Death and Taxes is Gone…Should you be Concerned?
Upon reading the title of this post, you might actually think it cause for celebration. No more death and/or Uncle Sam eating my paycheck? This is a glorious day! I hate to disappoint and all, but that’s not what I’m referring to. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s ok too, because up until a few days ago, I didn’t know who Death and Taxes was in relation to Warcraft, either.
To illustrate my point, see exhibit A.
A lot of forum chicken littles like to point to things like this and say “SEE! The hardcore riaders are leaving!” That’s all well and good.. except they didn’t leave, they re-rolled to hordeside. Also, what people don’t seem to understand is that these things can and do happen all the time in any game. I can’t really wrap my brain around those who try to grab at any straw they can get their hands on that might hint on a failure on Blizzard’s part. They want to see the game fail just to post an “I told you so” on the forums. Seriously, find something better to do with your time. Go outside.
It still does open an interesting avenue for discussion, however. Given the new-found accessibility of content and the expectation of this to continue (10-man versions of every raid instance in the expansion), many “hardcore” players have decided to head to greener pastures. I’m not convinced this is a bad thing. Being the largest MMO ever created in this history of the genre, Blizzard has the awkward position of trying to make large groups of different players happy. They want the average player to be able to login for an hour a day and accomplish something, but they also want mr. 6 hours of raiding a day to have something to do as well. So they develop dual content like Magister’s Terrace and Sunwell Plateau, which as you probably know, the average player will never even set foot inside the new 25-man instance.
Personally I think this comes down to pride and PvP. Many players raided so that they would have the best gear to go kill other players with. It didn’t make sense and it was a horrible system for anyone below the curve, but when they changed it, a lot of raiders felt like they got a playing point taken away from them. Now they were on equal footing with anyone with the inclination to pvp, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. So raiding is now what it always should have been about: progression and content.
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