Quantifying Wrath's success
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 16th 2009 at 7:00PM
The Egotistical Priest has a good series of posts up attempting to somehow quantify whether Wrath has been an overall success or not. Of course, it's definitely a financial success, but has the game's second expansion delivered what both players and Blizzard expected it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.So far, the answer is yes: while the area of Tradeskills is noted as less than a success (it seems to me, too, that tradeskills had more variety and options in Burning Crusade than their current state in Wrath, though that might be because we're only partway through the expansion cycle), everything else is noted as a win for Blizzard: they've really beefed up questing, balance has been intriguing since Wrath (and even if one class has rubbed you wrong, consider how many players came running back with the expansion patch to re-try their class), and of course, Achievements have (predictably) brought the game to new levels of addiction and given players of all kinds new things to do.
Vonya still plans to tackle instancing and raiding as the other two criteria for Wrath's success (and there are probably a few other ways you could test it -- lore? setting?), but by the reasoning so far, Wrath is a win no matter how you slice it. Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion -- the only question is where they'll go from here.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Expansions, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Classes, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Sheino Mar 16th 2009 7:43PM
Of course its a success, given everything that available so far. Its way to early to give this expansion a report card.
John Mar 16th 2009 7:43PM
I can't take it any more. If I have to swallow another one of these openly fawning articles from Mike Schramm I'll add this website to my company's restricted site list myself.
Look, I get it: you love WoW and Blizzard. And whereas this is a fan site, the other writers here at least have expressed the capacity to find that yes, Blizzard can make mistakes. Not so with you. Blizzard is right on balance, right on Glider, right on Wrath...how far does it go with you?
I love this line: "Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion -- the only question is where they'll go from here."
Let me help you to answer that question.
The expansion is an unmitigated failure for the 20-25% of players who were actively dedicated to the raiding aspects of the game. Even the most casual guilds are out of things to do, except pointless achievements that are the equivalent of "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we killed this boss while ______?" It's as if Blizzard spent the time after Sunwell came out watching BT speed run videos and Rogue-tank kills on Gruul and decided to base an entire expansion around that.
So we wait for Ulduar, and what we see so far gives us some hope. But articles like this and virtually every other one you have written are a disservice to the conversation about what Blizzard has done for the community. To sum it up for you:
- Blizzard has underdelivered on a heavily-hyped expansion in virtually every way.
- Blizzard has taken part in legal action that has brought the heavy hammer of the DMCA into the world of click-through EULAs, with consequences that will NOT be pleasant.
- Blizzard has made the "end-game" into nothing more than a walkthrough of a 3D environment.
Flame away, fanbots. You know deep within that you are sick of the apologetics, too.
SaintStryfe Mar 16th 2009 8:01PM
You have a lot of unresolved anger. Do you love your mother? Did your father hit you?
I think the big thing your missing: ARE YOU HAVING FUN?
I'm having a great farking time, I can see the awesome end game sights, I don't feel pressured to raid 4 nights a week to be competing in the end game, It's easy enough to do professions (though a few are under powered right now), and I'm loving the stories in the game.
unigolyn Mar 16th 2009 8:02PM
Please show me an Armory link of your Twilight Vanquisher main.
"- Blizzard has underdelivered on a heavily-hyped expansion in virtually every way."
Really? Every way? No, they really haven't. Almost all builds of all classes are far better than they've ever been, prot warriors in particular being nothing short of a masterpiece. Questing is much more varied and interesting than ever before, the game looks and sounds amazingly better. The reputation from tabards system means never having to grind dungeons you hate. Every profession now has a viable way to make money.
"- Blizzard has made the "end-game" into nothing more than a walkthrough of a 3D environment."
Look, any goober could be easily carried through everything in TBC except for the latter half of Sunwell. This is the equivalent of T4 content. It's not meant to be hard. This game is not made for the minority of hardcore Sunwell raiders, but there are encounters for them even this early in the game. If you want cop out and say Sarth 3D is a "pointless" achievement, then you're just a giant hypocrite. What were warglaives, other than a visible "I cleared endgame" marker? Same with Twilight Vanquisher/of the Nightfall.
I'd wager to say "The Immortal" is a better testament to the value of you as a player and that of your guild than any amount of TBC epics were.
doug Mar 16th 2009 8:02PM
QQ
IvanZephyr Mar 18th 2009 4:02PM
You seem to not understand that this expansion isn't even half over yet...or maybe you do and are just an idiot.
1.) The underdelivered (Isn't a word btw) on a heavily-hyped expansion?
Taking from the WotLK Trailer:
Death Knights? Yes, they've delivered on them. People seem pretty happy with Death Knights. There are balancing issues, but what game DOESN'T have those when introducing a new class?
New continent? Yes, they delivered on that. And incredibly at that, the landscape of Northrend is ridiculously amazing looking.
New Profession: Inscription? Yup, delivered on that. Inscription is here and its...well...a profession.
New hairstyles? Yup, they're in the game
New Dances? Not yet, but they're working on it. Not that I really care about them that much...
New Quests? Yes, yes, and more yes. The quests in Northrend are the best in WoW so far.
New Dungeons? Definintely. Beautiful looking and fun to play. (I'll hit on the raids in a minute)
New Monsters/items? Yes
Level cap raised to 80? Yes
Seems like, according to their trailer, they've already delivered every promise except 1. The dances.
Lets talk about end-game raiding for a moment.
Its incredibly obvious that raiding right now is easy. Blizzard THEMSELVES have admitted this. The reasoning also makes perfect sense. Burning Crusade pushed the raiding limit to such an extreme that only an incredibly low percentage of the player base got to even see Sunwell. They purposely tuned down Naxx, not only because they wanted more people to see it (Since, like Sunwell, such a few percentage of players got to see it), and because it's an entry-level raid. Was Karazhan ridiculously difficult? Maybe before the necessary-nerfs, but no, it was not.
Then you have to take into account that Naxx was tested for an incredibly long time. Players were given complete free-range to the instance during the beta-phase. The tuning of the instance is not the only reason why it's so easy. Its because players had been clearing it on the PTR for weeks before the game even launched.
Raiding is a walk-through? Perhaps after you've got Malygos and Sarth 3D on farm (And have the gear from them), but I guarantee you didn't walk through Sarth 3D when learning (Probably not even Malygos).
Now for your second point: Blizzard took action against a company that had a produce that explicitly went around the rules to give some players an unfair advantage. It's their game, they make the rules as to how it is played. Having a mod that farms FOR you/ect is not fair to everyone else. I don't even see how you can use this for your argument against them.
I think you need to calm down and wait for the entire expansion to be finished before you start slinging your mud. Ulduar isn't out yet and then there's patches 3.2 and 3.3 to look forward to.
The POINT of those "pointless achievements" is to push people into doing odd and/or different things while the new content is coming out.
Frankly, if I was Blizzard, I wouldn't care WHAT someone like YOU thinks, you're clearly still playing the game. And they're getting their 13 bucks/month out of you just the same.
And finally, if you have such a problem with the game, there's that time old saying of "If you don't like it, stop doing it."
PeeWee Mar 16th 2009 8:25PM
"The expansion is an unmitigated failure for the 20-25% of players who were actively dedicated to the raiding aspects of the game."
So? That still leaves 75-80% of players having a better time than you.
futurebiblehero Mar 16th 2009 11:24PM
John was spot-on with the first three paragraphs, at least.
Quantumflea Mar 17th 2009 2:38AM
cheers john, it needed to be said!
Forkbeard Mar 17th 2009 3:09AM
Don't forget... they pretty much have killed BG's. Used to love playing those... hell can't even get rep in AV on my server >:/
wordsofivory Mar 17th 2009 6:07AM
"The expansion is an unmitigated failure for the 20-25% of players who were actively dedicated to the raiding aspects of the game."
You mean the 8%, right?
SarahTheGnome Mar 17th 2009 8:03AM
I must say I agree with John to an extent. I was never a hardcore raider, we could only do 10 man with my guild, so we cleared Kara and ZA in TBC, we were sooo extatic when we cleared ZA pre-nerf, just the week before even. I remember the flame wreath issues on Aran, I remember the sheer joy and excitement of our first Kara runs. All.... gone. Naxx is not nearly as exciting. Everything is a one shot, even for a bunch of noobs like us. I LOVE that everything is accessible to 10 players now, that was a very good move on Blizz' part. But that should have been the line with dumbing down content. They should have not made it piss easy like they have now. The sense of accomplishment has just vaporised.
They aced the quests, phasing is godly, lore behind it is very enjoyable. Achievements are fun for those who are interested in them. I couldn't care less, but that doesn't mean they annoy me. But to just say raids are still hard because they have achievements to them now... it is not valid. Because it is still the same old content.
So when people say only hardcore raiders are disappointed by the raid content, that is not true, casuals also like a challenge every now and then. Get rid of attunements, okay, but just... don't make it a walk in the park. Achievements are a nice bonus, but they shouldn't be the only thing that gives the fulfilment to raiders in my opinion.
I love the expansion, but this bothers me, the raiding content. I will always have enough to do because I try out every aspect of the game, and because I spend a lot of time with roleplay, but I do not think the 'casual' excuse should justify making everything easy and diminishing the joy for those that like a challenge.
Keyra Mar 17th 2009 8:53AM
"I can't take it any more. If I have to swallow another one of these openly fawning articles from Mike Schramm I'll add this website to my company's restricted site list myself."
Promises, promises.
unigolyn Mar 16th 2009 7:46PM
Yeah, I read the part about tradeskills, and it's basically uninformed, barely thought out whining about a few of them.
Herbing is hard in the starter zones? Could it be because they're full of people all competing for the same nodes?
Where does an enchanter get blues to d/e for shards? Gee, you run instances or craft BoE blues on a tailor/JC/BS/scribe? Or you do dailies and buy them if you're really that bad at self-sufficiency?
Jewelcrafting dailies are dumb because they take 10 minutes of effort a day. Yes, I'd much rather clear Kara 40-50 times and never even see Mongoose drop than kill a few blue women 2 minutes from Dalaran.
Tailoring specialist cloth cooldowns are too long? Buy other people's cooldowns. There's no point to specialization if everyone can churn it out once a day.
Cooking is dumb because feasts are BoP! What's the point of having a cooking alt if it doesn't raid?! Well, not spending 80g a stack on your stat food is a start, I guess. If you care about min/maxing, you won't eat feasts anyway unless you're a pally or a shaman.
Deb Mar 16th 2009 8:04PM
"Bring the player and not the class" has left me bereft of friends. I was in a guild and things all fell apart when Wrath hit because understandably folks wanted to get into the best guild and raid first. They all left and did not "bring me". So I tried a new guild, and as a healer all of the movement strategies were too stressful so I became unguilded and now focus on leveling alts so that I may have all of the professions. Was it successful for me? No.
Max Mar 16th 2009 8:31PM
"and as a healer all of the movement strategies were too stressful"
...
epic
fail
Deb Mar 16th 2009 8:35PM
@ Max
I pay to play up to what I consider are reasonable standards and no one else. Watching health bars and maintaining situational awareness are not reasonable for me due to a disability, so I adjusted. I would hardly call that failure.
Zeplar Mar 16th 2009 8:08PM
I think Blizzard has always done tradeskills terribly. They're not interactive enough. I think there's room for Blizzard to do a lot more than "Click this button, wait 8 seconds, and you have a tunic."
Gathering skills, too. I can skin a deer and fail 3 times and then get good leather the 4th time. That deer should be MANGLED by then. But there should be a way to speed up gathering, or at least make it more interactive, too. I want to actually grab my skinning knife and slice up that deer part by part. It doesn't have to take long, maybe 8 or 9 seconds per skinning (zoom in on deer, slice slice slice, done), and it would be a lot more fun than right clicking.
I'm not sure what other games do; the only other RPG I really got into was Arcanum, which, while the most awesome game ever made, did have some..... issues.
Barthaes Mar 17th 2009 1:28AM
On the other hand, theres more than a few people who would be horrified at the thought of manually skinning a deer...
I know wow isn't exactly without violence, but a close up of skinning a deer? Maybe not...
Falcrist Mar 16th 2009 8:16PM
Raiding is a success in some ways and a failure in others. I'll explain:
In BC and Vanilla the raids were made to be so hard as to prohibit progression. Some of the most beautiful and detailed instances in the game were simply inaccessible to most players. T4 may have been nerfed into the ground, but T5 was some of the hardest content in the game. To say that guilds broke up over Kael is an understatement. The situation was more or less the same in pre-TBC, but with the added obstacle of requiring 40 people.
There are benefits and downsides to this. The downside, as I have mentioned, is that players are restricted from seeing certain content, either due to time constraints, skill level, lack of dedication, or even latency issues. This caused drama, and was somewhat unfair to those people who didn't have excessive time to pour into this game.
The benefit of it, from the raiders' perspective, was the feeling of pride and accomplishment when you stood over the body of that last boss. The reward for them, was not just the phat lootz (although this is a nice reward), it was also seeing the rest of the story play out in the boss' defeat. I'm thinking of Sunwell, and the long sequence at the end where the Sunwell gets relit with holy light. The "end credits" are a major reward in themselves.
There's also a positive side for those players who are not downing these bosses. It's something to aspire to. There's a certain mystique inherant in content that you can't access yet. You can look forward to clearing it someday. Whereas now everyone and their brother has killed Malygos, teabagged Sartharion, and sat on KT's throne. Too many people are done with the content or are working on the immortal (which is definitely THE most irritating achievement).
Achievements and hard modes fulfil some of the positives of the ultra-hard content. They give challenge, they allow players to look cool and show off their exceptional dedication to raiding. But a title is NOT the same. Achievements are NOT the same. Even getting additional, superior loot doesn't give the same sense of satisfaction and pride. Are hardmodes a success? Yes. The idea of hardmodes is an excellent one. The execution in Obsidian Sanctum is superb. The title is awesome. But it's not the same as having a dungeon that only the truly dedicated can reach. Players (and not just the hardcore raiders) are starting to get bored. There's not as much motivation to get that next boss down. There's not as much flavor and mystique to the endgame as there was.
So, again, raiding in Wrath is both successful and not. The real test for it is going to be Ulduar.