Old Becomes New Becomes Old Again

I thought I might expand a little on a comment I left over at The Ancient Gaming Noob, where I was replying to some thoughts by Wilhelm and Potshot on the opening of Cataclysm Classic. As the rollout of expansions continues, the successive iterations and refinements Blizzard imposed on the genre are being brought to light all over again

I think it's very easy to forget how strange and different some of the simplest innovations seemed at the time. Potshot, who always seems to remember better than most the way MMORPGs used to be, reminded me of the impact Blizzard's basic addition of quest markers over the heads of NPCs had at the time.

Whether all that pendant punctuation was an original idea developed by the World of Warcraft team I'm not sure. It would be unusual if so, since their normal modus operandi has always been to let others take the risks before moving in to reap the benefits, once the value of a new idea has been proved. 

Honestly, I can't even remember where first saw what Potshot calls the ""Christmas Tree” effect". It wouldn't have been in WoW.  I didn't play that game until mid-way through Wrath of the Lich King. I would guess that EverQuest II, which launched a couple of weeks before WoW, also used something of the kind but I have no actual memory of whether it did or not. The screenshots I took at the time prove nothing since I always turned the UI off for aesthetic reasons.

It doesn't really matter who had the idea first. It was undoubtedly WoW that popularized it and turned it into a genre standard, just as the game did with so many other features and mechanics. Even now, two decades later, the huge majority of MMORPGs employ many of the blueprints laid down by Blizzard devs and designers over the last twenty years. 

As long as I've been playing, there's been much discussion over whether the MMORPG genre or even the broader classification of MMOs is mass-market or niche. WoW had a huge footprint in its prime and games like Runescape and Lineage may well claim an even bigger impact in terms of sheer numbers but they still can't compete on the true mass-market scale with something like Call of Duty or Fortnite or Minecraft or League of Legends...

Add all the MMORPGs together, though, and it's a pretty big niche. It'd be tempting to assume it's a profitable business to be in, too, because people will insist on making the damn things. Then again, as we all must know by now, the best way to make a living out of developing games isn't always to end up with a finished product to sell.

Still, there are a lot of MMORPGs, old and new, and while there are considerable differences between them, they're mostly recognizable as part of the same family. Siblings, maybe. Certainly cousins. If they don't all have forests of punctuation points or even formal quest-givers, they certainly have some method for players to identify and access structured content with facility.

The MMORPGs that came before WoW tended not to bother with much - or any - of that. They preferred to let players work things out for themselves. Most didn't even have basic tutorials beyond "Press WASD to move". If you wanted to find out if an NPC had anything for you to do, you had to ask them. They certainly weren't holding up any "Help Wanted" cards.

By today's standards, the first wave of MMORPGs were astonishingly user-unfriendly. Developers expected players to have an enthusiast's knowledge and determination. What was then, pejoratively, often described as "hand-holding" was actively discouraged.

WoW's biggest innovation and the probable reason for its runaway success was the demystification of the process. While Classic seemed relatively challenging when Blizzard brought it back a few years ago, even that perceived level of difficulty was minor compared to what came before. 

In short, WoW from Vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King was, by comparison to contemporary expectations, easy and getting easier. But easier for whom?

As Potshot accurately describes it, Cataclysm represents the "the start of the era where we all play the single player game of WoW together." Almost all subsequent MMORPGs, other than the branch of retro-games trying to bring back the failed past, build on that beginning. Innovations like Warhammer's public quests and Rift's auto-grouping lead to the eventual, perpetual zerg of Guild Wars 2 and the flat, levelless world of Elder Scrolls Online. 

Over time, all barriers to entry are systematically torn down, with even the supposedly most challenging content being re-framed as available to all. Looking for Group becomes Looking for Raid or Instant Adventure. Storylines that once moved from solo to group to raid before the narrative concluded now reshape themselves into a series of Solo instances. 

Meanwhile, at endgame, developers double down on difficulty for the committed hardcore, creating a series of silos from which no-one escapes. Players either solo and accept that they're playing a somewhat inferior RPG purely for the benefit of having a little company while they do it or else they commit to a seeming endless round of self-improvement, trying to eke out incremental improvements to performance so as to be able to repeat the same content indefinitely at ever-increasing difficulty to no objectively discernible purpose.

Unsurprisingly, these choices do not appear to have even the same, minorly mass-market popularity as before. If you want a good, strong, narrative-driven, single-player experience with a coherent, meaningful story, there are better places to find it than in MMORPGs. And if you want to pootle around in your off-time with a few like minded friends, co-op gaming looks like a much better bet.

As Massively OP reported yesterday, a recent survey of 5,000 gamers revealed "over half of gamers play to unwind and destress". Perhaps more surprisingly, "46% also said they play for creativity and self-expression". 

Back when World of Warcraft began, the options for players to satisfy these desires were fewer. Gaming was more focused on challenge and competition than it later became. Players tended to be younger, have more time, better reflexes and be a good deal more willing to put in the necessary effort to "beat the game".

I think it's probably quite hard to credit now but when World of Warcraft blew up in the mid-2000s, a great part of its attraction was as a kind of video game you didn't need to be a gamer to play. So many grandmas played WoW to spend time with their grandkids it became a meme. And you didn't even have to have grandchildren in the game. I remember an interview on a radio show with a retired couple in their sixties who played WoW purely for the gathering and crafting and the point of the interview was that what those pensioners were doing wasn't as unusual as all that.

Most, if not all of that ground has been lost to the genre now. It's been ceded to a tidal wave of oddly disparate yet strangely similar genres: cosies, survivals, sims, sandboxes.

What they all have in common is permissiveness. They provide just enough structure for players to feel safe, while allowing them to set their own pace and choose their own path. You can burn through whatever narrative there is and climb whatever tech trees you're given and be done in a month or you can putter around, planting your garden and tending your crops, for a year. No-one cares. No-one judges. No-one tells you you're not playing the game the right way.

MMORPGs in 2024 are cursed with the expectations of endgame. Many have vast, explorable worlds filled with mystery and magic but there's no ostensible reason beyond natural curiosity to investigate any of it. Everything from the boosts in the cash shop to the exhortations of your guildmates tells you to climb the ladder to the top and be damn quick about it.

And when you get there, what's the reason to stay? Much less than there would have been had you been given a free hand to get there in your own time because there's no context to any of it any more. It's just there; a job waiting to be done. A job no-one is going to pay or even thank you for doing.

Potshot suggests this slide began as early as WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, and reached terminal velocity with Cataclysm. If so, the genre's still in free-fall now. Nothing much has changed since then. Every new development in the genre seems set on closing down the possibilities, refining the process. 

And why not? It's a profitable-enough niche, isn't it? Why try to open it out, let alone carve a new one? Leave that to someone else. After all, there's no shortage of other developers, willing to try.

Unfortunately, recent developments, like Iron Gate's obsession with making Valheim harder and harder or Nightingale's imminent conversion from online multiplayer to offline solo, suggest this new, easy-going Golden Age may be short-lived. Enjoy it while you can. Lessons, it seems, have very much not been learned.

I just hope it's not another decade before the next ideological wave rolls in...

We're Gonna Make You An Offer...

 

Sometime yesterday evening, my Timerunning Hunter dinged twenty, bringing the shutters down on her unpaid progress through World of Warcraft's Pandaria Remix event. It took me four hours and forty-three minutes to get there, from which you could conservatively subtract maybe half an hour at the absolute outside for time spent AFK. Probably a good bit less.

For the sake of argument, let's call it four hours straight. That's two and a half levels an hour or roughly a level every twenty-five minutes. 

Is that fast? I'm not sure.

I could run a comparative experiment. I just happen to have another hunter already in regular, unremixed Pandaria. She's Level 14. I could play her to twenty and check the difference. But I'm not going to.

Partly that's because I'm not interested enough in finding out the result but mostly it's because Pandaria Remix is just more fun, so why miss out? And anyway, it turns out XP gain in the Remix isn't a constant, so what would it prove?

The factor I hadn't accounted for at the start is the Cloak of Infinite Potential, an item you get early on in the event, which continuously grows in power as you gain "threads". I'm not going to attempt to explain exactly how this works for the simple reason I don't fully understand it. 

There are plenty of discussions about it on Reddit and elsewhere, suggesting the process is a lot more complex than it first appears. Apparently it has all kinds of implications, particularly for other characters on the account. 

The only part that concerns me at the moment is the basic XP gain function, which for the cloak my Hunter is wearing, has reached 20% at Level 20. I wasn't paying close attention during the leveling process so I'm not sure whether that's a co-incidence or whether the gain keeps step with the level. I think it's a co-incidence...

Whatever it is, so far I haven't really noticed that leveling feels much different to what I'm used to in WoW. It always feels freakishly fast once you get into double figures. The Free Trial ends before the slow-down comes. 

I still don't have a max-level character in the game after all these years and that's down to the grind that sets in towards the upper reaches of the level range. Either that or I've never stayed subscribed long enough to get there. Actually that's probably the more likely explanation.

XP gain aside, the Remix does feel very different, mostly because there seems to be so much going on all the time. The constant drip-feed of rewards in the form of chests to open make it seem like something's always happening, even when it probably isn't. Then there are the talents to set, the gems to slot and the new appearances to goggle at. It's all designed to make you think you're having fun all the time - and it works!

It's a while since I last capped a character out in the Free Trial so I'm not sure if this next observation applies only to the Remix or whether the whole thing has been revamped, but I'm all but certain you used to be able to carry on gaining experience to the end of Level 20. After that your character would be locked and you wouldn't be able to play them again unless you subscribed.

Now, if you're a Timerunner, it looks as though you can carry on playing as long as you want, at least until the event ends. You'll just stay at Level 20 and won't gain any more xp. I did a quest just to check and it completed normally but I didn't get either XP or a chest.

Surprisingly, though, you can still get loot from mobs. I ran around Jade Forest for a few minutes this morning, popping porcupines and cranes with my bow, and all of them dropped Bronze, the Event currency. I thought at first it was only going to be coin but on about the seventh or eight kill one dropped a gem and a consumable, so I'm guessing they keep the same loot table.

That does mean you could farm the currency and improve your gear indefinitely on the Free Trial. Since you'd never level up, you'd never outlevel the mobs. I'm not quite sure where that would get you but I'm sure someone's already doing it.

What Blizzard want you to do, of course, is subscribe. They'd really like that. A window pops up right across the middle of the screen every time you log in, suggesting it. When you hit twenty, up it pops again,as illustrated, this time with added PvP value. 

The real hard sell comes after you log out. Within seconds I received a long email congratulating me on hitting the dizzying heights of level 20 and extolling the benefits of a subscription. Apparently, "Countless epic adventures and incredible rewards await" should I care to continue on my journey and should I choose to commit to a monthly subscription I'd be able to "collect companion pets, mounts, and transmogs; face the realm’s deadliest enemies; and take your place among the world's most legendary heroes!"

So far, so expected. The paragraph that really stuck out for me, though, was this:

"Your subscription is the key to endless adventure across Azeroth with access to four legendary games—including World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King Classic™, WoW® Classic: Season of Discovery, and WoW Classic: Hardcore realms. Each month of your subscription you’ll also get a complimentary 500 Trader’s Tender to spend on eye-catching collectibles offered at the Trading Post in World of Warcraft.!

Does that sound at all familiar to anyone? Because it certainly reminds me of something... four games for one sub... 500 in cash shop coin every month...

All they need to do is bang a 10% discount to cash shop purchases on the end and I think we have a viable clone!

I am a little less than convinced by the "four legendary games" part. I'm not going to get into their legendariness, which is mostly a subjective judgment. I'm more concerned about whether they really count as four separate games. Aren't they more like four different modes of the same game? 

Also, should they really still be plugging WotlK Classic? I mean, okay, technically that was the status quo when the email arrived and still is now for almost another eight hours but maybe they might have gone ahead and pre-empted the inevitable by inviting me to subscribe for Cataclysm Classic, since that's almost entirely what I'd be getting. I wonder if the message will change? I'm almost curious enough to level another character to 20 to find out.

That would mean I couldn't carry on leveling up my Gnome Hunter later today, though, and I really would like to do that. I was having a great time. I'm quite keen on taking her all the way to 70. I'm pretty sure it'll be quicker, easier and more fun than getting that last level-and-a-half on my Berserker in EverQuest II, which was otherwise going to be my plan for the next few weeks.

I'm going to have another think about it but I'm very much minded to sub for a month. That'll give me time to enjoy the Remix and also dabble in Cataclysm Classic. I'd be quite surprised if I need more than a month to do either but only time will tell. In the meantime, I have a couple more characters to take through the Free Trial before I have to decide.

All things considered, I think you'd have to call Pandaria Remix a success, both in terms of the entertainment value it provides and in its main purpose of increasing interest and raising revenue. WoW is looking surprisingly spry these days. I have to say the unexpected flexibility suits the old warhorse a lot better than I would have expected.

Cataclysm? What Cataclysm?

Since Blizzard was desperate kind enough to offer me a free weekend in World of Warcraft Classic, it seemed rude to refuse. Even if I couldn't see any real point to it. 

I can totally see what Blizzard stands to get out of it. More players for Cataclysm Classic, of course. And what do players mean? Money! From a player's perspective, though, what could four days in the dying embers of Wrath of the Lich King Classic under the Cataclysm pre-patch offer? 

Don't look at me. I haven't been following this thing. I have a vague idea there are some tweaks from the original Cataclysm in the pre-patch but that might just be me getting it mixed up with something else. There are too many of these retro servers to keep up with nowadays.

I'm not even sure what version of "Classic" I have access to for the next couple of days although character select clearly indicates Cataclysm is already with us. Last time I played Classic was several years ago, just before the boycott. Back then, there was only one Classic. Now there are loads of them. I may not have been playing but I've been reading and I remember reading about Seasonal servers, Hardcore servers, Classic-Classic servers, Burning Crusade Servers and WotLK servers.

I remember there were deadlines when you had to do something or not do something to avoid or initiate server moves but I wasn't subscribing so I missed all of those. I remember Shintar explaining what would happen to my characters if I did absolutely nothing but I don't remember what she said it was. 

I am still on the EU/RP server Hydraxian Waterlords, I'm pleased to say. I thought I might have been relocated. I know, since I last played there, the server has at various times been everything from a ghost town to bursting at the seams. In the hour I was there this morning, I saw not one other player but it's hardly a representative sample. Still, you might expect to see someone in Ironforge on a Saturday morning.

As I said in a comment on Wilhelm's post on the free weekend offer, I didn't get anything from Blizzard to let me know in advance it was happening. The email inviting me finally turned up this morning, about a day and a half after the doors opened. It doesn't give you much confidence in the marketing department, does it?

Getting my Classic characters up and running again was both very simple and unnecesarily complicated. I opened Battlenet and the launcher immediately offered me an update, which I took. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with Classic. It was a 13GB download for Retail.

I worked out how to swap over to Classic, technically very straightforward to do while at the same time being very obscure. That, naturally, needed another download, although a much smaller one, thankfully.

One thing Blizzard does do better than almost anyone else is get you in and playing once you've worked out what version you want. The Play button lit up green in a matter of seconds even though the download had only just started.

I logged in to character select, where I found my Classic characters, tapping their toes and twiddling their thumbs, still waiting for me - all seven of them. I'd completely forgotten I had so many. 

I picked my highest, the Level 52 Dwarf Hunter and woke him up. He was down by the water's edge in Feralas. God knows why. Several notices popped up telling me various things including the surprising news that talking to other players is now an opt-in preference. Chat is disabled by default. I think we can all draw our own conclusions there.

A lot had changed, including all my Talents, which had been reset. I also had no combat abilities on my hot bars for some reason. There was no doing anything until I got that lot sorted.

It took about fifteen minutes. It's the kind of admin I don't particularly mind but it's surely not the best way to welcome back the prodigal. If nothing else, it did give me a moment to think about what I might want to do with my gifted time. Unfortunately, even after a quarter of an hour pondering on it, I still had no idea.

While I was re-assigning Talents and replacing hot keys, I did notice I was now entitled to a whole load of new abilities, some of which I was probably too mean to pay for last time and others that have no doubt been added to the game since I left. In the absence of anything better to do I ported back to Ironforge and made my way to the Hunter trainer, where I bought everything I was offered.

After that I headed out into Dun Morogh in search of the ranch where they train you to ride and sell you something to ride on. I was quite pleased with myself that I remembered where it was, although I did go to the Gnome riding school first. I'd also forgotten that Dwarves gad about on rams, which was quite a pleasant surprise.

I had 84 gold on me, which was more than enough to buy everything including a fast White ram. I even had some change left at the end. Whether I have more in the bank I have no idea because after taking a few screenshots I logged out. I just couldn't think of anything else worth doing.

I suppose, if I was serious about coming back for Cataclysm, I could carry on levelling up but I'm not even sure if I'm on a server that's going to be updated. The icon the launcher plonked on my desktop when it started patching is named "Burning Crusade Classic". 

I thought I remembered reading there weren't going to be any permanent BC servers but I was hardly paying full attention. Anyway, I thought that if you did nothing to stop it, you automatically carried on along the progression rails to whatever expansion station came next. Maybe I got shunted into a siding.

I'm thinking, though, that the whole point of Cataclysm was the remaking of the Old World. Wouldn't you want to start a new character to play through that anyway? I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do. If so, it makes it even harder to work out what this free weekend is supposed to do for me.

The danger with please-come-back offers like this is that if you don't actually come back, they can be a waste of a perfectly good weekend. In this instance, it was good to check in with my old Classic characters again, see they were still where I left them, wherever that was, but I don't think I'll be doing much more before the gates clang shut again on Monday.

Unless, that is, anyone has any ideas. Is there anything useful I could do now that would help, should I decide to try Cataclysm Classic in a couple of weeks? Answers in a comment, please...