What Ruined World of Warcraft

[Deleted]

Nothing ruined WoW, it has bad elements but nothing nearly as bad to ruin the gaming experience as a whole.

[grexly75]

I can agree and relate to that text.

It's more or less all about the ultimate convenience and instant gratification in World of Warcraft today. Any resistance at all makes people explode with the argument that "this is a game and not a real job" and that it's almost a personal insult to them.

It's an age where everything have to be accessible to everyone, and people can't be told that something is not for them, or even think that they might not have enough time or willingness to play something for what it was. Otherwise they will go crazy and angry.

And unfortunately it is going further in that direction, case in point Wildstar had pretty much everything the OP talks about but it failed to live up to expectations among other things and they went F2P very fast which is not good for a game that was 100% sub based..

I think that the only other sub based MMO that is still holding its own pretty well is FFXIV..

[Deleted]

And unfortunately it is going further in that direction, case in point Wildstar had pretty much everything the OP talks about but it failed to live up to expectations among other things and they went F2P very fast which is not good for a game that was 100% sub based..

I think that the only other sub based MMO that is still holding its own pretty well is FFXIV..

which is why this was bound to happen in wow. Just glad i experienced that first "era" of wow, vanilla tbc wotlk.

[Maslenka]

It's definitely not ruined. If for whatever reason you don't find WoW appealing, well then go ahead and pick another hobby. It's not like you're glued do computer forced to play games, mmorpg nor WoW.

[Brewhan]

1st gen wow - Vanilla,BC,WOTLK
2nd gen wow - Cata,MOP,WOD
3rd gen wow - Legion, x, x

First gen always the best. Just like pokemon

[Charge me Doctor]

The game has followed the WotLK formula since then, so yeah obviously most of the people still playing like the WotLK formula. WotLK was still the moment they switched from the design which made the success of WoW to the design which made it decay.

What the fuck is "WotLK formula" and how is it possible to think that 4 completely different expansions were following some sort of "WotLK formula"?

[Perkunas]

We ruined it too. The players are just as responsible for the current state of the game as the devs are. We demanded convenience, we've thrown fits instead of move on from a genre that was never designed for the person who didn't have loads of spare time. Give us faction reps to grind with dungeons! UGH I HATE DUNGEONS WHERE'S OUR DAILY QUESTS FOR REP??? TOO MANY DAILY QUESTS ARRRRRRRRRGH!!!

He took my toy! She hit my bear! I want a potty! I want a cookie! I want to stay up! I want, I want, I want, me, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, mine, now, now, now, now!

[Charge me Doctor]

MOBAs did.

MOBAs and other genres that provide ability to play in really short bursts that are packed w/ RPG-ish action dealt a heavy blow to MMORPGs in general. Not as many people want to sit glued to their screens playing one game for hours and hours. Market and demands are kinda different from what they used to be.

They didn't ruined anything, they simply provide something that people wanted out of WoW but it never delivered (interesting, balanced PvP action). Players who played WoW just to pwn noobs moved to action games, where they should be.

[RoKPaNda]

whaaa, no it aint, its worse imo, even the numbers speak for themselves. i dont see wow with 12 million anymore

Do you have any idea how old WoW is? That has more to do with the decrease in subs than any other one factor. As per Blizzard themselves there was always a constant stream of new players and a constant stream of old players quitting. As the game got older the amount of new players drastically decreased because lets face it, old game is old.

From a raiding perspective, whether you're casual or super hardcore, the game is better now. If you're a non-raider the game is better now. There is more to do no matter what kind of player you are.

[Spaze]

MOBAs did.

MOBAs and other genres that provide ability to play in really short bursts that are packed w/ RPG-ish action dealt a heavy blow to MMORPGs in general. Not as many people want to sit glued to their screens playing one game for hours and hours. Market and demands are kinda different from what they used to be.

never thought about it but damn it its so true

[Deleted]

They didn't ruined anything, they simply provide something that people wanted out of WoW but it never delivered (interesting, balanced PvP action). Players who played WoW just to pwn noobs moved to action games, where they should be.

You can't balance PvP. This version is the most balanced version of all times.

[Rotted]

WoTLK started strong, but went downhill with ToC.

Actually it dipped with ToC and came back strong with the ICC patch, negative feelings returned because we had icc for 10 months was it? Then instead of the next expac we had Ruby Sanctum for x amount of months.

[lithuvien]

What ruined WoW?
a) The player base got old, got jobs, got married, had kids and then ran out of time to invest a lot of hours in an MMO
b) The newer generation is not that interested in MMOs, so not a lot of new blood for the game.

[Deleted]

Do you have any idea how old WoW is? That has more to do with the decrease in subs than any other one factor. As per Blizzard themselves there was always a constant stream of new players and a constant stream of old players quitting. As the game got older the amount of new players drastically decreased because lets face it, old game is old.

From a raiding perspective, whether you're casual or super hardcore, the game is better now. If you're a non-raider the game is better now. There is more to do no matter what kind of player you are.

its not about the amount of content anymore, its the game ITSELF, the basis of the game. Lvling is basically gone, all the rpg elements are gone, customization is gone, (stats, hybrid talents etc..) difficulty is gone etc... theres more.

[Eurhetemec]

"There was a time when loot was exciting instead of generic, dungeons were hard, leveling was part of the experience (and not a 3 day chore to endgame), community was king, and inconvenience just lead to good memories. Now it's just a lobby to pug raid in for ever increasing boring stat increases on forgettable items, with a Facebook game style treadmill on the side.

The sad state of MMORPGS really. I cross my fingers that we see what Dark Souls did to to the action adventure genre in MMO land. Bring back the difficulty, remove the hand holding, and let you experience the world again instead of chase after mindless quest markers doing piss easy content."

-Equestria



Do you agree?

As some who played since beta, I think that's mostly drivel, frankly.

WoW has had ups and downs, but Legion is an up. Cataclysm was a huge down. MoP was Cataclysm but less awful. WoD was a big down (with a couple of good ideas hidden in it).

The idea that "community was king" is an extremely rose-tinted fantasy, too. Just bollocks, frankly. Community mattered slightly more, but this was WoW, not EQ or DAoC or something, and it didn't matter very much, as much as you misremember. If you're thinking it mattered in Cata or later, you're deluding yourself.

All that said, I don't entirely disagree with your "solution". It won't do what you want, it won't magically re-create your rose-tinted bullshit memories of WoW, but increased difficulty and so on would make for a game that was more engaging, so long as it's difficulty that can be tackled by play-skill more than "get better gear". Trouble is, even back to Vanilla, WoW has always been more of a "get better gear" than "git gud" game. Gitting gud helps, a shit-ton. And I much prefer content that asks that I git gud, but the trouble is, WoW (and indeed Blizzard games in general) are more about progression than gitting gud.

To make the game a "git gud" game you'd need:

A) To revamp the ENTIRE leveling game (not just the ten levels of [current expansion]) and the ENTIRE open world. Possibly with some kind of scaling?

B) Revamp ALL classes and specs, to make them more skill-friendly - some are, some are less so, and this has always been a problem. We'd need more CC, more interrupts, more utility abilities, more move/countermove-based design and so on.

Having done that, you might have a better game.

Might.

But this isn't Dark Souls. This is a progression based game. If you want "The Dark Souls of MMOs", you need a game where vertical progression stops at a certain point - like DAoC back in the day. Horizontal progression (which usually acts as very weak vertical progression) can continue of course - this is where GW2 fails, note, it basically has no real horizontal progression in terms of combat gameplay, only non-combat or meta-game.

In the meantime, if you want a bit of the "old WoW" back, I can tell you where to find it - make a new character with 1-3 friends, take off most of your Heirlooms, and go try to duo/trio/quad dungeons. Now if you keep all your Heirlooms on, you probably need to solo, or at absolute duo dungeons that are orange to you (because anything less than orange will be just sad in full Heirlooms in a duo). You'll actually level at a decent rate. Hell, if you don't buy the flight point Heirlooms, you'll even have to explore the world - some of it will be dangerous, sometimes you'll even get PvP flagged like in the good old days.

So I'd suggest doing that for your "old WoW" fix.

its not about the amount of content anymore, its the game ITSELF, the basis of the game. Lvling is basically gone, all the rpg elements are gone, customization is gone, (stats, hybrid talents etc..) difficulty is gone etc... theres more.

This a real filthy half-truth. Most of this stuff was gone by the end of TBC, frankly. You see people talking about how it was still there in Cata or MoP. Bollocks. Nope. Lies. It's been gone for years. Legion actually represents a move BACK towards the feel of Vanilla-era WoW. It's nowhere near as far as it needs to go, but it's the right direction, they just need to keep going with that next expansion.

Various things killed this stuff, too, and people don't want to face it.

Heirlooms killed leveling. They murdered it, desecrated it's corpse, and are now drinking out of leveling's skull. You going to convince people to give up their Heirlooms? You going to be the one to nerf them?

Most of the things people call "RPG elements" didn't make it out of TBC, as I said, but what are you referring to? Sure, I miss stuff like Mooncloth, kinda (not so much ammunition), but that sort of thing could easily be brought back - and Legion does a bit - like needing specific forges to make certain kinds of metal.

Hybrid specs died in TBC. And they died because groups and raids didn't like them.

[Flevor]

Nothing ruined it

it's everyone's personal opinion

/Endthread

[Deleted]

As some who played since beta, I think that's mostly drivel, frankly.

WoW has had ups and downs, but Legion is an up. Cataclysm was a huge down. MoP was Cataclysm but less awful. WoD was a big down (with a couple of good ideas hidden in it).

The idea that "community was king" is an extremely rose-tinted fantasy, too. Just bollocks, frankly. Community mattered slightly more, but this was WoW, not EQ or DAoC or something, and it didn't matter very much, as much as you misremember. If you're thinking it mattered in Cata or later, you're deluding yourself.

All that said, I don't entirely disagree with your "solution". It won't do what you want, it won't magically re-create your rose-tinted bullshit memories of WoW, but increased difficulty and so on would make for a game that was more engaging, so long as it's difficulty that can be tackled by play-skill more than "get better gear". Trouble is, even back to Vanilla, WoW has always been more of a "get better gear" than "git gud" game. Gitting gud helps, a shit-ton. And I much prefer content that asks that I git gud, but the trouble is, WoW (and indeed Blizzard games in general) are more about progression than gitting gud.

To make the game a "git gud" game you'd need:

A) To revamp the ENTIRE leveling game (not just the ten levels of [current expansion]) and the ENTIRE open world. Possibly with some kind of scaling?

B) Revamp ALL classes and specs, to make them more skill-friendly - some are, some are less so, and this has always been a problem. We'd need more CC, more interrupts, more utility abilities, more move/countermove-based design and so on.

Having done that, you might have a better game.

Might.

But this isn't Dark Souls. This is a progression based game. If you want "The Dark Souls of MMOs", you need a game where vertical progression stops at a certain point - like DAoC back in the day. Horizontal progression (which usually acts as very weak vertical progression) can continue of course - this is where GW2 fails, note, it basically has no real horizontal progression in terms of combat gameplay, only non-combat or meta-game.

In the meantime, if you want a bit of the "old WoW" back, I can tell you where to find it - make a new character with 1-3 friends, take off most of your Heirlooms, and go try to duo/trio/quad dungeons. Now if you keep all your Heirlooms on, you probably need to solo, or at absolute duo dungeons that are orange to you (because anything less than orange will be just sad in full Heirlooms in a duo). You'll actually level at a decent rate. Hell, if you don't buy the flight point Heirlooms, you'll even have to explore the world - some of it will be dangerous, sometimes you'll even get PvP flagged like in the good old days.

So I'd suggest doing that for your "old WoW" fix.

As mentioned above - people demands MOBA. They don't want more skills such as CC and what not(why do you think the DH is so simple?).

They want to sit down for 20min, get all the legendaries, destroy mythic, be up to date with the lore and log off.

They tryed this in WoD(which will be remembered as the most casual friendly expac ever). People didnt like it. They tryed it all in Legion. Even that people whines less compared to WoTLK and MoP, you simple can't satisfy people(there is a shift of demand in each generation).

What you will have left is the real WoW players and the community. Not these lame people(who hopefully will leave and play LoL instead - if they had more selfrespect than whining online and wasting time).

[Deleted]

rng
/10chars

[Kokolums]

I genuinely believe this. WoW demands you invest more time than you would a MOBA, but doesn't reward you in the long run for that investment. It's in that spot where it takes too much time away from life to merit throw-away investment, and then proceeds to reward you by throwing away your investing a couple months later.

Speaking from my brother's point of view who doesn't play WoW anymore, he feels that gear in WoW has lost it's meaning because you replace it all when the next patch/raid/content area comes out; you can't get invested in the items. He's also told me he doesn't have time to play a game like WoW. That's not actually true (it doesn't take that much time, just more than a MOBA), but if he's going to play a game as much as WoW asks of you (doing daily chores and such), then he wants that game to make him feel like his investments matter, else he'll just play lower investment games that give a similar experience in his eyes.

The reward comes from the community. When you know your community and your community knows you, it becomes news to push harder. You are no longer just a nobody. People in the community notice that hey you got some good drops and are moving higher. The community shares in the fun. It gives it meaning.

Hes exactly right that it doesnt feel like it means anything because theres no community. D3 suffers this same problem.

They could fix both wow and d3 with a strong lobby that forces social interaction. However they insist on adding appear offline which will prevent the community from rebuilding and cost blizzard millions of subs and loads of revenue.

[jdbond592]

"There was a time when loot was exciting instead of generic, dungeons were hard, leveling was part of the experience (and not a 3 day chore to endgame), community was king, and inconvenience just lead to good memories. Now it's just a lobby to pug raid in for ever increasing boring stat increases on forgettable items, with a Facebook game style treadmill on the side.

The sad state of MMORPGS really. I cross my fingers that we see what Dark Souls did to to the action adventure genre in MMO land. Bring back the difficulty, remove the hand holding, and let you experience the world again instead of chase after mindless quest markers doing piss easy content."

-Equestria

Do you agree?

Yes, I do. Do you know how many people actually buy DS games? Few. There is a not a single game title out that has sold "bigly" purely on it's "difficulty". Few "difficult" ones cater to niche.

Equestria likely never held a job or bothered to check that 300000 doesn't equate to millions even Legion sold.

Come back to us when combined sale on all DS titles even match Legion.

Biggest thing killing WOW is sub. I mean in 2017, how many games are out there that you need to buy and then pay monthly sub? And then the sheer burden of going through so many expansion (or not going which makes it even worse)....