Tigole, one of the big kahunas on the World of Warcraft development team, recently defended the game on the official message boards against complaints that it was tilted towards large raiding guilds.

Tigole noted that casual gamers' interests were served first with the addition of Mauradon and Dire Maul patched in after release before any new raid content was patched in. "Rather than rushing to get Blackwing Lair, ZG or AQ done, we then focused our attention on Maraudon and Dire Maul. We prioritized those two dungeons OVER raid content even though we were lacking in the latter department, because we wanted to fully flesh out our casual experience first."

There's quite a bit more in his post and I think anyone who's fair-minded will see that he makes many valid points. Still, as a long-time level 60 who doesn't like to raid in Molten Core, I see the other side and understand some of the discontent. All the really cool stuff drops in the big raid dungeons, and I feel a bit shut out of that.

And it's not as if I don't play as much as the guys in the raiding guilds. I do. I don't even want to do a /played and see how many hundreds of hours I've spent in Azeroth. I'd rather not know. Think of all the potholders I could have knitted instead of playing WoW. Think of all those burns I could have prevented! Oh the shame....
 

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Patches