As hard as it is to believe, all of Wrath of the Lich King’s end-game dungeons have already been conquered. The guilds Nihilum and SK Gaming joined forces to be the first in the world to accomplish this ridiculous feat.

On their website, the guild offers a statement that is equal parts bragging and concern.

“We are proud to declare that all [Wrath of the Lich King dungeons] have now been cleared,” reads the statement. “This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?”

The question that begs to be answered is, “Did Blizzard do this on purpose?” If so, then Blizzard should be very concerned right now. If the best guilds in the world can clear the whole game in only four days, then middle level guilds will probably clear it in a month or two, and even casual guilds shouldn’t have any trouble getting through in under six months.

How does Blizzard intend to keep people subscribing when there’s nothing to do?

Balancing tweaks are to be expected after launching an MMO, but it doesn’t make much sense that all of Blizzard’s miscalculations made the game easier. I suspect this was in fact Blizzard trying to appease its casual player base.

If that is the case, then Blizzard didn’t miscalculate the balancing of the boss encounters, but rather the balancing of its player base. Until now, Blizzard had a very deliberate play structure in World of Warcraft. In early levels, the game is a casual MMO that allowed any and all to play. Then, slowly, it turns more hardcore in the hope that casual players will be turned into hardcore players. It was a balance that has obviously been extremely successful for them, but now it seems they’ve thrown that out the window and skewed massively to the casual players and apparently left the hardcore out to dry.