Is WoW getting more dumbed down by the expansion?

[Super Kami Dende]

Afaik it came from the badges you could farm by doing dungeons. That was released with the Sunwell patch if I recall correct

No he is correct mostly. Some even called the original Grand Marshal Epics in Vanilla "Welfare Epics" since once they changed the Honor system in pre-patch they became easy to get.

[babyback]

No he is correct mostly. Some even called the original Grand Marshal Epics in Vanilla "Welfare Epics" since once they changed the Honor system in pre-patch they became easy to get.

You are right. I forgot that you could buy the PvP gear from vanilla with honor.

[RoKPaNda]

You realize WoW has the most disgustingly expensive cash shop prices in the genre right? It's like $40AUD now to swap servers. The fucking expansion is $60. Ridiculous.

+They sell gold now via WoW tokens.

Oh and if you think the first round of Allied Races aren't anything more than a cash grab you're delusional.

lol. Yes character services are quite expensive. You obviously haven't seen a real cash grab MMO though with a cash shop. "LIMITED TIME ONLY SPECIAL GREEN EYE CAT WAIFU TRANSMOG!" every month.

Oh, we get what 2 mounts a year and a pet or two?

[Advent]

lol. Yes character services are quite expensive. You obviously haven't seen a real cash grab MMO though with a cash shop. "LIMITED TIME ONLY SPECIAL GREEN EYE CAT WAIFU TRANSMOG!" every month.

Oh, we get what 2 mounts a year and a pet or two?

3 words. Black Desert Online. Ugh...

[Sansnom]

Tell me i am wrong, but it feels like WoW lost it touch more and more each expansion. The game feels so much dumped down then their glory days of million of active players.

What happened to the MMORPG part, where thousands of pple were at 1 zone. Now we got sharding that ruins the MMO feeling.
We got scaling on each mob/quest/zone, now everything scales up to your gear.

PvP is scaled up so everyone is as strong as eachother.

Has Blizzard lost their touch? I feel like Blizzard forgot the meaning of MMORPG.

None of what you mention has anything to do with "dumb" down. If I am wrong, then please elaborate why these things are considered to be dumming down the game.

[cparle87]

Oh and if you think the first round of Allied Races aren't anything more than a cash grab you're delusional.

Yeah, they were so totally obviously a cash grab to entice people to buy race changes that they explicitly said you couldn't race change if you wanted the racial armor. Glad to see you're banned again.

[Aega]

Blizzard has no choice but to fine-tune the game depending on its main target audience's intellectual capabilities, LQ, motivation and patience to learn those new skills. The framework does not change: how must we tune the game to ensure best subscription numbers at any given time?

You cannot have a smarter game while the subscribers show a decline in mental capacity and growing aversion to put the right amount of effort into anything they do, especially a game.

And those who are exceptions and go against this trend, are not wasting their best years playing MMOs, the most they come in contact with their 'homo ludens' side, is when using gamification in a professional environment.

[MasterHamster]

Wall of ranting ahead!

Yes, it is being dumbed down, and it has gone much too far. Many changes has made a lot of sense, and I cannot fault Blizzard for most of them. They made sense at the time and had a lot of community support. Sadly it's quite a lot of "You think you do, but you don't." where that statement is actually true.

WoW has devolved to an MMO-ARPG that has sacrificed almost everything that used to give RPGs depth and complexity in favor of extremely streamlined fighting-air-style combat button-mashing, that tries to be so accessible that all basic challenge is moved to opt-in content like high M+ and organized raids.

Everything else is a guaranteed success, hollow husk of what used to keep people occupied, immersed and interested in the games for hours upon hours. Now you hit the next max level, spend 2-3 afternoons gearing up and it's back to two-shotting everything as usual.
Motivation being that since there *is* challenging cutting edge content, this isn't an issue. If you want a challenge, go join a high level M+, or a heroic raid! Then it's okay that all the "baseline" content is a dull, mindless chore that you just want over with.

Just look at what has happened to leveling once this went out of hand, when the "base" world content and dungeons become facerollable with or without heirlooms, suddenly gear didn't matter anymore. Talent system changed and suddenly you only had one talent choice every 15 levels, all other customization is effectively done the moment you've chosen your spec. No need to focus on professions on the side, because why craft anything that'll be a gray item within a couple of hours anyway?

Why care about those talents or abilities that grants you stuns or improved silences, when nothing in the world that can be interrupted actually hurts? Why use Kick or Silence when mob spells hit for 3% of your healthbar exactly? Don't you just love it when your lvl 45 talent row does absolutely nothing for you when leveling so 31-59 is pretty much dead other than a new ability or two?

And these causes the next issue, where people utterly despise leveling yet they can't figure out any other "fix" but to make it faster, that just further compounds the problem. A mindless, godmode mash-button fest with zero depth, and your "choices" don't matter. Gear doesn't matter. Professions doesn't matter. Nothing but holding W and mindlessly mashing 1-5 until the mob is dead. New quest zones are only there to tell a story (and be filled with mindlessly easy WQs and 'group elites' you can solo on a dps class) since you're never actually threatened. The storyline's big bad is just a regular mob you will kill in 20 seconds instead of 8.

So after the leveling stage, you hit maxlevel where the design paradigm of "If people want a challenge they can opt for it" reigns surpreme. Heroic dungeons, LFR, island expeditions... can probably wipe the group for a few days and then we're overgeared to insanity. And bonus! Now with secondary stats streamlined to perfection, you never have to care about such boring things like hit rating, expertise, armor penetration, or plateaus. Because you know, a higher ilvl should always be an upgrade, we don't want you to actually know anything about your class. If you can decide whether i250 or i245 has the highest number, that's all you need to know.

Now you may be making the mistake of thinking I'm some arrogant, hardcore mythic raider who scoff at all the plebs beneath me and anyone who doesn't clear Mythic on 3 characters per week and you'd be on the polar opposite of the truth. I do not raid, and I do not enjoy high M+ that's more about fighting a timer than the bosses. It's nothing but a rush to the finish (can't have content that makes people stop and think for a moment can you?)
I am a casual scrub who wants to conquer a new continent, I want to experience a proper MMORPG where I can fail even if I play well, because I don't have the gear yet or I made a crucial mistake.

I want the game to stop apologizing whenever I fail as a result of paying more attention to YouTube on my second monitor. I hate the fact that it takes a couple of afternoons at the new maxlevel doing mindlessly easy content and you have the gear to pretty much solo everything outside of group content. I want to enter a dungeon with new people but still face content that makes us want to use CC, maybe even fail at a boss more than once because the dps is just zerging. Comparing to what we're getting since MoP, Cataclysm dungeon design was miles ahead. I want to see gear upgrades actually unlock more available content. Content I previously simply couldn't beat because my gear was garbage. It's as if Blizzard is afraid of using the bare basics of RPGs to pace the game, challenge players and make them work a bit in order to succeed. Because that's what makes the reward all the sweeter. Finally getting the boss down after using communication and pushing your character is what makes it fun, not the exp/hour or calculating how many bosses there's left to kill before I'm ready for the first raid.

I hate to see my favorite game of all time make these tiny yet together significant changes that is killing the game off.
Death by a thousand cuts would be an apt description.

[varik]

WoW is dumbed down, dont think so.

Some membrers of the community are dumbed down, sure yes.

[Gavll]

They've definitely diluted the complexity in general (with the removal of interesting secondary stats and actual talent trees) and tried to shift it all to Mythic raiding / M+

But at the same time since the early era (Classic - TBC), they've made most classes way more complicated to play.

It's still a fun game for a 1-2 month period but I don't think it can capture me for years on end like the older era did.

- - - Updated - - -

Wall of ranting ahead!
...snip...

Good post /10