Why was World of Warcraft dumbed down that much?

[Archangel Tyrael]

Some of you spend your valuable hobby-time on researching your class and boss fights, training and getting experience to maximize your performance, searching through endless addons, level raid professions, trying to get used to changing your talents, specs, gemming from fight to fight etc. And when you finally manage to get that hc kill, you see a mediocre player with the same gear that dropped to you from Lei Shen, only it's on LFR colors and he/she brags about raiding just like you do. You get upset, I understand that.

But you need to understand that these stuff you do does not feel "gamey" at all, feels more like work. It might be fun for you, but that frustration is not even close to that for the average gamer, who are much more crowded and let's not argue about that, you are a vocal minority among the online gaming community. Some of you guys may be so experienced in this "hardcore raiding" routine that it's possible none of this process feels hard, yet getting to the point where you stand is almost impossible for a casual gamer in terms of experince, in the game's current state. Nor anyone has the wish to get there, why would we? That's stressful, tiring and not even remotely fun.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to repeat the usual "get a life" speech, I won't generalize anyone for a simple hobby. But you do have heroic raiding, extra bosses, titles, mounts and all that adressing your small community, just suck it up, you won't get to be special in a fucking video game. Share your fun/game with the rest of the online gaming community.

I'd argue that if someone finds WoW ''heroic'' raiding ''hard'' to get into these days, said person must have severe mental problems.

This has been my opinion since TBC to be honest.

[DrSteveBrule]

There's a common fallacy that's being spread that raiding feels like "job" when it is a huge fucking variable of what a job is and what guilds you apply to.

If you apply to a guild that are way above your skill level then the schedule might be tight, just remember EVERYONE is trying to get through content as quick as possible, it's the gamer mentallity.

The problem is how guilds work and how raids work. It all hinges on "leaders."
How many players are willing to do this? Not many. You ever been in the awkward position of starting a PuG and tell everyone you didn't want to lead but just wanted to start a group?
Yeah, and most times they'll hold that against you and in the worst case they'll drop group.

It's changes like THIS that need to be made to make raiding more accessible. Voice com/shyness these kinds of things can be accomodated without the shit fest that is LFR and the impact it has on the game and EVERYONE.

[Deleted]

It's not so much dumbing down as it's improving the quality of life. Although it is true that Dungeon and Raid Finder have contributed to players becoming less social, both tools are very useful, as on lower populated servers it's really hard to find any groups or raids. But then there are the talents. I can't understand why people complain about new talent trees being worse than the old ones. The old talent trees had so much less options and almost everyone used a cookie-cutter build which they had found from the internet. Most of the talents were boring passive effects, like increasing X's damage by Y%. Now all those effects are baseline and there is only the more interesting talents.

[Balazzar]

In ways dumbed down. But TBH if there was no LFR and you had to attune to get into ToT, and most raiders were still farming MSV and maybe the first part of HoF... the game would be a ghost town.

A lot of it is the fact that after WotLK the story just got thinner from a "wow this is epic" viewpoint. I was okay grinding Karazahn cause I thought someday I would down Illidan... never happened of course. Same thing in WotLK. I stuck through cause I wanted to get into ICC. I never played Cataclysm, but I really could not care of Lei Shen ran amuck in the distant lands of Pandaria... That is changing in a good way with Garrosh.

The decline of guilds is, IMO, a part of the game's life cycle. I do not know ANYONE who has been a raider from day 1 until now. Every friend and guild I have been in has gone inactive for long stretches of time... and usually they resub to a disbanded guild and an empty friend's list. Let's be honest, the raiding crowd is by and large longer-term players. Nowadays a teenager sees WoW and thinks "wow, this game looks a tad bit better than my free iOS game" and walks away. Back in Classic/TBC that was a subscriber.

[melodramocracy]

It's been simplified because over 8 years, every small nuisance was complained about by some minority that was loud enough to get everyone nodding their heads in agreement.

Absolutely.

[Zangeiti]

Personally I think they are doing it because they want more casual's to start playing. Seeing that they have the majority of hardcore's playing they want more business. so by dumbing it down they make it easier for the casual player to get into the game. But! making it a problem with hardcore's like me. I remember one time Me and my guild were able to pull of a 10 man on lei shendurumu the forgotten, elder council, tortos, maegaera, iron qon, ji-kun, horridon, primordius, dark animus, jinrohk, twin consorts. It was a big disappointment cause we did like 3 days of prep for this

[melodramocracy]

Wow is so easy only 336 guilds have killed Ra-Den, 402 Lei Shen. Less then 1.4%. Six other heroic fights are under 7%.

Fascinating, I had no clue that one heroic raid tier constituted the entire scope of the game. This needs to be repeated apparently, but simply because a video game has difficult elements to it doesn't mean that the game itself is hard.

[Granyala]

wrong, MMORPGs have always been about the community and helping to achieve common goals, sadly the state of this game is everyone wants to make it a solo game which really pisses me off.

Blame Blizzard. In every way other people ALWAYS hindered your progress.
Examples?
Questing: Other people make you wait for respawn. Grouping reduces XP gained.
Rare mobs/Treasures/Gathering: Yeah seeing another player in the area makes you /yawn
Dungeons: While you need other players, the teamwork stops as soon as the boss is dead. Then the other becomes your enemy.

It's that constant competition that tires people out and makes them want to go solo.

I long for the Guild Wars 2 System where you're actually HAPPY to see other players, instead of "Great why does that guy also has to quest here? Now it'll take me 2x as long to finish this."

[ComputerNerd]

By destroying the sense of achievement one gets from doing exclusive content and the community that is built around it to accomplish that. Takes the MMO out of MMORPG

What we have now is just an on rails single player game where everyone wins just for participating and it has totally ruined wow

I mean there's a thousand other games that are exactly that; why did they have to make WoW like that

Changes towards this end pretty closely coincide with the drop in subs too

Guilds have killed the MMO part more than that, when they have closed doors.
A guild group is just that, a largely fixed group with most members pre-determined.
Where is the massively multiplayer interaction, the interactions with other parts of the community ?
There isn't any.

LFR and LFD put you with random people, other guilds, other servers even which has does a hell of a lot more for the MMO portion of the game.

[Sniperpally]

Guilds have killed the MMO part more than that, when they have closed doors.
A guild group is just that, a largely fixed group with most members pre-determined.
Where is the massively multiplayer interaction, the interactions with other parts of the community ?
There isn't any.

LFR and LFD put you with random people, other guilds, other servers even which has does a hell of a lot more for the MMO portion of the game.

they might as well be asshole bots. shit maybe they are, I really have no way of knowing the people are real when I LFR

[Nyteyes]

In a word? Money. The easier the game is the more players they get to subscribe. Hence moar money.

[Shahad]

The game isn't easier.

/thread

[Terahertz]

The game isn't easier.

/thread

It actually is though. MoP compared to wotlk, heck, cataclysm even, has been dumbed down so much. The only times I have to put effort into playing the game is when I PvP and solo high end raiding/level 90 dungeons... Outside of those examples I never have to try my best.

[Drusin]

I've done the "challenging" part of wow, remember when starting zone mobs were hostile and not neutral, phew never thought i'd make it out of there alive.

[Glorious Leader]

Guilds have killed the MMO part more than that, when they have closed doors.
A guild group is just that, a largely fixed group with most members pre-determined.
Where is the massively multiplayer interaction, the interactions with other parts of the community ?
There isn't any.

LFR and LFD put you with random people, other guilds, other servers even which has does a hell of a lot more for the MMO portion of the game.

It was and is today INCREDIBLE cliquish. It was far worse in BC and Vanilla where you were basically at the behest of some raging asshole who ran the guild and his chosen cadre of officers. The cliques determined who got to go and who got lewt. I remember the mage officer in my old BC guild. He was maybe a 15 year old kid I was 26 at the time. At one point I said something I can't remember what exactly what it was but he nerd raged so hard in our little mage channel and threatened me that I would never get a piece of loot again or show up for any fuckign raid if I challenged him like that again. Well not wanting to take such disrespect and disabuse from what was practically a fucking child I said in vent this is BS. The rest of the officers agreed with me but that didn't mean they weren't a MASSIVE clique themselves. In fact when I came back to the game after a long hiatus I had found the group of them just left one day. The officers robbed the guild bank of everything we had contributed, took of with the 7 or 8 of them to another server and abandoned the guild. It was an incredible clique. The great thing about today is I can basically say fuck em. I can go get my fill somewhere else in the game or in another game.

[Olrox]

I find it hilarious that whenever a topic like this pops up someone or multiple people will bring up <insert boss kill>.

How is it hilarious?

Usually these posts at some point assert that the highest challenge the game offers is in some way less difficult/complicated/hard-to-reach/etc than some other expansion when it almost invariably isn't.

So yeah...not entirely unreasonable to expect the person saying that they "can't find a challenge" to be someone whose overcome the most challenging thing the game offers.

If the OP were going to make more valid points about challenging content at a particular level (which is largely moot since there's pretty sufficient challenge at all levels now - Heroic Raids for 10-25 content, Challenge modes for 5 man content. Single player content pretty much hits its cap in difficulty at the Brawler's Guild) it'd be a bit different but he's just throwing around broad claims and saying that legitimate quality-of-life issues are "dumbing down" the game.

So explain to me how it's funny to ask someone to prove that their assertion is true?

[TaurenNinja]

Fascinating, I had no clue that one heroic raid tier constituted the entire scope of the game. This needs to be repeated apparently, but simply because a video game has difficult elements to it doesn't mean that the game itself is hard.

You want everything to be on one level of difficulty? Then you would have a failed game because no one would start playing it.
WoW's implementation of "easy to learn (or easy to do the easy content), hard to master (or hard to do the hard content)" is the best approach there is, for any game, period. Because only with this approach, you have a lot of newcomers starting the game, and a lot of later hardcores staying for the hard stuff.

The only apparent drawback is that this leads to the paradox where some people (as in this thread) think that just because it's easy to do some random quest or 5man dungeon, or any other $easyContent in the game, that the whole game would be too easy and not worth playing or whatever.

But normally, whenever something is too easy for you, you simply step up to the next harder content. That is natural progression. Think Questing/LFR/Dungeons/Scenarios are too easy? Start playing Normal. Think Normal is too easy? Start playing Heroic or CMs. Think Heroic or CMs are too easy? Start improving your clear times. Think PvE is too static? Start playing PvP. Think PvP on 1800 is easy? Start improving your rating accordingly.

It's all there. But still some people complain about how easy the easy crap is although they never even touch the harder stuff. It's paradox. Or insane. I don't know. But it's hardly objective. And that's what offends me a bit, because I try to do all these challenges to the extent that is possible for me, and then there's some random guy without any evidence that he knows what he's talking about claiming that "the game is easy". It's just stupid.
If said player was in a world-class guild, or a tournament-level PvP player, who would critizise something about the game, that would then have a lot more validity (although even then he might not be objective). But, as a counter-example, some guy who barely has any experience in difficult content (HC Raiding or higher-level PvP, for example), claiming that WoW as a whole would be easy and dumbed-down and whatever because of the introduction of LFR or the removal of some attunement quest or the removal of group quests, that is simply... I don't know a proper word for it, but I think it's completely nonsense.

[Durandro]

It actually is though. MoP compared to wotlk, heck, cataclysm even, has been dumbed down so much. The only times I have to put effort into playing the game is when I PvP and solo high end raiding/level 90 dungeons... Outside of those examples I never have to try my best.

Examples, please. Just saying 'it is' isn't acceptable.

Explain in detail how boss mechanics are more easy nowadays. Also please explain how reputation grinds are easier. Also explain how easy it is to gear up to run the last tier of raids via pure dungeon grinding (protip: MoP is the first expansion where this isn't possible).

Nostalgia is a funny thing.

[BenBos]

In a word? Money. The easier the game is the more players they get to subscribe. Hence moar money.

"Easy to get into and hard to master it."

The holy grail of good game play.

A pity WoW 2013 is so huge and overwhelming for a total noob, it starts to be a problem. Transmog, reforging, triple specs, phasing, cross realm play, proving grounds, wargames, experience turned off options, pet battles mechanics, farms, ...

For a total noob even the term mana is a strange new word ...

So WoW is too complicated after 9 years and 4 expansions for a newbee already.

[Glorious Leader]

You want everything to be on one level of difficulty? Then you would have a failed game because no one would start playing it.

Actually I don't agree with that. The rest of what you say is true if you accept the multiple difficulty model but if we went back to one difficulty the game would become so mind numbingly stupid easy just for the sheer need of players having something to do. If you lump all the players into one group obviously it will have to drag the content difficulty DOWN compared to heroics and normals today. I for one would welcome that but I suspect the crying from heroic raiders would be deafening. In fact heroic modes were set up for exactly that reason. In fact the very fact that heroic modes are a thing now sets current raiding apart from bc and vanilla where you simple had one difficulty and 9/10 that difficulty was set to piss easy.