Gamasutra’s piece ‘World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things‘, which I posted to Slashdot the other day, has generated a lot of talk amongst the usual suspects. Tobold’s reaction was that he got some things right and some things wrong. Scott Jennings points out the many ways in which the author was pretty clueless. My reaction?

For the most part, yeah, the guy was singularly unclueful. Comments like

Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot. The designers must be so extraverted, that they can’t fathom the introvert point of view. 

make me wonder if the guy has ever played another Massive game. The risk vs. reward factor in Massive games was just covered in the mmoblogosphere. You have to pay to play, and if that means that you need to put up with 39 asshats in order to get the best stuff in the game, then so be it. If a guy working by himself can get the best items in the game, it really makes the Ms in MMOG pretty darn superfluous.

At the same time, I will cop to poor design choices on Blizzard’s party … especially in recent days. On a twinkie level, the boredom of the Valentine’s event (especially when contrasted with the Christmas, Halloween, or Lunar Festival events) was almost insulting. More crunchily, AFK Gamer’s derisive dismissal of the AQ loot tables hits the nail square on.

Further proof that World of Warcraft is EverQuest in a shiny wrapper … take a look at a partial list of the items available in the Ahn’Qiraj instances. See the books, codices and tomes? Weee, upgraded spells and skills are buried in an instance! … You don’t HAVE to go to AQ if you don’t want to or if you’re not interested in the other loots. Eventually, your guild, your prospective guild and even PuGs will insist you have your upgrades. They, we, will choose someone with upgrades over you. 

The EQ comparisons have always been there, to be sure, but this does smack of Planes of Time -style thinking. In the grander picture, the fact that there are people speedrunning World of Warcraft speaks to the addictive nature of the game in ways no regular stinky nerd can.

I’m glad it’s as popular as it is, and I certainly don’t see anything in the near future that could usurp its dominance. Now that they’re in the position they’re in, though, I hope they’re going to use the opportunity to further the MMOG genre as a whole. Aiming their playerbase of 5 Million+ people away from the problems and pitfalls that faced EQ for so many years has to be a good thing.