Gameplay immersion in WoW is TERRIBLE

[Deleted]

The whole RPG aspect of the game has blown up so badly it's pretty hilarious. The whole game is designed to people who just want to play it for the gameplay at max level, literally nothing else is even remotely well done nor do they even try. Leveling is terrible from balance to gameplay to quest design to dungeons, story spans over multiple expansion making no sense at all, even at max level you see the same characters in multiple places like Drek'Thar in your example and the writing in general is extremely inconsistent and all over the place. It doesn't even try to feel like a real world anymore, band-aids over old band-aids. I don't mind since I play single player RPGs if I want that fix but I can't even imagine how shitty WoW is to new players

[Venziir]

play alone, at night, and do all content, including old.

the game is immersive

I agree, but I'd also add "turn on the game music and sounds and wear a headset/earphones". That's how I play each time a new expansion comes out, I also turn off every sort of chat aside from the /s and /y ones which allows me to see what the npc's say only. VERY immersive!

[Scornedfury]

Actually played since Vanilla.

Don't believe you or you sounds like you didn't do anything but level toons. Probably did nothing else.

Either wary youre complaining about the stupidest shit. Half of what you're complaining about is stuff thats in any and every longstanding mmo. So if everything is so bad go try another mmo out. You'll be back after a day.

Players are just spoiled these days. Blizz should hand your everything and they are incompetent and idiots if not.

[omeomorfismo]

rotfl complaining about numbers and immersion at the same time.
rotfl

[ro9ue]

The role of the 'Playable Character' in this game is untenable, immersion breaking and inconsistent with the game world. The whole way the PC interacts with the 'game world' these days is completely dysfunctional and broken.

For a start, being 'Head' of our orders is stupid and doesn't allow players to fulfill their own identity because of associated baggage that it brings.

- How can the head of any order justify or participate killing in Battlegrounds and various other conflicts which involve killing people in their own order. You wouldn't be able to show up at your order hall or command any honor or respect if you are slaying your brothers and sisters because nobody would work with you and the organisation would shatter GoT style. It's like when a Draenei Shaman get's out of AV having just killed Drek'Thar and then goes to the very same Drek'Thar for that blessing in their hall. It kills immersion completely and utterly.

- If we are the TOP officials of our orders why do we do 90% of legwork while everyone else sits around doing nothing? If I am the CEO then why the hell am I doing everything. What kind of stupid organisation forces their CEO to do the grunt work? Surely if he's the CEO he should be running things by distributing orders from a safe place not risking his life collecting pig spines and bottles of orc piss. You wouldn't see Trump in a tactical outfit leading a S.W.A.T team because that would be an idiotic, risky and inefficient use of his time. If they wanted us to do all this grunt work crap they shouldn't have made the PC a super important person.

- Numbers no longer have meaning in relationship to power. Being level 110 is stupid. What does the number '110' say for how powerful someone is or experienced? ZERO. When there were only every 60 levels the rest of the gameworld was consistent with that and players could make reasonable decisions and things had meaning. Let me give you an example:

Level 10 - Inexperienced - Pests.
Level 20 - Little Experience. - Animals.
Level 30 - Reasonable Experience - Humanoids
Level 40 - Good Experience - Geared Humanoids
Level 50 - Experienced - Military Humanoids
Level 60 - Very Experienced - Undead, Demons, Dragons.

Instead we have 110 meaningless levels that say zero about your progress and your relationship with the rest of the world. There is literally no place in this game where I feel threatened other than current content. You could aggro a pack of low level ogres and basically go to sleep and wake up the next day to find that despite hours upon hours of tirelessly swinging their weapons at a stationary opponent, they have not so much as tickled your nutsack. The worst part is they just keep increasing the level ceiling every expansion and the problem just gets worse and worse. I would like to one day know my char can logically stay at max level and not have to constantly 'catch up' because suddenly he's weak. We can't just keep growing in power forever it's stupid.

While on the subject of numbers I have to say combat numbers are unreasonable. 523 is a reasonable number to process not 15,343,789. Players have to spam up their screens with these stupid number counter addons to see if their actually doing anything. Instead of seeing 2 or 3 meaningful numbers you see an endless spam of numbers in the millions. It's idiotic.

- Ever heard the expression "It's the journey not the destination"?. Travelling used to be a huge part of this game. Any player who sets foot into the wilderness of Azeroth was taking the risks and rewards that come with adventure. Even if you had to go somewhere there were still events that transpired along the road to make things interesting like meeting other players. Flying makes WoW's entire travel network redundant and removes any and all chance of anything happening in your travels. You simply fly from point A to B. It's theoretically possible to level to max without even moving the char from an inch from where he starts by simply spamming queues. It sickens me that this game's leveling experience has become spamming tedious dungeons queues and teleporting from one end of the universe to the other to places that no player can appreciate because they get pulled from setting to setting like it's nothing.

- The actual in game 'World' is empty and forgotten. Any place outside of the current content/expansion is cast into the oblivion of 'old content' never to be see or heard from ever again.

- I don't even want to start on the story. It's a shambles.

Anyway I've said my peace. Share your thoughts if you so desire.

I actually agree with a lot of this but I do give them a little leeway for "gameplay reasons".

I've been waiting for an MMO to drop the leveling system. It's really just arbitrary bullshit. There's no longer a feeling of "progression", it's just an annoying bar I have to fill before I can do what I actually want to do and play with my friends.

Agree on the traveling thing. I think the game would've been better off without easily accessible portals, group finders and flying mounts - but I feel that's sort of a pandora's box issue. Once players have that convenience, it's hard to go back. Think about how much shit they got for taking away flying just temporarily for new content. Not to mention EVERY new MMO that has been released without those tools have had a ton of complaints from their playerbase and often have to cave into the pressure to bring back those conveniences.

On the lore-breaking stuff I let slide for gameplay, I mean the lore in WoW is a joke at this point. We had a time-traveling orc and there really is no sense of actually defeating any foe since they just seem to resurrect them whenever they want.

In so far as the CEO/order hall comments - I think the issue lies more with how important our characters are lore wise now. I feel like we should've just stayed as the grunts and simple adventurers. Once you start killing lore heroes and such you begin down the spectacle creep path where you end up with Ashbringer and kill gods in their planes.

I'd rather that higher tier lore happen automatically by the story writers and we essentially just participate in the "war effort", like a large scale Isle of Thunder.

[ls-]

Instead we have 110 meaningless levels that say zero about your progress and your relationship with the rest of the world. There is literally no place in this game where I feel threatened other than current content.

As soon as you got your T2 or in some cases even T1/T1.5, there's nothing threatening in outside world, unless your class was a pile of garbage, which could actually be the case back in the day.

So nothing has changed in this regard.

-- edit #1

Also, for experienced players for whom WoW wasn't their first MMORPG, unless we're talking about RPers or PvPers who preferred twinking, WoW was ALWAYS about reaching lvl cap ASAP and doing relevant stuff.

And lastly, immersion and MMORPG don't go well together, I mean, even being a proper RPG and an MMO simultaneously is quite hard because MMO part kills many aspects of an RPG: many mechanics don't work well or can't be used in MMO environment at all because devs need to balance everything and everyone, this ruins RPG fun.

[Deleted]

The role of the 'Playable Character' in this game is untenable, immersion breaking and inconsistent with the game world. The whole way the PC interacts with the 'game world' these days is completely dysfunctional and broken.

For a start, being 'Head' of our orders is stupid and doesn't allow players to fulfill their own identity because of associated baggage that it brings.

- How can the head of any order justify or participate killing in Battlegrounds and various other conflicts which involve killing people in their own order. You wouldn't be able to show up at your order hall or command any honor or respect if you are slaying your brothers and sisters because nobody would work with you and the organisation would shatter GoT style. It's like when a Draenei Shaman get's out of AV having just killed Drek'Thar and then goes to the very same Drek'Thar for that blessing in their hall. It kills immersion completely and utterly.

- If we are the TOP officials of our orders why do we do 90% of legwork while everyone else sits around doing nothing? If I am the CEO then why the hell am I doing everything. What kind of stupid organisation forces their CEO to do the grunt work? Surely if he's the CEO he should be running things by distributing orders from a safe place not risking his life collecting pig spines and bottles of orc piss. You wouldn't see Trump in a tactical outfit leading a S.W.A.T team because that would be an idiotic, risky and inefficient use of his time. If they wanted us to do all this grunt work crap they shouldn't have made the PC a super important person.

- Numbers no longer have meaning in relationship to power. Being level 110 is stupid. What does the number '110' say for how powerful someone is or experienced? ZERO. When there were only every 60 levels the rest of the gameworld was consistent with that and players could make reasonable decisions and things had meaning. Let me give you an example:

Level 10 - Inexperienced - Pests.
Level 20 - Little Experience. - Animals.
Level 30 - Reasonable Experience - Humanoids
Level 40 - Good Experience - Geared Humanoids
Level 50 - Experienced - Military Humanoids
Level 60 - Very Experienced - Undead, Demons, Dragons.

Instead we have 110 meaningless levels that say zero about your progress and your relationship with the rest of the world. There is literally no place in this game where I feel threatened other than current content. You could aggro a pack of low level ogres and basically go to sleep and wake up the next day to find that despite hours upon hours of tirelessly swinging their weapons at a stationary opponent, they have not so much as tickled your nutsack. The worst part is they just keep increasing the level ceiling every expansion and the problem just gets worse and worse. I would like to one day know my char can logically stay at max level and not have to constantly 'catch up' because suddenly he's weak. We can't just keep growing in power forever it's stupid.

While on the subject of numbers I have to say combat numbers are unreasonable. 523 is a reasonable number to process not 15,343,789. Players have to spam up their screens with these stupid number counter addons to see if their actually doing anything. Instead of seeing 2 or 3 meaningful numbers you see an endless spam of numbers in the millions. It's idiotic.

- Ever heard the expression "It's the journey not the destination"?. Travelling used to be a huge part of this game. Any player who sets foot into the wilderness of Azeroth was taking the risks and rewards that come with adventure. Even if you had to go somewhere there were still events that transpired along the road to make things interesting like meeting other players. Flying makes WoW's entire travel network redundant and removes any and all chance of anything happening in your travels. You simply fly from point A to B. It's theoretically possible to level to max without even moving the char from an inch from where he starts by simply spamming queues. It sickens me that this game's leveling experience has become spamming tedious dungeons queues and teleporting from one end of the universe to the other to places that no player can appreciate because they get pulled from setting to setting like it's nothing.

- The actual in game 'World' is empty and forgotten. Any place outside of the current content/expansion is cast into the oblivion of 'old content' never to be see or heard from ever again.

- I don't even want to start on the story. It's a shambles.

Anyway I've said my peace. Share your thoughts if you so desire.

And that's why I play The Lord Of The Rings Online. WoW was a joke after The Burning Crusade.

- - - Updated - - -

Fuck off and stop playing then?

You are just a kid.

[Methodd]

This. Blizzard isn't going to massively change everything just to suit you needs and never will. Sorry not sorry.

Well they did to cater to kids like you who want everything now, and the game is worse off for it. The numbers don't lie.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

This is one person who takes himself to important and claims its the games fault the he doesnt like the game instead of accepting the fact that the flaw sits in front of his pc.

Yup agreed 100 percent. This just is how the game is and I don't mind it one bit. Wow isn't game of thrones or something where each character is super serious. It's an mmorpg and one that focuses on end game competitive progression.
Frankly if you are worried with these things it's your fault. You are looking for the wrong things here.

[Aquinan]

You are just a kid.

Nope, try again. Don't like the game? Post constructive feedback on the official forums.

[Shammyrock]

It's theoretically possible to level to max without even moving the char from an inch from where he starts by simply spamming queues

Don't you have to be like lvl 10 to start queuing for dungeons?

[Sanguinerd]

I've long belived that being a "boss" was a bad idea. If everyone is a leader NOONE is.

Even if you try to immerse yourself It just doesn't work.

[Shammyrock]

To be honest, an mmo generally isn't where I go for immersion

[therealstegblob]

Chalk this off as another armchair game developer foaming from his mouth.

So you mean he's a game developer then?

[Justpassing]

I don't see why this is an issue - as a married man, it's a nice change of pace to be in control for once.

Don't get married.

[tikcol]

And travelling on foot for weeks on end to get garbage rewards from your quests might have been fun the first time around, but after 7+ years of playing, I have little desire to repeat those experiences.


Timewalking/transmog disagrees with you very much.

This is why the game doesn't attract new players. Instead of bringing new ones, it's pandering to your boredom.

[Darsithis]

This is why the game doesn't attract new players. Instead of bringing new ones, it's pandering to your boredom.

It has to attract new players, and it does. I've met plenty of people who are new to WoW, even recently. It also has to accommodate players who have been playing for a long time. It isn't fun to walk the length and breadth of Azeroth on no less than...let's see..12, 6, 3 = 21 characters for pointless rewards. Once or twice, sure, when everything was new and I wasn't sure what was around the next bend, when I had no idea what interesting treasures I could find, but I know every zone by heart, every special place by sight. If I had to repeat my first experiences in WoW for every new alt I create, I really would stop playing.

[tikcol]

If I had to repeat my first experiences in WoW for every new alt I create, I really would stop playing.

That's another issue right there. You choose to play like that but "demand" that the game catters to your way of playing.

Having a zillion alts that is

[Darsithis]

That's another issue right there. You choose to play like that but "demand" that the game catters to your way of playing.

I didn't demand that it caters to my "way of playing". The game naturally changed that way. Personally, I don't go out of my way to ask Blizzard for anything. If a game doesn't interest me, I just stop playing it. I'm not a completionist and I have little interest in wasting my time in a game that isn't enjoyable for me. I don't post angry rant threads, I don't tell everyone I quit, I don't send mad emails to Blizzard about how they've "destroyed the soul of the game" and so on. I just simply stop playing whatever it is.

Fortunately, World of Warcraft is enjoyable for me, and over the years the game has become very alt friendly, so I've created a lot of alts. My point was that if hadn't changed like that, I'd have stopped playing, and Blizzard recognized themselves that a good deal of player retention was that allure of alts, the desire to experience different classes, abilities, roles, starting locations, and questlines without having to repeat everything.

[Khallid]

I don't see how anything in your post has anything to do with immersion (which is the title). You seem to want a more realistic game, but the whole point is that it's fantasy. Realistic war is painful and disgusting, so it's no wonder fantasy wars don't focus on that.

- Numbers no longer have meaning in relationship to power. Being level 110 is stupid. What does the number '110' say for how powerful someone is or experienced? ZERO. When there were only every 60 levels the rest of the gameworld was consistent with that and players could make reasonable decisions and things had meaning. Let me give you an example:

Instead we have 110 meaningless levels that say zero about your progress and your relationship with the rest of the world. There is literally no place in this game where I feel threatened other than current content. You could aggro a pack of low level ogres and basically go to sleep and wake up the next day to find that despite hours upon hours of tirelessly swinging their weapons at a stationary opponent, they have not so much as tickled your nutsack. The worst part is they just keep increasing the level ceiling every expansion and the problem just gets worse and worse. I would like to one day know my char can logically stay at max level and not have to constantly 'catch up' because suddenly he's weak. We can't just keep growing in power forever it's stupid.

While on the subject of numbers I have to say combat numbers are unreasonable. 523 is a reasonable number to process not 15,343,789. Players have to spam up their screens with these stupid number counter addons to see if their actually doing anything. Instead of seeing 2 or 3 meaningful numbers you see an endless spam of numbers in the millions. It's idiotic.

Your main thing here is basically that Numbers = bad. But any quantitative way to measure something will require numbers, and bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Higher level will make you stronger just as higher item level. There is no inconsistency with the number-to-power trend. I honestly don't understand what the issue with the level is. You are stronger at higher level. Level is a measure of strength, not of story progress.

The damage numbers have gotten large because every time things get stronger. If we were dealing less damage than what we did at lower levels, then THAT would break immersion. Higher level means you are stronger, and your damage numbers need to be higher. Your inability to process numbers larger than a few hundreds is entirely yours. The fact that they appear too quickly might be a reasonable thing to complain about, but we don't live in a void. Addons exist. You can't pretend that they don't. The developers can't pretend that they don't either.