When wow lost its mystery.

[Romarii]

Pretty much this. Cataclysm killed this game.

agree completely

[Vaelorian]

I don't think Cataclysm killed it. WoW's story was over. The Lich King was dead and gone. WCIII's story had its conclusion. The reason people picked up WOW was gone.
Was Cata bad? No only dragonsoul was bad and LFR was bad (the implementation). MoP And WoD were pretty bad in terms of story. Legion however is stronger but the pace that WoW is going down slowly has set... and nothing really can unmake that.

[Ferrair]

WoW lost its mystery and exploration back in Vanilla i think, or whenever it was when they took away wall jumping.

Remember those videos people put out, wall jumping into mount hyjal, that airport in stormwind i think? a farm too, jumping in to the gates at Tanaris leading in to Uldum even though it was just a cave, getting in to the cave at Tanaris leading to the Caverns of time.

I think there was a route to get to the land mass above Eastern Plaguelands but it was just mountains or something. Then you had the glitch to get in to the Emerald Dream, the GM island etc. etc.

I used the Blink glitch to get to the airport, jumped up a pole in Orgrimmar to let me get UNDER the city to see some weird rune, lower Karazahn with the dead bodies chained to the ground under water.

Granted they were all out of bounds, but those were fun times, never knowing what you're gonna run in to.

[Aleks0410]

The internet and datamining is indeed a big reason for the loss of mystery in game. But telling people not to read guides etc. won't fix the problem. It's like saying "don't like flying, then don't fly". Doesn't work like that. If you're at a major disadvantage over the rest of the server population, it's just not fun, no matter what your goal is.

With that said, I believe game design also plays a role in adding mystery. Flying and easier mobs/world content fx. No zone in at least 2 expansions have felt truly mysterious to me. The ogre base camp in north eastern Loch Modan still feels mysterious and dangerous though (on P-servers).

[Golden]

Plus, WoW has become a pattern.

Before an expansion is even announced, we know:
1. It will have 5-8 zones.
2. It will open with 2 raid zones of between 6-10 bosses.
3. There will be about 8 new dungeons.
4. There will be 5-10 new levels.
5. There probably won't be a new battleground.
6. There won't be a new gear dye system, etc.

It's starting to look like what WoW is now is all it's ever going to be.

[Stardrift]

Flying. Cata brought flying to Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, and that sucked the awe out of the world. It suddenly made everything so much smaller. It was awesome for the first week, flying around and seeing everything you never could before. But that lost its touch real quick.

[Army Dreamer]

When wow lost its mystery.

Since PTR became available.

[vipers]

when wod was released and after that it was downhill

[deepr]

I get what you mean. Wow was the first MMORPG I played and when I started I had no idea what the game had in store for me, how everything worked, how big the world was. I gradually discovered most of this by myself, being the insignificant noob that I was. The feeling of mystery and adventure, the interaction with other players... everything was so cool and new. This my friend will never come back. Because these days I know the mmorpg formula and Im 12 years older...

[Guyv3r]

WoW lost its mystery and exploration back in Vanilla i think, or whenever it was when they took away wall jumping.

Remember those videos people put out, wall jumping into mount hyjal, that airport in stormwind i think? a farm too, jumping in to the gates at Tanaris leading in to Uldum even though it was just a cave, getting in to the cave at Tanaris leading to the Caverns of time.

I think there was a route to get to the land mass above Eastern Plaguelands but it was just mountains or something. Then you had the glitch to get in to the Emerald Dream, the GM island etc. etc.

I used the Blink glitch to get to the airport, jumped up a pole in Orgrimmar to let me get UNDER the city to see some weird rune, lower Karazahn with the dead bodies chained to the ground under water.

Granted they were all out of bounds, but those were fun times, never knowing what you're gonna run in to.

TBH i think i miss this the most.

[Deleted]

I remember when you could get a quest from Darnassus that sent you to Tanaris and then to the far reaches of Hinterlands. While those took time to complete, they had a true sense of exploration and adventure and made the world feel like a big place, unlike the current rollercoaster mode where you just tunnelbrain through one zone at a time.

[Demithio]

Blizzard never found or kept a balance between mystery, adventure and playability. They went from one extreme being the long grind in vanilla to another extreme when Cataclysm went watered down until we have what we have today. Extreme watering of the game content until its simply putrid slop. After playing vanilla recently I can say that it did need some tuning, notice I said tuning, not a total wipe of anything that even resembled inconvenience or having to put in effort. They had a good balance in the first half of wotlk, until it started going south in the latter part. But even early wrath was a bit too simplified compared to previous TBC. However, right around that time frame is when Blizzard had the best opportunity to balance the game between accessibility and adventure / challenge / mystery. They should of kept a combination of vanilla traits (such as long, adventure like dungeons, RPG elements, books etc) and mixed in slightly easier accessibility.

- - - Updated - - -

Because you can't have mystery when 1) datamining shows the entire game for you before it's even released and 2) this game has existed for 10+ years and at this point, nothing Blizzard can throw at us is truly new.

I think a lot of mystery (or the illusion of mystery) can be injected through game design. Even with datamining, 10 years etc. Or, at the very least a renewed sense of adventure. Its really just a function of the elements that promote mystery and adventure being completely absent from the game at this point. Can it be exactly like when WoW was fresh and new? No. But it can have some of that spark put back into it with proper game design. Something that Blizzard refuses to do, and in fact does the exact opposite.

[Jimson]

I don't read mmo-c main page. Every expac that comes out I just get online and trying to wonder around. Thing is the rest of the people have read and know whats out there, so it speeds up the process for me finding out whats out there by them guiding me through it.

I don't understand what you mean by people "guiding you through it." Have you considered not reading a WoW fansite while the expansion is new and people are bound to be discussing it? Or do you mean strictly in-game? You can turn off /general and /trade chat, you know.

This isn't exactly a new thing, either. Even before WoWhead, we had Allakhazaam.

[Allyosaugh]

But, you know, all that Far Sighting really just demonstrated something to me. Mystery is an illusion, one that can't be created (not fully) but only encouraged by obfuscating the known within the unknown. There used to be peace with the mentality that there was something behind a wall that we could see but that wasn't available. What we used to call mystery, we now just call gating. And people are really mad that their money doesn't get them everything, up-front, all at once.

reminds me of this tolkien quote about 'mystery' in lord of the rings:

Part of the attraction of Lord of the Rings is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.

the old world used to have tons of 'closed doors' and mystery zones that we would always wonder about the potential of: hyjal, uldum, grim batol, the emerald dream gates.

with cataclysm those were all explored and revealed, and there was no new "far off unvisited land" to wonder about and look forward to. the best we can get these days is an instance portal to an upcoming raid in the next patch that we already know about, e.g. tomb of sargeras, icecrown citadel.

of course a large part of the blame lies on the playerbase and sites like this and wowhead's news section, revealing everything planned and datamining everything from new patches before they're even announced. the players always will hunger to know more, but now the playerbase is large enough to organize itself and create ways to answer all their questions, finding nothing left unanswered and destroying the magic.

even as tolkien expanded on the lord of the rings universe and more and more papers are published, some things are deliberately left mysterious and unknown, like tom bombadil, the cats of queen beruthiel, the origins of ungoliant, valinor after the second age, and more.

there aren't enough of these deliberately mysterious or ominous things in the game nowadays to captivate players' imaginations. the best we can hope for is the giant snake in gun'drak that the developers of the game don't even know about, with no actual story meaning. the world's been explored already, we have nothing left to learn about.

[ping-pong]

People usually search for external factors to "blame" for something they miss. If you give any person who hasn't touched a game to play it (without feeding him all the info to skip everything), he will be in awe and have a sense of mystery for quite some time. "Woah, Legion invasion from so far away, and I get to fight them on different fronts? Hell yeah!"

How can a game keep it's mystery if you (choose to) know everything about it before it comes out? How can the process of leveling be fun if you research fastest way to skip the most but still ding? It's not about expansions giving you different feelings, it's about you learning everything before playing and then just going through the motions of clicking some buttons to achieve what you already know and have read about.

How can a game keep you interested if you don't follow the story but rather just chase some ilvls?

Fix your approach, mystery will be back as soon as the next content you haven't thoroughly researched comes out.

[ComputerNerd]

That has always been that way.
You spoil exploration only as much as you want to.

Those things you describe you read by choice, you aren't forced to.

The mystery is gone once it has been seen once. and we have been around long enough to have seen much of it, by chance or by choice.

[ButterBeast]

Wow died when WOTLK ended. in december 2010. 2005-2010 that was real wow and we all remember how good it was. everything since cata is just a joke. its like plastic vs diamond.

this comment is a joke.

[Golden]

Blizzard went through a lot of trouble to make their game world small.

When blood elfs were announced, I thought they would make a whole expansion around the elf lands. Instead, they made two starter zones.

I thought there would be a whole expansion around the Maelstrom, not one zone.

I thought the trip to Argus would be a whole expansion to an alien world, not a raid zone.

I thought they might make expansions around each elemental plane. Instead, they made the elemental plane of earth one zone, the elemental plane of fire one raid zone, etc.

There aren't many teasers in the game anymore.

[Bumkin]

this comment is a joke.

you are a joke

[ButterBeast]

you are a joke

rich comming from a trumpling.