{"id":1554,"date":"2011-03-29T23:14:45","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T06:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2016-12-08T17:54:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T01:54:08","slug":"wow-on-the-wane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/1554","title":{"rendered":"WoW on the Wane?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still in that state where I don’t have time or attention to spare on starting (or even resuming) a major game. But I figured I should put in a little more time on WoW<\/em> as long as I’m paying for it, and logged in for a couple of quick sessions, doing low-level quests over in the Hinterlands. (I’m very close to getting the Achievement for that region.) But even as I come back to the game, it seems that a lot of people are leaving it. At least, that was the constant refrain on the chat channels.<\/p>\n

Partly, it seems, it’s the competition: people torn away by Rift<\/em>, which has been very specifically advertising itself as a WoW<\/em>-killer for the last month or two. Partly it’s just that a whole lot of people reopened their accounts just to see the effects of the Cataclysm<\/em> expansion, and now that they’ve seen it, they’re losing interest again. Or so it’s said. I honestly don’t have any direct evidence that people actually are leaving in droves. If I were to go to Orgrimmar, a place that I think of as the Times Square of Azeroth, and find it deserted, that would be something. But I haven’t been back there yet at all. Like I said, I’ve been in the Hinterlands. Not encountering anyone in the Hinterlands comes as no surprise.<\/p>\n

Of course, even if most of the players are suddenly leaving, it doesn’t strongly affect my mostly-solo play experience. It might even be beneficial, by reducing the competition in auctions or something like that. But even so, the idea that the game is on the wane just as I’m getting into it is disheartening, like I’ve cast my lot in with a losing cause. Which is a completely irrational reaction for someone who used to play and enjoy A Tale in the Desert<\/em>. I’m pretty sure that ATitD<\/em>‘s user base on its most popular day ever was still multiple orders of magnitude below WoW<\/em>‘s today. But that means that ATitD<\/em> has always been the scrappy underdog, while WoW<\/em> has to play the role of the empire in decline.<\/p>\n

And when I say it “has to”, I mean that it’s inevitable. If not today, then someday, and soon enough that most current and former players will live to see it happen. This is the fundamental tragedy of MMOs: that they’re doomed to peter out. A single-player game can end in triumph, but a conventional 1<\/sup><\/a>Note that A Tale in the Desert<\/em> doesn’t qualify as “conventional”, and tries to deal with the problem by periodically bringing its story to a conclusion and starting over. But since it does in fact start over, with mainly the same players, it’s not all that different for our purposes here.<\/span><\/span>