Compromising on Features that Slowly Ruined WoW.

[Kahmal]

Watching all of these Nostalrius rant videos, that often go on a tangent on how great WoW was from Vanilla to the WoTLK days. The reality is Blizzard can't just remove things like LFR or LFG that hurt the community, but I feel like there are ways to compromise around them, for the better of the game.

TBC - Flying

That's the only blunder of that xpac that had any long term effects. Personally I don't think Flying in WoW is that big a deal, it didn't totally kill World PvP it just made it more optional. Daily Quest hubs could still turn into a skirmish if not an all out War zone, especially Isle of Quel since there was no flying. A problem that began to start in WoTLK is we slowly lost a reason to ever land, something they're hopefully fixing in Legion. I think WoD with no flying would have been a success had there been a reason to leave our Garrisons. I had a lot of great times on the ground early WoD.

People want to use there flying mounts fine, so how about you can only access your flying amount at a flight master. you can mount up around the flight master and fly where you please, but the minute you dismount your grounded, unless your near another flight master.

WoTLK - LFG, Inflated Economy

I remember when LFG first came out and I loved it! However as time went on I slowly realized that the game was starting to feel more like a Dungeon Crawler then an MMO. The Looking For Group tool is a more proactive experience where your likely to have to interact with people before inviting them or getting invited. I say just keep LFG around for leveling only perhaps since it's harder to find a lowbie group, if that at all.

I really have no answers for the inflation that started when WoW streamlined the crafting, and Garrisons only made it worse.

Cataclysm - LFR, Paid Faction Changes, Transmogs, Leveling(I know I'm missing something, Cata was a dousy!)

LFR has it's place in the game, but it can be implemented far better. Blizz releases it about two weeks into the tier. I feel that they should release LFR of the current tier two weeks before the new tier! If you think back to TBC by the end of the expansion Blizzard nerfed all of the content by a flat 30% that way players could see as much as possible before WoTLK. In WoTLK we had the 30% buff in ICC so most people could probably at least reach and fight the Lich King.

The leveling experience needs to be redone again entirely somehow though, for the sake of fresh new players. No idea how anyone would stick around as it is now due to how unchallenging it is and never needing to group.

As LFR is right now it just doesn't motivate new would be raiders. When a new tier comes out people should be excited to jump into and get ahead of the curve to experience can, not just sit on there heels waiting for the tourism mode to come out a few weeks later. It shouldn't function as a catch up mechanic at all anymore either, or at least not a full catch up mechanic. There are better ones out there.

Xmog has it's pros and cons, it can stay.

[Frolk]

snip

Tell me these "cons" transmog has

Tell me how paid faction change hurt the game

[Kahmal]

Tell me these "cons" transmog has

Tell me how paid faction change hurt the game

Xmog, what you were wearing used to mean something. Now it doesn't. But it gives you a reason to go back to old raids, and it's nice that people look unique.

Paid Faction change I feel is the reason why Alliance out weight Horde from a PvP stand point. Prior if you wanted to faction change you had to commit to leveling a new character. Now you just pay $15 bucks. Activision saw green.

The two weren't really worth me mentioning though.

[guardian_titan]

A rather thinly veiled "I don't like X so please remove or change it so it only benefits people like me" thread.

Blizzard's largely picked up popular features that other games had before it. LFG, transmog, world quests, even scaling zones/dungeons are all from other games. If they weren't so popular in other games, Blizzard wouldn't have considered adding them. If you haven't noticed, Blizzard hasn't been original with their ideas in years. While WoW started a sweeping change to MMO design (it was touted as the casual man's Everquest when it came out), it hasn't really been revolutionary since TBC with flying which was largely unheard of back in 2007.

If you don't like a feature or like where WoW is heading (I'm certainly among those that dislike the game direction), either quit or make your own game. There are plenty of other games out there. Removing features that many other players like just to appease a tiny portion will kill the game much faster than Blizzard just tweaking them a bit. Like it or not, LFD/LFR are here to stay. Best case for people like you, OP, is that they change it so you get no gear from it at all except maybe badges that you turn in for gear with the idea you only get 1 badge per boss and it's 100 badges per item. If a raid tier only has like 9-17 bosses and you can only get badges off bosses once per week with no other ways to get them, it'd take months to get geared and by the time the next tier came out, LFR players would be lucky to have half of their gear from badges. While Blizzard's not vicious enough to do that, they already appeased raiders by removing real tier and giving LFR shitty quest reward rejects.

But in all honesty, even if Blizzard did remove those features that you complain about OP, what would you complain about next? Some people complain just to complain and once their complaints are taken care of, they find something else to complain about.

I also have to agree with Frolk. What cons do transmog have? People no longer showcase the newest gear? Oh yay, I look the same as the other shaman in my guild or in that other guild that's also at the same level I am! Oh yay, I look so unique because I look like every other shaman wearing my tier. Transmog gives us more individuality. How is that a bad thing? We NEED MORE choices, not fewer. Blizzard should never be taking away a choice just because people dislike it. That's like people whining about fries in kid's meals at McDonald's. If the parents want to buy fries for their kids, fine. Don't take that option away. Add in alternate options for parents who want more healthy options (or as healthy as you can get from McDonald's). That's exactly what McDonald's did. They didn't take away the fries option because of parents that whined they were unhealthy. They gave parents more options.

Don't try to take away options because you don't like them. Look at how to ADD more options. Don't take away something that others like because you personally don't like it.

[Deleted]

xmog makes new sets much less unique. Ask yourself this, can you remember the models and names of the tier sets after transmog was implimented - im having a hard time doing so but i can remember every single tier set before that because the gear and models were unique at the time.
Paid faction change is terrible in the sense that sucks some life out of the concept of having a "character" and imo your "character" becomes more of a class. At any given moment your blood elf female could be a tauren male and i think that along with ridiculous the sped up leveling and purchasable lvl 90/100's this takes away from the feel of the game. Back in Vanilla you didn't reroll, some argue that this was a bad concept but i would rather have to go back and do the deed over than having the option of being "genderless" if that makes sense.

Just my opinion tho.

[Frolk]

Transmog

Not sure if i wanna look like this.

Left or right?

[Sansnom]

As LFR is right now it just doesn't motivate new would be raiders. When a new tier comes out people should be excited to jump into and get ahead of the curve to experience can, not just sit on there heels waiting for the tourism mode to come out a few weeks later. It shouldn't function as a catch up mechanic at all anymore either, or at least not a full catch up mechanic.

Stop thinking removing LFR will something cause these people to migrate to organize raiding. They will not. If they were incline to try raiding, they would have found a guild or other forms.

Some people are excited a new tier is release. Not everyone will. Not everyone cares that much about raiding as you do.

There are better ones out there.

Offer any gear outside of raiding and some people will complain about it.

[RevanTN]

Transmog

Not sure if i wanna look like this.

Left or right?

May I ask what addon is that you're using to highlight enchants, gems, durability etc?

[Kahmal]

Stop thinking removing LFR will something cause these people to migrate to organize raiding. They will not. If they were incline to try raiding, they would have found a guild or other forms.

Some people are excited a new tier is release. Not everyone will. Not everyone cares that much about raiding as you do.



Offer any gear outside of raiding and some people will complain about it.

We always had gear outside raiding....
and I never said remove LFR.

[Blazur]

I really like your idea for flying. Idk if they would ever tinker with flying again after what happened with wod though

[Mic_128]

Watching all of these Nostalrius rant videos, that often go on a tangent on how great WoW was from Vanilla to the WoTLK days. The reality is Blizzard can't just remove things like LFR or LFG that hurt the community, but I feel like there are ways to compromise around them, for the better of the game.

TBC - Flying

That's the only blunder of that xpac that had any long term effects. Personally I don't think Flying in WoW is that big a deal, it didn't totally kill World PvP it just made it more optional. Daily Quest hubs could still turn into a skirmish if not an all out War zone, especially Isle of Quel since there was no flying. A problem that began to start in WoTLK is we slowly lost a reason to ever land, something they're hopefully fixing in Legion. I think WoD with no flying would have been a success had there been a reason to leave our Garrisons. I had a lot of great times on the ground early WoD.

So did I. Early in the expansion, it was enjoyable. But once I hit cap, I want to get off the ground. Archeology goes from being a pain to outright offensive when you're stuck on ground mounts.

[quote]People want to use there flying mounts fine, so how about you can only access your flying amount at a flight master. you can mount up around the flight master and fly where you please, but the minute you dismount your grounded, unless your near another flight master.

Sounds good. Impliment it for ground mounds, since being grounded is so much fun, and I'll be all for it.

Wait, no, I won't, because it's still terrible.

WoTLK - LFG, Inflated Economy

I remember when LFG first came out and I loved it! However as time went on I slowly realized that the game was starting to feel more like a Dungeon Crawler then an MMO. The Looking For Group tool is a more proactive experience where your likely to have to interact with people before inviting them or getting invited. I say just keep LFG around for leveling only perhaps since it's harder to find a lowbie group, if that at all.

It was better than sitting around for an hour in Org spamming "LFG for UBRS Balance/Resto Druid" to finally get a group, only then to have to wait another 20 minutes while someone else flies out to the stone. I'm sorry, the LFG tool is so much better. I would prefer there to be some quests in the world that lead you into the dungeon (I still haven't worked out why BWD was the first Cata Dungeon.)

Cataclysm - LFR, Paid Faction Changes, Transmogs, Leveling(I know I'm missing something, Cata was a dousy!)

LFR has it's place in the game, but it can be implemented far better. Blizz releases it about two weeks into the tier. I feel that they should release LFR of the current tier two weeks before the new tier!

The point of LFR, is for those who can't raid, don't have the time for organised groups to be able to raid. I'm not a great fan of LFR, but it has it's uses. Waiting that long, you'll have people not even bothering, because either they'll have given up or because they did manage to get lucky with some Pugs and now outgear it.

The leveling experience needs to be redone again entirely somehow though, for the sake of fresh new players. No idea how anyone would stick around as it is now due to how unchallenging it is and never needing to group.

You do realise that the reason WoW was so popular was because you DIDN'T have to group? In most at the time, if you wanted to go out and quest, you *had* to be in a group. A full group with a tank and a healer. They could probably do something to tweak the numbers a little, but not to the point of needing to group. It'd also be yet another nail in the coffin of low pop realms.

As LFR is right now it just doesn't motivate new would be raiders. When a new tier comes out people should be excited to jump into and get ahead of the curve to experience can, not just sit on there heels waiting for the tourism mode to come out a few weeks later.

That's to stop hardcore raiders from feeling that LFR is a requirement, that they HAVE to run for min/max purposes. It's partly why LFR has its own tier now.

It shouldn't function as a catch up mechanic at all anymore either, or at least not a full catch up mechanic. There are better ones out there.

It's not a catch-up mechanic, it's for a level of progression for those who can't do normal raiding.

Xmog has it's pros and cons, it can stay.

You are an idiot if you think there's anything negative about transmog.

Xmog, what you were wearing used to mean something. Now it doesn't.

Ignoring Challenge Modes slash removed PvP Epic rewards, you don't think that those rocking Mythic level gear can't just not transmog to show off their mythic level gear if they want?

[Roamingstorm]

That's the only blunder of that xpac that had any long term effects. Personally I don't think Flying in WoW is that big a deal, it didn't totally kill World PvP

Wintergrasp? Tol Barad? Isle of Thunder/Timeless Isle? Still had your Isles of Quesadilla, hell those even promoted world PvP. To go even further during Wrath I remember, least on my server, that the Crusader dailys ALWAYS had some fight break out some where. On top of that arenas "killed" world PvP mainly due to the fact it was the best place to obtain PvP gear going into BC, and to add BGs was a more productive and reliable way to earn honor. I still did my South Shore raids and attacks on Stormwind/Goldshire, but it was out of fun, not to gain anything, which those still happen today.

I say just keep LFG around for leveling only perhaps since it's harder to find a lowbie group, if that at all.

I really have no answers for the inflation that started when WoW streamlined the crafting, and Garrisons only made it worse.

No, anyone who's anyone remember the pains of spending 5, 10, or even more minutes to get a dungeon together, only to have someone go AFK, leave, or people be too lazy to travel to a summoning stone to only have someone hearth and spend another 10 minutes finding someone or to not find anyone at all. As for inflation, yeah Garrisons made making gold stupid easy (with followers), but before than it was mainly depending on your server population on how expensive things were. I remember when I transferred to a higher population server and was shocked to see flasks for so cheap from the low pop server I came from.

LFR, Paid Faction Changes, Transmogs, Leveling(I know I'm missing something, Cata was a dousy!)

Who cares about LFR? If you join a raiding guild, who really gives a crap? It's like hearing people flip out when the creator of Dark Souls wanted to put in a easier mode for DS3 and lost their damn minds because of him saying that. It's still not going to stop me from playing the standard game as a Deprived.

Faction Changes? Really? If you raid, especially if you're a hardcore raider, this is a big deal when you're looking to join a hardcore raiding guild, because most of the time those people don't really give two craps on what faction they're on.

Transmogs? Wut? Do you know how many times I'd end up in a damn set being a Shaman, especially some of the god awful PvP gear in Wrath, that I wish I could change the way I looked? Who gave a crap about people in gear? In Vanilla all I did was PvP and didn't give a damn about someone wearing a Judgement set so long as I killed them, and if I saw someone who wore Grand Marshal gear the first thing that came in my mind was "that person has A LOT of free time" not respect. (Because the grind for Grand Marshal or High Warlord was awful.)

As for leveling, hilariously enough I went back and did all the "revamped" old world, and actually enjoyed most of the quests more than I did the vanilla ones and even the cata zones. Leveling got easy, because people who went to level alts didn't want to go through the whole damn process again. I very much doubt it was new players who complained that leveling was too hard or too easy (SINCE THEY'RE NEW they don't know how it was in (insert previous expansion here)), it was already veteran players who didn't have the patience to do it again. (Hence why we have BoA gear out the wazoo) As for grouping, what? Who grouped while leveling in Vanilla? I didn't. Even my friends didn't. The only time we'd group is to do a dungeon, or on the rare occasion ran into a group quest.

[khazmodan]

I really like your idea for flying. Idk if they would ever tinker with flying again after what happened with wod though

these same developers are putting a follower table into Legion which shows that they are either so out of touch with the player base they might as well be drunk or they are just jerks with a god complex. Considering this and there continuing direction towards a single player game experience I no longer have any trust in these developers ability to get it right.

[KrazyK923]

The reason I love posts like these is because the OPs always seem to think they happened in a vaccum.

That one day Blizzard woke up and said "Nobody wants this but we'll introduce it anyway."

When the reality is that people have been clamoring for every single one of the features mentioned here.

Flying. A Dungeon Finder (By the way this happened in BC broseph. This is how I know you didn't play in BC or you're being disingenuous. People always attribute LFG to Wrath. Its base and every core feature of it was added in BC and only refined in Wrath). A Raid Finder. No stupidly long attunements so that only 1% of players saw raids. A Transmog system. A way to make old leveling less terrible. Every single one.

People want to know why WoD's endgame was terrible? Because players threw bitchfits about the abundance of dailies in MoP.

[Mic_128]

these same developers are putting a follower table into Legion which shows that they are either so out of touch with the player base they might as well be drunk or they are just jerks with a god complex. Considering this and there continuing direction towards a single player game experience I no longer have any trust in these developers ability to get it right.

Have you any idea of how the follower table works in Legion as compared to WoD? Because your post just makes you look ignorant.

[endersblade]

I love that argument for Xmog: "I used to love seeing people in the armor they're wearing, and now I can't, because they transmog'd their gear!" In other words, some people have to potentially wear armor sets (or gods forbid the clown costumes from Vanilla/BC) just because YOU like to look at them?

"It lets people with Mythic gear show off their gear"
Right. If they wanted to do that, they would. Transmog didn't FORCE them to change how their gear looks.

The only cons to transmog are selfish ones. The only valid arguments I can find against it are the transmog sets we get from our garrison (stormwind guard set for alliance, not sure what the horde one is) that looks like plate, but can be worn by anyone. In PvP, yes, that can be confusing. Up until a split second later you see them cast something and you'll know what class they are, so it's not even a big valid reason.

Hell, transmog even created its own economy. While yes, this made prices on old-world greens go through the roof and making it hard for noobs/alts to get gear, the introduction of almost an entire set of BoA gear and the fact that leveling is so swift now that it's pointless to waste gold on gear have made that largely superfluous. I've made hundreds of thousands farming old BoE greens and tossing them on the AH. People get the gear they need without the need to farm it, I get gold, everyone's happy.

[The Stormbringer]

Transmog

Not sure if i wanna look like this.

Left or right?

Hot damn, a Death Knight with the Dreadnought set. God damn that's badass! How much money and time did that take you?

@Kahmal: I never found Flying to be an issue. Ever. I love being able to fly around, and if it hadn't been in TBC, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it or Wrath as much as I did. Hell, one of the best times I had was pre-Cataclysm when there was that glitch that let you walk in through the Dark Portal from BC into Azeroth and take off and fly around Old Azeroth. I managed to get a ton of screenshots of how messed up the world looked.

[Deleted]

Paid Faction change I feel is the reason why Alliance out weight Horde from a PvP stand point. Prior if you wanted to faction change you had to commit to leveling a new character. Now you just pay $15 bucks. Activision saw green.

Faction change was introduced in 2009. They were still all under Vivendi.

[keedorin]

Catering to casuals ruined the game.

[endersblade]

Catering to casuals ruined the game.

Catering to the 1% ruined the game. Nice try though.