What Ruined World of Warcraft

[Volitar]

Just feels like the stuff in game is just chores that you never finish so that way you always keep playing. Just do the same quests you've already done 500 times, this time it might titan forge. Keep going!

[Deladeu]

Toxic vocal minority in the community that Blizzard has continually given into year in year out.

[Whatever Dude]

Toxic vocal minority in the community that Blizzard has continually given into year in year out.

This man speaks the truth. Blows my mind that, for example, Blizzard has never tried handing out in-game surveys to the entire playerbase to get their opinions on things, instead of communicating with a tiny portion of it on forums.

When you log in to a new patch, there's that pop-up that explains to you what's new. They could easily use that for a short survey asking a few questions and a player's general input on things.

[Eurhetemec]

Don't play WoW anymore, but nothing "ruined" WoW. Things grow and people's interests change. If WoW stayed as "hardcore" as TBC/Vanilla, the game would have died. People get old and can't dedicate 5 days a week to raid 4 hours a night, as well as farm potions/wizard oil/weaponstones/dailies/ect, And the new younger people who are the new MMO mainstream don't want that. WoW absolutely catered to it's mass audience, and that's why it's hugely successful.

Definitely. I do think a bit more of the vibe could have been retained, but things could not have stayed as they were.

Nostalgia nerds are the worst TBH. Don't get me wrong I loved TBC as a game, and my time spent in vanilla TBC and wotlk will always have a fond place in my memories and heart, but vanilla was not a very good game. If you think things were "harder" back then you clearly don't remember things correctly. DPS was spamming 1-2 buttons, healing was spamming 15 different ranks of the same 2 heals, and tanking was spamming 2 buttons while praying to god your warlock didn't get a shadow bolt crit. The bosses had barely any mechanics, the gear stat philosophy was trash and classes were boring. TBC and WOTLK were better in their design, and Cata raiding and class design was fantastic. MoP raiding was probably peak raiding IMO. throne of thunder was almost a perfect raid tier.

I feel like calling ToT "almost perfect" is pretty nostalgic itself but sure, generally.

That said, Vanilla's dungeons were relatively more challenging and interesting as places than modern dungeons tend to be (but WotLK onwards is "modern" in this sense), including the Cata revisions of those dungeons. Part of this is simple streamlining, of course, but I do feel like the notion of "dungeon has place" rather than "dungeon has tunnel-full-of-monsters that we run through as fast possible has kind of died". Writing was on the wall even TBC though.

As expansions went on, and as I got older and my priorities changed, I grew less interested with putting in the amount of time necessary to raid. It doesn't mean the game got worse, in fact I think aspects like leveling, story, and endgame activities (mythic+) all improved drastically.

I'd agree with all of that except leveling. The "current" leveling is always great - i.e. 100-110 in this case. But below that? It's pretty awful. The combination of Heirlooms, content having to be geared for the lowest possible gearing levels (yet usually facing effectively highest!), some dubious design decisions when revamping the world in Cataclysm (particularly "CATACLYSM IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!" as a theme in way, way too many zones), inconsistently applied revisions to older system (personal loot in older dungeons! except randomly not in loads of them! Make your mind up!), and many fun/interesting places becoming deeply dull due to not-really-necessary changes. It's good to cut down the XP required for TBC/Wrath/Cata/MoP/WoD, too, because if we didn't, that'd be horrible but it doesn't make for a great experience. It would almost be better if when you hit 60, you jumped to 100 or something.

Perhaps if you miss the old hardcore aspect of MMOs, you should look into this game called wildstar. I heard it was gonna bring back hardcore MMOs and kill WoW

WildStar is an interesting example because it profoundly failed to understand what was actually good/interesting about Vanilla/TBC-era WoW. It was like they took the wrongest possible lessons from it, then built the game aggressively around those terrible lessons. Then they were horribly surprised when people got to endgame and said "Huh, a massive gigantic grind to unlock any content, eh? How about no..." and went back to WoW or the like.

This man speaks the truth. Blows my mind that, for example, Blizzard has never tried handing out in-game surveys to the entire playerbase to get their opinions on things, instead of communicating with a tiny portion of it on forums.

When you log in to a new patch, there's that pop-up that explains to you what's new. They could easily use that for a short survey asking a few questions and a player's general input on things.

Because surveys presented that way get similarly bad/biased results to just reading the forums or the like. They might be different, but they're every bit as problematic. People tend to either try to get rid of them as fast as possible (as they're getting in the way of playing), or outright ignore them, unless they have extreme opinions.

"Why are you leaving?"-type mini-surveys tend to be a little more effective as they're not getting in the way of doing something fun, and people often do feel they either owe the company a brief explanation, or even if they're annoyed, they want to blow off steam by telling the company everything they did wrong.

[huth]

Nothing did. The game is still doing fine for an over a decade old behemoth.

[Snackpack]

Dungeons are much harder than ever now (m+). Raiding is harder than ever with Mythic. The rest makes a little sense.

[Deleted]

Vanilla wow was by far the most casual and accessible mmo on the market at the time it released. Blizzard has just kept it that way over the years. Theres a reason people that played mmo's before wow called it mmo lite.

Yes and it was sweat spot for this game. They should retain that level for every expansion and just add new and fresh content. No just keep making game more easy and accessible with every expansion. Same with League of Legends. It is more casual than Dota but it plays millions of players becouse they again hit sweat spot with complexicty and difficulty of the game and they keep game on that level. They doesnt casual their game more and more every year just to get couple of thousend noobs into their game and ruin game for their establish playerbase.

- - - Updated - - -

Dungeons are much harder than ever now (m+). Raiding is harder than ever with Mythic. The rest makes a little sense.

Yep becouse LFR is and normal dungeons are so much harder than Vannilla. Yes you have to compare easyest difficulty levels beocuse Mythic doesnt bring any new content. You can finish game in LFR so difficulty is deteremined by lowest possible difficulty and not highest. You couldnt cheat game by finishing it in easy mod back in vannila.

[Jastall]

Not the ‘difficulty’, I disagree with the OP.


What ruined it is that Blizzard could never stick to something. When dailies were criticised they did a 180 and didn’t have them at all (Or rather made the ones in WoD pointless so you didn’t ‘have’ to do them, even to gain rep).

Then they did a 180 again in Legion, when people complained about lack of content Blizzard decided to create the illusion of content to keep them happy without having to put much extra work in.
Now the world is filled with shallow repetitive world quests, the majority of which revolve around killing and collecting.

While I don't agree with the specifics, I agree with the general idea that Blizzard does too many 180s in their design decisions. Prime examples being difficult Cata Heroics after the faceroll Wrath ones, and the sheer amount of grinding in Legion after almost no high level content in WoD besides raids. To say nothing of stuff like class revamps that are, let's just say, hit and miss.

I don't think WoW is ''ruined'' or I wouldn't play it, but Blizzard does have a tendency to try and fix what isn't broken sometimes.

[Deleted]

Do i agree? no

2010: 12M active subs reported
2015 Q3: 5.5M active subs reported
2017: NO active subs reported, just some indirect stats designed to suggest high interest

Yeah. Totally, rose-tinted glasses and nothing more.
Also, 2 + 2 = 5 because you can paste in a picture.

[melodramocracy]

Yup, the game was good, then WoTLK came out.

The genre was good, then WoW came out.

[mars836]

I'm glad that I found this thread, but I'm disappointed by discussions that seem so arcane and hostile. These sorts of talks always miss the mark.

Whenever I read forums I always see people complaining about things like flying or group finder. For me, those are just features of the game that I take or leave as they come. I'm not going to grind for flying as it's miserable, so I just decided I can live without.

For me, what has "ruined" WoW is that the artistic design of the zones has suffered to such an extent that the game does not feel like a virtual world anymore but a game. I still listen to the songs of Elwynn or Mulgore or Eversong just because the environmental design and ambiance of those areas are so amazing; yes, even to this day. If I roll on a vanilla server and run through Mulgore, it still feels amazing, because the zone is just designed so well that it feels like a real place. Mulgore for example is not just another obstacle for me to overcome in my quest to reach the end game, but Mulgore is a living breathing area of a living breathing world.

In vanilla, I never cleared MC. I've always hated raiding. I never wanted playing this game to become a job. I just kept rolling new characters and exploring the other living breathing areas of the world. For me, and you are free to disagree, the zones of vanilla WoW were just so breathtaking that to me nothing has surpassed them. I couldn't care less about the pacing and mechanics of raids, how "difficult" things are, etc. However, zones like Elwynn or even Badlands were so spread out and open that it really felt like I was there. My memories of places like Ashenvale are me being in those zones, not my character. I was there.

And that's possible. And I can still get that feeling today by going into those zones now, so this isn't just "nostalgia." Those zones are just so tremendous, and since then I have not really encountered that.

As a video game, certainly, WoW is better than it has ever been. Indeed, I am actually able to do raids and progress through the content now without it being a miserable experience. But that's limited at the end of the day. What I miss are wide open zones that made me feel like I am immersed in a world, such as Stranglethorn. I wouldn't bat an eye if the Cataclysm happened to Borean Tundra or Suramar. I think Suramar has beautiful music, but as a zone it's incredibly, deeply lackluster.

I'm tired of people that constantly "blame the player" for this. It is not my fault or the fault of "nostalgia" that I simply find some zones to be more immersive than others. I have no interest in going through WoD content again, it's awful, and it's a huge chore when I have to level through it. I couldn't care less about Legion areas. They aren't part of a world, they're just zones in a game. But I actively, out of my own volition, choose and enjoy to go through Mulgore, Eversong, Elwynn, and the Barrens, over and over again, because I legitimately enjoy those areas and appreciate them as places in a real world.

The failure to maintain that spirit is what to me has "ruined" WoW, even though it has improved as a game. The world I loved is gone, and that's the greatest tragedy of all, no matter how easy it is to do end game content now.

[Eurhetemec]

Yes and it was sweat spot for this game. They should retain that level for every expansion and just add new and fresh content. No just keep making game more easy and accessible with every expansion. Same with League of Legends. It is more casual than Dota but it plays millions of players becouse they again hit sweat spot with complexicty and difficulty of the game and they keep game on that level. They doesnt casual their game more and more every year just to get couple of thousend noobs into their game and ruin game for their establish playerbase.

Ironically the bolded bit is EXACTLY what they do. WoW continues to position itself as RELATIVELY as accessible as it was. If it was the same level of accessibility as it was in Vanilla, NOT relatively, as you mean, then WoW would be a forgotten game, because stuff like SWTOR, FFXIV and so on would have eaten it's lunch.

What it needs is more optional complexity, and more engaging content for people who want a better challenge/reward ratio (M+ is pretty decent for this, but it'd be good for it include content for wider ranges of numbers of people), which it sort of has on the fringes, but hasn't really embraced.

Yep becouse LFR is and normal dungeons are so much harder than Vannilla. Yes you have to compare easyest difficulty levels beocuse Mythic doesnt bring any new content. You can finish game in LFR so difficulty is deteremined by lowest possible difficulty and not highest. You couldnt cheat game by finishing it in easy mod back in vannila.

LFR is significantly harder than MC/BWL in terms of skill required when a new tier releases, if your raid isn't stacked with players already overgeared for it - the mechanics are more involved than either MC or BWL. Not AQ40, but MC/BWL. The problem is that really overgeared players tend to fill up LFR, so it does become easy, because of the overgearing issue. But frankly, if you went back into MC in even BWL gear, let alone BWL and AQ40 gear, it was a faceroll, so that's no change. Normal dungeons at release in Legion were about as hard as any normal dungeons all the way back to TBC. They were not as hard as Vanilla dungeons, but again, that's because you were always undergeared in Vanilla and dungeon design was fundamentally different - they were "places", not just "tubes full of monsters". But the "tube full of monsters" design came in, in TBC and it's never changed. It makes things a lot easier mostly by preventing the kinds of massive fuckup that could happen in Vanilla.

[Whatever Dude]

2010: 12M active subs reported
2015 Q3: 5.5M active subs reported
2017: NO active subs reported, just some indirect stats designed to suggest high interest

Yeah. Totally, rose-tinted glasses and nothing more.
Also, 2 + 2 = 5 because you can paste in a picture.

MMO-C released some stats recently that showed only 1.8 million active players. Probably slightly higher subs than that. 2-2.5 million at most.

Legion is as big of a failure as WoD was. Blizzard is just keeping it under wraps as tightly as possible so corporate shills are having an easier time making it look like WoW is still popular and thriving.

[Deleted]

This man speaks the truth. Blows my mind that, for example, Blizzard has never tried handing out in-game surveys to the entire playerbase to get their opinions on things, instead of communicating with a tiny portion of it on forums.

When you log in to a new patch, there's that pop-up that explains to you what's new. They could easily use that for a short survey asking a few questions and a player's general input on things.

That, however, would expose them to some answers they very much would rather not hear. Especially en masse.

[Kithelle]

"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?

Loot was never really exciting to me...farming weeks or even months for a single piece of gear wasn't fun...especially when you'd have some asshole come in and need on it when they weren't even performing the role.

Don't remember dungeons ever being hard...if anything mythic +...times runs and such are harder than anything from past expansions.

I'll take 3 days as a chore as opposed to 3 days to get 1 level.

Community was never very special even back in vanilla...never made and special contacts while spending hours sitting around looking for dungeons.

Only thing inconvenience lead to was boredom, sitting around for hours at a summonstone and spamming trade chat in SW didn't lead to any good memories.

May I suggest you take off those rose tinted glasses and join the real world?

[Kazgrel]

What ruined World of Warcraft for me: WoD

For all the clamoring about the genre being too soft/easy, I'd like the folks stating that to provide evidence of their mythic/savage/whatever max difficulty success stories. Generally speaking, that goes a long way toward quelling that "game's too easy" nonsense.

[Kithelle]

2010: 12M active subs reported
2015 Q3: 5.5M active subs reported
2017: NO active subs reported, just some indirect stats designed to suggest high interest

Yeah. Totally, rose-tinted glasses and nothing more.
Also, 2 + 2 = 5 because you can paste in a picture.

Yes...because the game being fresh and new back then and now has nothing to do with it?

The game is almost a decade and a half old and still going strong with a sub based system when most mmos have moved on to f2p.

[voidillusion]

Do i agree? no

Yup i use those those almost everyday when i play the version of the game that is actually good for me. Still times are different, and the premise of the thread isn't very correct, the game simply changed, it was ruined for me and others sure, but for many it evolved and is actually better.

The same way ppl that prefer older states of the game are immediatly labeled with the "rose tinted glasses" i could also argue that those who like the current encarnation have very poor taste, but it wouldnt do any good.

The fact is, as stated on many many threads already on this forum, some actually prefer aspects that were removed over time, some dont. To each it's own.

[deniter]

Because you're choosing not to run content that suits your needs. Prior it was "raid this way or FUCK OFF." - and raiding was a very niche activity. Now there are multiple difficulty levels and everyone can experience some version of the content. This means more resources spent on that content which makes the content better for everyone. If you're running tourist mode and that's not enough for you, raid something higher until it is enough for you. You not having an end-game is entirely your choice, four raid options are available.

Your example is flawed. In WoW they made the end game noticeably better by adding ways for other groups of players to participate thus justifying them in spending more resources on the end game.

You missed the point by a mile. Prior it indeed was "raid this way or FUCK OFF." but there was a full length MMO game before you even reached the "hmm, should i commit to schedules of some raiding guild or not" -part.

As you said, raiding was a very niche activity - it still is. But nowadays you don't have much choice since they have stripped down everything else but raiding in its various flavors, and added few facebook -like minigames and a story driven single player game to give an illusion of vast content from past years.

There's nothing wrong in different difficulty settings, but the entire game should reflect the setting i choose. And raiding as a feature suits very poorly for a casual gamer. In pre-wotlk WoW there was months, even years of content for someone playing a few hours a day, and none of it had nothing to do with raids. Now everyone has the same, limited amount of content they can play through in few months, then either quit until next expansion or do it again on dozen of other characters.

The game IS better in many ways, mostly technical and artistic areas, but it's so small and non-MMO'ish that many of us older players don't even bother anymore.

[Whatever Dude]

Yes...because the game being fresh and new back then and now almost being old enough to vote has nothing to do with it at all.

The game is almost 18 years old and is still going strong.

I love this argument. It's so bad yet it keeps being used.

When WoD came out, WoW was already 10 years old. It was already incredibly old yet it shot back up to 10 million subscribers briefly because people were misled into thinking the game would be great again. Naturally, they were wrong and the game quickly shot down in subscribers because WoD was awful.

The game is also not almost 18 years old, did you fail your Math classes? 2017-2004 = 13 years.