The 5 worst decisions blizzard has made to Wow - Your opinions

[Trassk]

Blizzard has made made innovative and creative choices and decisions to there games, none more so then Wow, and for a game near to a decade old, and a game legacy older then that, a lot has been decided upon to keep it going.
But not all those decisions have been good ones, and have even damaged the reputation of the game, either making people lose faith, trust, or even go as far to quit the game for a time, or permanently.

In your opinion, and please give even a brief as to why you think this, what do you feel has been the five worst decisions to the game, either for gameplay, design, lore and story, or any factors that you simple can't agree with or enjoy.

Mine are

1 - In introduction to the shop. Yes yes its new, despite buying items from wow's website is not like mounts and pets. But as danger dolan put it, this feature has steadily became something worse and worse in terms of how blizzard use it, what they sell on it, and how far they are prepared to use it to sell items and get more money from the playerbase. For a game that is sub based, having pets and mounts is one thing, but armor, and buying lv90 characters, features that you can do in the game, I feel this is going to get worse over time.

2 - The separation of pvp and pve. Might be stange to think of, but there was a time when people formed large groups to come and fight the opposing faction, either in major cities or out in the open. I formed many a group in the past myself for fun to go attack alliance cities and counter account ones done to ours, leading to big battles in a none battle ground setting. It was chaotic, but it was fun. Since then, blizzard seems to have worked on making this less and less of an enjoyment and something people want to do, from flying in azeroth, to making guards in major cities hit like trucks, to making faction leaders extremely hard to take down, people have ground tired of this, and you hardly see anyone forming sich groups now. All just so it doesn't effect peoples pve?

3 - The direction of the story since the end of wrath. Up until the end of wrath, the story in wow felt like it was growing and getting better and better, it seemed like the devs knew what they were doing, from Illidan and kil'jaeden and the draenei and blood elves, to death khights and the old gods and of course arthas, it felt like the game had a growing appeal on story alone.
And then cataclysm happened, and the story of the game became a joke to so many, everything from one side getting more focus to the other, to over powered lore figures doing all the work, to dumming down of bad guys, to contrived plotlines, to absolute silliness and even parodies of there own story, people were no longer happy with the direction of the lore, and it seemed like that well of story and innovative ideas they had from WC3 had all but dried up.

4 - The linear questing experience. Why this became a thing god knows, because nobody complained about the questing system prior to this, aside from it needing a little more sparkle, which quests did in cata and mists, but the way they were presented, that you couldn't do quests except in a linear fashion like a final fantasy game, it made the experience of leveling any new characters such a drag, and the reworking of vanilla zones into cataclysm zones did just that to these hubs we knew for years.

5 - Of course, the daily questing system. Way I see it, wrath had the best setup to all endgame. You had loads of dungeons to do heroics in, tabards to grind, and by doing dungeons you got gear and rep and got prepared for raids because you practiced your character in a setting more suited for doing bosses and content in. you were also not required to grind dailies, but you could for extra rep if you got bored of doing it one way.
Cata started to knock this on the head, with the increase in difficulty in heroic dungeons, yet the system was still there.. and of course, mists killed it, because to get upgrades, you had to do dailies, at the determent of doing content that would give to practice for raiding.


Anyway, those are my thoughts on blizzards mistakes, probably not all shared, but I don't give a shit, its just thinks I feel they didn't think carefully enough about at the time when making them.

What are your ones?

[Strah]

LFR
10-man raids
Normal/heroic modes
Homogenization
Removal of attunements

[Pull My Finger]

It's funny how people seem to focus on negative things all the time. I couldn't name 5 bad decisions impromptu if I tried, just because I don't think about shit that bothers me so much. I don't know. Making 5 mans irrelevant in MoP comes to mind, but apart from that ...

[Deleted]

LFR
Class homogenisation
Irrelevance of zones after leveling
Easy Heroic Dungeons
Online Shop

[Mongoose19]

1. Arena and it affecting skills/spells in PvE
2. Badge system which was fine till Sunwell - since then it just went retarded
3. Homogenization of classes which resultated with every class having cc, interupt and healing spells
4. LFD
5. LFR

If all these 5 points didn't happen we would have frickin awesome MMO right now but reality is sad

[Deleted]

Revamping all the old zones into linear snorefests.
Revamping a bunch of old dungeons/raids into linear snorefests.
Dumbing down the mobs and quests into linear snorefests.
Ballooning the stats out of control in Cata.
Encouraging people to solo their way to the level cap and jump straight into LFD/LFR with no reason to learn their class/spec or how to work/behave in groups.

[McNeil]

1. The shared 10/25 raid lockout (basically reduced the amount to do by raiding with 50%)
2. Scenario's (just make them soloable quest events... keep the playing with other players concept with 5-mans)
3. Challenge modes (are just speed runs, people hardly bother with it)
4. Online Shop (only shows that Blizzard doesn't care for its consumers, just about their pocketmoney)
5. Linear questing thats filled with terribad pop cultural reference jokes (game feels like a singleplayer this way, trying to appeal to the Family Guy crowd)

[Frolk]

1. Stupid guards, see timeless isle, player A attacks player B while wearing that stupid shell, player B defends himself, player B is killed by the guards
2. Way to much CC
3. Removal of elite/group quests/areas
4. Removal of attunments, bring em back BUT!! make em account wide
5. Make dungeons harder, 15-40 can stay easy, ppl are new, but from 40 and up ppl SHOULD know bit about their class, stuns, CC, aoe, single target spells to nuke down 1 mob etc, not the AoEfest it is now,
6. Ill add a sixth cause im a rebel, Not adding new 5man dungeons infavor of instead adding shitty scenarios, that takes even LESS brainpower to clear than 5mans

[KBWarriors]

Merging With Activi$ion - Why on Earth anyone would merge with that awful money leeching company is beyond me. Either Morhaime truly stopped caring about what he did or he thought he was in the right mindset. I think any gamer could have told him that Activi$ion would latch onto his company, it would make them go "public" and suck them dry. So far, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.

LFR - I know people will probably defend this one but it was a decent idea with poor execution. Making a mode that is literally the laughing stock of raiding and that people can "AFK through" is ridiculous. This mode has brought nothing to the game except for a sense of entitlement and casual players feeling like there should be more in the game. For those people, they run LFR and they're done for the week, then they go to the forums to sit there and argue with everyone who tries to knock on LFR or casual friendly content.

The Shop - Why a game that charges $40 for new expansions and has a $15 monthly fee continues to pump out micro transaction content is beyond me. I'm completely alright with character services or realm transfers costing money. However, instead of adding more cool mounts via quest chains or boss drops in the game, credit card warriors rejoice at the thought of them adding in mounts and more pets via the store.

Seriously, browse the official WoW forums.. I have never seen people so happy to spend more money on a game they're already paying monthly for. Further more, in Warlords of Draenor, they're going to be adding EVEN more cash shop options that will further decline the state of this game. Anyone who honestly doesn't see any negative repercussions of just GIVING people Level 90.. well just wait, we'll see how well that works out for them. If you think this community is crap now, just wait until all these new players are running around at Level 100 just after 2-3 days of starting the game.

Why do WoW players get so happy when they add store mounts to this game but EA players get so pissed off when EA brings up micro transactions?

Homogenization - In BC/Vanilla, you used to see certain classes and go, "woah that's so cool.. I want to be able to do that." I used to love playing a class because it felt unique. Now, no one cares what class makeup comes to a raid, as long as all the consolidated buffs are filled then you're good to go!

Pandaria - Before this gets quoted and hated on.. I just want to say that I love the artwork and appreciate all the effort that went into creating this zone. The new textures, the models, etc. However, it just doesn't feel right being there. I just can't get the sense of being in a true WoW expansion surrounded by Asian inspired culture and talking martial art Pandas.

Look at the Burning Crusade, it was dark, the land was torn and you felt like you were in a WoW expansion.

Wrath of the lich king felt the same way. Sure, the snow got tiring to look at after a while but the theme felt right to fight the scourge and the story behind Arthas was amazing.

Cataclysm zones weren't too bad except for Vash'ir in my opinion. I enjoyed Deepholm and finally seeing what Uldum was. Hyjal was a really fun zone to quest in too (unless you're on a PvP server). Twilight Highlands was really cool, until you tried collecting anything and phasing kicked in.

Every expansion just felt like a WoW Expansion. Pandaria just feels weird, like it's not suited for the game.

All in all, my account's up in 20 hours and I think I'm going to wait to see more info on Warlords of Draenor before I turn it back on. I just hope they have some major hot plans for Level 100 characters and content, since they're just practically giving everyone who comes back Level 90.

[Deleted]

Def Cap- might be the only one but i loved it.
In-game shop- P2W inc inc
Consistent Class changes- All the Hotfixes and so called balancing is annoying since perfect balance don't exist.
MoP- hated this expansion with a passion, loved wotlk and tbc as well as the Asian culture but this was a great /facepalm
Cairne- Let Garrosh and that tauren bitch kill him? unforgivable

[Perkunas]

1. Way too much homogenization within classes. This killed many unique aspects of classes and removed all the niche roles in the game. I bloody liked being a Support DPS on my Elemental Shaman. I didn't care that I did less damage than a pure DPS'er because my buffs to the group coupled with my damage increased the output more than if a pure took my place. It added a layer of complexity to raid composition and that's something I sorely miss.

2. Convincing the masses that raiding should be for everybody. Raiding is supposed to be for raiders. If you don't like having to commit a large portion of your free time you shouldn't expect to see all the raiding content. Blizzard made a mistake with putting the majority of their lore in the raids and they should have corrected it by making questing be more about the story and raiding could have been just a compliment to that lore instead of the focus. The story should belong to everybody who plays the game and they need to create an endgame for people who can't play for extended periods. LFR was not the answer to this.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

1. LFR. It's pretty much the direct reason that subs fly all around, people finish the content in a week and then unsub for 5 months. And that's not even talking about the idiots that use it...

2. The shop.

3. Monks start at level 1

4. Dailies as the main form of endgame

5. Not making a dedicated patches team so we can avoid having another 8 months yet of SoO.

[Spriggs]

Merging With Activi$ion - Why on Earth anyone would merge with that awful money leeching company is beyond me. Either Morhaime truly stopped caring about what he did or he thought he was in the right mindset. I think any gamer could have told him that Activi$ion would latch onto his company, it would make them go "public" and suck them dry. So far, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.

Actually Vivindi, Activision and Blizzard's former parent company, was the one who made Activison and Blizzard merge in 2008.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

LFR
Dailies for endgame
Patches are two far apart
Flying (Removed World PvP)
And WG and TB not actually being ongoing world BGs, (+ they changed AV so the battles are ridiculously short)

[Hitei]

1. Arena instead of putting that effort into expanding the BG system.
2. CC.
3. Making three expansions in a row highlighting orc characters.
4. Destroying the Stormwind park and leaving it destroyed for years.
5. Giving AV reinforcement counter and not updating the NPCs each tier to keep them powerful

[SL1200]

1. Phasing
2. Crz
3. Making lfr too difficult for the target audience
4. Squish
5. Removing weapon slots.

[Ciddy]

Hm.

1. Removal of class-specific quests. It's one of the few things from Classic WoW that I would love to see make a comeback.
2. Garrosh. I'm just gonna leave that one there.
3. Scenarios. I'd rather do away with them and focus more on dungeons.
4. Changes to AV. I loved classic AV, and I feel that AV in its current form is nothing more than a 5-10 minute race to zerg the enemy boss.
5. CRZ.

[pateuvasiliu]

2 words.

Dumbing Down.

This ecompasses Lore, making content easier, linear quests, removing elites from the old quests and turning them into things you can solo ( dear god remember Stitches or Eliza? ) etc.

[crakerjack]

1. Removal of rating requirement... It wasn't done to make an even playing field, that's what MMR was implemented for... they removed rating requirement so that PvP would seem more interesting now that 1300 players could get the same gear as 2200+ players. Sadly for the bad player, having the same gear wasn't enough for they would still get killed, just the better player walks away w/ 50% health instead of 80%. Removing rating requirement is equal to making LFR drop heroic loot. What's the point of having a match rating system aside from getting titles etc if everyone gets the same gear? It's not balancing, if it was there wouldn't be MMR. A 1300 rated player doesn't need the best PvP gear because he's not facing 2200+ players, he's facing players of equal skill at 1300 mmr. Blizzard tried to label it as a balancing move, but why the hell would you need to balance when bad players are facing bad players and gladiators are facing other gladiators for the season title?

2. Blizzards lack of interest in PvP. I've always been big on PvE and PvE... they were the 2 biggest aspects of the game and have been in there since the get go. You'd think that blizzards priority would be to keep these 2 aspects in perfect shape, but cataclysm showed a different story. While PvE wasn't perfect or amazing in cataclysm, they did still have firelands which was renowned for being pretty amazing. What did PvP get that expansion? Oh an MMR glitch that allowed people to face 1300 rated people all the way to gladiator... this also relates back to my first post about how equal gear doesn't mean shit when gladiators, who have the same gear as their opponents, can face 1300 rated players and go 113-0. Not only did this glitch last a whole season and then some, but blizzard was shutting down threads on their official forums where people were discussing solutions for the problem. Some seemed pretty legit, but later that day you'd notice the thread gone. I quit before it happen, but making resil a base stat is just another pathetic attempt at making PvP seem more interesting for people who rarely PvP.

3. Lack of class diversity due to too many classes being added. In all honesty, I don't think deathknights should have been added and WoW should have sticked to the original classes while only adding new races. Races don't affect balancing, assuming blizzard doesn't give them some crazy OP racial, but adding additional classes causes too many issues to list. Because blizzard kept adding new classes, we now have little to no class diversity, which means there's not a single ability in this game that's 100% unique.

4. Cross realm features killed realm communities. I liked LFD when it first came out in Wotlk because it was quick and convenient. Little did I or the playerbase know, that this would cause communities to fade. People used to hesitate at the thought of ninjaing or acting like a douche in a dungeon. If they did, they'd know that people would report them and blacklist them. Not saying there was some ingame system for it, but people remembered your name if you acted out. Ever since LFD came out, those asshole players could hide behind a veil of anonymous which allows them to act as they please or ninja w/e loot they want. Before someone tries to argue "oh why don't you just make your own group" it doesn't work that well unless you have guildies or friends on which is still hard to build a full group. Typing /2 LFM healer/dps kara, I could get countless whispers and even if no one was talking to me, I could open the LFG menu and see which players are wanting to do that specific raid/heroic. You could tell who was good and who wasn't by using gear score. Gear score was WAY better than ilvl because an idiot can have a decent ilvl but have horrible gems/enchants. Gear score put all these factors into play which gave you a good estimate of how well someone knew their class.

5. Don't really have a fifth, but I'm sure I could find some issue w/ the game.

[Msshammy]

Oh wow huge surprise here.. yet another post focusing on negative things..