From personal experience, one of the toughest parts of balancing a people-related service is one of convenience vs. consistency. As a leader and the guide of whatever, you are expected to set the course, establish the rules, and then stick with it. The consistency, in other words. Yet you also have to listen to the people you serve, identify their needs, and bend the program to fit those needs and desires where it is wise and prudent to do so. The convenience.
If you’re not convenient enough, people get mad because they feel as though you’re not listening, you’re trying to force a round peg into a square hole, and whatever other metaphors fit here. If you’re not consistent enough, the people lose interest, feel insecure with what you’re doing, and support you less. To lead means that you have to actively search and struggle to balance between these two areas, the best of both worlds, and the longer you lead, the greater the chance that people perceive (true or not) that you are failing in one of these.
When a company develops, publishes and then runs a MMORPG, they find out first-hand (if they haven’t learned already) of this difficult task. We players, well, we’re fickle, pickled and quick to leap all over whatever we perceive as failure on the company’s behalf. It’s probably tempting for them to try to veer the product into either area at the cost of ignoring the other. Sure, make the game as convenient as all get out, give in to every player demand, make major monthly changes to the title — and see how few gamers respect you in a few months, and how jittery you make those who stick around. Go with an iron-fisted consistency, charting the course while turning a deaf ear to those who see you smashing through icebergs, and you’re going to see the beginnings of an in-game rebellion against your fascist ways.
So obviously, you have to play to some of both, and feel your way to how convenient you can get while still sticking to the “vision” (sorry McQuaid) and greater goals of the title. I’m watching in fascination as Blizzard, ever since Wrath of the Lich King, has seemingly veered further and further away from consistency (established lore, established “we will NEVER have/do this”) and deep into the territory of convenience.
After all, convenience is one of the fundamental principles of WoW, so it can’t hurt to get more of that in, right? Sure, let people create characters on both factions of a PvP server. Make raids easier/smaller. Let players switch factions. Give faster access to more powerful epics. Lower level/price requirements for mounts. And now, the possibility of letting players select race/class combinations Blizzard has denied them since launch, because they were trying to be consistent with what classes that race could or could not have (according to lore and whatnot) at the cost of convenience.
On one hand, as a casual gamer, I’m all about companies giving me more choice for my gaming experience. I think it’s awesome if you will be able to make an Undead Hunter or a Gnome Priest, for instance. But for someone who was there at launch and had to endure years of Blizzard saying “This is the way it is and will be forever and ever” because (we assumed) they had good reason for it, it calls for a bit of a double-take. So if it’s no big deal to make these changes at this date, then why’d they have it set up as such in the first place? Was the purpose behind these initial decisions arbitrary and meaningless? If not, is Blizzard just pulling out the stops of convenience because they are gambling that it will gain/retain more players than if they stay the course?
Another possible example — Star Wars Galaxies NGE. SOE’s big push for it was to make the game more accessible, more convenient, more familiar to the larger gamer crowds out there who had grown accustomed to WoW-like titles. And yet by shoving NGE through, current players felt betrayed by SOE’s inconsistency to the basic game systems and how it played for years prior.
What do you think — what’s more important to you, consistency or convenience, and how much leeway are you willing to give to a company who is trying to do one over the other?
Bio Break 
I think like anything else, change happens. It’s been five years and from experience they’ve made the changes needed to make a better product.
I’ve been playing on and off since beta. We get more content now, quicker and more diverse.
I think it’s been one of Blizzard’s biggest advantages to adapt the lore to the game and not vice versa.
I found the game having to bend to the lore hurt WAR and Lotro.
I’m especially surprised that they’re (if rumors are true) allow Night Elf Mages. It doesn’t fit the lore, it was one of those combinations they said they’d NEVER do, and yet now it’s going to happen. Well…that’s just strange.
WoW is getting consistently easier.
In vanilla WoW we had trouble fielding enough people to do Molten core. It was a year into the game before I saw Majordomo, and nearly 18 months before I saw Ragnaros, and then Deathwing. and that was only after becoming one of ‘those’ raiders. The hardcore raider, who eats, sleeps and breathes raiding. We’re talking Tuber farming hardcore here.
Now, as I enter my twilight hours in WoW, I’m in a guild that can, at best, field 5 people. We can pick up 5 more players and beat the latest 10-man instance in little under 2 hours.
The Challenge has gone, the fun has fizzled, and our guild is faltering for it. People are leaving either for ‘proper’ raiding guilds who can field a full 25 man, or 3 10 man instances a week, or leaving the game entirely (myself included) to move onto other things. I can see alot of people jumping out next year, with CO, Jumpgate, SWtOR, the AoC expansion among others offering something newer.
I think convenience might be a bit of the wrong word… I think “change” might better (no political jokes here). WoW has pretty much had the same classes and the same “vanilla” content for the past five years. Rather than keeping it static, they’re wanting to show that the story/lore is developing as we play.
Granted, I wouldn’t want to play a game that had no consistency at all and where the developers were constantly re-writing the major rules every 3 months. But stagnation is no fun either.
@ Matt – very true, Blizz have the advantage of a great IP and background fluff while being totally in control of where they take it and can just retcon things they want such as the intro of the new races in burning crusade – Spaceships and Holy alien Paladins, hmmn bet Horde didn’t see that one coming.
As for convenience vs. consistency – players would want both, if one is missing no amount of the other will make up for it.
WAR lacked consistency but was quite convienient in some respects – it didn’t seem well planned out and lurched from one idea to another (keep sieges,RvR,scenarios) but then again players took the most convienient route of leveling – scenarios – rather than the more fun route of RvR.
I think it’s different from the NGE because that system completely overhauled how the game was constructed and played, not what players could experience. The game itself changed, not the world the players were in. SWG after the NGE was simply not fun. I could still hunt the same huurtons on Dantooine as ever, but it was in a totally new way (that was inferior to the old way). In the leaked WoW, I can still do the same things I always have, but now there is simply the option to start, say, a Gnome Priest or phase Redridge into a level 85 PvP zone instead of a level 20 quest hub.
The game itself that I play doesn’t change.
Consistency is always important. Convenience is only important if you don’t know how to make a good game or you just care about the money. Blizzard had its head in the game for many years… but ever since WotLK, possibly even BC, and Activision’s merge, Blizzard has been more about convenience. Blizzard used to know how to balance the two… now they just care about the numbers and the money. What a shame. It’s just like how a music artist sells out to the record company. Sure, changing your music style will attract more listeners for the short term… but it will cause you to lose long term listeners. It is difficult to regain those long term listeners that buy album after album, concert after concert.
Blizzard doesn’t need convenience, anyone who plays the game knows about what needs to be easier – it’s blatantly obvius! Making it more difficult or more consistent requires more knowledge.
I recently came back to WoW and started all over again with some new players who were totally new to WoW (and MMOs). 4 months later we are all still playing.
I have to say that ALL of the changes have been for the better — particularly for the casual player.
WoW has become much more fun than ever before (and I played it from more than a year the first time around).
I think that Blizzard just gets sanding away the rough edges. As a result, I feel like a get a higher fun per hour (FPH) yield now then I ever did in the past.