How to Save World of Warcraft (or, Cataclysm = Midi-chlorians + Jar Jar Binks)

1) Abandon the idea that leveling is meaningful.

Quest points on the map, quest text nobody reads, heirloom xp bonuses and faster leveling. With all of the above, why pretend that leveling even matters? The good stuff is level cap.

Speed up leveling by 25% for 1-40, 10% for 41-60 and another 5% bump for 60-80.

2) Reintroduce Path of the Titans.

When I first heard about Path, I thought it was going to be the quintessential Cata mechanic.

Then Blizzard yanked it.

The death of Path also meant Archaeology was dead as horse shit, before it ever really got a chance. As an 85, I can’t imagine doing another mind-numbing secondary-prof grind. At least with cooking/fishing, I could stay in one zone and fish, then cook what I caught. Arch takes you flying all over the world, hitting 30 dig sites for one. Lousy. Fucking. Skill point. It’s time consuming and, frankly, a little stupid.

If all that grinding meant advancing along my path of the Titans, then I probably would have done it with a shit-eating grin. Now, it means zipping around the world for a couple of trinkets.

Just put Path of the Titans back into the game and we can be friends again. Okay? Okay. Here, we’ll pretend you never meant for it to be in Cata. It can be a fresh start!

3) First mounts at level 5.

That’s right, level 5. “What the hell?” you hardcore Vanilla players are saying, “When I started playing, we ran everywhere until level 40! And even then, we had to pay 100 gold for our first mounts! It was a lot of money in those days!”

Yeah, I get that. I was right there with you. (Well, okay, not really. I was a paladin, so my first mount was free.)

If the game is going to survive, it has to change. And part of that change is going to involve drawing in new players. I want the new players to feel engaged as soon as possible, and I think that means mounts at level 5 so they feel invested and can move around to do stuff.

4) Lower the price.

From $15/month to $10. Let’s take the latest subscription numbers at face value and say 1.1 million. At 1.1 million, $5 per player means $5.5 million a month and $66 million a year. If Bobby K. saw those numbers, the cigar would drop out of his mouth, and his monocle would fall into his martini glass.

I’m arguing that under the new trial model (free until level 20), if your game is compelling enough, you can convert those free trials into paying subscriptions. At $10 a month, some of those trial players may be willing to take the plunge, even in this economy. (Hey, if the pr0n sites can do it, why can’t Blizzard?)

I think veteran players are leaving because a lot of them feel, “Pfft. That’s $15 a month for a game I rarely play.” But $10 a month is an emotional price point. They may think to themselves, “Well...I’ve invested a few years into this game. What’s $10 a month to hold on to that? I can scare up $10.”

5) Fire Bobby Kotick.

Some people “get” it. Some people never will.

Steve Jobs gets it. John Scully didn’t, and never will.

JJ Abrams gets it. George Lucas used to get it but has grown fat and complacent and doesn’t get it.

Greg Street (Ghostwalker) gets it. Bobby Kotick doesn’t get it. He needs to be tarred and feathered and run out of Blizzard headquarters. I’m not saying this as a player. I’m saying this as a shareholder, which I am.

6) Fix the world. Again.

I originally looked forward to the idea that the early quests and quest rewards were going to be overhauled and cleaned up. It needed to be done. That stuff was old and creeky and kinda like going to an amusement park you liked as a kid. When you were age/level five, you busted a nut over this stuff. But now, the rides look dangerously rusty, the petting-zoo animals have mange, and the costumes those employees are wearing look flea-bitten and smell kinda funny, like pee and booze.

But we have a rule in IT: “When you try to fix something, don’t end up breaking something else.” Sounds pretty simple, right? You’d be surprised how often you break Y while you were fixing X. And I think Blizzard broke Y.

For one thing, they took away my emotional attachment to the old world. I haven’t visited the Night Elf lowbie zones since Cata. Can’t bring myself to do it. I have a lot of good memories of the month (!) I spent going from 20-30, and I can’t bear to zone back here and see it turned into a ghetto with Horde overrunning the joint.

I sometimes think this was Blizzard being lazy. “Hey, let’s clean up the old zones and fuck some shit up! Everything is already there. We just need to knock down some structures and set some fires, and it’s like we’ve got a new expansion! Maximum results, minimum effort!” “Great idea, boss!”

No, not a great idea. It was fairly obvious Blizzard were under the gun to get out an expansion and came up with this pile of horseshit. Everything feels hurried, unfinished, rushed. It’s a half-assed effort, and the worst part is, Blizzard know it. And now they're getting the feedback about its half-assed efforts not just in Web chatter but in actual subscription dollars.

And you know what? They deserve it.