The real issue with modern WoW

[glowpipe]

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.

just look at all the reports from beta. Mobs are too easy, Dungeons are to easy

Last blue post post was about a dude who couldn't do SM at lvl 40 and he was shocked that people now facerolled it at lvl 30. People like to remember the game being a lot harder then what it was. I was a high end server first raider on a high pop server back in vanilla. I have no shot at getting into a mediocre or even subpar mythic guild today

[kaminaris]

I've been raiding semi-hardcore since WOTLC and even these days there is no lack of difficulty in modern raids, if you are talking about mythic raids of course. You are not talking about difficulty either, everything you mentioned - is grindy boring experience which has 0 difficulty. Farming resistance gear, oils, enchants - that is not difficult, it is time consuming. And let's not forget - back in Vanilla/TBC it wasn't easy to get information about this and that. Nowadays you have streams, logs, discord servers - plenty of ways to get every piece of info you need to get ready for the raid encounter.
What i miss is Legion's Artifact and Class Hall system, and in my opinion - Legion was the best expansion this far.

not gonna lie you had me in the first half... then I read about legion being anything close to decent and realized I was trolled.
Just as if farming AP for each and every spec wasnt ultra boring and tedious or farming legendaries doing all raid tiers for all difficulties... (yep our guild - top 200 - did it, all tiers, all difficulties)

And about this topic. We can close it as nobody does agree. This is not even a point of discussion. WoW is harder than it ever was. If you disagree go clear mythic raids and 20+ keys in time or get to glad in pvp.

It just lacks content, thats it. There is no magic here. There is nothing worthwhile to do.

[Sofo1]

The issue for me is that they release a non finished product that gets good after a year or two.

[Understarmor]

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.

what in the fucks sake are you talking about, 150 million unique accounts, and 200 million everytime an xpac hits...you can't be this fucking stupid can you? I mean really? the peak that it hit was in wotlk was 12 million players....even if EVERY SINGLE player created two other UNIQUE accounts by multiboxing or whatever technique you want to use that's still only 36 MILLION...where the fuck are you getting 150-200 million?

I mean seriously, why post on this forum and waste others time if you're just a dumb retard that throws out numbers? Just to further re-iterate how dumb your comment is, if all 12 MILLION created 10 accounts, that would still be only 120 million accounts, far below the 150 million you claim it still has.....i mean wow....just wow

[Koleiki]

what in the fucks sake are you talking about, 150 million unique accounts, and 200 million everytime an xpac hits...you can't be this fucking stupid can you? I mean really? the peak that it hit was in wotlk was 12 million players....even if EVERY SINGLE player created two other UNIQUE accounts by multiboxing or whatever technique you want to use that's still only 36 MILLION...where the fuck are you getting 150-200 million?

I mean seriously, why post on this forum and waste others time if you're just a dumb retard that throws out numbers? Just to further re-iterate how dumb your comment is, if all 12 MILLION created 10 accounts, that would still be only 120 million accounts, far below the 150 million you claim it still has.....i mean wow....just wow

Not taking sides here, but might want to reread what you're quoting before exploding with unfettered rage cowboy.

He said 10m at expansion release, not 200m.

[Thetruth1400]

Its the lack of difficulty.

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.

Agreed. The catch up mechanics I think are the worst thing this game has. Sure, they existed back in TBC and WotLK, but only slightly, not for all your gear, not a super high ilvl, and even then, they took time to earn.

Truthfully, it's getting worse going into 8.2 with Benthic gear which is giving better than Heroic, basically Mythic, level gear for doing the most basic of content that exists.

It's deadly to the games longevity and just further promotes the "Sub for a month, quit, and come back sometime in the next patch when Blizzard offers the same system or worse to get free gear".

[bloomy]

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?

this is backwards thinking, they already have lost 10+ million players over the past few expacs because of those reasons you listed, making it hard again would lose some of the new players, but the amount of people who quit because the game got too easy is much larger than the amount who play it for instant gratification.

the thread isn't wrong, but it's not just ease of the game, it's the ability to play a character which holds your attention, this comes down to 2 major factors, the obvious 1 is class design which is in a really bad state, and the other are the core game mechanics when in combat. an example of that going bad would be the removal of snapshotting, you used to have to pay attention to your buffs and know when it was right to let your dots fully run out and when you should maybe overwrite them halfway through their duration after lust was popped or a trinket proc'd. this forced your rotation into being different each time you played your character and helped keep things fresh, when you mix that with engaging class design you end up with a game people want to keep playing. in the current game your rotation only changes when you get some rng proc, which isn't complex or compelling, it's lazy game design and boring to play.

beyond that they also screwed the pooch getting ride of 10 man raiding, whether you like 10 man raiding or not is irrelevant, 10 man made it considerably easier to start a new guild and it helped a lot of people get into raiding initially. when 20 man is your only option you inevitably end up in a guild with politics and drama and groups who secretly(or not so secretly) dislike other groups in the guild which is obviously not very enjoyable for many people. it also makes it damn near impossible to start a new mythic raiding guild because why would anyone want to stick around in the current game for a full year trying to field a new 20 man roster. both of these problems do exist in 10 man as well, but they are MUCH smaller issues and much easier to rectify in a short window. also, as a final note, adding 10 man mythic wouldn't even stress the current guilds, the guilds who are happy with 10 will stay, and many others will split pretty much down the middle and make more guilds, and a lot of people who hate 20 man raiding will come back and make 10 man groups. they could easily put in the extra time to balance these 2 sizes and keep the game the same, but i think an easier option would be to remove LFR, and then just make normal raids as easy as LFR.

if you want to know when the game died it was with the changes to raiding and class design and the removal of snapshotting at the very end of MoP, since that point we had WoD which was a terribly boring expansion, legion which was equally boring but got saved by new game features(legendaries, artifact weapons, WQ's, and m+), and now BfA which might be the most boring of them all. it's very clear that the massive changes made at the end of MoP are when the game as we knew it was ruined, most people don't even realize how bad it got with those changes so they point to things like cata which really have nothing to do with why the game is as bad as it is now.

there are A LOT of changes that could help the game immensely and most of what i mentioned here they already know, but it puts more work on their plate and that's the core issue. they have decided that it's not worth their time to put in the amount of work it takes to make the game fun, they make it quick and we get tired of it quick. for now i guess they are fine with that, but the game will continue to be dead until they revert/fix some of the changes made at the end of MoP.

[Forogil]

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.

And if the raid boss is so broken that it is un-killable we don't have to wait months for it to be fixed.

[Halyon]

Ceaseless grind is not difficulty. Numbers aren't difficulty. Mythic raids are by far much harder than anything in vanilla. For me, Wrath was the golden child expansion, although Legion was pretty cool as well, and I for one liked MoP.

The game is harder now than it ever was in vanilla when it comes to mechanics and actively doing shit in a raid encounter for the most part. Vanilla was about grinding your way to x and y gear piece to make sure your numbers could survive the incoming numbers from x mechanic, not much else. C'thun was literally unbeatable for a while after release because there weren't enough numbers to contend with his.

There are a multitude of reasons why someone might not like wow anymore, be it because they're just growing out of it and in the difficult break-up phase, or because they have a masochistic need for the ridiculous grind vanilla demands. If that's your thing, more power to you, but don't pretend that it affords actual difficulty. Time-gating shit via attunement and whatnot is NOT hard, it's tedious as fuck when you have a life to attend, which most people who grew up with wow now have to balance with gaming habits now.

[Vladar]

The average retail player: Vanilla was never hard.
Also the average retail player: Its almost impossible to raid with 40 man. Make more solo content.

[Halyon]

Agreed. The catch up mechanics I think are the worst thing this game has. Sure, they existed back in TBC and WotLK, but only slightly, not for all your gear, not a super high ilvl, and even then, they took time to earn.

Truthfully, it's getting worse going into 8.2 with Benthic gear which is giving better than Heroic, basically Mythic, level gear for doing the most basic of content that exists.

It's deadly to the games longevity and just further promotes the "Sub for a month, quit, and come back sometime in the next patch when Blizzard offers the same system or worse to get free gear".

I still don't understand why this is a complaint. Catch-up gear doesn't at all put you at the same gear level required to do heroic or mythic raiding for current tier, and if difficulty's what you want, then Mythic is the place to be, not world quests or lfr...

Which to me does beg the question how many people complaining about how easy the game is are actually doing something to reach said difficulty levels.

Fair be it to say the overall difficulty could be harder, sure why not, but I cba with slogging through everyday crap longer than I have to just to get to the meat of the game, which for me most certainly ain't leveling anymore, and it never will be again. I do miss stuff like mage tower from Legion, which at least was a little individual notch in the belt to people completing that, but alas...

Another thing is just that the market is not that beneficial when catering to the 'hardcore', not in an MMO. Sekiro and Dark/Demon Souls are wildly popular, mainly because they're SP-focused. An MMO has to take ALL the player-base into a count, democracy, and try to focus effort more on what works for the most people. Sekiro doesn't appeal to everyone at all, so basing the game after that would turn away a lot more people than it would gain.

[Popastique]

not gonna lie you had me in the first half... then I read about legion being anything close to decent and realized I was trolled.
Just as if farming AP for each and every spec wasnt ultra boring and tedious or farming legendaries doing all raid tiers for all difficulties... (yep our guild - top 200 - did it, all tiers, all difficulties)

And about this topic. We can close it as nobody does agree. This is not even a point of discussion. WoW is harder than it ever was. If you disagree go clear mythic raids and 20+ keys in time or get to glad in pvp.

It just lacks content, thats it. There is no magic here. There is nothing worthwhile to do.

Trolling? Not in the slightest. Yes, i agree that AP grind and legendary RNG were 2 big problems with Legion. I myself remember doing multiple COS runs as protection warrior to get my artifact to 54 in order to beat mythic Helya. But apart from those 2 points - Legion was amazing, especially class lore and artifacts.

[Monster Hunter]

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.

Classic Was easier than current, just more time consuming.

Say it with me Time consuming is not difficulty.

We found all this out with cataclysm and the over tuned heroics, the whole make heroic dificut again stuff, people quit in droves.

[Zarc]

Nah. The real issue, which so many has discovered lately, with modern WoW is the lack of forced social interaction that was present in vanilla which truly made the game an MMO. No LFG for dungeons, so you had to actually talk to people to form a group. Social interaction. Lots of up-start time before you actually begin the dungeon, meaning once you're there you are really committed to get it done even if your group are having difficulties. Social interaction. The leveling is harder because you die if you pull like 2 mobs and you only get credit if you or your group gets the tag for that special mob so you try to group. Social interaction. Loot is not personal but needs to be divided amongst the group. Social interaction. List goes on...

In other words the real issue with modern WoW is not difficulty, it's that you can essentially play the game as a solo game, reducing other players to basically bots.

[MrExcelion]

Jaina (before this last major nerf anyway) and Uu'nat are plenty hard, and KJ last xpac

Whether they're fun is another matter, but just touching on the difficulty aspect.

[rrayy]

Wildstar did not fail because of difficulty.

That is not the point. If difficulty was all that it takes to make a great game like the OP says, Wildstar should have been a massive hit. Widlstar wasn't a massive hit therefore difficulty isn't the magic cure the OP claims it is.

[ShimmerSwirl]

T

I agree that nearly instant catch-up isn't the best idea but it's a way to allow people who only play once in a while to come back and still be able to play with friends. I don't know that there is a "best way" to do it but prioritizing having people being able to raid and do mythic+ without feeling like they're behind and can't catch up isn't the worst choice. The progressive raid model had serious problems which were probably worse in retrospect than what we have now.

The problem is these type of players just shouldn't be playing MMOs. Simple as that. Blizzard's fatal flaw was prioritizing these type of players over actual MMORPG players. There are a million casual, pickup and play games out there for those gamers who just want to login for an hour and play with a friend. An MMORPG just isn't the right one. Why try to fit a square peg into a round hole?

[MoanaLisa]

The problem is these type of players just shouldn't be playing MMOs. Simple as that.

As I said in my first post in the thread, your thoughts on the matter would be correct if you were trying to run a profitable MMO business with 100K subscribers. WoW isn't that and never will be so it's pointless to say stuff like that and have anyone take it seriously.

[Vladar]

The problem is these type of players just shouldn't be playing MMOs. Simple as that. Blizzard's fatal flaw was prioritizing these type of players over actual MMORPG players. There are a million casual, pickup and play games out there for those gamers who just want to login for an hour and play with a friend. An MMORPG just isn't the right one. Why try to fit a square peg into a round hole?

We will see how classic does vs retail. Retail is tuned for the casual player, classic on the other hand with several tiers of 40 man raids and no catchup gear mechanics is not. I predict a huge success for classic.

Classic forces you in some way to do 40 man raids for gear, in retail the most effective way to gear up is to log off and wait for those free epics.

[Relapses]

The problem is these type of players just shouldn't be playing MMOs. Simple as that. Blizzard's fatal flaw was prioritizing these type of players over actual MMORPG players. There are a million casual, pickup and play games out there for those gamers who just want to login for an hour and play with a friend. An MMORPG just isn't the right one. Why try to fit a square peg into a round hole?

Nice gatekeeping.

Thankfully, people like you don't get to decide who the REAL MMO players are. (See also: No True Scotsman logical fallacy.) There's something to be said about Blizzard trying to please literally every demographic of players but moving the needle in the completely opposite direction is one of the most hilariously disastrous ideas I've ever seen floated on this forum.