Why is WoW not improving?

[Big Thanks]

WoW has become Nickleback....

LoL i support this comparison

[arkanon]

Nothing wrong with playing for the BIS.
Most people do.

Me? Im going for the snowflake feeling of having a matching set. thats how i play the game

Just goes to show how crazy different everyone can be playing WoW.

Had a 'sister guild' of more casual players who asked to come raid normal with us (back when it was lfr/flex/normal/heroic). It was an alt run and we welcomed them. A priest had always said he was capable of raiding heroic with us, but there was never room for him. When we invited him for the alt run, he said "heal or dps?" and i said dps would be fine...........he replied "ok, disc or shadow?"

I waited for the punch line but he had played since vanilla (apparently) with the impression that disc was a dps spec. he had done 5mans, heroics, pug raids, everything - as disc dps.

The point is yes, even within defined groups like 'raider' 'pvper' etc etc there are smaller sub-groups that have completely different motivations.

[Vineri]

The main issue is a massive dilution of talent within the WOW Dev team. Whether through retirement (Metzen), moving on to other companies (Street) or being shuffled to other projects within Blizzard (Kaplan and Chilton), the WOW Dev is not what it used to be. And, the replacement Devs, for the most part, are utterly clueless about the game and greatly lack vision. When you add the dilution of WOW's talent and the ever increasing "bad" influence of Activision, you get the product you currently see BFA.

Add to that that the current WoW Dev team is a collection of "Yes Sir", "Yes Madam" mindsets, unlike the team who founded the game, originally. Those remaining broke from the original team spirit of "It releases when it's done", etc.

Current devs are afforded less creativity, in lieu of what they need to do in order to maximize profits. (Thank you, "Activision".)

Many people overlook the bean-counters, but they are ever-present in large companies. PAID POSITIONS. Bean counters are not looking for lasting customer satisfaction, but rather what can be done "now" to get more "tomorrow". Any grievances can be settled at a latter date with a simple Public Relations message. At which point, all is good (so they think), as it will only get better - the "day after tomorrow" ..... whenever that day comes.

[Luxeley]

Add to that that the current WoW Dev team is a collection of "Yes Sir", "Yes Madam" mindsets, unlike the team who founded the game, originally. Those remaining broke from the original team spirit of "It releases when it's done", etc.

Current devs are afforded less creativity, in lieu of what they need to do in order to maximize profits. (Thank you, "Activision".)

Many people overlook the bean-counters, but they are ever-present in large companies. PAID POSITIONS. Bean counters are not looking for lasting customer satisfaction, but rather what can be done "now" to get more "tomorrow". Any grievances can be settled at a latter date with a simple Public Relations message. At which point, all is good (so they think), as it will only get better - the "day after tomorrow" ..... whenever that day comes.

That's a very good point, you're right. And it's also proof of Activision's growing influence over WOW's direction and development.

[Caparino]

I dont think that all Class Devs have after Legion the Inspiration aka "Hey the Class is to complex, Pruning it all and make a Standart 3 Button rotation."
That Bfa Class Design is a clear instruction from the higher ups how the Bfa classes are to play, not how the class devs like them.

My Havoc DH lost is Demonic Soul Fragment System which was very unique, and the Venegeance DH has a useless Pain Ressource without effective Spender.

WoW has a System like a smallest common denominator. No Tier Set can be very good, because other classes will complain. No Class can be very fun to play because other classes will complain that their Specs are boring. Hell, my DH lost alot Secondary Stats and Blizzard nerfed the Mastery because it can be to much fun to move to fast?

Nearly every Mastery from all classes are boring or absolut horrible in Scaling and often the last desired Secondary Stat.

[Mermeoth]

Well.. Wow improves in some areas and get worse in some areas with every its cycle. A lot of changes are done in expense of something else. (most often it's convenience vs immersion)

I can't say game does get overall worse or better. Instead of that I would say game shifts around. (Yeah some content sux from time to time)
For example in vanilla classes were pretty unique with own strenghts, weaknesses and buffs. To make classes better balanced within every possible area these differences blurred over time resolving in homogenization. Its peak was during Mists of Pandaria. After that blizz started pruning and classes got more unique again.

For me personally I enjoyed Vanilla and TBC most. Wotlk was when game for me started fall apart. Yet I like many changes done down the line.

[huth]

LOL. You have never done any pvp have you?

You don't need to have done PvP to figure that out. Non-instanced PvP declined the moment instanced PvP became available, which was in Vanilla.

[tripleh]

I'd say wait for the next round of layoffs, it will eventually happen. Usually layoffs associate with poor sales. Before when wow was doing great,Blues would post showing there increasing there cs departments to handle customers. This included in game support as well. With recent layoffs its kinda showing that there isn't that many players around that would require having those positions filled. Would players be upset if they found out that blizz decided to outsource customer service? Players should pay close attention if they bring on any new CMs. With Ythisens loosing his job, how would players react to blizz hiring another cm to fill his spot without giving him a chance to get his job back? Any new cms brought in could just be a cheaper replacement.

[Dystemper]

I'd say wait for the next round of layoffs, it will eventually happen. Usually layoffs associate with poor sales. Before when wow was doing great,Blues would post showing there increasing there cs departments to handle customers. This included in game support as well. With recent layoffs its kinda showing that there isn't that many players around that would require having those positions filled. Would players be upset if they found out that blizz decided to outsource customer service? Players should pay close attention if they bring on any new CMs. With Ythisens loosing his job, how would players react to blizz hiring another cm to fill his spot without giving him a chance to get his job back? Any new cms brought in could just be a cheaper replacement.

Why pay for live Cms when they can just use cheaper automated systems and some type of AI

[tripleh]

Because those are both flawed. A real person can communicate better then some AI or automated system. AI and automated systems is no different then leaving a text or voicemail. Without knowing if anyone actually seen the message/ticket. Plus automated systems can be abused, we seen this in the report and the silences feature for wow. There was a blue response a few weeks ago showing that alot of things were flagged or reported that shouldn't have been.

[Dystemper]

Because those are both flawed. A real person can communicate better then some AI or automated system. AI and automated systems is no different then leaving a text or voicemail. Without knowing if anyone actually seen the message/ticket. Plus automated systems can be abused, we seen this in the report and the silences feature for wow. There was a blue response a few weeks ago showing that a lot of things were flagged or reported that shouldn't have been.

While all that is true, that does not mean ATVI will not just go to a Automated AI type CM service as many companies seem to be doing with just bare minimum human involvement . Its pretty obvious now that 99% of ticket issues are handled by a automated system. And lets not forget that Humans are very flawed and can screw up communication just as bad

[Vineri]

While all that is true, that does not mean ATVI will not just go to a Automated AI type CM service as many companies seem to be doing with just bare minimum human involvement . Its pretty obvious now that 99% of ticket issues are handled by a automated system. And lets not forget that Humans are very flawed and can screw up communication just as bad

So, 99% of tickets are handled by a robot, yet you indicate that Blizzard will never do this for CM. Betcha a few gold automated phone menues get revised, and things go downhill .. automation little by little, until even pressing ZERO returns you to the main menu

[ZERO] Weclome to Customer support, for account and billing press one .. to hear about our exciting product lineup press 2 ...

[ZERO] [ZERO] ..

Weclome to Customer support, for account and billing press one .. to hear about our exciting product lineup press 2, for help accessing our websi..

[ZERO] [ZERO]

Weclome to Customer support, for account and billing press one .. to hear about our exciting product..

<CLICK>

[Mehrunes]

I can see you have zero experience in World PvP with flying mounts enabled.
Pretty sure you never did it
Its completely broken

That neither changes nor addresses the fact that participation in world PvP plummeted after battlegrounds. You're fighting your own straw-man/non-sequitur combo here. Good job!

LOL. You have never done any pvp have you?

OK, humor me if I'm so wrong that you seem to think I "have never done any PvP". What rewards did world PvP provide? What balance did it have? Why did world PvP participation plummet already in late Vanilla, long before flying mounts?

[MoanaLisa]

When a claim is made, casual or otherwise, that there is 3million players left (i am being generous, it was implied 3mil was a 'low' estimate) that claim needs to be backed up by SOMETHING. many estimates have the current player base between 300,000 and 600,000 players.

And what precisely are you backing that up with? "Many people say..."

Come on. You used to make smart takes back in the day. This is dumb and not worthy.

[Muajin76]

Blizzard doesn't care about player feedback, anyone who's been playing long enough should have no issues in recognizing as much.

They have become discconnected with the player base and forgot what it's like to make a great product that players enjoy. Unless blizz gets new leadership and disconnects from activision, i don't see that happening again.

[Dentelan]

Because blizzard implement all their innovations using only logic. *Oh, lets add dungeon finder to save peoples time*, *lets add LFR so even noobs can see raids* *lets add transmog so everyone looks cool*.
Its sounds nice and logically understandable. But its wrong way. We are talking about video game, and they must implement their innovations thinking about human psychology, not about what they say. What must be done to game so human psychology would accept it and stay interested, that is the question,
There is good video about that in youtube, Asmongold was watching it once, why classic was better and what makes MMO great.

[Mighty Tim]

I agree that the game has gone through (at least) three major "design philosophies"; 1) the early MMO-era (Vanilla-TBC: Pardo, Kaplan), 2) Something for everyone era (Wrath-WoD: Chilton) and 3) Modern era (Legion-BFA: Hazzikostas) and of course the leadership is responsible for general culture and tone of the team for these eras, but I'm just very careful to lay blame on one specific figurehead - the "Game Design" team alone is... quite large, it's easy to point to one person (especially the public talking heads), but I think the reality is more complex than that.

The goal of current wow is to sell mounts.

[Druantis]

My favourite posts are the "I came back after X amount of time."

No, you didn't, or you wouldn't be still on these forums (still addicted). You didn't leave because WoW sucks, you left because you were banned (forced to leave for a bit) for either rotation botting, farming, exploiting, buying/selling for rl money, or for economy/gold issues.

Yes, WoW has huge development pipeline issues - but it's because they are hiring millennials, or transferring millennials (say from the Diablo series) over from other departments, and, as someone in the creative industries, millennials only know how to copy-and-paste and don't understand that the original games and Google pages and YouTube videos they steal from were created by or about people who were actually creative.

Because of this, unless WoW goes back to their teams who have already earned the minimum 10,000 hours of creativity in (exactly how they replaced the WoW music artist Russell Brower with cheaper unoriginal millennials who just copy-and-paste music bits into pastiches) they cannot improve the game via original mechanics (everything they have done for the last few years is copy-and-pasted from other games or from their earlier games).

This is not a troll, this is also happening with movies (Bird Box stole from which movie?) and apps and music and products and games (Fortnite is being emulated by how many games and was based on which game?) and all creative industries thanks to inbred sociopaths like Bobby Kotick and his "how can I cut corners and get my next bonus at the expense of everything else" inbred sociopathic accounting teams (firing, store mounts, tokens, microtransactions, etc.).

Hiring millennials who have no originality (originality costs R&D and has no guaranteed payout) and no desire/ability to create something new is completely inline with the self-serving goals of the inbred sociopaths running these industries.

[ZebrasRule]

Sub numbers were always going to decline thats a very natural thing for an aging game. WoW is 14 years old theres no MMO out there with anywhere close to the same number of players even if WoW was sat at just 3 million players.

You don't know how many players wow has.

Wow is doing well for Blizzard because of "engagement with value-added services" (aka whales buying gold tokens for $, fox mounts, race changes, boosts), not because of raw numbers of players. They literally admitted that in their latest security filing.

[Vrinara]

The thing is. WoW Is improving in different ways. Sure BFA is kinda boring, but there are some good ideas here that could really work if blizz put a little more work into them.