Is WoD as immersive as previous expansions?

[IIamaKing]

It's a good thing immersion is subjective.

Naw, you're just wrong. ICC was the only immersive part of the Wrath. Other than Dalaran, everything else was just made up on the spot with zero introduction. It was thrown together just because it needed to be. Killing off aspect, going back to Naxx, etc. MoP at least had a coherent story from the story, that ended in a long foreshadowed event.

I am hoping this was sarcasm, Or you look quite dumb.

[Xe4ro]

Weird poll but yeah WoD is very immersive if you like lots of story stuff =).

[Azwing]

he isn't wrong... immersion IS subjective. some people can play wow (or any other game)for hours without it even feeling like time has gone by while some people may find it a drag to even boot up said game.

for example: my friend loves banjo kazooie and can play it over and over, whereas i cant stand the game... it's purely subjective

I completely agree with you that immersion is subjetive. However, your example is not really illustrating the type of immersion that applies to an RPG, as in this discussion. You can be absorbed in playing a game, say solitaire, or free cell...and yes, that is a type of immersion. It is being involved in a game. In a RPG, however, immersion is more about the involvement of your character (or you, as a player) in the world it inhabits. I can play WoW for hours and be absorbed by the gameplay, without feeling involved in the WoW universe much at all, for example. Being absorbed in gameplay doesn't necessarily have much at all to do with how immersive a game world is.

The caveat with WoW, of course, is that the RPG aspect of MMORPG has always been on the light side. It isn't a core aspect of the game for many players, or even for the game design itself. And, that's just fine. The game is tons of fun even if you're not really into RP and getting really immersed in the WoW universe.

[Phood]

*sigh...Its interesting how much players (current and former) have a revisionist ideal of WotLK. When it was current content it was hated just as much as any other expansion. Personally I think the disconnect between the zones in style, climate, and purpose is jarring in WotLK, not to mention the utter worthlessness of just about the entire Ice Crown zone (which was WoWs vision of movie-Mordor).

[Cute Chen]

Warlords' leveling experience was the best they've done yet. But after that? Nothing.

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*sigh...Its interesting how much players (current and former) have a revisionist ideal of WotLK. When it was current content it was hated just as much as any other expansion. Personally I think the disconnect between the zones in style, climate, and purpose is jarring in WotLK, not to mention the utter worthlessness of just about the entire Ice Crown zone (which was WoWs vision of movie-Mordor).

I loved Wrath and I played too much. I'd run home to do a heroic on my lunch breaks. I'm not doing that now.

[spinner981]

No. The enemy is a joke. We defeated them already with much fewer forces. There is no impending threat; we just came over to kill them all because reasons. It is less immersive than any of the xpacs I've played in so far.

[Stacie]

The LK story was very gripping but the questing experience for me in WoD felt more immersive. That being said around the time of LK expan i was in a different mind set. Perhaps if it was released today i might have found myself more immersed.

[Akka]

For me, immersion really has to do with the story, and playing through the story. All the other stuff actually takes away from that.

Of course, immersion is completely subjective. So that is just my view of how I enjoy playing the game. To each their own

Weird point of view. The story in WoD is absolutely terrible, so immersion is destroyed from the get-go. After that, what immerse in the game is not just the story, but the consistency, character and general feeling of the world. The first is nonexistent (see "terrible story", "plot holes" and "everything contradict everything else"), the second is basically a long string of not-so-subtle call-backs to TBC in the hope of raising nostalgia, and the third is completely absent (garrisonned in garrison, yay for the immersion). Not to add that the complete lack of danger, progression and the disconnect between all parts of the game, and you break up even more the immersion.

There is nothing to actually immerse in the game. The story less than anything else.

[Christonya]

Yeah. Till I got several alts to level cap and had nothing to do.

[Akka]

*sigh...Its interesting how much players (current and former) have a revisionist ideal of WotLK. When it was current content it was hated just as much as any other expansion. Personally I think the disconnect between the zones in style, climate, and purpose is jarring in WotLK, not to mention the utter worthlessness of just about the entire Ice Crown zone (which was WoWs vision of movie-Mordor).

It's less a "revisionist" situation than the fact that most people who vote WotLK were the one who STARTED playing in WotLK. People who liked the Vanilla-TBC design have been basically snubbed since WotLK, as Blizzard has been on the "dumbing down" design since then. So these people have mostly left the game, and been replaced by the "Wrath babies" (that's the nickname given to them, don't blame me).

That being said, even if WotLK was a disastrous change of design and the herald of the dumbing down of the game, I don't see big flaws in the lore or story sides of the game, and many zones are just superbly conceived. Immersion-wise, its only (big) flaw is the (now-ubiquitous) retarded easiness and lack of feeling of danger. For the rest, it's (immersion-wise, again) pretty good.

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Warlords' leveling experience was the best they've done yet. But after that? Nothing.

I feel compelled to say it again : I don't see how Warlord's leveling experience is anything but utterly boring. It's bad Hollywood clichés (emphasis on "BAD"), disjointed and trite chains of events and constantly contradictory storyline. I'd say it's the single WORSE leveling experience in all WoW lifetime, so I can't understand how people can praise it so often.
Only the pop-culture references of Cataclysm were worse, but at least Cata had some other leveling parts which were great, while WoD is at best "good" (Arak and Shadowmoon) and most often "utterly forgettable" (Gorgrond, Nagrand, Talador are just a blur of boredom in my brain).

[Dinoboy]

Immersion seems to coincide with implementation of queue wizards replacing summoning stones and group creation based on convenience rather than proximity within the world. Which would lead me, personally, to believe that the feelings of immersion into this game is tied to the amount of social interaction and cooperation between players. Then again, there are plenty of ways to poke holes into this subjective argument.

[yjmark]

Weird point of view. The story in WoD is absolutely terrible, so immersion is destroyed from the get-go. After that, what immerse in the game is not just the story, but the consistency, character and general feeling of the world. The first is nonexistent (see "terrible story", "plot holes" and "everything contradict everything else"), the second is basically a long string of not-so-subtle call-backs to TBC in the hope of raising nostalgia, and the third is completely absent (garrisonned in garrison, yay for the immersion). Not to add that the complete lack of danger, progression and the disconnect between all parts of the game, and you break up even more the immersion.

There is nothing to actually immerse in the game. The story less than anything else.

Your "weird" subjective point of view is noted. But obviously I completely disagree.

You can nit pick everything I enjoy, and I could easily do the exact same about everything you enjoy. It would go nowhere (like most discussions on subjective topics). Funny how that works

Sorry you are not having fun in the game. /shrug

[Queen of Hamsters]

I spend most of my time flying around and farming old world content since...well, Draenor doesn't offer me anything beyond leveling.

MoP so far = my winner as far as immersion goes. Loved the expansion.

[BarosanuNr1]

I'd rate them Wotlk > MoP >>> TBC>WoD >>>>>> Cata. This is with Wotlk as my favorite expansion and MoP as my least favorite.

People already said why Wotlk and MoP were good, so I'll just add that I am a freak for viking-themed content, so naturally Northrend provides unfair competition in this poll.

In TBC, because of how design went back then, the devs expected you and your friends to devise your own adventures to a certain extent (same as in Classic), and thus we ended up with a more open world.

In WoD you have a leveling experience* which is extremely controlled (almost as much as Cata), so much that you have a difficult time getting to care about the various zones. This is made worse by the fact that the devs insist on putting small questgiver outposts all over the map, so that your journeys of exploration last for about 40 seconds, before you run into another outpost with 3 available quests and whose inhabitants are not some isolated tribe/group, but rather an actual military force of your faction who just happened to be there, in the middle of nowhere - how immersive. Or, if they're not already there, they quickly travel distances that are actually supposed to be quite long according to the fictional world's size - like the part where Durotan attacks Bladespire hold, it's like the ogre fortress was in the Frostwolf backyard, you casually walk to it like you would walk to your street's corner to buy some bread. You know, just follow the road build by someone for this exact purpose**. This is not a problem with the gameworld's size, Northrend also had cramped areas (Dragonblight) and made much better use of them without making it seem like you are in a Disneyland filled with fake buildings and people***.
Then you reach level 100 and... nothing. The leveling areas are phased, and the 100 areas are filled with just mobs destined to be farmed for apexis. They even abandoned the idea of story scrolls you could find around in Pandaria. They don't tell you much about the creatures you meet (like the Gorgrond savage factions, or the pale orcs), while the ones you do know about, you do because you've met them in previous games (the orcs). Spires of Arrak is somewhat of an exception in this regard, which serves to confirm the rule that stands true for the other zones.

Cata was so fucking bad in this department that I don't even consider it worthy of discussion.

*I'm talking about the leveling experience because that's all the "world" content WoD currently has to offer, although this may yet change.

**Compare this (and many other similar quests too) to what I consider one of the most immersive points in Northrend - the start of Storm Peaks. If you are not on a flying mount (which was accepted even back then as something you chose for yourself, sacrificing immersion in the process), you have to come in from Crystalsong, take a long snowy road up a steep mountain, with nothing but snow and mammoths all around you. Then you reach K3, because, just like in Tanaris, only goblins would be crazy enough to build a town in a place like this. And then that's it, the road ends at K3 (along with most of your faction's quests), and the rest of the zone is left for adventurers to explore for the first time (with the exception of Brann ofc, who is also an adventurer, but better than you). This is the very edge of the known world, and you explore what lies beyond, as an adventurer, not as a mercenary or a would-be conscript (like you are from Cata and onwards). This makes Storm Peaks much more "savage" than anything Draenor has to offer.

***And yes, we've had short distances before between important places. But when you travel them alone, you know it's an improvisation stemming from game mechanics, it's not actually a short walk. When you have (important) NPC traveling with you and holding a speech all the way, the immersion is broken. Look at how they made the 2nd orc mission in War3RoC. I always hated that mission because of how long it felt - like you actually traversed the fucking Barrens. But the intended effect worked.

[Akka]

Great post and great analysis, BarosanuNr1.
I especially agree with the lack of background lore (especially compared to Pandaria), and the lack of "lost" feeling due to the countless outposts everywhere (which was also one of the terrible flaws of Cata, which managed to "tame" the entire Azeroth because of this).

Though I wonder why you rank WoD and TBC the same when you seem to praise the TBC's design while (justly) critisizing the countless flaws of WoD's one.
(also, you might have mixed MoP and Cata in your first sentence, as your ranking say MoP is your second favourite and the text right after says it's the "least favourite" )

[BarosanuNr1]

@Akka. Now that you mentioned it, TBC deserves better praise (edited), and I should have compared it to MoP more instead of just WoD (my mistake). MoP was my least favorite expansion overall (including gameplay, content etc.), but its immersion was good, and so was the story "technique" they used.

I'm actually surprised so many voted for TBC, since TBC had similar conception difficulties as MoP, even though the devs faced them in different ways. They made a world, with a certain look and sound, then decided what to fill it with, since Outland, similarly to Pandaria, didn't have any real lore beyond Hellfire Peninsula (starting zone) and giant mushrooms. Again, similarly to Pandaria, they took certain risks with TBC, and people might not remember it today, but environments like Netherstorm and Tempest Keep were quite hated back then, because of how different (spacey) they felt, different from the WoW universe we had known before (sound familiar?)*.

Unlike MoP, however, TBC didn't throw stuff in your face (except the intro quest from the portal), due to technical limitations most likely - they were forced to rely on a continent without phasing to provide enjoyment to many different players for a long time. So, they kept content subdued, and gave you a lot of liberty, left you to explore the world, get stomped by the felreaver, by the gronn, fall over the edge into the nether etc. All these little events perturbed on your killing of 20 orcs for whatever boring quest, spicing up your gameplay experience in a cheap manner that didn't feel intrusive. In fact, I bet many quests were intentionally guiding you to areas where you might find your own source of enjoyment. Even the music served this purpose, it was still atmospheric, like in Classic (whereas in MoP it was in your face, like in Cata, and changed from hub to hub, taking you out of the experience - just traverse Jade Forest on a 100% mount if you don't believe me, you go through 5 loud songs in 1 minute), and it's interesting, now that I think about it, that the soundtrack itself began to change around the time when they introduced phasing and a more dynamic world (was this the slippery slope that led to Disneyland?).

WoD failed, to me, because it promised it would emulate the TBC model, and improve upon it (open world, rewarding of exploration, nostalgia exploitation), when in fact it emulated the Cata model and simply fixed some issues that MoP had already fixed better. TBC would have been even greater if it had had the hidden treasures and various rare spawns (and so on) that WoD now has. But WoD is in fact a polished Cata, and Cata was badly restrictive, so WoD also suffers from it, even though it was advertised as the opposite. Yes, you can go explore Draenor, but you will not find a living, breathing world, where you can meet other players and have adventures together, you will find a child-proof theme park. And you can ride the same ride several times before it becomes stale. TBC, for all its lacks, NEVER became stale.

*And while I'm comparing TBC and MoP, it's interesting to point out how excited the devs are in the behind the scenes videos for both of these expansions. Seriously, watch them talk about them, those people were having FUN. Then watch the Cataclysm ones and see the difference. I haven't seen the WoD ones yet...

P.S.: Sorry for 2nd long-ish post, got carried away. WoD has many good (great) parts too, it's just the overall feeling is bad.