The Weakest Link

I think I’m the weak link in every raid group I’ve ever been in. I’ve quit WoW more times than I can count. Usually, by the end game I find myself irretrievably bored or frustrated with a title. At some point, while tanking my way through an instance with and unfriendly and blame happy PUG group, I miss some minor critter who has escaped my aggro radius. This critter inevitably chews the leg off of our healer and one by one the rest of the group goes down, starting with me.

This happens over and over until, totally cowed by the furious roars of recently resurrected DPS characters, I log out after the completion of the instance and switch to a single player game where the peanut gallery cannot follow.

Is the problem that, by gamer standards, I am a man of advanced years? Possible, but I have many friends older than me who still rock the dungeon. More likely, it is the fact that I loose interest after max level. After hitting level cap, I find it almost impossible to motivate myself to “gear up.” Endlessly repeating the same content while amassing a small fortune in gear and gold.

This is the only way to fully master instances and raids. Gear up, learn the map and bosses backwards and forwards. I think that is why I am drawn to sandbox environments. Having achieved max level in a sandbox, I can meander about the galaxy/world and seek my fortune in my own time, solo or grouped.

Am I wrong here? Am I missing some key component of the MMO genre? I really hope so. Please let me know if I am. Maybe, I just like fresh content, maybe I like no content at all. Or at least not an exact duplication of the last time I went through this with the same “OMG we’ve been ebayed,” cries from dying rogues and mages at exactly the same points on the map. It’s not good for my self confidence, or my temper.

And it’s expensive. It usually means moving on in search of greener pastures. PvP usually requires a nearly identical grind. So no love for me there. Although I do enjoy large open world PvP confrontations when they erupt. Hmm, again no real structure there. I'm beginning to see a pattern.

If market data has proved anything to me over the years, there just are not a lot of people out there who agree with me on this point. There are a few, after all, Eve, SWG, WURM Online and a Tale in the Desert are still around with small but dedicated communities.

However, with the exception of Eve, substantial development and marketing dollars do not seem to be heading towards projects like these. Everyone seems to have taking a shot at the champ at the back of their mind. WoW, all the investors seem to be measuring the marketability of a new title by the WoW stick. Developers follow suit and design games for that market.

Perhaps you have seen the presumption that WoW’s 11.4 million subscribers represent the majority of dedicated MMO’ers willing to shell out for a triple A game, posted and reposted in various forums and articles.

I propose that there is a as yet untapped market. There are many potential customers who already reside in the demographic, tabletop gamers for instance, who for whatever reason have not picked up the mouse and plopped down their credit card.

I know some of these people, and if you are reading this, you probably do too. So what kind of gameworld will attract them? Probably not a scripted theme park thrill ride which costs more than a new AD&D module every month, I'll wager.