This is why WoW changed

[Deleted]

Old Mc Skinner has a farm,
hee a hee a ho.

With a grind, grind here, and a grind, grind there..
Grinding dominates WoW everywhere..

Old Mc Skinner has a farm,
hee a hee a ho,

with a apexis daily here and a apexis daily there,
kill dem mobs just everywhere,

Old Mc Skinner has a farm,
hee a hee a hoo!

.. and the reason why wow became Old Mc Skinners new home is that it needs less effort to implement grinds instead of daily quest hubs with something like narratives and proper rewards, with puzzles and engaging content...

[Kevyne-Shandris]

.. and the reason why wow became Old Mc Skinners new home is that it needs less effort to implement grinds instead of daily quest hubs with something like narratives and proper rewards, with puzzles and engaging content...

Let's put it this way: Molten Front is more like how quest zones should be. Sure there's gates on it, but it felt like you were working towards a goal. Then once inside Molten Front the zone was small enough to breeze through the dailies across multiple alts -- MF was busy will players because it was alt friendly. I bought an extra account then to run my alts through all at once.

Now? I have to consolidate my accounts as just the garrison grinds my HDDs like mad (and I don't abuse hardware at all. The only sound other than the light whirr of the 1 exhaust fan [have a Noctua HSF so very cool -- the PSU fan doesn't even turn on -- and quiet], is the HDDs. They literally grind in the garrison. WoW isn't that important to replace expensive enterprise class HDDs!!).

[Deleted]

Let's put it this way: Molten Front is more like how quest zones should be.

Yeah, i liked Molten Front. At least i like it a lot more than what we get today.

Blizzard replaced something bad (mandatory dailes) by something even worse (grinds).

[Gaidax]

Look guys I see alot of hater posts about how the game is now. When vanilla was launched the game industry was not on the instant gratification thing. Gamers were the gamers, they spend alot of hours onto games. We didnt have farmfille or other instant gratification games. When WoW grew, the game had to cater to the people. So what do business do they want to make the most money, so there view on the game as a whole has changed. Thats why we get garrisons and stuff cause the majority likes those thing. The people who whine on the forums (us) are probaly the people that are in a minorty and just want to be the best. We just don't get that anymore cause MMO is a dying genre. Thats why they cancled TITant cause they knew it wouldnt be a succes as wow.

I checked there documantry, and there business guy just sayed it. At the time Wow launched it was the right product to come along. LOrd of the rings and harry potter were hot and all that stuff. Look I have wanted that wow was becoming something greater well it hasnt, I stopped a few months ago. Started playing the witcher 3, and in that game you feel the love from the devs, like how vanilla and tbc and wolk were.

The amount of effort in that game and the small things that you notice is just awesome. Wow has changed, nothing more about. But don't complain on all the forums that life sucks wow sucsk, just move on. Dont hang in your nostalgia!

PS: sorry for my english it's not my native language.

Have fun gaming! greetz

Or maybe... just maybe - the players who were 12-20 year old bums with heaps of time to burn back then (like me for example) grew up and don't have time for fcking around anymore?

Back when I was 19, wasting time in the so-called "army", I had heaps of time to do all the bullshit... nowadays when I am 30 I am happy that I can just log to raid 2-3 times a week for 3 hours and with that do Mythic Raids without feeling inadequate because I was not grinding some rats before the raid for soul shards or not running daily dungeons for welfare epics that have same iLvL as Mythic content I'm clearing (think WoTLK style badge gear).

So yeah... instant gratification? I think not... it's simply the case of the core playerbase moving on to having other priorities in life, so the game needs to adapt or lose them.

[Pua]

This is a good summary of the change in WoW over years.

We used to have prerequisite quests, attunements, an immersive way of gating content, now we have dates posted on forums when content will be suddenly made available by a corporation; we used to have dungeons we had to go to and explore, not they are a menu where we click buttons to queue for LFD and auto-teleport.

It used to feel like living in a real world with monsters and heroes, now it feels like a Microsoft product with lots of menus and buttons that we have to click through.

I agree with your sentiment (and Zolascius', of course), but this goes back to something melodramocracy also said: the game isn't aimed at a group of people anymore.

It's aimed at everyone.

While this has problems in reward structures, design quandaries, risk to reward ratios and time investments, it also creates a community whose members are consistently at odds with each other, because each section is directly competing. Those who like meaningful world content and dungeons are fighting against those who want nothing but raids; the PvP community is fighting against both, while other players who enjoy transmogrification, mount collecting or pet battles are being fed little more than reskins rather than meaningful content for them.

The problem, arguably, is that World of Warcraft is an MMORPG that doesn't really resemble one. When it was first built, the level of content was so good that players who wouldn't otherwise be interested in the genre stuck with it because they could play with their friends and have fun doing a multitude of things. Now, the MMORPG elements have almost been entirely stripped away in order to streamline content delivery that doesn't get people into anything else. In short, it was those very MMORPG elements that have been dispensed with, that were the glue holding the entire construct together.

When you turn an RPG into something that isn't an RPG, you can't really expect things to go wonderfully. The problem, of course, is that World of Warcraft's success has led many other design studios to think that the MMORPG is a great way of making money; they then largely copy what's already been done, and the entire genre is suffering as a result of boardroom priorities trumping game priorities. What's most lamentable about this, is that players argue on forums such as these that games are supposed to make money. The calamitous launch of Diablo 3, or the rushed and incomplete launches of Star Wars or WildStar should have seen players up in arms about what was going on. The entire community should have been disgusted at what's happened in Warlords of Draenor, yet we see daily arguments about how anyone who is unhappy is a snot-nosed, entitled whiner who should just quit.

This poisonous attitude has hamstrung the entire community, because it's stopped it acting in a unified manner that could affect real change.

Now I'm obviously only speculating, and I feel as though every sentence I've typed will be argued with (assuming anyone bothers to read this wall o' text), but World of Warcraft has forgotten the very first world of it's title; WORLD. The "world" shrinks as every year goes by, and players are consistently taken out of it more and more in order to engage in super-efficient queue systems that effectively funnel rewards into your hands for showing little other than a certain level of patience. The growing number of people railing against raiding these days are really arguing against a symptom rather than the cause, and Blizzard makes raiding an easy target by effectively sidelining all of the more important content that an MMORPG should have, in order to chase longer-term subscriptions from an ever shrinking section of players.

I would love someone like Jeff Kaplan to take control again, along with an entirely fresh design team from the bottom up, and for them to simply accept that rebuilding the game into a proper MMORPG will have casualties, but that you can bring back a community that invests in and loves the work you do.

I want to go off adventuring again.

That's really all this post is about.

Or maybe... just maybe - the players who were 12-20 year old bums with heaps of time to burn back then (like me for example) grew up and don't have time for fcking around anymore?

Back when I was 19, wasting time in the so-called "army", I had heaps of time to do all the bullshit... nowadays when I am 30 I am happy that I can just log to raid 2-3 times a week for 3 hours and with that do Mythic Raids without feeling inadequate because I was not grinding some rats before the raid for soul shards or not running daily dungeons for welfare epics that have same iLvL as Mythic content I'm clearing (think WoTLK style badge gear).

So yeah... instant gratification? I think not... it's simply the case of the core playerbase moving on to having other priorities in life, so the game needs to adapt or lose them.

As an individual in a similar situation to yourself... The game needs to lose people like you and I.

You can NOT build a meaningful, immersive world when you try to ensure everything can be done in the least amount of time possible. What you're suggesting is that the game should be designed for players like you (and me) when, actually, we're the problem players that are killing it.

What's good for me, is not good for the game. I think a lot of players need to grow up a bit, and accept that.

I think Hell will freeze over first, of course.

[Kazlofski]

I will add another point to what's been said.
Completely agree with the part of most companies becoming more greedy nowadays, doing less for more money etc.

What I want to add is that the community in general has deteriorated... I remember back in Wotlk when I started of course there were bad attitudes all over the place and all but people has the common courtesy to actually talk. You joined Oculus, which so many hated, people often said this place sucks I am leaving before leaving. There was at least minimal communication. You made a group to a dungeon, you actually had people greet each other and say thanks bye and such at the end of the instance.

Nowadays it's simply get into a group, sometimes getting an invite out of nowhere on say Apexis group quests, the certain person finished his part, leaves without a word.
People join dungeons, complete silence, finished dungeon = instant leaving nothing said again.
You actually make a Mythic dungeon today which takes inviting people to a group and all, many times it's just "NEED TANK" "KNOW YOUR STUFF" "MORONS BE KICKED INSTANTLY" "Don't fuck up", what happened to people? Everyone wants to just get done with his stuff as soon as possible, Social aspect has almost died out and basically foul language is common, too common...
It continues to going for a boss, 2 wipes people instantly leave without a word (Again back then people at least said "Sorry guys this ain't working out, I am leaving") Now it's nothing said whatsoever, just leave and forget about it. And when it comes to the end of the instance, yet again everybody leaves instantly, not even a thanks nor anything.
Even quite many guilds nowadays, just gather up for a raid, not always the friendliest to each other, to down bosses and once the raid ends, barely any communication between the members occurs and everybody is off to do his thing or going back to being offline until the next raid (Thankfully there are still enough guilds around which are nicer to each other and have decent people but still the type of guilds I mentioned has become far too common).

So basically my point is... I feel (And I can imagine many people are in my position too) like there perhaps is something to do in WoW after all.
People are saying that there isn't much to do but I think sometimes it's because they wanted to do a normal raid/Mythic dungeon/some other group activity and then they encountered just toxic behavior or complete ignorance that it left a really sour taste in their mouths, turning them off from any wish to do those activities anymore and instead logging off and looking for something else to do instead.

Of course there still isn't too much to do and many times that's why people don't have any interest in playing WoW but let's put that aside for a moment.

So what do you guys think?

[Kevyne-Shandris]

While this has problems in reward structures, design quandaries, risk to reward ratios and time investments, it also creates a community whose members are consistently at odds with each other, because each section is directly competing. Those who like meaningful world content and dungeons are fighting against those who want nothing but raids; the PvP community is fighting against both, while other players who enjoy transmogrification, mount collecting or pet battles are being fed little more than reskins rather than meaningful content for them.

If Pet Battles are going to be that 4th interest -- and more time consuming than raiding (you do more content in Pet battles each day than raiding 2x a week!) -- yeah, the reward needs to match the time investment.

It's not just playing with Fluffy anymore. Six hours a day can go by doing the MoP and Draenor Pet dailies.

If time is money, well Pet Battles takes more time than raiding with zero character progression benefit. -_-

[Constraint]

Or it could be that the game was, you know, new... And it no longer is... That could be it. Just a thought.

Not in the slightest. What they say has great merit - there WERE an abundance of hidden things to surprise people in Vanilla, a hell of a lot more than there are now. And that is indeed predominantly due to their (in my opinion) pathetic current questing/exploration model of "quests on rails".

You do the quests that they want you to do, when they want you to do them. No more, no less. No more roaming across an unknown map and stumbling across a quest hub you've never heard of before. It's just, "grab these 3 quests. Complete them. Now grab these 2 quests. Complete them. Now run over to this guy. Grab 2 more quests" etc, etc, ad infinitum, until you hit max level. It's SO PREDICTABLE AND BORING..!

Some of us have been saying it for years, as it's been getting worse and worse over the expansions, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in. Although it's just a small piece of the puzzle Blizzard are chucking out piece by piece.

[Pua]

If Pet Battles are going to be that 4th interest -- and more time consuming than raiding (you do more content in Pet battles each day than raiding 2x a week!) -- yeah, the reward needs to match the time investment.

It's not just playing with Fluffy anymore. Six hours a day can go by doing the MoP and Draenor Pet dailies.

If time is money, well Pet Battles takes more time than raiding with zero character progression benefit. -_-

I don't disagree, but the the systems are really too shallow to be of lasting value to players.

Why, for example, are pets, mounts and cool armour hidden behind the raiding wall? Raiders are the players least likely to be interested in these features because many play solely to raid, yet the rewards other players want are shoved into boss drops. It makes no sense. Why does transmogrification not look like it does in Diablo 3, where the system is simpler, requires less bag space, there are dyes, and there's some specific transmogrification outfits for you to go out and find? So much more could be done with it, yet a major source of enjoyment for players just feels half-arsed and tacked on.

Mounts are the same. Why do you have to collect six mounts of different colour, when one model would be enough with a "breeding" system (think dyes) that allows you to customize how they look? Instead, one model is used for six mount rewards and only the colour palette changes... With several behind a hardcore raiding wall, where players are the least likely to appreciate it.

It's just not been thought through. Blizzard have literally decided that all the best rewards are in raiding, whether that's the audience that wants those rewards or not.

[Biggles Worth]

The majority of people playing WoW does not like garrisons at all.

Lets be serious for a moment here. Just kidding.

[Tzalix]

maybe for someone who started playing at cataclysm it is.

I started playing in BC. It's the same game. A lot of what we do in the game has changed, but it's the same game.

[Baltasar]

Activision happend,and yet you dont get it.
Third time mod will ban me for this,so go ahead you fat activision lover fuck.

Infracted: Discussing moderation is against the rules [ML]

[kamuimac]

Look guys I see alot of hater posts about how the game is now. When vanilla was launched the game industry was not on the instant gratification thing. Gamers were the gamers, they spend alot of hours onto games. We didnt have farmfille or other instant gratification games. When WoW grew, the game had to cater to the people. So what do business do they want to make the most money, so there view on the game as a whole has changed. Thats why we get garrisons and stuff cause the majority likes those thing. The people who whine on the forums (us) are probaly the people that are in a minorty and just want to be the best. We just don't get that anymore cause MMO is a dying genre. Thats why they cancled TITant cause they knew it wouldnt be a succes as wow.

I checked there documantry, and there business guy just sayed it. At the time Wow launched it was the right product to come along. LOrd of the rings and harry potter were hot and all that stuff. Look I have wanted that wow was becoming something greater well it hasnt, I stopped a few months ago. Started playing the witcher 3, and in that game you feel the love from the devs, like how vanilla and tbc and wolk were.

The amount of effort in that game and the small things that you notice is just awesome. Wow has changed, nothing more about. But don't complain on all the forums that life sucks wow sucsk, just move on. Dont hang in your nostalgia!

PS: sorry for my english it's not my native language.

Have fun gaming! greetz

this happens when you compare 11 years old game series to 4-5 year old and about witcher 3 succes - its the first part which got world wide recognition so you can guess they learned on mistakes from 1&2 to produce nearly perfect product - something which blizzard no longer does cause they simply dont have to cause theiur fanbase is ready to throw cash at them no matter what shit they produce.