exactly. full agree.
i remember the days in TBC. it wasnt like there were NO casuals and only genre fans. there were a lot casuals, and beginners and idiots too. but (as you correctly said) know what? they didnt run away in panic, like the newer wow seems to mention ("if we dont have a lot of "casual stuff"/pisseasy things/no-deep systems, casuals dont play our game"). no, as you said, they learned, they adapted, they got better. maybe slowly. maybe while doing stupid things and low dps. but nowhere i saw this guy going like "meh, i dont like that game, its too complex, it takes too long, i have no fun.". never met that ppl. nowhere. wether in vanilla nor in TBC. and i wasnt that "i live in my encapsulated raid guild blob" guy.
exactly as you said, blizz catered to the wrong audience. instead of further developing good systems into great systems, and finetune all the stuff, while adding side by side new stuff, the reinvented the whole wheel with catering to the masses in mind.
and also, as we both said, just looked at the good quarter numbers, but forgot that they should invest in their longterm paying customers instead doing things for ppl leaving that game after 2-3 months and never came back. they just didnt realized that a mmorpg xpac has a fat time/effort/money investment, that you have to stabilize with a solid customer base to be economic.
or in short: they were greedy and shortterm thinking. quarter numbers is all that matter these days, because market is changing fast. but IF you are in that lucky spot, that you already have a stable and giant customer base, this route is the wrong way and just stupid.
and we all know the result of such management descissions (when ppl like mike morhaime wanna please the activision shareholders, mostly by great quarter numbers): systems like the wow token (every wow token ever passed the AH gives blizz 5$ extra), connected servers instead realmpacking (the transfers are an absurd great money creator), more marketing, less investment, and so on.
stupid, that some silly management economics destroyed a great game. wow retail is still ok in some parts. but what great paltform wow had? what had this game could be, if they had focused on core of that stuff? that would be a damn great paralell universe.
of course there are ppl out there sayin: if that happened, wow would be dead today. but i dont think so.
its so sad that blizzard, a great gaming company, full of real game lovers, that made games for gamers by gamers, went down that long way from the top down to a cheap eyeblinder moneymaker, catering to everyone.
Last edited by Niwes; 2017-02-09 at 10:49 PM.
It's so ironic, seeing posts like this, full of arrogance and elitism, implying that WoW wasn't, from its inception, a game designed to "cater to the masses". From the get-go, WoW was all about accessibility, and, as time progressed, it only continued to become more accessible. I'm sorry if it hurts your 'elitist' feelings, but it's the truth. WoW was never designed to be 'challenging', but, instead, it was designed to be more accessible than its competition.
From limited time on vanilla private servers, I feel like classic had a real liveliness in the world. A lot of this was simply in the fact that there was no flying; the world was massive, and having to traverse it on foot added to the scale of the place. In addition, the threat posed by mobs made you careful about where you went, and made fights seem like real encounters. Overall, I guess you could credit realism for why I like vanilla. I still play on live way more than any private server, and can say that Legion has made massive improvements in this respect.
"Casuals". First, what is a casual player?
WoW at its inception was suppose to be the most friendly, accessible and easiest MMO game. No death penalty. No mandatory PvP. No player looting other players. No endless grind. Easy rewards from just questing.
Would it? That would mean the focus would on long levelling. Each expansion would require a one year or more levelling period. Much like Vanilla. Not saying this a bad idea. In fact, I would like to see this. But that development needs to be paid for. Some has to give if the focus is on levelling for one or two years and less on end game. That means the most obvious choice of reducing development would be raids.
Would the "hard core" players be happy with that? Would be considered as even more evidence that Blizzard is focusing on "casuals"?
And you know this? How? You have access to Blizzard customer database?
Blizzard only released subs number. 8 million. 10 million. 12 million. 7 million. We all based the success of the game on this one single number. We all make one big assumption. That the 8 million or what ever players at Vanilla are the same players today. We don't. Blizzard never released their players turnover. For all we know, the number of original players at the start vanilla could be just in the tens of thousands.
Blizzard once mentioned that WoW had 100 millions accounts. Assuming Legion has around 7 million, that is a 7% customer retention rate.
We do not know how many new accounts are being created from new customers.
The more I play I legion I think "there were very few who were lucky in vanilla but now being lucky is mandatory".
Blizzard didn't get the idea for Flex until half a decade later, nor the technology for any of the other solutions I listed.
Catchup mechanics was the answer to let people see all the content due to low participation rates at the time, because it was easy to implement, if Naxxramas 40 had magnitudes higher attendance due to other solutions (If they existed back then) it's not guaranteed they would of had to add catchup in the first place.
It's like, if we had super effective solar power in the 1800's, normal petrol as a fuel would have been a dumb idea.
But the biggest point is we have all those solutions now, so contrasting to Vanilla/TBC participation rates is folly. It's not non-linear vs linear. It's non-linear vs linear with no xyzabcd features to back it up.
Last edited by Daffan; 2017-02-10 at 01:00 AM.
Content drought is a combination of catchup mechanics and no new content.
So... doing dungeon multiple times for a reward vs doing a dungeon multiple times for a reward. I don't see a difference honestly
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Well, i've already "completed" vanilla, there is nothing new for me on PS except things that they've got wrong because of lack of sniffs from official servers and, well, just wrong things like druids running around with "of quality" items or playing fucking molten core full of mages and fury warriors (who were shit at this patch, but because admins decided to put 1.12.1 talents into 1.4 game with redesigned weapons it's fine and blizzlike)
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If you down guldan in day one - you play on way lower difficulty than you should be and do that mostly for alts.
And no, it's the same, you work towards killing last boss for months and finally down him. Maybe do couple of farm runs for BiS trinket for your main DPS.
Except in vanilla you are forced to "spend maybe a week or two progressing in order to kill him yet again" as you speak, because you needed gear to progress in next raid.
Just FYI - nerdscreams happen only once - on a first progression kill, then it's on farm until new content is released. It was like that from release of raids.
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thank god that bleeding edge raiders are only 1% so we peasants can play whatever we want, because most of our, peasants, DPS loss is from fuck ups and lack of gear, which is not a case for bleeding edge raiders.
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they've lost all customers because "Stormstrike has a new icon" patch obviously
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No you didn't, you've seen practically target dummies with bosses models. LFR is not endgame, it's akin to watching a video on youtube and then say "ok, i've seen all raiding content, what's next?"
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Sinestra was so fucking fun. DBM didn't worked at all on her, while mechanically she wasn't that hard. We realized A LOT about our fellow raiders who we used to think were good, but actually it was an addon playing for them. Derp.
Last edited by Charge me Doctor; 2017-02-10 at 03:33 AM.
Originally Posted by Urban Dictionary
To me, Classic was better in that it didn't feel so spoon fed and hand outs type. I'm actually surprised and happy with how they're handling flying now though. You gotta earn it.
There are a lot of factors, but here are some that come to mind;
The journey was a lot of the fun, but now players seem so fixed on end result. I want it now, I got it finally, rather than I got it yay! Parts of that varied through the xpacs and vanilla (grinding for tier gear), and legion handles some things better, but still.
Now the journey is more grindy since you zombie through stuff without having to think hard. So you only look forward to end result. (How many enjoy leveling anymore? A lot would consider it a chore). End result takes too long so it's made easier. Reach end result. "oh, well that's it." Cancels subscription lol.
Teleporting everywhere kills it too. Zombie-ing through dungeons just AoE'ing everything also makes it a drainer, barely have to think or co-operate. Completing dungeon runs without even speaking a word to your team is successful? Is that right like that? Don't even care what classes we team up with now, it doesn't alter our tactics or play-style accordingly. So it's boring and feels like a grind rather than achievement completing something.
Also, there was a stage you didn't even need to know where dungeons were in the world cause you just teleport everytime.
A lot of the Classic stuff admittedly did take too long, but I think there needs to be a middle ground. Okay so for dungeons, CC'ing all the trash every pull makes runs too long, but there has to be some in between point.
The quest helper. Quests are zombie mode cause you don't even need to read them. (But there was an addon doing that so blizzard did it themselves anyway, didn't see a way around it.)
All the automation ease of play use type stuff like that makes it less interactive.
Blizzard said at one time I think that a lot of players when cancelling subscription don't have time anymore, particularly the veteran players. Which is fair enough, so they made things quicker and easier. But I think it got to a point being too much. Also, probably partly misunderstood that "I don't have time anymore" could really be "I don't want to make time anymore".
If you do something you really enjoy, you'll make the time.
Thanks for reading
Last edited by blitz156; 2017-02-10 at 03:48 AM.
It's your choice to level at extremely fast pace and "zombie through stuff without having to think hard". I still enjoy leveling, i don't equip heirloom items (because the flood of green items from quests is already unstoppable), i don't go to dungeons more than once, and i completely skip TBC questing because it's shit (i used to skip classic questing too (usually by dungeoning and grinding mobs), because it was boring as fuck since i've been doing a lot of it already, Cata kinda changed it to better). The only thing that i miss is importance of a profession you pick - some crafted items used to be really good, now it's just a waste compared to how much time you spend leveling it up to your current level.
Kills what? Kills your downtime in the world since you spend less time alt+tabbed into youtube while flying?
Honestly, what is better, single-target-auto-attacking each mob to death, or AoEing them to death? Protip: it's all the same, one of these two is faster tho. I don't recall talking much to other players in a dungeon besides "mage water pls". What stops you from communicating with party members now? If you think that people used to be all communicative and talking StRaTeGiEs in a dungeon in vanilla - you are wrong, you just gave leader to a tank (and hope that he won't masterloot anything) and he puts marks on targets, then you do what you have to do.
And again, you don't need to know where the entrance to the dungeon is, but you can get this knowledge. Even in vanilla 99% didn't know how to get to fucking mara without an addon
CC'ing "all the trash every pull" wasn't even a thing. Common "time-eaters" back then were:
1) waiting for group to assemble
2) waiting for everyone to "finish their quest and i'll be there"
3) waiting for patrols to gtfo
4) waiting for mana users to eat
5) slowly progress forward because main "damage dealt" graph was "autoattack", "wand attack", "auto shot" and "pet attack"
6) running/drinking/ressing AFKers after death, because a warrior decided to actually use his ability "Charge" to pull stuff instead of throwing a knife. God damn these players using their abiltiies.
Quest helper wasn't blizzards idea, it was community that made it, it was community that used it, it was community that forced it onto each other (omg he don't know where this shit drops what a noob without quest helper/questie/whatvere the fuck). In fact, majority of "QoL" changes (even people-who-didn't-played-vanilla-but-played-PS-and-think-that-it-is-vanilla hated LFG system was created by community, blizzard just removed the mandatory addon from the list of mandatory addons and simplified the process)
Blizzard said a lot of things, this can be one of reasons for changes, but WoW was always about accessibility - everyone should be able to play it, but community forgot about it, helping newbies became something frowned upon and this whole "just kick the noob and get a good guy instead" mentality developed in community over time.
Now, this case was brought up in mid-TBC, when exp required for leveling in vanilla was reduced - do you really think that anyone in his sane mind will level a character from 1 to 60 over the same time it was required back in 2004? It isn't the case of "well people just don't want to put this time in", but it's in most cases was impossible to do certain activities (good luck finding a group for dire maul in TBC when 2k out of 3k pop were capped and no one was at your level to run dungeon).
The game became too long over the time and exp requirements had to be dropped, because it divided community too much and alt-play was impossible for regular player (who often paid money for others to level their characters which is not cool (but i made a plenty of money for doing that in mid-TBC, that's why i hate questing through vanilla-TBC)
Last edited by Charge me Doctor; 2017-02-10 at 04:18 AM.
Originally Posted by Urban Dictionary
How is 20-shotting mobs to get even less experience of vanilla is more than a mindless grind? I mean, is it health pool/damage output of player that makes mindless grind not mindless grind? Because, universally, killing mobs is considered to be mindless grind, because mobs are just mobs and don't fight back that much, they exist to be beaten to death
Last edited by Charge me Doctor; 2017-02-10 at 05:05 AM.
Originally Posted by Urban Dictionary
Nice, fair enough.
Fair call. But there had to be something done to counter that; sit in 'capital city of xpac' and just TP where you want to go. At least they improved that over time though giving more reason to go out in the world.
But I disagree your view on dungeon runs and how they were. My first experience that solidified my love for WoW was as a noob in Deadmines. Little did I realise I partied with a top-tier raider alt and he structured and explained the game well for us scrubs. It was fun as, we learnt each others abilities, co-ordinated CC. Attacked at precise moments. We all had a job to do and if we did it well we got through it easier. I remember in UBRS or something having to learn how to kite that dragon properly so you could buy the team some time and breathing room. Made you care about your class and feel defined. There were situations that could make your class shine other than Skada/Recount meters. Now you just run in and not give a shit and spam all your abilities without caring of any consequence, tank doesn't even need to pull just bring mob packs to him, AoE that shit. And it's not about that you can't talk (lol) it's the lack of incentive or reason to.
Yeah, some valid dark points to classic.
Yeah, I believe Blizz were just forced to add it, unless they otherwise made questhelper count as cheating. But that wouldn't go down well.
There was a game screenshot, I forget which, where someone photoshopped the hud to have quest markers and guides for everything imaging how much it would neuter the game. A cancerous thought but funny to imagine. Wish I could remember what it was. The closest thing I can think of is The Witcher 3 quest style compared to WoW... or was it skyrim.. Anyway..
Things don't have to go slow, but should be remain engaging. A lot has been sacrificed for the sake of speed imo.
"just kick the noob and get a good guy instead" - The whole ilvl thing is replacing that now. Don't have to prove yourself. Shame if you can do good dps cause you chose the right stats, but careful if that makes your ilvl low, you will get you declined anyway. So ignore stats, ilvl is king.
None of us miss the bad in Classic obviously, but there were some good feels too. Now if only they can integrate the good somehow without bringing back the bad stuff. Compromise perhaps, but how much.
Last edited by blitz156; 2017-02-10 at 05:11 AM.
Well I've got my personal 3 big gripes, but there's plenty of other issues as well.
1) Quests felt like actual quests; they actually took brainpower to complete. Vague, sometimes cryptic text was all you got to figure out where to go, and they weren't marked on your map.
2) The only one who got to zip around the world were Mages. The rest of us had to learn flight / boat / zeppelin paths to find the quickest way somewhere. The world felt FAR bigger back then because getting to another continent took some time.
3) The game didn't make you feel like the most badass overpowered hero in the galaxy back in Vanilla. You were just another adventurer that gets kind of thrown into the mix, teaming up with other players to hopefully take down some evil. I absolutely hate the direction WoW has gone with this notion; now it's like they don't want to acknowledge there's millions of other players, and instead now I'm some chosen god among men who the npc's think can solo all the baddies.
The thing about it is, while you seem pretty reasonable, most of the people here focus on the bad in legion and completely deny any of the bad from vanilla. It's silly tbh.
I miss a lot of classic wow. Would I play it again after playing subsequent expansions? Hell no.
(A lot of the ilvl issues go away when you don't pug. Pugging has always been cancer)