How to actually bring players back next expansion:

[Eggroll]

I don't think theres much of anything that would bring people back after Blizz's antics lately.

I dunno. The hype around the start of the xpac was extreme. Imo that shows people still WANT to play this game. But lack of quality in game design is just so shocking, it makes for a shallow and unengaging, forgettable experience. People want to play a BLIZZARD game with Blizzard quality or else they will quit quickly.

I had really hoped they wouldn't blow it this time.. but they did Plus the general theme of the xpac isn't exactly uplifting as much as it is depressing.

A nelf fan and player hasn't really got anything to look forward to this xpac.

[CaptainV]

Yeah slowing down progression is literally what Blizz has been doing since WoD, im sorry but slowing progress is exactly the problem, not the solution.

[Dawon]

As much as id like that they just can't, there isnt enough story to restart with a new game. Given enough time maybe, but they seem hellbent on offering new expansions every two years now no matter the state its in. I do think this game is fixable truly, its just going to need to lean on its roots and mesh the best of the past with the present, i think they are going to learn a lot with classic.

Yeah that's why I wrote "restart the story". Pretend nothing happened, we're back at square 1 with Ragnaros, Nefarian and god knows what... just a complete story/lore reset and try to make it different this time, taking other turns, no more dimension jumping and timewalking bullcrap... just a nice plain story from start to "finish".

[Fascinate]

Yeah slowing down progression is literally what Blizz has been doing since WoD, im sorry but slowing progress is exactly the problem, not the solution.

I don't necessarily mean just the raid schedule, its the way we get there as well. While you need catch up systems in this game, the level its at right now is far too skewed in favor of the one hour a day player. LFR exists for a purpose, there is no reason that i should be able to afk an entire expansion and have a gear score equal to the heroic version of the raid even when you consider a new raid is coming in a month. I should at max be 350 item level with the activities ive been doing, maybe even lower.

I just feel everything needs to slow down, raids/gear/expansion release dates. The 2 year expansion cycle just isnt good for the game, only their bottom line.

[Deleted]

Ideas are like ass*oles, everyone has them. In less than 2 minutes I can come up with 10 simple steps to fix the game as well.
1. Bring back reforging.
2. Get rid of stupid prismatic slots and bring back colored socket slots with bonuses for matching the colors.
3. Bring back tier sets.
4. Remove titanforge.
5. Remove stupid mission tables.
6. Remove grindfest, time filler items like artifact weapons and azerite necklaces.
7. Fix lore by simply placing a stable horde warchief everyone likes and a stable alliance king everyone likes, and let them hate each other for a few expansions.
etc

I'm not even putting any thought into it and I'm sure most people would agree with me at least 70%. But those are just ideas that will never come to fruition. They are absolutely meaningless and worthless.

[WoWDontu]

~Sit down and figure out the most fun specs/abilities classes have had in the past 15 years and make the most fun spec you can. A good example of this would be a shadow priest with mana returning vampiric embrace from tbc combined with legion voidform. Or tbc shadow combined with shadow orb playstyle, you get the idea. (obviously for this to make sense you need to make mana matter again, hint hint)
~Bring back role playing elements (hunter pet system is a good example)
~Slow down the pace of progression/stop giving away epics. Im 371 and havent stepped into the raid nor done a single mythic + dungeon (aka no weekly cache). Pretty ridiculous that i have heroic gear and have basically afk'd the entire xpac blizzard.
~Bring back high end profession recipes that are locked behind rep, or rng based. People like being special, not everyone should be able to craft everything.
~Bring back profession bonuses to combat, people love the feeling of being rewarded to play the game, even if professions arent their most favorite thing to do.
~De-homogenize the classes. Stop trying to be fair to everyone, we dont all need to be within 5% of each others damage to feel useful in a raid. TBC shadow is again a great example of this. Go back to the role playing roots this game started from, fairness should be secondary to fun/class identity.
~Profession items should add more to character power (gems, enchants etc), like they used to. This not only makes sense from a game play point of view, it again encourages RPG aspects.
~Bring back reforging. You really dropped the ball on this one blizzard, sure it wasnt convenient to hearth back to a city to reforge during a raid but who cares, the beneifts far outweighed the negatives and reforging was an awesome way to tune your character to its strengths.
~Make pvp mirror pve 1:1 like it used to. You know you ruined pvp when you started balancing the game as two different entities, i could only imagine how low pvp participation was in legion. Balance the game the best you can as a whole like you used to and the game will be better for it.

I really want to add to that list a "remove collections" tab option but thats a bit extreme, i just think that is too much of a focus for far too large a percentage of the playerbase. Dont get me wrong im not sitting here trying to tell people how to enjoy the game, i just feel mounts/pets/achievements have become center stage for a lot of players, and that isnt what makes a good mmo.

I wrote this out in 5 minutes, feel free to add your thoughts if you have any chat.

I'll stick to what makes me enjoy this game nowadays... arena and mount collecting

[ArenaDk]

Hehh...the irony....WoW peaked at 12 million, now? God knows, but I wonder if it is more than 5.....at best (my personal guess is rougly 3-3,5) No wonder they moving devs from the game...Means the game is soooo good and better, more and more people leaves every day...good job, keep it up

I want to remind you that if woltk would be released today , it would be called worse than Wod.

Really boring old quest design.
Villain comes all the time taunting ( would be called cartoon villain)
First raid tier was a under tuned 1:1 copy of a existing raid
Heroic dungeons were far to easy ( would be called game for the casuals )
3 1 Boss Raids ( LAZY DEVS)
Let’s not even start with the tournament.
Pvp was so unbalanced that it was almost fun, oh not if you didn’t were a dk or paladin
Ulduar war Fine
ICC was Time gated , brought free heroic 25er loot for everyone and had 2 good boss fights.

[Mysteries]

There is no secret formula to increasing subs to a game that has become stale after over 14 years. Your suggestions are reasonable, but they won't guarantee anything.

[Fascinate]

I'll stick to what makes me enjoy this game nowadays... arena and mount collecting

That's why my post was more about adding than removing, who am i to say what people should enjoy about an mmo? I think mount collectors should exist in this game, the reason i added that last bit was to put a spotlight on the fact its almost taken center stage over things like class design or core design fundamentals this game used to be built upon, and why i feel a return to that is important for the health of the game.

[shise]

Maybe that's because pretty much everything the game has to offer now is literal shit?

That´s your opinion.

[Fascinate]

There is no secret formula to increasing subs to a game that has become stale after over 14 years. Your suggestions are reasonable, but they won't guarantee anything.

That's the million dollar question now isnt it?

A lot of the magic this game used to have can make a return if they dial the right knobs, i truly believe that. I think WoW classic is going to give them a ton of information about this exact topic.

[bloodmoth13]

Basically, make wow mmoRPG again, as in this moment i feels like mmoactiongame or mommoba..
Class design is so dumb and boring because of it, almost every single class is just about mashing four buttons, they really need bring back some class fantasy at this point like paladins using seals, auras etc, rogue making his poisons again, druid using seeds for some of his spells and i can continue with talent threes and others things peaople asking for since beginning of wod, but unfortunately at this moment it seems blizz is at "you think you do but you don't" mindset

What are you actually asking for though? auras and poisons arent fun, thematic yes, but they are passive and uninteractive. is it the mechanics or the thematics you want?

This game however has for the most part turned into a guitar hero pvp game where you arent battling bosses, solving mysteries or saving the world but rather executing a rotation flawlessly and doing it better than the 2 other dps in your dungeon group or the 18 other dps in your raid.

Honestly the problem with the game is a problem with the playerbase, and possibly a design issue that accomodates this. The game of world of warcraft, the competetive game, isnt within a single dungeon run or raid schedule, its competing against other players on the server through gear scores and boss kills. This game relies on the pool of players being relatively close in power levels to be fun to play, if you fall behind the curve you can get left behind with nothing to do and get isolated from the rest of the player base.
To blizzards credit, they have done a lot to remedy this, raid finder, mythic keystones (gives high level players rewards for helping low level players) catch up gear etc. though there are a lot of players that argue against these things, that they are cheap unauthentic and lower the prestige of the players who beat the content honestly, and they are right, but they argue for something that would likely kill the game because without catch up mechanisms a large majority of the players would be left behind and likely quit.

Anyway, i dont think that class fantasy will be sated with boring buffs and passive auras. they seem fun initially but boil down to nothing but forgetful passives. i think mechanically classes need some better fleshing out, for example plate dps classes should be on the front line dealing and taking damage, but with the way threat is handled only the tank takes damage, and hybrid healer dps classes should be slinging out heals when able and providing support, but dont and cant because dps are dps and thats all they are intended to be and expected to do, and doing anything that lowers your dps is wrong.

I think class fantasy can come back through mechanics, but it would take a threat system revamp along with some class archetypes and templates been set.

Another issue with giving single classes unique things is that they are generally either completely necessary or completely irrelevant, if its necessary then its unfair for a single class to have something so completely required that assures them a raid position based solely on what it is. take interrupts for example, initially not every melee had an interrupt, but over time making them necessary meant sharing the tools with more players, which was a net positive for the game as it made combat more interesting (seriously old dungeon bosses were boring as fuck, even if you did interrupt their abilities it seemingly did nothing)
I dont think we will ever go back to shadow priest mana batteries, they wound up changing the mechanic, sharing it with others then removing it because it wasnt good gameplay, and im not really sorry to see it gone in its former form.

If i brought it back, it would be optional as a talent and compete with other interesting and powerful utility talents. What giving mana to healers means today is allowing them to heal more inneficiently, using their more powerful heals more often. Essentially its indirect healing, so it can compete with other talents that reduce or restore incoming damage.
For example, a shadow priest that had a talent tier with 1 talent that allowed them to passively distribute their mana to healers while maintaining their rotation, one talent that makes their shadow heal buff their next mind blast (no net dps gain, only dps compensation for off healing) or a CC spell that stuns or fears a single enemy target (or group)

What i would like to see to accomodate this is a complete revamp on threat so more players are taking direct damage, and more overall incoming damage but more avenues to reduce it, such as heavy dps or pet classes off tanking, pure dps classes debuffing or CCing and hybrids off healing incoming damage. the power of this utility should be far above what we have now and integral to group success on harder difficulties. ideally it could even be possible to do dungeon content without dedicated tanks or healers but running efficient heavy dps (bruisers) and off healer support dps.

[Deleted]

I want to remind you that if woltk would be released today , it would be called worse than Wod.

Villain comes all the time taunting ( would be called cartoon villain)

Actually that was one of the most awesome features for me... Arthas was everywhere, everything was connected. It felt like im on an epic journey, chasing the big bad.

BfA... worst thing is that they split half of the content between factions. Thats it for me. It feels random events, merely connected. Its a BORING story.

[Mercane]

A lot of the magic this game used to have can make a return if they dial the right knobs, i truly believe that. I think WoW classic is going to give them a ton of information about this exact topic.

I think WoW Classis is going to be nearly DoA. I mean- I'm sure it will have a good 250-300k players, which would be considered a 'success' for any other company, but we got Activision at the helm now boys.

[Fascinate]

I think WoW Classis is going to be nearly DoA. I mean- I'm sure it will have a good 250-300k players, which would be considered a 'success' for any other company, but we got Activision at the helm now boys.

Ya kinda like the snes classic was DO....oh wait.

- - - Updated - - -

What are you actually asking for though? auras and poisons arent fun, thematic yes, but they are passive and uninteractive. is it the mechanics or the thematics you want?

This game however has for the most part turned into a guitar hero pvp game where you arent battling bosses, solving mysteries or saving the world but rather executing a rotation flawlessly and doing it better than the 2 other dps in your dungeon group or the 18 other dps in your raid.

Honestly the problem with the game is a problem with the playerbase, and possibly a design issue that accomodates this. The game of world of warcraft, the competetive game, isnt within a single dungeon run or raid schedule, its competing against other players on the server through gear scores and boss kills. This game relies on the pool of players being relatively close in power levels to be fun to play, if you fall behind the curve you can get left behind with nothing to do and get isolated from the rest of the player base.
To blizzards credit, they have done a lot to remedy this, raid finder, mythic keystones (gives high level players rewards for helping low level players) catch up gear etc. though there are a lot of players that argue against these things, that they are cheap unauthentic and lower the prestige of the players who beat the content honestly, and they are right, but they argue for something that would likely kill the game because without catch up mechanisms a large majority of the players would be left behind and likely quit.

Anyway, i dont think that class fantasy will be sated with boring buffs and passive auras. they seem fun initially but boil down to nothing but forgetful passives. i think mechanically classes need some better fleshing out, for example plate dps classes should be on the front line dealing and taking damage, but with the way threat is handled only the tank takes damage, and hybrid healer dps classes should be slinging out heals when able and providing support, but dont and cant because dps are dps and thats all they are intended to be and expected to do, and doing anything that lowers your dps is wrong.

I think class fantasy can come back through mechanics, but it would take a threat system revamp along with some class archetypes and templates been set.

Another issue with giving single classes unique things is that they are generally either completely necessary or completely irrelevant, if its necessary then its unfair for a single class to have something so completely required that assures them a raid position based solely on what it is. take interrupts for example, initially not every melee had an interrupt, but over time making them necessary meant sharing the tools with more players, which was a net positive for the game as it made combat more interesting (seriously old dungeon bosses were boring as fuck, even if you did interrupt their abilities it seemingly did nothing)
I dont think we will ever go back to shadow priest mana batteries, they wound up changing the mechanic, sharing it with others then removing it because it wasnt good gameplay, and im not really sorry to see it gone in its former form.

If i brought it back, it would be optional as a talent and compete with other interesting and powerful utility talents. What giving mana to healers means today is allowing them to heal more inneficiently, using their more powerful heals more often. Essentially its indirect healing, so it can compete with other talents that reduce or restore incoming damage.
For example, a shadow priest that had a talent tier with 1 talent that allowed them to passively distribute their mana to healers while maintaining their rotation, one talent that makes their shadow heal buff their next mind blast (no net dps gain, only dps compensation for off healing) or a CC spell that stuns or fears a single enemy target (or group)

What i would like to see to accomodate this is a complete revamp on threat so more players are taking direct damage, and more overall incoming damage but more avenues to reduce it, such as heavy dps or pet classes off tanking, pure dps classes debuffing or CCing and hybrids off healing incoming damage. the power of this utility should be far above what we have now and integral to group success on harder difficulties. ideally it could even be possible to do dungeon content without dedicated tanks or healers but running efficient heavy dps (bruisers) and off healer support dps.

Obviously there are trade offs for some of the things i think would better the game, but i view most things in WoW with a lesser evil mindset. I think giving classes their identity back would overall be better for the game, and in my mana battery example that wouldnt apply to just healers, i think they need to make mana matter again for DPS casters. Being a mana battery in TBC was so fun because people would literally fight over you to be in their groups, its those sorts of situations in the game that make people fall in love with WoW.

My examples are of shadow priests because that is what ive played the most since i started in 2006, but surely other classes have examples that made them fall in love with their spec but has been lost over time for whatever reason blizz deemed fit.

[hasslehoof]

Step 1: Make the Game not complete shit.

Wow, I solved it pretty much.

[G3 Ghost]

Ya kinda like the snes classic was DO....oh wait

I've seen this argument before and it's fairly stupid.

There is a monumental difference between sitting down with some classic NES/SNES games for an hour or two and logging into a game that takes literal weeks to progress.

OT: A big improvement would be getting rid of Azerite traits. It's not fun to grind out and farm for specific traits only to have them ripped out from under you and made wet noodle (former rogue main here).

[A Chozo]

That's just fluff.

The game's core needs work. Like, the RPG part, the Game part. I think that WoW has too many systems and interfaces cluttering a basic RPG experience. Like, in a World Quest, you are doing a service to someone, yet this person appears as a floating head talking to you, and there's no explanation to such stuff. Or when you finish an Island Expedition, the loot simply appears in your bag - who did you kill that dropped it?

Basic stuff. Better lore, especially lore explained in-game. This is what this game needs.

Not "reforging".

[ArenaDk]

That's just fluff.

The game's core needs work. Like, the RPG part, the Game part. I think that WoW has too many systems and interfaces cluttering a basic RPG experience. Like, in a World Quest, you are doing a service to someone, yet this person appears as a floating head talking to you, and there's no explanation to such stuff. Or when you finish an Island Expedition, the loot simply appears in your bag - who did you kill that dropped it?

Basic stuff. Better lore, especially lore explained in-game. This is what this game needs.

Not "reforging".

We had before 8.0.1 that only specific mobs drop islands in island expedition. But you can imagine it as all the loot from the island is getting put on the ship and shared afterwards. I would highly advise to not hate against the system because they tried something new , which the game needs.

And about world quests. Don’t you know how it is in movies when you are already somewhere but still the voice from the briefing is being played ? It is never written in a way as if the person is telepathic talking to you.

This things don’t hurt a RPG, but your comment about them does

[Fascinate]

I've seen this argument before and it's fairly stupid.

There is a monumental difference between sitting down with some classic NES/SNES games for an hour or two and logging into a game that takes literal weeks to progress.

OT: A big improvement would be getting rid of Azerite traits. It's not fun to grind out and farm for specific traits only to have them ripped out from under you and made wet noodle (former rogue main here).

I don't see the disconnect, at all. Its retro gaming on both sides of the coin, and they couldn't produce enough snes classics to satiate the market. Also you dont need to play 10 hours a day to enjoy classic, millions of people played a couple hours a day and it took them months to hit 60.

I think blizz will learn a lot from classic and what they can and cannot interject back into the game, who knows maybe this is by design.....two birds with one stone kind of deal.