Your Preferred Tone of World of Warcraft

[Jaspias]

With the recent interview confirming that Blizzard plans on limiting flying in all subsequent expansions in order to "add things like targeted exploration of the world". This deeply troubles me, as I don't like the idea of my exploration of the world being target at all. This has been a trend for many years now, with Blizzard focusing on delivering a linear narrative and streamlined questing over unguided exploration and, well adventure. I thought this is something that would be directly tied to why many fans are criticizing WoW and the recent subscriber loss. But I have played since early BC, and I have noticed that the subscriber count has actually INCREASED the more guided the game has become. Blizzard listens to their fans, and they ALWAYS listen to their wallets, so I ask, do you, a current subscriber and player of World of Warcraft, prefer a more open and vague tone of play, (Vanilla, BC, Wrath) or guided, structured, gameplay (Cata and beyond)?

I thought my dislike of newer content was popular opinion before, but if it truly was, then why does Blizzard continue to make the game so much more structured? Was the original tone of the game unintended? Does anyone else miss the feeling of completing all the quests in a particular town, and with no direction to do so, riding off down the road in search of new adventure? Does anyone miss being a simple wanderer for hire, not a famous general bringing down armies either from a command table or side by side with a famous warchief, but a collector of bear asses for desperate alchemists, lowly for now but with dreams of plundering forgotten cities and slaying might dragons in your head?

[Thage]

Open to imagination and exploration for the first half of the leveling experience, flowing into the bad guys starting to show up and the story flowing into an epic story from the second half into endgame. Think like level 40+ in Vanilla WoW. Prior you were an adventurer just out traveling and adventuring and helping out where you could, and then you got involved in major threats to the world's safety--the Blackrock Orcs and Dark Irons, the Scourge, the Quiraji, and the forces of Ragnaros and Nefarian.

[ComputerNerd]

If I could find the page I would happily link it.
One news post showed that during MoP only a minority actually completed the Pandaria exploration related achievements.
Flying didn't help that.
Removal of it will not, only making it worse.
You can't do "targeted exploration" - a players wants to, or they do not.
Forced discovery by accident is what happens now, because of having to work around obstacles which serve no purpose but to force us to "see" that content some designers insist on us seeing.
If it was so appealing in the first place, that wouldn't have been necessary.

I have had more exploration achievement progression without trying in WoD than I ever had before.
It took effort before, now most of it is by accident.
That isn't exploration. It isn't because I am choosing to go look for it, it is coming to me.

[Mirishka]

Black Temple-slash-Wrath of the Lich King would work nicely. Warlords seems to be headed in a direction I like, but its been too Garrisoncraft so far.

[Jaspias]

If I could find the page I would happily link it.
One news post showed that during MoP only a minority actually completed the Pandaria exploration related achievements.
Flying didn't help that.
Removal of it will not, only making it worse.
You can't do "targeted exploration" - a players wants to, or they do not.
Forced discovery by accident is what happens now, because of having to work around obstacles which serve no purpose but to force us to "see" that content some designers insist on us seeing.
If it was so appealing in the first place, that wouldn't have been necessary.

I have had more exploration achievement progression without trying in WoD than I ever had before.
It took effort before, now most of it is by accident.
That isn't exploration. It isn't because I am choosing to go look for it, it is coming to me.

Its not just exploration achievements, it goes much deeper. What I think they are getting at is that they want to guide you through everything. I've noticed a complete change in tone while leveling an alt in outland while my main is 100 on draenor. They want to give you three quests, send you into an area, and then get you to a new one. I just loved being able to fly above an area, look for all the boxes not near any enemies, loot the 8 or so i needed, and get out. Same with the "Kill 1 named mob" quests, you HAVE to fight through all his henchmen and go in his front door. They plan everything! Feels like im controlling nothing at all....nothing at all...nothing at all...