I don’t like the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft, in particular I don’t like the direction where the game is going. This time I don’t want to comment the bugs or the mechanics I don’t like or consider broken, I just want to say that I don’t expect much from the overall approach. The first day after the patch I heard a guild mate say: “this isn’t anymore a mmorpg”. And that is also my point.

It’s not important to define and categorize what is a mmorpg and decide if WoW betrayed an ideal or not. The point is that this implementation of the PvP is arid and leading nowhere. I believe the latest Penny Arcade comic describes this approach. Blizzard didn’t even try to suggest an interesting PvP model, they didn’t even pick up the challenge. They simply took a consolidated mechanic like the CTF and adapted it into the game. The risk is zero here because there isn’t anything to design aside the conversion itself. By adding a CTF you cannot go wrong because it is a mechanic that has been tested for years between many different titles.

But where is the “world”? From this perspective the battleground are a failure. A failure because if the genre isn’t able to gain its own definition and personality, it will just inherit what worked from other games. The same dynamics, the same structures. Guild Wars is a “landingplace”. If so many parts of these games have failed, the new trend is to question even their existence. Why we need to walk from point A to point B? So we get insta-ports. This example is becoming a consolidated dynamic. These games are losing their personality, they are losing their own specific design, their are being emptied of relevance and purpose till there isn’t anything left. When this process will be over a “mmorpg” will become just an empty box that you can fill with whatever you like, even consolidated deathmatches.

Right now the implementation of the CTF in WoW is revealing. Why I need to fly from Ironforge to Menethil, take a boat, move to the other continent, fly again to Ashenvale and then ride till the entrance of the BG? And why I need to backtrack all that in order to go back to Ironforge in the case I want to do some PvE? Yes, I want insta-ports. All these dynamics are: idle times. I’m being idle for most of the time I pass logged in. I’m idle to move between points and I’m idle while waiting on queues, I’m idel while LFG. There is no gameplay and these idle times have zero use since I alt-tab out of the game. They are unexcused.

Now what I want to reveal is that all these consequences aren’t natural. It’s not natural that you can join the local channels form everywhere in the game-world. It’s not natural that the concept of “space” becomes so devoid of relevance that I feel seriously the need of insta-ports. What happened is that there was a deliberate choice in the design to empty the game from purpose and relevance. These aspects have no depth and no meaning anymore but because the design, again as an action and a choice, has decided that they have no role. This is a systematic attack that this genre is constantly suffering. This is what will kill these games.

What this approach to the design is achieving is the negation of the principles. The negation of the origin of the genre itself. Those roots are being killed and when all the ties with the past will be gone, the genre will be ready to be conquered by the consolidated archetypes already existing. Consoles, sport games, FPS, RTS and so on. This is what brought to my comments on Dave’s blog. For sure this genre is going to last for long, but what it will become isn’t even remotely near what we expect and will be completely estranged from its own origin.

WoW’s battlegrounds are the manifestation of this process. The game needs insta-ports because the principles on which the game was being built have been eroded to a point that they became completely unexcused. I need to fly from Ironforge to Ashenvale but …why? At the end I’m going into a portal and join a specific instance completely cut-out from the game-world. I do not care what happens in other instances, what I do in mine doesn’t affect the world outside, I do not care who is going to win. The key here is “I do not care”. Everything is contingent, the space is negated, the purpose doesn’t exist. The player isn’t anymore put in a context, he is outside that context, he makes the context and uses it. He makes it up, he hallucinates himself. And, outside, nothing exists, nothing has consequences and nothing “breathes”.

What is left of a mmorpg? The time I spend flying from Ironforge to Ashenvale and vice-versa. What is left of a mmorpg is an unexcused burden that will be ultimately removed. Even in WoW (you’ll see).

Aside all these considerations the battlegrounds are a fun diversion. They are fun because they copy directly consolidated mechanics that cannot go wrong if not in the implementation. But after some time they will grow old. Very old. The gameplay is limited, repetitive and unexcused. The rewards become plainful grinds that bore you to tears. They add nothing in the long term because they are estranged from the fabric of the world. They are time-bonuses for a live team that isn’t able to match the expectations of the players on the content.

And again that gap between the expectations of the players and the concrete possibilities of the dev team isn’t an unavoidable fact but just the direct result of a broken approach.