Burning Crusade: WoW or WTF?

I remember the first time I entered the capital city of Stormwind in World of Warcraft. As I reveled in the accomplishment, I realized how large this world really was. With the World of Warcraft expansion pack, Burning Crusade, nearly upon us, this editorial weighs in on the in-game economics of your favorite MMORPG, and then some.

With the World of Warcraft expansion pack, Burning Crusade, nearly upon us, this editorial weighs in on the in-game economics of your favorite MMORPG, and then some.In time I learned how deep the game experience is, above and beyond your typical MMO fare, given the added elements of trade through the auction house and increased human interaction through guild affiliations. Here I sit today with four characters all ready to move on to the next hamster leveling treadmill when the Burning Crusade (BC) hits the shelves tomorrow on January 16, and I can’t help but think about what ramifications this new expansion is going to have on the in-game culture, and in particular, the economy of the game as it moves forward. Let’s talk economics

Umm... so which one of us gets the drop?

As everyone knows, unless you are in a guild or affiliated through a real life friend in a guild, you have no chance to obtain the coveted end-game equipment. So the many hours of toiling with your guild to earn Dragon Kill Points (DKP) in order to purchase these upgrades has kept you up night after excruciating night toiling through those 40 man instances. That has led you then to be outbid on an item by one of the higher-ups in your guild. It never ceases to amaze me how many guilds have evolved or degenerated into groups of top members (haves) vs. everyone else (have-nots). God bless the Burning Crusade for fixing the problem with lower instance numbers. Perhaps it should be that God should smite those of the highest ranks in guilds for what is about to happen.What you may have witnessed as of late, is many top members of guilds calling raids off altogether to wait for the upcoming expansion and its related content. When I noticed this with my own guilds, I found with some investigating, that the culture is preparing to shift entirely as it relates to guilds and raiding. Blizzard intends for the new content in BC to answer the concerns relative to the large number of participants required to currently raid during the end-game experience by lowering the large instance numbers to 25 characters down from the current 40. At face value, I think their intentions were to fix the problem, but what they inadvertently created is a new culture that may leave many players scrambling to find new guilds. What’s the path to hell paved with again? Im tired of playing second fiddle to you, bL00d pwnz n00b...I helped you earn that staff. Wheres my staff, huh?! Were through!

I'm tired of playing second fiddle to you, bL00d pwnz n00b...I helped you earn that staff. Where's my staff, huh?! We're through!

The higher end players have broken away or are planning to leave their current guilds in favor of an “uber-guild” that utilizes the best equipped members from various classes in order to form a streamlined machine. These new guilds will handle conquering the content first. This could leave larger guild memberships to reorganize leadership or to send members off homeless as they reorganize. You may have already seen the posts within your guild forum of calling off raiding, taking a break or quite simply, that they are leaving for a new guild altogether. As the new content is released and the wheels of level grinding ensue, those of us within a large guild will be left to find new homes. In many cases the ability to simply find someone to help you may pose a challenge. Initially, the goal will be to farm and hit level 70 while searching for others along the way to enter the new instances. How nice of them to have a battle plan ideally packaged and wrapped up with a pretty bow for us to skip merrily through. Sure, I believe that, and in a perfect world we all come home to a refrigerator with more than two beers waiting for us. Already, Blizzard created what I believe to be the greatest stumbling block by issuing the “Looking For Group” button in the most recent 2.0 patch. Although it was intended to simplify the ability to find a group to conquer content, it served more to frustrate those attempting to find party members. Instead of communicating to everyone playing via the LFG channel, you now have to queue up and wait for a party to fill. In many cases you are left spamming the general chat channel to find what class character you need to complete your group. What once took five to ten minutes to form a raiding party has now created a virtual hodgepodge of people that can wait upwards of an hour or longer to complete a group. So much for the interaction of finding what you want which further removes you from speaking and negotiating with other individuals before a raid.One upside I have seen with the new content is what I would call the great equalizer or, what I would compare to the part in Karate Kid where Ralph Macchio finally takes it to the house on the Cobra Kai. Wax on, wax off…Should you become one of the dredges of society lining up in the bread lines at Ironforge without a guild, take heart. The Burning Crusade has conveniently created the answer to those pimped out characters you have previously helped to equip. Yes, dear adventurer, the new content does drop higher statistical items as we all have seen linked in the general chat forums. I had the opportunity to play the Beta and I am here to tell you that the random drops and quest items will render much of the top equipment useless. Imagine how you will feel nabbing that first item that is better than anything your elitist ex-guildmate left you and your cohorts dead for. You will be able to comment on where he managed to find his Newbie gear with a resounding LOL added in for good measure. Oh, be sure to ask him how long it took to gear up with that crap and then hammer the point painfully home with how you managed to pass him up with a thirty-minute quest line reward. It will be at this glorious moment that you will know how Danny Laruso actually felt delivering the knockout blow with that ridiculous crane kick. Remember, slamming down a flag and challenging the inferiors to duels will be completely optional. So, with our new world to explore and guilds reformed to more streamlined parties, what else could be changed? Look no further than the economy. After playing the beta, I realize we are dealing with game designers who obviously passed economics in high school. NWO: Supply and demand

Hey little dude, if you eat wild boars, they drop 100 gold.

The quest rewards and monetary drops in the current WOW monetary system are very thin with regard to the amount of gold obtained. Most of the community seeks out skills or items to send into the auction house to help supplement the paltry income made from farming. The game play of BC allows not only for better drops, but has larger quantities of cash coming out of kills. Within an hour period, I was able to farm out 75 gold which is unheard of in the current game format.The folks at Blizzard must be compensating for the ramped up cost of goodies like a flying mount - which at this time fetches 4,000 gold - in favor of keeping cash drops at a reasonable level. By now, from your history books, you should have read what happened to Germany in the 40's when they attempted to answer the lack of monetary supply by printing more cash. That little play caused most of the general populous to walk around with wheelbarrows full of notes in order to buy the equivalent of a ninety-nine cent E. Coli taco from your local fast food joint. The same may hold true to the economy of scale within the game. Average prices for items will skyrocket to accommodate the influx of gold into the system. That is the least of our worries. Consider what the insurmountable number of Chinese farmers are going to do to affect future game play. You may have seen the constant in-game advertisements touting cash for gold schemes. The standard US price for gold has gone up making farming a real-life economy. With BC, this is only going to get worse with the seemingly endless supply of young gamers finding a way to take mom and dad's credit card for a spin on the virtual banking network while forgetting to ask for permission. Now despite the ups and downs (like the many server crashes and patch down times forthcoming) of what this expansion has to offer, BC should be an exciting addition to the experience that is online gaming. WoW or WTF? Look, cant we all just get along?

Look, can't we all just get along?

Even though the relationship aspect of players may change with the guild reformations and the economy hurt a bit early on, you should plan on having a good time along the way despite the little annoyances. I know I do. There are still players out there that aren’t just out for themselves. It may be that these are the very alliances, coupled with how the economy, guild relationships and overall gameplay rolls out, that will determine ultimately whether you, and I, say WOW or WTF.

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AiwaMar 24th, 2007 - 09:59:53

Sorry this might be a little long :(

I will say that i am a elitest wow player of the pre BC days. To give you an idea (this is just for wow players that can understand this) my priest had full prop, beni, and any high end gears from zg or aq20 (as well as various non set bwl healing gears), my hunter was in full dragonstalkers, and all the bwl cross drops i wanted (DFT, prestors, much debated drops for hunters) and my rogue had full BF, and 5/9 BS, and pretty much anything i wanted up in AQ40. NOT to mention all three had the class books from aq20 before it was trainable (and got the backstab book), epic mounts (the hunter has the zg mount) attuned for all instances, and all had resist gears that could push them to 315 fr, nr or frr.

I was a grunt like everyone else at first but after perfecting zg and aq20 (my guild was able to clear all of zg including jindo and edge within 2 hours or less consistantly, allowing room for 3-4 deadweights to pick up gear) i was made a officer and from what i saw, the guild was 'fair' in terms of loot, we ran a dkp system and although it was not by any means perfect, it was good enough where causal raiders were willing to wait for a raid spot to open up (i remember typically 50 people on at raid times all the way to when raid are called off). Which to me at least shows we had a system that may not guarentee a raid spot to causuals but the chances that a spot might open up to experience end game content in the end was worth the wait.)

That being said TBC was sort of a virtual kick in the.... for me. Like the article said, all pre bc gear was outdated almost straight away. I expected my gear to be outdated, but not to the degree in which lvl 61 greens did. In less then a few hours, i was already replacing my gears. I then looked back and realized all the time working together for those MC,BWL, AQ, NAXX gears was wasted, i even felt more sorry for those players who did the grandmarshal grind, not only was thier remarkable acheivement in the wow world tarished by the fact 1 month before TBC everyone could get a hold of GM gears, but now in TBC, GM-quality gear was THE standard in which lvl 61 greens replaced. Thats when it finally hit me when TBC was the 'great equalizer' the causuals were so happy about.

So ok, i shouldnt be whining, expansion is here, new game, move on and rebuild.

By the time i reached level 70, ran the 5 man instances i found that dps melee weapons (which so happen to all fall at 71.7 dps) healing weapons (+227 healing)and caster (120 spelldamage) were very.... standardized. I found out that gears i could get in steamvaults, i could get almost the exact same in BM, mech, Bot, or SL. The new 5 piece set gears for classes were all also to me at least, seemingly designed for general pve-pvp use. Those sets are not exactly made for pve, but they arent exactly made for pvp either, kinda in the middle, a far outcry from the mindset of raiders before BC who would have a set of gear made for pve, and a set for pvp.

The instances in TBC i find are very poorly designed. Unlike the old strath, scholo, dm, ubrs. etc. etc. TBC instances are very plain and boring. All of them are made to follow a single path, on top of that most of the bosses in those instances act like a mini version of high end bosses pre BC or a mix of several bosses (best example would be the last boss in arcatraz, and last boss in shadow labs, skekham, and rag with a touch of vael anyone?). This i can see being exciting and 'new' to causuals that never could reach to these bosses but to the hardcore raiders the bosses are just one word.. 'meh.'

Moving on, I also noticed some real changes in classes in BC. Hunters took a much bigger hit in terms of usefulness in raids, Rogues, who were once powerhouses in pve if speced and geared properly were now.... not doing so well. Mages and warlocks on the other hand got stronger and in most cases, espically in 5 man raids, i would rather replace a rogue or a hunter for one of them simply because casters dont get hit by massive 4k aoe's, and give a much more reliable crowd control yet maintain a high DPS. I am sure blizzard will make changes but there are also many other balance issues that needs to be addressed (green druid tanks better then prot spec/geared warriors, shadow presit outdoing afflication locks etc. etc. ) because it really feels that TBC was rushed.

Lastly guilds. putting the cap from 40 to 25, and all small instances 5 man with karazhan a 10 man i think was a mistake. I do not think a single guild that raided 40 man instances pre bc has made it into the expansion completely intact. Most have broken to smaller groups usually with a small group of close friends. This is both a blessing and a curse. Im sure some are glad they dont play with that annoying person anymore, but at the same time it limits what a guild can do. One problem before BC was small groups that kinda molded together, BC makes those groups into guilds themselves, which in turn took much of the talents that might be needed for real progression in high end raiding. I cannot say my guild now has the talent to effectivly raid new content and PVE progression was a real drive for me to play wow.

All in all, i have come to the conclusion that TBC was aimed towards causual players. Which is not a bad thing but i feel it does alienate anyone who have worked for a 8/8 set to a degree or raided a long time. I feel that TBC was ment to bring in causal gamers for a monthly fee and have them pay for a long time and play every once in a while. As for me, i am going to give BC a few more weeks, and if im still not happy with what WoW has changed into i think i will quit and move on.

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HelloWorldApr 18th, 2007 - 16:23:32

Peace people

We love you

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TeloHoobregemSep 1st, 2007 - 12:55:53

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For most people,term life insurance quotation falls into that category because it protects a family against a devastating loss of income.

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capturaharaFeb 17th, 2008 - 08:09:36

great article...though i am about 1-2 years late in reading it! thanks for the help today!

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