How to actually bring players back next expansion:

[Knaar]

Bring back a dot-based hunter spec like how Survival used to be! Managing the spells and dots was more fun than the current "it's off cd? press it again!"...

Explosive shot... serpent sting... black arrow.... man that was a fun spec to play!

[pinkz]

How to actually bring players back next expansion:

same way they did for BFA for next expac, do a insane early release purchase with carrots on a stick.

- early access to new X-races
- free instant usable boost to 120
- mount, pet, toy

people will bite, BFA was a huge success on sales numbers, even asmongold ate that carrot, it worked...reroll, add or modify as needed
-

[Prime92]

That´s your opinion.

Cool that you noticed, one might've thought it's a snake. Besides, basically everything supports this oppinion except for some white knights with blind folds over their eyes white knighting for bli$$ard.

[nekobaka]

Its something about the timer, it removes all fun for me. I dont know why, it just does.

At times I can relate when I just want to relax without thinking about mistakes being made and being punished more heavily than just a corps run. On the other hand I have accepted them as the only real way I am going to have engaging small group based content post-Cata.

[Stacie]

I would do the following:
1) Bring back JP/VP style tokens with a cap that you can buy heroic loot with, also lock loot/items behind rep. THIS MAKES REP GRINDING VALUABLE at the start of expan/tier and not pointless.. (Did anyone in BFA really want 355/340 gear from rep vendor or use it? I literally don't no a single person who ever did. Time it was unlocked they had far better.)

2) Ditch Mythic raiding. Bring back "Hard mode" style boss's such as we had in ulduar. This would likely lead to content being cleared much quicker, more people will play alts as a result. It also means the gear gap between top/med players wont be all that different with the top players only really having a couple of items higher from the few hardmode boss's. Gear just would not feel so "our of reach" for the casuals and keep them playing. Shift that "hard mode" play-style over to m+ with same ilvl rewards as the raids + cool mounts, mogs, pets, toys, titles as an incentive.

3) Make Flex raiding new meta, screw the set 20 man mythic setting. Design boss's around it the best you can. If its a little more easy/hard with a few more or less who cares not every boss will be like that and only the very top guilds will care enough. Everyone else can just have fun and play with friends without having to bench them (or be unable to raid because a few don't login)

The game was fun when it was more simple, easy to get into. It should not be a slot machine you play with friends, it should not be about 2-3 days a week hitting head at a wall waiting for that 1 person to stop wiping the raid. It wasn't like this at its peak and it should not be now.

I understand some hardcore people want to be in the best gear possible and way ahead of those filthy casual players. They wish to have a challenge etc etc.. But those players are in the minority in this game very few achieve this. If you design the game around those players ofc the other players in the majority will just give up they want some of the pie also. I'm sure blizzard could come to some sort of "balance" where those hardcore players could still have a challenge and rewards to show off (M+ and hardmode boss's for cosmetic/title/mounts/pets).

[Fascinate]

The future of making World of Warcraft popular and relevant again is not in the past. It's looking ahead.

I'm not sure it's possible but "bring back", "like they used to", "Go back" is all retreading the game. It won't work. Site/forum users are locked tightly into this idea that "correcting" the past is going to change anything. It really won't. Personally I think removing LFD/LFG is a great idea. I'm under no illusion that it wouldn't cripple the game and that people would kill each other trying to get away.

Well im not a game dev right, im just someone who has been playing since 2006 and quickly jotted down a few things i would pick from past xpacs that i thought they had gotten right.

I do think the game needs to draw on its past to regain some former glory, the next expansion should be a greatest hits sort of deal if they want to draw back the most people.

Again, just an opinion and stuff.

[Katsutomai]

but milions of players who stayed in game do not want toxic whining crybabies which left to return

game is so much better without those individuals

- - - Updated - - -



clearly OP

Because people left the game they are "toxic whining crybabies"?

[Fascinate]

I would do the following:
1) Bring back JP/VP style tokens with a cap that you can buy heroic loot with, also lock loot/items behind rep. THIS MAKES REP GRINDING VALUABLE at the start of expan/tier and not pointless.. (Did anyone in BFA really want 355/340 gear from rep vendor or use it? I literally don't no a single person who ever did. Time it was unlocked they had far better.)

2) Ditch Mythic raiding. Bring back "Hard mode" style boss's such as we had in ulduar. This would likely lead to content being cleared much quicker, more people will play alts as a result. It also means the gear gap between top/med players wont be all that different with the top players only really having a couple of items higher from the few hardmode boss's. Gear just would not feel so "our of reach" for the casuals and keep them playing. Shift that "hard mode" play-style over to m+ with same ilvl rewards as the raids + cool mounts, mogs, pets, toys, titles as an incentive.

3) Make Flex raiding new meta, screw the set 20 man mythic setting. Design boss's around it the best you can. If its a little more easy/hard with a few more or less who cares not every boss will be like that and only the very top guilds will care enough. Everyone else can just have fun and play with friends without having to bench them (or be unable to raid because a few don't login)

The game was fun when it was more simple, easy to get into. It should not be a slot machine you play with friends, it should not be about 2-3 days a week hitting head at a wall waiting for that 1 person to stop wiping the raid. It wasn't like this at its peak and it should not be now.

I understand some hardcore people want to be in the best gear possible and way ahead of those filthy casual players. They wish to have a challenge etc etc.. But those players are in the minority in this game very few achieve this. If you design the game around those players ofc the other players in the majority will just give up they want some of the pie also. I'm sure blizzard could come to some sort of "balance" where those hardcore players could still have a challenge and rewards to show off (M+ and hardmode boss's for cosmetic/title/mounts/pets).

I can get behind all of that, and i said earlier in this thread you obviously need to have catch up mechanics but the level its at now its kind of ridiculous. I dont think you should be able to go afk for a couple months, do three days of world quests and have heroic raid gear. I do think there needs to be a bigger gap here and i think people would generally agree with me that this is poor game design.

[bback]

The game is getting old and whatever they do the old days won't come back.

[Fascinate]

The game is getting old and whatever they do the old days won't come back.

That is exactly why i made this thread, i am a huge fan of not only classic WoW but i like SOMETHING from all of the expacs. I think the game is fixable, they just need to touch the right dials and make a greatest hits from all of them.

I am not a doom and gloom type person but i do believe wow is in its biggest down turn ever and its time for blizzard to pull out all the stops.

Another thing to think about for people browsing the thread, what is WoW's core audience now? They arent getting the 12 year olds who watch ninja play fortnite, fortnite is 2018's wow. I think to regain the most subs they are going to need to cater a bit more to the crowd that made this game so popular a decade or so ago.

[Deleted]

Fix is simple - Cut the RNG.
Let casual players be casual and hardcore players wear highest ilvl gear in game. There is nothing wrong with that. WoW has so much content for every type of players, stop trying to make everyone equal. Let people achieve things instead of "giving" things away to LUCKY players.
Maybe rng kept players playing but it crossed the line in BfA and instead of keeping players they rather rage quit the game.

[Niwes]

If a harder 10s is a choice compared to 25s, than maybe, just maybe blizz should listen to what the community wants and change the mythic difficulty to 10 and 10 alone.

It is stupid to balance both 20man and 5 man content at the same time when you need 1 tank per 4 other players in mythic+ but need 1 tank per 9 players in mythic raiding. Same for healing, and also dps utility.

You wouldnt have class stacking as you would need a balanced spread of buffs and shit with 10man.

Also, you wouldnt have to balance 10man harder or anything, 10man in byself was harder to 25m as you would have carry more fails in a try.

thats not a solution. thats a shift of the problem.

wether you have something to offer for ppl that like the big raids, nor you have a solution for the friends and family problem.

sorry, way too less wellthought for me. it solves YOUR problem with 25s but produce problems for others. not that great.

[Marrilaife]

Professions as a "raiding perk" instead of proper part of in-game economy are already here. Gee, I love being ridiculed for having "wrong professions" on my main, because the ones I'm loyal to since wotlk are apparently not the "bis" ones.

"De-homogenized" classes are already here too. And that's why the game sucks. You wanted to play an enhancement shaman, feral druid or even dps warrior? Sorry no m+ for you, only acceptable melee are rogue and demon hunter! Last thing we need is bringing back buff bot role, most boring and unfun playstyle ever. We need to bring back homogenization so people can actually enjoy what they play instead of being rejected or forced to reroll because "sorry, wrong class".

Only thing I agree with the OP with is that the trend we got since Legion to shower people with "catch up" gear from lowest common denominator content is bad. "Catch up" gear should allow you to gear to the point you can do the real endgame, not to replace it! When the best way to play is to unsub for 4 months, come back and get gear from faceroll solo content that is equal to hc raiding / m+ 10 / 1800+ rating arena, then something is wrong. The game actively discourages you from playing, it's better to not play and then jump on catchup bandwagon, and by the end of the season reach similar result as people who played and put the effort. Catch-up gear should only be dispensed after season ends, and new one starts, and during active season be a couple of steps behind, not rival with current gear because it's so close a few lucky titanforges and you're already there. Maybe I'd agree with catch-up gear landing 1-2 weeks before season end, as at that point most things are wrapping up and people want to prepare for new one, with rerolls, alts and returning players. But 1,5 month like now? Or worse, 11 weeks before next season like in Legion which was bam right in the mid of season / tier?

The game was good when people played dungeons, raids, arenas, bgs and other group content that requires some modicum of teamwork, but it degraded into funneling people into wqs and warfronts that are boring and don't promote any social interaction.

[Ghazan Julio]

That yours was an invalid one.

Dungeons have been around since the beginning and all the sudden people are bored of them?

You still don't have a point yourself. Dungeons are fine. Making dungeons a multi-level platform like raids is unnecessary. Ever heard the phrase don't make a mountain out of a mole hill? Blizzard keeps doing that themselves. IT IS a big deal when you're just copying what you did last expansion. They could have made the dungeon system more interesting. The giant mechanism they copy pasted over does not seem to be working well. When you add azerite gear to that, I think it makes the end result or loot feel extremely boring, repetitive, and old.

I do not see creativity. When the game feels original like wrath and mop and legion did, I think the rewards were much more clearly laid out and optional. Especially in MOP. If you want to do the new challenge modes for gear or w/e do them. Now we've jumped to +15s and whatnot again.

[CaptainV]

Heres what they honestly need to fix the current state of WoW:

- RNG: Kill it with fire, no more titanforged/warforged/bonus rolls, bring back the LFD Justice Badge Gear Farm.
- PvP: World PvP Zone, Stop trying to make actual world pvp a thing, its boring.
- Narrative: The Next Expansion should either kill the 2 factions off entirley, or give you the option to choose new factions as part of the starting experience, since the old faction war is dead and has been for a while.
- Raiding: Just, stop, we dont need LFR, or Mythic, we just need to go back to Normal+Heroic, id rather have 4 raids, than 4 raid tiers.
- Warfronts: Frankly one of the best world pve content ideas in the game executed poorly, Id not give up on them, id rather they refined it into a proper pvp feature and made it a world pvp thing.
- Azerite/Artifact/Apexis: Good-fucking-bye, we dont need it, ever, again.
- Garrison Table: It could be interesting if you had followers you could actually DO world quests with, which might give players more personal love for their followers plus making the table actually less fucking pointless, less is more on this feature, less missions, more use of those missions.
- Garrison/Base/Content: Id like to see Garrison return, but id say we can make a compramise, make the next one a player airship where the upper deck is open to everyone but the lower deck is basically exclusive to you + anyone you invite to your group.
- New Regions: Nostalgia isnt fun anymore, id rather have a completley new island/world to expore, than explore the same old Azeroth when we just defeated a titan.
- Class Dynamic/Design: A new ranged dps class is needed to compete with hunters and we defo need a new mail class, blizzard has been avoiding mail classes too much since Leather has 4 classes now which is 4 too many.
- New Races: Possible, but I think there will only be 4 more after Kul'tiran/Zandalari and I think they will already be as follows: (Horde) Mecha Gnomes and Vulpera (Alliance) Sethrak and Redeemed Undead. (Personally id love Vrykul and Eredar to be playable races but we wont see them playable for a while I suspect).
Finally and most importantly:
- Flying at launch, and content built specifically around flying again: Vertical progression was fun, having areas of a map you could not access without a flying mount was interesting, adding mystery to the locale, while ground mount progression just makes that mystery tedious since you know you wont be seeing it till 2 patches later, which is unfun. Make Pathfinder a single progress especially since it seems they're shifting to mini islands per expansion that are grounded anyway.

[Deleted]

"Wanting to" is not the biggest blocker for fixing most of these - budget is. The game is suffering because they don't put enough resources on the development team. The new systems/features of BfA are half-baked and late and there are essentially no class changes apart from minor numerical tweaks. It doesn't matter what they want to do on the team, because they are not given the resources to do it.

I cannot speak to the financial situation of Blizzard (and neither can you for that matter) because I don't have insight into Blizzards internal finances, and I try to keep conjecture to a minimum.

I think it's not a problem of resources, it's a problem of design philosophy and development time. They literally designed themselves into a corner, to attract the attention of people with the low attention spans and mental capability of the average Fortnite player, while simultaneously trying to stick to their moronic goal of releasing new Expansions every year.

The result of the former is a game where nearly every major pull factor for the MMORPG player was sacrificed for "easy of access", "quality of life", instant gratification and an "action centered game design" ... which they are now afraid to give up because they fear it will hurt their customer base. The sad story here is, they don't realize that their customer base is slowly bleeding out anyway, because the game doesn't hold them, the new players it attracts either leave, play on/off and are on average pretty toxic.

The result of the latter is re-hashed content and re-hashes game systems, and in a worst case scenario, like BfA, not just a rehash but a simplification to the point where they become meaningless (e.g. Azerite Armor instead of Artifact Weapons).

[Alex86el]

here's an idea...

remove any type of "incentive" (indirect blackmail) on how often players should log in, what they do while loged in, deadlines and cooldowns they should not miss, dailies, weeklies, and all that crap that dictates our login schedule and ingame schedule.

if you make a fun game, people will still log in.
and as a bonus, it will not feel like a chore checklist every time.

[gutnbrg]

ive been subbed uninterrupted since 2006, maybe that sounds sad to some but ive always enjoyed the game in some way or another. This expansion really is terrible. I keep trying to find something i can enjoy, but i just log on and do some wqs and a few bgs and a mythic+ before i get bored. I cant even get on bored with playing the AH....my time is coming to an end

[Fascinate]

ive been subbed uninterrupted since 2006, maybe that sounds sad to some but ive always enjoyed the game in some way or another. This expansion really is terrible. I keep trying to find something i can enjoy, but i just log on and do some wqs and a few bgs and a mythic+ before i get bored. I cant even get on bored with playing the AH....my time is coming to an end

Yup ~may of 2006 for me, i also have enjoyed something about every xpac and found a way to have fun, this xpac has been the lone expansion that i cant find something i can really dig my heels into, i dont even have a desire to level alts because i dont feel class design is at a level it used to be.

Ill be playing the heck out of classic so there is that, but i also think blizzard could slowly reintroduce game systems from the glory days of WoW to reinvigorate the game.

Then again i could be 100% wrong and people do really enjoy free gear at every turn and having the same abilities as everyone else with different names lol.

[Willhouse]

Shut down all servers for three months.That will bring them back for sure.They wouldnt have anything to complain about.