Outdoing WoW at its own game

Yesterday, Tobold made a post concerning the question of whether or not World of Warcraft can be, well, "out-WoWed" -- as he puts it. The game he proceeds to create via his list o' features is aimed at an even more casual audience than the one already playing in Azeroth. After reading through the list and considering its intent to draw in a much more casual market, we sort of feel confused.

The main reason we feel confused is because the list seems to contradict itself in a couple key places. Firstly, item number four on the list states that the elimination of class "roles" is essential -- but that classes have to stay. However, classes are themselves roles (a mage does ranged damage, that is its role) so what is actually being suggested is for everyone to play the same class with a different skin -- which seems casual, at first.

We also have to point out that having no endgame and instead giving players new skins to use for new characters might not work very well -- especially if the combat is too generic. Why keep going through all the combat content? Tobold's example is giving players a Ninja skin, but not everyone thinks Ninjas are really cool -- yes, hard to believe, but it's true. If this game were to actually have more than ten million players, how can the developer know what's compelling for all of the different people playing this game? Well, they can't.

With generic -- everybody heals themselves, everyone does lots of damage -- combat and no actual endgame, what's left for all these players to do is mini-games. Basically, players are supposed to flock towards a game that has generic classes/combat and is chock full of simple games they can already get from Popcap or any other of the various casual games makers. The farther you take a game into the casual space the less it's even competing with WoW in the first place.

Part of the reason World of Warcraft has been so successful is because it found its own audience -- a mix of casual, mid-core and hardcore gamers. The answer isn't going all-out casual, because as time goes on more casual gamers will become mid-core gamers.