Hard to be positive with the game in the state it's in and players leaving in masses.
Especially when the dev team and Ion seem intent on not wanting to design a quality experience anymore.
Ending my WoW subscription last october was the best gaming decision I made in a long time. I had been playing on tokens since WoD and imo the game was never worth paying a real money sub for since that time. I quit when my gold reserves started getting a bit low. There are so many better games out there, I don't know why some people get so emotionally hung up on WoW. It's like you write all these novels about various problems instead of just unsubbing and moving on to something else. I kinda pity the people making these wall of text whine threads as though activision give a toss.
The game is still awesome in many ways. The problem isn't with the production value. The music is amazing, the art is beautiful, the classes are (no matter what people say) generally fairly unique. The combat in WoW is second to none (depending on what type of combat you enjoy). The story is fine (really. the moment people of an MMORPG start focusing this much on the story, there are bigger problems).
The thing that is driving people away, even if it's really hard to "measure", is the reward structure and expectations of players. That is really one of the biggest issues and causes of negativity. You can throw endless amounts of amazingly crafted, gorgeous zones and dungeons, raids and whatnot at me... but if I don't really care about the progression ladder, that content loses it's meaning in a very important way. Why is so much of "modern WoWs" content so forgettable? It's because it tries to remove all hardships, all the grinds and whatnot. Because those are "boring".
A comparison would be, maybe a trip to Disneyland where there are no queues, perfect weather, nothing goes wrong whatsoever, the kids are well-behaved all day, sounds like a great day.... but it's probably less memorable than, well, a real day at Disneyland. Things might be broken, the food might be slow to be delivered, whatever. The negatives are part of what makes people enjoy the peaks.
WoD, Legion, BFA, throws gear at you for no effort because "it's fun to get gear", but you don't actually have to play decently to get it. You can see the entire game, barring higher difficulty modes, without ever sending a single whisper or saying anything to anyone.
WoW is trying to be the perfect game, and it has managed to do so in many ways. But no one remembers "a perfect day at Disneyland". And that's the problem, with a Theme Park MMORPG that apologizes profusely whenever players don't get what they want in 30 minutes or less.
WoW is an awesome game, but it's a pretty shitty MMORPG right now. Whether or not people realize why that is, is a whole 'nother ballgame. It's really difficult to measure fun and what makes people willing to commit. I am no longer interested in gearing up my characters because nothing expects me to have good gear (unless I do high m+ or raid in heroic). The entire rest of the game is designed as if it just wants you to get stuff done faster so you can jump straight into the latest raid. That is not how you design a long-term MMORPG.
Last edited by MasterHamster; 2019-04-18 at 07:39 PM.
Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/djuntas ARPG - RTS - MMO
I have negative feelings towards BFA because BFA is legion except pruned and dumbed down.
How hard is that to grasp.
For the past 14 years or so, the only complaints I see and saw are class balance and broken stuff. I understand that every expansion there is always something to complain about. But let's be honest, we still enjoyed the game.
Now it's different.
You must be new to game forums. No, I'll stick with my other post: there's no upside to coming here or to most forums to discuss the game. Willingly being made into someone else's punching bag over a difference of opinion is enough to stop most any notion of that.
I think that BfA is disappointing so far. Unlike others I don't judge an expansion until the entire expansion is out. There have been expansions that started well that ended badly and vice versa. Mists was as hated as anything on release because of the dailies. That ended up better than it started. There have been better expansions than BfA and there have been worse but BfA isn't done yet so we'll see. I have other problems with the game that have to do with the game being over-engineered among other things. It's not been very creative the last few years and theory-crafting has overtaken inspiration I think. That's not really specific to BfA though. There have been signs of this for a very long time.
Nonetheless for a player like myself, two or three times a week, always play with people I know, it's kind of middling good and bad. Play the good. Avoid the stuff you don't care for.
While I'm at it, name one MMO that's been around longer than 10 years that's doing better now than it was. If I follow your logic then some truly legendary games that are still receiving updates must be very bad because many fewer play them now than then. So sure, have it your own way but I can't think of anything that qualfifies as a true MMORPG that's doing better today than when it was brand new. All bad then, right? Markets have nothing to do with it? Revenue models to access game content are irrelevant? I don't think so myself. YMMV.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
That's why i edited my post, saying wow is unique in his own genre despite being an MMO i mean, no other mmo lasted like wow, and the decline you were pointing your finger at is because of BFA, this game regain and lose interest every expansion release. BFA sold pretty good apparently.
Last edited by Xothene; 2019-04-18 at 08:35 PM.
I've pretty much quit at this point, so there's really nothing positive to be said. The game's just not fun anymore. They've made way too many changes, and this honestly doesn't even feel like World of Warcraft anymore.
There are plenty of things I dislike (pathfinder titanforging, changes to foundational systems, dumpster fire of a story, removal of Master Loot, etc.) I really could go in depth on this stuff, but all that really needs to be said is that I can't really even fathom why the dev team is making the choices they are nowadays.
Beyond those issues, though, there's class design. None of the classes I play have been remotely fun or engaging since WoD. They sucked in WoD, they sucked in Legion, they're worse in BfA. Considering classes are the vehicle that we interact through all other forms of content with, them being un-fun poisons the enjoyableness of everything else. Considering Blizzard's most recent interviews suggest they still don't see the problem here, I'm out. I just don't enjoy logging in anymore.
At least Classic Beta is seemingly around the corner. I'd prefer retail not being complete garbage, but I'll take that I guess.
99% of wow themed forum threads has ALWAYS been negative or neutral.
people only go to forums to complain, or seek advice.
people who like the game, just play it.
No, it's not different.
Plenty of people didn't enjoy the game and made that clear on forums, no matter what iteration you speak of.
It might be different to you, but the narrative on the forums is no different now from back when. I remember having to justify why I enjoyed my spec during MoP, for example, because a crowd of people were vehement about class design sucking back then too.
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Yeah, that's why the most negative voices are so desperate to pretend that they've got some insight into player numbers/activity. They even managed to pretend that WoW didn't actually have 12 million subs in WOTLK to support their narrative. The vast majority just either play or don't. Forumgoers and people making posts of any sort are in a tiny minority.
Exactly.
Even if someone scrunges up numbers sounding positive (such as 4 million or such), there's simply no weight to it. We.Don't.Know.
In fact I think it should be likened to trolling to pretend to know these things, especially since some posters literally burp it with every post they make to try and make it stick.
I've found starting new games in a similar genre a breath of fresh air to be honest.
Tried Project Cars in the racing series after being sceptical and now it's one of my top 3 racing games.
Tried Persona 5 after thinking "anime turn based combat seems silly" and now I consider it one of my top 5 RPGs.
Same with MMOs. First one I tried outside of WoW (played a few before it) was Guild Wars 2 and it opened my eyes a lot more to the MMO genre than moving from FF11 to WoW back in 2009 did.
Point being I don't think that one game has to be the only one in the genre for you even if it takes some time and commitment to start another game.
Last edited by Eleccybubb; 2019-04-18 at 09:41 PM.
Same as always.
And no, we really don't, actually. Since there's always people burping the same narrative, it's easier to just accept what you like and not bother with how others feel about said product.
Whilst you and others might not like X, there's for sure those that do. There's people in this very thread feeling that classes are great now, and that's 100% as legitimate and fair as it is to feel differently.
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Am willing to bet most people try titles and just don't fall for them.
I've tried and sometimes stuck with several other MMORPGs, WoW still remains the top dog in terms of overall quality as well as stability in terms of its future.