Should You Play WoW Forever? Yes. For the People.

Transcript

The Autopsy — one in six

One in six people on Earth is affected by loneliness. That's the World Health Organization's count, from last June¹. They link it to about a hundred deaths an hour². I died in the plague, and I've still got a raid on Thursday, which statistically puts me ahead of a sixth of you.

The Autopsy — the patient

Hello, living. Usually there's a patch on this table. Tonight it's you. Well, your Friday nights. World of Warcraft: Forever launches Wednesday, November fourth, three p.m. Pacific, and it comes with the sub³. Half my comments this week are some version of what's the big deal, and should I play it. Yes. Play it. I'm going to spend the next thirteen minutes on why, which is the nicest thing I've said on this channel, so somebody check on the raven. And it's got nothing to do with loot or the new race. It's the people, because a game you live in for years is one of the last places grown adults still make friends by accident. Blizzard knows that. They built a whole system around it, and in a couple of places they built against it, so you're getting both.

The Autopsy — what the big deal is

Quick version, for everyone who quit in two thousand nine. Forever is a fresh World of Warcraft that opens Wednesday, and it has no realms. You pick a ruleset instead, normal, PvP, roleplay, and hardcore later⁴. There's a new race, the Skyborne, and that one's behind a pack⁵. I've done that video. I'm not doing it twice.

I'm Horde, RP-PvP, a lock called Ashfall. I love this game, and I want it alive in ten years, which from me is a modest ask, since I've got the time. So everything I say tonight comes from somebody who'll be in the queue on Wednesday with a candle and a bad attitude.

The living, counted

Now the bad news, and it's yours, not mine. In twenty twenty-three the US Surgeon General put out a whole advisory on loneliness, and the line that stuck with me is this one: "approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness"⁶. Then the time numbers. Time with friends, in person, went from sixty minutes a day in two thousand three to twenty in twenty twenty⁷. For fifteen to twenty-four year olds it's worse, two and a half hours a day down to forty minutes⁸. Twenty twenty was a pandemic year, so that last number's a bit unfair, and the advisory says the slide started long before it. I believe them, mostly because I've seen your group chats. Forty people, three memes a day, and nobody who'd help you move a couch.

The Autopsy — a third place

Two researchers had a word for what I'm about to describe, back in two thousand six. Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams looked at MMOs and called them third places⁹. A third place is wherever you go that isn't home and isn't work, the pub, the barbershop, the coffee shop where they know your order. Their comparison was "the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old"⁹. And one more line from the same paper, which is more or less this video's title: games "help create a shared sense of home"¹⁰.

My third place is the Crossroads. Beta, night one, my lock got ganked at the flight master by the same rogue four times. A Tauren shaman rezzed me after the third, no words, just a wave. Level twenty, Wailing Caverns, there he is again, healing. Level thirty he sends me a guild invite. I know his dog's name now. It's Gary, which is a terrible name for a dog, and I'd fight anyone who said so.

And I've watched it work for a lot longer than one beta. I was in the first one, in two thousand four. I saw people from my first guild get married, for real, rings and in-laws and a cake, and it started with somebody typing LFG in the Barrens. A few of them still message me, twenty-two years later, which is longer than I was ever alive.

The Autopsy — does it work, counted

So did anyone count whether it works? A few people did, and it's old data, so weigh it. Helena Cole and Mark Griffiths surveyed nine hundred and twelve MMO players for a paper in two thousand seven, a self-selected sample, so these are the keen ones¹¹. Three in four said they'd made good friends in the game¹¹. More than half the women and over a third of the men had met game friends in real life¹². One in ten had a relationship that went, let's say, offline¹³. And two in five told game friends things they wouldn't tell their real-life ones¹⁴. And the games industry's own survey last year says seventy-eight percent of players think games can introduce them to new friends¹⁶. That's a trade group grading its own homework, but it points the same way.

The honest footnote, and I'm giving it to you because I'm a professional. Steinkuehler and Williams say games are best at bridging, people unlike you, and that it's "not usually providing deep emotional support"¹⁷. Usually. Hold that word.

The Autopsy — the guild at the funeral

The one that gets me is Norwegian. Mats Steen played as Ibelin, and his parents, Robert and Trude, thought he'd had a lonely and isolated life¹⁸. When Mats died, they found out people all over Europe had lit candles in his memory¹⁸. At his funeral in Oslo there were people the family had never met, his guild, some from far away¹⁹. The BBC's line on them is the one I can't improve: "They wept for their good friend"¹⁹. His dad, Robert, said afterwards they should have been "more interested in the game world, where he spent so much time"²⁰. I'm not doing a joke here. That's the whole argument. Real doesn't mean you met in a parking lot. Real means they showed up.

The Autopsy — Blizzard built it on purpose

And Blizzard knows all of this. On their own podcast this week, one of their developers walked through how layering is supposed to sort you, and it's the Gary story, almost word for word. You keep seeing the same player while you level, a quest at ten, an elite at twenty, and then:

That's the design. A stranger twice is a friend the third time. Blizzard's own recap from the reveal says they want "strangers to become familiar faces"²¹. And once you've got a guild, the layers are meant to keep you with it.

Cute. There's even a system that remembers who you've grouped with and pushes them back onto your layer, which MassivelyOP wrote up during the beta²². And there's no auto-teleport dungeon finder, just the old list where you still have to talk to people²³. Ana Resendes, one of their engineers, told Inven Global that when players had to find their own groups, they "naturally conversed with others and built relationships"²⁴. Blizzard, defending your right to whisper strangers. I've never agreed with them faster.

The Autopsy — why they had to

Now listen to why they had to build any of it.

The barriers were realms. And realms did this for free. On a realm you saw the same idiot in Southshore every night for two years. You knew the ninja's name, the whole server knew it, and your name was all you had. Forever swapped that for rulesets, which Blizzard calls "a broad player ecosystem"²⁵, and then spent a whole beta building an algorithm to fake a small realm. One of their production directors told GameSpot that "repeat encounters with other recently met players" are exactly what they're protecting²⁶. Which, fair, that's honest. It's also a lot of work to hand us back the thing they took.

And in the beta it didn't always work. A player on Blizzard's forums put it better than I can: you're talking to someone on a zeppelin, you cross a zone line, "and suddenly they're gone"²⁷. Blizzard says it's fixing the boats and the capitals before launch²⁸. I'll believe it on Wednesday.

Three years. I'll hold them to it. I've got the time.

The Autopsy — where it works against you

Two places it still fights you, and one of them's on you. First, alts. Blizzard built the account-wide rewards to make leveling alts "more exciting"²⁹, and it cross-linked the professions so crafting needs other people, which Kris Zierhut told IGN in so many words³⁰. The guides read that and said, make a second character³¹. I did a whole Obituary on it. If your alt is your crafter, your gatherer and your best friend, you've built a guild with one login, and that's a sad little guild.

Second, factions. No cross-faction grouping, and no grouping across rulesets either³². That one I like, honestly. Horde and Alliance hating each other is a relationship too, ask anyone who's been to Southshore. But if your friend rolls Alliance and you roll Horde, you're pen pals now.

And yes, it costs a sub. If you've got a friend who won't pay, the invite codes give them a free week, November fourth to the eleventh³³. Use it on the one who stopped answering your texts.

The Autopsy — the social machinery, counted

So I counted what Forever does to your social life, every system Blizzard's talked about. Pulling you together: layers that follow your guild and the people you've grouped with, a group finder you have to talk in, cross-linked professions, and the invite week. Four. Pushing you apart: the layer swap mid-conversation, rulesets instead of realms, the alt that does your crafting, and no cross-faction groups, which, again, I'm keeping. Four. A draw. Better than I expected. Worse than a realm.

The Autopsy — the prescription

So if you're coming in on Wednesday, here's my prescription, from someone with a medical background, technically, since my mum was an apothecary. Join a guild before level twenty. A bad one's fine, you can leave, and you'll have learned how. Say thanks for the rez, and whisper the person you've seen twice, because the third time is the design. When the game asks if you want to move to your group's layer, say yes. Find a crafter and tip them instead of rolling the alt. And log in on the same nights. The part nobody tells you about a third place is that the regulars make it, and you can't be a regular on random Tuesdays.

And tell me something, in the comments. The first person you met in this game that you still talk to. Name, class, how it happened. I'll read the best ones out in Letters from the Living.

Cause of Death

Cause of death, for the patient on the table, which is you. Playing alone. Time of death, whenever you ignored the guild invite. I'll say it plainly, once. I love this game, and the best thing in it was never a mount. It's the person still online at two in the morning when you're not okay, who doesn't know your real name and doesn't need to. Go find yours. Wednesday, three p.m. Pacific.

Next time

If you missed it, my Obituary for your realm is the short, sad version of half of this video. And the Pre-Mortem has five ways I think Forever could die, with dates on them, and I'm grading it in December. I'll be here. Forever.