The Game Was Better When.....

[skatblast]

Yes, they put challenge modes in because they are realising their game is broken.

This. Challenge modes are the new "heroics" sad really

[LilSaihah]

Yes, they put challenge modes in because they are realising their game is broken.

...So they're fixing the game with challenge modes.

...I'm confused, what's the point of this post?

[Speedy92286]

Eh, I have to say WotLK but only because it was sooo easy to pug a raid at nearly any time of the day. I love Raid finder but I also love being able to pug normal modes (my guild is not a raiding guild as of yet but we are working on it) since I am pretty decent at healing. I just love testing myself and finally defeating a boss after hours of bashing my head against it. With RF you don't really get that. Since MoP came out I haven't really seen any pugs on my server, but that could be because AoS is that as popular as it was.

[l33t]

i actually remember wpvp being more than that, back in woltk and cata i had some nice wpvp battles with my max level chars... thats gone now...

Well, actually noone stops you from going out there in wilderness and protecting lowbies of your faction from ganking. You can even bring friends, and eventually gankers will gather alltogether and try to fight back. That is how actually started nice and cool hillsbrad-like world pvp events back when I remember them.

[Peso]

And as people explained to you, you are wrong.

The RPG element has nothing to do with spending one hour spamming "LF TANK for Shadow Lab and go", that has nothing to do with RPG.

And i seriously dont find interesting to spend 1 our in a city spamming chats with a single message.

---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 10:09 AM ----------



I disagree with it.

LFG/LFR is one of the best thing that happened to WoW, and its so good that has cbecome an idustry standard, and even fool companies that try to avoid including it end up doing once they realize how stupid is not to include it.

I never had fun in WoW making groups, and thats what LFG/LFR does for you.

Dailies suck, MoP is just a huge daily grindfest, but removing LFG/LFR would only make the game worse.

You're also wrong.

And I didn't say asking in trade for more is fun. I said going out in the world is.

On a serious note this discussion is biased.

[Tomana]

Yes, they put challenge modes in because they are realising their game is broken.

No, the game is not broken, it is tiered. You can't have BC-style hard 5-mans and expect people to take 1 hour and wipes to obtain dungeon-level gear (and tbh, even in BC it was simpler to go directly to Kara) - Cata proved empirically this is no longer works. So you have two levels of difficulty, same as for raiding.

[Deleted]

The game was better when I was still new to the lore
The game was better when I was still raiding
The game was better before I x-transfered to a RP realm with only a small circlejerking raiding scene.


@People complaining about the game
Get over it.
Wotlk ruined the player base mentality and view on the game. It's been this way for years, it's time to move on.

If by fun you mean assembling your group in Shattrath for 1 hour, flying to the entrance and saw 2 dps leaving after a wipe so that you start over again, then I'll pass on that fun, thank you very much.

I partly agree and partly disagree on this one.
One of my best memories was back when me and a pal of mine for the first time ever ventured from Menethil harbour to Scarlet monstary for ~2-3h, I remember discovering the smith in southshore that sold "long capes" my dick grew two inches that day when I equiped it. Imho the dungeon finder would only be able to get actived at the said meeting stone the first time you want to enter it. (I do realise this will never happen with the current playerbase.)
I feel kinda sad thinking about how I would miss great memories such as this one if I started playing after mid wrath rather than late vanilla / early bc.

[GotMoxie]

The game was better when people were still relatively nice to one another, it didn't seem as though 85% of the player base had the silver spoon of entitlement wedged up their backsides, and when the adults in the game acted like adults. Nowadays, it's pretty difficult to tell the kids from the adults that just act like kids.

Maybe I'm just old and crotchety and wearing rose-colored glasses, or maybe the community has gone even more to pot than it had been.

[Nurvus]

To those defending that MMOs evolve - all new MMOs out there die, despite having better graphics, better animations, and often even attempting to copy WoW in several aspects.
So trying to dismiss the errors of blizzard's design philosophy as natural reaction to the MMO industry, is delusional.
It is the MMO industry that reacts to WoW, as WoW is, in all honesty, the game all other MMOs compare to nowadays.
I'm not saying it's the best or oldest (lol) MMO, I'm saying it's clearly the most popular and influential.

Class mechanic updates were mostly good, over the expansions.
Transmogrification is great too as it gives value to old content.

However, if WoW still had only 60 levels - although with all the new zones - it wouldn't lose any qualities.
If WoW didn't have flying mounts, it wouldn't lose any qualities.
If WoW didn't have LFD or LFR, it wouldn't lose any qualities.

Enthusiastic new players usually look up to the great players - they are thrilled at the massive journey ahead of them on the way to greatness.

But if the journey is made easy and boring, what greatness is there in the end?
The thrill vanishes.
The game becomes boring.

Players in general are terrible at identifying what really worsens their gaming experience, and ask for sollutions to problems that don't exist.

The problem with WoW right now is that everything that matters is max level content.
- The triviality of everything you do or craft before max level - 99% of what you craft while leveling is pointless - it's just a gold/time sink to max your profession to get bonuses & a couple "stepping stone" items.
- The inexistant learning curve - for new players, everything is too easy, and then suddenly you hit a brick wall, giving the impression that better gear is the only way to advance.
- A huge, detailed world you are encouraged to abandon, and instead just queue while gathering stuff or doing dailies in the max level zones, or just standing around in capital cities.

[Deleted]

The game was better when people were still relatively nice to one another, it didn't seem as though 85% of the player base had the silver spoon of entitlement wedged up their backsides, and when the adults in the game acted like adults. Nowadays, it's pretty difficult to tell the kids from the adults that just act like kids.

Maybe I'm just old and crotchety and wearing rose-colored glasses, or maybe the community has gone even more to pot than it had been.

Yes the community has definetly gone down hill ever since 3.2/3.3ish.
I remember lurking the forum servers almost daily back in 2005/2006/2007 & people who were douchebags & ninjas would get shouted out as terrible people and they would be forced to do a name change if they wanted to get thier reputation back. Good days heh.

[Draknalor186]

when there werent this many botters, cheaters, gold sellers and whatnot
the game was better when there wasent any "this or that expansion is better" or "this game was better when" threads every 4 sec

[GotMoxie]

Yes the community has definetly gone down hill ever since 3.2/3.3ish.
I remember lurking the forum servers almost daily back in 2005/2006/2007 & people who were douchebags & ninjas would get shouted out as terrible people and they would be forced to do a name change if they wanted to get thier reputation back. Good days heh.

I wish I could pinpoint exactly what caused the major shift in "Let's be nice, with the occasional dick" to "Let's be dicks, with the occasional nice person that the dicks will then call a scrub".

[Granyala]

I wish I could pinpoint exactly what caused the major shift in "Let's be nice, with the occasional dick" to "Let's be dicks, with the occasional nice person that the dicks will then call a scrub".

Nothing. The community hasn't really changed much at all.
Trade was always full of anal spam, even back in BC, which is why I deactivated all public channels back then. They still are inactive on all of my characters.
Battleground chats were always flamefests with more insults flying around than all arrows, pellets and crossbow bolts of the battlefield combined.
In dungeons people ninja'd back then and insulted you as a no-rl guy when you gave friendly advice.
Randoms were just as incompetent and arrogant as they are today. The only difference is that now its "Randomdude - Randomserver" instead of "Randomdude".

In any Xpac, the only people I really had fun with were the people in my guilds.

[Gavll]

Only read this page, so can't comment on the rest but I would definitely point to the removal of the Global LFG channel and the introduction of the LFG tool as the beginning of the 'end' so to speak.

The short lived global LFG channel was my favourite period of WoW. I could play any character and do anything on them, all the while being on the lookout for another group that may interest me. I could do this without having to decide what to do first.

Farming mats on Warlock...oh group LF tank for SM Arm - swap to my 38 Warrior who wants Ravager (outdated example I know! - but a genuine one)

Dunno why they removed it. I thought it really brought the game to life to have a global chat channel. I dont remember it being abused by gold spammers either.

[Deleted]

No, the game is not broken, it is tiered. You can't have BC-style hard 5-mans and expect people to take 1 hour and wipes to obtain dungeon-level gear (and tbh, even in BC it was simpler to go directly to Kara) - Cata proved empirically this is no longer works. So you have two levels of difficulty, same as for raiding.

Why cant you have proper 5 mans that provide real progression and teach players how to play in a cordinated organsied way? Oh because bad players quit at the first sign of challenge cos its easier to drop group rather than communicate. Avoiding this by making stuff simple dosent fix the broken situation, it just slows the demise. In a world where everyone is special no one is.

[Divineknight13]

the game was better when classes had counters ...

oh and also when paladins had DI ... the hrs of fun seeing people scream at me when they didnt know they could click the buff off!

[Tomana]

Why cant you have proper 5 mans that provide real progression and teach players how to play in a cordinated organsied way?

Because having 5-mans harder than LFR while providing crappier loot is silly. If it was the case, no one would bother with 5 mans - people would just go to LFR. And if you set the ilvl in a way that requires to run those hard 5 mans, people will simply won't bother.

Which is why in BC, a lot of people went straight to Kara after maybe doing heroic slave pens a couple of times - Kara was easier than most heroics and provided better loot.

Also, having "proper 5 mans that provide real progression" requires a custom group, not something you build in LFD. So you want people to spend 1hour in /2 again to build a 5-man group? Been there, done that, never again please.

[Drfireburns]

I think the game was better when you actually had to CC adds in 5 mans and raids. Anyone remember when Heroic Magisters' Terrace was released?

You couldn't just take any specific spec or class in their. Shadow Priests constantly had to MC adds. Heh, those were the days.

[Simulacrum]

No, the game is not broken, it is tiered. You can't have BC-style hard 5-mans and expect people to take 1 hour and wipes to obtain dungeon-level gear (and tbh, even in BC it was simpler to go directly to Kara) - Cata proved empirically this is no longer works. So you have two levels of difficulty, same as for raiding.

wat

How did cata prove anything about anything when it comes to 5 mans? Even going straight into 5 mans in ass gear on week one of launch, healing on a holy paladin all the heroics were a joke, and only the oneshot abilities, initial ignorance of an instance, or unforgivable stupidity (it happens sometimes) ever made things difficult. Playing even remotely intelligently they were a joke. Even on a shaman healing (who were pathetically underpowered as a healer at launch and got *massive* buffs during/after the first tier) it was more than doable.

All cata "proved" was that players who are conditioned to play poorly do poorly (what a shock) when they can't get away with doing so. TBC proved that, when you condition people to play well, making 5 man content hard is no problem at all. Honestly, the hardest part of TBC 5 mans was dealing with how difficult tanking was then (relative to today); if we had otherwise TBC-level difficulty 5 mans today they would be much more forgivable simply because it'd be easy for any tank around to hold threat on the mobs.

Speaking of "even in BC it was simpler to go directly to Kara", it was actually simpler to go directly to BT and hyjal! If we're getting carried, may as well get carried properly.

Because having 5-mans harder than LFR while providing crappier loot is silly. If it was the case, no one would bother with 5 mans - people would just go to LFR. And if you set the ilvl in a way that requires to run those hard 5 mans, people will simply won't bother.

Which is why in BC, a lot of people went straight to Kara after maybe doing heroic slave pens a couple of times - Kara was easier than most heroics and provided better loot.

Also, having "proper 5 mans that provide real progression" requires a custom group, not something you build in LFD. So you want people to spend 1hour in /2 again to build a 5-man group? Been there, done that, never again please.

You sure seem to know a lot about how people play. People "simply don't bother" to do 5 mans if 5 mans are harder than other content, even though they did them constantly throughout all of TBC and early cata, when they were still relatively hard. Even if you could go "straight to kara after maybe doing heroic slave pens a couple of times", you could still only do kara once a week.

And it does not require some "custom group" that is "not something you build in LFD", as evidenced by every single 5 man group through all of TBC. Magister's Terrace was one of the hardest 5 man instances that have ever been in the game, and yet it was still possible to pug it with randoms from chat or the LFG tool; even if the arena event often lead to wipes even with a good group, but that's magister's terrace for 'ya I guess. Which people conspicuously constantly did every chance they had, despite the presence of kara, or other - supposedly easier - ways of gearing up.

"1 hour in /2" to get a group is extreme hyperbole unless you were a poorly geared DPS (if you were a well-geared DPS you were showered in invites), and even then that'd still be true today if not for cross-realm (and often still is; 30 min queues for dps much?)... so all you're saying, once compensating for your exaggerating, is that things'd be the same as they are today, but they'd require more player interaction and demand more player skill, and bring back the old TBC-style community, where people remembered the names of good players they met in 5 mans and friends listed them to do more groups with them, as opposed to the boring, anonymous interactions we get these days, where nobody knows anybody else is or has any reason to care in the first place.

[Deleted]

While I miss TBC and think it did more stuff right than wrong compared to the later expansions, I'm not going to say the game is shit right now. It's just not for me as good anymore as it used to be so I just quit playing it.

Cattlehunter basically hit the nail with his explanation about TBC in a way I wouldn't have been able to say it myself

I guess the game over time just evolved to suit to a different audience. It's a shame for me, but apparently there are enough people around who like it the way it is, so Blizzard won't miss my money.
The worst fault done in TBC was in my opinion to introduce flying mounts. It took away all the world pvp that was left, since it got so easy to not get jump upon and that's coming from someone who wasn't really the most awesome pvper at all.