What aspect of the game do you believe represents the backbone of World of Warcraft?
What aspect of the game do you believe represents the backbone of World of Warcraft?
"Come, Stormrage, and I will show you what happens to those that betray the lord of the Legion!" — Mannoroth.
Other, Player interaction.
"These so called speed humps are a joke. If anything, they slow you down. "
Pvp cuz it's so balanced.
jk, all of the above because it's all what makes WoW.... WoW.
I think Raids and Endgame content are the largest contributor to the subscriptions this game receives, and are also the reason it was built well since Vanilla.
Agree with CheeseSandwich. If I wasn't in a guild with a bunch of guys I chat bollocks with on Whatsapp while I'm at work, meet up at one person's town to get blindingly drunk 2 or 3 times a year, and idle in Mumble playing WoW / Diablo / Battlefield with for 5 evenings out of 7 after my kids go to bed, I wouldn't pay the monthly sub.
Not to say I don't like the game. I enjoy raiding most of all, but the social community far outweighs it
Raids, definitely. I'm not a pve-er but without raid content, this game would be a ghost town within several months.
I think questing. I mean, with the beta for Vanilla only having 100 quests for both factions ultimately making Blizzard up the scales quest-wise due to player reaction shows how much questing is an integral part of the game. You can literally go through the game a million times just questing and having no player interaction or environmental discovery and still make it to the highest level; of course difficulty will be there.
Raids in general and player interaction. I don't know but i found out that i had the most fun times in the game, where players were engaged to help / quest together. Lore etc. wasn't a real motivator for me, because the best gaming experience was a simple run to stratholme or other dungeons in the early days. I've met a ton of people, had a lot of fun with them. Today, it's very hard to keep this running.
I think its world exploration. Lots of games have raids. Better raids than WoW, even. Doesn't do them a damn bit of good. Lots of games have PvP. In fact, it's hard to not have better PvP than WoW. But again, this isn't always enough to fuel the fire. But you know what WoW has that almost no other game has? Great exploration. A world full of wonderful, crazy secrets that takes years upon years to find. Shoot, I just took somebody on a tour of eastern kingdoms the other day. This is his first week of playing WoW. We spent about 4 hours on my field trip. Now, I'm a fanatical lore nerd and I've been playing this game since before BC launched. But you know what? I still found myself saying "the fuck is that!??!" almost as much as he was. Because despite the fact that I've explored more of this game than the vast majority of players, I still haven't come close to seeing all of it.
There is some crazy shit in Azeroth.
Immersion. Or atleast it use to be.
It will be different for every person.
For me, it's Questing. I'd play this game if it had nothing but quests, but I'd have no interest in staying if it had no quests.
Loot. RNG loot drops is a type of variable-ratio reinforcement schedule—the best for conditioning habitual behavior. It's the backbone of gambling too.
It's a little bit of all of it. I think the core game is questing, exploration, and interaction with others. Other people's answer will be different and they won't be wrong. It's a big game with a lot of different aspects. Pinning it down to just one thing is too limiting.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
During Vanilla through Wrath I would say dungeons, questing and story. Starting with Argent Tourney in wrath, and picking back up in Cataclysm I would say it's switched to raiding.
Curse you radio selection! My options are all on the list, but I can't pick just one. I guess I could destill my vote to the core concept of "individual story progress" and pick other.
Ever since vanilla Raids have been presented as "THE THING" to do in WoW.
Every new major content patch - the raids are the most highlighted part, while pvp usually does not get any new BGs/Arenas.
It is also what the majority of the people subscribe to WoW for, raiding.
Roleplay. Its first and foremost since its an RPG game, and be it questing/raiding/PvP/rp for end game is strictly on the player choice.
Let's not derail this into a "WoW sucks now"-thread, shall we?
For me, Roleplay is the main thing. But I'm biased, leading a large RP guild.
Personally I'm a big fan of questing. When a new expansion is out, I love running through the quests, explore the new lore. This combined with exploration are great for me, even more than the raids.
One thing that isn't on the list is another main thing for me:
Collection! Mounts, pets, achievements. I love it! Keeps me playing as much as the friends I've gathered, the quests exploration and lore, and raids.
raids and before it, dungeons before they became useless
Dungeons were for people short on time but wanted a great hard/involving experience
now they are a joke, since mid/late wotlk
Content drought is a combination of catchup mechanics and no new content.