Why was World of Warcraft dumbed down that much?

[Venant]

WoW, the OP for this thread must be the first person I have ever heard of who managed to go from just returning to the game to being 13/13 H cleared within 3 weeks.

You should actually try wiping hundreds of times getting all of the heroics on farm in the current tier of content before you start complaining about the game being too easy. The design concept for WoW seems to be a game that is easy to learn but challenging to master. All of these people complaining about how 'easy' the game is are probably not the players who are working on the actual difficult parts of the game.

[melodramocracy]

Also you are picking and choosing your definition of dumbed down game. Some aspects of this game are easier but others are certainly more complex than ever before. So surely that means the entire game isn't dumbed down which is counter to the topics suggestion?

And most of the echo chamber that makes up this thread is picking and choosing it's narrow definition of hard content, and imagining that that counts for the entire game.

"Driving a car is easy."
"Oh yeah? Lets see your F1 title"

[Orange Joe]

And most of the echo chamber that makes up this thread is picking and choosing it's narrow definition of hard content, and imagining that that counts for the entire game.

"Driving a car is easy."
"Oh yeah? Lets see your F1 title"

More like people saying

"Racing is easy"
"Oh yeah? Let's see your race trophy"


Want me to go back and quote people saying heroic raids are easy and only require time?

[melodramocracy]

More like people saying

"Racing is easy"
"Oh yeah? Let's see your race trophy"


Want me to go back and quote people saying heroic raids are easy and only require time?

That analogy implies that raiding is the entirety of this game.

[Marema]

People really need to get over it. Game hasn't been dumbed down. People just are smarter. Want the game to feel more epic? Play the game with no addons.

[Orange Joe]

That analogy implies that raiding is the entirety of this game.

Considering that is what most people are talking about. It fits.

[Teebone]

One thing about challenge that people like to OP crave.. addons. Try raiding without them. Truly. The game was designed around the stock UI. I'd love to hear your excuses why someone shouldn't raid without addons. Ask my guild mates, done it for years, just relied on my own timing and in-game warnings. Want to test yourself? Try soloing Lady V without an ability timer addon. I did it like twice out of I dunno, 30 tries?

Admittedly though, since being injured at work some time ago I don't have the reflexes I used to. Now I kinda need the spoiler alerts =(

If the OP is good as he claims to be though...?

---------- Post added 2013-06-27 at 09:51 AM ----------

People really need to get over it. Game hasn't been dumbed down. People just are smarter. Want the game to feel more epic? Play the game with no addons.

This this this, times a million, this.

[khalltusk]

And most of the echo chamber that makes up this thread is picking and choosing it's narrow definition of hard content, and imagining that that counts for the entire game.

"Driving a car is easy."
"Oh yeah? Lets see your F1 title"

This is what annoys me.

The game has always been bloody easy it was never hard. It was grindy and has been improved over time. The aim has always been to make it casual friendly. Raids were the "END" game product. They went from easy to difficult as we all know. They changed this over time to make it so more and more people could go into raiding as it makes good sense.

When people say the game is dumbed down they are just angry that other people have more chances to see and do things than we used to get back in the day as blizzard has made changes they don't agree with.

Thats it nothing more to it than that. Outside of raiding this games never been difficult compared to the rest of the MMO market.

[Pua]

The talent tree thing is because no real choice ever existed in talent trees. In some cases, it still doesn't :x

I really wish people would stop saying this; it's fucking nonsense.

[Erous]

I don't think it was dumbed down...moreseo that Blizzard added too much casual content. They neglected to give an adequate path for casuals to flow into a hardcore setting.

[Seefer]

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.

I am of the firm belief that you never even played back then and are basing your wild ass assumptions on the Onyxia MOAR DOTS video to justify your anti-social behavior or just being bad so nobody wants to play with you.

[Orange Joe]

I am of the firm belief that you never even played back then and are basing your wild ass assumptions on the Onyxia MOAR DOTS video to justify your anti-social behavior or just being bad so nobody wants to play with you.

I am of the firm belief you didn't start mid expansion where you DID have to go through people like this to find a decent guild.

Good guilds won't take the average Joe that just joined. He needs to get experience before they let him join.

[Seefer]

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.

Boss Mechanics - They now put a circle on the ground where bad stuff will land so provided you are actually paying attention you can just side step it

Rep grind - Badges, bonus to rep after getting one to exalted

Gearing up - LFR, same thing as a 5 man, easy as hell and can ignore almost all mechanics and live and go afk to get loot.

---------- Post added 2013-06-27 at 10:05 AM ----------

I am of the firm belief you didn't start mid expansion where you DID have to go through people like this to find a decent guild.

Good guilds won't take the average Joe that just joined. He needs to get experience before they let him join.

My Priest - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/greymane/Tomaxx/

My Hunter - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...mane/Remolose/

Note the Sgt title from way back when, I had no issues getting into a raiding guild and didn't deal with an asshole raid lead or any of the bullshit he claims

[DrSteveBrule]

"There are more divs in the world than.. better ones."
-Karl Pilkington

Almost anyone can agree that the world is populated with more idiots than anything else.
As a business it makes perfect sense to "dumb" down your game.
The problem is those idiots are harder to figure out a rubix cube that changes color.

Why do you think we got so many Dailies?
Because idiots can do it and it's time consuming.

[Woceip]

Just to throw something out there. When my warrior was out there, knee deep in dragon whelp guts in the swamp of sorrows, it was pretty stupid that despite the obvious 'real world' experience, that I had to go to an NPC that did nothing but chill in a city with a somewhat vacant look on itself so I could learn to rend better. I'm pretty sure I should've been teaching him. A lot of today's wow that people like to complain about is just wow minus the stupid and arbitrary pieces.

[Shahad]

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.

So outside of the stuff that was designed to be challenging (not grindy) ever since the inception of the game you don't have to be as good to complete it? No shit Sherlock.

Scroll a few pages back, when I said I could solo Zul Farak on my lvl 50 warrior. Then tell me why is this even possible? Or a lovely example that happened a while ago. I get a group for Scarlet monastery - Graveyard. A rogue stealths and runs to the boss and kills him, and the dungeon is over in 5 minutes. Now tell me again how the game has not been dumbed down. And again you come here and start talking about heroic bosses, when already everyone in the thread acknowledged that heroic raids are hards. The topic is "dumbed down game", not "heroic raids are dumbed down".

But then again, I expected nothing less from a Blizz fanboy than to post the same crap after 28 pages.

Let me explain to ya a little something called scaling. When each expansion hits, the developers do a lot of little changes to spells so that at the cap all the specs are relatively on equal footing. Now, since leveling content doesn't particularly matter to anyone, they don't do anything about low-level balance. Which means that, with time, the older instances get outscaled by the new player scaling paradigm. And since no one cares, they don't rebalance it.

Boss Mechanics - They now put a circle on the ground where bad stuff will land so provided you are actually paying attention you can just side step it

Rep grind - Badges, bonus to rep after getting one to exalted

Gearing up - LFR, same thing as a 5 man, easy as hell and can ignore almost all mechanics and live and go afk to get loot.

Bullshit. The number of mechanics per boss fight has like tripled since vanilla/BC. The fights are now much more complex due to the increased number of moving parts. And all the specs have more complex rotations to pay attention to while doing those mechanics.

LFR is shitty for gear catchup in so many ways. But you can still run the older tiers with a pug and get pretty good gear out of it.

Rep grinding takes more time than it did before and the bonus only applies to alts.

[Orange Joe]

My Priest - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/greymane/Tomaxx/

My Hunter - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...mane/Remolose/

Note the Sgt title from way back when, I had no issues getting into a raiding guild and didn't deal with an asshole raid lead or any of the bullshit he claims

In case you didn't know. You are not everyone. Just because you didn't have issues doesn't mean others didn't.

[Bugsy]

That is why it has continued to simplify itself- because it worked, and because it was always Blizzard's design philosophy, from the very beginning. Whether this simplification is or is not one of the causes of the sub loss, or whether that is better attributed to the game's age, possibly outdated sub-to-play model, or the general popularity of MMOs right now, is all and only unproven and unprovable speculation.

Now, I am one of those F2P Haters and only because I have yet to come across a gaming company that had the ethics to separate development to better the game vs store items to boaster their gains.

It is an ongoing issue with all the F2P Games on the market right now. Soon as the game goes live, 3/4 of the development goes into their store where 1/4 struggles to push out content and work on game development IE. Class Balance, Encounter Design, Zone Design, Game Mechanics and Bug fixes. We have seen it time and time again, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Neverwinter(on the fence) and so on. It is a wave and very few see it coming, the quality of game play is sinking and how much you can make off the store is becoming the golden nugget. Now I know everyone is going hate on this post but think of it from a marketing stand point. All you have to do is give the audience just enough to keep them logging on, the bare minimum. Because its F2P, players don't have the expectations they would with a Sub game. You see it every day in life and the old saying rings true. You get what you pay for. Prioritizing development on Store items: designs, little pets, store bug fixes(GW2 was terrible for this, fixed all the bugs and added new features to the Store before the game breaking bugs)


As for accessibility, all games offer a trial, more then enough time to get a feel for the game.

Sub-to-Play is the ethical route for an MMO, it keeps all budget in one major area. Game Development.

[fangless]

Bullshit. The number of mechanics per boss fight has like tripled since vanilla/BC.

It only feels like it because now we have the dungeon journal placed in front of us. It details all these spells/abilities from all the random adds/sources in the fight, and it feels like a novel. Basically every fight in Throne has a ton of crap you just ignore in the journal, because it's out of your control.

There's a lot of fluff still, and plenty of fights that look more complex than they are. Heck, you can say Heroic Lei Shen is a combination of spread/stack, cause it is, but turns out it's pretty hard. Council in Throne looks crazy, right? Look at the list of abilities from the Illidari council 6 years ago, pretty similar. Much more deadly too.

[Ronduwil]

Scroll a few pages back, when I said I could solo Zul Farak on my lvl 50 warrior. Then tell me why is this even possible?

Because low level tanks don't have the end-game threat-generating mechanisms on their bar yet. Blizzard compensates by giving them insane low level DPS so that they can hold threat. Also, Blizzard isn't exactly known for balancing lower level classes. Case in point: