What Ruined World of Warcraft

[Akka]

If you use a made up term to fit your narrative, and can't even explain it, i can't help you either. Yeah, and talk about "design philosophy" more, especially when all we know about blizzards "design philosophy" are our own guesses, since they never presented anything like this

As I said, if you can't manage to notice blatant changes in design, I can't help you. Or maybe I can, but I'm not interested in handholding, especially when I'm pretty certain this failure of noticing the obvious is deliberate.

[Lasombria]

What ruined World of Warcraft?

Everything.

Everything that ever has, does, or will exist ever. From the dinosaurs, to the planet Neptune, to begonias, the goal of every person, every object, every atom, has been to ruin this one game.

That's what the OP wants to hear, so there we go.

I love this answer very much.

I'll throw one factor on the pile to be specific about ways that part of the community has hurt the game: liars.

Now, this isn't in any sense a WoW-specific problem. I've heard good discussion of it from people who've been involved in maintaining forums for several other game companies. But the reason that things like armory links are important is that a lot of what people say in forums where they can't be verified when it comes to what they've done or not is outright lies. There's exaggeration, like the guy who once set foot in a place at high difficulty and took part in a few pulls of the first boss and claims to have cleared it. There's also people fabricating whole experiences...and on the basis of those fabrications doing things like mocking others being dishonest about their experiences, demanding to be heeded in discussions of class/spec/etc. changes, griping about the damn casuals and their unwillingness to actually try doing stuff the liar claims to have, and so on.

A community that ostracized and banned serial liars would be better for talking about, well, everything. The same guys who feel driven to claim unearned accomplishments in a computer game very often turn out to be full of shit about everything else, too, whether it's sex, politics, yard maintenance, fashion, or what have you.

[Chemii]

It did. It opened with Naxx, which for the actual playerbase could have just as well never existed before WotLK. Over the 6 months until Ulduar people had levelling with superb story and storytelling and a side serving of loot from Obsidian Sanctum with its first forays into varying difficulty levels that players activated by particular way of clearing the instance.

BTW "massive 6 months draught" sounds rather funny after how long we stayed in SoO and HFC.

This isn't the end of the expansion though is it, it's the 1st content patch, the 1st time they made balance changes, fixed major bugs, added dual talents - six months after launch. Naxx was very easy, as was Malygos - all cleared within 72 hours of the expansion launched, in Sunwell gear.

People complained - a lot - enough to warrant blue posts about it.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...lty-Blue-posts

Theres more but you can find nearly every news post on MMO-C at the time talking about "soon", which is where the soonTM comes from. The hot topics of the time revolved around how easy the content was, the story was great but don't kid yourself that it lasted six months.

[Teri]

Splitting difficulties/raid sizes changed the game forever.

And no, saying, vanilla/TBC had 10/20/25/40 man does not count as it has only 1 version of 10 man kara/ZA, 1 version of ZG/AQ20, 1 version of the 25 man and 40 man raids as well.

Realm transfers were already shaking things up in late vanilla & TBC, now we got almost full cross-realm for everything dungeon/raid/pvp related (outside of mythic raid)

But guilds/auctions/trading are 1-realm still, even with thousands of people visiting your "realm" every day, kind of inconsistent design... certainly doesn't make it feel like a community.

[Demoncrash]

The sad state of MMORPGS really. I cross my fingers that we see what Dark Souls did to to the action adventure genre in MMO land. Bring back the difficulty, remove the hand holding, and let you experience the world again instead of chase after mindless quest markers doing piss easy content."

They tried that with Wild Star. Didn't work out too well. All these hardcore players that want tough games are only found on message boards, not in game.

[Deleted]

People complained - a lot - enough to warrant blue posts about it.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...lty-Blue-posts

Forum dwellers complained a lot. Regarding the playerbase, all that needs be said is said by hard, simple numbers.

[deniter]

Well put. I suspect the gaming of the engagement metrics by Blizzard employees led to the disasters of WoD. Having your customers eat a shit sandwich each day for a million dollars and then concluding customers prefer shit sandwiches over other treats isn't a good analysis on which to base your strategy.
I wonder why you say for 'casual with lots of free time' LFR is endgame. Is it an allergy to minimal social interaction in non-queued PUGs or pre-agreed raid times in guilds that stop you from enjoying the real raid content?

The latter. My definition for casuals and hardcore has been raiding and whether you participate it or not. I simply can't / don't want to commit to schedules for a video game. I play when i feel so and log off if i'm tired or have other plans. The other thing is the pressure you get from a guild's side. They give you orders and goals to accomplish before next raid, and there's a risk to lose your raid spot if you fail to deliver it.

I could play years and years in a well made MMO gearing up for a next dungeon and farming mats for a rare weapon, but having to show up every thursday and saturday 8pm sharp is a no go for me. That's the only thing i don't like in those old-school MMOs and that's the only one that still remains in WoW - everything else has been stripped down.

[Chemii]

Forum dwellers complained a lot. Regarding the playerbase, all that needs be said is said by hard, simple numbers.

What are you babbling on about?

Wrath was great but to just blindly say it was all awesome is ignorant. It was criticised openly at the time for lots of things. Post launch hype it wasn't that good for veterans but of course new subs would think the game was great because they probably didn't even reach Dalaran in the first six months.

[Jorah]

Yup and then it got even better.

Technically speaking WoTLK was regress compare to TBC.

TBC is pinnacle of WoW gameplay evolution and in game content (i mean type not amount).

[Deleted]

What are you babbling on about?

Wrath was great but to just blindly say it was all awesome is ignorant. It was criticised openly at the time for lots of things. Post launch hype it wasn't that good for veterans but of course new subs would think the game was great because they probably didn't even reach Dalaran in the first six months.

What are you whining about, "veteran"? WotLK was awesome enough to expand the playerbase to 12 millions. The laughably tiny bunch of forum whiners unhappy that Blizzard made entry-level raid for humans living elsewhere than their mom's basement was a joke in itself and Blizzard taking pains to appease that tiny toxic blob with blue posts was even more ridiculous. And even that was not quite so amusing as when they finally listened to the forum whiners for Uniqueness, Challenge and Exclusive Rewards for Outstanding Skill. They made Cata heroics and with that incredibly deft move they ended an epoch

[Echoherb]

It's not ruined, it just has a bad community since so many play it and there are a lot of shitty whiny people in the world.

[Jorah]

It's not ruined, it just has a bad community since so many play it and there are a lot of shitty whiny people in the world.

Someone triggered.

[syar]

It does feel like playing a hub based MOBA nowadays. Not that its bad , its just not that addictive and its not a whole hobby like it was in vanilla. I sub for a patch , do some queuing then unsub. I am not sure this new model is the best financial decision for blizzard but hey, whatever.

To the people that want that time filling hobby experience , I suggest that you take up something like bee keeping. WoW is still fun if you threat is as a short duration time sink.

[Icechaosss]

I still love the game

[Deleted]

Go on GW2. It has a great vanilla feel and once you get the best gear, it will continue beeing the best gear. It feels very rewarding.

As to what ruins WoW... it's simplicity. The devs make dumbed down simplistic design wich is good for returning players, but wich sucks for active players. They need to work on making every aspect of the game fun. Currently outdoor content gets stale within 2 days. Really, GW2 is such a good game to get ideas from(because they actually try to innovate with every release).
If WoW copied their event and meta system, mount system, pvp reward track system and crafting, WoW would become a super popular game again. Really GW2 has almost everything except the combat. That is much harder to change than reward systems. Granted a meta event system would require alot aswell, but damn... would it be worth it.

Oh and drop the shitty RNG titanforge and legendary drops (and crucible). Those don't work as retention, quite the contrary. It frustrates players and makes them stop. But seeing how i struggle a bit to find a group to do the argus world boss on wendsdays, i'm thinking these things are now quite clear.

[Doffen]

But seeing how i struggle a bit to find a group to do the argus world boss on wendsdays, i'm thinking these things are now quite clear.

If that is making it clear for you, then for me its making it clear that current WoW does not frustrate players at all, cause damn there is lots of groups for Argus world boss on wednesdays. Heck I even struggle to get in one cause they fill up so fast.

[HuxNeva]

The latter. My definition for casuals and hardcore has been raiding and whether you participate it or not. I simply can't / don't want to commit to schedules for a video game. I play when i feel so and log off if i'm tired or have other plans. The other thing is the pressure you get from a guild's side. They give you orders and goals to accomplish before next raid, and there's a risk to lose your raid spot if you fail to deliver it.

I could play years and years in a well made MMO gearing up for a next dungeon and farming mats for a rare weapon, but having to show up every thursday and saturday 8pm sharp is a no go for me. That's the only thing i don't like in those old-school MMOs and that's the only one that still remains in WoW - everything else has been stripped down.

You are partly right. As raiding is a team activity, you agree on times just the same as you would for a sports match, or even meeting at the pub. You are also partly wrong. Many N/HC guilds will not 'pressure', have orders and goals, or have your raid spot up for grabs. That is the beauty of flex raids. Don't confuse world first contender raid stories with the casual friends and family guilds. The differences are as great as as they are between the Sunday morning village pub cycling tour and the 'tour the France', or your local's indoor soccer game and the World Cup. Sad thing is that I see so many (justified) complaints here on MMOC about 'community' that are easily solved by joining a nice guild.

[Rheznor]

"There was a time when loot was exciting instead of generic, dungeons were hard, leveling was part of the experience (and not a 3 day chore to endgame), community was king, and inconvenience just lead to good memories. Now it's just a lobby to pug raid in for ever increasing boring stat increases on forgettable items, with a Facebook game style treadmill on the side.

The sad state of MMORPGS really. I cross my fingers that we see what Dark Souls did to to the action adventure genre in MMO land. Bring back the difficulty, remove the hand holding, and let you experience the world again instead of chase after mindless quest markers doing piss easy content."

-Equestria



Do you agree?

I believe it is important always to differentiate between a opinion and a fact. I dont think it makes sense to say a game is ruined if it still has literally millions of players, specially one thats been going on for so many years. Now, I do think that some changes were not for the best, but again, a lot of people may disagree with this.

For me, what was the biggest change that I dislike was the introduction of LFG, LFR and cross servers. My experience, during the first years, was that you really had to work to get a group, travel to the instance/raid, work hard for hours to get it done. People didnt quit as easy because you had all that previous effort. That created a strong community, friends or at least adventure companions that lasted in some cases for years or at least during an entire expansion. Today one bad pull and some folks quit the instance/raid.
You dont need to invest anything to progress so there is no point in committing to anything. I understand that for some, specially if you didnt have a guild and/or was a not a tank or healer getting a group was a pain. Not to mention to be able to raid. Still, maybe the solution was something else, maybe there was not other solution.

Today you can experience all the content of the game without crossing a single word with another player. They could all be AI and people wouldnt even notice the difference. For me that was the biggest negative change.

Regards.

[Chemii]

What are you whining about, "veteran"? WotLK was awesome enough to expand the playerbase to 12 millions. The laughably tiny bunch of forum whiners unhappy that Blizzard made entry-level raid for humans living elsewhere than their mom's basement was a joke in itself and Blizzard taking pains to appease that tiny toxic blob with blue posts was even more ridiculous. And even that was not quite so amusing as when they finally listened to the forum whiners for Uniqueness, Challenge and Exclusive Rewards for Outstanding Skill. They made Cata heroics and with that incredibly deft move they ended an epoch

I'm not whining, I'm responding to the post about TOC being the first bad part of the game, you seem to be off on a tangent talking about how amazing the story was in wrath.

Nothing you've said makes any sense, Ulduar was very difficult, yet everyone says it's the best raid ever made. Make your mind up.

[bufferunderrun]

The lack of true competition, unfortunately wow never had a true competitor despite the various "wow killer" that surfaced and failed over the years, no one was able to steal the crown and that lead to 2 kind of problem: first big companies who had the financial power to make big title have migrated from the mmo genre no triple A on the horizon and second it lead blizzard to concentrate on other projects neglecting wow quality, i wonder if wow had to survive a true competitor thing like overwatch would have been made?

A side note the lack of good new mmo had lead to less new players and less attention from the public, in general mmos are less appealing as they were 10y ago.