The gaming middle-class

Pigeonholing somebody as being a casual gamer or hardcore power gamer has the same inherent difficulties as classifying him as being rich or poor: It is a sliding scale, and many of us would claim to be neither. There is a gaming middle-class in MMORPGs between casual and hardcore, just like there is a middle-class between rich and poor.

That becomes important if you consider for example who benefits from the announced changes to the high-level dungeons, putting more content into Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Depth, and Blackrock Spire. The real hardcore gamers don’t profit much of it: Even with improved loot tables these dungeons still yield a lot less good treasures than Molten Core, and it is unlikely that the uber guilds will switch from doing MC raids to Scholomance groups.

But if you define casual gamer as somebody playing irregularly, without a good social network in game, and being forced to rely on finding a pickup group when he wants to explore a dungeon, these people don’t profit from the changes either. Not everybody who is level 60 has good equipment and is playing the game very well. And a pickup group of people who just hit level 60 and are mostly wearing green equipment will most certainly fail to conquer Scholomance in a 5-man group. So the very casual gamers are actually hurt by the changes, because they previously had the much easier option of going to these dungeons in a raid group, where they would at least have a small chance of some decent loot.

The people who profit most from the changes are the gaming middle-class; people that play often, play well, but aren’t going on a raid every night. A 5-man group to a high-level dungeon is a lot more interesting than a farming raid there, and better loot and quests leading to epics is an obvious advantage.

Now I am certainly part of this middle-class. I do have a guild. I do go to Molten Core sometimes, but not often. I do have the gear, the know-how, the social network needed to get a 5-man group together which actually has a good chance to succeeding in these places. With over 1000 hours played per year I would have a hard time convincing anybody that I am a casual player. But a member of a real hardcore uber guild would look down at my only blue gear, and my lack of commitment to raiding every night until 2 am, and call me a n00b.

So I *should* be happy about the content Blizzard is creating for me, as I am certainly going to benefit from it. But my social conscience is causing me pain. It is a bit like moving into a nice renovated apartment, and learning that the building previously had housed poorer people, who got evicted for the middle-class to move in after renovation. In the case of WoW I would have much preferred new dungeons for middle-class players being created, instead of dungeons being taken away from the real casual players and renovated into something more fitting for the middle-class.

Nevertheless I must admit that the move might make commercial sense for Blizzard. I do know a number of very casual players, for example my wife, and some people of my D&D group. But either they play a lot of different characters and never make it to level 60 before growing bored, or they get so attached to the game that they play more and more, build up their social contacts, learn how to play effectively in a group, and end up becoming gaming middle-class themselves. Somebody who wants to play solo all the time isn’t bothered about the group size cap of high-level dungeons. And it isn’t quite clear how many of the 6 million WoW players are really casual, and how many have moved on to a middle-class or even power gamer level.

As part of a trend the changes in patch 1.10 and the announced content under development is still worrying me. The focus of Blizzard’s development is clearly on keeping existing customers happy, and changing the game according to the changing requirements of the players. The existing players get more skilled, and better organized, thus World of Warcraft is changed in a way to make it more challenging. But Blizzard shouldn’t forget that the huge success of WoW is based on the game being able to attract new players, people who never played a MMORPG before. Making WoW harder might suit the existing players, but it could raise the barrier of entry to new players, and thus harm the longevity of the game. When the lead developer of WoW in a recent interview spoke of WoW still being around in 10 or 20 years, he should be aware that the people playing in 10 or 20 years will certainly be not the same that are playing the game today. To attract the players of the future, Blizzard should spend some development time on creating content that is accessible to the most casual newcomer.