World of Warcraft - Staff Editorial

A week ago the staff here got together and decided what it was that got each of us excited about WoW. This week we decided to get together and decide what worried us about the game. The Con side of the argument proved to be more divisive than the Pro side was. We agreed on a few areas, but no where near the way we agreed on many of the positives.

The category that spooked the staff more than any other, was the fear of yet another MMORPG level treadmill. 75% of us placed this fear as number one or number 2 on their lists. Essentially, its universal around here to be worried of a "been there done that" feeling. Games like SWG have released with marginal high end content and very little to do that hasn't been done before to some extent in other games. The worry with most of us is that WoW might end up like other MMORPGs that were "cool for the first couple of weeks, but then got real boring...and I mean boring". We seem to agree that the treadmill was fun the first or second time you jumped on, but many of us have played multiple MMORPGs and are worried about jumping on our third or fourth.

The second and last area that many of us agreed on was a fear of the factional PvP system. Half of us agreed that potential problems with it crawled around in our heads. What we were unable to do was agree on what aspect of PvP bothered us the most. "What is the point of a restrictive faction system if PvP is only allowed in 10% of the world?" This statement summed up many of our thoughts. Others worry about class balance, the true nemesis to quality PvP action. We don't want PvP to be an after thought (like EQ), but if its not important enough to focus the world around it, why make the faction system so rigid? A few of us also wondered just how the story line will justify the system and the lack of open warfare.

That's about it for what we agreed on. Essentially from there our responses turned in to personal worries. A few of us worry about the WoW community after a migration from the Battle.net fan base and its occasional "less than mature" behavior. A couple more worried about customer service and community management. Another fear was of a boring combat system "Start auto attack, wait, click spell, wait, rest, wait, wait, wait, wait, start auto attack...Rinse repeat". Two of us worry that there won't be any tools or systems implemented strictly for RP (like mini games in taverns or cool places to just hang out). Essentially though, we agreed on two things and the rest was simply a hodge podge of our own rumblings about these types of games.

The fact that we shared so few worries says something about Blizzard and MMORPGs in general. For one it shows that Blizzard has successfully highlighted its game's strengths, while minimizing its exposure to its potential problems. It also shows that everyone seems to have their own personal set of things they hate about MMORPGs. Low level annoying creeps, raids that need 100+ people, no housing or bland guild systems are all ones that individuals shared but might be fine with others. That being said, the fact that most feared bad PvP and the "been there done that" feeling, should highlight the potential pitfalls this game could fall in to.