I always thought the core attraction of MMOs was the game with no end, yes we can talk about ‘end-game’ but the idea is that the story doesn’t really end. To me it’s what separates a single player RPG from an MMO – the free content updates that keep the game fresh (and help to justify the sub). If companies are now so focussed on short-term profits and player-churn then isn’t that a seismic shift in what the genre is about?

Maybe the numbers are telling them that WOW is in a decline that nothing can reverse. So this might be their spin on it.

MMOs are weird beasts that have to either mutate or die, or just play to their strengths and resign to the fact that you’ll see players wander off. I think they should just play to their strengths and the company should make new games. Then again, that’s how games were done for a long time before subscriptions anyway, and I’m strongly biased in that direction anyway. I detest subs and they ways they warp game design. I’d much rather see a company make a game, support it through bug fixes, but largely move on to another game.

I can’t help but think that Robin Williams would find that comment fascinating. Then again, when he gets manic he does sound like a fourteen year old….

I think the planned obsolescence route is playing with fire. It risks annoying the current players and not attracting the hoped for new ones. No one really wants to throw dice to figure out if their current game of choice will still be fun next expansion.

The most obvious example I can think of is Wizards of the Coast and their release of D&D 4E. The release of 4E and Paizo’s release of Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) demonstrated the danger of splitting your player base. Some went along with 4E while others –the majority of 3.x gamers, if you believe the hearsay– either stayed with 3.x or went with Pathfinder.

Planned obsolescence could fracture a gaming community beyond repair, and a corporation that sets out to convert it’s gaming system to a planned obsolescence model will end up doing more harm than good.

No, no it wouldn’t be like that. In fact, it’s so little like that, that I award it the title, “worst analogy ever made while discussing an MMORPG.” You had many strong contenders, but this takes the cake. In fact, it wasn’t even close.

While it’s apparently escaped your “blown mind” until now that WoW is not only not seeking an exclusive relationship with only one customer, you, but that it is actually aiming for more subscribers than currently exist on this planet–I’m at least glad that you’re finally figuring that out. The appropriate response would be to aim for a smaller game, maybe think about a custom built single-player game, if you really stop to consider the implications of jealousy toward other customers and the intrinsic facts of the concept of MMORPG requiring, those other customers. But to flay Blizzard for their MMORPG, a game inherently designed for many customers, to not adhere to the moral strictures of monogamous relationships, developed over thousands of years and explicitly between 2 humans in a completely different context? Sure it’s insane, sure it defies explanation, but the reasonable mind still cries out for explanation. Why apply this bizarre logic only to MMO’s, why not to every other type of business aiming at serving more than one customer per corporation? I.e., almost all of them. What is it about those bunch of lovable geeks at Blizzard that arouses this kind of emotional and sexual response towards a simple game, unusual only for its polish not for innovation or intrigue? We may never know.

That would be like starting a new relationship with someone and then saying “Oh, I’m just with you until my ex come back.” Who would want to be treated like that?! I don’t know who I feel worse for – Blizzard for being so openly brazen like that or the fan base that just “takes it.” Blows my mind.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve hated ‘daily’ quests with a passion – I don’t need a ‘chore’ to have a reason to login – give me something interesting and fun to do.

MMOs, even casual ones, require a huge time commitment. I still have pretty much every MMO I’ve ever played installed on my PC. I’ve moved them across from every upgraded machine to the next, or re-downloaded or re-installed them. I’d *love* to be playing all of them, every day. The changes they have undergone make that even more of an attractive proposition, not less.

But it’s just not possible. It takes hours and hours every week to be anything more than a tourist in an MMO and there simply aren’t enough hours for all the MMOs I’d love to be playing. The most I can do is pop back in once in a while and have a quick look round, which I do. The only way to stay as deeply involved with any of these games as I once was would be to forgo getting seriously involved in any new ones, and that’s just not going to happen.

still and whether you can make everyone happy or not, I’d recommend future MMOs to strongly focus on the cooperative side of things. this is where your long-term glue still lies and it’s easy to see that WoW has cut down in this area bigtime since vanilla.