself mixing with people not much younger, and sometimes a lot older, than me in almost every MMORPG I played.

I met guild leaders in their fifties and sixties as well as many guildies in their thirties and forties. Parents playing EQ with their children was not at all unusual. Most of these people played for months, years, many hours a week. Few of them raided, many didn't even do dungeons. Some barely engaged in any combat-related content at all.

Instead, they crafted and levelled and worked on making their characters look the way they wanted, all while chatting to their online friends about what they were doing both in and out of game. Once MMORPGs began to get housing, some of these people became full-time builders and decorators, only venturing out to try and get quest rewards or drops they could use in their home-planning schemes.

Vanilla WoW, with its hugely expanded casual access via questing and solo content and its relatively low player-skill barrier, made this kind of gameplay more welcoming than it had ever been. I firmly believe that explains a very significant degree of WoW's astonishing penetration into the mass market and into the mainstream culture of the time.

Sadly, video games are made largely by people who play video games. For every Domino there are a thousand bearded men in their twenties and thirties. Most of them are hardcore gamers and to them everything looks like a video game. It's the old "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails" thing.

Times change. Classic players are older and, I think, more articulate, or at least more confident about expressing themselves. Developers have, perhaps, grown up a little. too, and the industry is at least a little more diverse than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. There is hope that lessons might be learned and this time they might even be the right ones.

Finally, there's Azuriel's post, to which I replied in a somewhat tangential fashion, neglecting to address his main point, which he summed up as:

"WoW Classic is Something To Do. Which is not to be confused with “something to do.” "

I agree with this one hundred per cent. It entirely fits with the phrase Everwake used: 

"... it feels good to have a goal in my life that both feels important and without real consequences."

MMORPGS are entertainment, first and foremeost. Everyone will have their own criteria by whaich they judge whether or not they are being entertained. As I commented to Azuriel, "For me, what counts is “engaging” and “unengaging” or, if you will, “interesting” and “uninteresting”." I want my entertainment to make me think.

Where MMORPGs differ from some (not all) video games, though, is that as well as being entertainments they are also hobbies. Hobbies can make you think - and think hard - but they also have the ability to let your thoughts slow to a comfortable hum. A hobby is exactly that thing you do that has no "real consequence" but that "feels important".

Your partner and all your friends may well shake their heads and make jokes about your model railway layout or your terrible watercolors. You may groan inwardly as you force yourself to admire your aunt's latest embroidered antimacassar. It doesn't matter waht they think of you or you of them.

Hobbies settle people. They make life not just bearable but worth looking forward to. It matters that they don't matter - that's the point.

If you don't get that then you may (or may not) count yourself lucky. Many, many people don't have a genuine hobby. They don't want one. They don't need one. They feel fulfilled and satisified by doing the practical, purposeful things they need to do.

Well, bully for them. As I also said in the comments to Azuriel:

 "It’s equallly pointless to try and equate what’s interesting or engaging for you with what’s interesting or engaging for me. We are different people. We have different personalities. We respond to different stimuli".

A big part of the problem in the ongoing discussion over Classic is the propensity of people to tell other people why they're doing what they're doing. I'm at risk of making the same mistake myself, although I'm trying hard to ride the line.

As an academic manqué I can't help but over-analyze everything. It's another kind of hobby, almost. In the end, though, fascinating though the discussion is, what matters is what people are doing.

In Classic, right now, they're kicking back, relaxing and having fun. That ought to be enough to satisfy anyone.