Why Legion will still be stale in the end.

[Deleted]

There's a lot of things I'd like to see back in their original state and I honestly believe they were better than the current state of the game. Then again as much as I'd like threat management back I wouldn't like to be stuck with mr rogue who just backstabs untill mr dragon slaps him in the face again. While I'd like skill ranks back I wouldn't like to be stuck with mr holy priest spaming max rank greater heal untill his manapool flatlines in a matter of seconds. I'd like the old talent style back but then I might be stuck with mr hunter who's hellbent on specing down marksman to get improved hawkeye and then piling the rest of his talent points into survivability in case he would need to use that odd raptor strike when he went over the threat barrier and pulled the none tauntable dragon accross the room.

There were a lot of these little things that gave the game its charm. Along with the fact that progression was just so slow in every regard. I'd be fully ok with raiding being the 1% content, but I'd like something else to take the place for those who don't feel like investing the time. As even though I can be a gigantic knob at times I don't particulary like listening to crying.

My point is that as long as they try to offer everything to everyone it will remain stale. I remember a lot of guilds with absolutely horrible progress pace as they had a casual approach, but I can't remember any of them complaining about it, the ones who made up the major part of the, as I like to call it "neggie group" were those who didn't even bother trying. I just never understood the "I can't dedicate these x set hours a week to this" argument while that probably applies to just any other hobby of theirs.

Now I realize I went on a bit of a rant here so to cap off said rant I'll just say, vanilla - tbc had a lot of simple but fairly interesting ideas and the "wow I want that factor", none of that exists anymore as everyone feels entitled while not bothering to put any time into it which is basically a fast track to the majority feeling the game goes stale quickly instead of a minority of truly dedicated people.

[PuffyPussy22]

You focused on playing the game instead of beating it, and that's something I don't think they'll ever get back, tbh.

I think what you said here is really important and you are probably right, maybe it will never come back.

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No idea if it's been said already, but the devs have been saying it's been a focus of theirs to make the dungeons in legions more relevant throughout the entire expansion. None of us know exactly how effective it'll be but maybe it's going to be brilliant. Mythic+ seems like it's going to add more challenge than ever and is something you could always work on upgrading, dungeons will have a very small % to drop a superduperwarforged gear (if I understood the interview right) that'll be an upgrade to your raid gear. Keep in mind that the chances are getting it are supposedly very low, running raids will still be more effective for gearing, but there's always the small hope

They say they've learned from their mistake that we call WoD, and know content drought is a serious problem. We don't know if they'll be able to actually pull it off this expansion yet, it could go either way, but it has good potential

I have heard this, however I am not completely convinced of its effectiveness for the following reasons. Number one, it appears dungeons will be there own progression path alongside raids. Essentially neither aspect of the game really leads into anything else, I kind of think of this new design as two treadmills running beside each other but never actually going anywhere.

Now, maybe I am alone in this, but the idea of playing the game not for adventure, not for the excitement of going somewhere fresh, new or exciting, but for nothing more than to see the number on my gear go up, when that is the only substance this game can offer any longer, then there is no way for me to ultimately be excited no matter how hard I want to be. Because in the end, I know that my excitement will dwindle and I will see the game for what it is currently.

Of course you can argue that there is the challenge itself for nothing more than the challenge and id say challenge for the sake of challenge is ultimately meaningless. That isn't to say some people can't find reward in it, people doing naked runs in Dark Souls are testament to that, I guess the question is how many will actually care? Furthermore, why should they? Before I could give you an answer to that, now, I simply can't.

[Deleted]

the whole normal/heroic/mythic idea is to causal for me to like it raids are suppose to have 1 difficulty and thats hard, guildbreakers and stuff like that, now guildbreakers are people getting bored and quitting

[PuffyPussy22]

Possible solution/workaround:

Create realms with special rulesets to please more hardcore players and group like-minded individuals.

For instance a realm where current expansion's content is necessarily progressive (require achievment of Highmaul before you can enter Blackrock Foundry) with slower exp, gold and drop rates, no catch up mechanics, no instant queue acessibility features, no heirlooms or boosts, no character transfers, no LFR or Normal raid difficulty (possibly no Heroic?), etc.

Would realms like these be wildly popular? Probably not. But it would create close small communities of like minded people who want the same from the game (which is honestly what we're lacking the most nowadays), who would take longer to consume the content and enjoy a more hardcore/commited approach to the game without removing enjoyment from the more casual players.

This is most certainly the best solution to the problem, and it seems one Blizzard has thought of seeing how they mentioned the idea of pristine realms in regards to the legacy server ordeal. I like the idea of needing to beat the previous raid before the next, maybe balance the difficulty where Highmaul would be akin to normal, BRF would be akin to heroic, etc where the ultimate goal keeps you coming back.

The biggest issue with this atm is that Ian recently spoke on this in his dev interview on Twitch this past Thursday? I believe and he mentioned that they currently had no plans for that, it was just something they threw around at that time of the legacy issue. He mentioned he felt they are kind of going in that way anyways and thus a pristine server wasn't needed. Of course, he/blizzard failed to understand that the issue with the current game is in no way quelled from what ive seen so far, and unless they have some magic up their sleeve, I don't see that it will be.

Just wanted to say I say He(Ian)/Blizzard because I actually have no idea what is really going on. Ian may want everything we want and simply gets overruled. We know this was the case with Ghostcrawler and sometimes he had to man up and take the hate as the spokeperson for ideas he didn't even agree with.

[access5]

So going into Legion you have to wonder what was wrong with WoD, whether the devs actually think WoD is a failure, and what they are truly looking to change. While there some good changes going into Legion, that being the introduction of a more complex dungeon system, there are also bad things that exist in the game that, no matter what, will end in boredom, stagnation, and people generally asking what is next.

Lets look at how WoW has been designed throughout its history and why, seemingly only starting at the end of Wrath, did the concept of "content droughts" suddenly become a problem. Well, for one, the game before had content droughts, its just to reach this point of the game required a level of skill, time commitment, group cohesion, that only around 1% of people actually saw EVERYTHING in the game and eventually wondered "what now". Now, while some may actually quote this as a negative for the game at that time, what it also actually means, is that 99% of people had something to look forward too, thus most people had no concept of a content drought, even though for 1% of the playerbase there was actually a drought. In BC, we saw a very similar situation and once again, no general problem with a content drought, even though there technically was one for a very small percentage of the playerbase.

Now, we get into WoTLK. Suddenly dungeons are made more of a quick route to get into raiding. No longer were they really a relevant aspect of the game for casual gamers (although more relevant than dungeons today), they were simply more of an aoe fest you got over with quickly to get your emblems for that week. Of course this means more people get into raiding than ever. Good thing right? Well, maybe not.

Of course when you have more people entering your content at a faster rate than ever before, to the point that you are making your own content irrelevent with every patch (See Ulduar being erased before most people even saw it so that we could get the worlds most bland Raid in history in the form of Trial of the Grand Crusader! ), you are of course putting constraints on yourself as developers to deliver content faster than ever. Blizzard fortunately was able to make this last, at least until the final tier of raiding in which case we, for the first time, saw the rise of the content droughts! Oh no! Why could this be!

Well, it should be fairly obvious to most people why this is. Simply put, the more you rush people into later content, the more you make the content before it irrelevant, the more you have to develop content. Now, its odd to me that Blizzard has proven, since WoTLK, that they are incapable of actually developing content at the rate they invalidate their own content. Of course, one has to wonder why they keep doing so and whether Legion will actually change this odd trend.

Well, unfortunately this will not be the case, in fact, it appears it will be worse than ever. With the introduction of ease of access, content is of course consumed faster than ever. This includes things like LFD, LFR, catchup patches, the fact that you can really skip heroics completely and go into LFR if you wish, making one wonder what purpose heroics have at all. All this means is, in the end, by very basic logic that has been proven by each expansion since BC, that this xpac will be no different. In the end it has no option but to be bland, dull and burnt through within the first weeks to months, and then rendered irrelevant, by design of course, only for all of us to be asking "what next".

You really have to wonder what is going on at Blizzard HQ when the idea of 99% having something relevant to do is seen as worse than most people having nothing to do because they consumed it the moment it came out. Until they adopt the ideas that Jeffrey Kaplan and Rob Pardo clearly put into place when they developed this game, ideas that Kaplan has used to extreme success in the designing of Overwatch, then this game can never be anything more than a casual side show for inexperienced gamers and quite frankly, its a disgrace to those of us who call ourselves such.

Thank you for listening.

100% correct but the game has jumped the shark I'm afraid.

[Grenzstein]

Oh man, people really loving beating the same ol' horse every expansion, right ? Saw the same crap on every single expansion since WoTLK.

[Deleted]

required a level of skill

Timing consuming =/= skill?

Time consuming content as in requiring a certain setup(5 resto shamans at Mu'ru), resistance gear or gated content does not equal skill.

Current Mythics are much more mechanically complex. You often have to think about 3-4 mechanics at once instead of the 1 or 2 way back in vanilla and tbc. And that's during progression, not the nerfed overgeared HFC we know now.

Shortcuts are causing a draught. Back in tbc and vanilla you had an entire expansion worth of content from release till end. Nowadays you bypass everything up to the latest patch.

Of course when you have more people entering your content at a faster rate than ever before, to the point that you are making your own content irrelevent with every patch (See Ulduar being erased before most people even saw it so that we could get the worlds most bland Raid in history in the form of Trial of the Grand Crusader! ), you are of course putting constraints on yourself as developers to deliver content faster than ever. Blizzard fortunately was able to make this last, at least until the final tier of raiding in which case we, for the first time, saw the rise of the content droughts! Oh no! Why could this be!

^This

[Kolvarg]

*snip*

One of the counter points that is frequent is "WoW can't survive by dividing the playerbase". Well I argue that's exactly what WoW needs. The community and overall social experience is negative and unpleasant, especially for new players. And they keep trying (and failing) at pleasing everyone because they just have so many fans with so different tastes. I'd argue some segregation and trying to please different types of players with slight variations of the game (instead of trying to please everyone with the same package) is exactly what WoW needs.

But sadly, yes, it seems it was just something completly thrown out there, and since it was thrown specifically at the legacy problem it recieved feedback mostly from the legacy crowd (who for the most part just want unedited legacy servers, not really pristine servers, even if they'd enjoy them more than live WoW), which probably helped it being dismissed.

Don't envy the developers though, tbh.

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Current Mythics are much more mechanically complex. You often have to think about 3-4 mechanics at once instead of the 1 or 2 way back in vanilla and tbc. And that's during progression, not the nerfed overgeared HFC we know now.

The problem is current mythic and even heroic raids are only really played by and accessible to a minority, and are only a very small part of the game. The rest of the game, for the most part, doesn't reflect that. Not saying it was much mechanically harder back then, because it wasn't, but it certainly felt overall more dangerous, at least leveling wise, and in the early years even endgame content in the long run, and on top of that it had that RPG-style complexity and time consuming content that made it a longer lasting experience.

I'm sure it's not easy, but I think it's possible to make the world and overall non-raiding content more compelling and hard/dangerous without messing that much with Mythic raiding.

[Mosotti]

So your opinion is that if you can't beat the content then there really is no content? So, if I can't beat Dark Souls 3, then there must be no content in Dark Souls 3? Interesting opinion.

It's no content you should pay for, unless you're a fucking idiot. Many people bought Dark Souls just because they heard it's so hard, but they fucking hate it, and the only consolation is that they can say "I played that very hard game, couldn't even get pass the first boss, man, that game is hard, and I played it". I cringe when I see someone bragging "I played in vanilla, I used to inspect people in front of the AH and dream about their gear". The fuck is wrong with people, paying a subscription to inspect people that are actually able to play the game...

Of course it is stupid to buy something you can't use. Would you buy a bicycle if you have no legs? Why the fuck would you do that?

So yeah, that's why the difficulty levels in WoW were the best thing they could think of, and it actually saved the game. I don't know on what planet you are, but the devs just said that raiders and PVPers are a minority. Also the catch-up mechanics and the cross-realm grouping saved the game. There was no way in fucking hell to do a low level dungeon before LFD in a proper group...

[PuffyPussy22]

The fuck is wrong with people, paying a subscription to inspect people that are actually able to play the game...

So, your logic is that the only people actually playing any game are people who are playing the very end of the game? So, before I get to Bowser in mario im not even playing a game at that point? What was I doing? Your logic truly is interesting!

Of course it is stupid to buy something you can't use. Would you buy a bicycle if you have no legs? Why the fuck would you do that?

Terrible analogy. A better analogy would be saying I had legs, could use my legs, and did use my legs, I just never used them to the point that I beat the biggest cross country race during that year and as you point out below, maybe I didn't care too.

I don't know on what planet you are, but the devs just said that raiders and PVPers are a minority.

Considering you just argued that you weren't playing the game unless you raided I find it hilarious that you claim most people don't raid, and thus aren't playing any game. I of course wonder what these people are playing! Moreover, why would you constantly shuffle people into an aspect of the game, raiding, that Blizzard are claiming are in the minority? (Would love to see a quote on this btw mate!)

Your post almost reads like an argument against itself.

[Pantalaimon]

You claim they didn't like grinds, but you also fail to recognize that the core of any RPG, going back to the roots of the genre and WHY its attracted people to begin with over, an action game for example, or a fighting game, is that it has grind built into the system. It is a reward system setup to keep you coming back for more, to progress further. I would say if you truly didn't like the core aspect of an RPG, that being a grind, then you simply didn't like RPGs, you liked, perhaps, the action aspect of WoW, which is fine, but its not necessarily a flaw. Nor would it be a flaw in fighting games if I found combos to be frustrating and tedious and claimed they were boring because of this, it just simply means im not a fighting game fan and probably shouldn't play fighting games.

Having said this, you say people probably didn't like having something to do, but you haven't explained why having something to do is not preferable to having nothing to do. I find this line of logic just as bizarre as the first time I heard it.

There were more people back in Vanilla & BC who liked the long grinds, but those same people have largely either stopped playing or changed how they prefer playing the game to be further away from enjoying long grinds. Blizzard recieved backlash from gating a faction behind another faction in MoP, so much that it was enough to swing the radical Blizzard pendulum in WoD to more or less not include any dailies the entire expansion. If going back to longer & more tedius grinds would be the right decision to make future expacs no longer boring at the end then there shouldn't have been so much backlash in MoP to radically influence questing in WoD. If these same players and/or attitudes were a majority then gating a faction behind another one should have been more positively recieved than not, as it was somewhat similar to how you needed to access the Shatari Skyguard in BC.

There are plenty of realistic examples of why having something [boring] to do is not always preferable to having nothing to do. In many situations they are a both non-options when people are looking for something enjoyable to do. Sometimes it can work out at least somewhat alright, in the case of RS at the end of Wrath at least giving players a challenging fight to do despite it being a tacked on enemy that rewarded poor quality gear when compared to what many raiders already had. However, let's say, for comparison, that Blizzard added a bunch of 'Kill X enemies, collect Y items from them' style of repeated dailies that in no way made any impactful contribution to lore. If this was what was provided at the end of Legion I doubt it would be any different from simply having no content. Afterall, Blizzard could also not include any substantial reward for the above dailies in the hypothetical example. Granted this is all very much presented in a vaccum, but the point stands that simply including 'something' in place of nothing potentially could have no real impact on maintaining active players than a content drought would.

If you want a real life example then consider major traffic jams on a freeway. If you are used to going 70 mph on the freeway when commuting from work to home, never dipping below 45 mph on a bad day (just to be liberal with that number), but then on some completely bizare outlier day your freeway of choice gets slammed & you end up getting stuck going maybe 5-10 mph for half an hour. Sure going 5 or 10 mph is so much better than going nowhere for that half hour, but the vast majority of normal people are probably going to bitch and whine about as much going that slow as they would going nowhere for the same time. Having something that is only slightly better than nothing won't do jack to turn attitudes or active players around at the end of an expansion. It will require more than that.

[Mosotti]

So, your logic is that the only people actually playing any game are people who are playing the very end of the game? So, before I get to Bowser in mario im not even playing a game at that point? What was I doing? Your logic truly is interesting!

No, what I'm saying id that only people actually playing a CONSIDERABLE part of a game should PAY for that game. There's no fucking point in buying something you can't use, unless you're plain stupid or just very rich. So, having the MOST INTERESTING content behind some ridiculous fucking retarded skill/time sink gate is NOT good game design. That is actually why they've changed it and that's why the newer games trying to "relive" the retarded vanilla design, as Wildstar, failed MISERABLY.

Terrible analogy. A better analogy would be saying I had legs, could use my legs, and did use my legs, I just never used them to the point that I beat the biggest cross country race during that year and as you point out below, maybe I didn't care too.

OK, so why would you pay to participate in a race you know you have not fucking chance in the fucking hell to ever finish, not even mentioning wining. Keep in mind that we're not talking about a free race here. WoW costs a lot of money, why pay if you can't play? Keep also in mind the countless free alternatives that will attract the people, things that were not around in 2005 when the game design was "grind from 58 to 60, then raid or suck your dick".

Considering you just argued that you weren't playing the game unless you raided I find it hilarious that you claim most people don't raid, and thus aren't playing any game. I of course wonder what these people are playing! Moreover, why would you constantly shuffle people into an aspect of the game, raiding, that Blizzard are claiming are in the minority? (Would love to see a quote on this btw mate!)

Your post almost reads like an argument against itself.

Most people don't raid. Most people don't PvP. You want quotes? Here it is, also quite fresh:

A minority of players raid. A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5664?page=4#75

Is "Lead WoW Designer" a good source or you want me to call the Blizzard CEO to convince you? I'm sure he's busy

This is not a "claim" from Blizzard. it's a FACT. They have all kinds of reports and charts and tables and they can see how many people are raiding or not. This is no anecdotal like "I have 18 friends and they all raid, so most players must surely be raiders"

This games is being and has been kept alive by the filthy casual horde, that's the simple truth.

[Deleted]

Early wow was a labor of love, which happened to be very successful. Modern wow is business optimized for out-of-the-box experience, roughly the first 2 months of an expansion', and subsequent subscription retention is based on low cost/high margin maximization through the 'HOOK model' (model and theory for customer habit formation). This is why you see predominantly cheap reward mechanisms (achievements) and lots of content reuse (multi difficulties dungeon/raids, gear reuse with just different numbers in the textbox). It is spun as 'making content 'accessible', but it is purely a spending optimization exercise.

yep. this is sadly what it is. this is also why you you suddenly get legendaries and why the game has become more and more of a skinner box (garrisons, lootboxes, follower missions, treasures etc).

[Deleted]

Timing consuming =/= skill?



Current Mythics are much more mechanically complex. You often have to think about 3-4 mechanics at once instead of the 1 or 2 way back in vanilla and tbc.

Umm, addons are automating the process for anyone with half a brain. PowerAuras and DBM is making those "mechanically complex" fights incredibly easy. The gap is not as wide as you seem to think. Indeed, I think Blizzard should straight out ban the use of BigWigs / DBM and create encounters that do not require this.

[Pony Soldier]

As always just wait for the expansion to actually come out and try it before you start predicting the future with no evidence to back it up. All this is right now is pointless speculation.

From what I've seen so far the expansion looks great and I'm actually excited to play it.

[Exhuman]

WoW is a game designed to be played 3 months a year.

At least 7 million players see it that way. The rest are addicted to the game.

[Deleted]

You say masses playing catchup. You know what? Some people have beaten Dark Souls 3 already before me, I am essentially playing catchup, why does this matter?

Yeah well here is the thing, you can play dark souls 3 ten years from now, and the game difficulty will be the same as today.
Doing a raid of an expansion when that expansion it is not current, it is not by any chance the same game at all, that is why it matters, a lot of people doing BC raids only when in lich king, and as i said it is not the same thing at all.

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some of us would love to have wow hardcore again but it wont work, todays playerbase dont have the time to invest in a slow progress system we once had.

I have seen this same explanation a lot of times, and it is simply not true.
Today´s playerbase refuses to invest in a slow progress system, when the end-game is not something they can control, because it is an MMO with multiplayer only end game content.
Why do single player RPG games that require quite a lot of time, and sometimes effort, do not suffer from the same problem?
Because in those games the player controls everything, unlike in MMOs, where as any raider can tell you, sometimes you can not even wipe to a boss, because raid gets cancelled, guild disbanded, etc, something you will never have to suffer in a single player RPG.
Nowadays playerbase tolerance to not optional multiplayer activities, is reaching an all time lowest;

[Sierra85]

Nowadays playerbase tolerance to not optional multiplayer activities, is reaching an all time lowest;

i think thats an over generalisation. Obviously people still want to play, as was seen by the insane launch numbers. but then people slowly unsubscribe.

it is not because of guilds or out of control, it is the content is not engaging enough to hold these players interests enough. something blizzard need to work on to fix.

[Deleted]

i think thats an over generalisation. Obviously people still want to play, as was seen by the insane launch numbers. but then people slowly unsubscribe.

Never said anything about people not wanting to play, i was merely saying that an slow progress system seems to be no longer acceptable in an MMO, but in single player RPGs people are ok with that system, i have even seen mods for a lot of those games that slow down further the progress system.

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it is not because of guilds or out of control, it is the content is not engaging enough to hold these players interests enough. something blizzard need to work on to fix.

Yeah it is, that is why we are having 5-man raiding in legion; one of the things that make content not engaging enough it is that you are not in control of the game (raiding), that and the fact you must endure logistics just for being able to play, and a lot of people like challenging content, but without the logistics chores.
Now the thing is can you make this kind of content in an MMO? i do not think so, that is why the genre is having a hard time, because a lot of people do not want to have challenging content out of a single player enviroment, and the same applies to slower progression

[Lady Dragonheart]

This issue perplexes me for two reasons.

One, if you rush to beat the game, skipping everything that's optional along the path, you're going to marginally make the game stale for yourself. The game is vast and expansive for a reason, to be explored and experienced in moderation. An RPG, including MMORPGs, are meant to be explored and experienced, "beating" them once, on single difficulty no less, isn't what the game is designed for.

Second, the game is layered with multiple things to enjoy outside of high-end raiding and max PvP. There's all the different collections to collect, achievements, titles, reputations, pets, mounts, toys, heirlooms, mog items, rare vanity items, maxed out profession with all of the collectible recipes, and now appearances/mogs. There's all of pet battling and Pet PvP. There's also all of the questing and story that's in the game to experience. There's also role-play, for those that are into it, especially considering that it's a role-playing game. Sure, some people may not like every aspect of the game, however, not liking the majority of the game... it begs the question, why even play by that point?

Also, while more of a side-issue and less of an entire point, the game is over a decade old. That can easily be another contributing factor to why some may feel it being stale, but by that point, it's less about the game and more about the player that feels that way, anyway.