The other week I was reading this book, Alan Greenspan' bio, An Age of Turbulence, which was surprisingly good. Quite easy to read but still interesting enough to not just be a load of gossip about all the flaws the presidents had which Mr Greenspan had worked with. Now reading interesting books can make you think, and the WoW junky that I am, my thoughts went to see if the theories that Mr Greenspan applies on the normal world are also true for WoW. To my surprise they actually made a lot of sense.

The first and most important theory is that of self-interest. As most of Mr Greenspan' believes this one is also "borrowed" from the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith,The logic behind this rule is quite simple, people will not do anything out of pity or companionship, no, they do things cause of a self-interest. Adam Smith put it this way: ""It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.", simply said: " The baker doesn't bake bread cause he likes us all so much, he just wants to earn money". This theory is something Blizzard understands and realises very very good. Players do things in a MMO not cause killing a boss is so much fun or a quest is such a big adventure, no, cause they seek to be rewarded, every player is serving his own interest by doing what he does. And WoW seems to be excelling at this point, something that is seen by many of one the main reasons why WoW is so insanely successful, Blizzard knows how to reward players.

The second important theory is that of ownership protection. According to both Smith and Greenspan ownership protection is an absolute must if you want people to participate in the economy and want the economy to grow. This of course makes a lot of sense, nobody will spend their hard earned money on something that might be taken away from them or might loose its value really fast. Now this is something that Blizzard doesn't seem to understand too well. In TBC the value of the items/skills/reputation (basically any reward you can get) that you earned has gone down dramatically, an item you had to work hard for can be turned obsolete within weeks, not to forget the consistent threat of the reset by a new expansion. More and more people start to ask themselves the question "why would I?" which is a very dangerous question for a MMO. As I mentioned earlier, people play to serve their own interest, now if they start to get the feeling that their interest isn't served enough any more by their actions, they will stop taking action, which in an MMO means, they quit. I would say that the "award people approach" and the " ownership protection" theory have collided here. Rewarding people is good, makes them eager for more and feel good, but rewarding them to much makes the rewards less special and not worth that much any more to the receiver, and in TBC Blizzard overdid it, and thereby it damaged the value of the rewards that they give out.

Another theory that Blizzard doesn't seem to get is that of "relative happiness". It means that happiness isn't something you can measure on itself and you can't give it a absolute number. Happiness is measured in relation to other people, to other times and it changes over time. Does a new computer make you happy? It probably will. Will you be still as happy if your friend got the same computer the next day? Less happy probably. And what if the computer goes on sale the next week and everyone buys it for half the money you paid? I doubt you'll still be very happy with your computer. So does giving out an epic item make someone a happier player in WoW? In vanilla-WoW it sure did, an epic was something special, you earned it and now you had something of high value. Can you remember your first epic you ever got? I can (as I still have it), as small shaman I was farming Dire Maul (shaman heaven #2, SM was #1) and on one of the many many tribute runs we did the chest contained a [Treant's Bane]! Man, that was so insane exciting and the joy when I outrolled 2 warriors! Won't ever forget it. I can also tell you the last epic I got in vanilla-WoW, the [Ring of the Earthshatterer] from Kel'Thuzad.

And in TBC? I very much doubt it. We're bombarded with epics, the one is even easier to get then the other. New, better, shinier epics are constantly on the horizon. So will the average player be any happier in WoW cause of all these epics? I doubt it, he knows he ain't anything special, nobody is any more. I wouldn't be surprised there are people that are even annoyed by new epics, means they have to gem and enchant an other item, poor them.

For WotLK I hope Blizzard goes back again to the work-reward approach that they had in vanilla-WoW. Blues should be the standard, epics the rewards for exceptional performances. Or if they keep on throwing epics to everyone, make legendaries the exceptional rewards. As long as it is balanced again, doesn't matter how. If that doesn't happen then I'll fear that the exodus of the more serious players will continue, hurting raiding guilds all over the world, a sad sad thing.