How far has World of Warcraft fallen if the blind can “win” the game?
I came across a story on Twitter about a soldier in the British Army, Ben, who while serving in Iraq in 2008 suffered shrapnel wounds from a roadside bomb and had both his eyes surgically
removed. As horrible as that incident is, he overcame his disability and currently plays World of Warcraft with his guild on the Chamber of Aspects (EU) server. What makes this story even more amazing is that, with the help of a fellow guild member, Owen, acting as a “guide dog”, he raids. Successfully!
You can read the original story on WoW Insider here: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/12/guide-dog-player-and-guild-embrace-sightless-guildmate-steer/
Now for some disclaimers.
I played WoW from 2006 to 2011. I raided in Vanilla. It was hard. I raided in Burning Crusade. It wasn’t as hard as Vanilla. I raided in Lich King. It wasn’t as hard as BC or Vanilla. I never raided in Cataclysm. I loved every second I played WoW. I don’t play WoW anymore, mainly because my friends left. If they were still playing, I would still be playing.
I have all the respect in the world for Ben and Owen. What they do in-game is nothing short of amazing. I wish I had a tenth of the patience Owen has and a tenth of Ben’s skill. This is less about them and more about the state of WoW.
I play Star Wars: The Old Republic now. This hasn’t jaded my perception of WoW, it’s just the game I’m playing now with my friends.
With the disclaimers out of the way, I want to state the first thing that came to my mind when I read this story.
“WoW has become so geared towards the casual player that a blind person can raid successfully!”
I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way and was surprised that I couldn’t find a negative comment regarding the story on Twitter. I then scanned the comments at the end of the story and found that 1% (1 out of 90 comments) of the people leaving comments shared my opinion.
I was shocked. Then I went back and re-read the article and pulled this quote from the interview with Owen:
“Just to add to everything, as of [this week], our guild — Ben included — has just downed Deathwing, so on to heroics next week.”
Since Deathwing is the final encounter of Cataclysm, my mind just kept going back to the fact that WoW has changed a lot since I was a raider. I can’t imagine a blind person beating the Twins in AQ40 or even attempting the Safety Dance in Naxx.
I decided to dig further and found some, verified through the Armory API, statistics on Tankspot.com detailing the Deathwing encounter after the first week of release. A veteran poster stated that approximately 4,000 guilds, roughly 16% of the guilds in game, had killed Deathwing. He further stated that Deathwing had been killed within 3 hours of release on day one. And to think I remember the day when people didn’t even know Naxx existed in Vanilla. While mind boggling, it made more sense that a blind player could clear the current content.
I can only hope that other MMOs don’t tread the same path as the game I loved so dearly…
![[No Live Shows]](http://media.thegeekhole.net/noliveshow.jpg)
I share many of your opinions about the difficulty of the game and I think there is a simple reason for why people are able to blow this game up. First I think that the fact that so many people have been playing WoW for so long they have pretty much seen all the playable cards that could possibly be laid down. I am not awesome but just having experienced a good portion of the previous content I can pretty much put a lot of things on auto pilot. In Vanilla it was all so new, such an incredible undertaking and massive universe to drop into the likes of which none of us have ever seen. Is it getting easier? Yeah I kinda think so but how much of it is us just getting better at the same old things we’ve seen over and over again?
I’m not about to quit just yet but I imagine my day will come where it just becomes tired and old and I’ll follow suit and toss WoW on the shelf.
It is amazing that guy is able to play blind though. How much of an anomoly is he?
While I think this post has some good points the general statement seems a bit myopic. To address your “WoW has become so geared towards the casual player that a blind person can raid successfully!” statement… Firstly, I think it is more of a testament to the skills of his fellow raider “his seeing eye dog” (I hope he’s Worgen, lololl) to be able to defensively play for the both of them, than it is to imply that the content is so faceroll that a person who cant see can survive it!
The difficulty ramp up between 10 normal to 10 heroic, and then contrasting that to 25 Normal or Heroic is substantial; even on Boss HP levels alone, not to mention the sheer amount of output the boss does. (regardless of the number of healers). There’s no question, and the math supports it…
Regarding the number of DW kills so quickly… my guild killed DW in the first week and went onto heroics the next reset. Why? Because that is our content. We are a Hard Mode guild. Gear alone put us at Heroic Levels. We are now 5/8 Heroic 25, and (hopefully) this week will be 6/8— top 50 US. Heroic 25 content is not easy; several of the fights are major DPS checks (yes you Ultraxion), while other are strict execution checks with some massive healing required (HM Blackhorn). Look at the number of guilds who have killed Heroic DW 25… very few. Blizzard is introducing a scaling buff (in some regards similar to ICCs scaling buff, but not really the same); when this caps out I would wager that you’d still see kill numbers similar to end of WOTLK Heroic LK25 kills.
Some people are “ok” with just seeing the end of the game with Normal kills… others, like myself are not satisfied until you kill the last boss on heroic difficulty *while the content is still relevant*. My guild falls into the latter.
While, I know you do not play WoW anymore, others might share your opinion…. and to those people I would only say: “If its too easy… form a 25 man and run heroics and kill Heroic Deathwing 25, then you can complain that its too easy.”
@Mike – I agree with your comments. I hadn’t thought of the fact that WoW was a constant recycle of boss fights from expansion to expansion. This certainly could be a contributing factor.
@Derevka – This is why I follow you on Twitter. Succinct, insightful and relevant responses. I however don’t feel I was being totally myopic in my views regarding the story. I made it a point to state that I have all the respect in the world for what Ben and Owen (both Orcs, btw) have been able to accomplish in game. Still, my first reaction was that a blind dude beat WoW and I can’t get away from that simple fact.
I was intrigued to learn that the difficulty ramps up significantly from 10 to 25 and from Normal to Heroic. I personally was never a Heroic player. I was one of the satisfied players who felt a large amount of pride in beating the final boss in any encounter on Normal.
As to your points regarding the DW kills and how quickly, I think you are making my point for me. If 4,000 guilds, Edge included (free plug for ya there), are overgeared for the Normal end game content before it’s even released, then something is off.
I wrote this article to drive discussion and I’m happy to see I’ve achieved my goal.
Cheers!
The point we overgear normal is because of how normal is tuned. If normal is tuned for people to be able to progress through it from normal firelands… a guild with 25 raiders will full heroic T12 would have to be able to ‘overgear it’. Otherwise, the Normal Mode would be prohibitively difficult for ‘normal’ raiders.
I got my first Hate Tweet regarding this story from @Pooparazzi who told me to “Drink Bleach”. While this isn’t the discussion I was looking for, all opinions are welcome. Keep ‘em coming!
Thanks Poop.
im prob the one that brought about poop’s rage, so ill kinda sum up what i said on the podcast
this dude isnt reg old blind guy. this dude is fucking daredevil. hes like racing cars and shit. one of thoes people that goes out of their way to show the world they can do anything wile blind
so idk if you can really say if wow is so easy a blind guy can do it. its kinda like saying “ah man did you hear? some dude with 2 fake legs just ran the boston marathon. marathons are so easy now”…