Saturday, November 9, 2013

No new content announced in WoD to enhance multiplayer

Warlords of Draenor looks to be an epic expansion, with a much larger scale than Pandaria. All the announcements were awesome, no doubt.

However, I cannot help thinking about a slightly thing which disappointed me. No announcements or features were regarding multiplayer. The garrison is a solo-experience, and even raid finder seems higher on the priority list, as it also got tweaks for the better. But no new multiplayer features were announced.

Blizzard wants more people to play together, but it seems to me, they shoot themselves a bit in the foot, by continuously adding solo-experience content. I am not saying it is a bad thing, and it should definitely be in there. But the balance between Multiplayer experiences, and solo experiences keeps getting shifted towards solo, as the multiplayer part, haven't seen any new features since Cataclysm.
In Cataclysm we got RBGs, which encouraged more people to play BGs together. We also had guild levels, guild achievements, and tons of things to do as a guild, as you could unlock rewards and feel like you achieved something, together with others.

Many of my guild members, come online only when we are going to raid - then people go offline. Members have told me, they only play this game because of the guild, and it lacks content we could do as a guild. Whether it would be collecting items, experience or something else together. It just seems a bit like the "together" part keeps getting further down the priority list at Blizzard. Transmogrification runs, just doesn't so it for me anymore. I want to get back out there, whether it's killing 500.000 critters with my guildies, or craft certain items.

The introduction of Raid finder, pet battles, brawlers, etc. have all enhanced solo play. (And they're all great implementations, don't get me wrong) We have just not gotten any multiplayer features since Cataclysm, maybe apart from Flexraid which has been great.

Now we are getting even more solo-content, despite multiplayer has lacking for years.
The garrisons are really great - And obviously everyone should have the chance of having a garrison, so you wouldn't be forced to join a really good guild, to be in a garrison. It seems to bring a lot of new features, gameplay and fun into the game, such as pet-battles did. But again, the fun is being enhanced for the people, who like to play the game alone. What about the ones, who don't want to play alone? Sure, I can show my garrison to my friends, but what is the fun in that?

It is like showing off a house you built in Minecraft to your friend, but you have no possibility to build a house, together with a friend, which in my opinion is the funnier part.

I prefer playing Wow with friends, and honestly, since late Cataclysm it becomes harder and harder to "play-with-friends" - The purpose of playing together seems to slowly being vanishing, as the balance in the game, keeps getting shifted towards the solo-experience, without any love for multiplayer. (apart from the world-BG, but if it's auto-grouping like GrimBatol, then it's a pvp-raidfinder)

It is a big problems, for the ones wishing to experience the game with others - and I must admit, my time spend in Wow is less and less, as I do not feel committed to the game as I don't need to be committed to others. Even as a guild master.

If Blizzard manage to get around Guild/Multiplayer implementations, and re-create the balance between Solo-play and Multiplayer.  ("Hey, you can show your garrison to your friends" - that doesn't do it for me) - Then WoD will most likely, look to be the best expansion ever.

If not - well I doubt I can keep myself interested in the game for a longer period of time. If I want to play alone, I play Hearthstone or other games, not Wow. The idea of "guilds" is slowly vanishing now a days.