For World of Warcraft gamers who have played the game since vanilla, you guys can probably agree that the game has become a bit too “easy” in the sense that obtaining items has become a relatively easy process. An example would be how warlocks can obtain their mounts at their trainer for a few gold, rather than go through a long, arduous, and expensive quest line. Former World of Warcraft team lead, Mark Kern, thinks that the game has gotten too easy as well, and in his opinion (in his guest blog on MMORPG.com), by appealing to casual gamers it might have very well killed the MMO genre.
According to Kern, “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.” Kern also believes that by lowering the difficulty level, it affects the sense of achievement that a player feels when obtaining an item or completing a quest. He also believes that by making it too easy, developers are not motivated to create rich and deep quests, which we guess if true would affect both the gamer and developers simultaneously.
Personally while I agree with Kern regarding the “dumbing down” of the game, at the same time it allows for the casual player to enjoy features and aspects of the game they might not be able to, such as raids, simply because previously it was too hard and took up too much time. What do you guys think?
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