Will WoW ever be what it once was?

[Fagatronics]

It really depends on your view and how long you've played the game. WoW has more features and things to do in game than ever before. Most of those new features are geared towards a solo player rpg experience though.

If a player prefers to do things on their own then they must be having a ball right now. Outside of my guild and friends, I feel like the game is essentially a single player rpg now with other players running around in the background generally mucking up the experience. The mmo part of the game has been sorely diminished for me and that's why it wont be the same for me ever again.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

The game is still alive and nothing has changed except a few minor things, people will just be saddened on how "easy" the game is, when the only reason why it was difficult is because there was way less DBM and PTR strategies of bosses holding their hand. Not to mention being new is a feeling you won't get back in the same game.

[Gangplank]

the ONLY downside is that the community that has become a bit less open and friendly than it used to be. But that's not the fault of the game itself.

Well, while the game didn't intend to have a negative effect on community, the way WoW evolved has certainly impacted its players. Let's take a look at the degradation of community in WoW, from the start (from the perspective of an original vanilla beta player).

Vanilla:
- There was no LFG finder, so players had to find other players to complete quests and dungeons
- There was no dungeon queue, so players had to explore the world together and join the instance at the dungeon/raid portal
- Raids required 20/40 players, which required massive guild participation (and built several friendships in the process)
- Outdoor raid bosses promoted "pug" players to join together to take down the large number of world bosses (4 dragons, Kazzak, Azuregos, etc)
- Guilds held the key to gear improvements, which motivated players to join guilds and be active in a guild community
- Attunement process to enter raids required help from friends and guildies
- Ahn'Qiraj event was a bonding experience for many guilds, and was a server-wide experience for all players
- Players spread between 3 major cities per faction, though mostly congregated to 1 or 2 cities

BC
- One major city that collected all players in Outlands with portals to Azeroth cities (one-way only), alliance and horde shared community
- Standard raid size reduced to 25, and a new tier of 10 man raid was created (Karazhan)
#effect: guilds were still important, but didn't need to be massive. Overall, a good change, though Karazhan did invoke "cliques" within a guild
- Arena introduced, promoted an additional avenue for people to band together as a team
- Attunements became even more demanding, making friends an even more valuable asset
- Reputation by running instances also encouraged players to get out of capital cities more and join with players
- A guild or group of friends was necessary to achieve almost anything noteworthy (very few solo achievements at the time)
- Some outdoor raid bosses existed (Kazzak, Doomwalker)
- LFG finder in its infancy, almost no one used it

WotLK
- New 10-man raid tier introduced
#effect: guilds no longer needed to be large, guilds could drop the weakest links and still raid, 10-man tier solidifies guild 'cliques'
- LFG finder over-hauled and improved, renamed Dungeon Finder, allowed dungeon queuing while selecting a role to play
#effect: players didn't need to spend time finding people manually, which reduced the need for friends and/or guild.
#effect: players didn't need to leave a city or questing zone to join a dungeon
- PvP bosses in Wintergrasp added, encouraged players to manually LFG, guilds and friends were still assets for these bosses
- No world bosses

Cata & MoP
made additional improvements to the convenience of LFD, which eventually became LFR, which really made joining or participating in a guild very optional. Guilds still serve as the primary way for 25 tier raiding (and 10 tier during early weeks/months of new content). With cross-realm technology, solo players could achieve much with the Looking-For tools. LFD/LFR also made time commitments flexible, as players would not need to attend events arranged by a guild. Instead, they could play when they could, and leave when desired with no major penalty. For most casual players, guilds are optional/trivial. The community no longer needed to be an aid for accomplishments.

Now I think the introduction to the LFD/LFR was for the best, as the game is simply too big now to expect to do all the leg work on your own. But a lot of what made WoW great at the start (and through BC) was the camaraderie of friends and guildmates (and putting in the effort for things like attunements). If I could define the golden age for WoW, it would probably be Burning Crusade. I feel like this expansion held onto what worked well in vanilla while also making additions that would define the expansions to follow it (arena, smaller raid groups, flying, greater attention to world detail, etc). BC was also the expansion with the most well-known bosses -- Kil'Jaeden, Illidan, Magtheridon, Kael'Thas, Archimonde, Lady Vashj, and of course the home of Medivh (karazhan, which hosted some of the most memorable fights & events in WoW -- opera house, chess, etc).

[Tinykong]

Please don't return to the "golden days." WoW in Vanilla was terrible, it only seems to be awesome because people quickly forget the bad stuff.

[Duronos]

Please don't return to the "golden days." WoW in Vanilla was terrible, it only seems to be awesome because people quickly forget the bad stuff.

Funny how I played through the bad stuff and can't play it now right?

[Deleted]

WoW used to be a MMORPG that took the most successful rulesets and mechanics from other ventures and amalgamized them into a structure that appealed immensely to the MMORPG-Players of that Time. For example - not losing experience and getting de-leveled when dying was something i frowned upon in the beginning ... because i deemed it too softcore and casual.
The thing was - WoW was also very attractive for several completely different audiences, especially as it had a very good balance of repetetive grindy tasks (farming with my hunter in vanilla for example, lot of fun for hours on end) and long-term reward. So the game managed to attract a very very diverse crowd, as even the stereotypical bored housewife liked WoW better than the flash based gaming site they where used to waste their time on (and rightly so - you can walk with your avatar i a huge world and chat and have fun doing tasks ? that was huge and new at that time).

So no, WoW won't ever be what it once was. It was an mmoRPG with a strict set of rules the player had to adapt to. Now it's an MMOrpG with flexible rules that adapt to players. But there's no reason to be mad about it, at least they try to keep the niche that is "strict rules" and "adaption the the game from a player" alive. It just doesn't feel as good anymore ... many people shrug at your heroic kills because they value a 200+ lvl25 battle-pet collection more.

[Tinykong]

Funny how I played through the bad stuff and can't play it now right?

You are in the minority. WoW has more players today than it did during vanilla.

[Osmeric]

You are in the minority. WoW has more players today than it did during vanilla.

Well, it did at the end of Q1...

[Deleted]

In terms of class mechanics, synergy between classes and specs, and their raid viability, we are in the best shape ever. Also in raid mechanics, we have raids more difficult and complex than ever before.
Regarding pvp balance, I think we moved forward, but only a bit.
I believe the raiding model, and the gearing process is is still the major shortcoming of Blizzard.

[Tinykong]

Well, it did at the end of Q1...

Current numbers are slightly higher than at TBC launch.

[Duronos]

You are in the minority. WoW has more players today than it did during vanilla.

But it's also lost a lot more than Vanilla. Vanilla had an increasing sub base starting from 0. MoP had I 10 million and is at 8 million now... What you're not getting is that Vanilla had a huge increase of subscribers throughout and it just kept going that way all up until WOTLK launch. You're just not getting it, the game passed MoP in terms of subscribers on a bit after BC release. I'm a minority ehh? Tell that to the 7.5 million while the game was still growing back then, for a game any new game to get even 1 million subscribers in it's first year was a major achievement. MoP has the advantage of having the success of earlier success and now the game has turned the wrong way and people are leaving (it's also getting older).

Community was destroyed and the game is treated like a singleplayer, you play it, you do what you want and when there is nothing else to do then you stop playing it. You come back maybe every now and then to play it but the game is an MMO and you want people you can form bonds with, WoW doesn't really make that easy anymore therefore less to do.

(I will say that your profile name is epic though)

[Osmeric]

Current numbers are slightly higher than at TBC launch.

We don't have "current numbers". We have numbers as of March 31, 2013, nearly two months ago. IMO it's likely subs have continued to decline since then, especially given the warnings at the Q1 earnings call.

[Hitei]

But it's also lost a lot more than Vanilla. Vanilla had an increasing sub base starting from 0. MoP had I 10 million and is at 8 million now... What you're not getting is that Vanilla had a huge increase of subscribers throughout and it just kept going that way all up until WOTLK launch. You're just not getting it, the game passed MoP in terms of subscribers on a bit after BC release. I'm a minority ehh? Tell that to the 7.5 million while the game was still growing back then, for a game any new game to get even 1 million subscribers in it's first year was a major achievement. MoP has the advantage of having the success of earlier success and now the game has turned the wrong way and people are leaving (it's also getting older).

Community was destroyed and the game is treated like a singleplayer, you play it, you do what you want and when there is nothing else to do then you stop playing it. You come back maybe every now and then to play it but the game is an MMO and you want people you can form bonds with, WoW doesn't really make that easy anymore therefore less to do.

I fail to see how it's any harder to form bonds in wow than it used to be.

I meet new friends all the time, perhaps you're just on a server with a bad community.

[Tinykong]

We don't have "current numbers". We have numbers as of March 31, 2013, nearly two months ago. IMO it's likely subs have continued to decline since then, especially given the warnings at the Q1 earnings call.

Well, you can speculate all you like, but that's just opinion. The point I was making still rings true: vanilla had less players than today.

[SturdyGamer]

I doubt it. WoW is still a decent game though I doubt it'll ever captivate me to the point it once did. It is unlikely that the game will ever return to a state where immersion is valued as much as it once was. For that I suspect I'll have to invest in other MMO's, though many of the recent launches have been rather disappointing on that front.

[Fagatronics]

Well, you can speculate all you like, but that's just opinion. The point I was making still rings true: vanilla had less players than today.

Lol. It's funny because you're speculating as well.

[Osmeric]

Well, you can speculate all you like, but that's just opinion. The point I was making still rings true: vanilla had less players than today.

So, you statement about what subs are right now is something other than opinion? Do tell the source of this non-opinion information you have.

[Duronos]

I fail to see how it's any harder to form bonds in wow than it used to be.

I meet new friends all the time, perhaps you're just on a server with a bad community.

Or perhaps being technically forced to do LFD for 5 mans etc. with people I'll never see again from other servers does that. 5 mans are so mindnumbingly easy that nobody chats at all and just do the same thing over and over again sitting in a city doing /afk practically.

[Banshee Prince]

Fortunately the dark age of WoW is long dead...but now we have to put up with MoP which is pretty bad...albeit not as bad as the dark age.

[Honnycorns]

I think its already back, you just cant appreciate it!