Blizzard’s plan is hoping that the WoW playerbase will become so upset at the ‘out of control’ numbers that they will demand an item squish. This is very funny.
You don’t fix things that aren’t broken. What exactly is the Item Squish supposed to fix? Two answers are given.
1) To make numbers seem more manageable and less ‘ridiculous’.
2) To make things easier on the computers.
Reason number two is laughable. WoW already crunches data with all these digits yet you never see it because Blizzard already hides everything behind the decimal point. An iPod could crunch all the numbers easily. “More digits means it hurts the processing.” Hahahaha. With that logic, you might as well tell the artists, “More colors hurt the processing…” to the sound guys, “More current sound effects hurt the processing…” and on and on.
The only reason for the Item Squish is found in reason 1: because large numbers are ‘ridiculous’. But the reason why the resistance to the item squish will never die is because the reason isn’t actually a reason… it is an opinion.
Who decides when a number is ‘ridiculous’? Why is 20k ridiculous but 200 is not? There is nothing gameplay related in this. It is all cosmetic.
The argument FOR the Item Squish is so poor that it is based entirely around: “Your 200 will be the same as 20k after the squish”. But why the assumption that 200 is better than 20k? You could equally argue that 20k is the ‘reasonable number’ and 200 is the ‘outrageous number’.
All this talk about ‘ridiculous’ numbers but what is ridiculous is in the eye of the beholder. For some people, 20k is ridiculous. But other people think 200 is ridiculous. Who is Blizzard to choose which cosmetic opinion is superior? And that’s all this is about… cosmetics.
The simplest thing is to create an add on or option that allows players to squish the numbers if they want. Then people who like the big numbers could have those and the people who want the squish can have it too. Everyone would be happy.
And whose to say that the squish will stop with items? What’s next, levels? In a few years, will Blizzard say, “100 levels is ‘ridiculous’. It is time to do a level squish where the max level then becomes 60.” “We have too many pets. Hundreds of pets is ‘ridiculous’. It is time to do a pet squish where the max number of pets is less than hundreds.” “We need a mount squish.”
Why are we even talking about an item squish when we could be talking about a subscription squish? In this economy, $15 a month IS ridiculous to more and more people. And those $25 store mounts and $10 pets are ridiculous to many people. Why not squish all of that? “You don’t get it, Malstrom,” a voice says. “Blizzard’s profits are not to be squished. However, the content will be squished. Or as Bashiok said in a forum post, customers should squish their own expectations.” But why is all the squishing on the consumer end?
Why doesn’t Blizzard just squish themselves? Thanks to the recent mass layoffs, I see they are already in the process of doing that.
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