What happened to the RPG part of WoW?

[Pu3Ho]

Classic/Vanilla will be interesting when it arrives and people find out they can run out of ammunition. That's a perfect RPG element in that you have to prepare for a fight and get your tools lined up and ready. Training/Proficiency is another.

By the time it arrives retail won't even have 1m of subs left. WoW will save "WoW" and i can only hope blizzord shitgames won't ruin it again.

[kubaje]

Classic/Vanilla will be interesting when it arrives and people find out they can run out of ammunition. That's a perfect RPG element in that you have to prepare for a fight and get your tools lined up and ready. Training/Proficiency is another.

The fun thing about that is that it made engineering actually not useless. I know that things like that sound annoying but they add flavor. Playing a pally I had to buy shit to use my buffs. Yes, it wasn't something I loved or thought I needed, it still had its place and was something most RPGs had and should have.

[Fight4Fun]

Looking forvard to see next expax ILVL and health only two displayable stats LUL

[chazus]

there is no real character customization and everything there is to customize (transmog) is account progression, not character progression.

I just want to make sure I understand this.

So the moment you get a thing on a character, but can also use that thing on another character, that makes it not an RPG?

[Syegfryed]

Account wide achievements, cosmetics and mounts reduce the RPG aspect because your characters all become more or less the same. There's nothing to differentiate one from another except for class. They have all accomplished the same things even if only one of those characters ever "did the work" as it were.

Would you reroll from a character that had things like "Death's Demise" without hesitation?

Would you reroll from a character that had things like the T3 Set without hesitation?

Would you reroll from a character that had mounts that were hard to obtain/unobtainable without hesitation?

That's how it affects the RPG. RPG doesn't mean you spend most of the time in Goldshire.

you can just not use, ignore or pretend to not be there

most of the rpg/rp prt is imagination

[A Chozo]

Well, the old talent tree was that lame thing but at least the talents had neat names, which make you feel more unique. The more, the better.

And the account-wide stuff is a blessing. I've changed mains because my first character couldn't heal nor tank, and I wanted to do it. Farming all the old stuff would've been lame. I'm glad it's account wide and I can focus on the new adventures. It's for a better World of Warcraft experience, since they keep launching new races and classes and sometimes you just gotta change.

The only thing I miss are the stats. You can simply sumarize everything with Item Levels, and since you can't exactly focus on which item you want to get, your status will usually increase in the same rhythim, so you just feel "better" overall.

[Khaza-R]

RPGs and convenience don't mix. And WoW decided to start catering to convenience in Vanilla.

[RoKPaNda]

You get WAY more customization out of talents now. A lot of talents have situational usefulness.

Previously there were only two ways to spec your character: The exact right way and the wrong way.

Edit: I honestly don't miss the stats either. They weren't particularly exciting and it just lead to disappointment as Helm #2 out of 16 different possibilities dropped and nobody wanted it.

[kubaje]

you can just not use, ignore or pretend to not be there

most of the rpg/rp prt is imagination

You need to differentiate. A Role-Playing-Game is a game where you create a character (not a persona) and work on that character. You gain experience, get items and improve that character in general.

Role Playing is when you go to the Goldshire Inn and try to find your wife or become a prostitute in their basement behind the kegs.


Two completely different things.

[darklogrus]

The first 3 is due to poor game design and even worse class design...

[Syegfryed]

You need to differentiate. A Role-Playing-Game is a game where you create a character (not a persona) and work on that character. You gain experience, get items and improve that character in general.

Role Playing is when you go to the Goldshire Inn and try to find your wife or become a prostitue in their basement behind the kegs.


Two completely different things.

still look the same to me, you role play in the game, you just bring up the worst exemple

most of the itens and achievements you can get again if you want, is not rly "an" issue

[kubaje]

still look the same to me, you role play in the game, you just bring up the worst exemple

most of the itens and achievements you can get again if you want, is not rly "an" issue

It's actually not. RPG is about the "physical" character, RPing about the persona you make up. One is the game itself, the other is your imagination.

- - - Updated - - -

You get WAY more customization out of talents now. A lot of talents have situational usefulness.

Previously there were only two ways to spec your character: The exact right way and the wrong way.

Edit: I honestly don't miss the stats either. They weren't particularly exciting and it just lead to disappointment as Helm #2 out of 16 different possibilities dropped and nobody wanted it.

Well, as a healer I actually really liked having the choices of increasing my mana pool, the casting speed, crit chance or mana regen. That may not even sound like many options but the amount of different possible builds increases for each stat by a shit ton.

[rohoz]

RPGs and convenience don't mix. And WoW decided to start catering to convenience in Vanilla.

in beta, actually

[Sparda Strife]

WoW never had a lot of proper RPG elements, actually, a skill here and then helps, but a lot of systems even in P&P like ammo and things like that gets eschewed in the long run (Unless the DM is very strict)

Rather than skills, to encourage a RP aspect of the game, they should let us have some choices on our character´s behavior.

[rohoz]

I wonder if the kids in here consider final fantasy games as rpgs

[Lillemus]

I genuinely don't see what any of the mentioned things have to do with an RPG.
On the other hand I never really considered WoW to be an RPG, to me an RPG is not only affecting my own character progression, it's affecting the world around me, it being an MMO obviously greatly hinders this, as it would be kind of sad if every single boss in the game stayed dead after the first group of people had killed him off.
In terms of your list:

Achievements

Not quite sure what achievements has to with an RPG, I've never really paid much attention to achievements in any RPG I've ever played, when a steam achievement pops up when I am playing The Witcher 3 I don't feel any sense of pride or accomplishment, I at most go "huh. that was an achievement, ok".

Cosmetics

I mean, I suppose? But I guess Transmog should be added to the list as well then, because it would make sense for an adventurer to wear the spoils of his effort with pride?

Mounts

So it didn't bother you that you could fit 16 horses inside your backpack, but somehow this is what breaks the immersion?

Professions

I mean, these never made sense in an RPG environment? Unless you're truly the Bethesda chosen one that somehow manages to be the world's best blacksmith, enchanter, swordfighter, juggler, conjurer, healer, accountant etc etc in all of the land. And I've certainly never had a D&D session where someone insisted that we spent the entire session on him making horse shoes because he wanted to master the craft.

Talents

The old talent tree certainly allowed you to make sub optimal decisions no doubt about that, but if someone presented a similar talent tree to me in any RPG "Congrats, you've leveled up! You can now choose between 2% dodge, 1% crit, 4% dmg with this weapon you don't use or 3% faster run speed" I would probably raise my eyebrow a fair bit. It may have been more similar to a traditional RPG tree progression in terms of looks, but the similarities end there.

Stats

I'm not really convinced that more stats a better RPG make, you mentioned DS as a good RPG with a boatload of stats, but I would argue that almost every single player RPG that has been made over the past decade is a better RPG than WoW ever was,

You said you were struggling for more ways WoW differentiates itself from classic RPG tropes, so here's a few:
Leveling
Almost every single RPG ever made has leveling at it's core, once you've reached the level cap the game is most likely over or you have reached the highest amount of power that you'll ever attain.
Grinding
"Kill XX of YY" was never seen in RPGs prior to MMOs, and whenever I see one of these un-ironically added to an RPG today it breaks my heart a little bit
Respawning enemies
Traditionally when I slay someone/something in an RPG it/they usually have the decency to stay dead, not magically reappear 1 min/hour/week later.

So when you ask what happened to the RPG elements, I ask: Was it ever one?

[Khaza-R]

in beta, actually

Very true.

Looking at the way they originally planned cities in 2003 is so sad compared to what they've become today

http://web.archive.org/web/200309251...l/cities.shtml

[kubaje]

I genuinely don't see what any of the mentioned things have to do with an RPG.
On the other hand I never really considered WoW to be an RPG, to me an RPG is not only affecting my own character progression, it's affecting the world around me, it being an MMO obviously greatly hinders this, as it would be kind of sad if every single boss in the game stayed dead after the first group of people had killed him off.
In terms of your list:

Not quite sure what achievements has to with an RPG, I've never really paid much attention to achievements in any RPG I've ever played, when a steam achievement pops up when I am playing The Witcher 3 I don't feel any sense of pride or accomplishment, I at most go "huh. that was an achievement, ok".



I mean, I suppose? But I guess Transmog should be added to the list as well then, because it would make sense for an adventurer to wear the spoils of his effort with pride?



So it didn't bother you that you could fit 16 horses inside your backpack, but somehow this is what breaks the immersion?



I mean, these never made sense in an RPG environment? Unless you're truly the Bethesda chosen one that somehow manages to be the world's best blacksmith, enchanter, swordfighter, juggler, conjurer, healer, accountant etc etc in all of the land. And I've certainly never had a D&D session where someone insisted that we spent the entire session on him making horse shoes because he wanted to master the craft.


The old talent tree certainly allowed you to make sub optimal decisions no doubt about that, but if someone presented a similar talent tree to me in any RPG "Congrats, you've leveled up! You can now choose between 2% dodge, 1% crit, 4% dmg with this weapon you don't use or 3% faster run speed" I would probably raise my eyebrow a fair bit. It may have been more similar to a traditional RPG tree progression in terms of looks, but the similarities end there.


I'm not really convinced that more stats a better RPG make, you mentioned DS as a good RPG with a boatload of stats, but I would argue that almost every single player RPG that has been made over the past decade is a better RPG than WoW ever was,

You said you were struggling for more ways WoW differentiates itself from classic RPG tropes, so here's a few:
Leveling
Almost every single RPG ever made has leveling at it's core, once you've reached the level cap the game is most likely over or you have reached the highest amount of power that you'll ever attain.
Grinding
"Kill XX of YY" was never seen in RPGs prior to MMOs, and whenever I see one of these un-ironically added to an RPG today it breaks my heart a little bit
Respawning enemies
Traditionally when I slay someone/something in an RPG it/they usually have the decency to stay dead, not magically reappear 1 min/hour/week later.

So when you ask what happened to the RPG elements, I ask: Was it ever one?

You somewhat didn't get the point about the first three things. Making those account wide makes you not give a flying fuck about your character, which breaks the whole RPG thing. You care about your account, yes, but that's not what RPGs are about. I actually want to only want a single character, not every class there is on earch server. That's what good RPGs do. In Vanilla - and yes, I do consider Vanilla a decent RPG - you would dream of having a single character in full T3 and wouldn't ever let that one go.

[MoanaLisa]

you can just not use, ignore or pretend to not be there

most of the rpg/rp prt is imagination

This is quite true at one level but achievements once done cannot be done again and get that little nod of acknowledgement from the game that you finished that. This is not the most critical thing wrong with the game by any means but as someone who really enjoys a good RPG all of this convenience that manifests when you create a new character and they have a bunch of stuff done before they are even level 10 takes you out of the game a little.

It's a minor piece to what people call immersion but I think it's definitely a piece.

Unlike others, I'm not going to take this to the wall in advocacy nor get hostile about it. I'm just writing about preferences. I think the game is too fast in character progression and removing all of the RPG elements was very much a big piece of that. It's an attitude that at this point expresses ultimately as 'why bother leveling. Just do an expansion where everyone is already at end game and stop bothering with quests or story. Just open the raids and get out of the way'.

[Nerovar]

Looking forvard to see next expax ILVL and health only two displayable stats LUL

It's still an RPG because there are numbers.