I returned to Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King, just as the Argent Crusade built their magical pony tent. I was excited about Arthas. I felt like Blizzard had returned to its roots in the RTS games after making what was tantamount to an Everquest clone with sides and then an expansion that was schizophrenic at best. First, I had to plow through Outland. I felt myself mindlessly plugging away at quests, grumbling and slogging through an expansion that had little consistent story, and quite a lot of filler content -- enough that I was left wondering what the heck the Alliance/Horde are even doing in Outland? That was eventually answered, three zones later, but after Thrall's moment of closure, I was left asking, "so where do we, as the player, get closure as we transition to Northrend?" The answer was somewhat disappointing -- "Well, you move to Northrend because it's level appropriate." There's no transition or quest chain that takes you from fighting the burning legion to fighting zombies, outside of the events leading up to the expansion. Let down, I trudged ahead. I never saw the call to the black temple. I never saw what brought the war to Sunwell. I never saw this:
Once I reached Dragonblight, I picked up the Wrathgate quest chain. For those of you who aren't familiar, the Alliance and Horde are forging into Northrend, recruiting new allies and building amazing war machines, and there are two major developments in the war: One, Arthas is set up as a big bad. The second, I will not reveal for anyone who wants to avoid spoilers. If you don't care, watch this video:
Pretty amazing. I then spent a few months grinding, before I received the closure I was looking for, going for the throat of Arthas himself. I participated in the events for the Cataclysm release. I was ready to go for Deathwing's throat. Over the weekend, I spoke with a friend who has not completed the Wrathgate. Because of how the world has changed, she will never participate in the battle for Undercity, thanks to the changes Cataclysm made to the world.
It was then I realized that the experience I had trudging through Outlands was going to be the experience she has toward the end of Icecrown. She will reach the point where quests expect her to grind, she will hit the level cap for the expansion, and she will transition to a Cataclysm zone. Arthas will never die to her sword. She will, at least, see the reason for fighting a dragon. Then she's going to never fight the dragon, but instead, grind in a few zones and she'll be ready for Mists of Furcadia. This pattern will ever repeat -- 90% of content intended for the end game at some point will be entirely wasted, and players will forever simply feel they are playing catch-up until they are at the current end-game, muddling through schizophrenic zones that only are minimally tied to the overall war story. She will never have killed Ragnaros, never have fought the leaders of the Burning Legion, never killed Arthas, and never have killed Deathwing (which the downing of Ragnaros brought about). The fight will never make full sense to her, unless she goes to see videos on YouTube or reads about it. I know she isn't the only one that will be confused at the transient nature of the war that has made only mottled bits of sense. That, and endgame instances only become sources of farming, and the content is largely skipped.
What can be done?
Simply put, expansions need a concrete beginning and a concrete end. You need to know why you're fighting on a continent, fight what you're fighting, and then transition to the next continent. The Wrathgate was a beautiful example of the first part of that chain. You're placed on a continent, you have a discreet chain that brings the players to where the end game content begins (and, after the next expansion is released, make it grant enough experience that players are almost ready to move on). Now the task, as the players move on, is to give them that sense of closure. As there aren't raids regularly downing Arthas, I suggest that game developers create a single-player quest chain that picks up where Wrathgate leaves off. Have the Argent Crusade send a messenger requesting the player move to Icecrown Citadel for the assault on Arthas. Have the player go in, perhaps fighting stripped-down versions of some of the raid bosses, and kill Arthas, experiencing this cinematic:
That gives the closure players need. Similarly, if I'd had the opportunity to seal the demon gates leading to Outland and gut Kil'jaeden, I would have felt like the space goats were saved. I did not. And herein lies the perpetual problem with playing catch-up in Warcraft: you will not know why you're somewhere, how the last zone ended, or have any sense of purpose until the end game. Fix this, Blizzard. Give us a reason to play.
What are your thoughts with mirroring end-game content with a single-player quest chain?
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