old-vs-new
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Leaderboard: New hotness vs. old and trusted
There's always something awesome just over the horizon. MMOs are coming out all the time, and it seems like it's only a couple of months before one new title or another is launched. It almost seems silly to stick around in a single game when there are so many titles already out there and so many more due out soon after. Why not live a little and see everything that the online gaming space has to offer? But there's always new stuff coming out for existing games, and that might be even more satisfying. There's something comforting about having all sorts of high-level perks to fall back upon in your game of choice, things you can't accomplish unless you stick with the game for a few years and learn its nuances. Truly embedding yourself in a game is a wonderful feeling, and it means that you always have a home to come back to (unless you get stuck with a shutdown notice, but that's another topic). Absolutely none of us is immune to the siren call of a new game or the familiarity of an older one, but that's not the point. Given the option, do you generally look forward to the next title? Or do you find a game, settle in, and stick with it as long as it's operational?
Blizzard: 'Changing mechanics to be more reasonable and less punishing is an improvement'
It's the old guard vs. the new guard in a recent World of Warcraft forum thread, and Blizzard's Bashiok stepped in to comment on the title's move toward accessibility. "What we've always been trying to do," he said, "what WoW has always been about (and to which much of its success is due) is to make an accessible MMO." Bashiok understands the older, so-called "masochistic" style of gameplay, but he says that MMOs are trending away from this in an effort to attract rather than repulse gamers. "I think that changing mechanics to be more reasonable and less punishing is an improvement, not a detriment, to games in general... But I feel we're lucky to now be in an age where those ideals (intended or not) are giving way to actual fun, actual challenge, and not fabricating it through high-reach requirements." While Cataclysm's difficulty levels are a matter of some controversy these days, it's undeniable that Blizzard has tuned World of Warcraft to become more user-friendly since 2004. Bashiok notes that even at launch, WoW was radically different compared to its contemporaries: "Anyone that looks back at the game at launch and wishes it was as challenging now as it was then is not aware of the painstaking effort put into making this game accessible as compared to its predecessors."
