A Cautionary Tale

Hello SotA Team

First of all, thank you for returning to the RPG scene. I am excited to see what the next months and years bring as this great project comes to fruition. I have been an Ultima player since Christmas 1983 when I received Ultima II. I have played UO, DAoC & finally WoW, and also has spurred my interest in writing fantasy fiction. As of yet, I have nothing published, but I hope to have that remedied in the future.

It is my experiences in WoW, which has lasted since Beta, which has caused me to write this rather lengthy note. I know LB played the game and I have heard his admiration of those at Blizzard Entertainment. For me, my admiration for that company has significantly diminished throughout my time playing WoW. I can honestly say that I keep up my subscription to WoW only for the sake of longtime friends whom I have met and now hold dear.

As World of Warcraft grew in subscription numbers, a vocal portion of the player base complained as to the difficulty of the game in general. Unfortunately, rather than having players raising their level of play, Blizzard lowered it?s standards, giving players unreasonable advantages over once-challenging foes. As I sit here today, there is no longer any danger in leveling, and even the instance bosses have been significantly declawed to a point where the process has become a zombie-like systematic pushing of keys no matter what role one chooses to play.

One of the reasons why I enjoyed Ultima so much stems from it?s difficulty. Yes, I said DIFFICULTY. NPCs would regularly kick my hind quarters and I would have to step up my strategy if I wanted to complete the game. It would do me no good to write to Origin Systems and whine to Richard saying ?Please reduce the hit points of dragons.? I would have looked like an idiot. Yet, on the WoW forums, you have subscriber after subscriber praising the outright Babification of a once engaging adventure in order to keep the millions of dollars flowing in.

During it?s height, WoW had 12 million subscribers, reached during it?s Burning Crusade expansion. It began LOSING subscribers when the game became easier. Their response? Shorten the levels, and FURTHER ?nerf? the adventure. They even had to GIVE away Diablo III to people who promised to buy their expansion and hold their subscription for a year.

Secondarily, every so often, Blizzard tinkers with the classes to the point that I would get disgusted. It made sense to me that my rogue could do ?X? amount of damage, and in one swoop, after a major patch, my rogue can now sneeze and do ?5X? damage. Where is the fun and joy in this? If I can sleep through things, why play them?

I can only cite one example from Ultima, and I believe this was a unique situation. When Ultima I was re-released in 1987, enemies in dungeons were now 1-hit kills rather than the skirmishes they used to be in the original 1980 version. This change was very very major and did a lot to take ?the teeth? out of the game. In the end, it was not significant enough to completely ruin my accomplishment and in the end I very much enjoyed the latter version of Ultima I.

I want to be challenged, CONTINUOUSLY. I want to know that anything can kill me at any time if I am not paying attention. I want to die horribly and repeatedly with a sword in my hand and my armor bashed into ribbons, for I will die with a smile on my face ready to go at them again until my skills become stronger and more adept to the challenges before me.

So please, no matter how much they scream, beg, plead ... DO NOT give in to people who would rather you lower your standards to meet their game play. A better playerbase is a much more educated and rewarded playerbase in the end.

Rant over, Carry on Good people.
Thank you,
William Chandler
AKA QuixtarDragon