I might have posted about this before but World of Warcraft has two kinds of progression mechanics and I think one is fun and a good idea and the other can absolutely fuck off, because it ruins social play for me

(just a note that this is about older WoW content - I can’t afford a WoW subscription and I also don’t want Blizzard to have my money, so I play on a Mists of Pandaria private server. I really hope that they’ve fixed these problems in later updates but I honestly kinda doubt that they have)

first of all, the progression that I like: as you level up, you gradually unlock abilities for your class. the gradual flow of abilities gives you a chance to learn how to use each one without overwhelming you with too much complexity at once (WoW classes get complicated and IMO a lot of the fun of playing the game is finding ways to master that complexity)

but then there’s the numerical progression. there’s the fact that at any given time in the game, there is only a thin, horizontal slice of content that you’re “appropriately leveled” for. any content that you’re “overleveled” for will be so easy that it’s completely unfun to play, and any content that you’re “underleveled” for might be a fun challenge, except for the fact that the game will not allow you to play it. it’s artificially gated off until you level up more. these restrictions are completely arbitrary and actually fly in the face of the game’s story and lore

what if I want to go back to old content because I liked the feel of a certain zone? too bad - zones are disposable in this game. you use them up and move on forever

what if I don’t like my current zone and want to find another one? well there aren’t many alternatives, if there are any at all, and whichever alternatives exist are going to be a pain to travel to (which is a whole other rant)

but the real problem comes when you’re trying to play with friends. if one of you is a higher level than the other, that will trivialize content for both of you. but you can’t do higher-level content together because it’s artificially gated off from the lower-level friend

and this “thin slice of content” problem creates another problem: if you want to play WoW with a friend, you have to level up in lockstep. neither of you can level past the other, or you won’t be able to play the same content together. I’ve solved this problem in the past by creating dedicated characters, whose only purpose is to play with that specific friend, but this still creates two problems:

• my friend can’t play without me, or our levels will get out of sync
• I can’t play on that character without my friend, or our levels will get out of sync

my WoW account currently has about 14 characters, and most of them aren’t higher than around level 15. I can’t remember which characters are for which friend, so I don’t know which I can delete and which I can’t. it’s a mess, and at this point I just don’t introduce others to the game at all. I play WoW alone when the mood strikes me, but I don’t even try to play it socially, which seems like kind of a design flaw in a genre whose main selling point is the social aspect of play

in the past people have said “see? you do like RPGs, because you like WoW” but I would say that I like WoW in spite of its RPG {number-chasing treadmill} mechanics, and I would like it a whole lot more if it didn’t have them