Who lost its soul? Veteran Players or the Game?

[Drusin]

It's like gamers are dumber than shit now that they don't realize this. 30 years ago, we just put the game up and never went back to it. Kids these days....

You would be surprised at the things people don't realize. Human nature in general is elusive to most people.

[Maquegyver]

Both. But developers and specifically their overlords are far more of the problem than players.

They have turned this game into a cesspool or time gating and metric based gameplay instead of anything resembling adventure or fun. I honestly have only been logging in to do my mandated time metric visions, my heroic raid (no ML, no tier, more RNG/luck based dps than is reasonable; killed raiding for me so quit mythic raiding), and maybe if I'm really bored grind out a M+ for my chest. Otherwise I don't touch the game at all.

The game honestly resembles a video lottery game more than an actual RPG or video game now. That is also an industry wide problem sadly. Nintendo is about the only company that still produces something resembling a video game and not a drip feed casino game.

[oplawlz]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't making a good game make the most money for them?

No, making an addictive game makes the most money for them.

[Azadina]

Both. Min-maxing/esport/competitive culture has infested everything and ruined everything since now everything has to be a competition to show how you are better than your peers. So you see things like min-maxing to the nines to the extreme of shunning anyone who isn't at 110% optimal, to things like meters and parses and Raider.IO which encourages being an elitist prick to show how much better you are. As a result games have embraced it. WoW took the opposite approach of an MMORPG and started to cater more and more to this extreme culture, adding Diablo 3 style gameplay and e-sport mentality with M+ and the like, so now you have an "MMORPG" which is basically an e-sport.

Both lost its way. The gaming genre changed the last I don't know, 10? years or so into where everyone wants to be the very best so it's a race/contest against your peers and if you aren't theorycrafting everything to the utmost extreme you are some subhuman. And this mindset has gotten into almost everything. I don't think there is an MMORPG out there anymore which doesn't have these people coming in and polluting it. So there is no game currently that has the feel of an actual RPG where the emphasis isn't on doing "homework" to max out on everything.

Games have lost the RPG aspect of MMORPGs but part of that is because the players have become more more competitive and gameplay focused so they stopped caring about the RPG aspects.

It's the evolution of technology, and people along with it. These days at top levels every member of a raid, pvp, m+ and whathaveyou is having their own streamwhore channel going, because that makes them money. That's what creates this sort of obsessive behavior with min maxing and e-sports. Money. In the past very few members of a guild recorded fights, because there was no point for everyone to record, let alone stream, nor did everyone have the hardware/internet to do so.

Maybe I'm old fashioned and belong to the past, but that's a development I've hated the entire way it's happened. Can't people enjoy the games for entertainment, instead of try to use it for streamwhoring to chase some dollars? Or worse, being a mindless sheep obsessively following their favourite streamers ideas, without a thought of their own at all? I guess not anymore.

[Big Thanks]

No one has...it is just generalisation based on the 100 or so ppl you see post here. Stop being a drama queen ^^

Also shouldn't it be "Players or Devs"? How does the game lose the soul? It does not create itself ^^

No one lost his soul (>_<) is just fancy words
And ofcourse im not speaking for every Veteran Player...i was trying to refer to the "bitter" veteran players.
But i chose not to call everyone "bitter"

[deenman]

Why do you think is M+ so popular for gearing? Because it's the fastest method.

Since there's no WoW Token in Classic, you had to farm the gold for it, which is good because that meant that you had to find a way to make gold and interact with the world (and by extension, your own professions).

So you just wait for two lockouts, craft your item, then never care about it again in any fashion.

Being uncrushable is a totally different thing, which was easy to reach for Pally / Warr because they had talents / abilities that gave them extra block chance.
A blocked hit will never be a crushing blow.

However, simply because you'll never get a crushing blow, doesn't mean those stats were worthless, just being hit on its own was still dangerous.
If you went on some rather hardhitting bosses full TPS, your healers will suffer for it.

For Feral Tank however, crushing blows were just unavoidable unless you had like 104% dodge.


And with all due respect, your spelling makes it very difficult to read and understand those sentences.

you would never get full hit,you got your defensive stats to the point where any hit would be a block,dodge or parry,yes druids couldnt do this

[Kanegasi]

Neither. You're the one with burnout, don't project your problems to the playerbase or devs.

[letssee]

the game 100%

[Marrilaife]

You probably got bored of the game, it can happen after so many years.

It also happens that when you try to make endless sequels to a product, be it game, tv series, manga, books, w/e, it looses quality over time and just becomes a cash cow.

So I'd vote both.

[Nak88]

The game is 15 years old. That's the main issue. Although I am currently unsubbed, I will resume playing Classic soon and of course I will give Shadowlands a big try.

[Stormspark]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't making a good game make the most money for them?

Making a good game costs money. Making and reusing cheap shitty repeatable "content" like mobile games have is much cheaper. Also, holding onto developers that actually have passion and want to make a good game costs more than just getting people who don't care and are there for the paycheck.

[Kehego]

Game lost it.

• WoW was a social game for casuals. Content was hard and required you to group up to complete it. The most prestigious content were the 40 man/25 man raids, but there were a small subsection of the community.

• The hardcore raiders with their calculators and spreadsheets were the most vocal. They were the vocal minority and over time were incorrectly perceived to be representative of the playerbase at large.

• Eventually those hardcore raiders became members of the development team, and began changing the game to revolve around raiding. Vast majority of content for non-raiders was axed. You can only get the best gear from raiding now, not from your preferred type of content (reputations, crafting, PvP, etc), and those types of content were axed (reputation dailies with hubs and overarching questlines were dropped for forgettable, tedious world quests. Removal of justice, valor, and conquest point vendors. Crafting was left to rot, etc). Classes were designed to be balanced in a raiding environment, not to be fun to play with across the entire game. Layers and layers of RNG were added, with your item having 1. a chance to proc with the stats you wanted, 2. a chance to proc with the sockets you wanted, 3. a chance to proc a titanforge, on top of 4. the chance for that item to even drop at all.

• "You know you do, but you don't" exposes how truly out of touch Blizzard is with their playerbase. "If you want to play a fair-haired, light-skinned, blue-eyed majestic high-elf, sorry but…the Horde is waiting for you!"

Sorry, but I don't give money to people who took what I liked about the game away from me and tried to sell me what I didn't want, and then insult me when I ask for what I wanted in the first place. I'll resub once Blizzard gets their act together again.

wow was always raid focused
wow as always as social as you made it. people got to 60 and did content just fine with minimum interaction
you always only got the best gear from raiding, in every expansion

jesus christ

I hope you never resub

- - - Updated - - -

Just like all the things in vanilla that slowed things down to keep you logging in to play. It's a fucking MMO. They are designed to keep you playing for long periods of time. Modern WoW is no different than old WoW. Just the mechanisms employed to keep you playing are different.

he'll act that going from stv to epl to feralas to winterspring and back to stv was immersive

- - - Updated - - -

you would never get full hit,you got your defensive stats to the point where any hit would be a block,dodge or parry,yes druids couldnt do this

I like how he's acting like susanexpress didn't exist in vanilla. People always bought gold
Crafted pieces and engi azerite holds for quite some time, but again, he doesn't play so he doesn't know.

[potis]

The problem with retail is the playerbase. Most of the "real" WoW players left around Cata and didn't come back. The current game is a result of entitled players wanting their cake and eating it too.

Go figure, all these returning "I used to be so good before Cata" are the most worthless unskilled trash that i have experienced the last 4 years of the game and have been playing since beta in 2004.

Pugs and casuals of the 99% are another thing, but entitled trash players claiming they were part of the 1% that believe they were any good at this game at any period are the worst offenders, unless you were in some sort of top 1-100 guild since 2005 to end of cata, its highly likely you were just trash, and returning will be the same, you will be just trash at the game again.

And this just in HC casual environment guild, which i get tons of people trying to join over the last 4 years, its amazing how delusional and terrible at the game "I used to raid hardcore" people are, sure some actually have decent days on their achievements from back then, but dear god, so fucking terrible at the game.

PS: Clearing ICC and Cata raids 9 months after they came out because the game allowed you too, doesnt mean you actually cleared those raids, Blizzard nerfed them to shit for you over months with some mechanic (ICC buff), the same way they do for Mythic raids, which is why raiding Mythic is irrelevant unless you are in an averagely top 100-200 guild at best, cause after that, most get nerfed kills.

[CasualVader]

The current situation of the game have two sides of the coin really.

At one hand ever since Legion they made the game very much more grindy due to the AP grind and added more RNG and other systems that just boosted the overall effort and time needed to get the better gear compared to earlier expansions which looks like to be solved in Shadowlands.

But at the same time we as players have also grown up and while when I was younger I could spend hours alone to quest and shout ''LFM this dungeon'' in trade chat I do not have the time or patience for that anymore which is why I couldn't stand going deeper into Vanilla as that type of content do not cater towards me anymore.

Both the developers and players are to blame here and best way for Blizzard to solve it is to try to cater towards both solo and group content which Shadowlands so far looks like they are doing with example Torghast being soloable and the list goes on.

[Thage]

In this specific instance? A little of column A, a little of column B. Although I would say 'lost their souls' is hyperbole in the extreme.

You have made something of a history on this site adopting one pet cause after another and trying to pin all the game's myriad issues on whichever issue you have chosen to crusade over at the time of making the thread, OP. You had a moment of clarity a couple weeks ago when you acknowledged you simply don't like tab-target MMOs anymore, or may have been forcing yourself to like them when tab-target was the only game in town... only to ignore the epiphany and draw the wrong conclusions once again. You began insisting that the tab-target gameplay, this, this is what's killing WoW. This time, you have it all figured out. I feel compelled to remind you of the old adage about the definition of insanity. You try the same thing over, and over again, each time thinking you've uncovered the silver bullet, and each time you expect different results.

I'm not saying this to disrespect you. I'm saying this because seeing things laid out in plain writing can be useful for someone who's gotten themselves too wrapped up in things and has begun missing the forest for the trees.

And this isn't to say WoW is some pinnacle of game design. The current crop of developers have struggled since the Titan devs were rolled into the WoW team back in WoD development. Ever since that watershed moment, it feels often more like lead developers are more interested in putting their thumbprint on the game's history and making a name for themselves (best exhibited by their proclivity to behave like larger-than-life rockstars, something Metzen and Didier pulled off due to actually having the charisma necessary to pull it off, a charisma Afrasiabi, Hazzikostas, and other lead developers sorely lack), and with design-by-focus-group, overdesigned systems on top of systems on top of systems in the name of pursuing metrics and monthly users, moreso than with producing a good game and letting the game stand on its own legs. It's a song and dance we've seen out of AAA development teams ad infinitum ever since the economic crash of 2008 writ large due to WoW's lightning-in-a-bottle debut making it a major pop culture player at its apex. Right now, it seems the dev team has had the same moment of lucidity you did, and time will tell if this moment of clarity will lead to them reining things in and rediscovering the forest, or if they too will remain content to miss the forest for the trees.

[Kehego]

The current situation of the game have two sides of the coin really.

At one hand ever since Legion they made the game very much more grindy due to the AP grind and added more RNG and other systems that just boosted the overall effort and time needed to get the better gear compared to earlier expansions which looks like to be solved in Shadowlands.

But at the same time we as players have also grown up and while when I was younger I could spend hours alone to quest and shout ''LFM this dungeon'' in trade chat I do not have the time or patience for that anymore which is why I couldn't stand going deeper into Vanilla as that type of content do not cater towards me anymore.

Both the developers and players are to blame here and best way for Blizzard to solve it is to try to cater towards both solo and group content which Shadowlands so far looks like they are doing with example Torghast being soloable and the list goes on.

you do know that gearing to go into bwl took the same appropriate # of hours right? I mean people did farm UBRS for how long on classic? Getting a full gear set from +10s takes just as much time or even longer than it takes to get like full dungeon set 1, especially if you're going for an optimized set

But on the other hand, gear only really means that much, since you can effectively clear most non-mythic encounters 10 il lower than required, which is a lot


Classic dudes farm ubrs for 5 hours every day for 3 weeks then complain that gearing in retail takes too long.
Then they complain that you can get into raids too easy (lfr) when noone even really cares about LFR

[Big Thanks]

In this specific instance? A little of column A, a little of column B. Although I would say 'lost their souls' is hyperbole in the extreme.

You have made something of a history on this site adopting one pet cause after another and trying to pin all the game's myriad issues on whichever issue you have chosen to crusade over at the time of making the thread, OP. You had a moment of clarity a couple weeks ago when you acknowledged you simply don't like tab-target MMOs anymore, or may have been forcing yourself to like them when tab-target was the only game in town... only to ignore the epiphany and draw the wrong conclusions once again. You began insisting that the tab-target gameplay, this, this is what's killing WoW. This time, you have it all figured out. I feel compelled to remind you of the old adage about the definition of insanity. You try the same thing over, and over again, each time thinking you've uncovered the silver bullet, and each time you expect different results.

I'm not saying this to disrespect you. I'm saying this because seeing things laid out in plain writing can be useful for someone who's gotten themselves too wrapped up in things and has begun missing the forest for the trees.

My moment of lucidity was when i realized i couldnt enjoy any other game on the market apart from wow because i was constantly trying to find flaws in said new games instead of sitting back and enjoy them FOR WHAT THEY ARE.

This change of mindset made me enjoy new games for the first time in years

Once you are able to do this...you will soon realize almost every game on the market is insanely good

You just need to turn off the part of your brain that is constatnly trying to find "flaws" and making "comparisons" to previous games you played and thinking about the "whats IF's" to make the game better.

Soon you are playing a new game and you start thinking "if this game made this instead it would be a better game".....just STOP! STOP!
You need to turn off that part of your brain and focus on the positives.

This moment of lucidity was good and all...but im still discussing WoW for some reason...so yeah....im still stupid (>_<) nothing better to do i guess

[relaxok]

The devs can ramble about the "saving the beating heart of the RPG", but at the end of the day, it's the people sitting at Blizzard HQ that stabbed a lot of daggers into that heart.

Who asked them to kill off professions?
Who asked them to prune the shit out of classes?
Who asked them to remove unique Classes synergies (such as Windfury Totem + Warrior)?
Who asked them to remove any defensive stats (Dodge, Parry, defense) or Mana regen stats (Spirit, Mp5)?
Who asked them to turn almost any items into a bland copy of each that has: Stamina, Primary Stats and two secondary stats?

Sorry, it's a damn cheap excuse for the developers to now turn around and say "look guys, we want to save the RPG!" while they have removed a ton of those RPG aspects for over a decade by now.

Well if you believe the developers, the players have pushed all those things.

Players pushed for QoL changes, players complained about too many buttons, players wanted to be able to do content with their friends regardless of class (‘bring the player not the class‘), players thought all the stats on gear were confusing and didn’t know when an upgrade was an upgrade

[Kehego]

Well if you believe the developers, the players have pushed all those things.

Players pushed for QoL changes, players complained about too many buttons, players wanted to be able to do content with their friends regardless of class (‘bring the player not the class‘), players thought all the stats on gear were confusing and didn’t know when an upgrade was an upgrade

Windury+warrior only feels good when you're a warrior, too.

Dodge/parry as a stat is useless as it does nothing but just put gear that only 1 primadonna class could really equip. Crit > parry conversions are more interesting and allows more more usable gear all over for everyone.
Mana regen stats was a direct balance situation, bc when int gave mana, it basically made the game near to unplayable for healers in bad gear. That's also why they did the many Healing into spellpower conversions, as well as the whole removal of spellpower.

Most items with effects were outright bad. There'd be 1 good proc weapon each tier, sometimes you'd have no good proc weapons for an entire expansion.

That guy kral never knows what he's talking about.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't making a good game make the most money for them?

Short term, no.

Long term, yes, but many game developers and shareholders don't seem to understand that, for some strange reason...