Today, World of Warcraft launched its biggest content patch since the launch of Legion. This is Patch 7.3, "Shadows of Argus", and it's the continuation of the expansion's narrative payoff. This is the final act, narratively speaking, for not only this specific expansion, but also for the game as a whole.
The reason I say this is because, when this expansion concludes, one of the biggest villains--and the faction he controls--shall be struck down (and the faction destroyed, respectively). When I say "big", I mean "cosmological" levels of bigness. The leader of Big Evil in the game, until now, will be gone.
The problem is that the only way to go is to take on the actual Big Evil in the game's cosmology now, which is where everyone not on the WOW development team expects that this will go. As with Wrath of the Lich King, the devs have once more written themselves into a corner. There is no way that this doesn't result in the game's final expansion before Trump completes his second term; this is the beginning of the end for World of Warcraft.
And I think some of the senior people on the team know it. There's only so long you can play the up-and-onward escalation game before, like Gurren Lagann you reach the Final Boss and that is that: win or lose, you're done. There's no more worlds to conquer, and the game is all about finding and wrecking opposition for glory and treasure, so the game is done.
Quite frankly, it's about time. As fans know too well, no king rules forever. Sooner or later, the top dog has to go out. If the folks at Blizzard don't see this as the case, then the chances are that they're going to fuck it up so profoundly by trying stave off the inevitable that--in classic Greek style--they will only hasten it instead.
Joseph Campbell has a great quote from The Hero With a Thousand Faces that's relevant here: A god outgrown immediately becomes a life-destroying demon
. That's what happens when you try to retain something whose time has gone; it becomes cancerous, and turns against what it once sustained. As it is in real life, so it is in the virtual worlds we create.
I give this game, at most, the full eight years expected of President Trump's administration. If it still here after that, either it will do so vainly to extend its life and position, or will be "World of Warcraft" in name only and actually be another game entirely. Neither is preferable to just letting the game die.
Learn to let things go when their time is gone. Just as you cannot resist an idea whose time has come, neither can you retain an idea whose time has gone. So it is with all that lives.
I played through a lot of Cataclysm.
ReplyDeleteThe game seemed to have a narrative misstep with going to Outworld THEN the Litch King which, if you thought about it, should have really been the other way around. When they then revealed that what's his name (Bolovar I think?) not only survived the dragonfire but that "there always had to be a litch king" I just threw up my hands in frustration. I could maybe buy Slyvannas taking over and freeing all the undead to become Forsaken or join the horde - sure, I could buy that. But not this "it can never end" crap. At the very least, why can't Bolovar take over, and command all the undead to march into a meat grinder set up by the alliance/horde until they're all dead-dead?
Heck I barely could understand that... jousting daily quest routine they had in the northlands (are we under attack or not?) but tolerated it because it was so much fun to get on a sabercat and ride things down with a giant lance.
Farewell, WoW. You did provide some fun times I won't forget.