There isn’t much happening on the MMOG market at the moment. There are a few new titles under the consumer’s magnifying glass and the ones released in last two years are still gathering under their banners a decent amount of subscribers. But overall there is nothing out there that has the chance of becoming the next big popular thing. Warhammer Online is a bitter-sweet memory, Aion is as bad as it was hyped and Star Trek Online will probably be assaulted by a large number of trekkies, but has failed so far to impress anyone else. Of course, there is always EVE with its share of fanatic supporters willing to constantly bash any other MMOG while hiding inside a shroud of elitist arguments and constantly turning a blind eye to the game’s large amount of flaws and lack of accessibility. So, with my choices highly limited, I decided to revisit World of Warcraft, a game I love to hate and hate to love, and see how the undisputed king of the MMOG universe is currently doing.

Cataclysm, the new WoW expansion, is a reality we will soon have to face, although there is no clear confirmation from Blizzard regarding the release date. Speculations though revolve around the general idea that the game expansion pack will hit the streets during the fourth quarter of 2010. Unfortunately I don’t think there is any point in holding our breath regarding the overall quality of the game post expansion – nothing will actually change. Judging by what I have seen so far, Cataclysm will only give new meaning to the “whipping a dead horse” expression. Level cap will be increased to 85 to clearly separate the “cataclysmers” from the rest of the WoW players by at least ten million hit points. Probably new gear will be introduced, gear that will make all the previous sought after items feel like a really bad joke and all the players that have invested time and subscription money in getting those items feel like idiots (hopefully/finally). Two new races: the Goblins and the Worgen – well they aren’t actually new, they were already in the game. The only thing that happened was that the N from NPC was removed and now players have a new reason to start the game all over again. The two old game continents will be subject to a serious makeover to reflect the idea of a cataclysm and support the whole marketing effort. In fact the whole expansion is nothing more than a re-skin that introduces a handful of new game features from which none can be considered innovative. So the only logical reason of buying the new expansion is inertia: players have already invested too much effort, time and money to give up and move over the whole WoW obsession.

But until Cataclysm is triumphantly released, there are a few things in World of Warcraft that beg for attention. The first relatively new feature that drew mine and immediately turned me into a fan was the Dungeon Finder. Basically it’s just a cross realm match making system meant to speed up the process of finding a dungeon party. It doesn’t sound as much, but when you look at it as an element meant to support an instant gratification design effort, then it’s probably the best feature WoW has to offer. You can log into the game and you’re killing your first dungeon boss in a matter of minutes. You’re not wasting time in finding a group since the system is automated and most importantly you can do this at almost any hour. As a matter of fact a lot of things have changed or have been recently introduced in WoW with the sole purpose of making the game content more accessible from a time investment perspective. A bold move or just natural move meant to keep an old game interesting to both newcomers (is there still anyone out there who has played this?) and veteran players, but either way a decision that must be applauded and supported.

Apart from these new gimmicks that I have perceived as a breath of fresh air, the core of the game, the engine that drives everything forward is still the same. And this means that a lot of the old problems are still part of the game and I sensed no intention from the developers to try and fix them. The classes are as imbalanced as ever and I can not help think that most of the design decisions made are censored by Blizzard’s marketing department following the general idea that if it sells then it must be good. The game is still gear driven and that makes PVP pointless. A new form of mass PVP has been introduced in WoW which reminded me of Warhammer Online in more ways than one, and unfortunately the most disturbing element I had to face while taking a trip down memory lane was the enormous lag. This comes to prove that the Mythic developers that worked on WAR were crucified for nothing and that massive PVP is for the moment a feature for which there is no technological support or simply the end-result does not justify the prices for the software/hardware needed for it.

For the time being World of Warcraft is a train running on a dead end track: you might want to jump aboard for an hour of fun, but make sure you get off before this turns into a long and extremely boring ride.