While trying to decide what to write about this week, I decided to read over my article from last week and after doing so, I realized that I didn’t at all talk about what I initially intended to talk about. Unsurprisingly, I got side tracked while writing and ended up not talking about the game that I want someone to make like I originally had intended. So before too much time passes and my last article is still fresh in everyone’s minds (including mine), let’s get back on topic.
Last week, I talked about all the reasons I enjoy PvP in World of Warcraft. WoW, however, is restrictive by nature. It is meant to be grindy and progress over multiple weeks. This means that getting into any sort of late game content takes a lot of investment before you can start playing, and that is only on one class. If you want to play another class, you need to level again, then get gear again, and suddenly you’re another 100 hours into a character. This sort of “gating” is necessary for the rest of the game but extremely inhibiting for people who just want to jump into games and play. Another factor that truly restricts WoW PvP is that the game has to be balanced, not only for PvP but also PvE, forcing Blizzard to do strange things to keep the balance between the two.
The solution is pretty simple: A NEW GAME!
Like Super Mario Brothers 3, except totally different. Make it like Dota2 in the sense that everything is unlocked immediately. All your characters would not have gear but would have talents. When you join a game, everyone would choose a character and be given two or three minutes to choose talents and other things that would change between games. Matches would be best of three or five and first team to kill all members of the other team would win the round. Make sure each character has many different abilities and mechanics at work to create similar complexity to the original. Characters wouldn’t need to be limited to four abilities or things like that. Give players the ability to customize their UI and hotkeys for each hero and save presets to load once the game has started. I would lose my job, and delve into a life of orange soda and pizza pops if this game existed.
Nobody has really tried to make this sort of game – an arena combat game with this sort of depth and pace. The closest, and probably sole, example of a company trying to replicate this magic would be Bloodline Champions by Stunlock Studios. A totally free arena fighting game with zero grind or downtime was close to being what I wanted. A lack of depth compared to WoW was a factor; with characters only having four to five abilities and zero passives, it was more about shooting and hitting abilities. Another factor was that healing was not nearly on the level it was in Warcraft, and felt more like a benefit of certain abilites as opposed to your solemn purpose to be keeping your teammates alive. It was a step in the right direction. Somebody realizing a genre that didn’t really exist yet and taking a chance at making it. Considering that the last time someone did this it was a guy going by Eul who made a little map he titled “Defense of the Ancients” in the Warcraft 3 map editor. It wasn’t a terrible idea. Unfortunately the game never really gained any traction and, while the servers remain online, the game is veritably dead.
Someone needs to pick up the torch. The potential is there. People still watch WoW arena tournaments and Blizzard has only now, after over a decade, added the ability to spectate games. Until now, people were using gimmicks to watch arena matches, but the community still existed. Imagine what could happen if a dedicated game existed and people really latched onto it. Imagine Dota or League but with no downtime, no scaling, no pushing; only fighting, with an extremely amplified arsenal of abilities. Now that sounds like a game that I would really enjoy beating you at.
