Layer One: A Role-Playing Game That’s Forgotten It’s an RPG
What should an RPG be?
At its core, a role-playing game allows players to assume roles in a fictional world and create stories together. The emphasis is on creation and immersion—building characters not just visually, but through decisions, actions, and narrative.
World of Warcraft increasingly dictates who your character is, rather than letting you define them. When the game forces your character into scripted roles—like being the “Hero of Azeroth” or cleaning a human war memorial as an orc in TWW—it strips away meaningful choice and breaks immersion. It’s no longer your story; it’s the story Blizzard chose for you; it is literally the OPPOSITE of what an RPG with a character creator should be.
Ironically, Blizzard knows players love creation—it’s why cosmetics are a major revenue stream. But true character creation goes beyond appearances, which i feel they don’t understand fully. It’s about shaping your identity through gameplay, choices, and consequences.
They need to focus less on linear narratives and more on creating a rich world where players write their own stories through their own decisions. Let players explore new zones, make decisions, and play how they want, with the game rewarding creativity and having stories emerge between the players and these interactions. Put the grand cosmic narratives in the background, where they belong, in little lore books and such.
You could literally just take the campaigns out of the game, and drop new zones with stuff to do in them, and that would be better than what we currently have.
Layer Two: An RPG Pretending to Be an E-Sport
The Homogenization of Classes
WoW classes have been watered down in the pursuit of balance—especially, i feel, due to small scale competitive PvP. Defensive cooldowns, self-heals, buffs—they’re all essentially the same within roles.
While the core roles like tank, healer, and DPS still exist, the unique identity of each class is fading.
The push for e-sport-level PvP balance has led to design decisions that prioritize fairness over fantasy. But WoW wasn’t built as an e-sport. It was built as an RPG, where class fantasy and identity mattered more than equal win rates.
Balancing small-scale, instanced PvP inevitably forces homogenization. Instead, PvP should reflect the world it is built into—large-scale conflicts like battlegrounds or dynamic open-world skirmishes, where imbalance and chaos actually enrich the experience. Remember, this is World of WARcraft, not World of Arenacraft.
EDIT I’d also like to add to this section that PVE balancing has also had a significant impact on this, if not more so than PVP. There is even an e-sport element to PVE on WoW, where the same rationale applies as with PVP; and so it leads to the same homogeny.
What Should Change?
- Make class identity the priority. Balance should always and only be secondary to this, but should still be a priority.
- Shift focus from arena-style e-sports to organic, large-scale PvP battles that erupt naturally in the world, driven by real stakes and rewards. That is the type of PVP that belongs in an MMORPG, not this weird arena nonsense, where you’re just teleported away to fight in a small bubble. There is nothing immersive about that whatsoever.
Layer Three: The Tone Has Lost Its Soul
One of the most jarring evolutions of WoW has been its shift in tone. Early WoW—and the Warcraft RTS games—had a dark, grounded, gritty atmosphere encapsulated in a chunky cartoony shell. There were plagues, betrayals, faction war, and death. The humor in the game was very dark, indirectly making light of what in the real world might be quite grim; even it’s cartoony aesthetic leans into that; with very grim things occurring in this cartoony shell; this, in turn, can make elements of the game humorous in a dark way.
This contrasting tone and aesthetic allowed the game to be serious one moment, and then goofy in the next.
I feel the makers of the game have confused the aesthetic with the tone. it is like they hired writers who just looked at the visuals of the game, and decided this is a cartoon. Now we have a cartoony looking game with cartoony narratives. It should have very grim narratives about warfare, death and survival, with the aesthetic putting a humorous spin on these dark aspects from time to time.
If you want a very easy way of reminding yourself of what Warcraft’s tone is supposed to be, you only need to look at what was a key inspiration, Warhammer. Or simply watch the old cinematics; or even play Warcraft 3.
Why this is important is because it is the core identity of the franchise. It is why the franchise is so beloved in the first place. I feel the game is gradually losing support over time as it meanders away from this core aspect.
WoW just looks cartoony; but it isn’t supposed to be a cartoon, even if the aesthetic gives liberty to do silly things from time to time.
“But it is for the modern fans! Modern fans like this more!”…
Errr… What? Why would you think what people liked back then would suddenly not be likable now?
You can even see it reflected in player decline. If this was truly what people wanted, why is WoW doing so much worse than it was previously?
TWW feels a bit more warcrafty, and i like that; but it is still missing that darkness, and the comedy that can sometimes come from it.
Final Thought:
WoW’s biggest flaw is that it keeps evolving into things it was never meant to be. It wants to have it’s fingers in all the pies, but is losing touch with the main RPG pie as a result. It needs to return to its foundation; not a tightly-scripted MMO or a balanced e-sport, or a cartoon.
A fix of all three of these layers would be a return to form for WoW; i feel like at the moment, they’re lost, and this is what they’re looking for; but for whatever reason they’re just struggling to grasp it, or simply don’t care to.
