My Life As A Gamer: WOW's Next Patch Comes Next Week

First, let's get the announcement out of the way. Here's the trailer.

Now that we've put that out there, time for the video where the lead dev goes on for 30 minutes about the new patch. Some of this is actually about game design.

TL/DR: "This is a theme park game where you play the patch, not the expansion and not the game; we use a seasonal approach to our design paradigm now."

They still haven't accepted that the changes made that remove the requirement for players to actually engage available content, or to socialize in order to progress, have had a deleterious effect on the game and its customers. Encouraging mute autistics with short time preferences and little patience is not good for a MMORPG, and the comparison between Classic World of Warcraft and Current makes this crystal clear.

The design decisions devalues discipline, determination, discretion, and commitment since the introduction of easy epic-quality gear in The Burning Crusade, where the majority of players opted to farm the currency to get epic gear from a vender over the former system of having to work your way up through the dungeon and raid tiers. Crafting gear has gone down in value precipitously since Wrath of the Lich King, such that only Alchemy and Enchanting mean anything anymore. There is little or no need for a player to engage with his realm's community, either on the micro or the macro level, to play the game now; the end result is players acting more like those of Path of Exile or Diablo 3 than any proper MMORPG.

The solution is simple: remove those systems. Specifically, these things need to be done:

• Gear Caps: If you do not raid or deal in crafting, you cap out at Rare quality gear. Yes, this means that your character's power is directly related to the commitment you make to put in the work required to attain that power. Casual players have no business wielding world-shaking levels of power; those who, regardless of reason, will not pay the price for power shall not have it.
• Gear Curves: No more multiple difficulties for a given form of content. All dungeons, raids, whatever are set for a specific difficulty and you're expected to work through each in turn.
• Commitment Required: You have to commit to a main character if you want to reach the pinnacle in a reasonable amount of time, as you must master that character to do so. Having a stable of characters (or classes, for games like FF14) should never be a thing. Design should focus on requiring this at all levels of play, meaning a concommitment discipline on play experiences that maximize verisimilitude. (e.g. It should never be a viable strategy to actually skip things through being dead.) Git Gud design shall be the rule. Services currently available that undermine this will be removed. (Good bye to level boosts, etc.)
• Socialization Required: No more queuable anything. Not dungeons, not raids, not PVP, nothing at all. Learn to talk to other people, make contacts, behave appropriately, etc.; services currently available that allow you to dodge the consequences of bad behavior will be removed. Economic participation shall also be required; the backstop to bad RNG in raiding and dungeons is making and selling/using crafted gear. PVP shall have the consequence of effecting the economy via control of resources and raid access.

Likely more also needs to be done. The overall goal is to return the game to a proper sandbox environment, where the game emphasizes what makes the RPG as a genre of game distinct and appealing as best any videogame can- and no, it's not in any form of storywanking; if that's what you want, go write or read one. Be it tabletop or videogame, the closer a RPG is to its roots in wargaming the better it will be as a RPG. MMORPGs are no exception.