The real issue with modern WoW

[ShimmerSwirl]

Its the lack of difficulty.

People try to dive deep and analyze why WoW is sinking and point to all sorts of things like Azerite, LFR, CRZ, Sharding etc. Those things play a role no doubt.

But from a design perspective the real issue is the overall lack of difficulty across 95% of all content. Blizzard has to spend tremendous amounts of work hours, talent and money to create content patches, but because of the low difficulty of all this content the playerbase consumes it almost immediately and is left wanting more. This obviously isn't sustainable, yet this has been the Blizzard approach for many years now.

Contrast this with the design approach from Vanilla/TBC. A single raid could easily last for 6 months. Just a raid, not even any other content to go with it. Not even multiple modes of the raid, just purely one single raid. People would be out in the world farming various gear, items, enchants, oils etc for this one raid, and they needed that stuff because the difficulty of the raid necessitated it. And the process of getting those things was challenging itself. Gold, mats, enchants, everything took time and effort to get. The time and effort kept the playerbase busy playing the game rather than complaining about it.

Further, the lack of absurd catchup mechanics meant that old raids were still viable content even after new ones came out. Players continued raiding SSC and TK for months after Black Temple came out in TBC. In short, the content Blizzard created got used to its full potential, lasting months or even years.

Its funny, the logic behind creating easy raids was that since they were so expensive to develop that more of the playerbase should see them. They were partially successful in their goal - much more of the playerbase sees raids now, but they failed in that this expensive content is an even worse investment now due to how quickly it is consumed.

Classic will be an interesting case study to compare side by side with BFA. The slow methodical reward structure of Classic vs loot falling from the sky in BFA for doing next to nothing. Hopefully it will show Blizzard there is nothing wrong with actually making players play the content that they spent months of time and millions of dollars creating.

[Flurryfang]

Saying that it is the lack of difficulty that is the problem, is giving an EXTREMLY simple answer to a very complex question......But its not really wrong.

Like i agree, that Blizzard using alot of time on content, is somewhat wasted when the players can just speed through it no matter what skill level they have. "Final bosses" of the non-raiding/mythic+ content often has the same difficulty as WQ elite mob, so nothing stops you from stomping it. The same is somewhat with raids.

But just increasing the difficulty is not really gonna do much. What made WoW versions like Vanilla and TBC work, was because there was alot of hard work before raids, and because raids had bosses with very variying difficulties, despite them being in the same raid. All the raids were also somewhat connected, where you had to complete one raid to progress to the other.

So while difficulty is the right problem, the solution is much more complex and will require a nearly complete change of how modern WoW works.....Pretty much making it into a different game.

Im personally just waiting for Classic to be somewhat a success, so that they open up TBC and let me do the entire raid-tree of that expansion.....God the attunement quests in that expansion was amazing and i really miss doing that entire journey on old and new characters.

[TigTone]

List off everything in wow that is NOT difficult.

[Theangryone]

Raids lasted 6 months in vanilla because no one knew what they were doing. 15 years later we know the systems, we know the drill, and after everyone has streamed the ptr we know the new raid before it goes live. Nice try though.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Raids lasted 6 months in vanilla because no one knew what they were doing. 15 years later we know the systems, we know the drill, and after everyone has streamed the ptr we know the new raid before it goes live. Nice try though.

I was referring more to TBC, which was the ideal raid model imo.

[Daara]

The real issue is how do you make the game more difficult and require more time investment and not lose a huge chunk of the fanbase who wants instant gratification, alts, and time to have a real life?

[Flurryfang]

The real issue is how do you make the game more difficult and require more time investment and not lose a huge chunk of the fanbase who wants instant gratification, alts, and time to have a real life?

I think it is really about choosing an audience. Blizzard have for so long tried to aim at everybody, which have made them hit the "Trying to make something for everybody, end up making something for nobody" thing. If they choose who they wanted to play the game, they could aim at the right difficulty, the right elements to extend time investment and make people enjoy the time being spent on doing the things required to do some elements of the game.

[Swnem]

Somewhere in between. TBC did it best. There was some catch up gear added in time through badges, not every slot and all of the tiers were one progression cause of attunements and there was only one difficulty.

You went in a journey throughout a whole expansion, rather than a patch. Maybe the atunements are too much of a barrier, but yeah, if gear didn't shower, then it could work. But that is only in a world without mythic+.

Anyways, i strongly believe raiding needs to change, but convincing the devs of it is another story.

[potis]

But from a design perspective the real issue is the overall lack of difficulty across 95% of all content. Blizzard has to spend tremendous amounts of work hours, talent and money to create content patches, but because of the low difficulty of all this content the playerbase consumes it almost immediately and is left wanting more. This obviously isn't sustainable, yet this has been the Blizzard approach for many years now.

You are wrong and this was answered so many times its getting tiring.

The 95% or even more, lets not say 99% for the sake of it doesnt do difficulty, if they cant do something they quit the game, they do not learn.

You people need to understand WoW had over 150million unique accounts averagely 8 years ago, its easily over 200million at the moment probably even more, this is why every Launch expansion it hits over 10million for the first month or two.

Its not the same people playing, random casuals sub and unsub whenever, you arent special if you unsub to "punish" Blizzard, we are all recyclable.

WoW is a business, its there to make them money, this is why you have:

Arena/Rated BG and probably BG's themselves because no one likes to die and wait 5 minutes to rez.
Pokemon
4 Difficulties of stuff.
500 different mounts.
Irrelevant quests that only give transmog.

And many other irrelevant things, everyone focuses to farm and do something different.

I can write lots of things but this is another "WoW Classic is the solution" thread and its rather pointless.

But wake up and realize you are not special, not the 20-50k that check mmo-champion regularly and create a circlejerk echo chamber of WoW hate.

[A Chozo]

The real issue with modern WoW is...

*checks smoke signals for the clue*

Transmog. With this freature, now we can't figure out who's worked hard for what, since everyone can look and feel pretty. And this is bad.

[BlueRemedy]

since everyone can look and feel pretty.

Its wow, no one looks pretty.

[Teaon]

Its the lack of difficulty.

People try to dive deep and analyze why WoW is sinking and point to all sorts of things like Azerite, LFR, CRZ, Sharding etc. Those things play a role no doubt.

But from a design perspective the real issue is the overall lack of difficulty across 95% of all content. Blizzard has to spend tremendous amounts of work hours, talent and money to create content patches, but because of the low difficulty of all this content the playerbase consumes it almost immediately and is left wanting more. This obviously isn't sustainable, yet this has been the Blizzard approach for many years now.

Contrast this with the design approach from Vanilla/TBC. A single raid could easily last for 6 months. Just a raid, not even any other content to go with it. Not even multiple modes of the raid, just purely one single raid. People would be out in the world farming various gear, items, enchants, oils etc for this one raid, and they needed that stuff because the difficulty of the raid necessitated it. And the process of getting those things was challenging itself. Gold, mats, enchants, everything took time and effort to get. The time and effort kept the playerbase busy playing the game rather than complaining about it.

Further, the lack of absurd catchup mechanics meant that old raids were still viable content even after new ones came out. Players continued raiding SSC and TK for months after Black Temple came out in TBC. In short, the content Blizzard created got used to its full potential, lasting months or even years.

Its funny, the logic behind creating easy raids was that since they were so expensive to develop that more of the playerbase should see them. They were partially successful in their goal - much more of the playerbase sees raids now, but they failed in that this expensive content is an even worse investment now due to how quickly it is consumed.

Classic will be an interesting case study to compare side by side with BFA. The slow methodical reward structure of Classic vs loot falling from the sky in BFA for doing next to nothing. Hopefully it will show Blizzard there is nothing wrong with actually making players play the content that they spent months of time and millions of dollars creating.

wrong.

source: Cataclysm expansion.

[Dead Moose Fandango]

It's probably that everyone and their mother complains about what they think is wrong. That's the problem.

[ShimmerSwirl]

You are wrong and this was answered so many times its getting tiring.

The 95% or even more, lets not say 99% for the sake of it doesnt do difficulty, if they cant do something they quit the game, they do not learn.

You people need to understand WoW had over 150million unique accounts averagely 8 years ago, its easily over 200million at the moment probably even more, this is why every Launch expansion it hits over 10million for the first month or two.

Its not the same people playing, random casuals sub and unsub whenever, you arent special if you unsub to "punish" Blizzard, we are all recyclable.

WoW is a business, its there to make them money, this is why you have:

Arena/Rated BG and probably BG's themselves because no one likes to die and wait 5 minutes to rez.
Pokemon
4 Difficulties of stuff.
500 different mounts.
Irrelevant quests that only give transmog.

And many other irrelevant things, everyone focuses to farm and do something different.

I can write lots of things but this is another "WoW Classic is the solution" thread and its rather pointless.

But wake up and realize you are not special, not the 20-50k that check mmo-champion regularly and create a circlejerk echo chamber of WoW hate.

I agree with you. Blizzard's mistake was trying to cater the gameplay toward a type of player who should probably be playing candy crush on their phone. WoW just doesn't work as a mindless lootgrinder. Its an MMORPG, but they have sacrified almost all of both the MMO part and the RPG part in the name of convenience. With those elements gone, you're left with a game that still creates content like its an MMORPG, but tunes it like its a DLC smartphone app game.

- - - Updated - - -

wrong.

source: Cataclysm expansion.

As someone who enjoyed TBC heroics more than any other type of content WoW has offered and ran about a million of them, I say with a lot of confidence that despite Cata's attempts to be more challenging, Cata heroics were a pale shadow compared to TBC difficulty.

That said, Cata did fail - but you can thank LFG for that. Once LFG got introduced players stopped caring about their server rep, they acted like dicks, played recklessly, and the only way to solve this issue was to make dungeons so easy that even these bad, apathetic groups could still clear them.

Hard dungeons require manual group forming where your server rep matters. Thats what holds those groups together and allows them to actually do the hard content rather than quit after one wipe.

[potis]

I agree with you. Blizzard's mistake was trying to cater the gameplay toward a type of player who should probably be playing candy crush on their phone. WoW just doesn't work as a mindless lootgrinder. Its an MMORPG, but they have sacrified almost all of both the MMO part and the RPG part in the name of convenience. With those elements gone, you're left with a game that still creates content like its an MMORPG, but tunes it like its a DLC smartphone app game.

Blizzard didnt do any mistake, it did what was requested.

People keep blaming Cataclysm dungeons and all that random bullshit.

Catch up dungeons and the very long period of ICC made the 99% catch up and realize that there is nothing to do apart from raid when you reach a point in the game.

They dont want to raid, or care to raid, but even in that 99% there would be a minority yelling that "I WANT TO RAID, BUT I DONT WANT TO ACTUALLY RAID".

And LFR was created.

WoW was always a mindless lootgrinder, it all depends how good you are and how fast you learn and since people learn very slowly you can understand how things went.

Not everyone plays at the same terrible (From my view) level, what Blizzard considers "Average player", i consider "Dear god, how are you even breathing without choking on your saliva" while the people doing M+23s would probably think the same for my group when we do M+15-17 for the hell of it, since there isnt a reason to do them, we prefer spamming and gearing alts on 11s-13s (Gear cap).

Its the same when i level an alt, and watch a blood DK kill one mob at a time instead of pulling 15 and cleaving them down cause thats how a tank actually levels.

Everyone has had different experiences in WoW, the majority is never met with better players to learn how to improve, and when they do meet, they go defensive "Its just a game, you are just an elitist, get a life".

People do not like being reminded they suck at one more thing in their life.

[Tommi]

Once LFG got introduced players stopped caring about their server rep, they acted like dicks, played recklessly, and the only way to solve this issue was to make dungeons so easy that even these bad, apathetic groups could still clear them.

Hard dungeons require manual group forming where your server rep matters. Thats what holds those groups together and allows them to actually do the hard content rather than quit after one wipe.

Why do people keep saying this? I started in TBC, a few months before patch 2.1, and I remember people being absolute cunts to eachother. The top two guilds on my server in TBC used to harrass people doing quests and shit. There was this one group I remember who followed me around for an hour. The priest would MC any mob I attacked and made it run to leash range so it reset. I reported them and they got a 3 day suspension for harassment after a GM watched them for 15 mins.

Lets not forget being in a feeder guild and having your tanks poached by them constantly and then never used them, just to piss people off....

People were arsehole in TBC/Wrath/cata before LFD/LFR. People generally put up with them coz they were the only real way to progress further. Pissing these two guild off ment you never got into groups for heroics due to the power they held on server.

[Relapses]

Dear God, OP thinks attunements are a good thing. Lord help us if more people start thinking like this.

[Rogalicus]

WoW's problem is not lack of difficulty, it's that anything even remotely challenging was backloaded to highest difficulty content on level cap and the rest of the game absolutely doesn't matter.

[ls-]

Dear God, OP thinks attunements are a good thing. Lord help us if more people start thinking like this.

They probably didn't play before 2.4 went live, after 2.4 the attunement quests were done for fun, but before that... Oof...

Regarding attunements, jic some don't know about the issues caused by them. Plenty of people who weren't in top guilds on servers w/ active raiding scene hated them thanks to rampant guild poaching. It's so bad that it's enough for Blizz to justify their removal. Before they're removed a lot of guilds were stuck doing the same lower tier raids pretty much forever because they couldn't progress to a higher tier raid. As soon as they had everyone attuned for it, key players often were poached by higher tier guilds, so they had to recruit new people and do the whole attunement quest line once again, or poach from a lower tier guild :P

[MoanaLisa]

It's the right answer if you want to run and make money on an MMO with 100K-250K players max. Mass market games aren't made for the elite sort of player. That's why they are mass market.