What happened to the RPG part of WoW?

[Irian]

OP I don't think you have the right idea on some stuff. I don't see account-wide stuff as the issue with the loss of the MMORPG feel of WoW, but rather a lot of side things that felt fundamental to the feel of an MMORPG being eroded.

In particular, the latter few points as well as a general sense of agency, ability to make mistakes, complicated classes with synergies that you need to pay attention to, buffs to apply that aren't just flat stat increases that you fire and forget, talent trees that - whether an illusion or not - make your character feel personalized and give room to learn, stats that mean something beyond "this makes you hit faster, this makes you cast spells faster, this makes your attacks do more damage sometimes etc".

The game is just too stripped down, and nothing has been added in its place. The game doesn't have the kind of complicated, sometimes overwhelming but grand and exciting feeling of an MMORPG and the sense of progression we miss and the current developers are intent to keep it dead under some assumption that we want a streamlined action game.

Account-wide is fine. Having mounts and achievements on all our characters isn't totally killing some aspect of the game. But it's more like a symbolic change of a change in direction for the game itself that never seems to end with these current buffoons of developers.

[CritFromAfar]

RPG games are considered RPGs due to their mechanics and how they're designed, so this can mean a number of reasons why an RPG is considered an RPG.

RPG is just a roleplay, but even though the most obvious RP aspect is the story, there are games that are considered RPG's without having a very obvious story. Which means that mechanically, an RPG can be made with stat progression, story/plot, and cosmetics. All of these together make an RPG, but removing some of them can still make an RPG, too.

Making rewards account-wide removes any need to try and do the content again to get the reward on a different character, removing the need to do the content again and removing replayability, which is a huge aspect of RPGs.

I've noticed people sometimes complain that there's nothing to do between raids, and this might have a lot to do with it. Farming, grinding and pvp were huges parts of what people did when they weren't raiding. Designing stats so that there is no preperation required to raid means that there is less to do, and when you look back at previous expansions, there were aspects of the game that existed that had prepwork needed so you could raid, such as making sure you had enough hit rating to hit the boss or enough Mp5/spirit so that you wouldn't OOM, or enough dodge/parry/armor/expertise/defense rating to not get 1-2 shot by the boss due to the tank being crittable/squishy. These stats lead to changes in scenario, such as "Why is our tank getting 1 shot? Oh, he's wearing cloth armor", or "Why do my spells keep missing? Oh, I don't have enough hit rating because I switched gear" or "Why am I going OOM? Oh, I have spirit gear instead of MP5 gear and my talents don't support spirit".

The desire to min/max stats lead to aspects such as enchanting for buffs, jewelcrafting to fill sockets to min/max the proper stats, getting specific reps. to get buffs/enchants/items/gear that you might not have been able to get elsewhere (in WOTLK you could only get shoulder enchants from rep. vendors), creating flasks and food for buffs. Which lead players to do other content, such as running around looking for ore nodes or fishing in various areas, just to fulfill their end goals.

Even aspects like flying took away RPG aspects, as being able to fly over an area prevented players from interacting with each other, as they could just avoid each other entirely. This made it easier to avoid WPvP or any situation that could create frustration or friendship.

In previous expansions level progression was different, too. Previously you got 1 talent every level that you could put where you want, even if you always chose to put it in the best possible spot, there was always the illusion of choice, and that's also the point of an RPG. Gear vendors gave players the CHOICE of which stat/gear piece to pick, and this in turn gave players something to do and something to look forward to. With the RNG system, even though you can look at the loot table and still hope for an item, there is no extra piece to look forward to in the future that the player can CHOOSE after having worked hard and built up enough currency to buy.

Now you get 1 talent every 15 levels, and people no longer go "Ding!" every level and have a chat full of guildies crying "Grats~". People no longer /roll over chests or gear, so the comraderie that could be gained from those types of things is gone. If you ask a question about something you're more likely to be told to google it rather than having a friendly person explain how things are, and you may even get someone mad at you for not knowing something ahead of time. You can no longer run people through dungeons to fast level them or gear their twink because of design changes Blizz made that prevents such things, too. Twinks aren't as popular as they used to be and you don't get experience from being in a party group with someone several levels higher than you. You don't HAVE to be nice in a group (hell, you don't even really have to talk at all in PuG's, even though it helps) because you can just reQ and insta-pop a dungeon, even if you get kicked you can just Q again and get a different group. This only changes in guilds, and even then being nice doesn't guarentuee you a spot in a raid if you're not good enough, or if someone is better.

I kinda veered off from the OP, but I agree. RPG elements are diminishing, and it's effecting the players enjoyment of the game.

[unbound]

Overall, it has been a slow burning away of RPG from the game...mostly in the name of convenience or QoL changes. While people were running around happy with the little victories of not having to buy or farm mats for certain spells, etc, they weren't noticing that those were elements of RPG that were being removed.

So they got rid of some minor things in Wrath, and then a number of things in Cata, and then more things in MoP, etc, etc. No single change was a big deal, but over time it results in little RPG left.

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I never cared about being a special snowflake, I guess?

In other words, you never cared for actual RPG

[Unholyground]

This is why I moved back to Guild Wars 2, while I will always love WoW it just keeps getting more like a loot box game where you pay 15$ a month to have a potential for loot.

[Lillemus]

This works in both ways. You could have used MP5 items as a hybrid class because mana mattered back then, even when you didn't need to go for MP5 as hybrid dps. You could go for armor pen as a ret/enh/mutilate rogue and have a character with a mostly useless stat. You could use wrong weapon speeds because you believed it made sense. You could pick items with defensive stats as a dps. Then again you could use spell power items in firelands as enh and have an entirely different playstyle which actually was the best way to go.


Those "inconveniences" neither break nor make the RPG by themselves but it adds up and makes for a dull experience.

Having to feed your pet as a hunter seems pointless and annoying but it still adds some flavor. Of course they could have improved that by making different food give the pet different buffs or abilities, instead they just scrapped it. The same goes for ammo, rogue poisons, materials needed to use certain abilities. All of those could have been improved and made rare materials drop somewhere and those give special poisons or more powerful ones. There is so much that could have made a better RPG, those things just don't work in a fast paced e-sports environment.

I mean, some of these things you can still do, I can use daggers as an outlaw rogue, you can ultimately do a lot of silly things if you are oblivious to your surroundings, and this is still possible, I think one of the reasons we don't see many people do things like these any more has more than one cause, a big one being a lack of new players, the vast majority of WoW players are people who have played this game for a good amount of time, not funny quirky naive new comers. I don't think you would see many people pick up MP5 or defensive items with the notion that these items would be good for them if you reintroduced these stats.
I think the person who spoke of sacrifice made a fair point, choice is more about what you sacrifice, and the thing with those older trees was that it was very obvious what you were sacrificing, because you'd see a whole bunch of greyed out blocks. In the current game you don't see the grey boxes, but they are still there, just not visible.

In terms of pet feeding and reagents for various spells I can only agree, the removal of these for convenience sake has taken some of the flair out, crafting poisons was kind of fun.
As I mentioned earlier, we may just have different perspectives on things, to me Blizzard is a MMO first and then a RPG, with MMO aspect far outshining the RPG aspect. IMO I don't think WoW could ever be a good RPG because it does not let me affect the world around me, it's the same reason I don't consider newer Bethesda games good RPGs either, because they decided to take a page from MMOs and make enemies respawn and have your impact on the world around you kept to a minimum.
But hey, at the end of the day, different strokes for different folks

[kubaje]

OP I don't think you have the right idea on some stuff. I don't see account-wide stuff as the issue with the loss of the MMORPG feel of WoW, but rather a lot of side things that felt fundamental to the feel of an MMORPG being eroded.

In particular, the latter few points as well as a general sense of agency, ability to make mistakes, complicated classes with synergies that you need to pay attention to, buffs to apply that aren't just flat stat increases that you fire and forget, talent trees that - whether an illusion or not - make your character feel personalized and give room to learn, stats that mean something beyond "this makes you hit faster, this makes you cast spells faster, this makes your attacks do more damage sometimes etc".

The game is just too stripped down, and nothing has been added in its place. The game doesn't have the kind of complicated, sometimes overwhelming but grand and exciting feeling of an MMORPG and the sense of progression we miss and the current developers are intent to keep it dead under some assumption that we want a streamlined action game.

Account-wide is fine. Having mounts and achievements on all our characters isn't totally killing some aspect of the game. But it's more like a symbolic change of a change in direction for the game itself that never seems to end with these current buffoons of developers.

RPGs are about character progression. Account-wide things change the answer to this question: Do you give a shit about your character and would not trash it because of what that character achieved? There are only two answers to that. "Yes" being the answer to a good RPG, "No" being a desaster for an RPG.

[Demithio]

Whatever RPG elements WoW had are long gone for years now. WoW was never really huge on RPG compared to titles such as LOTRO or some older ones, but it did have a good amount in the vanilla / TBC days. There was far more attention to detail back then that made it feel far more like a world. It started to die off during wotlk and just kept being removed from there forward. A shame really as the game has lost so much over the years that made it an epic experience for the players. Where one felt involved and connected with the environment. Now its just some mediocre title (some would argue complete junk) at this point.

[Freshouttajail]

- talents - don't allow character customization anywhere close to what talent trees allow you to do

This belief needs to stop. Talent trees were shit back then and they are still shit today, just a different shit. It's not really all that special to put points in a secondary specs when these points where designed to fit your main spec anyway and on top of that everybody still used the same talents pretty much.

[Nynax]

-snip-

I'll tell you what happened to me, and why I am glad for all the account wide stuff.

It was Blizzards idea of class "balance." I had played a shaman, specifically enhance, since vanilla. After multiple expansions of being the "forgotten" class when it came to improvements (which still happens with BFA launching "oh, we didn't have time for you.") I just didn't want to deal with it anymore.

Honestly the game is way more fun when you can change classes and choose your weaknesses, rather than feelling locked into one pile of frustration.

[Demithio]

Overall, it has been a slow burning away of RPG from the game...mostly in the name of convenience or QoL changes. While people were running around happy with the little victories of not having to buy or farm mats for certain spells, etc, they weren't noticing that those were elements of RPG that were being removed.

So they got rid of some minor things in Wrath, and then a number of things in Cata, and then more things in MoP, etc, etc. No single change was a big deal, but over time it results in little RPG left.

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In other words, you never cared for actual RPG

This is really it. A slow progression of rotting away the truly important elements. All the "QoL" changes removed the actual RPG elements of WoW slowly over time. Hindsight tells me "QoL" is simply a euphemism for Blizzard got lazy and greedy. And yes, some of these things we thought were cool at the time, but little did we realize what it would end up doing to the game.

[Akka]

Only that RPing doesn't make a RPG. RPG is defined by progression of a character.

Err... Wrong ?
RPG IS about the "role". It's about "immersion", about "acting as if you were the character". You need to be able to have agency and the agency needs to have real impact. Character stat are not required at all in a RPG, even though they can help.

That being said, WoW has always been pretty light on the RPG side, but yes the more time has passed, the more Blizzard removed what part of the game could support the RPG side through immersion in a world and replaced it by an "action game" aspect. So the guy you argue against is still dead wrong - just not for the reasons you give.

WoW today is not a RPG at all, it's a lobby action game.

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The players got rid of them. People didn't want to carry ammo, or reagents, or make poisons, or feed their pets. They didn't want to have carry multiple sets of gear, or mounts.

That's a gratuitous claim. You have no idea if it's true. Blizzard decided to dumb down the game because they expected it was what people wanted. Doesn't mean they were right. Don't confuse expectation with reality.

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

Well, you probably can manage to streamline that into just ilvl

[Alphatorg]

WOW has never been an RPG in OP's sense. It's always been about getting into raids (challenge modes/M+) and PVP, everything else was just brainless filler bullshit.

[Drusin]

I know, all those changes were made because people cried about the game not being alt-friendly but why do people want to play their alts in the first place? Because the RPG aspect is entirely lost and you can't work on your character anymore as you used to be able to.

Because I enjoy all the classes and get benefits from having more than one character.

[klaps_05]

Excellent thread that shows that it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for blizzard to satisfy everyone and they should really stop listening to anyone but Blizzard and just make the game in their own vision.

[Demithio]

WOW has never been an RPG in OP's sense. It's always been about getting into raids (challenge modes/M+) and PVP, everything else was just brainless filler bullshit.

Completely not true. Not sure if you were around during vanilla (or any of earlier WoW), but it was large collection of small things and details that made up the big picture.

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Excellent thread that shows that it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for blizzard to satisfy everyone and they should really stop listening to anyone but Blizzard and just make the game in their own vision.

Oh they do. Does anyone honestly think they've ever listened to anyone but themselves (or in this case the corporate bean counters)? Its very obvious by the outcome. Players learn and conform to how the game is designed, not the other way around. Its ALL Blizzard, has very little to nothing to do with 'what the player's wanted'. All this talk about what the "players did" is mainly bullshit.

[Naiattavain]

WoW is supposed to be a MMORPG, yet there isn't much RPG left. The only character progression is ilvl, there is no real character customization and everything there is to customize (transmog) is account progression, not character progression. Yes, you can work on reputations but even those have rewards that are mostly account wide.

- achievements - account wide

- cosmetics - account wide

- mounts - account wide

- professions - don't matter anymore and easy to level up

- talents - don't allow character customization anywhere close to what talent trees allow you to do

- stats - 4 secondary stats + 3 primary, of which only 1 matters to you at any time. Games like Dark Souls have 9 stats + 5 base powers + 4(6) defensive stats + 4 resistances

and probably even more points I can'/don't want to think of right now.


RPGs are all about character progression and I would argue most people trying WoW for the first time expect it to be a game with real character progression where you give a shit about the character you spend the most time on.

I get why Blizzard made everything account wide and made the game easy to grasp but at the same time they made people not give a shit about their characters anymore. Why would I care about a character when I can create a new one and it has everything my old one had except the ilvl?

I know, all those changes were made because people cried about the game not being alt-friendly but why do people want to play their alts in the first place? Because the RPG aspect is entirely lost and you can't work on your character anymore as you used to be able to.


Do you give a shit about your characters (not only their ilvl) anymore? Old PvPers don't count since they have the only uniqueness left in their character bound titles/mounts.

blizzard just sort of recycled the game so doesn't matter anymore.

[Beatman]

WOW has never been an RPG in OP's sense. It's always been about getting into raids (challenge modes/M+) and PVP, everything else was just brainless filler bullshit.

You seem to be the brainless one here.

challenge modes = MoP
M+ = Legion

And Classic, BC and WotLK (+ Cata) had more to them than raiding and pvp. Of course, you had to actually play back then to know that.

[Alphatorg]

Completely not true. Not sure if you were around during vanilla (or any of earlier WoW), but it was large collection of small things and details that made up the big picture..

Oh really. What was this great non-raid content which you could enjoy in Classic? Grinding consumables? Grinding Tyr's hand? Grinding rep? Riding around on a low speed mount?

[StrawberryZebra]

RPG is defined by progression of a character.

How would you define "progression" in this case? Are we talking strictly mechanical power progression? That leads to a number of potentially awkward conclusions as a result. The Legend of Zelda series has a protagonist who grows in power over the course of the game, you have more weapons and tools at your disposal, can access more areas of the world and even deal more damage and are more durable. The character has, from a strict mechanics point of view, progressed from their humble beginnings into a hero who is able to recover the Triforce and rescue the princess.

Does that make the Legend of Zelda an RPG? It fulfills the critera afterall. So does the Call of Duty multiplayer - It's got progression mechanics lifted straight out of RPG's. What about MOBA's, they're very much defined by character progression too, in both their levels and stats from items and such. If you're going to exclude MOBA's because that progression isn't persistant then you'd also exclude Rogue Like RPG's like Darkest Dungeon.

What about characters who progress in none mechanical ways? It's very common for characters in story driven games to grow as characters and people, without getting more powerful in terms of gameplay. Are those RPG's too? The character(s) in question have made significant progression in their personal growth as a result of the players actions.

Your definition is too both too broad and too narrow because you're framing the problem poorly. Genres are defined by what the player wants to get out of the experience more than arbitrary systems. It's how we know that something like Mass Effect, despite having Shooter mechanics, is an RPG - Because thats what we want to get out of the game. It's how we know that Call of Duty is an FPS despite it's RPG progression. It's how we recognise Dead Space is horror or that Legend of Zelda is an action/adventure game.

Just because WoW doesn't have what you want in an RPG doesn't mean that it's not one. It's offering an RPG experience to those people who want it. If you're looking for something different, then have you considered playing something that does have the RPG experience you're after? Not to sound rude or confrontational, but if WoW isn't the game you want it to be then moving on to one that better suits your tastes would be a smart move.

RPGs and convenience don't mix.

This is demonstrably false.

Divinity Original Sin 2, arguably one of the best RPGs in recent years, had lots of convenience features to it. Like being able to teleport around the map, being able to respec at any time beyond the first act of the game, a quest log that was well organised and allowed you to go back and re-read old conversations you had, check up on progress and a map that told you where quest NPCs were. In combat it told you how you could remove debuffs, what surfaces did and what other effects you could apply to them. It also didn't include little annoyances like having to fill your bags with ammo, limited inventory space, or forcing you to rest at set intervals.

It's not a new thing either. Mass Effect wasn't an inconvenient game to play by any means, neither was Dragon Age. Classic RPG's like Chrono Trigger didn't bog you down in stupid inconveniences either, nor do JRPG's in general. Clearly it is more than possible to have an RPG that isn't deliberately obtuse for the sake of it while still preserving the core experience.

What I assume you're trying to say is that D&D based RPG's have a ton of awkward inconveniences to help mechanically reinforce their design choices. They're the big exception to the rule rather than being the norm.

[dragnipur]

The RPG part OP a had horrible death and WoW became just a MMO.Let it RIP in peace and never be spoken about that subject.The developers don't want to even hear about it!