I suspect we're reaching a little bit of a language barrier. :) I don't think you can describe it as "the goal" by any means. It is a side effect. It has some negative consequences, yes, but there are also positive ones. For example -- a repeat player will find the game easier to rush through to get to what they want to play again. A new player who is given lots of cool stuff feels prized and welcomed, and the older player giving it feels like a mentor.
As a side effect, you can either embrace it, or fight it.
The main reason why most everyone fights it (and WoW is BUILT on fighting it -- soulbinding, bind on pickup, level restrictions, moving people from zone to zone so that they don't revisit older dead content, tiered equipment, extremely limited economy with virtually no trade, etc) is because embracing it is too damn expensive.
To embrace mudflation, you have to instead say, "OK, we're going to constantly render our content obsolete" and keep adding stuff. You would encourage hand-me-downs to players rather than restricting trade. You'd literally destroy old areas rather than keep them around. And you'd go ahead and change what newbies start at to compensate. This is what pen and paper gaming does to handle the situation in long-running campaigns.
But building a pen and paper module is far cheaper than making an expansion. So even if you fully expect to use "exploit it till we can. When it breaks we make another" as your model, you are caught in a horrible trap: you aren't able to make the stuff fast enough. So what you do is fight a rearguard action, expecting to lose. This is what Blizzard is doing, what EQ is doing, and so on.
Re: Having fun playing WoW
I suspect we're reaching a little bit of a language barrier. :) I don't think you can describe it as "the goal" by any means. It is a side effect. It has some negative consequences, yes, but there are also positive ones. For example -- a repeat player will find the game easier to rush through to get to what they want to play again. A new player who is given lots of cool stuff feels prized and welcomed, and the older player giving it feels like a mentor.
As a side effect, you can either embrace it, or fight it.
The main reason why most everyone fights it (and WoW is BUILT on fighting it -- soulbinding, bind on pickup, level restrictions, moving people from zone to zone so that they don't revisit older dead content, tiered equipment, extremely limited economy with virtually no trade, etc) is because embracing it is too damn expensive.
To embrace mudflation, you have to instead say, "OK, we're going to constantly render our content obsolete" and keep adding stuff. You would encourage hand-me-downs to players rather than restricting trade. You'd literally destroy old areas rather than keep them around. And you'd go ahead and change what newbies start at to compensate. This is what pen and paper gaming does to handle the situation in long-running campaigns.
But building a pen and paper module is far cheaper than making an expansion. So even if you fully expect to use "exploit it till we can. When it breaks we make another" as your model, you are caught in a horrible trap: you aren't able to make the stuff fast enough. So what you do is fight a rearguard action, expecting to lose. This is what Blizzard is doing, what EQ is doing, and so on.