Mark Kern, industry veteran, on MMORPGs

Mark Kern, former team lead on World of Warcraft, writes about MMORPGs and casual gamers:

Accessibility was the mantra when I was leading the World of Warcraft team. We labored over the user interface for the game, going through many iterations, to find one that would be easy and intuitive for players new to the genre. We created a massive number of quests to lead the player through the world, making sure that they never had to think about what to do next.

But even that wasn’t enough. As WoW grew in population, reaching ever more casual gamers, new expansions introduced even more refinements. Quest trackers were added, and xp was increased so that it was easier to level through all the old content to get to the “new stuff” of the expansion. Gear from the a new expansions first quests made raid gear from previous expansions a joke. And the level curve became faster and faster until we reached a point where everyone is just in a race to get to max level, and damn everything else in between. Why care about level 20 gear when you would blow by levels so fast it was obsolete before you even logged off for the night?

And it worked. Players came in droves, millions of them. But at what cost? Sometimes I look at WoW and think “what have we done?” I think I know. I think we killed a genre.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since patch 1.5 with the introduction of Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley. I’m not a veteran by any stretch, but I’ve surely played for far longer than most players today. I’ve accumulated countless days of game time and incommensurable riches, both in loots and in friendships.

I started as a noob and slowly, painstakingly climbed the ladder towards greatness. It was hard but it was worth it. I’m proud of what I have achieved in this game, and I’m prouder even of the friendships I’ve secured over the years.

However, since Wrath of the Lich King, I could tell Blizzard was slowly pushing us hardcore players to the exit. They’ve gone from the idea that players would come back over and over, day after day, to get better at PvE or PvP, and play with their friends, to the idea that the only way to satiate players is to give them hundreds of daily quests and thousands of reputation points to grind.

My guild, our guild, which withstood years of changes, many highs and even more lows, finally died two months ago. We were doing great in Burning Crusade, even better in Wrath of the Lich King, kind of OK in Cataclysm and very poorly in Mists of Pandaria. Casual has killed us.

I miss playing with my friends. They are now my real-life friends, not in-game friends anymore. I miss spending nights trying to down new bosses. I want to scream in joy when we kill a boss that has been giving us a hard time for weeks.

The thing is: I don’t miss World of Warcraft. I’ve been meaning to play with my friends again (well with those I don’t play with already on Diablo III or League of Legends), but I don’t want to farm 1,000 Valor Points, the new reputations, the new daily quests, the new Looking for Raid, the new achievements (cause I do them all), the rare mounts that have been eluding me for years, etc.

Blizzard’s attempt to cater to the greater numbers has slowly forced hardcore players to spend far too much time on this game than they ever wanted to. (And I’ve been wanting to spend a great amount of time! But not that much.) I cannot spend 6 hours a day, seven days a week on a game to have the same rewards, the same look, the same abilities than a guy spending two hours a week. That’s just not right.