On this, yes, definitely. You need a group, or at the very least 1 (or more) person that can sit between game and user content and sift things. The common counter to this is that it costs money to maintain something like this, and with the margins we have nowadays, and have you seen the price of eggs, etc. So we don’t do it.

But there is a silver lining to all this, and it’s in the way the industry expands, whether we like it or not or whether we agree with where it’s expanding to or not: I’m old enough to remember (as many here) back in the day when “Customer Support” for a game was basically one oft forgotten 888 number and that was it. Try launching a decent title today or tomorrow without a dedicated CS/TS group and tell me how it goes, and how long it lasts.

It’s not that dedicated CS/TS suddenly became free. It’s that the industry realized how you can lose (X) dollars by having such a group, or lose (X) plus 100 potential million dollars by not having it. It’s the same with this. Right now we don’t have user content reviewers because (a), only a microscopical minority of the games out there support user content and (b), it costs money. Once (a) starts growing, the proposition for (b) will change, and maybe in 10-15 years from now we’ll be talking about the User Content Groups in dev houses like we now talk about CS and TS. Who knows.

Despite my pathological allergy to (most) user content, that’s where we’re going.

This is something that needs to be done better by all games really, and not in the way you described, at least how i feel about it. It’s one thing to do it like EvE does, where economy and other players “make the fun”, and another to basically allow “modules” to be made by players. Can you imagine how much content would be in a game like WoW if there were a way for the players to add to it? Of course there would need to be oversight, so exploits and such don’t make it in, but even so.

PP/S Any chance of you turning on full text in your RSS feeds? I promise to still come here and comment when you write something brilliant like this. (sugar coating intentional) I notice you don’t run ads, so shouldn’t impact finances. :P

I hate WoW’s development cycle right now. I think exactly like how Zubon said it - that casual players are subsidizing hardcore players when they choose that kind of content development choices. TBC as far as we know it, would have three content patches before the next expansion : Black Temple, Zul’Aman, and the Sunwell - two out of three of these will never be seen by the vast majority of WoW players.

I’ve never told anyone to go and smell the roses though. I just focus my anger at my lack of interesting gameplay choices on the developers. When I voice these opinions however, I very often get told to go and smell the roses in so many words, and often by - you guessed it - raiders.

Anywho, I think it’s pointless to classify players. Considering that I have 2 level 70s, and 7 other 60s (one of each class), I doubt I can be considered a casual player in terms of time spent playing. Not to mention that I’ve both raided and participated in the old crazy rank-based PvP Honor grind in WoW. What am I then?

My exact complaint isn’t also so much the number of gameplay options available to me. The fact that I’ve played the leveling game 9 times shows that I do not lack ways to make gameplay interesting for myself. It is that Blizzard is saving the best of their content for a tiny subset of their players.

Raiding should be about access to gear, which only raiders need. Not access to all the parts of the storyline that truly matters. I have reached level 70 and completed nearly all soloable and small-group quests in TBC. Yet I have no idea that Kael’thas not only betrayed the Blood Elves, but also Illidan and is consorting with the Burning Legion directly. Yeah, I got the hints. Only ‘the hints’.

I will not get to stand on the Frozen Throne, and take screenshots on the coolest place (literally) in all of Azeroth because I refuse to wipe for half a year on all the rubbish that comes before it with 24 other people so that I can step foot on the stupid throne.

Not having access to so much of the most important content - just sucks. I don’t care about the gear, but I do care about experiencing the story. Games and especially virtual worlds are about telling interesting, interactive stories to me.

Blizzard promises to fix this some of the lack of interactivity in Wrath of the Lich King. I guess I’ll give them one more chance.

In the meantime - I’ll focus on the flowers that currently still smell nice in my part of the untended, slowly rotting field, while I watch the gardener focus most his work and effort on the far, far side that most people cannot even see.