Now, let’s not start off on the wrong foot here, I am in no way one of those elitist types in World of Warcraft (WoW). Far from it! My raiding history will show that, as right now I’ve only done up to Trial of the Champion (ToC) 25 and have yet to venture into Icecrown Citadel (ICC). I am merely asking the question: Because everything in this game is more accessible does it make it necessarily better?

Of course it does! From a pure business standpoint, it makes perfect sense for your customer to see all of your product. How many people saw the original Naxxramas during Vanilla WoW? Not many, most of you will say. How many players got to fight Kil’Jaeden in the Sunwell Palace in The Burning Crusade? Once again, not many! Now with Wrath of the Lich King out, they have made all end game dungeons more accessible than ever. Once again, however, this does not come without its problems.

Let me ask you all this. How excited were you when you first killed Ragnaros in Molten Core or C’thun in Ahn’Qiraj Temple? What about downing Prince in Karazhan or Illidan in the Black Temple? Most people like me were ecstatic! The chat consisted of yells like “ZOMG WE DID IT!” and cheering over in ventrillo (voice chat). How excited was I when I finally killed Kel’Thuzad in Wrath of the Lich King? Maybe excited for about a minute after I realized that he dropped nothing good for my character. Did I feel like I accomplished something? Not really, because nothing dropped for me. Was it even that hard? Again, not really, I just had to stay out of the red circles. What about downing Anub’arak in ToC? Once again not very excited at all because nothing dropped for me!

Yes, the game has always been very gear-centric, perhaps in this expansion a little too gear-centric. Let’s not get into that though as this is not what my article is about (that could be saved for another one). Let’s take a little stroll back in time in the WoW. Gathering 40 people for a raid was no easy task, let’s get that straight. Who knows if half the people in your raid even knew what they were doing. It was very hard to organize 40 people to all concentrate and focus on one thing. Yes, it could be done, but not everyone has the mental capacity. Enter The Burning Crusade and along with it smaller raids of 10 and 25 mans. Gathering ten people was admittedly easier, and while sometimes 25 mans were tough to organize, it was easier to do than 40 mans. Raids were still tough in Burning Crusade. Doesn’t anyone remember guilds being stuck on M’uru (boss in Sunwell Plateau) for some weeks? What about fighting Prince in Karazhan as most of the time you beat him by pure luck in the beginning?

WoW has come a long way in terms of design and gameplay. No longer do you really even need to use Crowd Control in raids and dungeons. You don’t need a set amount of any type of class to beat any kind of boss right now as most of them are all a DPS (damage per second) race. So what is really my problem?

My problem is since everything is so accessible, there’s no challenge left in the game. Before all of you light up with rage, yes I understand there are “hard modes” to the dungeons. I still do not understand to this day why Blizzard created hard modes. What is the point of purposely gimping your entire raid just to make the boss “harder” and to give better gear drops? I know it is to satisfy the “elitists” and “progression guilds” (they still exist?). Shouldn’t a boss just be outright challenging from the get go? Most boss fights in WoW today consist of staying out of the fire/swarm/black hole/purple goo, or they are just your basic tank and spanks with DPS races. Is this really fun? It’s almost as if there is no thought process behind it anymore. As most people say, it almost feels as if you are “face rolling” through the content.

Did I enjoy the days of crowd control? I can honestly say, yes I did. I enjoyed marking enemies so we knew what to attack first or what to sap, sheep or trap etc...If you messed up you all died. It made it tougher and while frustrating, it made you want to win even more. It left less room for error, it almost demanded perfection and I like that. You go into a dungeon now at level 80 and you could beat the whole thing with your eyes closed and without having to think at all. Everyone is on the mindset of “Faster dungeons mean more badges, and badges mean better gear”. That’s not to say that I can be like that as well, sometimes I don’t want to be stuck in a dungeon or raid for hours, as I have other things I’d like to be doing, but that is just making the game more of a chore and a grind rather than making it fun.

What am I trying to say out of all this? Challenge means fun, streamlining your content just so your customers can see it is good on a business sense but it also makes game designers rethink their objectives. A boss should be challenging, not just something that’s in the way of your gear. Going into a dungeon should require the player to use some thought, not just mash buttons. Who knows what awaits us in Cataclysm!

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