Can the WoW community ever become what it once was again?

[Deleted]

Blizzard providing an environment where you don't have to improve as a player to experience end-game content is what happened.

Casual players complaining that they couldn't experience the game as intended because they weren't good enough has led to the complete gutting and pruning of classes and their abilities. It's almost comical to look at the empty husk that classes have become as opposed to past expansions.

The part I disagree with here is the classes. They have more depth now then vanilla or tbc. The thing is we are far to powerful for the world. Take the defias gang from vanilla and look at how they functioned.

Knuckle busters = Fast attacks that tear apart low armor players having one get the first hit on you as a cloth was bad. You needed to kite them at equal level unless you had a lot of gear he wins the fight. This mob was a joke to mail and even most leagher users

Mages= High burst from long range and tended to patrol with other mobs if not picked off by range melee needed to kill or cc them they would chunk your hp by as much as 30% per spell

Bandits = Like knuckle dusters but slower heavier attacks. Less threatening to casters since they don't inflict as much delays from hiting you while casting but more dangerous to melee.

Compare that to now?

I honestly don't know what mobs do on live they all die to one spell hit.... My rogue can outheal a entire gang beating on him from leeching poison...

Its a joke and it doesn't stop being a joke till mythic dungeons. Though by the time you run them you tend to be 30ilvs higher then they were intended for. Then raiding that is it. WoW at this point need to be rebuilt from the ground up. As scary as it is for blizz maybe the no magic melee mage shouldn't be able to hit level cap?

[Lliam]

The community will improve when these types are put in check. And it will take a community to do that. Self policing communities ftw.

One could argue that is how it was in Vanilla/BC before all of the cross-realm options we have in the games current state.

The part I disagree with here is the classes. They have more depth now then vanilla or tbc. The thing is we are far to powerful for the world. Take the defias gang from vanilla and look at how they functioned.

I was speaking more to the fact that they are removing utility abilities that differentiate elite players from the good players. Removing Die by the Sword for example from warriors as a baseline ability in Legion removes the option of a DPS warrior saving a tank by being able to taunt the boss and survive for a short period of time. Also, look at affliction warlocks in Legion, they have four damaging abilities.. tell me how that is going to be a fun spec to play.

[Deleted]

Honestly man, I dont think its a WoW problem, or MOBA problem, or GAME problem. The problem is with the people who play them. Most of them think they are all smarter/wittier/edgier/more hardcore/etc. than anyone else, and they build up this air of superiority around them. Hurr durr look at my gaming achievements, bla bla bla. For those of us who just want to have fun playing, no matter what else is going on, it gets pretty damn tiresome. The community will improve when these types are put in check. And it will take a community to do that. Self policing communities ftw.

You will always get those types. They are effectively digital entropy when it comes to online games. Blizzards mistake was catering to then. Somewhere along the line it became unacceptable to just enjoy fighting world mobs that posed a threat. From their elites got removed from the world. After that normal dungeons where no longer acceptable they demanded they be renamed into heroics so they didn't feel left out. Then came raiding itself.

You can't use appeasement for those kind of people. They won't stop till the last boss is kill able in three aa attacks or their pet and bis gear is mailed to them. The really sick then is even when they get what they ask for they just go "no content unsub". I have no idea what compelled blizzard to chase after people who don't enjoy mmos but god damn did it back fire.

[CaptainV]

I am talking about how the game worked way back when in the golden age of vanilla and tbc. When a player almost had to rely on others to level with challenging group quests and world mobs that posed at least a moderate threat to players.

Then there is the whole end game. Where one it was a game focused on forming connections and working with other players to advance and accomplish common goals it has increasingly become a solo player game. Devoid of challenge and rewarding the worst of the worst with slow dull repetitive gameplay. This game design slowly killed off any kind of community outside of what the top players managed to create. This toxic system slowly burns and grinds down players trying to advance by tossing one grind after another at them in a endless cycle of catch up. From lfr to apexis then to conquest.

Is there a way to return to the slow system of steady progression we used to have or has the idea of instant gratification simply destroyed any chance of that happening in favor of "its my wel-fare epics and I want them now!" ?

The "golden" age you like to paint with rose tinted glasses wasnt all that pretty to begin with, take it from a veteran of that timeline. This "welfare" epics mentality isnt new, infact it was argueably worse back in the age of the TBC 1% over the 99% because literally everyone had no patience for screwups, entire raid guilds had to die because one or two players made a mistake forcing the raid to disband and its members to find some hope of joining a new guild.

It was actually "worse" than it is now, hard as you may think that is to believe, even back in Vanillia the concept of DKP as an early bonus rolls system which was (heavily) abused to the convinence of many leaders/leaders girlfriend/boyfriend/reletives generally sucked.

If you really wanna add insult and salt to this wound, you can also consider the fact that 40 man raiding was literally what LFR is today in earlier content like MC, where many people just got the attunement, qued up in a big ass raid for loot and didnt commit to anything more than trying to dps so they could get a shiny piece of gear.

It was a terrible community, toxic and elitist to the core and it didnt offer some "inspired" group unity as most think, the only time that 'ever' appeared in WoW's entire lifetime was when the raiding became a casual scene and WOTLK came into the frey. For the first time people formed raids for "fun" as opposed to for "progression" and usually did it with groups of dedicated friends, because until thatpoint, raiding was a scene "only" for the elite.

Trust me, the "community" is better off without that stink, Wildstar tried that and look where it got Wildstar.

If Wildstar showed us anything the idea of a hard progressive community designed for long term commitment to content grinding and eventual progression has died because people simply never liked it in the first place.

It never worked, it never has.

The only reason TBC and Vanillia had the popularity they did was because at the "time" WoW was considered significantly more casual and easier to progress through than 99% of every MMO competing with it. Basically, it was the only MMO many people even got to reach end game and play.

That didnt make it good, or even great, at best, it made it tolerable.

The lucky few that had decent raid guilds, great pvp communities, that was a scarce thing that existed in a whirlpool of high demand and little reward.

The demand for "hard raid content" was the reason WoD went back to the stoneage and prooved yet again that by giving a minority content at the expense of everyone else, the game suffers.

Its time to accept that "hard" content wasnt the reason people worked together.

[Zenotetsuken]

I am talking about how the game worked way back when in the golden age of vanilla and tbc. When a player almost had to rely on others to level with challenging group quests and world mobs that posed at least a moderate threat to players.

Then there is the whole end game. Where one it was a game focused on forming connections and working with other players to advance and accomplish common goals it has increasingly become a solo player game. Devoid of challenge and rewarding the worst of the worst with slow dull repetitive gameplay. This game design slowly killed off any kind of community outside of what the top players managed to create. This toxic system slowly burns and grinds down players trying to advance by tossing one grind after another at them in a endless cycle of catch up. From lfr to apexis then to conquest.

Is there a way to return to the slow system of steady progression we used to have or has the idea of instant gratification simply destroyed any chance of that happening in favor of "its my wel-fare epics and I want them now!" ?

I just want to get this first thing out of the way. You have never needed to rely on anyone to level, so claiming that "a player almost had to rely on others to level" is just false.

Now that we got that out of the way...

No, it will never be the community it once was. They have systematically stripped away the things that made that community what it was.
No more place where everyone in your faction hangs out (IF/Org)
No more need to look for dungeon groups
No more need to be in a guild
No more gear grind
No more raid competition
No more raid glory
No more server BGs
No more server World PvP
No more individuals
No more need for communication
No more months of leveling
No more need to farm mats
The list goes on and on. There is no way of getting back to the community that once existed in the game, without undoing the majority of the "QoL" changes that have happened over the past 10 years. Even then, they would just lose the majority of the current players, and end up with a barren world anyways.

[Shinv]

Not unless blizzard removes CRZ and allows server communities to grow again. This game only flourished because of communities everyone doing there own thing all the time with such easy solo and no need grouping is whats been killing the game.

[Aurabolt]

Don't you know that anyone can buy and use Drums of Bloodlust, a consumable item crafted by leatherworkers which grants upon use sligtly worse (25% instead of 30) version of Bloodlust? Here, get the wowhead link

...So you give vague comments that could be 3-5 things and assume I know what you're talking about off the bat. Then you try to talk down to someone you assume doesn't know what they're talking about when in fact we were clearly talking about two different things.

I'm familiar with the item just so you know. I never solo old raids without it because of the stat boost.

One could argue that is how it was in Vanilla/BC before all of the cross-realm options we have in the games current state.

Cross-Realm was introduced mid-MoP. That is worth mentioning off the bat. I played in late TBC.

The only Community Policing was warning against trolls, ninjas and guild bank ninjas and only on high and Medium-High servers from what I saw. That's about it. The WoW Community has yet to prove to me it is willing to police itself since LFD was introduced and I agree that is the ONLY way we will see meaningful change. There is simply too many people unwilling to do it.

[Plotus]

I agree with Redtower. I miss the whole zone progression of the BC Shadowmoon Valley when you needed to group up for quests. That was the most fun i had leveling/questing WAS WHEN I PLAYED WITH OTHER PEOPLE TO DO SOMEWHAT HARDER QUESTS. Shocking i know, in a MMO who would want to do that.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

No, it will never be the community it once was. They have systematically stripped away the things that made that community what it was.
1. No more place where everyone in your faction hangs out (IF/Org)
2. No more need to look for dungeon groups
3. No more need to be in a guild
4. No more gear grind
5. No more raid competition
6. No more raid glory
7. No more server BGs
8. No more server World PvP
9. No more individuals
10. No more need for communication
11. No more months of leveling
12. No more need to farm mats

1. Back in Legion.
2. Back in Legion. Mythic+ dungeons. (already back in 6.2 tbh)
3. How so? You are pugging mythic kills? Or are you suggesting you needed to be in a guild for the super difficult leveling process in Classic?
4. Back in Legion. Legendaries, Mythic+.
5. http://www.wowprogress.com/ compare their kill dates to yours and tell me if its that there is no competitiveness or you are just not competitive.
6. I'll agree with this one. With Transmog and multiple difficulties, the inspiration to raid at the highest level is gone, however you are paying to play a video game. You should aspire to succeed. It only takes a few hours a week!
7. There are no more server BGs because some servers are so small or faction imbalanced that its not feasible anymore. This was changed soooo long ago though.
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cokjnrAAw In your experience there is none. In others, there is more than ever. There was never any real purpose to world pvp though. You need to understand that. The only time it was ever prevalent was because people wanted to do it.
9. Don't understand this comment. I suppose you mean in terms of realm identity. This is gone because they have implemented cross server tech, which was needed with declining population. Sad, but needed.
10. Just a blatant lie. Any serious pve or pvp requires voice. You will never achieve anything worth doing without voice. Even CMs, unless you are getting carried.
11. Thank god? Imagine if it still took 6-10 days played to get to 60, and now you have to get to 110. Good fucking joke. Think about what you are saying before you say it.
12. How is this related to community? You either get the mats in the world, or you buy them on the AH. Hasn't changed since TBC removed those retarded BOP Demonic Runes and crap.

[Zenotetsuken]

1. Back in Legion.
2. Back in Legion. Mythic+ dungeons. (already back in 6.2 tbh)
3. How so? You are pugging mythic kills? Or are you suggesting you needed to be in a guild for the super difficult leveling process in Classic?
4. Back in Legion. Legendaries, Mythic+.
5. http://www.wowprogress.com/ compare their kill dates to yours and tell me if its that there is no competitiveness or you are just not competitive.
6. I'll agree with this one. With Transmog and multiple difficulties, the inspiration to raid at the highest level is gone, however you are paying to play a video game. You should aspire to succeed. It only takes a few hours a week!
7. There are no more server BGs because some servers are so small or faction imbalanced that its not feasible anymore. This was changed soooo long ago though.
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cokjnrAAw In your experience there is none. In others, there is more than ever. There was never any real purpose to world pvp though. You need to understand that. The only time it was ever prevalent was because people wanted to do it.
9. Don't understand this comment. I suppose you mean in terms of realm identity. This is gone because they have implemented cross server tech, which was needed with declining population. Sad, but needed.
10. Just a blatant lie. Any serious pve or pvp requires voice. You will never achieve anything worth doing without voice. Even CMs, unless you are getting carried.
11. Thank god? Imagine if it still took 6-10 days played to get to 60, and now you have to get to 110. Good fucking joke. Think about what you are saying before you say it.
12. How is this related to community? You either get the mats in the world, or you buy them on the AH. Hasn't changed since TBC removed those retarded BOP Demonic Runes and crap.

1. Yeah, I know, I just pointed out that it isn't there currently.
2. Now you are getting into a specialized category. Yes, it will exist, but it's not the norm, and won't be inclusive.
3. Again, specialized category. Mythic has nothing to do with 90%+ of the player base.
4. I will take your word for it.
5. I was talking about friendly server raid competition. Who cares if my raid is #32132323 and yours is #434342, it doesn't have any bearing on anything.
6. Yeah
7. I pointed it out, because it was a unifying aspect of a server, seeing the same people from your server in BGs all the time, slowly learning their strengths/weaknesses.
8. So you are basing your argument on 1 video from 2 years ago on some server? I never said that there was a point to it, as with the server BGs, there was something unifying about fighting against someone on your same server. Cross realm everything put an end to even that IMO.
9. I mean more like not knowing who anyone is. I remember in Vanilla being able to just know who everyone was, because people were more open to being who they were, so you could pick them out of a crowd. Now people just seem to avoid any interactions, because there is no incentive to standing out.
10. Again, specialized category. What I meant was there is no need, or incentive to communicate with each other outside of serious PvP & PvE. Kind of goes along with the #9 TBH.
11. My list wasn't about if a change was good or not, it was about the effect on community, and the slower people level, the more interactions they have with other people. I am still friends with someone that I met in Vanilla, grinding some Yetis because I couldn't stand doing the quests around that level.
12. It was more about there being no reason to interact with anyone, because you can just sit in your garrison and farm what you need, or buy it from the AH. I joined my first raid guild in Vanilla by convincing the GM that the guild would spend less money on buying my Stonescale Eel off the AH if they invited me to the guild and gave me a spot in the raid. lol sorry, that was just one of those nostalgia moments.

Again, my post was about things that have been stripped away that played a part in what we used to have as a community. Some were for the better, some for the worse, some intentionally changed, some unintentionally changed, but all changed in some way.

IDK, I don't really care if you agree or not, it's just how I see it. You could see it completely differently, and that's cool too.

[Gadzooks]

Great example here of WHY the community can never be "what it once was."

People spouting misinformation to support their notion that for some inexplicable reason the community is worse, presumably to justify their own disinterest or perhaps need to fit in?

The player never had to rely on others to level. Never. You were just a noob. In Classic, the fastest way to level was to grind 1-40. This was for a few reasons, first of all because of travel. Travel was a severe hindrance on the world, and having to run for 10 minutes, kill mobs for 10 was very poor exp per hour. Zones were so poorly made in Classic, that you would often have to grind anyway unless you wanted to constantly switch zones.

Next up, lack of gear. Very little quests actually gave gear, so attempting to do them in the order they are presented meant you were quickly overmatched. This is not because they were difficult, it is because they were poorly designed. Simply hitting the AH every time you go to log out allowed you to stay ahead of the curve, something most players never did.

Finally, the spec imbalance perpetuated by poor talent options. The previous talent system worked quite well for leveling up, and was indeed rewarding, but the big issue was how little the class was able to function without its level 30-40 options. In fact, its such an extreme issue that it was actually optimal to level in a certain way, then completely respec just to get the 31 point talent at level 40!
Great example is Paladin.
You NEEDED to put 11 points into Holy just to level, no matter what. Consecration is mandatory. And then what was the 31 point for ret? CC! Great game.

The game never had any challenge. That's an illusion based on how long it actually took to level and how inexperienced you were at the game.
I leveled 4 characters to 60 on Nostalrius, and two of them were under 6 days played, one of them being a Warrior.
The only challenge I ever faced was ganking, and staying motivated in the mid 30s as it started to go from 2-3 hour levels of grinding to 4-5 hour levels of grinding.
Fun game.

So there you go. Great example of why the "community" was a certain way. If they were all as confused as you were, then its no wonder they needed help doing quests that took 30+ minutes of coordination for a mediocre green and 25 percent of a level.

There are many other things that ripped it even further open like LFD and LFR, and I think the push towards Mythic and Mythic + (formerly Challenge Mode) dungeons will do its part in bringing that back together, but if you are talking about going back to where every player on every realm knew everyone else, that will never happen again.
Cross realm grouping capabilities changed that, arguably for the better as server populations continue to decline.

And also, so we are clear - TBC and Classic have to very different leveling models. In TBC, they added hundreds of quests to the old world, and nerfed the leveling experience needed by 25-50 percent per level. Leveling in Classic content during TBC was actually manageable comparatively, and should signify that it was never what you thought it was. Blizzard always wanted to make it more accessible and less grindy, they just didn't have the tools at launch.

If they ever add "sneering elitist" to the dictionary, I nominate this post as the illustration.

[Kavoo]

Is there a way to return to the slow system of steady progression we used to have or has the idea of instant gratification simply destroyed any chance of that happening in favor of "its my wel-fare epics and I want them now!" ?

Since you're touching this subject, while I really loved the old times where I had to work my ass out just to get blues, I don't think gaming scene nowadays allow it to be as slow paced as it were back then, people just don't have the time/interest in doing it anymore. With so many fast paced games in which you just login in and play for whatever amount of time you want, having to play a game where you have to do so many preparations to finally do whatever you want to do just wont cut out for the current gaming generation.

[RoxyBlue]

Since you're touching this subject, while I really loved the old times where I had to work my ass out just to get blues, I don't think gaming scene nowadays allow it to be as slow paced as it were back then, people just don't have the time/interest in doing it anymore. With so many fast paced games in which you just login in and play for whatever amount of time you want, having to play a game where you have to do so many preparations to finally do whatever you want to do just wont cut out for the current gaming generation.

Exactly, in today's society that long grindy and slow in depth journey wont cut it. People want fast and easy relative to their lifestyle. Not many will put up with the way we had to do things back in the day. Sure you get posts on the wow forums about, we really want the old style of leveling and playing back blizz!...and they get upvoted. But the truth is people would scream bloody murder if progression was like it used to be. Heck they screamed bloody murder over not being able to zip around on flyers ignoring most land content.

[Deleted]

Have you never done a apexis daily...?

I have zero clue why you think that game design ever left...

- - - Updated - - -



I have completed every raid before nerfs save for sunwell, uld zero light, and lk due to a combination of work and school I had back then. The fact the game is currently balanced and tuned to be a joke for players who openly drool onto their keyboard is actually a issue. Sure the very,very top level of play hasn't changed but everything below it has. The world doesn't posses any danger anymore at all... When a player can pull two dozen mobs and end with more hp then he started with after you done fucked up in terms of design.

I don't believe wow can get by anymore by just offering a good experience in high level play anymore. They need to actively make a game that provides some level of challenge from start to finish.

Right here in bold is the problem with the community. A problem that has always been there at least since TBC (where I started playing). Players looking down on others just because they play differently or they are new players or they are playing a new class or just because wow is someone's first big game. Elitist find sooo many excuses to call someone "drooling on keyboard", that it's not worth engaging in social activites outside your known group.

For me the social part of wow is guilds and RealID friends with whom I can play together even cross-realm. This has always been the case for me. Group quest in 1-60? I skipped them unless someone was forming a party when I was close. Dungeons? I don't see dirrence compared to today. I typed few extra messages like "Please invite, I'm retri" and saw few extra messages like "Polymorph the moon". That's it. The game has still the same framework for social experience as it always has - grouping for dungeons/raids, grouping for faster dailies... I concede that with shared-tagging of mobs, players don't have to group for elites/rares. But if typing "pls, inv" was good social experience then noone is stopping players from making macros with "pls, inv" and spamming the game into social heaven .. Over the last decade I've added maybe 6-10 players to my friend list (that aren't guild or real-life friends). Except for one I never talked to them anymore once the party was disbanded. And the one was spamming me about running dungeons every other day, just because I performed really well in one (I was focused more on BGs that time).

So, noone is stopping players from talking to others. You can't just force them to talk to you, especially when you think about them as "drooling" idiots.

[glowpipe]

No it won't. You had a lot of grown up people playing it before. It was all about the game and having fun with eachother. Now with damage meters and the current playerbase. its all about beating the meters and making less skilled/geared players feel like shit.

There is no server community anymore either. With crz, name change, realm change and all that shit. The game is just unpersonal. You play with people you never see again. This results in people being dicks and getting away with it.

[SheepHunter]

LOL point me to ONE SINGLE THREAD where this actually happens. I need a good laugh

Play the game, casual plebs dont use the forums.

[Deleted]

Never.

With the rise of social media and more people flooding the internet, waving their rights in faces of anyone who thinks just a bit differently, no community will ever be as it once was. No one is safe. Aggressive behavior will only become a bigger problem. It'll grow like a tumor. You thought being called a noob was bad? People flame, roast and eat each other alive on facebook, twitter, instagram, forums. They call each other the nastiest things. Threaten each other. They even report each other to local authorities because of disagreements. There's been multiple cases where someone has been reported for child abuse or terrorism.

You might think 'they' are just teens. But it's actually adults who are the worst. Moms, dads, grandparents. And it's not going to end. Bullying has gotten a whole new meaning.

I think it has something to do with it being so super easy to voice your opinion. Like I'm doing right now, but people get so personally invested in it and don't stop to think that maybe they should read it over before tossing their cent.

[Gadzooks]

Not unless blizzard removes CRZ and allows server communities to grow again. This game only flourished because of communities everyone doing there own thing all the time with such easy solo and no need grouping is whats been killing the game.

This is definitely part of it. If you read Ghostcrawler's comments (instead of crying about them), he paints a picture of a dev team that's juggling quality of life, convenience, and making sure features aren't abused.

You can build a perfect game on paper, but how the players use the game can be quite different.

Blizzard has definitely dropped the ball on the interpersonal relationship in the game - especially with guilds. Aside from RP and friends/family and raiding, guilds no longer serve any real purpose to the average player. The perks helped, but they took those away with no real explanation, and gutted the guilds that rose in MoP. Changing raid sizes has gutted guilds for years. They need to create more tools to help players build communities - and they fail in that respect - Garrisons being the big mistake they made, and Class Halls doubling down on a bad idea.

Another issue is not the elitist jerk in the end game progression community, or the newbies flailing around in questing and 5 mans and LFR - they're in the parts of the game designed for them, and they're fine. The problem, is the group between, the group that became the largest part of the population...pugs. That's where most of the abuse comes from these days. Cockblocking content by making groups impossible to join, kicking people the instant they don't play perfectly, joining content they don't belong in like LFR and causing drama and problems, and generally making chat channels and groups unpleasant places to be. A lot of effort is made to try and say they don't exist, but that's from those actual players. Once upon a time, the casual player was the largest part of the population of a server, but as interest in the game has faded and the casuals fallen off, this group has become too dominant.

Another issue is anything before the current expansion content is considered something to be gotten through as fast as possible, or skipped. It used to be half the game, and it's where everyone met each other, formed friendships and guilds, and grew into the end game content together. No more. Now a level one is on their own until they reach Draenor - and everyone is a stranger. They don't know their class, they don't know how to play, leveling was too easy, or it didn't happen, because of a boost. They didn't platy the same game everyone did in vanilla/tbc. And that's a shame. That's the game that molded players into who they were.

And finally, but not the only reason remaining, I just want to end here - the chat channels on servers need ti be cleaned up. It's hard to build a community, when most people are afraid to talk, because some neckbeard with sand up his fedora will jump down their throat and abuse them, or the "Hitler did nothing wrong, hur hur" types have taken over. /General on my server, before I quit, might as well have been a 4chan feed. That kind of nonsense doesn't build communities, it fosters and encourages antisocial behavior.

Blizzard's stance in vanilla was that they just provided the tools. The players made the community. It's true - and both sides are dropping the ball these days.

[Jinpachi]

One could argue that is how it was in Vanilla/BC before all of the cross-realm options we have in the games current state.



I was speaking more to the fact that they are removing utility abilities that differentiate elite players from the good players. Removing Die by the Sword for example from warriors as a baseline ability in Legion removes the option of a DPS warrior saving a tank by being able to taunt the boss and survive for a short period of time. Also, look at affliction warlocks in Legion, they have four damaging abilities.. tell me how that is going to be a fun spec to play.

You're right. People knew who the toxic and/or shitty players were. I dont mean shitty as in unskilled, because people can take the time to teach if they want. I'm talking the afkers, intentional wipers, etc. Yup, that's absolutely right.

[Darkeon]

Unless there is a need to rely on other people there won't ever be a "community" as existed on the early days of WoW. Path of least resistance and all that.