Warcraft – The creation and destruction of a genre May 11, 2010
Posted by Mally in Current-affairs, Entertainment, Games.add a comment
World of Warcraft has been running now for nearly six years. During that time the game, as well as its player base have grown to enormous proportions, and the franchise as a whole can be seen as nothing short of an absolutely mind-blowing success, even spawning a community and industries that dwarf this little unassuming boxed product.
So after half a decade’s worth of playing, honing, tuning and perfecting, why, on the eve of the release of its third expansion, would anyone suggest the death not only of the Warcraft empire, but of the genre in its entirety?
The origins of the popularist “role playing game” really began with Dungeons and Dragons. First published in 1974, thirty years before WoW hit our screens, the idea was incredible. Swords, scorcery, spells, characters, and a Dungeon Master controlling everything the players saw, smelt, tasted and touched. The interactions, the non-player characters, the world around them, everything was crafted inside the participants’ minds, and as is the way with an open-ended sandbox game, who knew what might happen in the proceeding hours of play?
And that was a big part of what made the game fun. That was what kept people coming back time and time again. Every encounter was fresh, different, exciting and potentially deadly. And it didn’t change whether your character was level 1 or level 50. Because the game didn’t revolve around the power of the characters, the gear, the loot, the gold, or even the player’s patience or staying power. It revolved around the people, their all-too-human interaction and creativity.
The problem with any computer game, particularly Warcraft, is that it can’t compete with such human skills nor the interaction of face-to-face gaming. Playing Warcraft with friends is fun, and makes the game more enjoyable, but exactly the same game can be played on your own, making the addition of other humans a nice-to-have, not an essential. Additionally, the participation of other humans when sat in front of the screen doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the game, nor the way the game plays out on any given evening. Having moved from one large guild to another much smaller one in recent weeks, my gameplay experience has changed little, if at all. My activities haven’t altered, my world hasn’t shifted, in short it didn’t actually matter where I was. Yes it’s nice to share a guild with friends, but I had them on my friends list anyway, and will still hang out with them as I always have done.
Probably the biggest issue for Warcraft is the lack of sandboxing, natural in a face-to-face game, very difficult in a video game, particularly one on a scale of Warcraft, both in world-size as well as participation numbers. In a paper role-playing game anything can happen; the Dungeon Master controlling the game could take it in this direction, or that, down this hole, up this hill, wherever he or she wished, on a whim or pre-planned ahead of time. Pre-planning or no though, the players being so manipulated can react in absolutely any way, refuse to climb hills, have an aversion to darkness, catch a disease, or go mad. Imagination is a wonderful and slightly disturbing thing. Such is the wonder and replay-value of the human-run sandboxing found in games like D&D.
Let’s give Warcraft its due, it does try. Its quests, the hundreds and hundreds of quests, are sometimes rudimentary, at times surprising, and on the rare occasion utterly engaging. But they are fixed. Repeated in the millions, day in day out, by players around the world. They don’t change, and more importantly, have little lasting effect on the gaming world (notwithstanding the phasing which, if you’ve ever tried to summon people outside ICC, has its serious limitations). In D&D, you burn the Inn down, it’s forever burned. The villagers will hate you, the Innkeeper will most likely want stern words with you. You set light to a building in Warcaft, and within five minutes it has magically become un-burnt ready for the next wandering adventurer to re-burn it, and all the NPCs are happy once again to be your friend and ask you how you doin’.
Why is this an issue? Because it makes the game less a traditional role-playing game, and more a book. “But you can choose where to go, what to do!”. Yes and no. I can certainly choose to run over here. I can even choose to run over there. But what difference does that make? What effect has that had on anything? “Ahh but you can do this quest, or even choose not to! It’s your choice!”. Again, no not really. If you want to level up (and more on this later), then you do the quests at your level. You can’t do the ones higher than your level, and there’s little point doing the ones lower than your level (assuming you haven’t done them already), so you do the same quests as you did with your alts before, and the alts of all the other players playing the game.
Why? Because you’re focused on one thing, and one thing only. Getting to level 80. And here we come to the crux of the matter: Warcraft has stopped being a game of exploration, of adventure, of sharing experiences and overcoming the odds by the skin of your teeth (yes it did used to be like that once-upon-a-time). Now it’s a race. How quickly can you get to maximum level. Can you get your other characters to buy you better gear to level faster? An extra 10% xp? 20% xp? by wearing heirloom items? Awesome! A couple of level 80 mates helping you breeze through group quests, dungeons, elite mobs, all on the way to getting to 80 asap. Hurry hurry, rush rush. Ding!!! (which incidentally used to illicit many guild “Gratz!!”s, but now barely even gets a note of sarcasm)
So before you know it, you’re not playing a role-playing game any more, you’re playing an arcade game. Bash the goblin, get 10 points, level up, upgrade your ship. Open Questhelper, look where the next monkey is, go there, bash the monkey, get 10 silver, buy a bigger stick, rinse repeat, am I at 80 yet? No? Join a guild, recruit some help, ding, ding, ding, join the level 80 crew. And then?
Well then things actually take a slight turn for the worst. This is where the RPG metaphor disappears completely. At level 80 you have one focus and one focus only: Gear. You may think you’re into “progressing’, or crafting, playing the auction house, making money, even fishing. You’re not. It’s all about Gear. The quests have run dry, your days of exploration and adventuring, all but gone (unless you’re an achieve-a-holic, in which case /bighug).
And how do we get gear? Here’s where my RPG bashing itself takes perhaps a slight hint of a beating. Because at this stage you do actually have to take a role, though it is more of a “job” rather than a “persona”. But of course the jobs on offer are few and clearly defined as is the way with video games. You are either, a) a tank, b) a damage-dealer, or c) a healer. None of this paper-based, “hide-in-the-shadows cowardly warrior throwing stones at the big boss because a mouse gave you a scroll that told you the stones were magical”. Oh no. The tank stands in front of the bad guys pulling faces and poking them with cattle-prods, generally pissing them off. The damage dealers hit the bad guys with their carefully apportioned tool (of non-choice due to the face that the community all said that “the FlibbleBloater900 does the most damage and you’d of course be a complete NOOB not to be using one! NOOB!!”), and try not to die or piss the bad guys off more than the tanks. The healers? Well, they click on coloured boxes until they stop going down. It all kinda reminds me of Track and Field down at the local arcade; hit hit hit hit hit JUMP hit hit hit hit THROW. “By the way is anyone coming for a pint of mead later at the local inn of ill-repute, I would like to…” “Shut up and get facerolling!!!” hit hit hit hit RUN hit hit hit POKE…
Now I will be the first to put my hands up and say that Blizzard are doing their utmost to fill the world with wonder, to increase the richness and depth of the play experience. From what I’ve seen of Cataclysm so far, it is looking utterly delicious, and I can’t wait to have a wander around… RIGHT ON THE WAY TO TRYING TO BE THE FIRST TO GET TO 85 ON OUR REALM!! WOOOOT!!!!!
/ahem
And so, in creating one of the most successful games in the history of gaming, they have also destroyed the genre forever. People just don’t and won’t ever care about questing. UNLESS it’s the sole point of the game as it is in D&D, they simply won’t. I can’t remember any of the text that was written on my way to multiple-80-dom. I also lost count of the number of addons I used to streamline the whole affair and I know I’m not the worst offender by any stretch. In D&D there IS no end, so the value is there, in the moment, right where the players are stood. In fact they can stay there, the whole night, experiencing a swath of adventuring without even lifting a boot! Freaky huh? As soon as a finishing line is introduced, all that people have in their minds is the finishing line, everything else is simply a distraction, a barrier to getting there. Some may try to pretend that’s not true, but in Cataclysm, when all their mates are at 85 going through “end-game content” shouting at them to hurry up and join them, are they going to tell them to go get a life as they pick another 30 berries for Innkeeper Wendle whilst enjoying the view? I think not.
So why is this destroying the genre rather than just WoW on its own? Because there really is not a huge amount more you can do with the genre away from what Blizzard have done (all credit to them). You have to play a character of some description, and that character will have to do a well-defined set of tasks to gradually improve a set of clearly mapped-out skills and abilities in order to make putting in the hours have at least some seemingly tangible value. And that character will have to use those bigger and better skills and gear to enable him to move to a new, more dangerous area, a new, more lawless planet, which will in turn look and feel flashier, shinier and more hawt as the game progresses. And unless the game goes on forever, there will have to be some end to proceedings, which introduces the “Finishing Line”, which simultaneously introduces “The Race”, as well as the necessity to create something for people to do when they complete “The Race”, lest they go elsewhere.
So anyone that utilises some form of RPG formula (games such as GuildWars, Aion, Lord of the Rings, even Star Wars The Old Republic in all likelihood) will be compared to Warcraft. If they don’t compare well, they’ll fall by the wayside. If they do compare well, well, good for them, but what do you think people have actually been doing this last six years? Quests are the same whether you’re picking berries for an innkeeper, or mazer-crystals for Admiral Froth. Gear is the same whether you’re firing Black Arrows from an ubet-l33t Brimstone’s Longbow or Eepawn Rounds from an Evokian BlastCannon3000, they still pew, and enemies still grunt (or sing Elvis at you). Even the end-game content and bosses are broadly the same whether you’re taking down the Lich King, poking Darth Vader with a stick, or punching Bowser in the face. And the roles will be no different whether you’re FailDruid, Mario, or Boba Fett, you’ll still have one group that soaks pain, one that deals pain, and one that clicks on coloured boxes. And people have already been doing all this now for over half a decade. What difference is a change of art, words, lore, location really, honestly, truthfully going to make?
People were right in saying that Warcraft being so good was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because, well, we’ve all had a lot of fun along the way haven’t we? It’s been a heck of a ride and something quite special to have been a part of. And of course a lot of people have made a lot of good friends during the wee small hours spent in-world, though ironically the strongest of those have been the ones that have spilled over into real life, in many cases leading to life-long friendship, and in some even to marriage. As a game, it’s been an unmitigated success looking at participation numbers and profits. But now I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next. Not Cataclysm, we already know it’ll look and feel lovely, have plaudits falling off the mantlepiece. Level 85 will sing its siren song just like level 80 did. I honestly don’t believe it’s even going to be Star Wars, much as I’d like it to be more than “Warcraft in Space”(tm).
It’s what is over the horizon that we can’t see yet that I’m excited about. What will be sucking our time and our wallets in ten or twenty years time. I like many others would never have predicted Warcraft’s success, so who knows what form it will take? But if it’s going to replace Blizzard’s baby, I have a feeling it will in all likelihood be utterly fantastic, with nary an XP bar, nor a piece of questline text in sight.
