Blizzard has to stop obsessing about endgame - the world is tiny!

[Deleted]

Bioware didn't worry much about SWTOR's end-game, see how that turned out..

There's nothing wrong with having endgame, but it doesn't have to come at the expense of world content. And it can be placed on older locations as well.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Bioware didn't worry much about SWTOR's end-game, see how that turned out..

Neither did wow at launch, blizzard just was lucky enough that they did get away with it. And to be honest, SWOTOR gained nothing by being an MMO, if they would have done KotOR 3 properly instead, people would have worshipped the ground they walk on.

[Powerogue]

I don't know what you mean, they updated the old world one expansion ago, and it was awesome.

If I wanted to gripe, I'd say that flying mounts are generally a bad idea, at least, before the level cap. It's a very different experience seeing everything from the ground than just flying high over the danger.

Granted I'm a rogue, so I just stealth through the danger anyway, but if I wasn't a rogue, you'd see the issue!

[Darksoldierr]

I still dont understand why there are no dynamic events with PvE/PvP rewards out in the world. Specially now with CRZ tech.

[lunchbox2042]

The ability to sit anywhere in the game and queue up for whichever content you wish killed any semblance of a world this game had.

[RickJamesLich]

Blizzard really does need the world to feel more interesting, along with questing itself. The new talent system has it's pro's and con's, but it makes leveling extremely boring, especially when you get a tier where none of the options are interesting. I do think something like actually making some of the zones phase or something could be great here. I'd like to see flyign removed, I know that's not going to happen, I think the next best thing is to make flying not possible during certain portions of the day or something.

As it stands now though, you're best bet is pretty much to always stay in the city and queue for stuff, whether it's dungeons or LFR when you hit 90, there's very little incentive to go out into the world unless you want achievements, which isn't that big of a deal I think for many.

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Neither did wow at launch, blizzard just was lucky enough that they did get away with it. And to be honest, SWOTOR gained nothing by being an MMO, if they would have done KotOR 3 properly instead, people would have worshipped the ground they walk on.

To be fair, I'd say blizzard's initial end game was not bad at all and it was pretty challenging, some of the 5 mans would have trash that could respawn within 5 or 10 minutes, you could die on the pulls if you got lazy, everything about them was much more challenging. And if by some miracle you got enough good gear early on to start doing MC, the place was widely considered impossible for quite some time.

[Deleted]

I don't know what you mean, they updated the old world one expansion ago, and it was awesome.

If I wanted to gripe, I'd say that flying mounts are generally a bad idea, at least, before the level cap. It's a very different experience seeing everything from the ground than just flying high over the danger.

Granted I'm a rogue, so I just stealth through the danger anyway, but if I wasn't a rogue, you'd see the issue!

Well, what they did was to update the quests as well as tweak some of the old zones. They didn't update the world in the sense of making it relevant, bringing it with them into the future.

Instead of having to go back every few years and do another Cataclysm, which only lasts for a year or two anyway, they should come up with systems that always make sure the old content is relevant.

[Seezer]

Endgame is all people are focused on now, and I think the main reason that so many of us weren't when we started in vanilla was simply that we didn't know much there was for us to do at 60. A lot of people really thought the entire game experience was leveling to 60, and you actually had to tell them, "no, there's this whole other experience that becomes available once you hit level cap." I really don't think the entire world needs to scale with you. It's a lot of "extra" with little to no reasoning behind it. The reason people don't want to go back and do desolace again with a lower level character is that they've already been through Desolace 10 times. Nothing can change that, aside from updating the content. And Cataclysm's updates proved to be a waste of time at worst and polarizing at best, with many players wishing they would have just left the old zones as they were.

It's an interesting concept. Having the ability to go do redridge quests at level 70? Create your own path? But I think it ruins the progression that Blizzard intended for you take through those zones - not that leveling doesn't have its problems, like "new" Azeroth --> Outland --> Northrend --> "new" Azeroth.

And all of this is to say nothing of the fact that, at the end of the day, the majority of players care about raiding, instanced pvp, and gear progression. Whether this is the way it should be is beside the point - you will not reverse this development in the game's culture. Exploration and adventure are afterthoughts for these players. From a business standpoint, it's questionable whether Blizzard should devote any more resources to those ends. Though, on principle, I agree with you that the heart and soul of a MMO lies in its expansive world. We really do still have that, though. You can ask any new player. We're just desensitized to it.

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I'd have agreed with you on this before achievements, before transmog, before pet battles. It does seem like all that old content is sitting out there. But if you think about Loremaster, or Bloody Rare, or wanting to get a tier set out of Molten Core, or looking for a Minfernal, players have a lot of reasons to go back to old content. They're just not the original reasons we went there.

People didn't look at end game in vanilla like they do now. Not even remotely close. End game for most was just getting to 60. And there was alot to do in getting there. Hell, most ppl were happy getting to 50. The playerbase didn't long for raiding. There were so many ppl in the world with you that the players made the game fun. You always had ppl to mingle with and do stuff with. Raiding a small zone, holding an enemy capital city for a day or 2, kiting a mob to a city, things like that made the game fun. Now people sit in shrine or org waiting for a que to pop. The game went from being an mmo to a loot collection game. And that's why it's steadily declining. People love throwing out the "Rose ternterd derp glasses" phrase, but it's mostly by ppl that aren't being honest, or didn't play. Not everything new is good, and not everything old is bad.

[mysticx]

The ability to sit anywhere in the game and queue up for whichever content you wish killed any semblance of a world this game had.

Before queueing we sat in cities spamming chat-channels to get a group, where was the "Wide open world" in that?

At least with queues we can go out into the world while we wait yet nobody does, so it seems people don't really care about the big world out there... :P

[DeadmanWalking]

I love how OP says we should reduce endgame content and focus on making more content on landmasses and everyone else turns this into thier own argument against what ever they hate, like turning it into an argument against flying mounts or boosted characters. Pure idiocy. OP wants less endgame content and the raiders are turning it into an argument against LFRtards.

I'm laughing my ass off at the entire thread. WHoosh! Over everyone's heads.

[roahn the warlock]

Which loops all the way around to my pet theory that something in Blizzard's internal development is fundamentally broken. I don't know if it's the tools, the codebase, management practices, design philosophy, or what, but something in there is Not Right, or we would not be hearing the "limited resources" mantra so often AND seeing so little content.

they have 300% more games they are working on anymore. That's pretty much why.

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As it stands right now there are major population issues on the majority of servers. You don't see many people in the heaviest traffic zone you sure as hell aren't going to help that by having people wander around every zone in the game.

Oh god, people in an MMO, call the press!

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Before queueing we sat in cities spamming chat-channels to get a group, where was the "Wide open world" in that?

At least with queues we can go out into the world while we wait yet nobody does, so it seems people don't really care about the big world out there... :P

You have a good point, I always said they shoulda just made trade chat everywhere, not just cities.

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I recently uploaded an article about the changing nature off mmo's and gamer culture - the reason, from my 10 years of observation and interaction with both my peer group and the younger generation of gamers (brackets 14-19 and 20-25), that the game is stressing the endgame experience - is because that is the hardcore group of players who will not unsubscribe when there is little to no new content for extended periods of time.

Younger gamers have grown up around a culture of competition, immediate gratification, and personal achievement at the expense of cooperative experience. The game is focused around hardcore pve (mythic will be a harder varient of the current heroic difficulty and heroic difficulty will be at the level it is usually after a few nerfs a couple months in - it's a hook for the semi-hardcore) and hardcore pvp (players who will devote x amount of hours every day to get their points and rankings - the bizarre thing i've noticed here: most players primary concern isn't balance anymore; it's queue times. I used to play so much in wow (or any mmo for that matter) because I had a never ending variety of stimulation to enjoy. Now - you sit in front of your monitor for an hour for a queue (unless you're a tank), or you do the same sets of dailies over and over and over. Can't do it anymore personally.

The reason why Blizzard, and ANY MMO going forward will have this focus - those hardcore pve and pvp players provide the 1-3 million players that bring in their steady stream of money. Even if WoW fell to just 1 million players - that's still $15 million A MONTH in revenue. It doesn't take that much maintain servers folks; particularly when a company has several other lucrative properties.

The gamespace is degenerating into herp-a-derp single-player oriented gamers who don't view the other virtual avatars as people, just things occupying "their" world. You're seeing a lot of the youngest generation of gamers moving into MoBA style games now, and why? Huge pool of players, intimate play, competitive, and easier to control who and what/how you're playing.

The ideal MMO for "old school gamers" aka people closing in on 30, would be one with a massive world and no pvp. If you take pvp out of the equation, balancing a game's numbers because so much simpler and resources would be focused purely on creating a world and things to do in it. But that's not sustainable - because the incoming generation of gamers and the currently dominate % in the market place want competitive game play, or at least a way to make it competitive.

Go poll players and WoW and see how many of them would enjoy PvE leaderboards in the game, or World of Logs integration into the UI. That's what that demographic finds enjoyable about the game - not necessarily playing cooperatively with friends and pushing each other to do well - but about being statistically, mathematically perfect, gaming rng, and having the feeling of competing against millions of players and then being able to declare themselves the winner. For them - this isn't bad. For me, and many people in my generation of gamers - it's abhorrent and toxic.


Edit: Oh, and I should mention - the removal of flying will force players to interact with each other more in the world, at the very least in terms of tightening up competition for resources etc. I liked flying for the same reason I switched from a pvp server to a pve server - it was less stressful and convenient. But honestly, mmo's shouldn't be about convenience and avoiding players - that's a single-player game mentality, but unfortunately, that is precisely what younger gamers want and are used to.

Oh. My. God

You win this thread. Though gotta wonder why this is the case, why the younger people don't want to be social by any stretch of the word. I think the biggest reason is gaming is no longer "nerdy" nerds would be into the RPG part, but the call of duty "lol ur mom" generation are only interested in beating others at stuff.

[Arrowstormen]

I think it's total BS to say that the younger generation has no interest in being social. There's no proof of that, and the "older" generation is not any bit more social.

[Deleted]

I agree in a way, but banning flying mounts to me, won't make a world look or seem bigger.
(It will only result in wow being inefficient again and losing a lot of time trying to do a small thing).

They could add dynamic events in all zones, that pop up sporadically on non set timers, and stay there for an entire day. It could be done like in the scenario's of IoT, gradually unlock and giving you some kind of reward (rewards have to fit everyone though : valor, conquest, mounts, pets, gear?). But the rewards have to be very decent so you actually want to do it, but they also can't be so mandatory that you feel that you HAVE to do them.

They can do a lot of things, though these kind of things take a lot of resources, so I wouldn't really hope on anything, it seems pretty unlikely they'll redo all zones and make them more interactive in the future, because that would counter the new continents/worlds.

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I recently uploaded an article about the changing nature off mmo's and gamer culture - the reason, from my 10 years of observation and interaction with both my peer group and the younger generation of gamers (brackets 14-19 and 20-25), that the game is stressing the endgame experience - is because that is the hardcore group of players who will not unsubscribe when there is little to no new content for extended periods of time.

Younger gamers have grown up around a culture of competition, immediate gratification, and personal achievement at the expense of cooperative experience. The game is focused around hardcore pve (mythic will be a harder varient of the current heroic difficulty and heroic difficulty will be at the level it is usually after a few nerfs a couple months in - it's a hook for the semi-hardcore) and hardcore pvp (players who will devote x amount of hours every day to get their points and rankings - the bizarre thing i've noticed here: most players primary concern isn't balance anymore; it's queue times. I used to play so much in wow (or any mmo for that matter) because I had a never ending variety of stimulation to enjoy. Now - you sit in front of your monitor for an hour for a queue (unless you're a tank), or you do the same sets of dailies over and over and over. Can't do it anymore personally.

The reason why Blizzard, and ANY MMO going forward will have this focus - those hardcore pve and pvp players provide the 1-3 million players that bring in their steady stream of money. Even if WoW fell to just 1 million players - that's still $15 million A MONTH in revenue. It doesn't take that much maintain servers folks; particularly when a company has several other lucrative properties.

The gamespace is degenerating into herp-a-derp single-player oriented gamers who don't view the other virtual avatars as people, just things occupying "their" world. You're seeing a lot of the youngest generation of gamers moving into MoBA style games now, and why? Huge pool of players, intimate play, competitive, and easier to control who and what/how you're playing.

The ideal MMO for "old school gamers" aka people closing in on 30, would be one with a massive world and no pvp. If you take pvp out of the equation, balancing a game's numbers because so much simpler and resources would be focused purely on creating a world and things to do in it. But that's not sustainable - because the incoming generation of gamers and the currently dominate % in the market place want competitive game play, or at least a way to make it competitive.

Go poll players and WoW and see how many of them would enjoy PvE leaderboards in the game, or World of Logs integration into the UI. That's what that demographic finds enjoyable about the game - not necessarily playing cooperatively with friends and pushing each other to do well - but about being statistically, mathematically perfect, gaming rng, and having the feeling of competing against millions of players and then being able to declare themselves the winner. For them - this isn't bad. For me, and many people in my generation of gamers - it's abhorrent and toxic.


Edit: Oh, and I should mention - the removal of flying will force players to interact with each other more in the world, at the very least in terms of tightening up competition for resources etc. I liked flying for the same reason I switched from a pvp server to a pve server - it was less stressful and convenient. But honestly, mmo's shouldn't be about convenience and avoiding players - that's a single-player game mentality, but unfortunately, that is precisely what younger gamers want and are used to.

Mythic will not be harder than the current heroic modes. It's entirely the same, just different name and raid size.

Mythic = Heroic
Heroic = Normal
Normal = Current Flexible
LFR = LFR

The bosses could be harder but it's intended that it stays equal to the level current heroics are at.

[Kemi13]

"The world isn't getting smaller, there's just less in it."

[Sierra85]

"The world isn't getting smaller, there's just less in it."

what does adding new continents and zones and quests add if you have no way of progressing your character. If you progress your character through questing and quest gear, isn't that a different game completely?

wow is all about the end game. its the lucky slots system of looting gear and getting new items and becoming more powerful. if you had to quest forever i think people would get pissed off.

[ComputerNerd]

Your point is like Waldo, I can't find it. make heroic gear as good as LFR gear, done deal.

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Actually your "embracers" are the vocal minority on MMO champion

100k used the boost so far? You realize that is like, nothing right?

Heirlooms for JP was fine, paying gold for them was stupid. the whole 30% you had didn't do much

100k that we can see from the gear they still had equipped, that is not the total, and it only reflected some of the pre-orders, not those who will be using it on a traditional purchase.
Some may be waiting to use a boost, some may not want to.
Some may yet pre-order.

If the entirety of the gear was replaced quickly, then they would not be counted in those statistics.

Embraced as shown pretty clearly in dungeons, and the in-game attitudes.

[Kemi13]

what does adding new continents and zones and quests add if you have no way of progressing your character. If you progress your character through questing and quest gear, isn't that a different game completely?

wow is all about the end game. its the lucky slots system of looting gear and getting new items and becoming more powerful. if you had to quest forever i think people would get pissed off.

Sorry if you took my Jack Sparrow quote out of context. I was basically saying that people have been playing this game for so long that there isn't anything left to be discovered. OP said the world was tiny, I was merely saying it was not, there's just nothing left to be discovered.

[Deleted]

Sorry if you took my Jack Sparrow quote out of context. I was basically saying that people have been playing this game for so long that there isn't anything left to be discovered. OP said the world was tiny, I was merely saying it was not, there's just nothing left to be discovered.

Things don't have to be discovered. But they can be re-discovered. There would only come good things from using older content more, in a modern context with relevant and up-to-date rewards. It's not like people dislike old content, they just don't always like the thought of questing through it for the umpteenth time.

Raiding the Icecrown Citadel for relevant rewards, however?

[ComputerNerd]

Things don't have to be discovered. But they can be re-discovered. There would only come good things from using older content more, in a modern context with relevant and up-to-date rewards. It's not like people dislike old content, they just don't always like the thought of questing through it for the umpteenth time.

Raiding the Icecrown Citadel for relevant rewards, however?

And having to spend time updating old raid content with new class mechanics in mind, which would be a necessity for them to have relevant rewards, and it would likely take resources away from new content.

[Tart]

Blizzard wont make wow hard though (in terms of being out in the world). They removed the vast majority of elites (Loch Modan Ogres) to put the final nail in world leveling parties.

Tbh you dont even have to leave a city after you hit level 15. Although the dungeon finder tool is excellent, it also takes the social part out.