[!] Please keep WoW's playstyle

[Ghostile]

People talk about pruning to "prepare for console" while I still sport 18 skills on my bars + few I could take from talents.

[Rivin]

As an example..... Fighting as BM (Hunter) in a visually and audio noisy environment gives you the feeling of like "hmm, ok.. I'm pressing buttons but what am I/my pet doing realy? Am I doing something at all?" It's kind of too quiet to me and with all other effects overlaying mine it feels like having no effects at all. Some goes for Frost DK's Howling Blast. Some things are also just adjusting and getting used to the changes, I get that.

Hunters have had that issue forever. Most abilities had almost-unnoticeable animations and every shot sounded like the same generic arrow/bullet sound effect. So while I agree it's a problem for hunters, that doesn't necessarily make it a problem with WoW. Like your DK example: Howling Blast is poor, but pretty much every other attack feels a lot better now than they used to, having a lot more impact and better sound effects.

[kail]

Yeah...no. WoW is not close to GW2's combat and LoS and skill shot mechanics.

[Wildmoon]

Don't play DH. Other classes have been working the same.

[Zenny]

Of course you're waiting for it to happen... because it hasn't happened. I flagged it as a possibility. So yeah pointless comment is pointless.

Also I'd suggest buying a PC and playing it now rather than waiting for something that as you were kind to point out may never happen. You could be waiting indefinitely

My comment obviously meant that people have been saying WoW is coming to consoles for reason X for 5 years now. I've seen the same argument when the MoP talent trees came out.

But feel free to speculate on the latest change to the game that means it's being prepped for consoles.

[Raakel]

I still think it's going more and more the GW route which I don't like.

Some healer quotes...

The way things are going I expect the healer shortage to get much worse before it gets better. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next expac, Blizzard starts to move away from the classic trinity and enables some form of healer-less dungeon runs.
I really hope they don't do that. The GW2 system is the most boring ****ed-up piece of crap PvE I've played...

Agreed. I like most things about GW2 but I'm mainly a PvE'r and the system GW2 has is just bad. I much prefer the classic trinity of dps-heals-tanks we have now.

[Otimus]

I reckon they're gradually pruning abilities and overhauling animations with the end goal of eventually bringing WoW to consoles and broadening their audience.

I think that boat has long sailed away. Unless they were to make it F2P or something when bringing it to consoles, I doubt there'd be enough that'd care to make it worth it.

- - - Updated - - -

People talk about pruning to "prepare for console" while I still sport 18 skills on my bars + few I could take from talents.

This too. Even with some of the more severely pruned, you're going to need another massive prune or two for it to be controller safe.

[Zka]

the Devs have SPECIFICALLY said that they want to bring more abilities back once they have things working well with the current setup - so claiming they actually want to prune further is conspiracy theory bullshit.

Do you have any links for that? I've never seen them saying this. They shouldn't do it anyway. The current amount of abilities are comfortably keybindable. I don't want to go back to 40+ binds just for PVE like in Cata.

[D3athsting]

Lol @ wow on console, wow as of today is HUGE and more complex than ever, a console porting would cost you an expansion (not only a single raid tier ) not to mention you couldn't use any addon on console

[Eurhetemec]

Do you have any links for that? I've never seen them saying this. They shouldn't do it anyway. The current amount of abilities are comfortably keybindable. I don't want to go back to 40+ binds just for PVE like in Cata.

It was on the front page of MMO Champion a week or two before the expansion came out in some bunch of dev comments, but no, I don't have a link because MMO Champion is pretty much impossible to search well unless it's for really obvious stuff (for me, at least, maybe I'm just inept).

It's not something I've made up, either way - but again, it's just a "we want", and what Blizzard want changes frequently (as it should).

[MasterHamster]

Might not be precisely what the OP is talking about, but
WoW's combat has become so smooth that everything has lost it's OOMPF.
Damage numbers don't POP OUT at you but appear and move in a smooth arc
Most noticeable change was when they reduced the net "tick" from 400 to 20ms I believe. Also a very noticeable change in combat smoothness when we went into WoD from MoP.

It's hard to put exactly into words what has happened to WoWs combat, but a nice summary for me at least is that it doesn't feel like it has any actual, tangible impact anymore.

A Chaos Bolt flying into your target and 0.2 sec later gigantic number pops out IN YO FACE
A Mortal Strike/Overpower combo
Frostbolt/Ice Lance

Now it all just blends together in this ultra-responsive smooth combat.
Not saying it's necessarily bad, but it's definitely not the same as it used to be.

[Jyggalag]

Everyone completely dispelling the idea of WoW coming to consoles can tell the future aye? It's called speculation.

For all we know it could be something in the pipeline for 10, maybe even 20 years from now. No one claimed it's going to happen tomorrow. If it's going to happen at all then of course it's going to be a slow process. People don't like change and so the smart move is obviously to induce change so infrequently that people have time to adapt.

Can you imagine if Blizz came out saying "yeah we're cutting abilities for every class by 75% to fit on consoles in a year's time"? People would rightly lose their shit. They'd alienate a massive portion of their playerbase overnight with a good chunk of players who enjoyed the earlier complexity of classes boycotting the game. MoP talent trees are a great example which you've kindly pointed out. It's one of the most talked about points that come up during any arguement in favor of vanilla servers.

Who's to say consoles in 20 years from now couldn't support a 'WoW2' or whatever on a new engine where players character data could be copied over? Who's to say those consoles couldn't support addons? Who's to say Blizz won't make any QoL changes in the future that effectively bake in some of the more popular addons so that the need for said addons goes away?

What you're effectively saying otherwise is 'nah Blizzard definitely won't make any attempts to potentially skyrocket their playerbase and maybe even keep the game running on the same engine it has been since 2001 and continue to cater solely to the 20 year olds who are now 30 year olds when they're 40 years old' as if that's a realistic business strategy for a multi million dollar game company that employs hundreds of people. There's just no WAY warcraft would ever come to consoles because it hasn't happened already...

[RobertMugabe]

I reckon they're gradually pruning abilities and overhauling animations with the end goal of eventually bringing WoW to consoles and broadening their audience.

They want to bring WoW more into eSports, not into the console market...

[Factoral]

I think they have totally improved it. They have kept the core of what WoW is, but added in these Raid boss like mechanics that you can dodge, rather than just stand there and get smacked by it.

I think its 100% better and more satisfying.

[Jyggalag]

They want to bring WoW more into eSports, not into the console market...

Because console games don't participate in eSports...

[willtron]

They're pruning the growth to shape the tree a different way. They couldn't keep adding new abilities.

[Chrno]

Back in cataclysm / wotlk i had i think up to 30 keybinds ....
atm ..i have about 12 .. :P I actually prefer it this way XD.

WoW's combat has always matched the attacks i did as a warrior. (visually) and thus i feel connected.
That combined with the fluidness ... < is that even a word > of the combat i feel really connected.

Something i never had in GW2.
That said the GW2 playstyle is amazing i just think it looks like random animations glued together.