We found the reason why the game used to be great. PRESTIGE

[Teri]

Do you feel motivated to get item level? Thats the question.

If the answear is "no" then something is wrong with the game.

Because there is no incentives

Myself? Not really, 900 is fine for me in the current content cycle without raiding/M+.

No raiding guild , so no need to push it, that would change things otherwise if going from Normal to HC to early Mythic or something.

Raiders think otherwise, unless they stop at normal or heroic only, eventually you just overgear them by doing it each week via titanforges etc.

Back when server competition felt good in TBC I wanted to stay on top and get 1 character to the best.

[toxicrusader]

Wat? Even when I was a Hardcore Raider in WoW's Early years my Character ended up looking like a Clown 90% of the time since gear with good stats was often mismatched.

Always reminds me of this picture.

This made me cringe.

Thanks Elune for new models and transmog.

[Deleted]

Myself? Not really, 900 is fine for me in the current content cycle without raiding/M+.

No raiding guild , so no need to push it, that would change things otherwise if going from Normal to HC to early Mythic or something.

See? There needs to be incentives for people to want to do something.
If you don't sparkle the player with unique looking stuff that others envy we will be in state of depression while playing wow

This is why i like my idea:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-New-Tier-Sets

[Demithio]

Do you feel motivated to get item level? Thats the question.

If the answear is "no" then something is wrong with the game.

Because there is no incentives

No incentives because everyone can look 'cool enough'. And no incentives because, while maybe not top tier-best thing you can have right now- gear, but good enough stat gear, can be had fairly easily. The game has been disincentivized for a while now, and that happened when it was decided to give just about everything in the game to everyone. Whether you agree with that type of game design choice or not is another debate. However, it renders this result regardless of who thinks what.

[Deleted]

No incentives because everyone can look 'cool enough'. And no incentives because, while maybe not top tier-best thing you can have right now- gear, but good enough stat gear, can be had fairly easily. The game has been disincentivized for a while now, and that happened when it was decided to give just about everything in the game to everyone. Whether you agree with that type of game design choice or not is another debate. However, it renders this result regardless of who thinks what.

Thats indeed the problem.
Blizzard needs to make things prestigious again to give hapiness to players. Because right now this is insane, no one even looks at eachother anymore.
No one aspire to be someone else.

[DrStiglit]

I just can't get behind someone making a new thread to try and get more attention to their failed thread.

[Deleted]

That's why if I got to be the head of the WoW team I would put some resources inmediately to a "Don't show other players transmogs" option. So players can see what others are wearing and see the tiers and in first sight: "hey this guy got the mythic shoulders, cool!" "This guy from this pro guild is only wearing LFR tier, why?" That would make some people care more about that kind of rewards, while the ones who prefer to see semi nude elves can still get their sexy pixels.

[Eleccybubb]

That's why if I got to be the head of the WoW team I would put some resources inmediately to a "Don't show other players transmogs" option. So players can see what others are wearing and see the tiers and in first sight: "hey this guy got the mythic shoulders, cool!" "This guy from this pro guild is only wearing LFR tier, why?" That would make some people care more about that kind of rewards, while the ones who prefer to see semi nude elves can still get their sexy pixels.

You know if only there was a feature to see what gear players are wearing. I don't know an inspect feature maybe? Or you know a model viewer on Wowhead? I imagine there isn't the option because it's either too complex to work or Blizzard don't want to do it right now.

[Deleted]

Yeah. But it requires to target, inspect, go piece by piece to see if the guy in front of you is clearing mythic or jusr a casual with boring gear, and then target the next one, and the next one and so on. What was cool pre-transmog was to cross someone and "Wow, look at that guy with tier X and Y weapon!" I just want the option so everyone can choose. It could be hard to code right now? I don't know, the game already sends the info of the original items, which everyone has a model binded in our client, so telling the client draw the original model and not the one in the transmog should not be extremly hard to do.

[Eleccybubb]

Yeah. But it requires to target, inspect, go piece by piece to see if the guy in front of you is clearing mythic or jusr a casual with boring gear, and then target the next one, and the next one and so on. What was cool pre-transmog was to cross someone and "Wow, look at that guy with tier X and Y weapon!" I just want the option so everyone can choose. It could be hard to code right now? I don't know, the game already sends the info of the original items, which everyone has a model binded in our client, so telling the client draw the original model and not the one in the transmog should not be extremly hard to do.

But to claim every player would feel like that is silly. Nobody has hard evidence that it was a majority back then either just their own personal experience.

I just find it amusing that people have this hate crusade against transmog. Not you personally. Or this argument that because they were "famous" for having a full set it meant everyone else who had their high end sets was.

Also ironically a few of the most prestigious rewards are transmog options. Challenge mode armor and weapon pieces.

[Deleted]

But to claim every player would feel like that is silly. Nobody has hard evidence that it was a majority back then either just their own personal experience.

I just find it amusing that people have this hate crusade against transmog. Not you personally.

You became famous if you had a complete tier set. It's a fact, it's a consequence, it's how the game was designed.

You could ignore the fame, but it was there.

[Cosmic Janitor]

You became famous if you had a complete tier set. It's a fact, it's a consequence, it's how the game was designed.

You could ignore the fame, but it was there.

Well for the most part you spend weeks grinding DKP to get one piece vs the 12-30 (of 40) others in the raid that bid on it as well. Then one evening you realized that the guy that got all the off pieces for half the price actually got the way better deal, since your bonis is mostly shite and the other stuff has at least 0.3 crit more on it (if you were a caster and didn't scale at all with gear besides crit from int).

Completing one was a feat. Mostly a testament to bad itemization and poor choices, but it was a feat for sure.

[Deleted]

As I said, it should be an option. I would use it, some of my friends would use it as we talked about it, others would not. Obviously, not forced, keep transmog as it is now also. You want to see female elf meat or people perfectly matched, you can. You want to see the real gear? You turn on the buton that says "Hide other players transmog".

Having options is good.

[Kyanion]

You became famous if you had a complete tier set. It's a fact, it's a consequence, it's how the game was designed.

You could ignore the fame, but it was there.

Yeah it wasn't a fact. You can't say your experience was the same for everyone on other realms. Maybe on your realm it was but that was not true everywhere. And 'fame' in your eyes is what a few people gawking at you from time to time?

[Deleted]

Yeah it wasn't a fact. You can't say your experience was the same for everyone on other realms. Maybe on your realm it was but that was not true everywhere. And 'fame' in your eyes is what a few people gawking at you from time to time?

The fame came in the form of whispers and simply by looking at you. Mostly newbie players and casuals which is the majority of WoW.

But i'm not asking for changes "to be famous" (LOL), i'm asking for changes because this created a cycle of incentive to continue playing the game after the point of just walking around doing nothing in major cities.

People felt special by having a complete tier set and casuals aspired to be like them.

Dude this is something so simple that is crazy. The simple idea of "looking cool" was the main incentive for raiding (if you are addicted to rewards and prestige like i am)

[Kyanion]

The fame came in the form of whispers and simply by looking at you. Mostly newbie players and casuals which is the majority of WoW.

But i'm not asking for changes "to be famous" (LOL), i'm asking for changes because this created a cycle of incentive to continue playing the game after the point of just walking around doing nothing in major cities.

People felt special by having a complete tier set and casuals aspired to be like them.

Dude this is something so simple that is crazy. The simple idea of "looking cool" was the main incentive for raiding (if you are addicted to rewards and prestige like i am)

I find incentives in bettering my character through raid content by the stats on the item. I do not care what the items look like and even less so now that Transmog is a thing.. You like people gawking at you in town. To each their own. Some people would rather go out and do things than stand around town now.

You can keep projecting the narrative that "People felt special by having a complete tier set and casuals aspired to be like them." but that is easily disproven by the fact that raid numbers didn't do shit in Vanilla. If someone wanted to aspire to wear tier sets why didn't they say something like "Well I'm done looking at this idiot, now I'll go do the raids and get the gear myself." History shows that isn't what happened. It seems more likely a few people checked you out, went 'cool' and went on about their merry way. Your epeen got bigger and raid attendance didn't move. Such Vanilla. Much Wow.

- - - Updated - - -

The fame came in the form of whispers and simply by looking at you. Mostly newbie players and casuals which is the majority of WoW.

Newbies and casuals DID make up most of the game in Vanilla (and casuals continuing to be the majority all the way til now) but that majority of people didn't all stop to check out your armor. Some people did. But I doubt it is nearly as many as you seem to think it was.

[Deleted]

You can keep projecting the narrative that "People felt special by having a complete tier set and casuals aspired to be like them." but that is easily disproven by the fact that raid numbers didn't do shit in Vanilla. If someone wanted to aspire to wear tier sets why didn't they say something like "Well I'm done looking at this idiot, now I'll go do the raids and get the gear myself." History shows that isn't what happened. It seems more likely a few people checked you out, went 'cool' and went on about their merry way. Your epeen got bigger and raid attendance didn't move. Such Vanilla. Much Wow.

You are right SOME people looked at you...thought to themselves "i have to raid to get that" and instantly give up. But it's just some of them.
And that's exactly why believe in prestige for LFR players.
Instead of giving up after watching you they would think "all i need to do is LFR quests and achievements? COOL thats easy"
And they would be in their merry way after the rewads in a quest for prestige and maybe someday they would do normal mode.

As of right now, the only thing to look up to someone in awe is "item level"...not cool enough. (for me and i think for more people)

[Queen of Hamsters]

No incentives because everyone can look 'cool enough'. And no incentives because, while maybe not top tier-best thing you can have right now- gear, but good enough stat gear, can be had fairly easily. The game has been disincentivized for a while now, and that happened when it was decided to give just about everything in the game to everyone. Whether you agree with that type of game design choice or not is another debate. However, it renders this result regardless of who thinks what.

It never stops amazing me just how delusional people are.

Saying that there's "no incentive" for a fact, when there are tons of people proving you wrong on that, is just cringeworthy at best. Why do you people think that this game keeps ticking? Hint; Because people feel INCENTIVE to play in one way or another.

Want the best possible gear? Go get it if you feel incentive to do so.
Want to settle for the second best or even just third best? Then you're free to do so.
Want to just pet battle? Go right ahead!

The incentive for pursuing things in this game is the same as it always was. It comes down to what the individual wants to accomplish with their time spent playing. Long-term rewards? Gear? Getting Cutting Edge experiences in raids? PVP ranks? It's all there and there's NOTHING "given to everyone" that anyone with some higher aspirations would consider worth settling for.

The stuff everyone can get with minimal effort and time, is just that. The rewards aimed at the lowest common denominator. Saying that "the incentive to raid is gone!" when the raiding scene has remained pretty damned static in size through every expansion is just downright stupid.

And the amount of prestige a certain activity holds, is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Thinking that there's no prestige in the game because "people used to raid to prevent their characters from looking like idiots" is not only historically incorrect, but also proven wrong on a daily basis.

[Deleted]

The story goes like this

In the times of "no transmog" everyone was ugly. So it was prestigious to have a raid tier set.
This created a cycle of people watching players with said tiers and them wanting to raid to be like them.

It was an endless cycle each expansion to "be able to be cool i need a complete tier set".

This was the main incentive for raiding. People wanting to be cool looking.

Now? There is transmog and people dont care about nothing no more because everyone looks cool.
This destroyed the cycle of PvE incentive and quest for prestige.

Meaning, there is no incenitve no more for raiding. Only item level...but who cares about that? Heroic/Mythic Raiders, a minority.

This thread is related to this one
(Just an example on how to give prestige back)
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-New-Tier-Sets

You wanna know why the game used to be great? A lot of people will say because it was new. But game systems have changed so drastically in some expansions, specs and talent changes, graphics are updated. The game is really very different from Vanilla. If anything the people quitting the game are most likely the ones that want the game to be the way it used to be, and not the way it is now. So that's probably not the reason. People still buy expansions. They don't want to give up on the game. They are clearly still interested in the game.

Then some people will say that it's because people don't have the time anymore. People grew up. They have families. But the game is more casual now than ever. The game was hardcore in Vanilla, but it doesn't require you to be hardcore anymore. They release a new LFR wing every 2 weeks now. That is half an hour of investment every 2 weeks. You don't have that amount of time? Then also keep in mind that so many people have started only recently. There are always younger players joining the game. I've heard from a lot of young players, that have joined in MoP or even WoD. I'm sure some even joined in Legion. I mean there are still children playing this game. In some cases kids, that weren't even born when WoW came out. So that's probably not it either.

I think it's a different reason. Are you ready to hear it? It's very simple. It's something I'm sure tons of people have figured out on their own. Here it goes.

Because the game world was huge.

Simple as that.

Why? Because it was that huge, unknown world, that we could explore, that made this game so fascinating. Two vast continents. Tons of zones. 8 different races. So many dungeons while leveling up. Raids at max level, raids and dungeons in patches. So many patches. There was always something new coming. It was impossible to exhaust all of that content. Partially because it was hard, partially because questing took so long and there were so many quests in so many zones. Compare that to the average expansion content. TBC was still ok, but it started going down in Wrath. Tons of scrapped raids. Revamped Naxxramas and very lazy ToC.

If Blizzard ever wants to make an expansion that was as fascinating as Vanilla, what they have to do is increase the level cap by something like 50-60 levels, give us a huge new world, a different planet with continents as big as the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, give us as many dungeons leveling up as there were in Vanilla and as many raids in the endgame, especially in patches. They have to sweep players off their feet with huge amounts of content. The problem is that this would probably take like 5 years to complete. It would be like a WoW 2. But I don't see any expansion ever being as successful as old WoW used to be. It's just not enough content to bring back that feeling of exploration and adventure. It's just a couple of days of questing once the new expansion hits and then tons of world quests. Tons of time spent on repeating the same content over and over again. There is no excitement in this. We need the unknown. Not the planned. Not the chore. Leveling in Vanilla took like a month. How can you hope to leave the same impression with an expansion?

[Deleted]

It never stops amazing me just how delusional people are.

Saying that there's "no incentive" for a fact, when there are tons of people proving you wrong on that, is just cringeworthy at best. Why do you people think that this game keeps ticking? Hint; Because people feel INCENTIVE to play in one way or another.

Want the best possible gear? Go get it if you feel incentive to do so.
Want to settle for the second best or even just third best? Then you're free to do so.
Want to just pet battle? Go right ahead!

The incentive for pursuing things in this game is the same as it always was. It comes down to what the individual wants to accomplish with their time spent playing. Long-term rewards? Gear? Getting Cutting Edge experiences in raids? PVP ranks? It's all there and there's NOTHING "given to everyone" that anyone with some higher aspirations would consider worth settling for.

The stuff everyone can get with minimal effort and time, is just that. The rewards aimed at the lowest common denominator. Saying that "the incentive to raid is gone!" when the raiding scene has remained pretty damned static in size through every expansion is just downright stupid.

And the amount of prestige a certain activity holds, is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Thinking that there's no prestige in the game because "people used to raid to prevent their characters from looking like idiots" is not only historically incorrect, but also proven wrong on a daily basis.

"The incentive for pursuing things in this game is the same as it always was"

Are you insane?
The game changed so much. Players who were looking for prestige back then, now are left with no incentives.

1) No one cares about what you are wearing anymore because of transmog
2) Raiding is not exclusive anymore

The simplest things can change the mind of people completely.
I can tell you for sure that the main reason why i am not playing WoW right now is because i dont feel special in any kind of way. Power increases MEAN NOTHING and you can do NOTHING with said power increases. No prestige whatsoever.

Power increase is only good if you intend to do Normal > Heroic > Mythic
And who does this? Almost no one.