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The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of VGGEN.com as a whole or any of its affiliates. This is simply one writer's opinion, and should be accepted as such. Weekly World of Warcraft is usually updated each Tuesday.

I recently celebrated my first year anniversary of playing World of Warcraft. Around this time last year, I decided to dive into the game to see if it lived up to all of the hype and accolades surrounding it. A year later, I find myself satisfied with the experience so far. However, I am facing an interesting question: how much longer am I going to play? 

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I am staying until The Burning Crusade launches, so Blizzard has my money for another six months. While this seems like a no-brainer, I actually gave this issue some serious thought. While I thoroughly enjoyed playing levels 1-59, I’ve been trudging through the level 60 content. This isn’t because it’s too hard or out of lack of anything to do, but more due to the simple reality that World of Warcraft drastically shifts once you hit level 60. Grinding reputation and honor has become my latest goal in the game, but it becomes extremely boring, extremely quickly. While raiding could be an option, my server isn’t really developed to the point where there are enough raiding guilds set up. My biggest concern with a renewal has been the overall speed in which Blizzard delivers content. How long should it take to review eight classes? According to Blizzard’s standards: just short of two years. According to my standards, this should be done much quicker. Simply put, two years until an expansion release is far too long and completely unacceptable. While the major patches do add content, they aren’t a replacement for a true expansion pack.

While the expansion pack is certainly a good thing, it presents two problems in itself. First, is this too little, too late for me as a gamer? The game was released in 2004 and is seeing its first expansion two full years later in 2006. While the expansion will certainly add more content, it almost doesn’t feel like an expansion pack should, especially considering the clean break between the expansion and the original game. A new world, two new races, and some new dungeons are great…if this was one year after the initial release of the game. This seems like small potatoes in the big picture, and it really brings me to my next question: What’s next? 

I can already hear the collective groan of everyone who just read that, and I can already imagine the email I’m going to get. Yes, I haven’t fully maxed out the content, and no, I don’t see myself completely finishing off everything The Burning Crusade will offer. However, knowing all that, I have to consider what comes after the expansion in Blizzard’s mind. Is it going to be another two years before another expansion? Will there ever be any hero classes in any form? More land masses? Will we see the Frozen Throne in person? Is there a plan to get a second expansion out faster than it took to get The Burning Crusade out? Not having any plans for the future of the game spelled out, especially in light of the rumors that Blizzard may or may not do another MMORPG in the Starcraft or Diablo universe, makes me nervous as a player. While I will pay for my renewal now, I’m not so sure that I’ll do so when it goes up again in six more months.

Really though, World of Warcraft has been good for the most part. Even through all of the complaints, quirks, and annoyances I have with the game, my experience has been a positive one. The problem comes with the monthly fee, and that’s always going to be the problem with MMORPGs. When I first started out and the game was new, fresh, and exciting, the fee didn’t seem that bad. Now that I have a few developed characters, I’m finding myself having a harder time justifying paying the fee just because I’m getting, for lack of a better term, bored with the game. I still have fun, and World of Warcraft still takes up the majority of my gaming time, but I’m at the point where I’m questioning how much longer I really want to play World of Warcraft. Maybe I’m burnt out, and maybe I’ll get a second-wind when the expansion hits. Only time will tell.

The sad thing is that there is already a glut of MMORPGs on the market. The biggest problem facing the market right now is World of Warcraft itself. The game is a massive giant, and nothing already released or on the immediate schedule looks even close to being a serious competitor. Sure, the games may be good, but if nobody plays them they’re not worth the monthly price of admission. Guild Wars, however, is looking more and more like a viable option. While the game is far from a pure MMORPG and relies on instances and a small level cap for class builds, the constant expansion plans and fee-less approach has been tempting me lately. Sure, the gameplay is different, and I’m sure I’ll have the same problems with it eventually, but Guild Wars is kept relatively fresh with NCsoft’s plan of releasing expansions every 6 months. That is something World of Warcraft has not been able to do: keep me hooked long term with a constant stream of major new content. 

Do the major patches count in World of Warcraft as new content? The upcoming patch, which introduces World PvP and cross-realm PvP, is nice but hardly constitutes something on the same lines as an expansion. The last patch brought the dungeon Naxxramas and the Undead Invasion. While the Invasion was amazingly fun, there’s something just wrong with insinuating that a dungeon that many of the players will never see is on the same level as an expansion. Blizzard has seriously dropped the ball in taking this long to put out a full expansion, and it’s really been weighing on me while I’ve been considering renewing my subscription. Blizzard’s attitude in general ranges from just plain arrogance to pure naivety when dealing with World of Warcraft, its players, and their concerns. Maybe they launched not ever considering an expansion, and maybe they have three more in the pipes. The thing is, I don’t know, and I’m having a hard time justifying my subscription when it goes to a company that doesn’t tell me what I’m going to get by this time next year.

Let’s take some stuff out of my past columns: I feel my main class is gimped, I think that Blizzard is focusing solely on one segment of the game’s population and telling everyone else to love it or leave it, my server never really developed to allow for numerous raiding guilds, Blizzard spends more time deleting things on the forums than fixing bugs in the game, and the attempted fixes to non-raiders are poor attempts at jokes. I’ve gotten numerous E-mails asking me why I don’t just cancel my subscription and quit at life or something to that effect. Here’s why.

I actually have fun. 

Yeah, scary, isn’t it? I actually have fun. Sure, my guild is too small/stubborn/abandoned to run any instances over a 5-man, but I still have fun doing pickup groups, assisting larger guilds, and grinding honor in the battlegrounds. I enjoy playing with many of the people on my friends list, and I use World of Warcraft as an excellent changeup to my normal gaming schedule.

But really, what’s the point of complaining anyway? They got my renewal this time, and that’s really all that matters in the grand scheme of things. It does make me wonder though: how much longer can World of Warcraft possibly grow? There has to be a point where people say “I’ve had enough with the game and I can’t justify the fee anymore.” Whether this comes from the passage of time, Blizzard’s quality of work degrading, or lengthy gaps between content releases remains to be seen. Do not fool yourself though, it will come. World of Warcraft is unique in the sense that it has taken MMORPGs far beyond their niche’ and brought them to a completely new mass market. Blizzard’s MMORPG experiment (and let’s be honest, it is an ongoing experiment to see how much Blizzard and Vivendi can milk out of us until we say no more) has been a fun ride, and I have no intentions of getting off just yet. I still have things to do in the game.

Congrats Blizzard, even through all of your faults and the many ways you find to annoy me, you got my money for a renewal this time.

As usual, if you have any comments, complaints, concerns, or fan mail, send them to weeklywow@vggen.com. I’ll try to answer all E-mails personally, and you may wind up in a future mailbag column.

Posted: 08/10/2006

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