Real question here.
I personally feel like the RPG element has been overshadowed, starting around Cataclysm, and I can hardly recognize it now. This seems more apparent than ever now that there’s classic to compare it to.
To me, WoW feels like it’s become more of an actionstyle fighting game, where it’s more about pushing your dps limits and reach heights through M+ and raiding and high paced gameplay. There are many RPG aspects like professions, gold, travel etc. that have little meaning today.
So a real question here; is WoW still considered an RPG game?
Real answer : on pretty much every aspect WoW is still at its core a RPG, no matter how you try to play around with the meaning of a RPG.
You have a character with ability, stats, gear and an inventory. You are in a fictional world doing quests, killing stuff and getting rewards for doing so.
That’s about as complicated as the definition of a RPG can be. How you interact with players, how much time you spend walking around in the open world or how random rewards can be don’t change these characteristics.
Are professions required in a RPG ? Well they exist in tabletop RPGs like DnD and pathfinder yet in my current pathfinder campaign none of us use them yet we’re still fine. I guess it wasn’t such a defining feature.
You could argue that some RPG elements were watered down over the years and it would be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that at it’s core it’s still a RPG.
I feel like it’s more of a Hack and Slash than an RPG, both gameplay and story wise. Sure, you play as your own character, but you make no decisions in the story, and power progression is ultimately about an infinite grind, instead of reaching a maximum potential, as a hero on the rise.
As for the classes themselves, even though they are still unique, a lot of their gimmicks have been taken away. Paladin isn’t really the demonslaying undead annihilator class anymore, because it simply lacks the talents and spells (aside Wake of Ashes) that makes them special against those enemies. Sure, Paladins still watch out for their buddies, and avenge the fallen, but a core part of the class has been stripped away, to it’s own detriment.
I think many people can relate with this, even with other classes. I still enjoy WoW, but if I were to play WoW for RPG element reasons, I’d wait for Classic+.
To quote myself from the paladin forums regarding class design, though I suspect it likely applies itself to many parts of the game:
"It’s great that you enjoy it, I envy you in a way.
The best way I can describe current Ret, and it’s probably the same for most classes, is imagine a company selling a pizza that over the years they kept improving the flavour of, it got better and better, but one day, maybe to save money, the company selling the pizza removed half the ingredients.
The customers who had eaten the older version could clearly tell the pizza had gotten a lot worse and less enjoyable, but new customers who had the half decent pizza, and didn’t know how good it use to, didn’t mind the “new” version because it still tasted “alright”.
This possibly sums up all current class design."
This sums itself up pretty well when comparing what was considered MMORPG then, to now.
Does it matter what anyone else thinks? You get out of any game or any activity for that matter what you want to get out of it. If you feel the RPG element is gone while some may find the RPG element is strong. Depends on how you interpret it for your preference. personally I don’t play WoW for the RPG part, i have other games i find more RPG based like Witcher or Skyrim.
Now the question should be: “Do computer gamers understand what an RPG is?”
The answer is broadly…“No”.
No iteration of WoW, since its very inception has been an RPG. For that matter, there -are- no RPG systems out there in games available on the Internet.
An RPG is a Role Playing Game. You are Playing a Role, in the setting, with its defined rules.
If you ain’t roleplaying, you ain’t playing an RPG. Even if you are roleplaying, chances are 99% likely, you are not playing an RPG. Ammo does not make it an RPG, Feeding Pets does not make it an RPG, no flying makes it emphatically -not- an RPG, WoW has never, in its purest sense, been an RPG.
What has changed is the definition. Most people’s definition of an RPG these days is basically “Any action game where I play a character”
Which is -Cool-! That’s totally Cool. Don’t mistake that for a Roleplaying game though.
When was the last time your character ate, that wasn’t related to somehow magically healing the most traumatic of wounds, or somehow eating food that gave you buffs? When was the last time that they forgot that whole civilisations and continents existed because of lack of Dev time?
You can Roleplay in WoW’s setting. It is what keeps me subbed, but WoW is not an RPG in its technical sense.
Tbh, I don’t really think WoW has ever been much of a RPG either.
To me, the term “RPG” invokes pictures of branching dialogue trees and choices affecting the narrative in more or less meaningful ways, of freeform character sheets, relevant non-combat skills/activities and similar.
WoW has always been very light on that.
And truth be told, I think that mainstream multiplayer is kind of anathema to RPG.
I say mainstream, because obviously, even tabletop sessions are multiplayer, but they don’t exert the same pressure to optimize your decisions, which allows DMs to not engage in the rat’s tail of balancing efforts that ultimately render the point of making a decision in the first place moot.
Its still an RPG regardless of whats said providing you’re willing to accept the fact that its a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game, game play as slightly picked up in pace. Only slightly for the better health of the game, alot of veteran players got their favorite version of the game or still enjoy retail for what it is.
The answer you get when you google what is world of warcraft: " World of Warcraft ( WoW ) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the Warcraft fantasy universe. "
I disagree with your post though; because I think the RPG term for computer games has quite a different meaning than the tabletop meaning of the same term.
