A few days ago, I wrote a post entitled “Is WoW To Big To Matter?” which was based on a feeling I had been having after seeing almost every chat channel in every new MMO degrade into a discussion on World of Warcraft. I still stand behind that question, but in the (near?) future, I think that the MMO-sphere will have no choice but to consider WoW as something more then just the 800 pound gorilla in the room, because with the upcoming Cataclysm expansion Blizzard is breaking the number one rule of MMO gaming: Thou shall not alter the experience for a segment of the community. Ever.

Obviously, those most affected by the zone changes are those longtime WoWies who have a stable of level capped alts and who have plowed through every zone at least once. By re-designing some of the zones and shuffling their level-appropriate focus, Blizzard is essentially giving these players a whole new game world to explore. SOE split their own world-changes over two games: EverQuest and EverQuest II. Blizzard is selling an expansion which allows players to keep their current characters, but also gives them a reason to go back to the beginning all over again. For those who haven’t played in a while, this expansion may entice them to jump back in. I for one have a hard time repeating content, but the idea that I can start a new character, even of the same race and class, and see new territories from the start is pretty interesting to me.

What really strikes me, though, is that in the zones which have been changed, the historic zones that people have grown up with are gone forever. People can still sign up for EQ and see the original sights, and then jump over to EQ2 to see them re-vamped. What SOE did with EQ/EQ2, Blizzard is doing in one game through map redesign and shuffling of level-appropriate content, and is throwing in 2 new races, new starting zones, bug fixes and wholesale revamps. It will look and feel like WoW, but it will also feel like a new game in some respects.

It seems that every MMO must offer the same experience for all players, regardless of timeframe. The experience that you have in any starter zone the day the game launches is the same experience you’ll have in that starter zone four years down the road. It’s about egalitarianism, leveling the playing field, and balance. Your choice of race, class, talents, skills, gear, and so on matters only in which buttons you want to press and what role you want to assume. The environments themselves, the quests and the patterns of completion can be mapped and traded like baseball cards until the whole game turns into one big on-rails simulation. This bleeds into the whole “I Win Button” argument, but Cataclysm is looking to negate that. Ideally, we’d have more expansions like this: changing things up, keeping players on their toes, and making them all remember the days when people actually had to work and think in order to get ahead in the game.

Edit: It’s been brought to my attention by ModemMisuser that the original EverQuest had some zone re-vamps. The result of this was a fundamental change in how people could relate to the game, and how players related zones to one another. The removal of significant landmarks, for example, meant that any guides or references to those landmarks were no longer valid, and the re-shaping of a zone probably caused no end of grief for players who could navigate maps in their sleep.

While there is precedent for major zone redesign in an MMO, the sheer influence of WoW on the genre makes this a much more high-profile modification to the game world. These aren’t arbitrary, balance or technical changes, either. They are tied into the lore of the game, and when looked at from that perspective, are organic. These changes happened because of world events, allowing the timeline to progress while also offering a whole new perspective on the game.