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World of Warcraft Honor System Live
Available now from the World of Warcraft Patch servers, the Honor System has been put into production. The Patch Notes are available on the official site and besides the Honor System includes new art, bug fixes, and new live events in Kalimdor and the Gurubashi Arena. There will also be, starting in May, a "Children's Week" celebrated in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. "It is a time to give back to the innocents of war: the orphans!"
You can make the argument that you don't need something to enjoy the game about any system. However, I think there is a reason why WoW blasted past a million subscribers and the runner up has less then half that. WoW is made for the casual gamer. Period. A casual gamer can log on, level up, and never see something that he can't eventually get. Log a casual gamer into EQ and the situation is very different. You get to see stuff all the time that takes an insane amount of free time to achieve.
The problem is two fold. First, they are destroying what made WoW such a blazing success. They are making a system that inherently a casual gamer will NEVER be able to win in. A casual gamer can never get the uber PvP armor. If only 0.1% or 1% or 5% can get it, then they will never ever get it. This is going to start pissing people off.
Second, on the PvP servers, you are handing out an advantage that that the casual player is not going to be able to get his hands on. A level 60 casual player can take on any other level 60. Start creating massive equipment imbalances that are dependent upon your 'hardcoreness' (also read as being jobless or in high school) to achieve, and casual players are going to start dropping out.
Wow should play to its strengths. That means playing to casual players. There is a difference between throwing a bone to the nuts who play 40+ hours a week and changing the focus of the game to suit them. As far as I can see for the future plans blizzard has, it seems like they have made a potentially fatal mistake of changing their focus to trying to retain that insane 5% who spend 40+ hours a week, and have stopped trying to serves the other 95% that think spending 40+ hours on a game is insane.
I personally think it is an insane move, but I suppose only time will tell. If I were to give advice to blizzard though, I would tell them to build the world outward horizontally, not up. Add more areas/quests/classes/races for all levels. Don't get caught up in the trap of chugging top end content and forgetting about the massive casual gamer player base that made the game so larger in the first place.