Follow-Up: Asmongold Struck A Nerve

Yesterday Asmongold released a video. It's rather straight-forward (and lengthy).

This video prompted a Reddit thread at /r/wow and the response was huge. Reddit being Reddit, you had to sift for the better stuff, but overall the thread reveals that Asmongold's take was hardly a minority sentiment; the current state of the game isn't that good and the party responsible for its stewardship have failed.

In short, the disconnect between Dev and Player has been only getting worse (despite Legion) for years now- since Wrath of the Lich King. Asmongold calls the live game a Skinner Box for gambling addicts, and he's right; a lot of the frustrating systems changes over the years since Wrath have been just that- to turn the game into a series of slot machines meant to use known psychology to keep players playing for as long as they can before frustration sets in and they quit.

Why does this matter? Because World of Warcraft is what "RPG" means to most gamers world-wide, and that definition even filters back to tabletop RPGs (and has for years now, as D&D's 4th Edition shows). What seems to work here is what others will try to copy in their games, even in long-established games, because they (in cargo cult style) want to get the same results so they ape the forms accordingly. Mix in SJW bullshit, and a bad situation turns into a catastrophe wicked fast.

Is there a way out? Yes. Kill the RNG slot machine bullshit and return the game to a certainty of progress: do x, get y guaranteed. This is why private servers running older versions of the game have their following, such that Classic is officially a thing now:

Classic couldn't come at a better time really, assuming it comes out sometime next year of course. In terms of design and philosophy it's the complete opposite of retail, the negative reception to BfA is pretty much the best advertisement Classic could get. No more theme park and slot machine shit, just an old fashioned adventure with tons of heart put into it, and while that's not to say it doesn't have its flaws (because there are plenty) its core principles are so strong that they more than make up for them.

I await Classic for that reason. Compared to Live, Classic was as close to a proper RPG as any videogame could get. There's another big reason for why everything went wrong, but that's for another post.