Trying to make a game for everybody turns the game into something nobody wants?

[Kryos]

First - I played WoW since Vanilla and I love it. But I'm not a nostalgic person that thinks all was better in the past. I also raid mythic right now and I still like WoW, but I also feel that Garrissons where a mistake and all the critics of current WoW have good points.

I just want to ask you how all this happened. I think that the guys at Blizzard are not "Acti-Blizz corporate assholes that just want to milk us". I think they really want to create a good game and a good product. But why do they fail?. In my opinion the game lacks
a) a clear direction b) they want to make it a game for absolutely everybody - not exclude anyone.

The a) part can be found in the way they handle class balancing, class stats but also storyline and lore. It's a bit annoying and some people may have strong feelings if iconic abilitys get changed or removed or changed in a way they only share the name and nothing else, same to villains that turn into good guys and the other way round. But I think this is not the major problem. The major problem is b).

Blizzard needs to accept and then act on the fact that MMORPGs are not games for absolutely everybody. Yes, absolutely everybody can play the game, it's not hard, never really was, but it wasn't designed to be tailored to everybodys needs.

Today Blizzard developers think that they must make the game in a way that absolutely everybody, no matter how little time they have, no matter how much they lack in skill and dedication, needs to get tons of rewards, needs to be pushed and carried through all content as quickly as possible and then repeat the same tasks for months (or select a higher difficulty level and repeat the same stuff at that new level) for a constant stream of small rewards.

That is boring. Not only boring to high skilled players with lots of time, but especially boring to casual gamers who feel that they are carried and once they have seen all content (only takes 3 months top) there is nothing new and interesting to do for them. The hardcore players stick to it, farm their raid bosses and achievement points. But the majority doesn't feel like it.

So while I think Blizzard wanted to do good to people with jobs, family, kids, not much time but a craving for some fantasy gaming they created a skinner box (read about that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operan...ioning_chamber ).

They seem to forget that sometimes it is good that you can't reach all goals, that it's good that the world is bigger than you and your abilities. That you feel that there is still much to explore, see and experience and that maybe you will never have seen everything that there is. Yes, from a developers point of view that sounds like wasted time and efford. You craft a great world and content and many customers will not consume all of this content. What a waste...

But is it? First of all, many experience the content they haven't see at a much later point. So it's not completely wasted anyway and second of all, as long as the customers feels great in the world you created, it doesn't matter if he is missing out some pieces of content.

I think Blizzard needs to change WoW the way that you need more than average time to consume all the content. Don't push people through content. Make them consume the content slow and steady. Don't force feed them followed by starving them on a same-same diet.

What would you do to make the game as a whole better - not just for you and your personal demands and wishes?

[Jensxo]

It sucks because i was one of the people who made posts like these on the forums and i just got downvoted by the casuals and idiots who don't really understand what the point of an MMO is. The idea of an MMO is all about the journey rather than the destination.

I don't understand why people feel entitled to have everything given to them. The only thing left in this game that requires any sort of commitment is Mythic raiding and even that is slowly starting to become easier and easier. Anyone noticed how easy it is to gear up nowadays.

This game is completely done. WoW is destroyed thanks to the majority of terrible players who have no idea about what an MMO is. Constantly complaining why they can't access end tier content or why they need to do "attunements" to do content. Attunements are actually content. You were never "gated" behind some invisible wall back in BC. The game was better when you had to be good at it and content was exclusive.

[Kryos]

I want to make clear that I don't want the game to be hardcore difficult (WoW never was hardcore and I raided all content when it was current including Nax40 and Sunwell). Wildstar Online tried that "hardcore only endgame" and failed hard and is now nerfed and F2P.

I just think that the journey (even after reaching maximum level) needs to be longer and the content distributed in smaller but regular intervals. This could very well mean that someone who only has time for 2 hours of gameplay each week will not reach the endgame before new content is released and that's ok. No need to push him through everything.

[Packing an i5]

that sums it up right there. Another problem is the struggle between caving to demands by the community and sticking with their guns. They try to do a mix of both but sometimes they go too far one way.

[Echocho]

I think you are absolutely right, but at the same time I think it may be too late. Regaining all the people that left will take a lot of time, and because of WOD and probably Legion they may be lost forever to other games.

They need to go back and fix a lot of the things they did wrong, not only things they plan to do in the future, and they need to admit to themselves they have made mistakes in the first place.

It would probably take less work rebooting the whole game with a new vision.

[Deleted]

I agree.

Funnily enough, making the game PvE would also indirectly solve PvP which has become fundamentally boring because it's been balanced so badly throughout the years. And while Legion has *some* promising changes, the net result is that it's still resources gone into fixing something that don't really need fixing rather than PvE.

I think PvP is at it's most fun when everything is bursty and everyone dies easily like in Vanilla. Once you try to start artificially lenghtening the matches by giving people a lot of damage reduction cooldowns, utility, resilience or CC, it starts to get boring.

Consequently, I find that I enjoy the more "PvE" focused battlegrounds best, although im not a PvE player at all - which is funny. I guess it's sort of giving the structure of PvE centric elements that attracts me, similarly to DotA. I know it isn't for everyone, but that is how I like my battlegrounds to be. You know, battlegrounds that feel like actual battlegrounds, instead of just 10-15 min fast food BG's, meant to be devoured quickly, instead of those that grand epic, immersive, memorable experiences, like AV.

[melodramocracy]

This has been a fairly obvious issue in WoW for years, folks tend to get pretty angry when it's pointed out to them.

Even thinking outside the realm of video games, most products that tend to have wide appeal or utility also tend to not actually excel at any one thing, or be all that memorable. WoW is not excluded from this.

And while video games are not zero sum products with actual physical limitations, the creative resources responsible for are indeed limited.

[sevenitti]

I believe Wow will be further watered down until it dies. Blizzard earns more money on games like Hearthstone, or in general their other games - and thus the "best" developers have been moved to other games, and the masterpieces that are TBC and my personal favourite WotLK will not be seen again for as long as this trend continues.

The only way I see WoW becoming "tha shit" again is if the developers / blizzard wants to create a masterpiece equal or even surpassing WoW. They have the skills to create masterpieces, and they have the empathy (they know what we want). The only thing needed is the economical advantage of moving developers from other games to create a completely new MMORPG.

The somewhat sad thing is that I basically havent played WoW in four years, yet what I'm writing could have been said back then as well.

If anything, at least please use end-game TBC as template for future expansions! The original attunement for Black Temple was top notch.

[Tomana]

Blizzard needs to accept and then act on the fact that MMORPGs are not games for absolutely everybody. Yes, absolutely everybody can play the game, it's not hard, never really was, but it wasn't designed to be tailored to everybodys needs.

The thing is, once you said that "A", you'll need to say "B". That "B" being that MMORPG is, medium-term, a dying breed. A lot of today's gamers won't accept the fact they'll have to level for (for example) 200 hours, then grind materials for another 200 hours, then... you get the idea. The market is overtaken by MOBAs, shooters and mobile games, which are a) easier to get into and b) much less expensive to develop than a world that an MMO is (or should be).

This being said, as a MMO editor, you have two options: quit (prolly not gonna happen) or do damage control by broadening your target market beyond the classic MMORPGs adopters.
The third option, which used to exist - develop a niche MMO - is no longer on the table because of how expensive an MMO can be these days.

This being said, Blizzard does have a problem with releasing content on a more regular basis, especially in WOD.

What would you do to make the game as a whole better - not just for you and your personal demands and wishes?

As Ghostcrawler mentioned once, adding more content that could last a long time can be accomplished by either RNG, player-created content or skill-gated replayable content (think MOBAs). The last two are off the table (PVP kinda falls into the latter category but it's a niche).

That being said, a good idea would be to turn the whole world into one playground by adding random events all around the world and by scaling the world to the character (or better yet, by removing levels completely and make the player gather spells and talents rather than levels). Crafting professions need to be completely reworked from the ground up to use all available resources (yes, that may turn then into niches, but that's probably okay). That's the general idea. Stuff like an invasion of a zone by kobolds/zombies/pirates/legion/whatever where the whole server has to cooperate to push them away would be another possibility.

[Pull My Finger]

I think that Blizzards problem and biggest fear is their output. The amount of content they're able to produce. It's way to little for the mass of players the game attracted.

It would be OK if not everyone could reach all goals - if there were enough reachable goals in the game for any kind of player. That never worked in WoW. From a player's perspective, it was perfectly understandable that they would demand access to content - after all, they're players and they want to play the game, but find themselves put by the wayside at some point.

People are entitled to content. They're players and it's reasonable to expect to have things to do in the game. The judgemental attitude of players who would lash out at others for that did the game a massive disservice in the long run.

To me it appears that Blizzards logic was: we can't possibly make content for everyone ... so let's try to get everyone in the content that we're able to make instead. And that ultimately led to this really odd state the game is today: fragmented, micro-managed, multi-modal, over-orchestrated ... they try to include everyone, but at the same time keep everyone out of each other's way. The game is trying to please everyone, but somehow not really appealing to anyone instead.

[Lochton]

The golden rule is, 'everyone doesn't want everyone'. Technically, shouldn't have listened to everyone to make it more available for everyone.

[Aggrophobic]

Are you trying to say that the most successful MMO of all times, still going strong after 12 years is something "nobody wants"?
I think you got it wrong...

WoD was not that great but every other expantion was pretty amazing and you have to remember that WoW was at it's peak in Wrath and that expantion sure was made to cater to everyone.

Oh and Legion is looking good so, what would I do? I'd wait for the next expantion.

[Kryos]

Are you trying to say that the most successful MMO of all times, still going strong after 12 years is something "nobody wants"?
I think you got it wrong...

WoW subs are on a steady decline since 2011. After WotlK concluded the Warcraft 3 story that also was a starting point for Vanilla, the subs constantly dropped. With WoD Blizzard managed to generate massive hype withe the "will be back to Draenor and it will be savage" announcment and people expecting a BC 2.0 and 3 million players came back - just to drop off 3 months later. Pretty much the time frame you need to consume all content and clear the first raids on normal and lfr mode. So while WoW has very loyal fans, it's on a steady decline and the subs are so bad now, that Blizzard refuses to share them with the public.

[Fang7986]

that sums it up right there. Another problem is the struggle between caving to demands by the community and sticking with their guns. They try to do a mix of both but sometimes they go too far one way.

The problem with demands of the community is that it is too big. The "no flying" thing is a good example as there had been a small vocal part of the community asking for that for years and Blizz actually listened to em and all hell broke loose. I honestly wish Blizz would just tell the community to "STFU, we are going to make the game we want, don't like it leave." I'd rather have a game that only a million play, but every one of them absolutely loves it, than a game with 5 million players, but some one is always bitching about something.

[Deleted]

Blizzard needs to accept and then act on the fact that MMORPGs are not games for absolutely everybody. Yes, absolutely everybody can play the game, it's not hard, never really was, but it wasn't designed to be tailored to everybodys needs.

I think you're on to something here - however, Blizzard and WoW are the anomaly in this equation. They're the only wildly successful hit in a otherwise niched genre of games. Looking at it form the inside - Blizzard has never, ever experienced what it is to design a game for normal MMORPG crowd (i.e. having around 500k subs and feel like a huge success).

This is one of the "problems" with WoW and it's anomalous success (and I'm sure it's a really nice problem to have, I'd like to have problems like that as well). Everyone at Blizzard is used to something that isn't the genre norm. WoW isn't the genre norm.

So yes, at some point they'll have to come to grips of having a playerbase of 500k people who are all shit-tight-hardcore-mmo players. But I think we're still few years from that. They're still designing the game "for the masses".

[Mad_Murdock]

Another problem is the struggle between caving to demands by the community and sticking with their guns.

I believe the bigger problem is, these days, doing anything one group doesn't like, equals caving to demands versus listening to feedback. No one accepts they are in the minority and that their way lost. Nope, it's always "Blizzard caved\pandered to the minority". If Blizzard does stick to their guns and says "Dungeons are hard" one group applauds them, the other group finds it insulting. Yet as soon as the applauding group doesn't get something they want, they have pitchforks screaming "Blizzard doesn't care or listen!!"

[Zandro]

Usually when I see a new thread about 'Where Blizzard Went Wrong..", I dismiss it and get annoyed at the 1000s of other threads complaining about the same thing over and over... but this thread is direct, right to the point, and absolutely accurate. This is exactly where I think went Blizzard went wrong with WoW and I feel they need to focus more on a niche than the general public in order make the game great again.

[Extremities]

I believe Wow will be further watered down until it dies. Blizzard earns more money on games like Hearthstone, or in general their other games - and thus the "best" developers have been moved to other games, and the masterpieces that are TBC and my personal favourite WotLK will not be seen again for as long as this trend continues.

The only way I see WoW becoming "tha shit" again is if the developers / blizzard wants to create a masterpiece equal or even surpassing WoW. They have the skills to create masterpieces, and they have the empathy (they know what we want). The only thing needed is the economical advantage of moving developers from other games to create a completely new MMORPG.

The somewhat sad thing is that I basically havent played WoW in four years, yet what I'm writing could have been said back then as well.

If anything, at least please use end-game TBC as template for future expansions! The original attunement for Black Temple was top notch.

The thing about WoW is that they make hundreds of millions just constantly streaming in each month just from Subs alone. Those other games may make more money in bursts/waves because they're free to get in the door and than rape your wallet, but no way would they turn their heads from the game that made their company as big as it is - WoW. Diablo is huge, Hearthstone is huge, Hots is huge but in terms of services that keep a constant stream of funds each month just for something as simple as a sub, they wont put it on the back burner hence their hiring of more devs for the WoW team. Their team currently for WoW alone is roughly 500 strong and they've continued to hire over the years increasing the size of their WoW team. The problem I have with this though is that even with all these new hirers, what the hell are they doing? WoW has gone down in terms of quality, no doubt, I think a lot of people would agree with that while others wouldn't which is fine.

So.. their dev team increases, yet quality goes down. That in itself is a huge issue. Now, I don't know what I can or cannot say on the current alpha for Legion but I will say this, it does feel better than WoD by a huge margin. Quality, quantity, depth, detail, everything about it "feels" better than WoD ever did. To me, it feels like its back in the right direction. And, it's going to be a huge change for most people from what's currently on live.

- - - Updated - - -

I believe Wow will be further watered down until it dies. Blizzard earns more money on games like Hearthstone, or in general their other games - and thus the "best" developers have been moved to other games, and the masterpieces that are TBC and my personal favourite WotLK will not be seen again for as long as this trend continues.

The only way I see WoW becoming "tha shit" again is if the developers / blizzard wants to create a masterpiece equal or even surpassing WoW. They have the skills to create masterpieces, and they have the empathy (they know what we want). The only thing needed is the economical advantage of moving developers from other games to create a completely new MMORPG.

The somewhat sad thing is that I basically havent played WoW in four years, yet what I'm writing could have been said back then as well.

If anything, at least please use end-game TBC as template for future expansions! The original attunement for Black Temple was top notch.

The thing about WoW is that they make hundreds of millions just constantly streaming in each month just from Subs alone. Those other games may make more money in bursts/waves because they're free to get in the door and than rape your wallet, but no way would they turn their heads from the game that made their company as big as it is - WoW. Diablo is huge, Hearthstone is huge, Hots is huge but in terms of services that keep a constant stream of funds each month just for something as simple as a sub, they wont put it on the back burner hence their hiring of more devs for the WoW team. Their team currently for WoW alone is roughly 500 strong and they've continued to hire over the years increasing the size of their WoW team. The problem I have with this though is that even with all these new hirers, what the hell are they doing? WoW has gone down in terms of quality, no doubt, I think a lot of people would agree with that while others wouldn't which is fine.

So.. their dev team increases, yet quality goes down. That in itself is a huge issue. Now to switch gears, I don't know what I can or cannot say on the current alpha for Legion but I will say this, it does feel better than WoD by a huge margin. Quality, quantity, depth, detail, everything about it "feels" better than WoD ever did. To me, it feels like its back in the right direction. And, it's going to be a huge change for most people from what's currently on live.

[Deleted]

It's true you cant please everyone with everything.

Being a broad audience theme park MMORPG, the game has to adress a lot of different playstyles. While the focus in endgame is clearly on raids and organized group play.

I still think a lot of people like to play the game. I myself am burned out after playing 10 years of it, and only resub for one or two months once a new expac is available.

[Deleted]

Yes, you have to forget about the people who want easy content. They think they want it, but they really don't.