Diagnosis of a Lost Generation: World of Warcraft & Nostalgia

As an on and off video game player, the “new” release of World of Warcraft Classic didn’t go unnoticed to me. Perhaps more surprisingly, was the fact that if you were browsing YouTube, Reddit, Twitch or other mainstream digital platforms you probably heard about it too. I’ve followed its announcement, the hype in between the launch, and the launch itself up until now, where it’s still going strong. All of this was fascinating and intriguing to me. After all, WoW Classic is just the same game that initially existed 15 years ago: unpolished, grindy, slow and punishing. And yet, people wanted it more than ever. The noteworthy aspect is not the game itself, it’s the apparent philosophical change among gamers – particularly young male adults – of what they want from a video game. Why is this relevant? I believe this change transcends video games and it’s a counterculture scream that will echo in many other areas of society. A preview of what’s to be. It’s the reason why this article is not intended only for WoW players but for all those interested in our current culture and its evolution.

What is WoW Classic & WoW Retail

WoW is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that was first released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment and is currently in its 8th iteration. The game has gone through many changes and it has a completely different feel to it today than it had in 2004. However, the core principles remain the same:

  • You create a character (your avatar) in which you can choose between two mains factions – Alliance and Horde – and according to that first choice you pick a race and a class. The race choice is for the most part inconsequential, but your class will heavily impact your gameplay experience as it will determine your expected role when playing with others. After that you hit “Enter World” and boom, the magic happens. You’re inside Azeroth.
  • The game has three main experiences:
    • Levelling: your character initially starts at level 1 and you max it up to a level cap. Once you cap, the endgame begins – the main focus of WoW. As of right now the level cap is 120.
    • Player vs Environment (PvE): a group of players team up to conquer a dungeon or a raid boss and receive rewards for it. This mode of playing is the most popular and it is the core of WoW.
    • Player vs Player (PvP): an individual or group of players fight other players in organized events or in random encounters across the world and try kill each other. These fights usually occur between the two main factions.
  • Once you reach max level your character progression is based around your gear/equipment. The harder the dungeon/raid or the higher rated players you defeat, the better your gear becomes. Some achievements even include titles. Both titles and gear then become a symbol of status within the game, just like real life. For most, this is the main reason for playing.

WoW Classic is basically the first iteration of the game released more than a decade ago, and the latest iteration is called Retail – currently, in 2019, it’s Battle for Azeroth. So, what changed?

 

Social: When a Community Becomes Impersonal

WoW is a social game and will always be. It’s one of the reasons why it’s been so successful for so long. There are much better single player options in the market. Having grown in an era where Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out; I’ve quickly became a fan of RPG’s (role-playing games). I remember when playing Zelda, I thought to myself “If only I could play my character with others and compete or cooperate with them…” That’s when I was introduced to WoW and what really drawn me into the game – all the progress I’ve achieved as a player and character could be shared with my cousins and friends in the same world at the same time. Not only that, but now we could show the rest of the world how good we were!

And that’s what we set out to do. An important technical detail: before you create a character, you must choose a server (basically, this is “where” you’re going to play within the digital space). Naturally, to play with friends you have to pick the same server, otherwise you won’t be able to interact with them. We initially picked a server called Stonemaul and to our surprise most players were Russian so we couldn’t communicate properly. Luckily, Blizzard offered us a free transfer to an English-speaking server, and we could finally interact with strangers from Europe. One year after playing the game, during its 2nd iteration, I knew what the best guild for PvP was, the top-rated player in the server, or simply the player who had a certain profession for when I needed some specific service. In this sense, it was a true community. I would see the same people over and over again and reputations were created and destroyed. There were the PvPers, the hardcore raiders and the role-players. That was my server, my online neighbourhood. This created strong relationships and rivalries with other players and the game was as social as it was mechanical. In fact, politics could easily become more important than your skills in a guild environment. There are many horror stories about loot being handed to wives, family members or friends over more competent and more tenured players. The main point is this: your server mattered, the way you behaved was important, and more importantly, you felt part of a community for better or worse.

However, things are much different in today’s version of the game. When Burning Crusade (2nd iteration) came out a big feature was introduced that, in hindsight, acted as a warning – flying mounts. Previously, you could buy a horse for example that would allow you to travel at faster speed on the ground. But now, you could own, let’s say a dragon, and fly over the world without being bothered by enemy players or NPCs (non-player character). I’ll be the first to say that I was very excited for this, after all, who doesn’t want to own a dragon and fly it? From that moment on I was able to travel anywhere much faster and even appreciate the beautiful landscapes from a different perspective. But something was lost. If I wanted to go from place A to place B I could do it without being bothered at all. Because of this I avoided all the interactions that would have occurred if I had to travel on the ground. Very convenient indeed, but was that what I really wanted? Just like in real life, some of the best stories are those when you get lost or challenged by an obstacle. WoW is no different. For example, epic moments happened when an enemy player tried to kill another player. Both players would call friends and memorable battles would ensue. Why was the first player travelling to point B in the first place? It didn’t really matter, because in his mind he got an experience much more rewarding than the task he had set out to do initially. And even if he didn’t want to go through that interaction, he was forced to adapt either by becoming a better player, adjust his strategy or always travel in group. You were forced to evolve. The world was more alive than ever.

In the 3rd iteration of WoW (Wrath of the Lick King, the pinnacle of the game where Blizzard announced that it had 12 million subscribers), another useful tool was introduced – the Looking for Group (LFG) tool. This allowed you to enter in a queue for a certain objective and the game would find people with the same goal, create a group for you, and teleport all the members to the desired location. This included people from other servers too, so you would interact with new players almost every time. Before LFG, you had to organize a party with members from your server, fly to the location and only then could you proceed to go on with the objective. As veteran players might recall, this process could take hours. Not only was the pool of players much smaller but you would have to consider everyone’s schedules and the logistics of such an enterprise. Was this a good thing? It depends. With the LFG tool you were now able to play content that perhaps couldn’t play before and save considerable time. On the other hand, this was flying mounts on steroids. You could practically play all aspects of the game without leaving the same place or typing a single word with your group. You traded immersion for convenience.

The last changes that was made that diminished the sense of community within the game were the Cross-Realm Zones (CRZ) and sharding. The technical details of these technologies are fairly complicated and go beyond the scope of this text. But to grossly simplify it, the game would always put you in the layer that it finds most convenient (not too much people nor completely empty). As a result, every time you moved layers (this happen very frequently in a gaming session) you would see new people from different realms. Let’s say I wanted to go from point A to point B then back to point A. Initially, I could be seeing Joe and have a nice chat and tell him “I’m quickly going to finish this quest, be right back.” I would go to point B and finish the quest. 5 minutes later I’ll be back to the same exact position in point A and Joe was nowhere to be found. All I would see were random people that weren’t there 5 minutes ago, like in a crowded intersection of a big city. Joe was lost among the multiple layers of players that the systems decides to put you in, even if he never moved. Unless you saved Joe’s ID it would be hard to communicate with him again. The point of this system is to smooth the player experience. For example, it was common to be in a highly populated city making the game almost unplayable, especially if you had bad hardware. Unfortunately, this also promotes all kind of toxic behaviour, which is always amplified online. Now, you can be rude to people with the guarantee that you’ll never see them again and won’t be punished for it.

Fast forward to 2019, and the combination of all these factors make the game, well…just a game. Whereas, before it was a game and a community. I believe this is the major reason why WoW Classic is so popular right now. Players want that sense of community back; they want those memories of challenge and fun interactions; they want the whole thing, not just half of the equation. And they don’t mind sacrificing quality of life for it. If it takes an hour to organize a group to complete a dungeon, plus 2 hours to complete it so be it. They’ll have triple the fun. Plus, every time they get a reward it will feel meaningful because it was hard work to get it. Classic is showing Blizzard that convenience is nice but it’s not the most important factor. Too much of it and you have a soulless game. Players are longing for an escape, a hobby and fulfilling experiences. Good gameplay, cool graphics and a streamlined experience is essential for a good game and that will pull new players in but it’s the social aspect that makes them stay.

Currently, people are more stressed and anxious than ever. Whether it’s because of job insecurity, debt, or cultural clashes the fact is that escapism is part of their lives. For many, video games are the remedy that makes life tolerable, where they make friends or have any sense of self-worth. The world is already impersonal as it is. Slowly but surely, the sense of community is declining. Despite online dating and social media, we are lonelier than ever. Like the LFG tool and Tinder, we are letting algorithms dictate who should we meet and what’s best for us. You can live and work in a city your entire life without making friends and be considered a perfectly functional human being. That’s the reality for many. Classic is in a sense a revolution against anonymity and irrelevance. This trend is still only digital, and I suspect Retail still has the majority of players, but I can’t help but feel that this doesn’t apply only to gamers but to everyone. How can we reintegrate the sense of community back into society? How can we make the online space more personal and accountable? While doing this trough gaming is a commendable experience, I believe these lessons should be applied in the real world. We won’t be changing the fact that most people live in big cities or that social media platforms are the norm anytime soon, but we can recognize that it is possible to shape the direction of these factors. Cities don’t have to be impersonable blocks of concrete and instead be clusters of relatable, functional and relevant communities. And social media can be a facilitator for healthy and personal interactions, not the mean for empty validation or the focus of our social life. WoW Classic tells me that many people want to go in this direction. And they don’t mind sacrificing certain things for it which is encouraging.

 

Gameplay: Everything for Everyone Until We Are Indistinguishable

During levelling when you start to get more powerful, you can specialize in certain roles that your class is capable. For example, the paladin class has a specialization that can heal injured teammates, one that can tank damage and protect allies, and one that deals more damage to enemies. This is a classic setup for any RPG: tank, healer and DPS (Damage per Second). In Classic, the class that you choose matters more than probably any other iteration of the game. For example, if you pick the priest class you are expected to be a healer, nothing else. This was very restrictive and less experienced players could pick the wrong class for the role they wanted to perform. This was gradually reduced and in Retail every specialization of every class can perform at a high level.

In this regard, Classic and Retail are two extremes of the spectrum. In Classic you can feel very restricted by the class you pick because even though most of them can perform various roles, you are expected to perform only one at endgame. In contrast, Retail feels that every class can do everything so it doesn’t really matter who are you grouping with or what class you choose because you will always get the job done. On the one hand, your specialization is so valuable that you cannot do anything else. On the other hand, your specialization is indifferent because it’s no longer special. In 2019, every class has access to the same tools.

This evolution is a clear sign of our times, of an egalitarian philosophy. We are all equal before the law and the divine, so everyone should have the same opportunities and be able to do whatever they want. So, when Blizzard released WoW in 2004, every class player complained that they wanted to perform a different role, after all, they pay the same as any other player. Naturally, Blizzard started to work on balancing classes. I’m not trying to make a political statement and defend one approach over the other but today it seems taboo to point out any differences. (Toxic) feminism wants us to think men and women are exactly the same while ignoring the obvious physiological and mental differences; the taboo of racism makes it that we can’t joke with a friend from a different race in public; if someone’s clearly overweight and you state that fact for health reasons you will be accused of sizeism. This extreme version of egalitarianism pushes us all towards mediocrity because differences are no longer celebrated but totally ignored, until we’re all the same. It has happened in video games and it is happening in our culture.

 

Specialize

Paradoxically, this balancing by Blizzard accentuated specialization in a not so healthy manner. Allow me to explain: because every class has every tool, classes’ specializations had to limit the abilities they could use and in doing so you feel like you are playing a specialization and not a class. For example, my class was always a mage. I first started playing it because I just loved the combination of casting a frost spell to slow my enemy and then burn him with a fireball for extra damage. This little dynamic between hot and cold gave depth to the class, and in terms of immersion I really felt like a master of the elements. Today, if I choose the frost specialization 99% of my spells are going to be frost. I don’t feel like playing a mage but a frost mage. This specialization made me quit the class, it wasn’t what I signed up for.

This is yet another symptom of our society that video games reflect – work is becoming so specialized that is soul sucking. You’re no longer a doctor, you’re a dentist or a dermatologist. You’re no longer a lawyer, you’re a bankruptcy lawyer or an Intellectual Property Lawyer. You’re no longer an actor, you’re either a movie star or a TV show star. Of course, you can always change. But the economics and the cost of opportunity of changing will in most cases force you to stay in your current path. It’s not any different in WoW when you have put so much effort in a certain piece of gear or in improving your skills as a certain specialization. This is as inevitable as it is sad. It’s the result of a functioning economy where competition and knowledge are so high that no one can master more than one field. But does it have to be so? People derive the most pleasure from completeness. Just compare the work of a craftsman to the job of a factory worker. You will understand this better than I can ever put into words. Craftsmen gather the materials, mix them, bring every little piece together and polish their work until it’s complete. Factory workers will in most cases perform one step of the process and lose sight of the big picture. The art is removed from their job. This case is easy to visualize and won’t be relatable to most reading this text, but this applies to most jobs today. Working in the marketing department? Would you derive more pleasure form your work if you produced your goods, market, and then sell them to the final consumer or would you rather come up with clever headlines and SWOT analysis for the rest of your life? Would you rather build a full software system or focus your life on testing every new program that comes out of your engineers’ brain? You’re obviously going to be better at certain tasks than others, but my question is this: where should the line between overspecialization and worker’s fulfilment be drawn? Classic shows us that the trade between losing efficiency for more variation can be positive for our experience.

 

Quality of Life

One thing you’ll find once you play Classic again is that quality of life (QoL) is horrible comparable to today’s standards. Time to reach any destination takes forever, cooldown of abilities is longer, many abilities cost reagents which means you can’t use them freely, or professions significantly affect your gameplay and access to gear. In Retail, none of that happens. You have various teleports available, flying can be used everywhere, professions are mostly a means to generate gold and you feel that everything is much easier and comfortable. I will steal an analogy from an mmo-champion website user called Zaqwert and say that Classic feels like a small country road whereas Retail is more akin to an interstate highway. One is hard to cross, slow and bumpy. The other is fast, convenient and comfortable. Furthermore, combat (main aspect of the game) is light years ahead in today’s iteration than it was when originally released. It is more dynamic, faster, engaging and reactive. Special effects give life to spells and melee swings, and it’s a satisfying visual and sound experience.

So why would you want to play the unpolished Classic again? Players gained much over the years with Blizzard improvements but when they play the original version it’s as if an eureka moment occurs “Yes, this is what was missing!” But after all, didn’t Blizzard mostly implemented changes that many players were asking for? However, it seems to have backfired in a strange way. The customer is not always right like we are meant to believe. By continuously budging and improving the game’s QoL something was missing – sense of adventure and immersion. The sense of danger is not quite there. It’s the touristification of the game: you no longer get lost, and if you do you won’t get punished for it. In the same fashion, gameplay is fun and engaging but you either play the class the way Blizzard meant you to play it or you will be severely punished for it. It’s one directional. Again, have fun, but don’t go too far. In Classic, it’s the wild west of choices, abilities and specializations. It’s messy and chaotic. But there is freedom for classes to be played the way the players want to. 15 years later, people are still discovering new tricks and the game is still evolving.

Making a parallel to our physical world, this phenomenon is clearly seen in travelling and technology. I can book a trip to Thailand and be sure that I will be in a hotel with 1st world standards; I will have other tourists with me so I know I’m safe, and Google Maps will make sure I will always find a way to get home; my tourist guide will prepare a tour for us and I will follow as will everyone else. The sense of adventure is greatly diminished by these conveniences. It’s one aspect of technology: by making everything easier it can take away the soul of an experience. For example, while travelling on the other side of the world I can always be in touch with my family and friends through WhatsApp or email. Going to Thailand knowing that I’ll be by myself and there’s no way to contact my loved ones makes the experience a totally different one. You feel in danger, you’re forced to communicate with locals, and you need to adapt. You are truly travelling in that area not just passing by. It’s no longer a theme park.

We have much to thank to this technological progress (both in the real world and inside WoW) but it’s important to recognize that something was lost during this transition. An easy life brings the worst out in people: bad habits, addiction, weakness, and idleness. I’m not defending that we go back to pre-historical living conditions but as members of a global society we need to be aware of this paradigm shift. Because our dependence on technology comes with other insidious factors. We become addicted to it and their owners and programmers become the masters of our life. They shape the way we think, work and interact with each other, and they are only accountable to their shareholders. It’s scary how much we depend on these companies for our everyday life. This is easier to see in game, when Blizzard makes changes that affect your class or QoL, you see people raging, cursing and threatening the company because this significantly affects their life. In their minds, this is an existential threat. We are sacrificing too much control over convenience and comfort. And it’s a very dangerous trade off.

 

Blizzard Business Model: Am I In Control?

When Blizzard released the game in 2004, its business model was very simple. They provide customers a permanent digital world where customers can play anytime they want, and in turn they pay a monthly fee. The more players, the more subscriptions and the more money they made. It worked. But if you install the game today, you’ll see some significant changes to this mentality. Like any other mature company, you can only grow so much. So, the logical step was to make more money from each individual customer. However, increasing the subscription fee would be a bad business move. What could be done then? Microtransactions (MTX) for the rescue. Basically, MTXs allow you to spend money inside the game. Blizzard did not invent this method by any means, but they use it well. For example, let’s say I don’t want to go through the hassle of playing another character to the level cap. No problem: just pay Blizzard $60 USD and you’ll get it. Want to change your character’s race? For only $25 your Orc Warrior can now be a Zandalari Troll Warrior. But it gets worse than this. Blizzard (and video game companies in general) start to design their content around these MTXs. It’s no coincidence that every expansion they try to add new, cooler races so that people want to change their “old” character model. They also create very good-looking mounts and pets that are not available anywhere in game but only through their virtual shop. Or create a promotion where if you pay a 6-month subscription you get a cool item and feel special. In Blizzard’s defence, I think they don’t go overboard with this system unlike other companies that completely ruin the gamer’s experience. Nonetheless, it’s a trend we see in video games and a reflection of our capitalist society. The motto is ‘Monetize everything at all costs’ even at the expense of the game itself. And we see this phenomenon everywhere we go. I’ve recently started watching NBA and the amount of advertising between periods and timeouts me is staggering to see as a European. Not only that, but every statistic, building or event comes associated with a company’s name. You don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want to, but the experience can be bizarre where everything is valid to try to sell you something. A normal game lasts 48 minutes but the whole transmission can triple that duration in which you’re bombarded with advertising. Or maybe, like me, you love Spotify. But I strongly dislike the way they push the Premium version to its users. Loud and annoying ads that interrupt the flow of music can completely ruin an otherwise enjoyable experience. I’m not judging any of these entities for doing what they do, they’re just a symptom of the system we live in. But the fact remains that companies are designing their business models around the idea of extracting as much money as possible from their customers at the expense of providing a valuable experience.

But there’s a more insidious side to this philosophy of “extract as much money as possible from every customer”. This method is easily detected and although companies employ many tricks to influence them, the potential purchase is still a conscious, deliberate decision. In WoW’s case, in every iteration of the game you see small changes that don’t seem to have much impact on you but every one of them has a purpose: to subconsciously keep you addicted. Blizzard creates a positive feedback loop inside the customer’s mind in which the more he plays, the closer you get to the promised land. Like a carrot on a stick approach. Of course, in Retail, you will never reach the promised land because that would not be profitable or ideal for the company. But the illusion is always there, and it’s quite believable. A few examples of this:

  • Previously, you play and farm some kind of resource that would allow you to purchase rewards at your own choosing. In today’s game, you are never in control because most rewards are random meaning that by playing you have a chance of getting rewarded but are never sure of it.
  • To make matters worse, once you get the reward, you can’t choose what reward you’ll receive as the game decides that for you. So, you keep playing until you have the piece of gear you want. Which, of course, you won’t likely get but it’s enough to keep you motivated.
  • Unlike Classic, where you can grind everything off the bat and be done with it, Blizzard understood that it’s better to keep gamers playing for a limited amount of time but keep those sessions consistent. So, they created systems that are time-gated meaning that you can only complete a portion of the final goal for a % amount every day. That keeps you coming back the next day over and over again, and hopefully you’ll pay for the next month’s subscription too.
  • In Classic if you get an epic item (a very high-quality item) chances are that you will keep it for the rest of that iteration. But these were harder to get. In Retail, gear becomes outdated very quickly which means that every new season you must farm your gear all over again, otherwise, you’ll fall behind the competition. As a result, every new ‘epic’ item you get has less meaning and impact than before. You know you’ll replace it next season anyway.

These are a few of the most notorious examples, but if you play the game and pay attention to this covert influence, you’ll find many small examples that build up into a highly addictive game. This modus operandi directly affects the way the game is designed and played. When playing Retail, the user feels that they’re playing on Blizzard’s pace, not their own. If you can only play on the weekends, bad luck to you. You missed 5 days of progress no matter how much you play that weekend. You MUST login every day. In Classic, you can control this and play at your own pace and not be punished for it. Players want to reclaim their freedom. After all, for 99% of the playing population this is a hobby to be enjoyed when they want, not when Blizzard says so. We see this happening in more entertainment industries, like Hollywood and Netflix. A good movie is expensive, takes time, and will usually be consumed once. How can we keep them coming back? A TV show will do exactly that. A short episode that leaves the spectator hanging about what’s going to happen next is way more profitable than a one-time event. That way, it is possible to keep milking the cow for much longer. Until it is no longer profitable. Because that’s what happens with most shows: naturally authors cannot keep the story interesting or engaging ad infinitum for the sake of profits. It’s no coincidence that the 1st and 2n seasons are usually the best. This business model not only deteriorates the quality of the final product but also keeps you addicted for longer. In the end, we as consumers have to devour more and get less value out of it. This is not exclusive to the film industry, the music, writing and even health industries are riddled with cases like this as well.

 

The Great Social Experiment: Where Are We Going?

It can be daunting to make sense of all this. Wouldn’t it be so much better to simply enjoy video games and Netflix? In the end, it’s just entertainment and I might be exaggerating. That’s certainly a possibility. But what if it is not? What if we are really letting ourselves go to a place we might regret later? An impersonal, standardized world run by the economic interests of certain companies is quite frightening. But even scarier than that is the fact that a part of us wants this. It wants to let go. I played WoW and many times I got lost in time because I was genuinely having fun, but in many cases, it was because I didn’t want to think about my life. Same with other forms of entertainment. With virtual reality coming up and more technological advances it will become harder and harder to distinguish the virtual from the real and many will take refuge in the virtual. That is inevitable. But we are at a point in time where we can still control, shape and time the advancements of such progress. Who will dictate the rules of the virtual world? How far can a company go to keep you hooked in their program? Simply unplugging will not be that simple as I suspect many professional and social obligations will be met in the virtual world. World of Warcraft reflects and predicts many problems that will arise in the future at a much larger scale:

  1. The lack of real communities and its physical and psychological consequences.
  2. The “standardization” of the Human species. Everyone will consume, think and say the same.
  3. The covert influence and control entertainment companies (or governments) exert on their users (citizens).

The solutions to these problems require a tremendous amount of effort and radical philosophical change in society. An appropriate dynamic system thinking approach that not only takes each part of our civilization (be it the government, a company, or a single citizen) but also their interactions and constant evolution. That’s the main reason why a global effort is needed. But it has to start somewhere, and it can begin with us as simple consumers. Some simple and basic recommendations:

  • Deliberately choose the entertainment we consume;
  • Punish companies who unethically try to persuade us to do something by stopping consuming their content;
  • Value quality over quantity;
  • Produce something we regularly consume (we listen to music daily, why not trying to play an instrument for example?). This will help us appreciate good content and artists.
  • Disconnect and embrace boredom more often. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

The goal is to learn to be a good consumer, and that does not mean a rich consumer. One of my favourite examples of this change is The Joe Rogan Experience. In times where attention span is at an all-time low, a guy decides to simply have long one on one conversations and talk about everything that comes to his mind. And people love it because there’s true and genuine content in it. There’s a movement to reclaim our intellectual dignity and not treat us like a mere dollar symbol. But for companies to change, we need to change first because they create only what we buy.

World of Warcraft as the biggest MMORPG of all time is one of the greatest social experiments created, if we treat as such. It can give a preview of how people react to certain situations and social systems in real time. I have no doubt that at Blizzard there are some of the greatest system thinkers available. It’s a real shame their talent is being used to persuade us to play more of their games instead of producing better games. But this can be a learning opportunity for the times ahead. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence and brain implants are coming. If we don’t take some preventive measures, we will be swallowed by them and won’t even notice. General madness will become the norm and being sane will be madness, like in The Matrix. Or maybe, WoW Classic is just the reflection of nostalgic Millennials who grow up with the game and just want to go back to a time when things were simpler.