An explanatory list of WoW's problems and its downfall's reasons

[Nuba]

Hello everyone, I decided to make this pretty cool text to explain, in an all-in-one thread, why WoW subscriber base has downed so much since after the release of Legion and trying to explain piece-by-piece those problems.

As a heads up, if you are one of those die-hard WoW fans that will defend the company regardless of facts or what you read, this thread isn't for you. I am making this thread with a small hope that it somehow gets read by a developer that doesn't want to see the game go into maintanance mode like almost all the MMOs that were launched during the long WoW reign.

Alright, so let's begin:

There always existed the "feeling" of "having to grind in order to have fun", this has always existed in WoW and in a lot of old MMORPGs like Ragnarok Online, however that concept has been destroyed by mostly all recently launched games, and what we see today on the market (even in the MMO market) is that you're having fun even while you're grinding, which isn't happening in WoW right now, mostly because the whole grinding system feels repetitive and boring (even when leveling through different campaigns). This was partially fixed by the addition of voiced-quests in the end game content, but that doesn't take the fact that nobody new would want to start a new character in WoW, because the leveling experience in the game is just a nightmare for today's standards, a problem that could (in my opinion) be easily fixed by a full rework of old quests and questlines, adding voiced dialogs to them.

Instead of trying to improve player experience, the developer team chose to go the complete opposite - they made the game more and more "grindy", adding more ways to make content repetitive and force players into a feeling that they have to progress towards an endless objective - You always want to be farming Artifact Power, and if you aren't, you feel like you're getting behind. This whole feeling of infinite grind broke the fun for a lot of players - Back in the days of old expansions like TBC and WoTLK there were quite a lot of optional progression that you could do in order to obtain certain cool things that were optional, and we would still do those things anyway. Nowadays, there only aren't those things anymore, those things have been replaced by obligatory mindless AP grind.

Another thing that adds to the whole "you have to be playing all the time or you're behind" is the RNG drop system, that Warforges or Titanforges an item. The system is amazing when it comes to gearing lowly geared players, but completely destructive when end-game progression is completely based off of it. As a suggestion I believe that only gear 30 ilvls below current tier would be warforge-able or titanforge-able, and anything above that to be fixated.

These changes also created a huge gap for casual raiding, making it so even casual players - people that work and play the game to have fun at night before dinner and taking care of kids - would have the feeling of "if I am not grinding, I am getting behind", but for those people, which today's is the bigger portion of WoW players (Old players that used to play back in 2006-2008 and nowadays are 25+ y/o salarymen) the game is losing its appeal as you're always feeling like you're working towards a level that can't/won't be reached because either you're not playing enough, or doesn't want to play enough.

Another point is how it feels phychologically punishing to make a new toon or an alt - If you think that not playing the game for a day gets you way behind in the endless grind, immagine starting a character that virtually is months behind? The simply concept, the idea, of it makes it so you feel horrible when leveling other characters.

A gigantic lack of customization also made WoW less fun. This applies to the game in general but for PvP it was even worse. The fact that you can't have an unique character, that "ties" to you as a player, kind of completely destroys the idea of playing an MMORPG in the first place. Even for PvPers like me, the idea that "I am this character" is something that kept me playing and doing other content that I otherwise wouldn't be doing like farming achievements, taking part of holiday events and so onwards - The lack of customization kind of made me lose this feeling. Gemming isn't that important, Talent builds are usually super linear and lack room for "unique" choices and techs, enchants aren't that important, the only thing that people will look at you and see is a class and the item level. This problem gets even worse in PvP, but PvP is a whole other problem which I will be talking next.

PvP was completely destroyed by Holinka. For those who don't know, Holinka is the lead PvP developer that took over the reigns in the end of WOTLK, and apparently every single decision that this person ever took regarding the game design, philosophy and modes downed the population that would actively PvP, from making it so casual PvPing stops being a cool thing, to completely erradicating competitive PvP, holinka made the feeling of PvP in the game a complete waste. For you to understand a little how bad this is, the active PvP population nowadays is about 3% of what it was back in WotLK expansion (before said dev took over), which is a decrease in number over 10 times the decrease in WoW population, which is already over the top. I thought about listing the problems with PvP in WoW, but in the end the list would simply be TL;DR "everything".

So, as a conclusion, we can pretty much sum everything up with the "developers got lazy", since everything could have been prevented if those developers were a little more focused into knowing what the community was looking for instead of taking dumb decisions such as "adapting the whole game for new players without making it so new players actually want to play the game" kind of things, not to mention the constant sacrifice of active player base in favor of a player base that isn't even playing the game.

I unsubbed about a month ago despite having around 10 WoW tokens sitting in my inventory, I don't feel like I should be playing the game because of how it is right now, but I still have hope that good decisions are finally taken, that is why I am making a thread such as this one.

Hope you guys enjoyed the read

[Trend]

There have been WoW downfall threads for 12 years now. It never gets old.

[Woop Woop]

The pve is really great, first expansion where I don't enjoy pvp one bit though. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[Eleccybubb]

Nice to see the usual "Why I think WoW is dying/going down the toilet" thread.

[Deleted]

I will read every single line, word by word, if you answer this following question(and I will actually accept the existence of this thead and I won't be defensive, every day I see a new analytical insight):

Why do you have a need, to create this kind of discussion(what do you contribute with?). Do you feel better? Why don't you thank this community, the company for giving you more entertainment than anything ever gave you(both for your money and time)and just move on? Just for the sake of being respectful for something, you have invested so much in(and for millions of people, who still are enjoying thier time).

Im trying to understand this freakshow personality.

[Desparil]

Kek another wow is dying thread. Legion is awesome for some for others it isn't if you don't like it don't play it there is really no reason for walls of text.

[FelPlague]

hey mods, i will help pay a coder if you guys want
one that will make a filter that when somone makes a thread "wow is dying and here is why, and how it could be the best game in the world" deletes it...
thats gotta be easy... right?

:"(

[Saracens]

We do not allowing "Game is Dying, and let me tell you why." threads. Please post in accordance with our rules and regulations. Closing.

Thank you.