But I Want To Be Evil

Wrath of the Lich King, the expansion for the tremendously popular MMO World of Warcraft was released this past week. One of the new features that the game allows yout to do is create a new character class called a 'Death Knight', which is basicly another plate wearing DPS class for those of you semi familiar with the game.

One of the more interesting things that Blizzard has done with the starting area for the Death Knights is that the entire start is based on an instanced area, so its just you and other newly created Death Knights. What is really intersting however is that as you complete missions in this area, it actually appears to dynamicly change before your eyes by hiding and unhiding various creatures (and even other players), so that you are given the illusion that your actions actually have consiquences in the world (which is a first for WoW). Needless to say its very cool and inspiring stuff that is nice to finally see in World of Warcraft (as opposed to seeing the same mob you just killed respawned 30 seconds later), but that's not the real discussion of this blog post.

When you create a Death Knight, you fight for the Lich King's forces of undead evil. Which is a huge twist in the game considering you have always been forced to play as a 'goodie little two-shoe's', the end result of being able to play as this evil character is a refreshingly fun change in how you view the game. Gone is the illusion that you are culling some pack of wild wolves or misbegotten and aimless kobalds or orc, instead its a pure "be evil" mini-campaign of destruction, where you have to crush the forces of light that are opposing you in this starting instance.

Unfortunately though this "evil" campaign is short lived, after numerous missions of slaughtering the light and decimating their forces, you are soon sent on a larger mission to take out their leadership, but during the ensuing battle you aliegence gets switched (not by your conscent) and you soon find yourself allied to the very forces you were destroying, and the Lich King, who is the source of all your powers and abilities, is now your sworn enemy.

As a game developer I can understand why Blizzard cheaped out and went this route, it simply made things easier to integrate into the game so they don't have to worry as much about two different storylines, but as a person who enjoys playing games I have to say "what the fucking hell is up with this crap!". What happend to choice and giving the illusion that I have some influence in the world around me? Blizzard already has 2 factions (although really it should be 1 since they run down the same linear path, they just have seperate cities and can attack one another), so why not do much of the same and add in a 3 faction. An evil faction. It surely would not be difficult to use all of the existing game assets and setup to create a purely evil based campaign, so why not just do it and stop forcing players down this lame cookie cutter set of roles and storyline that no one really gives two shits about because they're too concerned with earning epic loot.

This is why I am excited to see what Bioware can do with their Star Wars MMO, they get the idea that creating unique experiances (within the limitations of the game) are just as importing as smashing enemies and earning loot. Sadly I can see that some of the guys at Blizzard get this too, but they're unfortunately handicapped for some reason from really making it happen.