Originally Posted by Wolfshead
Precisely! Blizzard purposely allows players to level from 1-70 with relative ease and never prepares them for the reality of the "endgame" in WoW. Imagine if from grades 1 to grades 12 you as a student sat around sang songs and finger painted (the "fun" stuff that children do in primary school). Then you graduate and enter college and suddenly realize that all of those years of non-learning failed to prepare you for your ultimate destination: college and then a career.
This is exactly what Blizzard does by creating the the extremely easy, and accessible content from 1-70 (and made even easier in a previous patch). Players new to MMO's are left confused, dumbfounded and perplexed at what to do next. Suddenly social skills and meeting new people become paramount as one has to literally find a guild in order to experience all of the multi-million dollar content that lies ahead.
Why then has Blizzard knowingly created a play experience that fails to adequately train and prepare the player for the content that lies ahead?
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Not only is this a good post but I think it sums up well an issue that has been around for many, many years. In many senses, it is a philosophical difference between Blizzard and previous developers and in some other ways it is a difference in execution.
First off, one has to keep in mind that many of Blizzard's subscriptions will never hit the level cap and will never see the change in direction needed. Much as I play HG:L as a 95% solo game, many people play WoW as a solo game period. Many others play it as a grouped game but only with specific friends and so casually as to seem foreign to most of us here. WoW excels at that on a level that no other game even approaches too; one can party only with friends once a week and hit all the level-specific dungeons and quests and honestly, you'll have a damned good time. For these ultra casual people, things work very well indeed.
Secondly though, we need to delve a little deeper. I have a few close friends that never played EQ or DAoC or UO or AO or whatever, never got into the whole genre and yet did indeed cap out and get confused. This didn't much happen in EQ for example. If you were at max level (and assuming you were not a necro, bard, wizard or druid) you probably had not only grouped but you had probably spent the vast majority of your time online in a group or waiting for one. If you were successful at the cap, it was because you had some grouping/raiding skills and some social skills that meshed. I've played a lot of these games though and the gamut varies a lot. DAoC? More social skills, less need for TCing and such. AO or EVE? Math or a willingness to read forums and follow instructions at least. So on and so on. It's a continuum not hard and fast. We all remember our early grouping efforts in WoW. It was basically people soloing mobs near each other and that to me is not a good thing. It's fine for "kill XX defias YY" but it grates when it is something a little more involved. The really tricky bit is the semi-casual and they tend to burn out. They don't like the fools much but they are loath to go to the extremes that I and others like me go.
Moving on though, you have to ask *how* exactly WoW can teach without hindering those that frankly have no interest in learning. Bob the shaman with two daggers can still kill things. He'll kill em a little slower but honestly, not that much slower. The math and the theorycrafting really only matters when you are raiding or at least grouping. EQ did well because you were both forced to learn your class and because your class was incredibly simplistic. WoW is more intricate by far though and that expectation is a bit too much. Plus, for good or for bad, the model of forced grouping is dead in modern times.
I think WoW has split the difference pretty well in the end. No, it isn't perfect and yes, of course players are forced to visit places like this to learn the details of certain mechanics but in the end, the system does function. Those that want or need to know certain information can get it and those that either don't care or are willfully ignorant can not be burdened by it.
EDIT: An anecdote comes to mind as well.
Back in the early days of Everquest and long before I was involved with the "real" raiding scene, we did things that now would be considered laughable. Keep in mind, these were the days where applicants were expected to be plebes for three months (no loot or rot only and 90%+ attendance) and in an environment where being in X guild instead of Y guild meant being a tier or two behind in gear for a game that really was defined by gear.
We'd do things like have applicants form up in a raid and bark orders in chat. (These were the golden days of zero voice or voice only for officers/etc.) It was like an old-school army thing. "Follow me!" and I'd jump off a cliff or into the bear pit or charge an obviously unkillable target and so on. Don't follow? Next guild for you sir. Even in that environment where training was part of the leveling process, we added a lot more. Most of it wasn't even that cheesy =)