When will World of Warcraft become World of Warcraft again? the spark is long lost.

[Jaojin]

Other people said it better before me. The players are getting better, hardest parts of the game are getting harder too. But the easy parts that have always been easy (leveling, quests, dungeons) aren't easier, they are nearly equally hard, but the players are way better, that's the main thing.

I think it's a bit of both. For one, players are much better and there are far more resources and mods online that enable you to play better even if you lack skill. On the other hand there are things they implemented that unnecessarily make the game easier, but you might not recognize them as such... like quest tracker. After they added it as baseline I stopped questing. For some reason I felt disgusted and bored with it and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why, so I attributed it to boredom with the same ol' model and just skipped it for the most part. Then after staying away from it for years I was leveling another toon and then it hit me that the quest tracking was annoying me. Turned it off and my play experience improved dramatically, I had to read quests again, and search for things.

Some things that are quality of life improvements for some bother people who didn't need them. Some are just real, authentic improvements that were sorely needed. Some people just don't like change. Some people just like to complain about how they can't prove they are better than player x or y. There are a myriad of reasons that people feel the way they do about the changes to WoW, but in the end it comes down to one simple truth: You adapt or you die.

Adapt or move on.

[Deleted]

What I have noticed as an original player in 2004 and now trying beta, the spark is not back. It's good but I get home every night and playing some beta is last thing on my mind, it's just simply not compelling, like the original was.

However, what I do NOT believe is, this game/company cannot make something like the old game, the one that had adventure, where you escaped to another world, not the current world, the one you log in to, with a soulless shopping list of things to do, log off, repeat ad nauseum. Wow2 will bring this back. We will play WOD, it will be OK. Not great, but next Blizz, 2015, Wow 2 will be announced and we will be excited. It won't be ready but it will be at advanced stage. Oh and the movie, the whole thing is a fab marketing exercise and win win..

Dreaming of running around Mulgore questing and only imagining what it will be like in next zone, the Barrens. I think I spent a month on that in 2005. Magic days.

[Lumicide]

The spark was in you, not the game

Hate the player, not the game. (or Hate the sinner, not the sin.) W-w-wait a minute... For fun, let's go to an extreme to see if that holds up. If Blizzard made WoW into a Flappy Bird clone, would the community still be at fault for not liking the change, or would it be the fault of Blizzard for completely destroying the game?

Eve has increased in popularity over the pats 11 years consistently, WoW has gone down the past 4 of its 10 years. Would it be reasonable to say: the changes to Eve have made it more appealing, and the changes to WoW have made it less appealing

[Deleted]

I agree with many of your points.
But players age and can't all spend ungodly amount of time farming a rep or an item anymore.

[Aehl]

1. Should it really be this easy to farm gear?
2. Wouldn't you like Attunaments instead of achievement linking?
3. Would you mind, if epics were only obtainable from raids, with a lower chance? say 2 items per boss drops, instead of like 6-8 or whatever it is?
4. How can you be happy about getting a item, if you know that within the next 24 hours you might replace it?
5. Why would there be so many zones with so many quests... if you don't even have time to do more than 5 quests each zone because you level up too fast?
6. i watched a Youtube Video of a blue geared level 90 going to Draenor for the first time... and 2 hitted mobs... and got BLUE GEAR FROM QUESTS!?!?!? will Draenor really be that easy!?!? is there no challenge in questing?!?!

1. Yes
2. They sucked
3 I would mind a great deal
4. So? Gear progression and upgrades are hardly new
5. So dont use BOA's and do it the old fashioned way
6. Questing is not designed to drive you nuts and is not meant to be a brick wall. Of course its blue gear, it's QUEST gear, whats the colour got to do with it.

[Aquinan]

Not great, but next Blizz, 2015, Wow 2 will be announced and we will be excited. It won't be ready but it will be at advanced

I doubt they will make a wow2

[Tisane]

Damn what a long post. But yeah, gotta agree the 'spark' was within the players and not the game. Even if it'd be Vanilla still, I doubt we'd like it as much as we did in the past for several reasons, such as other games becoming more well-developed than WoW Vanilla, realizing that some things were ridiculous (in a bad way), and so on, and so on. And yes I've played Vanilla, and yes I miss a lot about it, but I doubt I'll enjoy that nostalgia more than a few days.

I've played a handful of mmorpg-games for several years which decided to open up 'classic' servers or simply had the classic option still after all those years, I thought it'd be amazing to go back to that time, and it was, but after a few days it turned out to be pretty boring as I enjoyed the 'spark' back in the days already. Imo you can't get that 'spark' back just by doing the same thing over again, it only looks like that, but when you actually do repeat it, you'll think different.

[Aehl]

Well I think we can all agree that MoP was a terrible failure of an expansion.

No, "we" dont agree at all.

[Deleted]

I bet, if blizzard turned wow into flappybirds clone. The defenders from this threat would still defend the game. "whoah its so simple, and so easy to learn. I dont need to sacrifice my time to do shitty things, i can just jump into the game and start playing! ITS GREAT!".
Ofc the bird would just fly straight, and the game speed would be 10x slower. Just to make sure everybody wins.

Your heads are so deeb into blizzards ass that you cant tell anymore the difference between shit and good quality.

[ThunderTaco]

Hate the player, not the game. (or Hate the sinner, not the sin.) W-w-wait a minute... For fun, let's go to an extreme to see if that holds up. If Blizzard made WoW into a Flappy Bird clone, would the community still be at fault for not liking the change, or would it be the fault of Blizzard for completely destroying the game?

Eve has increased in popularity over the pats 11 years consistently, WoW has gone down the past 4 of its 10 years. Would it be reasonable to say: the changes to Eve have made it more appealing, and the changes to WoW have made it less appealing

Again, are we going to resort to subscribers to decide which design was the best ?

I don't know much about EvE online, but i'm pretty sure it's a niche, its subscribers might have increased over the years, but how many subscribers are we talking about ?

- - - Updated - - -

I bet, if blizzard turned wow into flappybirds clone. The defenders from this threat would still defend the game. "whoah its so simple, and so easy to learn. I dont need to sacrifice my time to do shitty things, i can just jump into the game and start playing! ITS GREAT!".
Ofc the bird would just fly straight, and the game speed would be 10x slower. Just to make sure everybody wins.

Your heads are so deeb into blizzards ass that you cant tell anymore the difference between shit and good quality.

Care to elaborate on how the game lost its "quality" ?

[Hubbl3]

Again, are we going to resort to subscribers to decide which design was the best ?

I don't know much about EvE online, but i'm pretty sure it's a niche, its subscribers might have increased over the years, but how many subscribers are we talking about ?

EVE Online has around 500k or so subs. Daily players peak at 30-40k.

On the other hand EVE is also heavily critizied for the content by it's players, the lack of change and that 9 out of 10 players quit the game after 5 min. Dominion for example seems to be the worst change to Nullsec mechanics ever, and the expansion is several years old.

[Deleted]

I went straight for normal, got to ji-kun normal in early april I believe, but so drama in so many guilds made me quit in april. Unfortunately I broke my collar bone in june so my summer was screwed and went back to wow for 2 months leveling alts, THEN I quit for 8 months.

I never said when I expected WoD to be released soon, you made summer of 2013 up in your own head.
You are probably the most ignorant and dyslectic person on this forum. And yeah, a join date of last month and 168 posts proves a not-so-regular stereotype.
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to grasp at. I said I dislike LFR and am a supporter of difficult content in order to get good rewards even though people of my age get stereotyped into the regular CoD player who wants to be showered in purples. Never did I mention that I did in fact do any HC raiding, but I'd sure like to.

dyslectic? wtf... so now you're offended, and you have to go attacking me with personal shit?
it's not my fault you were lying to us with evidence in your signature O.o

1. "I never said when I expected WoD to be released soon, you made summer of 2013 up in your own head."

2. "I hadn't played in 8 months since summer of 2013. It seemed like WoD was going to arrive soon"

what you said in #2 is totally telling me that you didn't play for 8 months because it seemed like WoD was going to arrive soon...
so my question to you was; how could you believe that WoD was going to release soon when it wasn't even announced?
your post is filled with a bunch of lies, you're just jumping on the train with all those "i don't care if WoW lost 50% of it's playerbase, it's the best right now" people.

but you failed.
you haven't even been playing for 1 year yet you want to support the game for what it is now?
please play the game, clear Siege of Orgrimmar and all that ridiculous shit first. THEN you shall have my attention.

i'm moving forward now, this is not what i wanted to talk about.
i'm just very surprised of how many people that has been spamming this forum telling us that
"lfr is for noobs, flex too, i jump straight to NORMAL"
but they forget they have armory links in their signature... and their characters are full LFR gear or worse.
seriously, you're are not the first one.

[ThunderTaco]

I went straight for normal, got to ji-kun normal in early april I believe, but so drama in so many guilds made me quit in april. Unfortunately I broke my collar bone in june so my summer was screwed and went back to wow for 2 months leveling alts, THEN I quit for 8 months.

I never said when I expected WoD to be released soon, you made summer of 2013 up in your own head.
You are probably the most ignorant and dyslectic person on this forum. And yeah, a join date of last month and 168 posts proves a not-so-regular stereotype.
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to grasp at. I said I dislike LFR and am a supporter of difficult content in order to get good rewards even though people of my age get stereotyped into the regular CoD player who wants to be showered in purples. Never did I mention that I did in fact do any HC raiding, but I'd sure like to.

Dude, don't try to argue with OP, he will just keep saying the game was so much better, harder and the community perfect during Vanilla. That Blizzard destroyed everything because they are greedy and want sub. Then he will argue that WoW isn't that good because it lost subs.

Rince and repeat, even if that doesn't make sense.

[Hubbl3]

Good Quality? You mean MOP have some of the best quality raids in wow history?

For experiencing the quality raids they must do the raids at a serious level. But they lack any will for progression or challenge on their own and just stay in LFR mode while bitching about the low quality and challenge of raids.

[alexke]

You're complaining about shit that happened years ago that isn't making you feel the same today.
It's like a fucking digital version of a midlife crisis.

Raiding in Classic was absolute bullshit. It required you to have 40people online. It required you to do retarded attunement quests wich are outdated to say the least. Having to get new members and doing shit like MC in T2 or AQ40 gear because you just got a new mage that doesn't even know what he's doing.

The loot was utter and total shit. You got 2-4 items depending on the boss per 40m raid. The chance for an upgrade was minor to say the least. About half of the classes / spec combination was absolute shit, to the point where they were non-existant.

"damn a sword dropped and i really want it... i didn't get it... whatever i'll get the mace, the axe or the 1h weapons from all the other bosses with almost the exact same stats... cuz i'll transmog anyway."

- Transmog is hands down one of the best things that ever came to Warcraft. I would've thought a nostalgic fuck like you would've liked something like that? As for complaining about stats and having to much acces to weapons?
Fucking sure. It's not like we had DPS-warriors running around with agility / Ap weapons like Zin'rokh right?
Or it's not like a raid like Molten Core dropped several weapons?

Complaining about class imbalancement now is a fucking joke. Atleast most specs are vailable.

Whereas the raidcontent in general was pure tank 'n spank with minor 'don't stand in shit' mechanics. And honestly, if you played the entirety of Classic and still had a full blue gearset, you did jack shit.
You had multiple craftables, PVP epics, MC and ZG were puggable. Towards the end of Classic I pugged BWL and AQ40 on an alt for Christ's sake.

The only reason some raidbosses lasted as long as they did, was because of no decent testing / bugged / imbalanced to the point where it was impossible to kill it. This is not having a progress boss, it's banging your head on a fucking wall without any outcome.
I have literally done hundreds of attempts on C'thun during classic, but the fight was an absolute bugged out of the ass shitfest.

i remember in vanilla... if someone had half gear with epics he was cool... if someone had epic mount he was cool... if someone had found the ZULIAN TIGER HE WAS SUPER COOL...

- The only thing that required you to get this one was being in the raid. I did ZG atleast 1x per week with my guild. We saw one drop during all of our clears. I'd rather kill a HC mode boss with a guaranteed mount drop or getting a glory mount.
Getting any glory mount > that ZG tiger. It's fun if you have one, don't get me wrong. But getting one was RNG, nothing more.


During MOP the raidcontent was more than good, with a couple of amazing bossfights. Have you atleast killed a boss of a raid on normal?

nowdays you can defeat the game in less than 2 months... do all dungeons get all the best gear with extra rolls... cuz rolling once per boss each week wasn't enough...

- If you concider clearing LFR / Flex beating the game. No fucking wonder you're bored fast. It's not like there's a Heroic mode to be done?
This is why people unsub. They claim they've cleared the game without doing it on the hardest difficulty. And honestly, I'm fine with that.
But do not bitch there is no content for you to do then.

'As dps you need to get a 15-30minute que' - This, allows you to do something else during that que besides spamming in General /Trade chat that you're LFG or LFM and flying to the dungeon / raid, where you always had to summon that one guy that's to fucking lazy to even take a flightpath.

Take off your goddamned rose-tinted glasses. If you really wanted to quit, you could've quit without posting a page of whine. Times change, things evolve. Or would you rather go back to the fucking stone age again? Since I hear getting food was really hard back then. You had to work for it.

TL;DR: World of Warcraft rose-tinted 'I cleared it when it was hard' hipsters complaining shit changes.

Infracted. Keep it civil

[Vintersol]

- If you concider clearing LFR / Flex beating the game. No fucking wonder you're bored fast. It's not like there's a Heroic mode to be done?
This is why people unsub. They claim they've cleared the game without doing it on the hardest difficulty. And honestly, I'm fine with that.
But do not bitch there is no content for you to do then.

You are bored fast because the raid content is repititive as hell. That wasn't the case before Wrath. You didn't know if you will reach every endboss of a raid. That was a totally different experience to raid. And yes, i have 14/14hc, not since January or so, but still i've done more than the vast majority of the game. And even then, i find it not really difficult, but simply boring to do the same over and over again without seeing something new.

[Hubbl3]

You are bored fast because the raid content is repititive as hell. That wasn't the case before Wrath. You didn't know if you will reach every endboss of a raid. That was a totally different experience to raid. And yes, i have 14/14hc, not since January or so, but still i've done more than the vast majority of the game. And even then, i find it not really difficult, but simply boring to do the same over and over again without seeing something new.

In Classic you also had to do the same thing over and over again. I've done MC, BWL, AQ and Naxx about as often as SoO or whatever. And no, you don't have to run LFR, Flex and HC on multiple chars every week. There is basically no difference since classic when you did the hardest available content in all iterations of WoW, with maybe the exception of WotLK, because of different loot in the different raid sizes.

That you are burned out when you are doing LFR, Flex and HC on multiple chars a week, okay. But there is absolutley no need in that, even if you are in a world top 100 raid.

[alexke]

You are bored fast because the raid content is repititive as hell. That wasn't the case before Wrath. You didn't know if you will reach every endboss of a raid. That was a totally different experience to raid. And yes, i have 14/14hc, not since January or so, but still i've done more than the vast majority of the game. And even then, i find it not really difficult, but simply boring to do the same over and over again without seeing something new.

Before Wrath you had fights like KT / Illidan wich were bugged so far up the ass, you could've concidered them as a 'gate'. The only reason you didn't know wether or not you'd reach an endboss was how much buggs / failed bosses you'd get.

Or in the case of having a rogue with Warglaive combo, how much of your members would get taken by other guilds. Fights got released in a state that were unacceptable.
This is the reason we have BETA / PTR tests.

but simply boring to do the same over and over again without seeing something new

Like doing SSC / MH again because of attunements? It works either way. I love to get new content, don't get me wrong on that one. But it really isn't that diffrent from TBC if you think about it.
Only then you were gated by bugged bosses or gating via Sunwell isle.

[Deleted]

You are bored fast because the raid content is repititive as hell. That wasn't the case before Wrath. You didn't know if you will reach every endboss of a raid. That was a totally different experience to raid. And yes, i have 14/14hc, not since January or so, but still i've done more than the vast majority of the game. And even then, i find it not really difficult, but simply boring to do the same over and over again without seeing something new.

yeah those guys are just talking bullshit.

@ my realms... i can't even get into a HC guild with my 563 geared alt... i need ATLEAST 570...
those guys trying to tell me that i should jump straight to HC with blue gear? then "wtf" is what i have to say.
i will get SOOOOOOO REJECTED. even with full ToT HC gear, there's NO WAY IN HELL that i will ever be accepted into a group/guild what so ever... you guys are being ridiculous. i have done HC, i have done NORMAL, i have done more then most of you people that come here whining about my thread.

it don't matter how many achievements i show, how many main/alts with the achievements i show...
they wouldn't invite me simply because MY HP IS SO DAMN LOW, I WILL DIE FROM 1x SWELLING PRIDE for example, i will die instantly at any boss with AOE that covers the whole room... simply because i have TOO LOW HP.

i am forced to farm LFR/FLEX/NORMAL so that i won't get 1 hit by unavoidable AOE in HC.
so don't come here with all your bullcrap.

[Sansnom]

Hate the player, not the game. (or Hate the sinner, not the sin.) W-w-wait a minute... For fun, let's go to an extreme to see if that holds up. If Blizzard made WoW into a Flappy Bird clone, would the community still be at fault for not liking the change, or would it be the fault of Blizzard for completely destroying the game?

Eve has increased in popularity over the pats 11 years consistently, WoW has gone down the past 4 of its 10 years. Would it be reasonable to say: the changes to Eve have made it more appealing, and the changes to WoW have made it less appealing

Interesting analogy. Lets continue and say Blizzard did make that change, and the lost the existing customers but gains an equal or larger customer base. Would it be Blizzard's fault for the change?

Eve certainly has proved its endurance in the MMO, especially considering the other failures, TSW, SwoToR, LoR just to name a few. But just taking one facets of available information and use that as a basis of comparison is rather naive. What would be interesting to see is the player turn over. How many new players Eve is attracting and retaining, how many long terms subscribers, active players etc.