If you listened closely to our last segment you should have a good picture of what this next part is about.

    One of the major contributors to WoW’s success has been its accessibility. By keeping it simple they were able to make the game playable by just about anyone. However, in their drive to open the game up they also created most of its difficulties and imbalances. One of the premier examples of this is the design Blizzard’s flagship class, the Paladin.

    First seen in Warcraft 2, and then playing a pivotal role in Warcraft 3, Blizzard knew this class, more than any other, would draw people who had not played previous MMORPGs. To that end, at release they designed a class that was, shall we say, unsophisticated. In an odd twist, Blizzard took the class they knew would draw gamers who measure success in terms of actions per minute and gave them a class that required precisely two actions per minute, one seal every thirty seconds. Slightly more, if you count the mostly out of combat healing.

    Thanks to the law of unintended consequences, this overly dumbed down combat system meant that paladins as damage dealers were more than just uninteresting; it meant they were unwelcome as they were unable to compete with the other classes. Blizzard’s consummate knights in shinning armor, the holy warriors of the Silver Hand, were reverted back into Warcraft 1 Clerics of Northshire as they dressed in drag and hid in the back rows with the other healing classes. Nearly every attempt to address Paladin concerns has been an attempt to fix this issue, without ever addressing the actual root of the problem. This class and many others are too simple.

    However, the problems don’t end there as none of the classes are complex enough to be truly challenging in their own right. Since the combat system is not a challenge, not the limiter or the lowest common denominator, metagaming has stepped into that void. And just as metagaming can ruin a traditional pen and paper RPG so can it ruin WoW.

    The key issue here is that unlike the inviting nature of WoW’s game play, metagaming is not easily accessible and there is no appreciable gradient. You don’t metagame a little, or not very well, you either meta or you don’t. This places a hard cap on what the majority of the player base is capable of, and once reached the game becomes stale and stagnant for them. Blizzard must correct this in Wrath of the Lich King or face an exodus of players who are incapable of advancing themselves any further.