A bunch of my guildies flocked back to World of Warcraft during its pre-Legion festivities. One of them mentioned in passing that he’d been toying with a frost mage alt and thought it was even more stripped down than the last time he’d played. That made my husband, who mains an ice mage when we play, flip out. “WHAT?!” he said to me. “It was already so stripped down before that they may as well just give us a button that says MAGE, and we’ll just press the MAGE button over and over until it’s done. MAGE MAGE MAGE MAGE MAGE.”
He was not happy. Then again, I’m still bitter about totems, so I’m empathetic.
He also plays a lot of SMITE and Overwatch, which prompted him to argue that Blizzard seems to be MOBA-fying World of Warcraft. “We’re slowly creeping to the point that we select a premade character from a list, trading off customization for ease of play,” he insists. “Want to play an elemental mage? You might as well just pick Janus instead of building your own.” That struck me because usually MMO players believe studios are catering to the busy olds (if you’re a youngin’) or the short-attention-span kids (if you’re a vet). I hadn’t taken seriously before the idea that Blizzard might be tuning WoW as an MMORPG-lite specifically for the MOBA market.
I thought that was all worth discussing! Do you think Blizz is courting MOBA players with its character development choices? How do you decide when MMORPG class revisions have gone too far into the realm of over-simplification? Where exactly do you draw the line?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
