By happenstance, I found myself rereading the comments of Eliot’s 2022 article on World of Warcraft’s then-latest excuse not to do housing, and I bumped into a comment from MOP reader Jim B., whose words leaped out at me.
“I’m not a crafter, I’m not an interior designer, I’m not a PvPer. Though I personally think each of these is a waste of time and resources, I understand that each is vital to the health and longevity of an MMO. Times have changed in the genre, and those that refuse to change with them, like Blizzard, are doomed to failure.”
Angels singing from on high, this this and more this! There are so many things I don’t have interest in (or more likely, no longer have interest in), but I still want them in the game because this is how games attract other people who aren’t identical copies of me, which is what makes the game interesting and my connections to those people fun!
I am not super interested in raiding anymore, for example; been there, done that, got the loot and the mental scars and the t-shirt and I’m just not into it. But it still probably needs to be in MMOs in some form or another; the idea of a big mass of people throwing themselves against a big bad seems like an important idea to keep exploring in massively multiplayer games, and I want a game that can handle it and the people who live for it. I don’t want the games designed around raiding and only raiding, but that’s another thing altogether. I do want the content in the game and the people who play it in MMOs.
And even if I weren’t looking out for the health of the game’s population, I’d want to be looking out for the health of the in-game economy. In sandboxes, it’s often the PvP crowd who drive all the demand for consumables and craftables, so even if all you want to do is make potions, you still need buyers, and those buyers need to have very different playstyles from you – the kind that use potions rather than make them – which means the game needs to create content for them.
What’s a type of MMO content you don’t play but do want in the game?
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!
