Is WoW Still Immersive?

[Deleted]

Does the new cross-realm feature not, at least partially, fix this issue?

There is always the initial Hype to start a new alt and at least reach lvl 20/30 after that people usually quit. And of course every new player contributes to populating the zone (plus the server changes now). I always used to find a group of new players at Duskwood, Tarren Mill, Westfall, basically all the initial level zones until stranglethorn vale at least had a group on them. And always gave the true experience of leveling to people. I bet every new player now just queue up in main city...

But guys I don't know if the answer to bring world pvp back is in the leveling zones. I always hoped blizzard implemented some kind of stuff to bring players with level cap to the world. Like....Gurubashi Arena, Dire Maul Arena, stuff with updated rewards that everyone wanted. The presence of events like this through out the world could easily create hubs of people and partys from both factions populating the zone for infinite times. (people still go to gurubashi arena just for the lols so imagine new updated rewards in this chests.)
Just an idea what you think?

[Deleted]

WoW hasn't been immersive for a long while now. With all the dailies it feels more like a chore.

[Vermicious]

Not nearly as much as it was... being able to fly almost anywhere takes a lot of that out. I do miss the BC era for that.

[Tyrannica]

We really don't know why people are leaving. Could it be the age of the game casues less people joining? Who knows.
The amount of levels for a new person could be off setting for them. There's really no telling the real reasons people are leaving, only assumptions.

Blizz just ignore their customers, totally. That is why people are leaving an aged game.

Proove is MoP, you get refined pet battles, more and more pets, more and more mounts, and pandas. thats not even PG12 thats PG6. In additon the story lines and dialoges of important events are on the level of some author who writes child books. Totally simplified.

As far as text and lore goes, i haven't seen a complex plot that is slightly difficult to understand in ages and certainly never in wow, maybe due to PG12.

Blizz is ignoring its long time customers, cause they ignore they are aged like the game. Probably most weren't even close to 12 in vanilla either, yet blizzard is making more and more content for kids....? Maybe some actual lead designers have serious child complex and they therapie it in this game.

I can only pray and hope the Titan lead designers are more in line what an adult wants from this game. And yeah i think this started allready in wotlk. The parody lichking(arthas) who acted like the darth vader parody in spaceballs, did not agree with the wc3 arthas who was much darker and more serious to the point. Also i laughed to the fact, that he sits on his frozen throne while alliance and horde bombard icecrown and take all the scourge infested lands, together with tirions forces and the ebon blade, while in fact, arthas used to do his work in person and launch counteroffensives to that ally&horde threat immediatly, while ner'zhul's spirit, if he wouldn't be vanquished by arthas, would have fled, exactly in the same style as in the end of "beyond the dark portal".

Wished the solo scenarios for story telling made it way earlier to this mmo, it would have helped to close the logic errors and idotic behaviours of important lore characters!

Maybe this is cause its a MMO, or maybe this happened cause blizzard is bad in story telling, bioware once stated blizzard can't do a rpg and tell a story but that was before wow. I think they are good in making working business models with a mmo. But the rpg department is lacking.

Lets hope the fresh added devs of project Titan will do it better, some of them have TBC expierence, but possible they will be asssimliated by the current business model and how things work now...

When i started mmos i said to myself i will never look back to solo rpgs cause they are lifeless in comparssion to a real big world with real people.

Now, i think a solo rpg can progress and tell a story faster and more intelligently and i miss that time, people became more an more pointless in wow also cause the best ones quitted the game and all what is left is silly content for kids and pet battles. People aren't quitting wow cause they are exhausted and the game is aged, they quit cause it had changed to something really worse.
It just equals a massive browserfarmgame in disguise, now. You do every day the same daily clicks and button pushes for the sake of farming and they improved this method by adding more dailies than ever. After getting huge junks of critizing the devs of this game still ignore their customers and defend what they did.

Immersive? Quite the opposite, nowdays!

[Aleksej89]

You can absolutely make wow leveling very immersive.

The absolute key is to not rush progress (even hide your EXP bar), read quests (pick zones where you can even roleplay a bit as a "class" doing something related to you) - and make sure you do not use WTFPWNOMGBBQ gear (not just heirlooms, a lot of regular quest gear is too strong for it's level).
Getting a friend is also great, especially if he also likes to RP (even in the tiniest bit).

Being immersed in wow leveling is all about taking your time and enjoying the WORLD, not rushing to max lvl.

As far as end game wow goes - it is literally ALL about the community you either Raid or do Organized PvP with.
If they are some junk ass mada fakas who want phat lewts, you will not have an immersive time.

[Angella]

When LFR drops the same gear as heroic raids the transition to 'wow - casual edition' will be complete. Almost there.

[Sebsmash]

Haven't felt immersed since leveling to 60 in TBC. It's all the same bullshit every time you log on, no random events going on to make it seem like the world is actually alive. Maybe if I flew over a small hill and saw some bandits fighting some towns people, or some demons attacking wildlife etc I would feel some sort of immersion, hell they even got rid of weather effects to a large degree.

The game has been severely downgraded in my opinion, and most of it is about feeling like you're in a different chaotic world.

[Gorehowl]

i havent felt immersion in wow since wotlk and i probably wont again really, game just isnt the same to me. still fun yeah, but doesnt feel like it used to.

[PenguinChan]

All depends on the zone and how it's presented. I haven't immersed myself in World of Warcraft since Cataclysm, just because I don't care about the Pandaren lands enough. They are decent, not exactly thrilling, but not immersive as I don't want to immerse myself in that content.

[Angella]

Real question: what games DO feel immersive right now?

[PenguinChan]

Real question: what games DO feel immersive right now?

In what context. Within the last decade, year, month? You can't just ask a question like that and leave how recent. :P

[Duronos]

Very little, but nowhere near as immersive as it used to be. I miss the time where if you made stupid decisions you paid the price. I remember getting my Ashkandi for the first time and my guild treating me as a god. Nothing feels like an achievement anymore, in other words everything feels like a chore. Below are my "ratings of immersion" for each expansion.

Mists of Pandaria: 4.3
Cataclysm: 6.1
Wrath of the Lich King: 8.5
The Burning Crusade: 9.3
Vanilla: 8.9

The Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King being my favorites.

I could agree with this, personally though I think Vanilla was more immersed than any of them. A lot of zones to go around in, Stranglethorn Vale before Cataclysm was the shit.

[coldrain]

nothing lasts forever.

even without the changes made to the game with questhelper, dungeon/raid finder, crz, et cetera.. Do anything for so long.. too much of a good thing..

The game sucks to people because they've memorized the shit.

[Glorious Leader]

Risk free gameplay that provides no consequence to decision making on the part of the player does nothing for immersion.

No, this game is not immersive. Some of the environments are, but the best of those are ones that you're basically whisked through while leveling, or skip entirely.

Basically this guy and the developers share a similar mind set. It's a wholly ignorant one that confuses inconvenience for immersion. In mists they got rid of lots of "risk free gameplay" but I didn't feel any more or less immersed. The island of thunder wasn't more immersive cause I couldn't fly, it was just a pain in the asshole to get around. That's it. Go ahead take away flying and lfd and every convenience you can think of. Take away the "risk free gameplay" you won't get the immersion back. All you get is pissed off customers.

I'll put this in bold because it needs to be understood. IMMERSION IS DEAD Youtube, google, wowhead, quest helper, thottbott, mmo-champion, elitistjerks KILLED IMMERSION not convenience or flying mounts or "risk free gameplay" LOL. Nothing the developers did killed immersion. The world wide web did. The immersion in the game was a huge trick that was broken when you saw the man behind the curtain.

So unless the developers can somehow manage to claw back the world wide web NOTHING they can do will bring back immersion. That includes the removal of all the convenience features ("risk free gameplay") in the universe. Go ahead make the game more obtuse, please by all means. You think it will fool people? It isn't fooling people in mists...

[PenguinChan]

I'll put this in bold because it needs to be understood. IMMERSION IS DEAD Youtube, google, wowhead, quest helper, thottbott, mmo-champion, elitistjerks KILLED IMMERSION not convenience or flying mounts or "risk free gameplay" LOL. Nothing the developers did killed immersion. The world wide web did. The immersion in the game was a huge trick that was broken when you saw the man behind the curtain.

I was immersed by Cataclysm, most way through. Immersion isn't dead, stop saying it is. Just because you spoil it for yourself, or others spoil it for themselves doesn't mean people like me will.

[lawow74]

MMO and Immersion don't mix, unless you can truly get out and away from any other players and focus on doing things by yourself, at least IMO. I can lose myself in my gameplay and feel like I'm my character, handling whatever needs to be handled when I'm alone.

It's when I have to be around other players that I start losing my sense of immersion. Though I tend to just see them as NPC's of varying levels of usefulness.

[Sebsmash]

I was immersed by Cataclysm, most way through. Immersion isn't dead, stop saying it is. Just because you spoil it for yourself, or others spoil it for themselves doesn't mean people like me will.

Immersed with recycled content.

Ho ho hoooooooo! So basically you were immersed with Vanilla WoW.

[Glorious Leader]

I was immersed by Cataclysm, most way through. Immersion isn't dead, stop saying it is. Just because you spoil it for yourself, or others spoil it for themselves doesn't mean people like me will.

Right okay it isn't dead for you. Now tell me was that because of anything the developrs did or because you ignored shit on the web?

When I say it's dead I mean it's dead because the game is alot smaller relative to the average player now. Players are bigger (in that they are smarter, more informed and more aware) in general and it's not because the developers have done anything to the game, it's because the potential access to resources outside of the game is MASSIVE compared to what it was before and the access is all there for people.

Guys like the dude I quoted have this myth that if you simple make the game this obtuse grindy bullshit, you remove the "risk free gameplay", this magical tooth fairy will come by and you'll go back to being dumb and tricked into immersion again when the reality is you can't recork that wine bottle. It's open. It's done. Now some people will avoid the googles of the world and good on you but that isn't the developers jurisdiction to determine and NOTHING they did has anything to do with immersion being lost in the game. It's solely a player problem, one of the few in game actually.

[PenguinChan]

Immersed with recycled content.

Ho ho hoooooooo! So basically you were immersed with Vanilla WoW.

Excluding content that wasn't exclusive to Cataclysm, of course. Bar the neat end-time dungeons.

- - - Updated - - -

Right okay it isn't dead for you. Now tell me was that because of anything the developrs did or because you ignored shit on the web?

When I say it's dead I mean it's dead because the game is alot smaller relative to the average player now. Players are bigger (in that they are smarter, more informed and more aware) in general and it's not because the developers have done anything to the game, it's because the potential access to resources outside of the game is MASSIVE compared to what it was before and the access is all there for people.

It's not like I'm shoved in the face every time I visit mmo-champion's main page with semi-spoiler content. I see content (or models) before they are released, I sometimes look at things that I shouldn't before it's available to the live client. I inform myself, but that doesn't stop me from being immersed in content I deem enjoyable. It has always been on the player to immerse themselves in the end, regardless of all the information given to you.

[Angella]

In what context. Within the last decade, year, month? You can't just ask a question like that and leave how recent. :P

Was hoping "right now" was sufficient for time specification. I mean MMOs that are currently available to play.