On February 21, World of Warcraft ushered in its 9.2 version "Eternal End", and the new group of new suits allowed official service players to start a new phase of the preparation for moving bricks, but on the other hand, with the arrival of the 9.2 version, the 9.2.5 version patch and its "faction towards the merger" update content are close, which seems to mean the real "end" of the 9.2 version.
In the statistics of the Warcraft big data website, the population of the "World of Warcraft" national uniform official service has fallen to 349462 people today, compared with the "total population of the World of Warcraft fell below 700,000" in 2019, which has attracted the attention of the industry and players, today's "World of Warcraft" official service has indeed become more and more invisible in the environment.
The news that Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft a few years ago caused an industry earthquake, and in Blizzard's "World of Warcraft", its players are also looking forward to what Blizzard can do for the fading "World of Warcraft" after the acquisition. In recent times, world of warcraft, in addition to the arrival of version 9.2, has also ushered in the news of change and change after the acquisition. The first is the official announcement of the "World of Warcraft" mobile game, and the overthrow of the camp antagonistic design that "World of Warcraft" has insisted on for 16 years.
The mobile game of the "World of Warcraft" IP is actually not surprising. In the trend of classic IP mobile game in recent years, Blizzard's choice is inevitable, and the only thing worth saying about this news is that "mobile games are planned to appear within the year" and "plans to provide a large number of new content for the Warcraft series in 2022", which means that the "Warcraft" IP may usher in the possibility of content explosion this year.
The overthrow of the "World of Warcraft" camp opposition design may be an inflection point in the departure of change.
The end of Warcraft's 16-year insistence
Among the many MMORPGs, the special status of "World of Warcraft" is unquestionable, in addition to the "War Method Pastoral" design that is constantly being learned, its camp design and conflict plot have also been talked about.
It is believed that when the "World of Warcraft" movie was released that year, the various interesting moves of its game "Alliance" and "Tribe" in the cinema are still fresh in the memory of many players. And the slogans of "for the alliance" and "for the tribe" are also the beliefs adhered to by a large number of veteran Warcraft players.
Deliberately partitioned cinema seating
For players who don't play World of Warcraft, it's often difficult for them to understand the strong sense of belonging of former World of Warcraft players to their game camps and their behavior of clashing with friends for the sake of the faction. In addition to the grand and delicate portrayal of the faction in the plot of "World of Warcraft", it is inseparable from the game's design of the complete opposite of "alliance" and "tribe".
In World of Warcraft, players from different factions can't team up, trade directly, or even have conversations, and when a tribal player talks to an alliance player, all they see is gibberish text.
In the Dalaran version, Blizzard adds a language potion, so that players on both sides can communicate normally for a short time
The characteristic opposition design that implements the game throughout brings a highly immersive experience to the player's camp playing experience, and also leads to the setting of the two camps of the wild map due to the inability to communicate and the setting of the red name, which has caused many players to oppose and dispute, and the faction confrontation is strong. The sadder thing than finding out that your real-life best friend was once a Warcraft player but has retired is that you belong to the Alliance and your friend is loyal to the tribe.
At the same time, in order to strengthen the sense of independence of the faction and the sense of player substitution, the mission plots of players in different factions of World of Warcraft vary greatly, and even the design of two sets of plots and different bosses in the same level of copy has appeared, which greatly emphasizes the existence of the camp and the division of the player, and enhances the player's sense of belonging to the faction.
The Tribal Alliance is a copy of the "Battle of Dasaro" between the besieging and defending sides
Such a faction setting is one of the major features of World of Warcraft, and it is also a design that Blizzard has insisted on for 16 years and is reluctant to change. Even in the new plots of recent years, many plots have completely become stepping stones to balance the confrontation between the two camps, and the multiple racial factions in the game have also been marginalized.
Until the recent official announcement that "there will be no more expansion packs focusing on alliances and clashes", the two camps began to move from confrontation to merger, and the camp era of "World of Warcraft" also ushered in its "end".
Should it be "de-camped"?
After World of Warcraft announced that there would be no more emphasis on faction confrontation and that clan and alliance players would be able to team up to play the game, my circle of friends was polarized.
Old Warcraft player, now the old A who plays the nostalgic suit is very indignant. This change of the angry blizzard makes the last feature of "World of Warcraft" disappear, and I feel that such a change has made the previous faction confrontation a joke, and the blood of his own fighting for the tribe has completely cooled down with Blizzard's "de-campization" approach. Finally, he left an evaluation of "formal clothes are dead, rest assured nostalgic clothes for the elderly".
Another player, Xiao K, who mainly plays the official uniform, affirmed Blizzard's change and sighed bitterly: "Blizzard should have listened to the player's voice a long time ago and put the cross-faction team function into the game, and now it feels too late."
I can understand Old A's indignation—the bloody past of the Iron Furnace Battle; even though the official rules are not to communicate, there are still players who try to figure out how to type simple communication letters based on garbled code; and the plot NPCs who died in faction battles; and even a denial of his own past.
Orc Translation Manual
But I can also understand Little K's support for "de-camping" - "World of Warcraft" without "de-camping" is almost ready to be renamed "Tribal World".
Before looking for an answer to the question of whether to "de-camp", let's look at a set of data - the proportion of camps in World of Warcraft.
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that World of Warcraft now has only 349462 people left, and of this remaining population, the population of alliance players is 118861 people, which is half the population of the tribe 230601, forming a very unbalanced faction population ratio.
It is reasonable to say that the alliance camp that is more in line with the aesthetics of popular players in the early days should not form such a large number of people, in fact, when the "World of Warcraft" game was first launched, the number of factions in the game was still relatively balanced, and there was even a period when the number of alliances was more than the tribe.
However, "World of Warcraft", which is continued from the plot of "Warcraft 3", is added by the existing plot of "Warcraft 3" and many classic heroes such as Sylvanas and Sal, and the tribal camp has a natural emotional basic advantage in the eyes of the old players of "Warcraft 3". At the same time, the upgrade route of the faction at the beginning of the game is also very unbalanced, and the upgrade route of running a broken leg before the league level 45 and the extremely fragmented upgrade map have made many alliance players who cannot withstand the torture turn to the tribe.
Coupled with the strong talent of the early alliance in the PK, only relying on the PVE dominance to barely maintain the relative camp balance, the tribe is in the 60s PK has an absolute advantage, attracting a large number of players who love PVP. In the 1970s, as the "Blood Elves" beautiful race joined the tribe, the number of tribal players once again ushered in a significant increase, the number of people completely overwhelmed the alliance, and has been widening the number gap.
The complete imbalance of the camp, coupled with the continuous loss of players after the twilight of the Heroes of World of Warcraft, has led to the fact that the current official service can no longer guarantee a good gaming experience for alliance players. Whether it is the guidance of newcomer players, the convenience of copy teaming, the tribal player experience is now much higher than that of the alliance, it can be said that the player composition of the alliance has been extremely rigid, and it is difficult to get fundamental changes. Under the premise of preserving the current alliance player experience, it is necessary to open up cross-faction teaming.
On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, in order to maintain the design and immersion of its strong factions, Blizzard sometimes needs to design different quest lines for two factions even for the same dungeon, which is not a small amount of work. And Blizzard, which has been eating books for many years, in recent years of internal and external troubles, as the book paper becomes thinner and thinner, its control over the "rationality" of the plot is also getting weaker and weaker.
In recent years, "World of Warcraft" has had a series of bad reviews of the story expansion packs, and in order to emphasize the so-called confrontation between the two camps, the once rich multi-racial plot has gradually been marginalized, and the richness and rationality of the plot have been greatly reduced, and players have been dissatisfied for a long time.
After 16 years of long-distance running in "World of Warcraft", players continue to lose, income has decreased sharply, and Blizzard has also undergone a major change acquisition, the choice of "de-campization" represents both new life and the end - the advent of the new camp era, the advent of the new Blizzard and the "World of Warcraft" that tries to enter the new change again, and the complete end of the old Blizzard, the old players and the peak of the "World of Warcraft".