World of Warcraft has spent years hearing players complain that there isn't enough to do.
Midnight may have discovered the opposite problem.
Between reputations, currencies, Delves, Prey, assaults, weekly objectives, raids, Mythic+, professions and whatever small progression system has quietly appeared since breakfast, some players have begun arguing that WoW isn't short on content anymore.
It may simply have too much of it.
Blizzard has now responded to that criticism — and its answer is essentially that one player's exhausting checklist is another player's Tuesday evening.
Blizzard Says WoW Players Want Very Different Things
Speaking to PC Gamer while looking back at Midnight Season 1, Associate Game Director Paul Kubit acknowledged that some players feel overwhelmed by everything currently happening in WoW.
But Blizzard is also hearing the exact opposite complaint.
For every player looking at Midnight and thinking there is too much going on, Kubit says there are others wondering why there isn't something new happening this week.
That's the awkward position Blizzard has created for itself.
World of Warcraft now serves people who log in twice a week, people who raid three nights, collectors with seventeen ongoing projects, Mythic+ players who regard sleep as optional and somebody somewhere who has already finished all of it.
Designing one content schedule for all of them was never going to be particularly elegant.
The Problem May Not Actually Be the Amount of Content
There is an important difference between
having lots to do and
feeling like you should do lots.
A dozen optional activities are wonderful.
A dozen activities attached to weekly resets, currencies, reputation tracks, temporary rewards or seasonal progression can begin looking suspiciously like admin.
That's where Midnight occasionally runs into trouble.
We have already seen the same tension in the debate around
WoW's aggressive eight-week patch cycle.
Constant updates make Azeroth feel alive.
They can also make taking a month off feel like you've returned from a three-year expedition to Antarctica.
The
Omnium Folio is another good example. On paper, it is a relatively small progression system. In practice, it becomes another thing sitting politely beside all the other small systems asking whether you've done your homework this week.
None of these systems are disastrous individually.
It is the pile that matters.
Blizzard Is Trying to Serve Two Completely Different Players
And Kubit isn't wrong.
There genuinely are players who consume WoW content at astonishing speed.
If Blizzard slows down significantly, those players will complain that Midnight is empty.
If Blizzard keeps throwing activities into the game, another group begins feeling that Azeroth has transformed into a collection of progress bars wearing a fantasy costume.
The solution probably isn't simply “less content.”
It is making more of that content comfortable to ignore.
Let reputations sit there without urgency. Let side activities remain side activities. Give players things to discover without attaching a weekly alarm clock to everything.
Because having too much World of Warcraft should theoretically be a wonderful problem.
The trouble starts when the game gives you twenty things to do and somehow convinces you that twelve of them are due by Tuesday.
That isn't an adventure.
That's Outlook with dragons.
Source: PC Gamer – WoW developers reflect on Midnight's first season
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