DRIVING YOUR PLAYERS INTO THE ARMS OF OTHER GAMES
This approach, I argued, slowly alienated normal players. It essentially made them less-powerful, second class citizens, simply because they were unwilling to participate in the endless grind. By emphasising DICC, and thus alienating the average player, both the DAoC and EQ developers were slowly killing their own games. They simply made their respective games a lot less fun, and therefore vulnerable. The moment a viable alternative/replacement MMO came along – one that made playing fun again - players bolted, leaving both the EQ and DAoC subscriber base shadows of what they once had been. That game was WoW.
WHO NEEDS FUN? KEEP THOSE PLAYERS WORKING
My argument in part 2 was that WoW, upon launch, adhered closely to the Gygax Arneson dungeon crawl model,World of Warcraft and players loved it. However, still early in its existence, the WoW devs chose to rather closely mimic the DAoC and EQ endgame content. The Blizzard developers introduced 40 man endgame raids, which were at the time extremely demanding and time-intensive. They also introduced a relativistic PvP model that required a truly unbelievable time commitment. Both of these activities rewarded players willing to grind through this content with the best loot in the game at that time. Again, this made normal players – those unwilling to put in the hours and hours of work - feel unheroic, alienated, and second rate.
I also argued that, as WoW continued to grow into the juggernaut it is today, it never really deviated from its commitment to time-intensive, artificially hard endgame content. However, the forms of DICC that the WoW developers fed to the players changed over time. That ultra-intense sliding scale PvP system? It was replaced by a much more reasonable system (though still somewhat grind heavy) in which honor points are accumulated. Soon thereafter, however, the devs introduced the very DICCish Arena system. This system is exceptionally grind heavy, requiring several hours of play per week for an entire *season*. Like all DICC content, the rewards for participating in Arena combat are among the best in the game. Players that participate in the older PvP battlegrounds system? Under the current rules, they can only earn the older, noticeably inferior Arena gear from previous seasons. Of course, even that's contingent on them maintaining a minimum 'personal Arena rating'. This requirement requires them to participate in both battlegrounds AND Arena matches, and thus ensures that a truly outrageous amount of work is required.
