The Use of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment System Enhanced Flow Experience in

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

There are too many factors which made WOW extraordinary and we have to admit that the

hypes before releasing, good reputation of Blizzard and that epic Official History of Azeroth

all contributed immeasurably to its success. However, here I have to point out one reason and

this reason played an indispensable role in the success of WOW. That is Dynamic Difficulty

Adjustment, known as DDA. According to Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, in order to maintain a

person’s flow experience, the activity needs to reach a balance between the challenges of the

activity and the abilities of the participant. And DDA system is a significant part of the core

elements of Flow.

At the beginning of 2006, before TBC released, the speed of player growth of WOW was

slowing down and lots of flaws was revealed. Because of the rigid ranking system, it was

bloody difficult for players to get high PVP (Player Versus Player) tier sets, The Field

Marshal’s set and The Warlord’s set for instance. And the ROI (Return on Investment) for

PVP gear was extremely low compared with those for PVE (Person Versus Environment)

gear. As a result, the PVP system turned out to be hierarchical and only a few top class

players could enjoy fun from it even though the honor system has been developed. Moreover,

along with the emergence of more epic dungeons, it was getting harder for players to play

through them. From MC to BWL, from TAQ to NAXX, the qualitative leap in difficulty

between each two dungeons made it impossible for every player to engage in. Guilds could

barely gather enough members for raids and as a result, people cannot get better equipment

and cannot get fulfilled mentally. Finally most of them chose to leave this virtual world

except for a few elites. It is this vicious circle that reduced the population of WOW.

According to the analysis of Jenova Chen, there are two types of DDA system: Passive Flow

Adjustment (PFA) and Active Flow Adjustment (AFA). PFA is a system-oriented DDA which

could maintain player’s Flow by reacting to the feedback collected from player. [Bailey &

Katchabaw 2005]. In order to rescue WOW, Blizzard took some measures and this action

itself, was a systematic procedure of PFA. They analyzed the data from a Monitor System – a

system chooses critical data reflecting player’s flow state – to get feedbacks from players.

This analysis system helped to understand which settings need to be changed in gameplay in

order to get a better game experience. And Blizzard integrated these changes into several

patches. After that, these patches were released, the game was revised from many

perspectives and eventually, there came the most exclusive version of WOW: The Burning

Crusade.

These changes in gameplay were core elements of AFA and made it possible for players to

feel a sense of control over game activity. In TBC, dynamic adjustments made it possible for

players to play in their paces. Blizzard put a lot of choices for us to make in the process of

enjoying the game and the most important thing is, we can never feel the existence of those

adjustments. In PVP system, military ranking was removed and arena system was added.

Arena system was with a function of matching contestants at almost same level. Players at

different levels could enjoy an impartial battle there and get more generous rewards. In PVE

system, dungeon mechanism was redesigned. The capacity for old 40-man dungeons was

redesigned into 25 players while capacity for 20-man dungeons was 10 players in TBC.

What’s more, there also added the heroic 5-man raid, which provided better equipment than

non-heroic 5-man dungeons but comparatively worse than 10-man ones. These measures are

taken for one same purpose: the coordination between equipment and challenge difficulty.

This pyramid-shaped distribution is very like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This “pyramid”

made large-scale guilds survive, made medium-scale and small-scale ones thrive. Different

individuals could position themselves according to their needs and enjoy fun at different

levels. They could make well-balanced choices between challenges and difficulties

themselves so that those choices would be the most suitable ones for players. The most

fascinating thing is that they have made numerous choices subconsciously and every single

choice would be regarded as a valuable data for designers to improve a better game

experience for players.

The reason why players see these changes as “game settings” rather than “choices” in game is

that these choices have been embedded into the gameplay and were treated as part of the play.

Eventually, players ignore them and get into the immersion stage. It built a system far more

efficient than the Monitor System in PFA. Blizzard successfully enhanced players’ flow

experience naturally only by releasing several patches, but these patches polished WOW very

well and salvaged it from the cliff edge.