What is Wrong with WoW? (Your Opinion Edition)

[Spichora]

Good question and the subject that has come up recently way too often. I agree with most of what people say here, th game has been stripped of most fundamental aspects what made it so attractive and satisfying to play.

And it begin in WotLK, when Blizzard introduced all beloved (NO) Looking for raid and looking for group. Hell, even doing quests was a challenge back then, with no indication on map where the quest actually is, using Websites and reading descriptions of quest. I know someone will be happy to drop "but that time wasting and boring", but guess what that was how player interacted with world around you. Exploring, getting into sticky situations in areas, ganked by opposite faction, but when you got your quest delivered that loot felt deserved, actually making difference in your playstyle, not just another # ilvl just to be replaced in next 15 minutes.

Dungeons were not only hard to go through but to find a group was challenging where in every dungeon certain classes shined. Raids and even Dungeons made you stand out from the pack. Because of that, communities were forming, guilds where people bonded and were valued for their skill not their item level. It was an prestige content which was hard and not all the players would be as good as others and thats how it should be. Just because you are paying for subscription doesnt mean that all its content should be allowed from the get go, there is a grind and pruning of skills to each that end content. The gratification and satisfaction comes from that, not everything being chewed up to f*cking nothingness, where your item level defines how viable you are to enter the raid, pressing 4 keys on your keyboard, considering how much pruning has been done to classes.

Player has no more control in planning in gearing, RNG has consumed this game in order to create this void before you are able to decimate the boss fights. Its unfair to playerbase, as progression is based on your luck! I dont want someone to get better recognition then anyone else, including myself, because their RNG was better then mine. Even gear has became so generic, no more difference between Healer/Tank or DPS armor pieces. As a Damage Dealer it was important for me not to miss my Damage on the target.

Races have lost all their identity, those small racial skills made each one stand out for their class. Some race had better classes then others and that made it more engaging, rather then picking character for looks. It felt like all the races had some value, unlike Zandalari trolls being shoved down our throats with their ridiculously overpowered racials.

Story has been dead after all the WC3 content was exhausted. The player is so detached from the world that he/she only follows the current events while all the other existing races or factions go in afk mode do nothing, which causes massive inconsistencies in their storytelling and identity of character or the race in whole.


In short Blizzard has turned all time loved game of adventurers life into RNG based marketing nonsense, where everything is so chewed up and delivered to you on silver platter that it provides no actual satisfaction and love for game. Game of Casuals! Make the players adept to the game not the other way around. Because it results in low standards of the game! When your playerbase has no desire to invest their time in game and will quit first thing something goes south for them. But Blizzard has done absolutely everything the "fans" asked for just to fail again. Mob will have endless desires, but that wont save the game. Taking a system that works, starting it over with new ideas just to fail miserably wont save the game.

[oltsakka]

Lack of server identity and social interaction.

In vanilla (and the private servers I've been to) everyone knew the best players, "village idiots" and most of the big guilds on your server. In world PvP you would run into the same opposite faction players and make a nemesis or two. Sadly sharding has absolutely destroyed server identity. You often get ambushed by players you will never see again. You might run into the most outrageously stupid or rude people while doing m+ but since they're from another server their reputation isn't at stake. In vanilla if someone had a reputation of being a ninja looter (just an example since ninja looting doesn't really exist anymore) you would know to avoid them.

LFG tool reduces players into faceless statistics. You have your item level or your RIO score but nobody can tell what your reputation is. You could have the chillest player ever but since he had 2 item levels less than the next guy you have no reason picking him. Whether it's PvP or PvE pugging is now a one-and-done deal. It's hard to make lasting friendships in the environment that LFG tool creates. Of course pugging wasn't always that great in vanilla (yelling in LFG channel for 30 minutes) but at least the chances were that you would be running to the same players again. Players that shared similar goals and interests.

At this point I just stick to playing with my guildies which is kinda sad but it's been a long time coming. I know my ranting was all over the place and generally unfocused but the playing this game is such a lonely experience. The loneliest experience you could have with whatever several million players this game has.

[Jambalam]

- character creation is weak, there should a whooe lot more options than the ones they offer (height, tattoos/marks/scars, way more faces and hairstyles)
- mount collection and mount animations need a rework.
- robe models and armor models are getting improved this expansion but are still miles behind what other games offer
- leveling system is in a need of an overhaul. Either redo vanilla zones to make them endgame content or let people go to more recent zones that aren't hard on the eye faster.
- starting a character at level 20 just feels better, so they should fiddle with the level system a bit so a new character at level 1 feels like a current lvl 20.
- eithef redo professions from scratch or don't iterate on them each expansion, because they don't feel as a game. archeology is the only "fun" one, that says a lot. Fishing can be so much more (ff XV), same goes for a lot of professions. (if it doesn't feel like a game but just a unsatisfying way to boost up a bit, it's not cool). I'm gonna insist on this a bit but, in vanilla you felt like a miner/blacksmith just because the formulas were based on real chemistry. Today I don't feel a bit as an alchemist, just an idiot waiting for procs when mashing herbs together. Leatherworking, you have to murder so many animals, it has become stupid (has been for a while, but it's the first time I really gave in to this prof)

There might be more to change in wow (sham) but I feel like those are the ones in dire need of attention. They mostly got inherited of old expansions gameplay and were maintained way too close to their implementation state.

The problem with wow is that it's been catering to casuals like this for the last 8 years. It's basically the sims : azeroth edition, and he is still complaining about cosmetics and mounts.

[msdos]

Raids and even Dungeons made you stand out from the pack. Because of that, communities were forming, guilds where people bonded and were valued for their skill not their item level. It was an prestige content which was hard and not all the players would be as good as others and thats how it should be.

This is also something that has been silently swept under the rug, kudos for bringing this up.

I think right now, the only thing that makes me possibly stand out is how I'm able to Chains of Ice things with the reaction time of a Korean E-sport player. But that situation is so niche and under-appreciated.
It also kinda upset me to have the other DPS in the raid talk down to me about meters and mechanics when I had an extra layer of mechanics no one else had in the form of grips, on Zul, Mythrax, Fetid I believe? PLUS I'm playing Unholy.. It's just like man, where's the respect???

[Jujudrood]

Well, in today's WoW, you have more replayable content than ever, you have more gear sources than ever, you have more ways to play than ever (meaning, choose raid difficulty, dungeons, pvp rated/non, etc, warfronts, IEs, etc).
Today, the game simply offers more than it's ever offered before.

But.

The two major flaws, as others have said, is Class Design and Gearing.

Design:
Some classes play like a dream and feel good, others just feel kinda "bleh".
There's no real talent choice for most; there are just simply "better for all occasions" talents that are the go-to.
GCD changes make you think about the buttons you press, but it overall impacts fluidity; you are a frothing at the mouth warrior who's chopping things up like a lawnmover, but wait a sec, I need to enable 100% crit, ok now resume lawnmower capacity.
I agree with the "things shouldn't just be one big macro that's forgotten about", but GCD changes are interrupting in many cases.
Other issues are fundamental designs, but those have always been a problem.
I bet rolling back GCD alone would make every class feel at least slightly better, though.
But how do you make the buttons feel meaningful? I dunno... maybe bake the abilities into an active ability? Maybe 5% crit isn't just a shout but an actual attack as well that piggybacks the crit effect? I don't want it all proc-based, because RNG things like that should be left to trinkets... speaking of RNG...

Gearing:
We have gear thrown at us from every which way to the point where we are drowning in it, taking bags of gear to the shredder and spending a few cycles breaking it all down (or DE'ing it). So much gear.
And yet.
Very little agency over what exactly you get.
Sure, raids and dungeons have ALWAYS been pure RNG, no ifs, and, or buts about it.
Today, you can even bonus roll (something brought about in MoP) to try your hand at a piece of loot a second time, so as far as that goes, in a vacuum, raid and dungeon are better than ever.
The problem, though, is that if you want gear outside of these sources (excluding the residuum vendor), you are literally left to a slot machine.
Sometimes you hit the jackpot, while most you simply get another "meh" and move on.
The reward structure then suffers, as getting items no longer feels like a reward, but rather it feels like you scratched yet another lottery ticket and chucked it in the trash.
Now, I don't want gear to be limited like it was pre-BC's "catch-up" vendor system, but neither do I want everything solely based on the toss of a die.
Bringing back the standard limited vendor options to fill in those gaps, while removing some of the more mundane RNG choices (like a lot of WQs... I mean, do I REALLY need 4 different WQs at the same time offering the same goddamn wrist piece???) would help bring about a more rewarding reward structure.
I don't want "Raid or Die", I just want to feel like I got a reward instead of a consolation prize.

[hulkgor]

Mythic plus... sorry but Raid gear should be the best gear, not a 5 man, M+15 version.

M15 still drops baseline 370.

Raid drops baseline 385.

How does m+ drop the best gear?

[Destinas]

There are many things I could list (quests, lore, timegating, RNG, etc), but I'll focus on collections/customization, since that's my main focus in WoW.

They continue to make collections boring and slow. Pets have been a point of contention this expansion, for sure. As a few examples:
-Island Expeditions hardly give rewards, and they continue to add more. Even if I got one item (anything - pet, mount, toy, transmog, rep item, quest item) every single time, I would still be doing hundreds of expeditions. Since the main thing I'm there for is pets/mounts, and I mostly get doubles (IF I ever get anything at all), it's super discouraging. Not to mention, dubloons trickle in, and there are rewards from that as well.

-Buying pets from vendors is tedious and frustrating. Not only do I have to do quest lines and get rep (which is fine by itself), but then I need to collect charms to buy said pets - on BOTH factions (unless I want to do pvp pet battles to unlock a vendor). It's not fun to do a series of quests in, say, Drustvar, where I'm introduced to Smoochums, only to have to do another set of quests to save Nigel Rifthold, only to THEN go to his unmarked treehouse near Fallhaven to THEN purchase Smoochums for hundreds of charms. These layers upon layers of prerequisites just discourage players - I've already done the work to find Smoochums or Lil' Tika, why do I have to then farm up a currency for a random vendor that had nothing to do with the actual quests? It just slows down collecting, which gives Blizzard time to add more, but makes the players feel like they're spending a whole lot of time to do/get nothing.

-They continue to make boring pets. How many hermit crabs have they added this expansion? They added another for Children's Week on the PTR, along with 3 other pets we already have. Why not allow us to adopt the Kul Tiran/Zandalari orphan, like the Northrend Children's Week? They haven't made a single one of the Kul Tiran dogs a pet yet, and we see them all over Kul Tiras and beyond (even Stormwind). Why not start a "Dungeons with Leashes" achievement? there are tons of fun models from dungeons they haven't added yet. There are also models for a bunch of mechanicals used in the Gnomeregan pet dungeon and other areas (like the mechanical hand). The Funggarians are pretty awesome - if we can have Podling pets, why not those? I'm quite tired of getting rat #367, cockroach #142, and crab #451.

-Mount collecting is very slow now as well. I understand that there's a balance between giving people too much of the same thing and not giving people anything at all - they haven't found that yet, imo. They said at Blizzcon that we would have to "befriend Krag'wa in order to get a frog mount" - nope, just pay 999,999g if you want all 3 of them. There are bee mounts in the files, as well as hovercrafts, stags, vultures, etc. Why not add more random models as mounts (similar to the bear from Darkshore, and the raptor from Arathi)? It just feels boring - most of the hardcore mount collectors I know are just taking breaks at the moment.

-Glyphs should become an account-wide collection as well, since they are just cosmetic as well. It's absolutely ridiculous to me that they haven't added a Zandalari Skeleton or Ice Troll Zombie glyph for Unholy DKs, in the expansion about trolls. They could have had many more glyphs for warlocks to summon new types of demons - including the new Shivarra from Argus, Voidcallers, and even Fel Lords. While I'm glad they're adding a couple new water elemental glyphs to have a Tidesage aesthetic, why not make a purple "mojo elemental" glyph for frost mages (since that's what we've seen them use in Troll places)? A Vigilant glyph to replace the Guardian of Ancient Kings would be awesome and fitting for Draenei/Lightforged. If they redid the glyph system, the druid artifact forms could even go there, and they could add more (Druid of the Flame scorpion bear form?).

-Speaking of customization, they should add plenty more options for skin tones, hair, face styles, etc. The orcs and blood elves were a good start - Night Warriors were kind of cool. Why not add a questline having the Druids of the Flame welcomed back into Night Elf society, and add that as a skin tone option for Night Elves? Why not add Yrel's horns for regular draenei? Wildhammer tattoos could be added for regular dwarves, including them into the current politics of the Alliance once again. Sand Trolls could easily be a skin tone for Darkspear (since they could be introduced into the Horde - they're leaderless for the third time now). Grimtotem tattoos/skins could easily be added to regular Tauren. Adding all these subraces as simple skin tone options easily fleshes out the story, without the need to add an allied race.

[Beet]

My issues with WoW are too many to name, but I can throw a few out.

They’ve cut so much out of the game to try to speed things up, and it’s ruined the RPG feel of it. I also dislike how loot is done now. I long for the days of old. I also miss when raiding felt like something I greatly wanted to do. Now it doesn’t even feel worthwhile. I mean shit there aren’t even tier sets anymore. I don’t think anything could be done to get me back to modern WoW unless they rehired some old lead devs like Ghostcrawler to get the game back on track. I’ll play classic for sure though. And no I’m not going into it with rose tinted “goggles”. I know fully well it isn’t going to be like vanilla. I don’t expect it to. I expect it however to give me years of enjoyment whether I play casually or hardcore. The nostalgia alone will be enough to keep me having fun for at least a year.

[Nestoras]

In few words.

Complete and utter detachment from our -in game character- and the (virtual) world we used to spent hours in it, that makes such a game completely pointless to play.

[Melius]

i can forgive many things from blizzard but not the story. maybe nzoth and azshara will save it but atm the story is absolute garbage. they thought a faction war would get peoples blood pumpin`. it seem it didnt work out as the planned it.

[temple1906]

So many of the comments will totally ignore that this is ultimately what matters, content. Class design has plenty of problems but it is not so egregious that people would quit in droves to play something else if there were still things to do

M+ is the best thing added into the game in forever; re-playable content where you can set your own challenge level.

We desperately need more of that.

Islands and Warfronts are some of the worst content ever added to the game. They don't even have an obvious demographic. At least with something like Battlepets you can see who they are targeting whether you like it or not. But WF/Islands are so unbelievably trivial and tedious.

M+ has its own slew of problems though.
1. New dungeons in an expac are a rarity, maybe one per major patch. This causes M+ to quickly become stale, even though the affixes change the dungeons do not. Whereas if you raid you get totally new content every major patch, if you just do M+ you are stuck doing the same shit for the entire expansion.
2. Due to gear losing so much of its value (partly because of M+) you now need to use the out of game tool, Raider.Io, when forming a group to mitigate the possibility of bad players killing your key
3. Setting your challenge level does not really work, as the game actively encourages you to increase the challenge level via higher item level rewards. This feeds back into the second problem. Casual players get enough gear fast enough that the game wants them to do a +7, but they're bad at the game so they can't really do a +7. They need to learn the routes, mechanics, and what their class brings to the table first but Blizzard designed end-game to quickly trivialize lower ilvl content. So, now instead of learning in lower keys you quickly get rushed to the higher keys and kill peoples runs! The solution, is Raider.Io, which feels really shitty to use because it's an out of game tool. Everyone complains about how shitty rio is but it's because Blizzard designed the game in a way that it's the only way to judge how good a player MIGHT be.

Mythic+ introduced a whole new set of problems to the game without really solving anything long term.

[Skildar]

The problem with wow is that it's been catering to casuals like this for the last 8 years. It's basically the sims : azeroth edition, and he is still complaining about cosmetics and mounts.

It's sad that you attack me this way, but I'm complaining more about the gameplay aspect than the cosmetic one. I wish you could see that.
And by the way, you should try playing The sims, even if it's not for you, it is a great video game experience.

[StrawberryZebra]

To cut a long story short, WoW has no Chill.

It's not a game you can really play to relax anymore, you've always got to be moving forwards otherwise you risk being left behind completely. Part of that is the playerbase, who've gradually adopted this kind of mindset as the game aged, and part of it is Blizzard encouraging it to some extent. I don't think either party is to blame for where we've ended up, but it is what it is.

It's not a RPG anymore.

I see people saying this, and similar, a lot.

WoW has all the mechanics of an RPG, all of the expected systems of an RPG and provides the kind of experience the player is looking to get out of an RPG. I'm really just not getting this one. It just seems like "RPG Elements" are the latest buzzwords people are using in place of well thought out arguments.

[temple1906]

The flipside of this is that Blizzard spends time making content - people burn through it in week or two and then sit in forums complaining about content drought.
Personally I'm actually totally OK with content that isn't endless. I actually personally prefer that. I want there to be breaks and empty patches so I can go play other cool games. When I'm done with the current tier.

Blizzard is really hell bent on keeping me locked in daily grinding some silly points for nothing.

People burn through it in a week or two because old content is invalidated. It used to be that if you were the cutting edge you did all of the new patch content relatively quickly, but you made up a small percentage of the playerbase. For everyone else, they were still finishing last tier or grinding out the current tier. Blizzard's new style attempts to solve a problem that was only created by removing the progression roadblocks of Vanilla and TBC without thinking through the solution. They could have easily made attunements BoA so that poaching doesn't become such an issue for example. They could have not made the newest patch the only relevant content by keeping ilvl inflation low, forcing you to complete each tier on your way to the top. That is how the game used to be and it is becoming increasingly apparent that it was a better game when it was that way. Character progression is garbage now because Blizzard designed the game to make sure nobody really ever feels left out of any content, and what we got from that paradigm is content that is functionally meaningless.

[Jibbler]

I can understand your perspective on the GCD in terms of some cooldowns, but I see value in them. Sure, it feels awesome popping trinket, 3 CDs, and timewarp at the same time, but is it really realistic? By that I mean, can one pop Bestial Wrath, Bloodlust, pull out a rabbit's foot for 5% versatility, and chug a potion simultaneously?

I'm sorry what? How is popping several cooldowns at once too unrealistic to you? But you're fine with an undead necromancer next to you raising the dead and filling the enemy with pestilence and diseases or the mage channeling arcane magic or the warlock summoning demon after demon? This is a fantasy game. Nothing about it is realistic and it shouldn't be.

[Shadowsgrace]

M15 still drops baseline 370.

Raid drops baseline 385.

How does m+ drop the best gear?

Weekly cache nets you a 385, the trinkets in Uldir are Trash compared to M+ and WQ trinkets. That 370 from just running a M+ can WF/TF. Most BiS Azerite trait combinations are found in M+, hence why we now have a vendor for them specifically. Hell, I'm glad I decided to not focus on my Fury warrior for my Main alt, as I would have to farm the crap out of Kings rest for 1 of those 2h swords off the last boss. As the ilvl for Gear goes up, M+ included, a fury warrior needs at least one of those swords.

[hupy90]

I'm sorry what? How is popping several cooldowns at once too unrealistic to you? But you're fine with an undead necromancer next to you raising the dead and filling the enemy with pestilence and diseases or the mage channeling arcane magic or the warlock summoning demon after demon? This is a fantasy game. Nothing about it is realistic and it shouldn't be.

I believe you are confusing my definition of fantasy and realistic. By realistic I do not mean "Like Earth where magic isn't real and Science explains everything", I mean in terms of whatever universe, does an action/thing fit? For example, in the WoW universe, magic exists and is subdivided into many schools, each with vocal/runic requirements. Thus, if I saw someone cast every spell possible, negating the requirements (Unless its an OP NPC), I would believe it to be out of place. A short definition of my take on realistic (In this case) is "Does xyz follow the rules established by the universe/setting it is set in?" rather than the aforementioned definition. So, a warlock summoning demons and a mage channeling arcane magic does fit in the WoW Universe and thus, is realistic. Drinking a potion, combusting, drawing a rune on the floor, activating a trinket, etc all SIMULTANEOUSLY is what isn't realistic (Unless we had several arms). Sorry for the confusion.

[Alopex Major]

i can forgive many things from blizzard but not the story. maybe nzoth and azshara will save it but atm the story is absolute garbage. they thought a faction war would get peoples blood pumpin`. it seem it didnt work out as the planned it.

I just find it kind of funny that you post this with a void elf avatar, one of the most egregious lore ass-pulls in WoW's history.

[Beerbill Society]

To cut a long story short, WoW has no Chill.

It's not a game you can really play to relax anymore, you've always got to be moving forwards otherwise you risk being left behind completely. Part of that is the playerbase, who've gradually adopted this kind of mindset as the game aged, and part of it is Blizzard encouraging it to some extent. I don't think either party is to blame for where we've ended up, but it is what it is.



I see people saying this, and similar, a lot.

WoW has all the mechanics of an RPG, all of the expected systems of an RPG and provides the kind of experience the player is looking to get out of an RPG. I'm really just not getting this one. It just seems like "RPG Elements" are the latest buzzwords people are using in place of well thought out arguments.

And apparently you choose to ignore every single argument present with this sentence.

World of Warcraft Classic, had all systems based on classical RPG (D&D), with weapon skills, hit chance of glacing, parry and block, spells resistances, spells with interesting effects, and almost all items were iconic.

Over the years this concept was lost, you don't need to go through a epic quest to get a upgrade or go through a long journey to find a group of people and have a hard time going through group content.

If you consider WoW current iteration anything near a RPG a have bad news for you, you don't seem to know any. Having a experience bar that don't mean jack shit because they sell "boosts", stats that don't improve nothing and will be squished in the next xpac, items don't have any purpose now, basically you get a heirloom and forget they exist and at Max level you basically is spoon feed so much gear that isn't even remotely worth spending time in improving it.

Even the sensation of becoming more powerful and gradually growing in power is removed because of leveling scaling.

Spells, talents, character development? It don't simply exist.

Professions? Useless, basically became a joke that you get the max level doing nothing and today are worth nothing.

Reputation? Lol, matters so much that Nightbourne exalt me and try to kill me at the same time.

Content is so fail proof that basically you can do while you are brain dead. I can play with one hand and jack off with the other while watching a completely unrelated show, seriously nobody would even notice.

And storytelling is so inconsistent that even Blizzard have a hard time keeping it together.

Rewards don't feel rewarding, questing is so boring that I could swear they made a bot to keeping developing them by following a few set rules.

There is not need to interact at all, like evar.

This game is basically an adventure game that used a really old RPG engine that was repurpose, but guess what that's exactly what this game is.

So yeah many nore arguments for you to ignore with this 'game is not a RPG anymore'.

Not to mention the lack of respect and engagement from Blizzard to their customers, self inserted whoring of the story and the whole new 'rip off the customer' mentally that is been setup in place, and cheap, quickly and profitable development mentality.

Play Classic and you will understand that a simple text quest asking for you to kill 6 kobolds hold much more to it than WoW current state.

- - - Updated - - -

I just find it kind of funny that you post this with a void elf avatar, one of the most egregious lore ass-pulls in WoW's history.

It was supposed to be a High Elf, but the hugest lore pull ass shit from blood elfs being horde prevented this.

[Xirrohon]

Im still enjoying the game. There is a ton of stuff to do. Like almost too much. Uldir was pretty good for a first expac raid and M+ dungeons are fun and change a lot. Ive done some PvP and enjoyed myself there too. I also really like what they did with WM and am glad that Ally is getting out there. Yea, the game isnt perfect but no game is. The game really hasnt changed a whole lot, I feel like people are just getting older and having less time to play the game.