That was what the develop of WoW said, regarding how in WoW it looks like after you play long enough the mana bar just never runs out and is a formality. It's hard to argue that this can be a bad philsophy, but as I reflect on this quote, it looks like plenty of console RPG does have mana or MP or whatever your special bar is called as somethign you *graduate* out of. When is the last RPG you remember where you're completely empty in all resource and can see your inevitable fate tick down? It seems these days if bosses can't instant kill you in a RPG or otherwise permanently disable you (status effects generally), you can never die, because mana is infinite and thus healing is infinite. Note that if your MP bar can run out but the way to refill it is trivial, it's the same as having infinite MP (see Turbo Ether, Elixir, and Megaelixirs).
But it didn't used to be like this. Most of the older RPGs are pretty good at pacing your MP bar. In Shining in the Darkness Heal 4 uses like 4 times the MP as Heal 3 so you don't use it until you get hit by the double Demonblazes in the final fight. You might even use your equivalent of Cure 2 if someone didn't get hurt too much. You also don't just start the fight using Super Spell as fast as possible. In Lunar Eternal Blue, all the Dragon spells do something crazy but uses up 99 MP. If you open up with say 3 Blue Dragon Vigors you now have a useless Jane for the rest of the fight. In Final Fantasy 4 it doesn't always make sense to cast Meteo over Flare even though Rydia had close to infinite MP (can always Osmose more back).
Obviously pacing of MP is not very hard. In a game like Shining in the Darkness it's obviously set up that Darksol will use his double demonblazes when he has X HP left and you're expected to be able to cast Heal 4 about 4 times before you run out, so if you're at level Z you should about to do X damage in 5 rounds (can take one double Demonblaze at full HP) assuming you conserved all your MP to chain Bolt 4 on those last 5 rounds. But even then, it adds a dimension where the fight at least looks close. Even if you know the fight always ends with you having 0 MP but the boss dead, the fight sure feels a lot more epic than the average Final Fantasy final boss fight where you end up the fight with nearly 100% HP/MP since this is where you use all your Megaelixirs. It might be a cheap trick, but why remove it if it does no harm to your game?
But it didn't used to be like this. Most of the older RPGs are pretty good at pacing your MP bar. In Shining in the Darkness Heal 4 uses like 4 times the MP as Heal 3 so you don't use it until you get hit by the double Demonblazes in the final fight. You might even use your equivalent of Cure 2 if someone didn't get hurt too much. You also don't just start the fight using Super Spell as fast as possible. In Lunar Eternal Blue, all the Dragon spells do something crazy but uses up 99 MP. If you open up with say 3 Blue Dragon Vigors you now have a useless Jane for the rest of the fight. In Final Fantasy 4 it doesn't always make sense to cast Meteo over Flare even though Rydia had close to infinite MP (can always Osmose more back).
Obviously pacing of MP is not very hard. In a game like Shining in the Darkness it's obviously set up that Darksol will use his double demonblazes when he has X HP left and you're expected to be able to cast Heal 4 about 4 times before you run out, so if you're at level Z you should about to do X damage in 5 rounds (can take one double Demonblaze at full HP) assuming you conserved all your MP to chain Bolt 4 on those last 5 rounds. But even then, it adds a dimension where the fight at least looks close. Even if you know the fight always ends with you having 0 MP but the boss dead, the fight sure feels a lot more epic than the average Final Fantasy final boss fight where you end up the fight with nearly 100% HP/MP since this is where you use all your Megaelixirs. It might be a cheap trick, but why remove it if it does no harm to your game?
