Writing on his blog for mmorpg.com, former World of Warcraft team leader and founder of Red 5 Studios Mark Kern says making World of Warcraft too easy was a mistake. He chimes in on a popular topic about the genre and in anticipating of his studios' upcoming game Firefall.
Kern's simple argument is that setting the difficulty low made reaching the maximum level the only meaningful goal in World of Warcraft. He confirms that this was a deliberate decision intended to encourage newer players to get into the game.
Kern argues that this issue created a feedback loop where players did not appreciate the game's quality when engaging in quests, so that developers got lazier in making said quests. He finally argues that the easier the game got with each expansion, the more players got turned off.
Kern ends his blog with a confirmation that their upcoming game Firefall will have a modicum of challenge. They also commit to a well developed crafting system, comparable to the one in Star Wars: Galaxies.
It must be reasserted that World of Warcraft is by many accounts, the most succesful MMORPG of all time. It hit the Guiness World Record for being the most popular MMO by subscriber and was a cash cow for Blizzard for many years. WoW's success is the reason the game has so many imitiators, and it continues to be played.
Kern left Blizzard in a relatively early time in the game's lifespan but continued to work in MMOs. An earlier piece on the same blog, he wrote about his role in the popularization of quest hubs thanks to the same game.
This is not to invalidate Kern's points, but to point out his comments should be framed looking at WoW's more recent fortunes. In spite of a high subscriber count, WoW has seen a drop in return players, and was forced to eventually turn F2P. Earlier analyses of the game within its lifetime point to other faults, such as its materialistic nature or its emphasis on investing time over skill, although these issues don't seem to have affected its success.
Kern seems harsh, but his blog isn't so much an indictment of WoW itself as it is a criticism leveled at the direction the MMO, and WoW's many imitators have taken. Kern implies with Firefall, he intends to sway MMOs into another direction again.
