More general comments from me:
I agree with Ben Sones comments. WoW is an excellent game even if with a narrow ambition.
What I criticized and still is felt as a major issue is about the massive aspect. WoW is mostly a single player/cooperative game that gives you a lot of immersion within the world only thanks to a wonderful work with the landscape. But it does very little, then, to offer gameplay that is “something else” than just whack-a-monster. The interaction with the environment is close to zero.
This is why I hope (with zero faith) that Blizzard will pour some ambition, in particular after release, into the “endgame”. For example implementing a good PvP system. Because even if I love the treadmill I still consider it just a treadmill and I absolutely need a reason and a purpose to go on. I want the war to become real and I want something to fight for that is different from reaching the next level, getting better loot and gaining a new skill.
What I fear, and I’m writing about this everywhere, is that WoW will die at this point. They probably won’t expand it. Instead they’ll probably choose a “flat” development where they’ll add more quests, loot, zones, monsters and then rise the level cap to excuse this process. All this is “flat development” because the old content will be simply cannibalized by “new shinies” and the actual depth of the gameplay will never develop. Exactly what “kills” the whole potential of the genre.
Instead I agree with the crafting system. Also for me this is the first time I’m playing with it and simply because they fixed the obvious.
Other (stupid) games like DAoC “had” to limit the possibility to achieve everything and to do so they simply choosed the stupidest, easiest solution possible: turn everything into a timesink that only a few players will endure.
This happened with the whole crafting system that is just a time/money sink with ZERO gameplay to offer and with the artifacts that, again, just require timesinks. Everything in the game is designed only from this perspective. Recently they tried to fix the “death rush” in the PvP and they simply added a second res sickness that creates another timesink. They tried to fix the population unbalance and, again, added insane timesinks in the keep upgrades. And the whole “free level each week” is exactly another solution “time based” where they basically say:
“Sorry, we are unable to make your game fun, so we give you free levels”
They move between “we need to slow you down so we add a timesink” and its obvious consequence “the game is too slow, so we cut down the time”. Schizophrenic in the incapacity to offer a game.
WoW, instead, only has parts of the games where it can offer you gameplay. The crafting *is* gameplay, it isn’t a loss of time. Instead of creating a hole for the incompetence of the design they, at least, tried to fill the hole with a gameplay that becomes fun.
As I said my expectations for the genre are set *extremely low*. This is why I love the game even with its narrow ambition and gameplay. But considering the stupid mistakes that are part of the genre, WoW is “teaching” really obvious but crucial lessons.
Should I remember that SWG launched being broken *in every single part* and, after a year, is still broken from the ground up?
WoW isn’t even on the market and can please or not. But it works and delivers exactly what it promised. Peoples are talking and commenting the game instead of ranting about lag, server and client crashes and broken systems.
The stress test is definitely a big success from this perspective.