Are MMORPG's games or are they Digital Stratification Machines?

Tobold reacts a little to lonomonkey reacting a lot to a troll comment on some blog. The comment is something you see a lot in the forums (but hardly ever on blogs), something to the effect that Blizzard had it right in WoW 1.0 and WoW 2.0, and normal people should never have access to advanced raid content, only people who can attend scheduled raids for 20 or so hours a week.

Honestly, one of the great disappointments of blogging is that I was hoping their would be more yelling. See, before I blogged I would always yell at people in the forums because they were stupid. Always threatening to cancel their subscription over every little change, always complaining that other people might enjoy the game ("But how can I enjoy the game, knowing that other people are enjoying it too?"). Those people don't seem to make blogs. Well, one of them does, but for the most part MMO bloggers are sane, and that's more than a little sad.

Anyway, I think some people see WoW as a Digital Stratification Machine. It looks down on players from on high, and judges them worthy or unworthy of enjoying certain parts of the game. Better players get access to better content, other players not so much. The main critique of the Digital Stratification Machine, as a game, is that it is s***hole game design to spend millions of dollars creating interesting content just to deny most players the ability to access it.

Fortunately Blizzard is in the game-making business and have kind of thrown the Digital Stratification Machine-model out the window. Better players get more achievement points, have cooler looking gear and get other neat perks like mounts and pets. They do not, however, get exclusive access to raid content, and that's terrific.