Anyone can beat World of Warcraft

With patch 3.1 recently released, one question has been on my mind, is Wrath of the Lich King just too easy? After two expansion packs and numerous patches, there is no doubt that WoW has changed a lot since the Molten Core days.

These changes, though, vastly cater to the casuals at the expense of the challenging end game content that many raiders are thirsting for. In vanilla WoW, MC and BWL were fairly difficult just because they were amongst the first 40 man raids available. It took time to get acclimated and used to the raiding system.

Blizzard knew this and after those two dungeons they released AQ40 and the original Naxxaramas, arguably two of the most difficult dungeons implemented into the game so far. Both these dungeons introduced encounters that were highly intricate and complex. Some bosses, such as the Twin Emperors, C’thun, and the Four Horsemen, required everyone to do their assigned roles perfectly.

This unfortunately became a problem for many guilds, and they were left banging their heads on many encounters. As a result, quite a few guilds disbanded and many players quit, causing Blizzard to take notice.

Maybe Blizzard did change Naxxaramas?

WoW’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, slashed raid sizes from 40 to 25 and introduced heroic and normal modes to instances. Many raiders initially interpreted the raid slash as a way to make raiding more efficient.

With less people, guilds could bring their very best to every raid. In addition, Blizzard’s early TBC dungeons were pretty tough, seemingly justifying the players’ suspicions.

Then Blizzard, worrying that interest in the game may fall off, essentially nerfed everything, marking the beginning of the end for difficult end game content.

Nothing would pose much of a challenge until Sunwell, the very last dungeon before WotLK, and even then, Blizzard closed off encounters and kept guilds from progressing in order to maintain interest.

Now, three years after vanilla WoW, WotLK was released and under much hype. Many players were infused with the hope of finally facing Arthas, which was implied by those annoying Ozzie Osbourne commercials. Blizzard, though, is smart enough to realize that they can milk every penny out of the game if they save the best content for last. So, like with Sunwell, raiders are likely going to have to wait until the end to actually fight Arthas.

When will the end be? The end will probably be when Blizzard determines people are beginning to lose interest, and due to the overall easiness and disappointment of end game content, it may only take a matter of months. After all, Blizzard essentially regurgitated Naxxaramas and seemed to have forgotten to adjust it for level 80’s, or at least it appears that way since it is not difficult at all.

The two dragon encounters, Malygos and Sartharion, while they do offer new and unique traits that have some potential, are only entertaining after the first few kills.

At least 3.1 released some new and difficult content right? Probably not. The newly released Ulduar fused vehicular mechanics with adjustable difficulties and promised to be the next challenging dungeon (many guilds certainly hoped so). Unfortunately, initial impressions are not looking so hot. Guilds have already essentially cleared Ulduar, at least the required bosses, within the first week. With that in mind, it would be no surprise to see most guilds have Ulduar on farm mode within a month. Furthermore, the “hard” modes are unlikely to be all that worthwhile.

Yeah, they do offer item upgrades, but they are not really proportional to the level of difficulty. Plus, Blizzard does not want to alienate the casual fan base by creating vastly superior gear that will not be accessible to them, which is unfortunate because it sort of sucks when every guild and every player has the same or equivalent gear as one another.

Overall, it appears that Ulduar will be entertaining for a while (I give it a month), but only because it is something new and refreshing.

Players can easily gear up multiple characters with epic gear

As a business, there is nothing wrong to what Blizzard is doing. They obviously would profit more if more people played and were able to enjoy all aspects of the game. However, they must also realize that by making the overall game easier, they have set an irreversible trend, that if altered, would alienate the majority of the “casual” player base.

The future undoubtedly looks bleak for hardcore players, but Blizzard, who is responsible for many great titles, deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they can find a way to please both casuals and raiders, who knows? I just hope we do not have to wait until Arthas to find out.