So, what didn't work this expansion?

[Xjev]

yeah true my statement wasn't good, but having many alts recently was something made me feel not as good as having everything on my main toon.

[Glorious Leader]

I dread what's coming after 5.4. Slow catchup and de facto attunement via legendaries (for those wanting to do raiding beyond LFR), coupled with LFR players quickly reaching the end boss and not needing gear to go any further, will lead to even more catastrophic net sub losses.

People currently subbed (for lfr) will unsub. Players looking to resub will second guess that decision. The first group would POTENTIALLY be sated by having alts to play through with lfr but not this expansion. The second group just probably isn't coming back. I don't dred it though. I welcome it. It's a total and utter rejection of their design philosophy for mists (and to a lesser extent cataclysm) and I hope some serious soul searching goes on at Blizzard.

[rhoark]

I think the game now is the best it has ever been. I especially appreciate how they corrected course and made all the expansion's raid tiers stay relevant, unlike Cataclysm and LK. It's just an older game with more competition now.

[melodramocracy]

I dread what's coming after 5.4. Slow catchup and de facto attunement via legendaries (for those wanting to do raiding beyond LFR), coupled with LFR players quickly reaching the end boss and not needing gear to go any further, will lead to even more catastrophic net sub losses.

Absolute truth.

[Glorious Leader]

yeah true my statement wasn't good, but having many alts recently was something made me feel not as good as having everything on my main toon.

It's fine if you hold that feeling but I'm not sure how pervasive or wide spread that feeling is. It's something I think that gets lost in translation a little bit. Personally I like the variety of playing multiple characters and rolls. I think the desire for that (even more than the desire for reward) trumps the desire for having things to do on one toon (that i've been doing things on for years now). Now without reward for that play style and with constant grind put in front of it (in effect punishing that desire) then it (and by extension the game) become less and less desirable.

Honestly it's okay if you like doing things on one toon but it's not something that I thing is easily translatable. I can explain why I like variety in playing different rolls and different characters with different abilities. I can't explain why it's "better" to just have one guy doing one thing. Maybe somebody else can take a crack at it.

It lines up. If you have multiple alts because you play 20-30 hours a week then it should line up (as it has in the past) that the guy who play 1-2 hours a week has just enough reward and progression for the time he can afford to submit to the game. Now SOME (and I mean some in the tiny minority sense of the word) people want to have 30 hours a week worth of content on their main but that's a desire that confuses me. I mean maybe cause you RP alot? *shrug* either way far more people were satisfied and catered to in the previous iteration of this game.

[Sturmbringe]

1. The expansion theme was un-wowish. The whole expansion seemed not like Warcraft.
2. Pandas made the game seem not like Warcraft.
3. Too much Developer time spent on Wowkemon and Wokemon Battles.
4. 25 man raiding continued to be almost completely dead and the Devs did nothing to revive it.
5. The Devs encouraged raid guild shrinking and LFR-only raiding which in turn destroyed many communities who had survived the decimation of 25 man raid guilds. There are hardly any communities left in what is supposed to be a social game.

Just give us legacy progression Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK servers and I will definitely re-sub. (I quit 2-3 months after MoP launched). Definitely not planning to resub to play MoP or any descendants thereof.

[Lyrax]

Didn't do anything wrong. All products follow the product life cycle, and unfortunately WoW is no exception. It has entered the decline stage imo, or is at saturation point and has just started declining. Games will die out eventually, and it seems WoWs time is going to be slowly coming to an end over the next few years. Titan is in development, or wutever it may be called, and that will be ready to replace WoW when the time comes.

Imo, MoP isn't doing anything wrong. The reason people say that Naxx etc were the hardest/most enjoyable raids is cause back then, people weren't as good at the game as they are now. Addons and skill of players has diluted the difficulty, and no matter how hard encounters are, people will find this game far easier than wut it was. MoP has been a fantastic expansion imo, and whooped catas ass really hard, but who cares, 7.7m is more than double their competition. No company will ever come close to WoW's playerbase, and they still have a healthy income. People seem to be making a mountain out of a mohill imo D:

[Tyrgannus]

The reason people say that Naxx etc were the hardest/most enjoyable raids is cause back then, people weren't as good at the game as they are now. Addons and skill of players has diluted the difficulty, and no matter how hard encounters are, people will find this game far easier than wut it was.

This is far truer than most people playing since Vanilla want to admit.

[Sky High]

MoP sure as shit wasn't Alt friendly but then again the levels we reached in Altalsim were ridiculous, where I had 9 characters that could complete heroic mode DS. Wrath was a lot better in that it took longer to get a max toon geared up since we had the lack of LFR. and the rep grinding and leveling experience I will say was the best we had in game, I could pick and choose different routes to level in in Wrath, Cata and MoP were waaaaay to linear. can't tell you how much I DONT want to level a toon through deepholm again.....

[Glorious Leader]

MoP sure as shit wasn't Alt friendly but then again the levels we reached in Altalsim were ridiculous, where I had 9 characters that could complete heroic mode DS. Wrath was a lot better in that it took longer to get a max toon geared up since we had the lack of LFR. and the rep grinding and leveling experience I will say was the best we had in game, I could pick and choose different routes to level in in Wrath, Cata and MoP were waaaaay to linear. can't tell you how much I DONT want to level a toon through deepholm again.....

Okay why was you having 9 alts ridiculous? Like it gets thrown around that it's a bad thing but I can't for the life of me figure out why. If you have 9 alts and you play for 15-20+ then the guy who plays for 2-3 hours a week is just getting by on his one toon and is far more satisfied than now where he's getting nowhere on that one toon because you having 9 alts is apparently ridiculous??

It get's thrown around alot but nobody has ever put up a good argument. I think it's one of those things that's just assumed is bad but nobody ever looked into it having upsides as well. Even the devs say cataclysm was far to alt friendly but well how is that possible? Like how is that a bad thing? So what you have 9 alts. I don't see the downside... I would submit that even if it is a disease (and I don't buy that it is) mists as a cure is far worse.

[Seezer]

It wasn't so alt friendly as for example wrath/cata was ^^

Wrath didn't have LFR. LFR is an altoholics god. Besides, very few players are altoholics. You can't design a game around ppl wanting 10 toons in max level gear.

I said this from the beginning. Pandas. People hated the idea of pandas. And all of the lame lore that went along with it. People kept saying "Derp pandaren were in the series since WC3". Yeah. Because someone made an april fools joke about it. ANd then ppl said "HEY I WANT PANDAS". And blizz put a panda in. It was an expansion made from an april fools joke.

[Glorious Leader]

Wrath didn't have LFR. LFR is an altoholics god. Besides, very few players are altoholics. You can't design a game around ppl wanting 10 toons in max level gear.

That's not true. Their are far more players with alts they would play for variety than guys who play one character for the entirety of an expansion. Especially in more recent years. As for not being able to design the game around people wanting 10 toons in max gear I don't see why not. It's actually exactly what the devs are after. It gives people LOTS to do without putting out the players who can only afford to put like 2-3 hours in the game on one main toon.

Everybody wins in the above scenario except for say the guy who wants to put 20-30 hours into one character. That guy is a minority.

[AlisonPrime]

Mop becomes INCREDIBLY alt friendly if you decide to just be like....hey, i'll get my items eventually, I don't HAVE to grind everything out immediately. You don't need to pour your focus into your toons over the course of a few weeks, you can just lay back and take your time with it. I am living proof of this.

I have 9 lvl 90's and since I stopped caring about Valor caps, and such, i find I have time to raid, AND do all my toons.....in the span of just 2 days a week doing LFRs and look at the result of only a month and a half of doing things like this

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - DK Main
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Paladin Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Warrior Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Hunter Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Shaman Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...coris/advanced - Druid Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Monk Main Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Mage Alt
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...prime/advanced - Warlock Alt

[Deleted]

I don't think anything introduced in MoP caused decline in subscriptions.

Game was ruined in Cataclysm and MoP didn't fix it: equal 10/25 man raids and shared lockout. It ruined 25 man raiding and alt/casual 10 man raiding, it caused death of almost all big relaxes/semi-hardcore guilds.

[Seezer]

You really need to start playing a new record...

MoP is as "wowish" as any other expansion.
Pandas are actually Pandaren. If you can't see past them, you're obviously not seeing the actual game and lore that came with them.
No dev time was really spent on Pet Battles, as they are actually called. It was pretty much done by the UI team, as Blizzard have said a few times.
Tell me what Thunderforged gear was meant to do please. I think that counts as something at least. Nothing major though, I agree.
The communities in the game have always been largely contained within the guilds. There are still a great many guilds out there that are plenty social. The devs can't force people to interact, and quite a lot of people on this very site that complain about it don't even do it. Not exactly solving the "problem", are they?

Legacy servers would be a waste of time and money. This topic has been beaten so much that the horse is now a skeleton.

This expansion wasn't "Wowish" at all. Call them pandaren till you're blue in the face, but they are still pandas.

[Fullmetal89]

The number one issue for me has been the incredible amount of gating this xpac has. They literally force feed you dailies/LFR until you unsub. I get that they are lazy and don't want to make catch up dungeons but honestly what they did in this xpac is make it near impossible for those of us that love making alts to enjoy the game. I can't ever stay on one toon for more than a couple of months I get sick of the play style. During Wrath/Cata I could swap to my priest once I got bored of my Hunter and get some decent gear fairly quickly do a couple of normals as disc till I got bored of healing. Switch to my warrior for some fun tanking, rinse and repeat with every level cap toon I had. In MoP its been a god damn nightmare for alt-aholics. I don't want to have to do a million dailies to get the damn coins for LFR loot. I don't want the entire gear progression to be RNG based, and I don't have the time to raid with my guild for catch up gear even if its old content. Case and point, bring back catch up dungeons and valor gear sets that get padded with LFR gear. Instead of forcing people to gear through a horribly frustrating mechanic. Oh and scenarios are not a "fun alternative" to raiding/dungeons. There's no incentive in doing them more than once. I mean if they added some cool transmog gear or something it be worth it. Like what they did with the first scenario during Cata. I don't know but as much as I love the pandaren race and Pandaria; I've really had a frustrating experience with this xpac. Its hard for me to say this but I've found MoP to be more boring than Cataclysm, with all its faults at least had decent PvP.

[Seezer]

And people are over wow. Everything has a finite life. Including wow. It doesn't really matter what they do. WoW is going to continue to decline. Many people are just outgrowing it, and for kids, there are better games out there. MMO's just aren't cutting it anymore.

[Shampro]

Alliance and Horde going and each other throats is def not ''WoW''ish

Goddamned idiots.

[Glorious Leader]

And people are over wow. Everything has a finite life. Including wow. It doesn't really matter what they do. WoW is going to continue to decline. Many people are just outgrowing it, and for kids, there are better games out there. MMO's just aren't cutting it anymore.

MMOs were NEVER cutting it at least not to the degree that wow did. WoW only cut it because it was less MMO then well every other MMO. Their is a direct corellation between the developers embracing conventions of the MMO genre and the decline in the subscriber base. That doesn't mean it's a causation but I do think their is something there. Just not sure how you'd go about proving it.

[Deleted]

The reason people say that Naxx etc were the hardest/most enjoyable raids is cause back then, people weren't as good at the game as they are now.

Well I played in (and before) Naxx and I'm still playing and to be honest, I was probably much "better at the game" back then. But back then I had almost unlimited free time to play the game. These days I have family and career and much less playtime and interest - other things have higher priority, it was back in 2006 after all.

I could never go back to those days *but* I really like the game just fine as it is today.