To Customize, Too Confuse

Many people play MMORPGs because of the customization that you can gain for your character through game play. These continual improvements and social aspects in MMORPGs are the main reasons I play WoW. With the addition of The Burning Crusade, the level of customization on a character has increased a great deal through new stats and gems, as well as reputation requirements for gear and instancing. Are there any dangers with this increase, or is it just more of what makes us play?

First, let’s detail all the ways to customize a character, assuming a level 70 character. I suppose I could get into the numbers, figuring out how many unique options are available through all the customizations, or how many choices are made to fully customize a character, but that would glaze your eyes, as well as mine, so we will just talk in generalities.

When this fictional character was created several important customizations were made. A server, a faction, a race, a name and an appearance were picked before even entering the gaming world. Most of these, with the exception of server, are irreversible. I suppose you can now change your name as well, but with the loss of name recognition by other players. As the character levels talent points are given, and eventually the character has 61 talent points to use to customize his specialization in his class talent trees. Two primary professions can be selected and leveled, with some professions leading to further specialization choices at higher skill level. Three secondary professions can be trained and used as well. All classes have at least a couple choices in what weapon training they purchase, level, and use. Hunters and warlocks have pets to train and customize.

The character then buys, instances, or pvps for gear. There are 18 gear slots, 19 if you dual wield, to gather gear for. Several of these are non-stat slots, like shirt and tabard, but they are still customizations, if only cosmetic. Post-TBC most gear at 70 can now have improvements through gems, enchants, thread or armor kits. The Burning Crusade also additional stats that players have to choose from, such as resilience, spell hit and spell penetration. With the new patch there will also be armor penetration and expertise added. The more stats that are available and the greater affect each other, the more complex the stat customization becomes and the more options a player has in selecting his gear and improvements.

Although it started its appearance in the old world, reputation grinds have come into new dominance with the expansion. This is kind of a stretch to call a customization, but it is a character specific stat that is required for access to gear, enchants, and heroic instances. I think this one ends up being a large hurtle for players trying to play together later in the game.

On top of all of this current complex character customization (bet you can’t say that 3 times fast), we have the upcoming expansion which is supposed to create a new profession, inscription, which will allow you to customize your core spells in certain ways. This will allow similar specialized and geared characters to have different custom spells.

All of these customizations extend the game and keep us playing for these small advances and tweaks in our character power. It’s the next reputation reward, the next gear upgrade, and the gold to pay for it all that keeps us killing mobs, running instances and entertained while we hang out with our friends in the game. I think that most of these customizations make the game better and more fun to more people. Each customization doesn’t make sense or extend the game for each player, but over all we each find something additional that we want to customize about our character and we spend our time doing that.

I would like to suggest there are dangers to the level of customization as well. Blizzard is making the game much deeper, and therefore harder to learn. It was very easy to pick up the original game, create a character, level and learn it, and at 60 gear it up and customize your gear with enchants. There were fewer statistics to keep track of and fewer ways to get them on your gear. There were no reputation grinds to speak of, and what keying was required easy to get through normal game play.

Now, in our post-TBC world, for someone completely new to MMORPGs, picking up the game and getting through all the new customizations is a bigger issue. I have many first time players in my guild, and as they leveled up there was a clear knowledge gap apparent between what they knew from learning in game, and what I knew from my outside reading even about classes I had never played. Increasingly complex customizations are required to be successful in the game, especially if you are looking at the pvp game. Once help and outside resources were offered to guide their characters through these customizations, they were able to work it out and it improved their effectiveness. The biggest problem I see is that they were not even aware they had missed some vital steps in their customization, or hadn’t used the customization to its fullest. They were happily going along with one arm tied behind their virtual back, and only when someone more knowledgeable noticed did they get the information they needed to proceed through these new stages.

I am not saying these changes are bad for people who invest themselves in learning the game, and enjoy learning how to play as much as the actual playing. People like me and you, who read blogs about WoW, and delve into the web for information when we start new characters, instances, or reputation grinds. These games were created by people like us for people like us, the problem isn’t probably so much that the complexity is increasing or changing in MMORPGs in general. The problem is WoW has aimed itself at a more casual sort of player, and that player doesn’t care about the details, they want to pickup their character and have some fun. They don’t want to read for hours and learn that race x had a 3% better racial bonus, not these players. They are most worried about picking the race that looks the coolest to them. This accessibility is the biggest success of WoW, but also root of the so called casual vs. hardcore debate. While these players can level to 70 solo or with small groups, eventually they reach the stage where their lack of understanding in the game begins to affect the players around them. It is at that stage that they need the help and understanding of those of us in the know. We can help them over this customization hurtle that Blizzard has thrown up, and get onto having fun again.

So what do you guys think, has customization in WoW gone too far? Are you looking forward to the new inscription profession as another personal touch on your character, or are you dreading another thing to learn? However you feel about it, make sure you assist those around you who are struggling to learn this game. They might be the players you depend on later, and karma is a nasty piece of legislation.