It's not Nostalgia.

[Destruktion]

End game never has been as solid as it is in MoP. Not only it offers something for everyone but mostly due to various difficulty level, the hard raids are a true challenge of skill oposed to a pure challenge of time and grind. Rewards are appropriate to the effort you put in game (yes, epix that are easy to get are not worth nothing compared to those that come from the hardest content). The things you describe as currently broken only prove you have poor knowledge of how this game really is nowadays. Things that were broken in the past were a fact.

You think the game is better than ever because it caters to everyone and everyone receives some kind of reward in the end. That's better if you want to make as much money as you can, but that doesn't make the game itself better.

I wanted to play this game so I could RPG as some hero saving the world and working together with others, with all the challenge and struggles that hero has as well as the rewards that might OR MIGHT NOT come after. Apparently some people want to play this game as a hero who has rewards shoveled down his gullet. They want every possible difficulty level for every possible task and to be rewarded at every second (through the power of currency) for every bit of effort they invest while spending the least amount of time and effort possible. For me, there's classic WoW. For the others, there's present-day WoW. To each their own.

Their were bosses you couldn't do without resist gear which was gating. It wasn't difficult but it just sucked a way time that is what he is saying. All of that can be done in raid rather then making stupid walls like that they should just make the bosses hard.

Some bosses put out high amounts of damage of a certain element. You want to survive, you put on gear that resists that element. That's sensible RPG game design.

[Ronduwil]

No offense to your kids, but they are highly "lead" by media, media want them to like Bieber over Asia. The radio, MTV, etc... and its not because Justin is a better artist... if you can call him that.

You're not offending my kids. They want nothing to do with Bieber. Even at the height of his popularity my oldest daughter said, "I don't see what the big deal is. He sounds like a 10 year old girl." I think she was 11 or 12 at the time. My youngest daughter thinks he's "terrible." That doesn't change the fact that at least 281,312 people disagree and that he's made more money in the past three years than I'll ever see in my life.

Art is always driven by media, especially in this age of mass media. We are inundated with it. Microsoft Windows isn't the most popular OS because it's the best. It just had better marketing than Linux and Mac OS/OS X. We all like to think that the best and most fun game is going to win out in the end but the fact is that subscriptions driven by advertising and world of mouth. Raiders aren't going to go out and evangelize WoW because they're busy raiding. Word of mouth is going to come from new players having fun in the starter areas, and that's exactly the part of the game that Blizzard rushes players through these days. All this talk of summoning stones and 40-man raids and the lack of mounts has very little impact on the game's success. It's a nostalgic point of view that means nothing to the new generation of gamers that will or won't play this game.

Here is a counter anecdote. I was born in '87. I didn't really care about music until maybe the 7th grade... when my favorite band because....... Nirvana. Is that just some sort of time traveling Nostalgia?

It's kind of funny that you say that because I always thought Nirvana was over-rated. At first I was happy about their popularity because to be frank I was sick to death of nothing but hair bands on the radio. But then we replaced it with nothing but grunge, and that wasn't any better. I really liked the early eighties because you could hear Quiet Riot, Kenny Rogers, Bonnie Tyler, Huey Lewis, Men at Work, Men without Hats, and Modern English all on one station without even thinking twice about it. By the nineties radio was segmented into dance stations, alternative stations, heavy metal stations, hip hop stations, country stations, and classic rock stations. Alternative went from being a bunch of weird stuff to just "grunge." That, in turn, was a euphemism for a bunch of Pixies knock-off bands following the trail blazed by Nirvana. I have to admit that Nirvana was one of the better bands of the era. David Grohl continued to do well with Foo Fighters as well.

Back to the topic at hand, I think it is nostalgia. I was born in '70 but I'm a fan of The Beatles and also enjoy music from The Carpenters. I even remember listening to Captain and Tenille as a kid and watching the Donny and Marie show with my parents and sisters every Friday night. At the end of every show they sang a goodbye song that signaled bed time and the start of a weekend full of cartoons and good times. That is the very essence of nostalgia.

[notorious98]

So now we're back to the old discussion about WoW being an old game that is forced to compete with many newer and shinier MMOs as opposed to being the upstart juggernaut behind the recent Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo hits making its first entry against old niche MMOs like Everquest and Ultima Online, and Asheron's Call. What you just said holds true for WoW as well. During Wrath Mr. T was peddling WoW and we even had a night elf in Teldrassil distributing mohawk grenades. I haven't seen a new WoW commercial in almost two years. My kids won't even touch WoW these days. They're more into console games, mobile apps, and simply watching "Let's Plays." As the bible put it, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." It could simply be that WoW's time has come.

If only more people could come to this realization. Every product has a life cycle. WoW is in the "decline" stage.

[Dormie]

If only more people could come to this realization. Every product has a life cycle. WoW is in the "decline" stage.

Doesn't change the fact that bad design decisions are possible.

[Lilija]

1. They have no proof that it is nostalgia.

Nostalgia relates to subjective feelings. You don't prove subjective things. But what I can prove is that those feelings are subjective. It's pretty simple: if those things were a fact there would not be people who completly disagree or experienced old WoW in a completly different way.

2. They most likely started playing after the changes have been made and feel left out.

I'm a serious raider since 2nd wave of Vanilla EU servers. So been there, done that, I think the game was mostly broken. But when given no alternative, people are able to go for a while with a broken product.

3. They are arguing against it because they're the majority on a fan site that have bad taste and stayed with the game while the rest leave and don't visit fan sites.

First of all you can't call anyone's taste bad because it's subjective matter that can't be rated. Second, it's kind obvious people who play the game are on its fan site. What wonders me more are those who don't, who despise it, yet still come to its fan sites to bash it. Most people who quit games... any games, do it cause they get bored of that said game. That's normal. Also the normal thing is to eventually stop discussing the game since after months of not playing it they have no idea how the game really is.

3. They say nostalgia exists with Vanilla|TBC|WOTLK but nobody is saying Cataclysm was good even in MOP or close to WOD so it must be rose-tinted-glasses.

Funny enough Cata at the start was the only time Blizzard listened to people who cried after "good old days". Look how it turned out :P

4. They're in denial and have no better argument to make against people with constructive reasons why the game was better besides they prefer the game now.

Subjective feelings about the game are not contructive reasons. I believe people when they say that they have enjoyed old WoW more. They forget however, that our enjoyment from a very social game comes from many more aspects than the game itself. If the people you play with are great you keep playing even if the game seems crap to you (that's the only reason I've stayed). Also, your age when you started matters a lot. Kids and teenagers tend to approach stuff different and very often things look just better when you are young and you experience something for the first time. Many people who started playing WoW as adults are able of bit more objective oppinion about the good old days. I myself remember some fond feelings of when I've started. But it didn't last forever and I am aware that many of those feelings was me - not the game design.

6. Nostalgia wouldn't cause such an uproar for this many years.

You underestimate nostalgia and emotions that drive it :P

7. Nostalgic people usually say something was better without an argument.

Unfortunatly, nostalgic people try to put their subjective oppinion as a fact because they are blinded by the memory of good emotions from the past.

8. The game has changed and just because you like it doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Sure, it always can be better I see flaws in WoW all the time. But I appreciate that old flaws are being fixed. And Blizzard really listens to people and adress a lot of the issues. Not all of them can be adressed at once but they are being heard as all the good changes in WoW are a proof of that.

- - - Updated - - -

Mm..noo..sry. WoW is broken all over. It's out of balance with itself. It's like a patchwork of changes they have made over the years. It isn't one cohesive game. Sure raids and arguably PvP might be solid, but that's about it.

Raids are a huge part of WoW and they do drive it. I can agree it has flaws but what matters is that old flaws have been fixed. Sure, new emerged but that's natural. As raids are on a really good track I'm sure with some more technology Blizzard can bring even more and more good things for everyone. Besides, there is more to do in WoW than ever. Yeah, most of those things are optional but that's the beauty of it. It's much better if people do something because they want to and not because they are forced to do something they hate on the way for their in game goal. Freedom of choise is a huge value. I see some people are simply lost without being forced into doing stuff. But then again, forcing anything on people is never good in a long run.

- - - Updated - - -

Walmart caters to everyone, guess it's the perfect store. A game that caters to everyone isnt a respectable one.

Won't comment on Walmart since it's not in my country and I don't know it. As for games, they don't have to be respectable - they were never ment to be respectable. People who enjoy the game don't care if some random person on the internet respects their game or not as it's completly irrelevant to their enjoyment. A good game is one that is being played by a lot of people. WoW so far even with the sub loss pretty much does the best on the market.

- - - Updated - - -

You think the game is better than ever because it caters to everyone and everyone receives some kind of reward in the end. That's better if you want to make as much money as you can, but that doesn't make the game itself better.

Actually, it makes it a better game because it's being enjoyed by bigger group of people.

I wanted to play this game so I could RPG as some hero saving the world and working together with others, with all the challenge and struggles that hero has as well as the rewards that might OR MIGHT NOT come after.

WoW was never good at role playing :P If you look RP in here I would suggest to look somewhere else in the frist place ^^

Apparently some people want to play this game as a hero who has rewards shoveled down his gullet. They want every possible difficulty level for every possible task and to be rewarded at every second (through the power of currency) for every bit of effort they invest while spending the least amount of time and effort possible.

I gues your problem is that you are seeing it all wrong. For an experience player LFR, flex and normal are a joke and that's not their content. The rewards that content gives are of hardly any value for that player. At the same time for a less experienced or skilled player normal can actually be hard and since they work on it unlike the experienced players who just storm thru it, that person is rewarded accordingly to their skill and effort.

I do agree currently you need less time but if that change didn't happen WoW would have been in much bigger trouble because most of old hardcores would be forced to leave WoW due to real life comittments. I've seen many great, skilled players quitting WoW forever due to the time barrier in TBC. Besides, being able to put a lot of time doesn't say much about you as a gamer. Achieving things based on your skill and effort says much more. And that's why current model is better. It is only worse for people who lack skill and are sad that they are not special snowflakes anymore only because they can be in game 24/7.

[Lillemus]

Doesn't change the fact that bad design decisions are possible.

Neither does it change the fact that good design decisions are possible, slowing the decline.

[Rissler-Dark-]

My kids are 11 and 14. Many people like '80s music, but most don't prefer it. Taste in music is largely nostalgic. Case in point:

Asia - Only Time Will Tell : 186,547 views, 1103 likes over the past three years
Justin Bieber - All That Matters : 7,073,274 views, 281,312 likes over the past two days

Then again I could be partly to blame for singing and/or playing Asia's Don't Cry every time my kids start whining. On the other hand you know some teen out there broke up with a girlfriend, danced their first slow song, had their first kiss, started driving, and/or did many of the other awesome things that people do for the first time as teens at around the same time Bieber fever struck. There's no way you can convince me that Bieber is actually 38 times better than Asia. Art in general is almost purely nostalgic. That's why fashion, music, movies, and games vary so drastically from decade to decade.

Damn you nailed that so good Ronduwil!! Perfect example and so true about music which relates to everything as well. Every time I attend BlizzCon I meet a younger people who loves Cata or the current exp and its because they build memories off what they played.

[Destruktion]

Actually, it makes it a better game because it's being enjoyed by bigger group of people.

It makes it a more successful game, not a better game.

WoW was never good at role playing :P If you look RP in here I would suggest to look somewhere else in the frist place ^^

I'm not an RPer, but I liked RP-inspired gameplay.

I gues your problem is that you are seeing it all wrong. For an experience player LFR, flex and normal are a joke and that's not their content. The rewards that content gives are of hardly any value for that player. At the same time for a less experienced or skilled player normal can actually be hard and since they work on it unlike the experienced players who just storm thru it, that person is rewarded accordingly to their skill and effort.

I do agree currently you need less time but if that change didn't happen WoW would have been in much bigger trouble because most of old hardcores would be forced to leave WoW due to real life comittments. I've seen many great, skilled players quitting WoW forever due to the time barrier in TBC. Besides, being able to put a lot of time doesn't say much about you as a gamer. Achieving things based on your skill and effort says much more. And that's why current model is better. It is only worse for people who lack skill and are sad that they are not special snowflakes anymore only because they can be in game 24/7.

Why shouldn't people be able to invest more time in game than others? If they can play the game more often, why shouldn't that give them an advantage? Should they be condemned to a certain level of play because of their innate gaming skills? No, some people have different strengths and classic WoW was better at securing success for people who put in the effort, whether it was in becoming skillful in your class or simply grinding away for hours at a time. Believe it or not, the ability to grind is a skill.

I do like that the game incorporates more skill in playing your class and raid mechanics etc. than it did before, but I don't like how it minimizes the amount of time and effort you can invest in the game as a whole. Everything is fking gated nowadays, it's like they prevent anyone from getting ahead of anyone else.

[namelessone]

What ridiculous gating in Vanilla? You mean the quest chains and dungeons that allowed you to collect FR gear that you'd need, that told you the story of why you're killing said monsters, why they're a threat to Azeroth, and ensured you were up to speed with your character/group work,? Oh, right. Apparently that's a bad thing these days. My mistake.

So how many times does it take YOU to run a dungeon to get up to speed with lore and your character? 20-30? Because that's how long it took to farm a set of resistance gear.

- - - Updated - - -

It makes it a more successful game, not a better game.

Successful is objective. Better is subjective. You can argue endlessly whether the game is "better" or not, and it will be a waste of time.

[notorious98]

Doesn't change the fact that bad design decisions are possible.

It's possible, but there's no actual gauge for whether or not that has had a factor in declining subscription numbers. Also, good luck pointing out, with any certainty, which design decisions were bad. More often than not, if the decision was bad, they attempt to revert it in some way. Like not allowing flying until the first major content patch. Or only allowing pre-made groups to enter into the hardest small group content.

[Tomana]

Because catering to the majority is clearly not working. Or what do you want them to do, keep doing what they're doing while subs drop to zero?

No MMO is currently "working", they all either fail to take off or plummet. Unless you decided that if somehow Blizzard would start catering to the minorities like in BC, the game would miraculously go up to 10M subs again?

Nah, that's a solvable problem, it's what Blizzard's designers get paid to do. One way would be to separate raid gear from 5 man gear. There are many others, it's not some impossible problem.

But why bother to do so? The current solution works mostly OK (for a 9 year old game, that is). No competitor can currently do as well, not even mentioning better.

- - - Updated - - -

Is it too much to ask for people to just l2p?

Is it too much to ask people to do their jobs properly? Is it too much to ask people to educate their children properly?
I don't know the answer, but most people fail to do the two above-mentioned things properly. So in the same vein, asking people to learn complicated things in a game is too much for most people.

It's a shame a company can't make a game focused purely on good gameplay, rather than trying to keep the bads so you can get their money. In a perfect WoW the motto would be 'l2p or gtfo'.

Go play EVE Online. Except that - surprise! - the subs from that game cannot sustain its own development properly, not to mention supporting the development of other titles.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Bad design point = catering to whiny people that probably don't like RPGs to begin with.

[Mirishka]

I do agree that the game was way more fun around TBC / Wotlk. Could be because thats when i started playing and everything was new and shiny. Also if you putted time and effort in the game you made something of yourself. Now if i log in once a week to do my weekly arena cap i'd be capped within 2 months. Playing 1 day a week...Not that it matters it's a nice change because let's face it, we grow up and time isn't something we got compared to 5-6 years ago. Atleast not me. Plus most of my friends played back then so there was always something to do. Now it is either : " Nah man farming my justice" "Nah man capping valor" " Nah man capping conquest " "Nah man farming honor" " Afk " " I'm off after i'm done capping". And that is mostly it. People log in the game and do their "routine" of things. Valor, Conquest, Justice, Enchants , Gems and then they log off caus thats all there is to do. Now you might argue with me that you can raid and do RBGS and stuff but is my Ele shaman coming in an RBG team? Nope. Do i got time for a raid guild? Nope. LFR? Yes defeating the bosses every week with no effort and just for some gear wich you will after weeks of trying not get, Yes very fun! I finaly understand people arguments against LFR. You are raiding let's say 3 days a week normal, (say we got 16 bosses) And your stuck on boss 5 with your guid. It's very challenging and everyone is chipping in their effort and you almost got him down...BUT damn last 5% you wipe. Well another try let's go! Now compared to LFR, you go in , pull the boss, kill it , get loot or gold, repeat next week. This.Gets.Boring.After.A.Few.Weeks. Because it is so fucking simple. Thats why many people sign out of the game caus they are bored of it. You got 0 to almost no social aspect in LFR so your basicly playing a single player MMO there. Why wipe nights after nights on a boss for a piece of loot when you can get it in LFR? Don't come with the "don't like it don't do it" argument caus thats fucking retarded. IF they were handing out a one year salary, your salary on the street for free you just had to stand there in line , pick it up and thats it, your year salary in your pocket. Would you go to work the next day? Knowing your working your ass of when you just got it handed it to you for free?

Don't take my opinion as a fact or what ever, and flame on me what ever you want. I logged in when 5.4 launched, walked a couple of meters and logged off. How it is now and with alot of great games releasing soon. I am done with this game. I loved the warcraft universe but what ever maybe next expansion!

Wall of text crits my face. You have an enter key, FFS use it.

Anyhow, the game can be as much or as little as you want it to be. If you want to log on, do the barebones minimum so that you can AFK through Raid Finder like 30% or so of the people who run it, you can. If you want to bust your ass, learn your class and run the hardest content with the best rewards, you can do that too. And btw, the 'heroic raider' option is harder than anything we had to do in vanilla or BC. I'm a 9 year player, so that isn't conjecture.

Oh and your 'why wipe on normal/heroic when you can get the same gear in RF?' argument is dumb. The gear in Flex is better, and the gear in normal/heroic is significantly better. Also there are achievements, titles, mounts, etc to consider. Plenty of reasons to do raids properly.

And to those of you suggesting the game should have less players, but better ones... whether you like it or not Blizzard is in business to make money. Otherwise it dies. They can alienate a few million people and make the whiny vocal minority happy, sure, and then suddenly Blizzard goes out of business because there's not enough of you to sustain an MMO.

Its an easy thing to say as a gamer. Not so easy as a game company that can go from thriving to "shit, we're being delisted from Nasdaq" before you know it.

Kind of sad that so many of you go to such lengths to analyze and rage over a video game. This is not Xavier's school for Gifted Youngsters. Its a fucking video game. Find your badge of pride elsewhere, stop taking shit so seriously, log on and have some fun. That's why its here.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

And to those of you suggesting the game should have less players, but better ones... whether you like it or not Blizzard is in business to make money. Otherwise it dies. They can alienate a few million people and make the whiny vocal minority happy, sure, and then suddenly Blizzard goes out of business because there's not enough of you to sustain an MMO.

Its an easy thing to say as a gamer. Not so easy as a game company that can go from thriving to "shit, we're being delisted from Nasdaq" before you know it.

So every game should cater to the lowest common denominators, tot he casuals who can't be bothered to learn? To the mainstream? Yeah, no matter how condescending and flippant you are, I don't want to live in a world like that.

[Arewn]

What ridiculous gating in Vanilla? You mean the quest chains and dungeons that allowed you to collect FR gear that you'd need, that told you the story of why you're killing said monsters, why they're a threat to Azeroth, and ensured you were up to speed with your character/group work,? Oh, right. Apparently that's a bad thing these days. My mistake.

Sorry, forgot vanilla was perfect and what you described was definitely the situation, no grind or unnatural extension of content life-cycle by skinner-box induced repetition at all.

On an unrelated note, this is a pretty good thread about nostalgia.

[Bodom]

I actually started playing on a Blizzlike private server just to see if it was nostalgia or if the game really was fun back then. I loved it! I spent a few hours getting to level 10 and I really enjoyed it. I don't have enough time to play there as much as I'd like, which also means I won't get to level 60 anytime soon, but I have a pretty good memory and the game was all I remembered it to be as far as I could see.

[Lillemus]

So every game should cater to the lowest common denominators, tot he casuals who can't be bothered to learn? To the mainstream? Yeah, no matter how condescending and flippant you are, I don't want to live in a world like that.

So you automatically hate any game with a difficulty setting?

The end-game content is more challenging than ever, the fact that some people don't want to do it because they can "complete" the game on an easier setting and then complain that the game is too easy is a personal choice and nothing much can be done about that really.

And yes, sadly mainstream games (Such as World of Warcraft is) is made for a mainstream audience, it's funny how things work like that innit.

[RumlyD]

Call it nostalgia if you like. I just prefer a design that is less streamlined than the current situation.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

So you automatically hate any game with a difficulty setting?

The end-game content is more challenging than ever, the fact that some people don't want to do it because they can "complete" the game on an easier setting and then complain that the game is too easy is a personal choice and nothing much can be done about that really.

And yes, sadly mainstream games (Such as World of Warcraft is) is made for a mainstream audience, it's funny how things work like that innit.

Of course everything yous aid had nothing to do with my post... I think you quoted the wrong person.

[Lillemus]

Of course everything yous aid had nothing to do with my post... I think you quoted the wrong person.

I'll try to cut it out in tiny pieces for you then:

So every game should cater to the lowest common denominators, tot he casuals who can't be bothered to learn?

This was where the difficulty setting mention was applied, just because a game is accesible by more people through difficulty settings != lowest common denominator. Again the comment on end game content difficulty also was applied, the casual who cannot be bothered to learn will never experience the real challenges of end-game.

To the mainstream? Yeah, no matter how condescending and flippant you are, I don't want to live in a world like that.

This is where the mainstream game comment would apply. Considering that WoW is by far the largest MMO, it has to be considered mainstream, so obviously a game designed for and played by the mainstream is gonna be developed to appeal to the mainstream.

Apologies if I misunderstood everything you wrote .