Blizzard drops two-decade assumptions about World of Warcraft, updates one at a time
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Certain ideas and assumptions about World of Warcraft, from character development to faction rivalries, have long been set in stone, baked into the game from its early days. It may have taken nearly 20 years, but some of those assumptions are finally starting to change.
Blizzard’s landmark MMORPG has been around for nearly 20 years. In the 18 years since the game was first released, a lot has changed, both inside and outside the game. World of Warcraft has received eight expansions, new dungeon and raid difficulties, new classes, new races, cross-server play, visual updates, and more. But parts of World of Warcraft have changed over time, but many of the core design philosophies behind the game have remained the same. Some of the core pillars that have long defined World of Warcraft are now changing in what can only be described as a pivotal moment in the developer’s long history. Amid ongoing allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at Activision Blizzard and Microsoft’s planned $69 billion acquisition, the WoW team is looking to forge a new path that challenges long-standing ideas about what WoW is, how to play, and for whom. So far So far, the results are promising.
There’s no better example than the rift between the game’s two factions (Horde and Alliance) to illustrate the old assumptions that have held back the game in recent years. For nearly 20 years, World of Warcraft has been defined by the Cold War-style battle between the two superpowers in Azeroth, so much so that the World of Warcraft portion of Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon convention typically draws from crowded conference halls between players. The game starts to see which faction is the loudest. Faction rivalry has always been one of the most important parts of World of Warcraft’s DNA, at least in Blizzard’s mind. Never mind the Horde and Alliance teaming up to defeat the apocalyptic threat time and time again in the game’s story, dating back to Warcraft III. Never mind the fact that the leaders of the two factions often cooperate and are even friendly to each other. The war between factions, and divisions between the game’s two player bases, needs to continue, because that’s what World of Warcraft was all about when it first launched in 2004.
Just a few years ago, this made the idea of a cross-faction game unthinkable. The developers even said so much. Humans and Orcs fighting side by side? While the game’s narrative supports this idea, and the game will benefit from a larger, connected player base while enjoying endgame content, it’s not on the table. The idea is even welcomed by many players, but it doesn’t really matter. Some ideas are out of reach, and this is one of them.
World of Warcraft is no longer defined by orcs and humans
Now, in 2022, it’s finally happening. Cross-faction support is coming, allowing Horde and Alliance players to team up for dungeons, raids, and rated PvP. This is a huge shift in the concept of what WoW is and can be. The initial response speaks for itself. Players largely seem to be ecstatic about the cross-faction play, proving they’re ready for change. While rethinking the Iron Curtain between the Horde and the Alliance is just one hypothesis the team has carefully researched, there are other changes that have been made or are being made that revisit other ideas that were once considered untouchable.
The seeds for this change were sown a few months ago, before the release of the game’s 9.1.5 patch (which notably reworked or removed certain systems from the game’s latest Shadowlands expansion, which were widely unavailable to players welcome). Around that time, game director Ian Hazzikostas said the team was sometimes too attached to the ancient traditions instilled in them by some of World of Warcraft’s original creators.
“It’s a pattern we’ve been trained to think in,” Hazzikostas said in an interview with Esports.com.tnahead of patch 9.1.5. “Working on World of Warcraft for so long can lead to looking stubborn on the outside, I get that, I get that it’s frustrating.”
One of those modes, the idea that progression in World of Warcraft is largely based on per-character rather than account-wide ideas, is now being re-evaluated.
“World of Warcraft started out rooted in the ‘you play your character’ paradigm, and then you switch to a different character, going back to the 2004 classic, where nothing is full account,” Hazzikostas said. “Everything depends on your character. If you play an alt, it’s a whole new journey where you have to earn everything and do everything from scratch. That’s pretty standard in RPGs, single-player or whatever. You make a character and it’s your character’s journey.”
However, as the game has aged and new classes and races have been introduced (Blizzard has started offering free and paid tier boosts), more and more players can play many characters. Having “alts” is no longer a niche part of the game, and most WoW players do. Still, some aspects of gameplay rarely carry over to multiple characters, resulting in players having to repeat some content or reputation grinds that weren’t designed for repeat playthroughs.
While the World of Warcraft team used to look at most game system decisions from a character-first perspective, only occasionally unlocking account-wide stuff, it was not the other way around. Evidence of this mindset change is already evident in World of Warcraft’s latest patch, which introduces alt-friendly changes hailed by the gaming community.
“I think now we’re asking more and more questions about pretty much every reward, every piece of content, does that apply to multiple plays?” Hazkostas said. “Does this make a meaningful difference for different characters? Or what is it, depending on the answers to those questions, we want to make more and more things account-wide from the beginning or let small more accessible?”
As for what’s next, the team continues to update various elements of the game that may be seen as objectionable, buggy, or badly aged. The changes range from revamping achievement names to changing quest dialogue, all in an effort to create a more welcoming and inclusive gaming world in the wake of shocking allegations in Blizzard’s ongoing investigations and lawsuits about workplace culture. Altering old game content may once have been ruled out, but that’s no longer the case, and Blizzard seems committed to making sure that the game’s entirety reflects the values of the current development team and player base. It’s a good thing the current team has a grasp of where World of Warcraft is and what it should have in 2022, even if some of the changes made to the old content might seem boring to veteran players.
It’s clear that Blizzard is blazing a new path forward for MMOs, allowing developers to become household names and more aware of players’ modern needs and their feedback, rather than being dictated by a decade-old idea of how a game must be. Whether Blizzard can successfully chart this path remains to be seen. Fans are still eagerly awaiting news of the game’s next yet-to-be-announced expansion, hoping what Hazzikostas has said since patch 9.1.5 “is a new perspective on the team moving forward” will translate into new ideas and a new era of MMO success. It’s unclear what World of Warcraft will look like next year and beyond, but if nothing else, it’s refreshing to see Blizzard ditch the old assumptions that have long held the game back with one update at a time.
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