Every now and then, someone asks why World of Warcraft continues to make level 70 content (examples here, here and here). After all, they only make up a small percentage of your customer base (if you believe WoWCensus, roughly 35% – of CHARACTERS, not players).
The answer is, I’m afraid, frighteningly simple: they do it because those are the customers who are out of content. Face it, if you’re level 31, you still have content to consume: it’s called Stranglethorn Vale, Desolace and Scarlet Monastery.
Well then, the obvious question is why is that focus so much on raiding? Simple. You hear about the raid content because its what the players are most excited about. Blizzard is, in fact, adding new quests in every patch – recent patches include Ogri’la, Netherwing quests (i.e. earn the ability to ride a dragon!), daily quests for many professions. (Side note: they also completely revamped Dustwallow Marsh, a level 32-36 zone, and redid loot for every dungeon from 20-60 in the game). They revamped the battlegrounds, and added daily quests to make them more rewarding. What did players care about? Zul’Aman.
Why is that? Well, for one thing, because most non-raid quest content is either consumed once and forgotten, or is a repeatable daily that ends up being mindnumbingly dull. Raid content has the benefit of being highly repeatable – it takes multiple trips to learn the fights, get your team on the same page and get the loot you’re chasing. In terms of development cost, it makes the cost a much better return on investment in terms of player time than making a new soloable zone that players can, in all likelihood, blow through in a solid day of gameplay.
Don’t underestimate the number of people raiding. For example, Random Battle reports the current numbers as being only 2M out of 9.3M customers. His numbers are wrong, though. WoWJutsu (his source) does not track Asian players at all – the actual number is 2M customers out of ~4.5M players. But even that’s deceptive, as one number is players and the other is characters – a true apples and oranges comparison. Only Blizzard knows the true crossover. Still, a significant portion of level 70 players are raiding, and many who are not wish they were (though this wishing is often wishing they could find a guild that raids one night a week). There are a couple of reasons.
First off, players playing a PvE game want a PvE endgame. They don’t necessarily want to be shunted into PvP anymore than hardcore PvP-heads want to be forced to level 70 levels to play THEIR game. WoW is definitely a PvE game, and it’s not surprising that battlegrounds are less popular than raiding seems to be.
Secondly, and this is somewhat important, raid instances act as a ‘gameplay horizon.’ It’s a reminder that there’s still stuff to do out there, still mountains to climb and enemies to conquer. The fact that only 6% of the customer base is into Black Temple is the point. Without elder game content, players at the end game have nothing to do, get bored and either quit, or beg for more content. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with the number of raids, the pace of their release, or their difficulty (I also don’t think they are the only gameplay mechanic that can be used to solve this problem), but the idea that there is a clear progression to them and some of them are insanely hard is, in my opinion, important to maintaining a solid base.
Because let’s not forget, those people who are at max level are the most likely to be logging on daily. These are your devoted, your faithful. They are the familiar faces you see when you log on, the people you turn to when you need something crafted or enchanted. They log on because they love the space, and they love the people within them. But at the end of the day, they have to have something to do.
And let’s not be deceived – progress is, in fact, being made. Last I checked, 2% had killed Vashj. This is up to 11%. Completion of the eye went from ‘nearly 0%’ to nearly 9%. Black Temple went from almost no completion to 2% downing Illidan. No, not everyone will be able to beat BT before RotLK comes out. But I don’t think they should. The real interesting question for armchair designer is, okay, what should Blizzard hope that percentage is?
Still, the reason that raids are important is that they are one of the few things in World of Warcraft that is actually a challenge – i.e. valuing teamwork, organization, intuition and player skill (as opposed to normal MMO gameplay, which is akin to popping bubble wrap – a comparatively low-stress MMO exercise). They provide players an opportunity to actually apply what they’ve learned, and really stress it.
Again, I don’t think raids are the only thing that can serve the design in this way. But at the same time, I do think that Raids serve WoW better than most armchair designers give it credit for.
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