My "What am I Playing" sidebar has remained relatively static since April of last year when I was randomly selected to participate in the closed beta of World of Warcraft. My thoughts on MMORPGs and the economics of playing one are a well-known book of rants to my circle of friends. I won't bore you with them here as they are hardly unique in their perspective.
However, after playing WoW for 7 months during the beta before it hit retail shelves, I was completely incapable of denying the game my 16-digit credit card. Blizzard is like a drug; I haven't said no to one of their games since WarCraft II. For those of you keeping track, that's WarCraft II, StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood Wars, WarCraft III (*cough* $80 collector's edition), and WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. It was once a dream of this young programmer to work for the well-respected company that brought worlds to life with beautiful artwork, meticulously balanced and varied gameplay, with a healthy dose of humor and wit added to keep things fresh and entertaining at all times.
It is with great relief that I look at my life today and give thanks that it was never more than a pipe dream. I pity Blizzard's programmers today.
A week before World of WarCraft hit retail shelves, I got my rear in gear and ordered the collector's edition from EBGames since they were handing out free copies of a WarCraft book with pre-orders. Did I think the game was ready for retail? No. I thought server stability was junk during the stress tests and open beta. I thought very little community testing had been done to the most recent, major content patches. I thought some of the greatest features of the game needed to ready for retail (PvP rewards and Battlegrounds, most notably).
But, did I recognize the biased opinion of a beta tester leeching free gameplay of an awesome game for 7 months? Heck yeah.
Due to extremely high demand, I didn't get my copy until about a week after the game released. Account creation servers were down the day I got the game, which seemed to be par for the course. Has a major MMORPG ever been released with stable servers capable of handling release volume client traffic during the first week or two? No.
I eventually got started up and ordered the 6-months of service to take advantage of the whopping $12 in savings offered by the commitment. Had I known in advance that the road of commitment in the World of WarCraft is paved with broken promises, empty explanations, and poor management, I'd have eBayed my Collector's Edition for $180.
As I sit here typing this, I am staring at a queue screen forcing me to wait to login to the game. Why? Server load is too high to accomodate demand. I started the game up 25 minutes ago and was #525 in line with an estimated wait time of 38 minutes. I am now #228 in line with an estimated wait time of 28 minutes. The wait time has fluctuated to as high as 55 minutes. At the current rate of actual time versus estimated wait time, I will be logged in to World of WarCraft in another 70 minutes, or 1 hour and 25 minutes after starting up the game. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
In the two months that World of WarCraft has been on retail shelves, server stability has gotten worse. This week alone has seen extended downtimes for maintenance and even more for emergency maintenance. Communication with the community has gotten worse. The community managers don't even know what to tell the boards about the queues suddenly appearing after the emergency maintenance the other night.
All I know is that I've spent $157.70 for a game I enjoy immensely when I play. But the damn playground is closed for repairs more often than not. So, what has this experience taught me?
- Blizzard is not perfect. They make mistakes like every other development studio. Indeed, they can make mistakes even bigger than those of their competitors. Lucky for them, their game doesn't suck (yes, I'm talking to you, Star Wars Galaxies).
- I got duped. I told myself I'd never fork out the monthly fee for a game when I have no control over the ability to play it. Expectation of performance, support, and updated content is not implied to be of any set standard or level of quality.
- Should I ever fall prey to the muse of another MMORPG, I will begin by paying monthly until some sort of equilibrium is reached with the servers. Unfortunately, no amount of my 6-months of pre-paid time on World of WarCraft is refundable. Anyone care to challenge the validity of such an EULA? Non-refund of a pro-rated amount of a service paid upfront would seem to be illegal should the service provider fail to render services already paid for. But, IANAL. If you pay monthly, you lose nothing should you cancel.
I am now #114 in line with an estimated wait of 13 minutes. God I hope my ISP doesn't reset a switch somewhere...