WoW Cataclysm VS 4e Forgotten Realms

[Obergnom]

I'm no expert on World of Warcraft, I played the game for two or three month because of my love for the setting and the strategy games, but it did not grab me.

I noticed a lot of positive reactions to the cataclysm expansion on both video game sites and RPG blogs though. It seems to me, that Blizzard basically did to Azeroth what WotC did to the 4e Realms. A cataclysmic change of the world.

The one is well received, the other... not that much, I think. Why is that the case?

 

[Nagol]

I think part of the reason may be the media.

In WoW, all the subscribers are players who are there to experience effectively a theme park. Not a passive audience, biut an audience that has little or no impact on the world around them. When the cataclysm happens, the players lose further access to the previous experience, but gain access to the new experience.

In FR, a lot of the audience are there to use the presented information as a base to be built on. The audience extends the material even if it is just through their own memories and campaign histories. When the cataclysm happens, the palyers are presented a choice: shift and adapt losing the previous extensions, or abandon the current version and stick with the old. If they move to the new, there is a strong risk that personal extensions are rendered irrelelvant or need to be rebuilt out of whole cloth (the areas may have been obliterated making previous campaign choices irelevant; the canon may specifically call out events that were dealt with differently in the campaign history, etc.). If they stay with the old, they lose the option of using future updates.

 

[BryonD]

I was a serious WOW player for a couple years. I quit a little over a year ago and haven't gone back. But I have been following the cataclysm stuff.

I think the big difference is that the plot in WOW is static.

When you mess with FR you are messing with the backdrop of many dynamic plotlines with official plotlines being less than the tip of the iceberg.

But in WOW the core areas that players have known for years and years and have entirely become ground hog day suddenly became new places to explore. And because they already knew something about the places, the changes add to the sense of discovery.

Plus, people always wanted to be able to fly in the old worlds and other technological updates that come with the update.

The differences are significant.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think that BryonD has the right of it for WoW ( and MMO's in general) but some people invest heavily in rpg's in hte financial sense as well as time and most of that material is not actually utilised much.

Looking behind me and doing a quick count I have roughly 30 or so 3.x books many people had a lot more and much of that material was in a sense never used. So some people, who really liked 3.x suddenly felt that Wizards was depriving them of that material by moving the player base onto 4e.

It did not help by marketing 4e as fixing problems with 3e when some people saw bugs in the system and other people considered them features.

Software can add new features while kkeing the old but in a pnp rpg that is really not possible if you change the engine in a significant way.

 

[Obergnom]

Of course the two are very different systems, but the more I read about Cataclysm, the more I think there is another difference:

There are people heavily invested in WoWs background and story... I read somewhere some players cried when they saw what happened to some outpost of the Horde.

The published realms (well, that was always my impression) were a similar passive experience. I guess, even the home games of people who are extremely familiar with the setting had to differ from canon, because it changed so rapidly. For my games that always was the case. Following the setting and adding to my home games the amount of canon that did not interfere with my stories was a nice secondary hobby.

If I understood the articles about WoW cataclysm correctly, Blizzard added at least as much content as they took away. While players lost some of their favourite places, there is a whole lot of new stuff to explore... WoW being a video game, the new parts are of course fully detailed.

With 4e FR that just is not the case. The Spellplague was an event of content loss. Gods, NPCs, countries... anything. That contend was not replaced. If I want to create most of the setting myself, though, I would use the PoL setting or just start from scratch.

 

[Beginning of the End]

To continue the themes being hit by previous posters:

Setting mastery is a feature for tabletop RPGs. Your mastery of the setting will generally (a) improve the games you run in that setting and (b) deepen your emotional investment in the material.

Setting mastery is generally a bug for WoW. While there may be a minor benefit in being able to power level due to familiarity with the material, for most people this is offset by the familiar material becoming dreary through repetition. But this kind of "speed run" mentality is a fringe aspect of video gaming.

Thus the disparate reactions to the overhaul.

 

[Obergnom]

Hmm, according to that theory the best P&P RPG Worlds are those that never change.

Might be, I could just be part of a minority that likes changing worlds more than switching the setting every know and than.

WHFRPGs "going back in time" with its 3rd Ed. definatly points in that direction. As does the new Dark Sun setting.

If that is correct, there is no point in fans of older classic D&D worlds (Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Mystara) desire for a new setting. It could only bring unwanted change.
(Dark Sun is different, it needs custom rules.)

 

[Leatherhead]

It's actually quite simple.

Most people in WoW didn't linger to long in the older areas, leaving them barren and underutilized, in order to play the latest and greatest in whatever new expansion there was. You might go back and use it for an alt or to powerlevel a friend, but for the most part you were stuck at the end. Changing everything up gives them a reason to go back and experience it for the first time again.

In contrast with the Realms, people were playing for years in the same locations. They had all their stuff, and their stories and they carved out that rock exactly the way they liked it. Now they come around and find out their stories are history, their stuff is broken and their rock has been teleported to another planet.

So when WoW was changed players thought "Oh great! I can play there again!" and when FR was changed players thought "Oh no! I can't play there anymore!"

Or you could just read what Nagol wrote, that works too.

 

[amerigoV]

It's actually quite simple.

Its even simpler than that. Its clear that the WOW community is more mature and accepting of change than the D&D community.

 

[avin]

There are people heavily invested in WoWs background and story... I read somewhere some players cried when they saw what happened to some outpost of the Horde.

That was Camp Taurajo. If were a Horde player since vanilla you could expect to safely (on PVP servers) questing on the Barrens region.

Taurajo was a Tauren (arguably the most pacific Horde race) village in mid-southern Barrens. A Hub of quests the vast majority of Horde Wow players experienced for years, with lots of different characters...

Taurajo was attacked, pillaged and burned.

Alliance took over all the souther Barrens.

Taurens blocked the entrance to Mulgore with a massive wall.

Places that spark fond memories of years of games destroyed... yeah, you can expect some players shed a tear or two over it...