When will World of Warcraft become World of Warcraft again? the spark is long lost.

[kwflange]

It is not all nostalgic.

I can log onto a vanilla emu and the world actually feels like a world unlike modern WoW.

[Deleted]

It is not all nostalgic.

I can log onto a vanilla emu and the world actually feels like a world unlike modern WoW.

indeed MoP doesn't quite feel the RPG / WORLD... cuz you're never outside of the capital cities... you don't enjoy leveling / questing... people rush to max level... they don't give a damn about content, mobs / art... O.o

[Crimsonsix]

I dislike the current iteration of WoW and no longer play it. It's not nostalgia or the novelty wearing off. A big chunk of the game got objectively worse.

I do not like:

1. The multiple difficulty levels for the same dungeon. If you killed end boss XYZ and are rocking a piece of loot off him, I don't wanna wonder which of the 6 difficulty levels you defeated. Are you legit, or did you kill it on LFR while keyboard turning? When I see a player rocking top dog gear, I want to know that the player is a top dog, from a top dog guild. It's part of the community experience. Now that sense of awe and knowing who is good and who is not is simply gone.

2. Lack of tiered progression. Every tier used to have guilds working on it. You had top guilds clearing BT and working on Sunwell, you had middle-of-the-pack guilds trying to wrap up end boss kills in TK/MH/SSC, you had beginner guilds running KZ and ZA groups while doing Mag and Gruul. Every tier was relevant. Every piece of loot was relevant. Getting loot in KZ meant you were on your way to doing SSC, KZ loot wasn't useless garbage. Now you have the 0 to hero model. Gear and raiding tiers are essentially reset every patch. Once the LFR of a new raid comes out, the previous tier and its loot become obsolete. Guilds are no longer interested in completing the tiers. They simply jump to the easiest of the 6 difficulty levels of the new tier, and forget about the old ones. And every guild ends up doing the same content at any one time.

3. Demise of raiding as the focus of the community. As raiding became as single player game with LFR and puggable normal modes, the number of raiding guilds rapidly declined. In TBC my smallish server supported close to 20-25 legit 25man raiding guilds. The number steadily declined with every expac to the point where there is just one left. Given that the content is so easy to see, and loot so easy to get, people no longer needed guilds. The guild-vs-guild jostling and the trashtalk became obsolete. Raiding ceased being the focus of the community, something that gave it structure and backbone. Raiding is perfectly soloable experience now.

4. LFR. People say LFR is "accessible content." I think LFR is a mockery of real content -_- A raid that you can steamroll is not a raid. It's more of an interactive slide show. Boring and meaningless. Not content at all.

5. LFD and the utter dumbing down of 5-mans. Sigh. This is actually a big deal for me. I enjoyed 5 mans a lot. Leading a slow, methodical dungeon crawl was awesome. Getting your group together, marking mobs, explaining strats, helping out new players, etc. This part of the game is completely gone now. The cata heroics were okay-ish on release, but got toned down later on. I perked up with MOP challenge mods, but those ultimately turned out to be minmaxing races with cheesy comps.

So actually, as a CASUAL player I feel like Blizzard took out a lot of casual-friendly *content*. WoW is now a game where the top-500 guild have their own microosm doing heroic modes. And everyone else is just lethargically chugging along with flex/normal/LFR non-content. As a casual player I simply have nothing to do. There are no meaningful 5 mans. The raid flex/normal modes are not that hard, and before I know it, the latest patch makes any gear I acquired in them useless. So there is basically no feeling of progress. In TBC I could raid 1-2 days a week get my crappy piece of KZ loot and know that I was progressing. Regardless whether it was a TK patch, or a Sunwell patch, I was moving forward. Now it's resub, skip to the latest LFR, steamroll, watch cutscene, unsub. Grats, unless you have the time and dedication to join the single remaining hard mode guild on your sever, you basically beat the game.

[Deleted]

another thing i find... ridiculous about the present "World of Warcraft"



it isn't even "Challenge Mode" anymore xD wtf...

[Odobisean]

another thing i find... ridiculous about the present "World of Warcraft"



it isn't even "Challenge Mode" anymore xD wtf...

Yeah and hunters were able to solo Azuregos whats your point?

[alexke]

another thing i find... ridiculous about the present "World of Warcraft"



it isn't even "Challenge Mode" anymore xD wtf...

Yeah, having a reckoning bomb paladin soloing Kazzak was alot better for sure.
Wait, wasn't intended...
Rogues soloing nearly everything in BRD including emporer, yeah, that was the thing.

Hunters being able to kite world bosses, or any other bosses to their death?

I've known Warlocks who've killed some of the Silithus summon bosses solo.

Are you even serious about this? If you're going to say that Challenge Mode isn't challenging because of a few players pulling something off like this?
Makes perfect sense. Even tho it's downscaled, he's probably in a full BIS set for Challenge Modes, aka maximum amount of gemslots and best itemization.
It's allmost like you're saying anyone who runs into CM's on his own is going to solo this.

[ThunderTaco]

I linked OP videos of hunters soloing dungeons and even BWL bosses, but he just said it was a bug exploit, he's probably going to say these kills are bug exploit too.

I also tried to explain him that the fact that one person was able to do it does not mean it's easy and doable by everyone, but I ended up being ignored

[Kolvarg]

indeed MoP doesn't quite feel the RPG / WORLD... cuz you're never outside of the capital cities... you don't enjoy leveling / questing... people rush to max level...

I agree to some extent with this, but it's not something that was really avoidable IMO.

People don't enjoy leveling/questing because they've tried end-game, they've gotten better at the game and end-game is what they enjoy most. Which makes them want to get to max lvl asap, which makes them unable to enjoy the leveling, even though in some ways it's quite more enjoyable than it used to be (again, IMO. And it needed to be a bit more challenging at least get harder slowly as you level up).

But if leveling to 60 used to take months, if it remained the same many players would take what, almost a year, to reach max level now. That's a huge time AND money investment for anyone new (or for anyone who wants to try a new class) to reach the content that makes the game worth playing (for most people anyway). All this while you are dropped in a world with no significant (no good one at least) tutorial, in the middle of loads of more-experienced players, most of them unwilling to help you.

No matter how good the game was, there would always be people unsubbing (be it for disliking certain features, not having time anymore, or not wanting to pay the sub anymore, there's always people quitting a game like this) and virtually no new people would join if the game required such an investment of time, money, patience and learning as mentioned above.

With that said, there are a LOT better options than just making you 1shot every mob and have almost no challenge while leveling. Easier exp and heirlooms IMO are already a lot of help. Leveling does look too easy now for us (probably not for a new player), and it is in some parts. It's ok to be super easy on level 1 to 15 or 20 or so, but it should slowly get harder instead of having difficulty spikes - those spikes of difficulty are worse than overall-difficulty IMO.

So what I mean is: Leveling is faster because it needed to be faster, and I'm glad it is. But it should do a better job at preparing the players slowly for the content at max level.

I dislike the current iteration of WoW and no longer play it. It's not nostalgia or the novelty wearing off. A big chunk of the game got objectively worse.

I understand and respect your opinion, and there are some parts I agree with/miss too. But I don't think it makes for a worse game overall. And I defenitely don't think it makes for less raiding guilds (on a global scale) or AT LEAST raiding groups. From the statistics released on MMO-C at least it shows raiding is far more popular now than what it used to be (even exluding LFR).

People are definitely a lot more independant than what they used to be, but I don't see less guilds or even raiding guilds because of that. That is my experience at least. And kinda like what I said above, IMO it's a good thing that players can be a little more independant. It defenitely helps newer players who are otherwise lost in a overall unhelpful community.

And even though it allows the game to be played more alone, it defenitely doesn't make you unable to find people who actually want to play with you (instead of being forced to play with you because they need someONE). Guild Wars for instance allows you to do many, many things by yourself, including dungeons (by using NPCs as your party), and I don't think it makes it a worse game or less MMO because of it. It just gives options, it makes for a different game: you might like it more or less depending on your taste.

[Hubbl3]

Yeah, having a reckoning bomb paladin soloing Kazzak was alot better for sure.
Wait, wasn't intended...
Rogues soloing nearly everything in BRD including emporer, yeah, that was the thing.

Hunters being able to kite world bosses, or any other bosses to their death?

I've known Warlocks who've killed some of the Silithus summon bosses solo.

Are you even serious about this? If you're going to say that Challenge Mode isn't challenging because of a few players pulling something off like this?
Makes perfect sense. Even tho it's downscaled, he's probably in a full BIS set for Challenge Modes, aka maximum amount of gemslots and best itemization.
It's allmost like you're saying anyone who runs into CM's on his own is going to solo this.

As a druid I could also solo some stuff in classic which was intended for being done in a group. The 5man kill of Loatheb was also quite nice back then =)

This is not something new from MoP at all.

[Luko]

another thing i find... ridiculous about the present "World of Warcraft"

[video=youtube;vHVsDoTAxes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHVsDoTAxes#t=248[video]

it isn't even "Challenge Mode" anymore xD wtf...

Can you do that?

As far as I know, only one person in the entire world has done that and it took him over 100 unsuccessful tries. Not challenging? I'd love to hear what you'd prefer to see.

[Deleted]

I meant in the way the most relevant loot is still in the latest patch's content. Yes catch up mechanisms didn't exist, and gear inflation wasn't so bad, but it still happened to some extent.

The most relevant loot in TBC was the loot one tier above where you were. If you were in heroic 5 man gear, then the most relevant loot was Kara loot (until the end where they screwed up and started handing out tier 6 for badges), and Tier 5 or 6 loot was in no way relevant to you until you progressed there. Today the only relevant loot is the latest patch because everything else is obsolete when you can simply loot better gear from a chest or buy from a vendor with badges.

That's completly different from simply not rushing to the latest content, when at max level.

I wasn't particularly rushing to the latest content. I simply played the game and ended up there in less than a month from lvl 1.

I'm sorry but it feels very stubborn of you. I can completly understand that it doesn't feel 100% right, and that you may feel "handicaped" and that its not the optimal way of gearing. But if you miss out the content patch when its current (or level up a new toon on later patches), you truly CAN do the previeous tiers with the intended gear level. There's simply no way around that. The raids are there; how and when you choose to use them is up to you.

I never claimed you can't technically wear ilvl X and enter raid Y. I'm just saying that it is not how the game is designed to be played and it does not provide me with a meaningful gaming experience. I simply do not find that interesting.

The game is designed to give the OPTION to quickly catch up and be able to start doing the latest content. The OPTION to play tier by tier is still there. It may not be optimal or efficient, but it is definitely possible. If you truly feel so disenchanted with the game because there's no "progression", I really can't understand how you're unwilling to try to do everything in your reach to play like you would enjoy the most, even if you don't think it's possible.

I know you don't understand it, but that doesn't make it any less true though. I don't feel like I have any such option and I don't get progress experience from the game. You can keep telling me that by your theoretical reasoning it should be possible, but that doesn't add anything of value to the conversation. Your theoretical reasoning is simply wrong and doesn't match reality.

[Dormie]

I dislike the current iteration of WoW and no longer play it. It's not nostalgia or the novelty wearing off. A big chunk of the game got objectively worse.

I do not like:

1. The multiple difficulty levels for the same dungeon. If you killed end boss XYZ and are rocking a piece of loot off him, I don't wanna wonder which of the 6 difficulty levels you defeated. Are you legit, or did you kill it on LFR while keyboard turning? When I see a player rocking top dog gear, I want to know that the player is a top dog, from a top dog guild. It's part of the community experience. Now that sense of awe and knowing who is good and who is not is simply gone.

2. Lack of tiered progression. Every tier used to have guilds working on it. You had top guilds clearing BT and working on Sunwell, you had middle-of-the-pack guilds trying to wrap up end boss kills in TK/MH/SSC, you had beginner guilds running KZ and ZA groups while doing Mag and Gruul. Every tier was relevant. Every piece of loot was relevant. Getting loot in KZ meant you were on your way to doing SSC, KZ loot wasn't useless garbage. Now you have the 0 to hero model. Gear and raiding tiers are essentially reset every patch. Once the LFR of a new raid comes out, the previous tier and its loot become obsolete. Guilds are no longer interested in completing the tiers. They simply jump to the easiest of the 6 difficulty levels of the new tier, and forget about the old ones. And every guild ends up doing the same content at any one time.

3. Demise of raiding as the focus of the community. As raiding became as single player game with LFR and puggable normal modes, the number of raiding guilds rapidly declined. In TBC my smallish server supported close to 20-25 legit 25man raiding guilds. The number steadily declined with every expac to the point where there is just one left. Given that the content is so easy to see, and loot so easy to get, people no longer needed guilds. The guild-vs-guild jostling and the trashtalk became obsolete. Raiding ceased being the focus of the community, something that gave it structure and backbone. Raiding is perfectly soloable experience now.

4. LFR. People say LFR is "accessible content." I think LFR is a mockery of real content -_- A raid that you can steamroll is not a raid. It's more of an interactive slide show. Boring and meaningless. Not content at all.

5. LFD and the utter dumbing down of 5-mans. Sigh. This is actually a big deal for me. I enjoyed 5 mans a lot. Leading a slow, methodical dungeon crawl was awesome. Getting your group together, marking mobs, explaining strats, helping out new players, etc. This part of the game is completely gone now. The cata heroics were okay-ish on release, but got toned down later on. I perked up with MOP challenge mods, but those ultimately turned out to be minmaxing races with cheesy comps.

So actually, as a CASUAL player I feel like Blizzard took out a lot of casual-friendly *content*. WoW is now a game where the top-500 guild have their own microosm doing heroic modes. And everyone else is just lethargically chugging along with flex/normal/LFR non-content. As a casual player I simply have nothing to do. There are no meaningful 5 mans. The raid flex/normal modes are not that hard, and before I know it, the latest patch makes any gear I acquired in them useless. So there is basically no feeling of progress. In TBC I could raid 1-2 days a week get my crappy piece of KZ loot and know that I was progressing. Regardless whether it was a TK patch, or a Sunwell patch, I was moving forward. Now it's resub, skip to the latest LFR, steamroll, watch cutscene, unsub. Grats, unless you have the time and dedication to join the single remaining hard mode guild on your sever, you basically beat the game.

This guy gets it.

[Deleted]

I dislike the current iteration of WoW and no longer play it. It's not nostalgia or the novelty wearing off. A big chunk of the game got objectively worse.

I do not like:

1. The multiple difficulty levels for the same dungeon. If you killed end boss XYZ and are rocking a piece of loot off him, I don't wanna wonder which of the 6 difficulty levels you defeated. Are you legit, or did you kill it on LFR while keyboard turning? When I see a player rocking top dog gear, I want to know that the player is a top dog, from a top dog guild. It's part of the community experience. Now that sense of awe and knowing who is good and who is not is simply gone.

2. Lack of tiered progression. Every tier used to have guilds working on it. You had top guilds clearing BT and working on Sunwell, you had middle-of-the-pack guilds trying to wrap up end boss kills in TK/MH/SSC, you had beginner guilds running KZ and ZA groups while doing Mag and Gruul. Every tier was relevant. Every piece of loot was relevant. Getting loot in KZ meant you were on your way to doing SSC, KZ loot wasn't useless garbage. Now you have the 0 to hero model. Gear and raiding tiers are essentially reset every patch. Once the LFR of a new raid comes out, the previous tier and its loot become obsolete. Guilds are no longer interested in completing the tiers. They simply jump to the easiest of the 6 difficulty levels of the new tier, and forget about the old ones. And every guild ends up doing the same content at any one time.

3. Demise of raiding as the focus of the community. As raiding became as single player game with LFR and puggable normal modes, the number of raiding guilds rapidly declined. In TBC my smallish server supported close to 20-25 legit 25man raiding guilds. The number steadily declined with every expac to the point where there is just one left. Given that the content is so easy to see, and loot so easy to get, people no longer needed guilds. The guild-vs-guild jostling and the trashtalk became obsolete. Raiding ceased being the focus of the community, something that gave it structure and backbone. Raiding is perfectly soloable experience now.

4. LFR. People say LFR is "accessible content." I think LFR is a mockery of real content -_- A raid that you can steamroll is not a raid. It's more of an interactive slide show. Boring and meaningless. Not content at all.

5. LFD and the utter dumbing down of 5-mans. Sigh. This is actually a big deal for me. I enjoyed 5 mans a lot. Leading a slow, methodical dungeon crawl was awesome. Getting your group together, marking mobs, explaining strats, helping out new players, etc. This part of the game is completely gone now. The cata heroics were okay-ish on release, but got toned down later on. I perked up with MOP challenge mods, but those ultimately turned out to be minmaxing races with cheesy comps.

So actually, as a CASUAL player I feel like Blizzard took out a lot of casual-friendly *content*. WoW is now a game where the top-500 guild have their own microosm doing heroic modes. And everyone else is just lethargically chugging along with flex/normal/LFR non-content. As a casual player I simply have nothing to do. There are no meaningful 5 mans. The raid flex/normal modes are not that hard, and before I know it, the latest patch makes any gear I acquired in them useless. So there is basically no feeling of progress. In TBC I could raid 1-2 days a week get my crappy piece of KZ loot and know that I was progressing. Regardless whether it was a TK patch, or a Sunwell patch, I was moving forward. Now it's resub, skip to the latest LFR, steamroll, watch cutscene, unsub. Grats, unless you have the time and dedication to join the single remaining hard mode guild on your sever, you basically beat the game.

Completely agree with this. Unfortunately I still strongly believe Wow is not the main focus any more and they have been hard at work on Wow2 since mid Cata. Wow2 is needed. There is no way on earth current Wow is their best effort. These guys made this great game, a game that was great until mid Wotlk, then it all went pear shaped. It needs a reboot, a complete makeover. Doubt we will hear about it until end of next year though.

And hate to say it but Wod is filler. Which is ok, but I doubt I will buy it, can't even bring myself to log into beta.

[klogaroth]

indeed MoP doesn't quite feel the RPG / WORLD... cuz you're never outside of the capital cities... you don't enjoy leveling / questing... people rush to max level... they don't give a damn about content, mobs / art... O.o

Perhaps one of my biggest lasting memories of vanilla WoW was my flatmate showing me the bot program he'd got to do his levelling for him.

Some people have not enjoyed levelling since there's been levelling. Some people have rushed to max level since the concept of levels existed. Some people have given no shits about art since people were drawing pictures on the walls of caves.

[Luko]

Perhaps one of my biggest lasting memories of vanilla WoW was my flatmate showing me the bot program he'd got to do his levelling for him.

Some people have not enjoyed levelling since there's been levelling. Some people have rushed to max level since the concept of levels existed. Some people have given no shits about art since people were drawing pictures on the walls of caves.

Correct and once this mentality became a measurable majority, the game shifted to accommodate. At the end of the day, Blizzard is a business. The game still offers FAR more content versatility than any other game that is or has ever been in the genre.

[fixx]

I dislike
A big chunk of the game got objectively worse.

The word you were looking for is "subjectively". If you feel something it's in your head, not objectively quantifiable.

When I see a player rocking top dog gear, I want to know that the player is a top dog, from a top dog guild. It's part of the community experience. Now that sense of awe and knowing who is good and who is not is simply gone.

Times change. Today it's the titles and mounts that are exclusive. Spotting special mounts is even easier than spotting special gear, so you're whining just for whining's sake.

2. Lack of tiered progression. Every tier used to have guilds working on it.

Wrong. TBC used to have guilds stuck on every tier because of guild hopping and poaching of geared people. It was community failure that caused it, not game design.

3. Demise of raiding as the focus of the community.

Guilds were the focus of the community and guilds are the focus of the community. It was never raiding.

4. LFR. Boring and meaningless. Not content at all.

Not content for you. That doesn't mean it's not content for somebody else.

5. LFD and the utter dumbing down of 5-mans.

LFD has got nothing to do with. Problem with 5-mans is and has always been overgearing, nothing's been dumbed down except the forum whiners. In previous expansions overgearing happened slower, partly because Blizzard added in more dungeons later that were aimed for higher geared people.

This guy gets it.

Gets what? Gets to jump on the "qq lfr/lfd" bandwagon about three years too late? Worth -50 achievement points.

[taliey]

And what made Warcraft, Warcraft to begin with?

Or is it not your job to tell us what you're saying, but our job to decipher what the hell it is you're saying?

[Dormie]

The word you were looking for is "subjectively". If you feel something it's in your head, not objectively quantifiable.



Times change. Today it's the titles and mounts that are exclusive. Spotting special mounts is even easier than spotting special gear, so you're whining just for whining's sake.



Wrong. TBC used to have guilds stuck on every tier because of guild hopping and poaching of geared people. It was community failure that caused it, not game design.



Guilds were the focus of the community and guilds are the focus of the community. It was never raiding.



Not content for you. That doesn't mean it's not content for somebody else.



LFD has got nothing to do with. Problem with 5-mans is and has always been overgearing, nothing's been dumbed down except the forum whiners. In previous expansions overgearing happened slower, partly because Blizzard added in more dungeons later that were aimed for higher geared people.





Gets what? Gets to jump on the "qq lfr/lfd" bandwagon about three years too late? Worth -50 achievement points.

I've been on these forums enough to know that if I try to show you how you're incorrect, I'll be talking to a brick wall. So I'll just say
please try not to talk about things you don't understand, thank you.

A large portion of the game has indeed gotten objectively worse. Saying that everything is just everyone's opinion doesn't change this. That's a tactic people use way too much on these forums. I can like the smell of manure but it doesn't mean that it doesn't smell like s**t to most people. In the same way, some people can like faceroll 5 mans and easy watered down leveling, but it doesn't mean it's not crappy gameplay.

[Crimsonsix]

The word you were looking for is "subjectively". If you feel something it's in your head, not objectively quantifiable.

etc

Quite the contrary. It's perfectly quantifiable. WoW's population peaked right after TBC at 11+ mil, now it's down to 6.8. For many of those who do not raid heroic modes, WoW turned into a queue-based lobby game. And there are simply better lobby games out there to play.

Other than that, thank you for condescendingly telling me what is and isn't my head. You even bolded the important parts, how cute.

[Lillemus]

Quite the contrary. It's perfectly quantifiable. WoW's population peaked right after TBC at 11+ mil, now it's down to 6.8.

By this logic the pinnacle of gaming was Farmville in February 2010 with 80 million users, this had declined to 60 million by October 2010, so obviously the game was utter trash by then - or maybe it's just that all games have a certain life span, and the fact that a game that is reaching the 10 year milestone this november still has a playerbase in the millions can be considered quite amazing.
The only game that has managed to actually have a steady rise over the same time period is Eve Online, and their subscriber base is less than 10% of WoW's.

For many of those who do not raid heroic modes, WoW turned into a queue-based lobby game. And there are simply better lobby games out there to play.

As other people have pointed out, it sort of already was, the only difference being that you don't have to stand in town going "LFM BRD, need tank" anymore, you can actually go out and do stuff. Some would argue that this in turn ruined the community, but here's the thing, noone is forcing you to queue up, you can just take the old route and spam /2, they only implemented more stuff, they didn't remove the possibility of doing it the olden way.