Opinion: Changes / compromises that must be made for WoW to survive

[Ielenia]

Blizzard needs to embrace a more single-player focused game with the multiplayer being optional.

I'd rather they did not make WoW into a "single player focused game".

That's against the whole idea of MMO, an acronym that means "Massively Multiplayer Online"

[Soon-TM]

Why, exactly, should Blizzard embrace any of your suggestions?

Why, exactly, do you come to opinion threads without never EVER bothering to provide an opinion of your own? All you do is belittling people that think differently to you, at least the other guy @det will repeat his "omg players have different opinions, so Blizzard shouldn't ever listen to them" mantra ad infinitum.

OT: It's too late for any sweeping changes imo - not that Ion, or the people working with him, is the kind of guy with an outstanding creativity.

[Ielenia]

While that might be true in certain cases, the change to speed (from 1 second to 1.5 seconds) was complete unnecessary.

That never happened. The GCD was never "1 second" except for very specific abilities on a small handful of the classes. The base GCD has always been 1.5 seconds. The "GCD change" was adding into the 'global cooldown' abilities that previously weren't, like most buffs, like Recklessness and Avenging Wrath.

FFXIV has a 2 second GCD and a ton of skills on the GCD, however, the action bar does have a TON of abilities,

Why does this matter? Having a "ton of abilities in your action bar" doesn't mean anything for a 2 seconds GCD. You'll still be pressing one ability every 2 seconds. GCD isn't "mitigated" by having "tons of abilities."

Blizzard will have big competition in 2020/2021 (New World, Blue Protocol, PSO2, A:IR, Crimson Desert, Project TL, Crowfall, Lost Ark).

WoW have had competition for the longest time (Warhammer, FFXIV, EVO, GW2, etc) and it is still standing.

Blizzard won't be able to maintain the 1 million or so players it currently has

Ooooooh-kay... now I know what kind of post this truly is. I feel bad having spent actual effort writing this post.

But, just to humor you: where is your source for this "1 million players" claim?

-fix Silvermoon and Exodar

What, exactly, needs "fixing"? I think I have an idea of what you mean, but you need to be more specific instead of just making vague statements.

-allow portal systems in all faction cities so that players can pick where they want to 'home' instead of forcing everyone to 1 capital each.

You can already set your hearthstone location in any major city you want. You'll just have to take one additional portal or tram/zeppelin.

-zone scale all the things for end-game. People seem to complain about this, but going back to older areas seems to be fairly popular when it's carried out. The world is big, and should absolutely feel that way at end game. Not to mention that during the leveling process, there's a ton of Azeroth one will never see as it currently is.

-Along with the scaling comes a revamp of professions. 90% of the mats (if not more) wind up completely unneeded at end game. There's no reason for this to be this way. There's all sorts of directions to go with this, you could have recipe discovery mixed in, where the right combo of materials is personalized to that character, etc. Give people a reason to go out into the older areas.

Nah. Rare materials are used for rare recipes. You won't be using them in your day-to-day crafting. Besides, there isn't any "90% of the mats end up unneeded" since a long time ago. We haven't had "purple lotus" equivalents in a long, long time. If you find a rare material, nine times out of ten you are not going to use it to craft anything, so why bother making them "less rare"?

[D3athsting]

Blizzard needs to embrace a more single-player focused game with the multiplayer being optional. Allow all content to scale for dungeons and raids and NPC options for PVP. I would even be fine with renting a private server for that option. Keep all the multiplayer options there for people that enjoy that.

That's exactly what killed swtor and many other games that i like to define "single player mmorpg", abuse of phasing and instancing is quite detrimental for a MMo, honestly if i want a sp experience i play the wicher 3 that kicks wow out of the window, idd the decline of wow started with the removal of elite group quests during leveling

[Kralljin]

I think WoW will survive for quite some time even without major changes, the game has most likely at this point a solid base of ~2M Players that play the game anyway unless Blizzard really turns the game on its head.

However my general criticism towards the design of the game is that the devs seemingly have no concept anymore of making a coherent game, the game tries to cater to everybody.

On the one side you have Ion saying that WoW is not an E-sport, on the other side they keep pushing M+ and Arena into the center of the game.
Game modes that by design appeal towards the competitive crowd.

Or the corruption system, that system works far better in ARPG games where this entire concept of "walking upon razor's edge" can come into fruitition because the gameplay loops are far shorter and you're not stuck 5min+ fighting the same mob within the same area.
The game just seems to be stuck between being an ARPG and a more slow paced RPG.

[Relapses]

Blizzard needs to embrace a more single-player focused game with the multiplayer being optional. Allow all content to scale for dungeons and raids and NPC options for PVP. I would even be fine with renting a private server for that option. Keep all the multiplayer options there for people that enjoy that.

"MMOs are dead so just make the game single player."

Imagine being so cynical you actually think this is a good idea.

[Relapses]

Why, exactly, do you come to opinion threads without never EVER bothering to provide an opinion of your own? All you do is belittling people that think differently to you, at least the other guy @det will repeat his "omg players have different opinions, so Blizzard shouldn't ever listen to them" mantra ad infinitum.

There is no majority opinion held by all players. Unless you actually think the vocal minority that posts on this forum is representative of the whole playerbase...?

OT: It's too late for any sweeping changes imo - not that Ion, or the people working with him, is the kind of guy with an outstanding creativity.

"I don't have any ideas myself so I'm just going to call the current dev team garbage."

Nice, dude. Really contributing to the discussion, aren't ya?

[taishar68]

I feel like I’m feeding something here as the op has not engaged in the topic, but...

Do you really think the GCD functionality is what drives the success of the game? Really?

Content drives this game, plain and simple. I know, playability las a big part of it, but if the content is good and engaging, it covers many sins.

[sam86]

Funny thing is not a lot of people liked the Wrath model. Only reason most people "enjoyed" Wrath was because it was Lich King based and that is their fondest memory.

no it isn't that alone
-professions were very cool and useful, while some were obvious better, others will still good, even gathering gave u buffs to enjoy
-talents: i can't state how many MONTHS i spent playing with talent calculator when i was at work idle for example or can't login in general, it was one of my most fav hobbies 'offline', balance them was nightmare and only ppl with memory of goldfish can claim it had 'cookie cutter' built, for example until end of wrath no one was sure what is best talent dps for shaman both specs
-frost dk tanking, i LOVED frost dk
-abilities: i think mop peaked in term of abilities and utilities per class, but wrath had best buffs in general
-music: i still listen to wrath music, there is reason why Grizzly Hills is most fav in any polls (btw it isn't my most, my most is howling fjord)
-actual balance lore: it was childish cartoonish, but it didn't have any non sense shit moments like 'we will never be slaves' grom or sylvanas 1502 plans within plans
-the only raid in wow history that has its hard modes different for every boss: ulduar
-tier sets
honestly a lot of things worked in wrath, some aren't exclusive wrath only but i think wrath is best overall, for example if i have to pick class abilities only i'd pick MoP over wrath, but with wrath class buffs

[Soon-TM]

T"I don't have any ideas myself so I'm just going to call the current dev team garbage."

Nice, dude. Really contributing to the discussion, aren't ya?

Judging by your cringey comment, you don't have any either, and didn't even bother to provide an opinion. What exactly did you come here to this thread to?

[Dilbon]

Most players play WoW either solo or with random people so the game needs to be designed around that. Too much "you and your friends" content and the only people left playing are you and your friends.

[Sencha]

Remove brainless activities like world/daily quests.

[Niffo]

Bringing back the RPG in the game. Not this rollercoaster tycoon kinda gameplay with 834832 difficulties and items not being worth anything.

[Lucetia]

Wanted to preface this with I know these are all personal preferences and not everyone agrees.

-professions were very cool and useful, while some were obvious better, others will still good, even gathering gave u buffs to enjoy

Personally professions were meh. Most of them just gave a straight up damage boost +primary or +secondary and since each gave one they were mandatory and nothing unique.

-talents: i can't state how many MONTHS i spent playing with talent calculator when i was at work idle for example or can't login in general, it was one of my most fav hobbies 'offline', balance them was nightmare and only ppl with memory of goldfish can claim it had 'cookie cutter' built, for example until end of wrath no one was sure what is best talent dps for shaman both specs

Sorry, it is not the memory of a goldfish, but talents were pretty much cookie cutter. Each spec had maybe around 5-10 points to play with. Other than that if you wanted to be optimal you took a specific build. Most were straight up essentially damage boosts added to spells or the specs itself. Nothing special. What we have now is better in terms of this as we can either alter spells or get new ones depends on the row. Which is a lot better than "Add X damage to this" "This gives you clearcasting, etc".

-frost dk tanking, i LOVED frost dk

This is the only thing I missed where all 3 DK specs could tank. I know why they changed it, doesn't mean I like it and I've always hated Blood.

-abilities: i think mop peaked in term of abilities and utilities per class, but wrath had best buffs in general

Eh, no expansion has "peaked' in terms of abilities for me. Things change over time and that's fine. I haven't found a specific expansion I would say is better than others for any class in particular.

-music: i still listen to wrath music, there is reason why Grizzly Hills is most fav in any polls (btw it isn't my most, my most is howling fjord)

This one isn't really geared to the topic though since music is extremely subjective.

-actual balance lore: it was childish cartoonish, but it didn't have any non sense shit moments like 'we will never be slaves' grom or sylvanas 1502 plans within plans

See I thought a lot of it was just meh. You have a Lich King who is constantly taunting you but never actually does anything other than just to stop in so you know he's there and says buy. The Drak'thar Keep end boss (name escapes me) was meh after the setup in Zul'drak. The snake thing in Gundrak was the same. Dungeons didn't feel like they contributed to the story much or concluded them as well as they should.

-the only raid in wow history that has its hard modes different for every boss: ulduar

Mixed opinions on it. While it's nice to have the variety it is a pain overall. Blizzard essentially didn't do it because it would cause headaches for some guilds on what to do and especially if no one found out on the PTR. This also makes farming some of them for transmog a pain to do (ie Mimiron and making sure you don't nuke him past the point the heart won't drop).

-tier sets

Only tier set from the entire expansion I can even remember (as in the others were just that bleh) are Paladin Ulduar White Set and Naxx Druid Green set. The rest are meh and honestly I haven't really found any tier sets I like except for maybe 2-3 overall.

[Mardux]

Judging by your cringey comment, you don't have any either, and didn't even bother to provide an opinion. What exactly did you come here to this thread to?

Says the person who complained about someone "belittling" people, then immediately turned around, and in the same comment, started belittling people. Oh, there's definitely cringe.

[MasterHamster]

Seems like live/retail is doing quite well overall, it has just changed target demographic over the years.
And with that has the overall design philisophy changed to "bursty", "seasonal" content instead of how content used to be designed.

Think ARMA slowly turning into CoD. CoD is very popular, but it isn't what those ARMA players enjoyed about the game.
Personally I can't stand this play-the-patch design, it prevents me from ever feeling like I'm actually building up towards anything.
Jumping onto a properly garbage geared 120 and still plowing through Nazjatar was the final nail in the coffin, haven't touched live since.

I prefer to put in some sort of effort to gain the opportunity to see the latest content, instead of having it instantly spoonfed to me.

[Soon-TM]

Says the person who complained about someone "belittling" people, then immediately turned around, and in the same comment, started belittling people. Oh, there's definitely cringe.

Hey, do you remember that thing about pots and kettles? It fits you like a glove, young Padawan. Because also the guy I quoted is the best mannered in all of MMOC, definitely

More on topic, I don't think there is a lot they can do with a 15 years old game. Any bells and whistles they add seem to be way too complicated (Warfronts, how can you possibly say RTS and MMORPG in the same breath? It wasn't going to work) or interesting in theory, but the implementation is piss poor (Garrisons, Legiondaries, Azerite gear). Furthermore, any radical change would be likely rejected by a large number of players, so they could very much save them for another game.

I'd be glad with just good raids (almost a given), good dungeons (WoD/Legion ones were great) and interesting open world stuff (e.g. Suramar). Oh, and un!@#& PvP by the Loas' sake.

Sometimes, less is more.

[Dakara]

Personally I would much prefer WOW if Blizzard moved away from time gating... everything.

Hours played has become less important than days played and that (IMO) is a poor design. I don't care if they "daily" to-do list takes 10 minutes or 2 hours, I don't want to log into WOW every single day... and so I don't, but then, every day I miss is X rep I fall behind upgrading my essences (still not Revered with 8.3 Factions yet), or a days of Coalescing Visions missed, or a days of follower XP behind etc etc etc

I'm the type of player who, will find a day/time that suits them and grind the crap out of something. Other players might prefer to chip away at things for an hour a day, and that's fine, they could still do that, but by gating things behind "dailies", those of us who prefer to play more hours in less days simply fall behind.

In probably every single WOW Patch/Expansion where something has been gated behind Rep/Dailies, by the time I obtain it, I no longer need it.

[Accendor]

Blizzard needs to embrace a more single-player focused game with the multiplayer being optional. Allow all content to scale for dungeons and raids and NPC options for PVP. I would even be fine with renting a private server for that option. Keep all the multiplayer options there for people that enjoy that.

Blizzard needs to embrace a more multiplayer focused game with single player being nearly removed. Remove scaling from all content.

[Seranthor]

Why, exactly, do you come to opinion threads without never EVER bothering to provide an opinion of your own? All you do is belittling people that think differently to you, at least the other guy @det will repeat his "omg players have different opinions, so Blizzard shouldn't ever listen to them" mantra ad infinitum.

OT: It's too late for any sweeping changes imo - not that Ion, or the people working with him, is the kind of guy with an outstanding creativity.

So asking questions is 'belittling'? Seriously? Opps... sorry for belittling you.