Signs that blizzard are giving in to lazy players?

[Hammerschlag]

Sorry but, the fact of the matter is, people are getting more and more lazy. Also, in today's society, people are very time constrained with work, family life, errands... The list goes on. It only makes sense for Blizzard to make more content more easily accessible and complete-able. If Blizzard continued to have the game require a lot of time requirements to complete rather fundamentally central game mechanics, more people would quit the game, thus Blizzard losing less money. Business chaps! Blizzard doesn't do this for free!

[Deleted]

Then don't do the content you think is too easy? Complaining about optional content is pretty ridiculous.

[Ascendant]

Put rating requirements on the elite pvp gear ala tbc and wotlk, they will only be a cosmetic change now anyway. Incentive added. I feel like arenas and rbgs need more stuff like this instead of just casually capping every week at 1400 rating and getting everything a bit later.

[Senaelanna]

Fixing an annoying profession isn't "giving in to lazy players".
Nor are LFR-players lazy.

OH MY GOODNESS I cannot believe that 3 years later you are still spouting this nonsense. Activision has done nothing to this game but cater to the lowest common denominator by making every single activity in the game easier in an attempt to encourage the growth of their subscription numbers. LFG players are the ones that I remember having to break my back carrying through extremely trivial content, when they couldn't figure out that moving out of the giant red garbage on the ground is maybe a good idea. I can't imagine that the skill of the LFR players has improved during that time, and that they are all still standing in the giant green pool of poison on the floor making the LFR raids an exercise in futility and frustration.

Professions used to mean something, they used to be at the very least time consuming to level, and they used to have some neat items associated to them. Then WOTLK comes along and drops the Casual Kingdom on everybody and now everybody needs access to everything. Lazy players have ruined this once glorious game.

---------- Post added 2013-03-23 at 09:04 PM ----------

To be fair, it is a job to the gsl players .

I'm pretty sure that a lot of those Koreans make bank off of those tournaments when they win. So yes, their dedication and commitment gets them rewards. I'm shocked. Not. That's the way it should be!

[Nexsa]

If you think it's fast now, that gives you even more time on top of your already large amount of hours you can put into the game.

Imagine how much more things you can do with all this extra time?

It feels like a job to level up skills. It's not fun nor entertaining to level up stuff from older expansions that have no use. I want to get to current content so I can enjoy it while it's, you know, current.

[melodramocracy]

If it's not for you, you stop playing it. It's as simple as that.

Wise advice for folks who feel that some aspect of the game is too difficult / time consuming / grindy etc.

Oh that's right... that sort of player isn't your intended audience, is it?

[ImmaGoku]

The only part I truly feel is wrong is giving ALL players resilence. Now, why have PvP gear?
You can stand up to PvPers in PvE gear now.

[zimzum2523]

If you think the easy parts of the game are to easy then do the hard parts. I don't understand people that complain about stiff like this.

[Senaelanna]

If you think the easy parts of the game are to easy then do the hard parts. I don't understand people that complain about stiff like this.

Because the entire game outside of heroic 25 man raids is notched under the easy part of the game.

[Deleted]

The only part I truly feel is wrong is giving ALL players resilence. Now, why have PvP gear?
You can stand up to PvPers in PvE gear now.

No you wont be able too, since they will also have 55-60% pvp power meaning they will deal far more damage on you even with the base resilience being at 65%

[zimzum2523]

Because the entire game outside of heroic 25 man raids is notched under the easy part of the game.

So if you find 5 mans to easy do challenge modes if random bgs are to easy do rated bgs. What parts of the game to do want to be harder? leveling? Take half your gear off. professions? were professions ever hard?

[Vargas]

OH MY GOODNESS I cannot believe that 3 years later you are still spouting this nonsense. Activision has done nothing to this game but cater to the lowest common denominator by making every single activity in the game easier in an attempt to encourage the growth of their subscription numbers. LFG players are the ones that I remember having to break my back carrying through extremely trivial content, when they couldn't figure out that moving out of the giant red garbage on the ground is maybe a good idea. I can't imagine that the skill of the LFR players has improved during that time, and that they are all still standing in the giant green pool of poison on the floor making the LFR raids an exercise in futility and frustration.

Professions used to mean something, they used to be at the very least time consuming to level, and they used to have some neat items associated to them. Then WOTLK comes along and drops the Casual Kingdom on everybody and now everybody needs access to everything. Lazy players have ruined this once glorious game.

---------- Post added 2013-03-23 at 09:04 PM ----------



I'm pretty sure that a lot of those Koreans make bank off of those tournaments when they win. So yes, their dedication and commitment gets them rewards. I'm shocked. Not. That's the way it should be!

Professions never meant ANYTHING.

They're merely a source for players to make money or to craft themselves gear. Seriously, shut up and stop acting like implementing catch-up mechanics destroy something important. Its for max-level characters who want/need to switch professions; new characters will progress just as well leveling the old way.


Jesus fucking Christ you no-lifers will bitch about anything. You must have a fucking cherry life if this, this shit is what gets you up in arms.

[Wildtree]

Some examples:

Professions-
These used to be skills that players would put time and effort into in order to reap in the rewards. Cooking- farming animals from different zones to level up. Fishing-moving from zone to zone and putting in effort to reach max fishing cap. Herbalism- visiting zones to pick different flowers. Now, in this current patch and looking at patch 5.3, it makes all these professions pretty meaningless. You can level max cooking at Halfhill very easily. Herbalism in the next patch means that herbs can be picked anywhere in Pandaria and so you can level it up without going to Kalimdor/Outland or Eastern Kingdoms. You can also do the same with Blacksmithing and ghost iron ore to level up

Not only does this damage the auction house economy via low level mats now but it makes these professions stupidly easy to level up at max level, making them feel quite worthless and unrewarding.

Disagreed..... The amount of materials does not decline. It might happen that endgame content mats become cheaper, but therefore low level mats become more valuable. The changes to crafting make it only easier for the rich players that don't care throwing out tons of gold, they likely never get back.

Raids-
I wont get much into LFR as i know that there are so many different views on it. I like the fact that it gives casual players to visit new content but it just gives an easy mindless gearing up route for the lazy wow player.

The mindless gearing up applies to all difficulty level.... Evidence? You remove gear drops from raids and dungeons, and you will see the numbers of participants nose dive. Barely anyone raids for the sake of the difficulty. Almost everyone does it to grind gear.
Proof - exists.. Called last tier content. It gets abandoned by the players, at least with their mains..
And difficulty is at large parts a matter of perception too. For some people LFR is in fact already difficult to a point. For most it isn't. For many normal mode is difficult, yet they feel LFR is easy, and heroic is very hard to master. For fewer the feel adjusts again.. They think LFR and Normal mode are easy, and Heroic is fine. And for very few, all three modes are easy.

[matters]

Some of the OPs points are valid but most of the 'casual laziness' came in Cataclysm. That lead to people either quitting the game or rampaging on the forums about how WoW used to be and why it would be so much better if Blizzard went back to that. What did they do for MoP? Well they made players actually have to grind for stuff (which with all nostalgia aside is all that Vanilla and TBC were) which then in turn led the extremely lazy people to complain yet again. In my opinion MoP is a great expansion and Blizz really did deliver what many of the 'Vanilla' players were asking for, the return to a grindfest. Sure many things are completely different than Vanilla and TBC but what else would you expect from a game that has been out for over 8 years? There is a clear evolution path that is very easy to see if you aren't whining about which expansion was better than the current.

Raiding, on fundamental level is exactly the same it has always been with great players killing dragons faster or better than others and PvP may be in shambles but ask yourself this, when was PvP NOT unbalanced or otherwise in shambles? Was it better when a rogue with vendor daggers could stunlock you to death? I think not.

TL;DR
WoW HAD to evolve over the course of its existence in order to remain feeling new. Players will either like it, love it or hate it completely, such is the nature of an MMO that is as old as WoW.

[Xl House lX]

Firstly, i'd like to say that i completely understand that blizzard are trying to aim WOW in MOP towards the more casual player and have seen the positive. However, i would like to voice my concerns and disappointment to the direction that wow is going.

It seems to me that Blizzard are totally ruining the hard work that they have done in the past, and merely down tuning it to make this game casual friendly, making the game feel very lazy
Some examples:

Professions-
These used to be skills that players would put time and effort into in order to reap in the rewards. Cooking- farming animals from different zones to level up. Fishing-moving from zone to zone and putting in effort to reach max fishing cap. Herbalism- visiting zones to pick different flowers. Now, in this current patch and looking at patch 5.3, it makes all these professions pretty meaningless. You can level max cooking at Halfhill very easily. Herbalism in the next patch means that herbs can be picked anywhere in Pandaria and so you can level it up without going to Kalimdor/Outland or Eastern Kingdoms. You can also do the same with Blacksmithing and ghost iron ore to level up

Not only does this damage the auction house economy via low level mats now but it makes these professions stupidly easy to level up at max level, making them feel quite worthless and unrewarding.

Raids-
I wont get much into LFR as i know that there are so many different views on it. I like the fact that it gives casual players to visit new content but it just gives an easy mindless gearing up route for the lazy wow player.

PVP-
It feels like blizzard have dug a huge hole, adding pvp power and now in patch 5.3, they want to change pvp and give resilience to every single player. While i see this is another good change for casual players as well as the removal of the 2.2k boundary on gear. It kind of ruins the whole "special" feeling of pvp.

TBC and WOTLK had a great pvp system i thought- rewarding players with gear when they reach a certain level for each set piece. This gave players who wanted to pvp something to aim for, something to achieve and feel proud of themselves. With a little time and effort put in on learning how to play, a lot of players would reach it. Now, i feel as though there is nothing to really aim for in pvp. It feels like daily quests- you have to cap every week to get to conquest point boundary where you can then buy the elite tyrannical gear( even this is being thrown away in patch 5.3).

From these points, while nice for the casual player which i understand, it really makes this game feel a lot less rewarding, a lot less special and kinda disappointing

Anybody else agree?

I'm still trying to wrap my brain about the concept of a "lazy" player. Lazy would imply the person isn't willing to work for whatever reason. It's a game so most people aren't "working", they are playing. Unless people are finally starting to admit that WoW is similar to a job you can't use the term "lazy" correctly. Casual would be the proper adjective.

Sorry but that kills me, most people play games to be lazy, so even if you have high amounts of activity in game you're still technically being lazy.

On topic: Yes the more Blizzard caters to casuals the better the game will be.

[namelessone]

Time =/= Effort. Thus, your entire argument is invalid. Furthermore, WoW isn't a sport and it's not a competition. If you treat it as one, you will be disappointed.

[ringpriest]

I'm still trying to wrap my brain about the concept of a "lazy" player. Lazy would imply the person isn't willing to work for whatever reason. It's a game so most people aren't "working", they are playing. Unless people are finally starting to admit that WoW is similar to a job you can't use the term "lazy" correctly. Casual would be the proper adjective.

Sorry but that kills me, most people play games to be lazy, so even if you have high amounts of activity in game you're still technically being lazy.

On topic: Yes the more Blizzard caters to casuals the better the game will be.

I have to disagree here. I think of a "casual" player as one who plays the game only as a hobby, say, as an alternative to watching TV.(That can still be a lot of hours per month.) Someone who enjoys playing, but doesn't really care about "winning"'; people who play mainly for the experience and often the social aspect. I used to know a lot of players like this, but they've mostly dropped out since Wrath. Everyone I know playing now does so to "win" at some aspect of the game, mostly PvP or raiding, but also a few who like to rack up Achievements or gold.

A "lazy" player, on the other hand, I see as someone who wants to "win", but who also feels entitled to "win". They want their victory to be handed to them. (They pay the same $15 per month as any world-first guild, why shouldn't they "win" too?) Lazy players don't want to learn their class, understand boss mechanics, gear their characters up, or even deal with other people. They just want to "win".

Casual - likes playing, doesn't care as much about winning.
Hardcore - likes winning, willing to put in a lot of effort to win.
Lazy - Wants to win, but is unwilling to put effort into winning.

Personally, I think that WoW's been headed down the wrong track ever since Blizzard started getting obsessed over what the path to "winning" should look like, and quit putting as much effort into quality, detailed, and interesting worldbuilding. So, in a sense, I agree with you: the more Blizzard gets back to focusing on the journey instead of the destination, the better the game will be. (Dailies do not count as a journey though.)

[Kesandri]

Personally, I think that WoW's been headed down the wrong track ever since Blizzard started getting obsessed over what the path to "winning" should look like, and quit putting as much effort into quality, detailed, and interesting worldbuilding. So, in a sense, I agree with you: the more Blizzard gets back to focusing on the journey instead of the destination, the better the game will be. (Dailies do not count as a journey though.)

I have to strongly disagree with the part about putting no effort into world building and quality. I really believe a lot of people dont understand how much work they have to put into not only creating new exciting content but also maintaining the old content too. The more expansions blizzard release means the more work overall they have to do.
Pandaria imo was a very good new land and very detailed imo, much more than some people realise as was the world changes in cataclysm including the new zones they added (I am referring to world quality here not content, that is another topic completely).

To say blizzard are only focusing on giving players everything on a stick is simply not true, there are several area's in the game that the 'average' player cannot achieve right now without putting effort in, challenge modes and heroic raiding to name a couple (we can debate the difference in difficulty settings in raids + LFR but right now thats irrelivent, the fact is heroic raiding does exist).

My only complaint right now would be that with the additional rep gathering alternative added recently that reputations are too easy to achieve now, I personally would prefer reputations to take a long while to reach exalted rather than simply doing dailies for a couple of weeks or the other new things they added like work oreders, this is the one part I do wish they would make it feel a bit like vanilla again (though I def wouldnt want reputations taking as long as they did back then, was just using as an example).

Overall with the slight disagreements I have to the reputation system right now I personally feel blizzard have got a decent balance between the player who can practically live on the game and the player who wants to do as much as they can but simply can only put so much time in.

[MiLLeR]

LOL'd at feeling "special" for getting gear in PvP. PvP should have nothing to do with gear or grinding, but only skill.

[Vorkose]

Blizzard cant win no matter what they do.