Blizzard destroyed 3 RPG gaming fantasies along the years

[uopayroll]

Every expansion was different and every single one of them had one "environment" where we all lived.
The thing is, Blizzard, without knowing, destroyed several "fantasies" or "environments" from the game and on its way destroyed several niche communities.
Could this be the cause to the games decline?

Lets have a look to the past and see what communities were destroyed (that i know of):

-Customization Nerds
Wotlk was the golden age of customization. It was the peak of hybrid talent trees, introduction of Glyphs, meta gem and gems in nearly all slots of gear.
The possibilities werent endless but they were many for many classes.
This was the time when WoW was trully an RPG and people had fun theory crafting...well, at least the "customization nerds" did.

-Overpowered with Gear
There was no scaling in the older days and if you had gear you could take on several people on your own.
A true "player empowerment" experience where you nearly felt like a God amongst peasants
Very powerful fantasy for many PvP'ers

-Prestigious Raider
Only one raid difficulty and hardcore like TBC, with no transmog and actual raid tier pieces.
All this together made raiding what it was.
A prestigious place to be and players showered with all the prestige a man could desire.
Cool fantasy lost with time.

-----

Did any change destroyed the environment you enjoyed?

Customization Nerds? You mean the two or three website everyone would go to to be told what talents, gems, enchants, reforges to do. This is why they changed it

Overpowered with gear? fun for those few that had the gear, not anybody else. This is why they changed it

Prestigious Raiders? Not in game they weren't. They were either in an instance farming for gear, or already had it and selling runs. Any perceived prestige was given outside the game on third party websites. This is why it was changed.

[Deleted]

I lose my marbles everytime someone says that

Please see page 2 post#33 for more info

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Thank God i have a customization nerd brother in this thread
Thank you brother

I've spent the last 3 days building and playing with every amour set and weapon type and tree in mhw and I haven't Evean started the "real game" yet. Still need to kill the fire breathing trex thing. But just going on hunts for parts for gear has kept me entertained no end.

That's how an rpg should be.

Oh and resistances. Should never have been removed from wow. Having resistances on different bosses in mhw makes you need to play around with weapons and gear

[Kyrua]

Matchmaking is not solo play. Just because people don't talk much in lfr or dungeons doesn't mean you can just go in and solo them. At least not while they're current content.

Try queuing into raid finder and telling the rest of the raid to just stand back while you do this 'single player.'

if you wanna be more precise and picky:
What he meant wasn't that the content can be cleared alone as a single entity, but that you can play and behave in every single content like a solo player.
You are right for the first part, he is right for the second one.
Thing is, none of you are wrong (sadly?).

[Deleted]

Saying "why would someone hurt their output like that" without seeing the reason is like saying "why don't everyone play the highest theoretical dps class each patch? Why are they choosing to play a worse class/spec". The obvious answer is because enjoyment > slight advantage.

Im going to steal that argument for future discussions thanks, its a good one

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I've spent the last 3 days building and playing with every amour set and weapon type and tree in mhw and I haven't Evean started the "real game" yet. Still need to kill the fire breathing trex thing. But just going on hunts for parts for gear has kept me entertained no end.

That's how an rpg should be.

Oh and resistances. Should never have been removed from wow. Having resistances on different bosses in mhw makes you need to play around with weapons and gear

Yeah the customization in MHW is pretty nice.
Its a shame that game is not as social as it used to be in the PS2 and WII days.

[Deleted]

Yeah. 2 & 3 were never fantasies of mine so good riddance.

They wete but you were too lazy to work for it so people like you demanded cuttering. Becouse if you cant have it nobady can right?

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Customization Nerds? You mean the two or three website everyone would go to to be told what talents, gems, enchants, reforges to do. This is why they changed it

Overpowered with gear? fun for those few that had the gear, not anybody else. This is why they changed it

Prestigious Raiders? Not in game they weren't. They were either in an instance farming for gear, or already had it and selling runs. Any perceived prestige was given outside the game on third party websites. This is why it was changed.

Nothing but lies next...

[Deleted]

Im going to steal that argument for future discussions thanks, its a good one

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Yeah the customization in MHW is pretty nice.
Its a shame that game is not as social as it used to be in the PS2 and WII days.

If found it fairly well populated since the pc release in August. It's really opened my eyes to how fucking terrible wow is and really always was as an rpg experience.

The bosses in wow are so scripted and regimented, the combat has so little depth it just sad that anyone could call wow as a "game" ever good.

As a social platform is was amazing but gameplay..... Just shit.

[Nerovar]

Ban all normies. Fixed the game for you.

[redwolfrain]

No, its not true...

Cookie cutter only exists in raiding environment to min max DPS.
There is no such thing as cookie cutter in World content, Rated PvP and Casual PvP...

In this environments versatility, utility, CC, Healing, tanking, survivability are more important than min maxing DPS.

If you cant see this...
If you played WOTLK...wooosh, all hybrid talents went over your head.
Because probably you werent a PvP'er at the time and you didnt enjoy customization.

I'd be willing to bet half of these people started in cata or later, the old talent trees were awesome unless you were a brain dead zombie that needed those websites to talent.

[Pickynerd]

The problem with the game is that with all the changes they have made over the years, you're basically doing the same thing over and over.

People want something different, but like wow, see all the wow2 threads.

[Florena]

I look at it this way; in order to complete something, you need to be able to communicate and talk among the team, to complete the goal.

You are right; those are not "solo play" in terms of playing the actual game, however - I feel compared to older expansions; it's much more singular experience then team-oriented.

Try running any content in BC/Wraith (at appropriate gear levels) LFR, Dungeons, PVP, all of that doesn't need communication, when back in the day; you needed too.

And you still need it for meaningful content in the game. Sure you can queue up for a random bg and say nothing. You could do that in vanilla too. If you're going to push rating though or do rbgs, you should be communicating with your team.

SUre you can spam heroic dungeons without a word, but you're going to need to communicate for mythic +.

I mean, you can choose to limit yourself to the lowest rungs of content if you want, but even lfr runs I go into have people communicating, going over strats, calling out stragglers now and then, etc.

[Katchii]

Sometimes it can be fun to play not like the others or to play with a hindrance, you never know. Or to play with something you are comfortable of using even if its not optimal.

I can't really argue against this, fun is subjective, I can absolutely accept that. As I said, I personally just have difficulty wrapping my head around how someone can have fun doing something using a wacky build knowing there's a "better" or more optimal one for that purpose. I am honestly just one of the kinds of people that just wants to play the game, I don't like or find much enjoyment in experimenting with builds and gear and figuring out what works best..I just want to quest, kill things, run dungeons...just NOT worry about those kinds of details.

I understand that today's game removed those kinds of details so don't have much negative to say except that the pruning went a bit too far (seriously...you think we're too stupid to use more then 4 buttons for anything?). It is unfortunate that people lost this level of fun due to the changes. I personally find the trade-off worth it though. Being able to have a fully defined and realized spec identity and fantasy early due to getting the iconic abilities and skills for choosing the spec is great IMO.

[Reachie]

And you still need it for meaningful content in the game. Sure you can queue up for a random bg and say nothing. You could do that in vanilla too. If you're going to push rating though or do rbgs, you should be communicating with your team.

SUre you can spam heroic dungeons without a word, but you're going to need to communicate for mythic +.

I mean, you can choose to limit yourself to the lowest rungs of content if you want, but even lfr runs I go into have people communicating, going over strats, calling out stragglers now and then, etc.

You are 100% correct, meaningful content you definitely need to play with good people, and have communication.

I guess I should of said "Lower rungs of content takes zero teamwork and can all be done solo"

[Kithelle]

snip

How are gems customization? All you basically did was buy the best gem(s) and threw them into a slot....if you got the slot bonus good...but often the slot bonus was ignored. There were never many many specs that actually were hybrid and it was a illusion of choice...you could either make a good build or make your own build and be weaker for it. So don't pretend there were all of these customization options...you either did what was best or you did what was weaker.

Overpowered with gear was so stupid...having gear be more important than skill is flat out horrible design...of course it was a fantasy because people went easy wins to feel tough.

Only one raid difficulty made it so that one difficulty was more accessible to everyone, which makes it less prestigious than clearing Mythic raids now.

[Deleted]

How are gems customization? All you basically did was buy the best gem(s) and threw them into a slot....if you got the slot bonus good...but often the slot bonus was ignored. There were never many many specs that actually were hybrid and it was a illusion of choice...you could either make a good build or make your own build and be weaker for it. So don't pretend there were all of these customization options...you either did what was best or you did what was weaker.

How can gems be good customization?
From the top of my head (and this is just from the top of my head, so the actual possibilities are more) if you have healing habilities that heal % of HP you can full gem stamina to heal more.
As a rogue we could go Hemo, serrated blades and mace specialization...and gem armor penetration...and /cast expose armor.
Having a full armor penetration build
This was a thing in wrath

The Illusion of choice is only true for raiding in particular.
For more info see page 2 post #33 please

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Man I loved not going to icyveins.com and looking up talent trees.

Man I loved inherently losing because I wasn't a hardcore raider with the best gear.

Man this game was so good back when the only reason I liked it was because I was a kid and didn't know how badly I was screwing myself over.

[Kithelle]

How can gems be good customization?
From the top of my head (and this is just from the top of my head, so the actual possibilities are more) if you have healing habilities that heal % of HP you can full gem stamina to heal more.
As a rogue we could go Hemo, serrated blades and mace specialization...and gem armor penetration...and /cast expose armor.
Having a full armor penetration build
This was a thing in wrath

The Illusion of choice is only true for raiding in particular.
For more info see page 2 post #33 please

I didn't say there were no viable hybrids...there just weren't many...often when you went off the beaten path with the old school talent trees you hurt yourself.

[Lurker1]

Everything still exists,you're just too old for this game.

Bingo right on the money the problem is sooner or later people get tired of playing the same game regardless of its a good game one can only play one game so long before they want to try new games and expansions alone won't be enough then.Over a decade old game even i myself is about to start playing and trying new mmorpg soon this year later on to see if i can play something different maybe one day.

[therealbowser]

Every expansion was different and every single one of them had one "environment" where we all lived.
The thing is, Blizzard, without knowing, destroyed several "fantasies" or "environments" from the game and on its way destroyed several niche communities.
Could this be the cause to the games decline?

Lets have a look to the past and see what communities were destroyed (that i know of):

-Customization Nerds
Wotlk was the golden age of customization. It was the peak of hybrid talent trees, introduction of Glyphs, meta gem and gems in nearly all slots of gear.
The possibilities werent endless but they were many for many classes.
This was the time when WoW was trully an RPG and people had fun theory crafting...well, at least the "customization nerds" did.

-Overpowered with Gear
There was no scaling in the older days and if you had gear you could take on several people on your own.
A true "player empowerment" experience where you nearly felt like a God amongst peasants
Very powerful fantasy for many PvP'ers

-Prestigious Raider
Only one raid difficulty and hardcore like TBC, with no transmog and actual raid tier pieces.
All this together made raiding what it was.
A prestigious place to be and players showered with all the prestige a man could desire.
Cool fantasy lost with time.

-----

Did any change destroyed the environment you enjoyed?

Blizzard shattered the illusion I had of having a choice for where I wanted to put my talents. But I still enjoyed playing with them and I miss it terribly none the less. I find the current talent system to be more interesting, but flawed in a somewhat similar way (ironically) in most cases.

I don't miss players in gear feeling "overpowered", and that is infact probably the thing I am most happy to see gone.

I never felt like raiding made people feel prestigious any more then than now. The difference is that players can all access the same content instead of it being developed for ~5% of the community. I sure as hell do not miss arbitrary time gates, especially. I don't enjoy gearing up an entire raid over months to move on to the next tier, either. In general, there are a ton of archaic systems regarding raiding I just don't miss. I still get excited to see who plays best in raids (world first races) and I am impressed by people who complete mythic raids.

Furthermore, most people I have met that go on and on about how great the good old days were and how 'raids made you prestigious' tend to be heroic raiders that don't feel special anymore now that there are a variety of difficulties and they aren't being given exclusive access to content. This probably doesn't apply to the OP, but there is how I typically view posts like that.

PS: You talk about 'customization nerds', but I am far more interested in customizing my gear than I am customizing my talents these days. The thing I am loathing the most about classic is going back to wearing damned clown outfits or intentionally passing on upgrades so as to avoid that fate. Transmog alone may prevent me from playing in classic much.

In general, very little has happened over the years that makes me feel like 'the environment of WoW has been destroyed'. At least, not from a game design aspect. They were little changes over time and I don't feel like the game was destroyed because of it. That said, there were some leaps amongst the small steps.

LFD (Note: Not LFR, and certainly not 'easy/casual raiding' but the LFD system itself.)
This is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I admire the system and I certainly don't want it removed. I've never hated it. But at the same time, it's essentially broken server spirit. This was the change that pushed it over the edge; after this point server communities continually went downhill and never recovered. It's a double-edged sword, though.

Cross-Realm Zones
If LFD caused server communities to crumble, than this was the killing blow. To this day I do not really see the purpose of this 'feature'. It has convenience when its utilize in groups, but in automatically connecting servers... what does it really do? It makes small servers have all of the drawbacks of big servers, and all of the drawbacks of small servers. It makes big servers get cluttered with people on other realms that despise them. It mixes communities that often want nothing to do with eachother, leading to a volatile cocktail that was brewed up exclusively to make the game appear to be more alive on the surface.

This is all I'll really mention for now in terms of gameplay mechanics that I felt actually damaged the game in some way (and in LFD's case, it helped and hindered). Blizzard's design choices are not ones I always agree with, but for the most part the game is alive and growing. It wasn't going to be vanilla forever; if they had never changed the systems, WoW probably wouldn't exist today. It certainly wouldn't be thriving as it has. But to be fair, that's speculation on my part.

The biggest and most critical things that WoW has seen destroyed are not because of Blizzard's gameplay design choices at all, though.

Community spirit
What I mean by this was the spirit you clearly felt in the early days of WoW. The days before memes and trolling were incredibly common place, where basic courtesy existed and your reputation mattered and prevented you from acting like a total asshole. This is the primary reason I dislike LFD's impact on WoW, since it accelerated the downfall of this. In vanilla, TBC, and even WotLK it was alive and thriving, but these days it's gone. Only a shadow of it remains, and most servers are dead anyways. ...and yet, if you play on some of the old servers, you can still see hints of their past in the players who have stayed all of this time...

Activision's obsessive need to monetize the game at all costs
Indirect and unelaborate, but humor me here. The WoW token was effectively the tipping point, and it was treated as a nice bonus at the time (cheap tokens for tons of gametime? What's not to like?). Then they made it apply to Blizzard balance, and all hell broke loose. Yet, despite this, Blizzard has largely let the tokens do their own thing... until Legion, that is, when they decided to start adding very expensive mounts to 'encourage' players to buy more tokens.

Even then, they didn't impact the economy. BFA is the breaking point for me, personally, as they have added a ton of ridiculously expensive mounts... and have directly damage the economy to try and force the gold to deflate. All the methods players had for making gold in the past is gone now. This makes WoW tokens worth less and players feel a need to gain more. Activision has gone from a passive role in the economy to a direct hand in it. It reeks of desperation and it is, in my opinion, damaging the game.

I won't even mention the store since stuff like that is to be expected in this day and age. That said, the fact that Blizzard is temporarily removing certain pets and mounts to try and encourage players to buy them quickly 'before they disappear' doesn't impress me at all. It's a sad state of affairs.

In short I disagree strongly with 2 & 3 and while I miss playing with talents, I don't feel like 'it has destroyed the environment', it's simply changed. The things that are damaging--perhaps even killing--WoW is not the gameplay design choices; Blizzard tries new things and I won't fault them for that. When something doesn't work, they do something else, and learn from their mistakes in that regard. The problem is at the heart of the game; the community and the business; that is, how players interact with eachother, and whether or not quality is sacrificed for $.

Good thread though, and I'm curious what discussions could come from a thread like this all the same.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Every expansion was different and every single one of them had one "environment" where we all lived.
The thing is, Blizzard, without knowing, destroyed several "fantasies" or "environments" from the game and on its way destroyed several niche communities.
Could this be the cause to the games decline?

Lets have a look to the past and see what communities were destroyed (that i know of):

-Customization Nerds
Wotlk was the golden age of customization. It was the peak of hybrid talent trees, introduction of Glyphs, meta gem and gems in nearly all slots of gear.
The possibilities werent endless but they were many for many classes.
This was the time when WoW was trully an RPG and people had fun theory crafting...well, at least the "customization nerds" did.

-Overpowered with Gear
There was no scaling in the older days and if you had gear you could take on several people on your own.
A true "player empowerment" experience where you nearly felt like a God amongst peasants
Very powerful fantasy for many PvP'ers

-Prestigious Raider
Only one raid difficulty and hardcore like TBC, with no transmog and actual raid tier pieces.
All this together made raiding what it was.
A prestigious place to be and players showered with all the prestige a man could desire.
Cool fantasy lost with time.

-----

Did any change destroyed the environment you enjoyed?

It wasn't gear that allowed you take on multiple people but the fact the game wasn't fucking braindead bs. I can hop on legacy servers and kill people naked or with green but I can't do it on live. I beat a level 90 mage as an 85 hunter for example. The reason those things changed is because blizzard dumbed down pvp massively.

The removal of customization hurt the game a lot but mop scaled it back as was well and was still more fun than bfa pvp. In vanilla every class could beat fully epiced out people by playing well regardless of gear. They just dumbed this game down so much man.

[Theangryone]

Ffs, those talent trees were the opposite of customization. You had one viable build and if you didn't have it you didn't get invited.