Few suggestions that WILL make WoW a better game

[A Chozo]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdotal

Thanks for linking this, I was almost making a lengthy post but this link explains the deal with anecdotes way better.

I will never really understand the logic of people who claim that "higher rewards" for "little % of the playerbase" will harm everyone else. At this point the existance of the Rank 1 title or Mythic raids is harming the playerbase as few people get there anyways. And what about the existence of MDI and AWC? Aren't they alienating the playerbase by showing such a high skill cap? Adding more content and rewards will never HARM the game.

Yes, Mythic raiding and MDI are alienating the playerbase - it's infested with try-hards and meta-slaves who can't cope with the skill ceiling. Adding more rewards will simply amplify the problem.

It's obvious that you know how much of a problem it is yet refuse to understand it, so yes, I do agree that you will never really understand the logic.

[Odrareg]

Thanks for linking this, I was almost making a lengthy post but this link explains the deal with anecdotes way better.

Yes, Mythic raiding and MDI are alienating the playerbase - it's infested with try-hards and meta-slaves who can't cope with the skill ceiling. Adding more rewards will simply amplify the problem.

It's obvious that you know how much of a problem it is yet refuse to understand it, so yes, I do agree that you will never really understand the logic.

If someone is as casual as feeling alienated by the existence of a world tournament or rankings and ladders in an MMO, that doesn't mean that he is correct in bashing ideas that could make the 'higher than average' player more interested in that MMO. Do you feel alienated by people in Durotar riding a Gladiator mount? Maybe those players only play Rogue-Mage-Priest in 3v3 and they destroy the game for you as you are a resto druid and no one wants to play rogue-mage-druid with you? That's what you're saying basically.

If you enjoy LFR, random BGs, Mythic+5 dungeons and are struggling on 1600-1700 in arenas, then that's fine and you have content and things to look forward to for the next few months. However you pay the same sub as someone who is doing a bit harder content but that hits a reward drought at some very near point.
Not everyone likes leveling up 10 classes and trying out all the allied races to kill time. Players can play the game differently.

Maybe this post seems a bit strange 1 month and half into Shadowlands, but BFA 8.3 lasted 10 months. Everyone using keybinds had cleared M+15s by the end of the spring and 5 Mask Visions became very easy with Cloak ranks and 465 gear. The same problem will hit Shadowlands soon, maybe a bit later as there's less gear dropping from PvE content right now.

In short, casual players have enough content to complete so they can cry about wanting titanforging back. And, players who want 'a reason' to push 2800 in arena or M+18s are certainly not harming casual players. And if that wasn't clear, this is not a 'filthy casual!' thread at all. The original post also mentioned cosmetic rewards such as the Artifact Challenge, that became very easy by the end of Legion but that still had a lot of success. Accessibility is not a problem, but giving some players an extra reason to do stuff is not harming the accessibility level for casuals.

Do you honestly think that a player having cleared all M+15s by the end of February is that crazy by asking for a reason to push M+20s? Or should he just shut up, 'change game' and level an allied race instead, so that he doesn't harm your own gaming experience?

[Utrrabbit]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdotal

Same goes with people who claim the majority of the plsyerbase does not do mythic+. When the opposite is true all you gotta do is look at logs.

[glowpipe]

Whats good for you is not good for others.
Many of the things you are suggesting here is only for a really small part of the game. And blizzard locking out content for a extreme minority, like people pushing 20+keys. high rated arena etc. You give lesser skilled player even less of a reason to stay. And at the end of the day, its the casuals that keep this game alive. Mythic high end players are less then 2-3% of the playerbase, Even heroic raiders are a minority. Without the regular joes paying the bills, servers would shut down.

[Chilela]

You're on to something in some cases, and I think they'd work well with some tinkering:

Mythic+ Ladder (or a better system of rewards)
I’m not referring to Shadowlands dropping little loot in M+, that doesn’t matter and doesn’t bother me too much. However, you do not have any reason to go beyond M+15 at all. An external score on a website means nothing.
Why not have a ladder that gives you titles or mounts? It would be great.
Either that, or for example completing all dungeons at +20 could reward you with a title. +25 could give you a different mount or even ‘free repairs’ for 6 months. I don’t know, the possibilities are endless and these 3 things I just mentioned honestly do not sound TOO TIME CONSUMING to implement. The mounts could be a recolor, who cares, it would still be something.

If nothing else, M+ cosmetic rewards are a bit top-heavy at the moment, as opposed to the other way around. Take rated PvP, for example. There's rewards for getting reaching fairly accessible benchmarks, whereas the only cosmetic reward for M+ this season isn't awarded until +15. I'd be fine with seeing some sort of reward for timing all +7s and +10s, even if it's something as simple as an achievement and temporary title. I could see +20s rewarding something fancy, akin to the R1 glad titles, but anything above that seems excessive.

As an aside, I'm not huge on rewards beyond cosmetic. Something like free repairs would bork the game, and in the case of bleeding-edge players, they're probably making bank off of boost selling anyway, so you're just making the rich richer with that idea.

More arena rewards
Back in WOTLK you had “The Flawless Victor” for 10 wins in a row above 2k.
Today after getting Glad (which has never been this accessible before), you literally have 800 points of N O T H I N G in between.
You can get Gladiator by winning 1 game and losing 1 on 2400, so you may end up on Glad with 2410 rating (example). Well, too bad Rank 1 is 3200+. Why isn’t there a more ‘recent’ 2700 3v3 achievement? Or another temporary title for reaching 2800? Another weapon enchant? Free Repairs?
And what about 3k? There isn’t even an achievement.
If you have pushed Gladiator but you are not good enough for Rank 1 or you do not ‘enjoy arena’ THAT much to just play it for fun, then you may very well lose all the incentive to do arenas for the season.
Note: the reason why I’m mentioning free repairs twice so far is both a joke but also an input towards diversifying rewards. To give more immersion, it would be nice if being a better player would reward you with ‘convenience’ stuff and not ‘just’ better gear. Imagine having a 5min CD on your Hearthstone if you are really good at the game. Why not?

The PvP reward system is mostly fine as-is, as hinted at earlier in this post. Glad is more accessible now, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's even close to easy to acquire. That said, I'd be fine with a temporary PvP title above Gladiator, but below R1, presumably for breaking 2700. If you're pushing hard enough to break 3k, you're probably aiming for R1 anyway, so anything past that point is fine. My comment about free repairs (and power rewards) earlier stands here as well.

More interactions between factions and ‘world events’ or effects
Back in Legion, there was a different world buff at the Mage Tower every week. Imagine if that buff would change and be assigned to the Alliance or Horde according to who has farmed more Stygia in that region. The buff could even be +5% honor earned through BGs…I don’t know. These things are pretty small but they would encourage people to log in, maybe contribute towards something that could ‘matter’, it would let people chat about it on Discord like “Oh this week the Horde won!” or whatever. This is just a quick example obviously

Given the modern faction imbalance, especially between guilds that value progression, I could see this basically being a huge middle finger to Alliance players. It's not like the Call of the Scarab microholiday where one faction winning doesn't really change anything practical, either. Unfortunately, this sort of thing feels genuinely incompatible with the more region-based community design of the game.

More unique looking transmog sets for more ‘difficult’ content
MoP Challenge Modes were a damn huge success. The same goes for the Artifact Challenge. People literally had a reason to level up all of their alts and complete that content. If it’s been so damn successful, why not do it more often through the years?
In BFA they waited until 8.3 to create something similar to the mage tower with Visions. Now we have Torghast. The path is correct and to be fair I’m not here to bash Torghast. But can anyone tell me why wasn’t it possible to do 10 masks visions in BFA and maybe get another reward, or earn ‘Coalescing Visions’ so you would indirectly have more keys (maybe account wide)?
In Torghast, what about being able to do “Layer 16” for the standard wings (so layer 8 x2 in difficulty)? Still 6 floors but just twice as difficult.
It could give you a cosmetic reward AND give you double Soul Ash so you don’t have to run through Layer 8 twice.
Again, this is just an example off my head. Imagine if they made a Torghast ladder with some titles and rewards by adding affixes (similar to Mythic+).

Torghast in general has an issue with its rewards. Soul Ash makes it practically mandatory, and outside of that, it has basically nothing. Definitely could use a more robust system of cosmetic rewards. Ss to the exacts, I'm not sure of. Laddering doesn't feel like the solution, though.

Overall, adding more rewards systems would definitely be fine for the game, particularly if they benefitted most levels of play, as opposed to the very top.

[A Chozo]

In short, casual players have enough content to complete so they can cry about wanting titanforging back. And, players who want 'a reason' to push 2800 in arena or M+18s are certainly not harming casual players. And if that wasn't clear, this is not a 'filthy casual!' thread at all. The original post also mentioned cosmetic rewards such as the Artifact Challenge, that became very easy by the end of Legion but that still had a lot of success. Accessibility is not a problem, but giving some players an extra reason to do stuff is not harming the accessibility level for casuals.

Do you honestly think that a player having cleared all M+15s by the end of February is that crazy by asking for a reason to push M+20s? Or should he just shut up, 'change game' and level an allied race instead, so that he doesn't harm your own gaming experience?

We already explained to you that it does harm the casual playerbase. If the unacessible content is too rewarding, they'll feel left out and will go play something else where they are... in. Where they are rewarded. Of course the hardcore players can want more content - who doesn't want more content? And of course it's just a plus (quantitatively speaking), but what me and lots of other players are saying that if they introduce even more rewards for the hardcore they'll alienate the playerbase.

I don't like that players better than me in pvp get that cool gladiator mount. I want it, but there's no way in hell I'll ever get it. This is true, this is a constant. The thing is, there are way more of me than people who get that mount - who do you think Blizzard (or any sane developer) will try to cater to? Both, but in a balanced way, and providing even more rewards for the already-rewarded will make the rewards for the casual feel smaller and smaller, pushing those players away from the game. They want both segments (the overwhelming majority who does random bgs, quests then unsub and the horribly small cutting-edge) to stay interested. The majority of the rewards must be reachable by both. This is what makes a healthy playerbase, not alienating it's majority.

[Mirishka]

Thanks for linking this, I was almost making a lengthy post but this link explains the deal with anecdotes way better.

Yes, Mythic raiding and MDI are alienating the playerbase - it's infested with try-hards and meta-slaves who can't cope with the skill ceiling. Adding more rewards will simply amplify the problem.

It's obvious that you know how much of a problem it is yet refuse to understand it, so yes, I do agree that you will never really understand the logic.

My pleasure.

- - - Updated - - -

If someone is as casual as feeling alienated by the existence of a world tournament or rankings and ladders in an MMO, that doesn't mean that he is correct in bashing ideas that could make the 'higher than average' player more interested in that MMO. Do you feel alienated by people in Durotar riding a Gladiator mount? Maybe those players only play Rogue-Mage-Priest in 3v3 and they destroy the game for you as you are a resto druid and no one wants to play rogue-mage-druid with you? That's what you're saying basically.

If you enjoy LFR, random BGs, Mythic+5 dungeons and are struggling on 1600-1700 in arenas, then that's fine and you have content and things to look forward to for the next few months. However you pay the same sub as someone who is doing a bit harder content but that hits a reward drought at some very near point.
Not everyone likes leveling up 10 classes and trying out all the allied races to kill time. Players can play the game differently.

Maybe this post seems a bit strange 1 month and half into Shadowlands, but BFA 8.3 lasted 10 months. Everyone using keybinds had cleared M+15s by the end of the spring and 5 Mask Visions became very easy with Cloak ranks and 465 gear. The same problem will hit Shadowlands soon, maybe a bit later as there's less gear dropping from PvE content right now.

In short, casual players have enough content to complete so they can cry about wanting titanforging back. And, players who want 'a reason' to push 2800 in arena or M+18s are certainly not harming casual players. And if that wasn't clear, this is not a 'filthy casual!' thread at all. The original post also mentioned cosmetic rewards such as the Artifact Challenge, that became very easy by the end of Legion but that still had a lot of success. Accessibility is not a problem, but giving some players an extra reason to do stuff is not harming the accessibility level for casuals.

Do you honestly think that a player having cleared all M+15s by the end of February is that crazy by asking for a reason to push M+20s? Or should he just shut up, 'change game' and level an allied race instead, so that he doesn't harm your own gaming experience?

Its cute that you automatically assume that you're better than people who object to your ideas. Condescending generalization is a good look in 2021.

[Lolites]

I mean to be fair 100% of the playerbase I play with over the last 16 years of wow would fit in the oposite category as you claim. From my experience the opposite is actually true. The majority of the playerbase are try hards.

rly? then check how many people do mythic raiding compared to lfr/normal... or how many people do low keys compared to pushing above 20...
casuals doing easy content are VAST majority
btw, if you play with people doing it have perhaps more to do with what kind of content you do, if you do more difficult content ofc you play more with people doing the same, but thats your anecdotal evidence vs. hard data that is available...

- - - Updated - - -

I will never really understand the logic of people who claim that "higher rewards" for "little % of the playerbase" will harm everyone else.

i dont think people actualy say that, however a lot of people think its pointles, as people already doing hard content do it for prestige so dont need extra reward (and are extreme minority) and people who are not interested in difficult content (who are vast majority) wwont start caring just bcs there is more rewards on the top end...

- - - Updated - - -

Mythic+ is an abomination and should be removed from the game. It shouldn't be Diablo 3. Why copy from such a bad game?

yeah, no, mythic+ is popular, so it should remain, you on the other hand, if you were removed from the game i cant imagine it wouldnt be improvement, bcs people with attitude "i dont like something so it should be removed even though MANY others love it" would definitely not be missed... unlike M+

- - - Updated - - -

Do you honestly think that a player having cleared all M+15s by the end of February is that crazy by asking for a reason to push M+20s?

people were pushing into 30+ keys despite no extra rewards beyond 15, just for prestige and bcs they like it...
so sure, it wouldnt hurt for another reward there (if we ignore resources put into the rewards taht could be allocated elsewhere) but for WHO that would be?
people who dont care about hard content wont start caring (or might actualy leave bcs they will feel they are under-rewarded), people who do it without reward obviously dont need it, so it would be for people who want to do hard content but not enough to do it unles they get something out of it, bcs obviously their enjoyment is not enough?
so yeah, no thanks, thats horrible idea, and all resources put into "hardcore rewards" could be put in something much, MUCH more useful

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think people really understand casual or even "hardcore" in definition. I'd argue there's way more core gamers involved then "casual" but I digress. Your ideas don't strike me as "Wow thats so bad" though.

[Sansnom]

Making things more accessible while still challenging is what would make woW better. Your only getting 1 of those.

Making wow better:
- Make anything that is a grind reward proportiontly.
- Any 'required' grinds should be fun or short.
- Everything should be balanced well enough you arent punished for choices made you cant change (class/faction/race/server/etc)
- Adding in optional challenges that are fun enough and rewarding enough that you have a 'reason' to keep playing so you arent the only one doing them (very rare to see groups for Visions past the first few weeks, Islands only ever had a handful at best and you are SOL if you wanted a PVP island, Twisting Torghast will get deader and deader the more people that finish it since theres no reason to go back, etc)
- Dont design the entire game around making the game endless, the majority of people 'want' to achieve their goals, not have an endless treadmill that is always out of reach.

The one thing I could think of that would make the game better would be to replace the daily with weekly. Not everyone likes to login everyday for an hour to not fall behind. That was a problem in the past starting with WoTLK when they had the daily dungeon that rewarded badges.

Now with the WQ where there is a few days timer for the emissary is the kind of step I like Blizzard have made.

[JemiS]

The game in the past was catered to mid-core players and over the last 10 years they've gradually shifted to serving the casual to semi-casual players. In your mind then they must be headed in the "wrong" direction. But the numbers disagree with you.

WoW has never catered to "mid-core" players. It's always been about catering to casual players. That was literally its selling point when it came out: it was the casual easy MMO on the market.

[Tadkins]

All of those ideas make me feel left out, as an LFR player who is not that great at the game. I do not feel like they would improve it.

[Relapses]

What you just described sounds an awful lot like what WoD's Challenge Mode rewards were.

There was a CMode ladder, you got a title for the realm fastest of any given instance and, of course, there were the transmog rewards you unlocked. Not that it was a bad thing, per se, just to point out that this has been already tried and was generally not a huge hit with the playerbase.

[loras]

Mythic+ Ladder (or a better system of rewards)
I’m not referring to Shadowlands dropping little loot in M+, that doesn’t matter and doesn’t bother me too much. However, you do not have any reason to go beyond M+15 at all. An external score on a website means nothing.
Why not have a ladder that gives you titles or mounts? It would be great.
Either that, or for example completing all dungeons at +20 could reward you with a title. +25 could give you a different mount or even ‘free repairs’ for 6 months. I don’t know, the possibilities are endless and these 3 things I just mentioned honestly do not sound TOO TIME CONSUMING to implement. The mounts could be a recolor, who cares, it would still be something.

More arena rewards
Back in WOTLK you had “The Flawless Victor” for 10 wins in a row above 2k.
Today after getting Glad (which has never been this accessible before), you literally have 800 points of N O T H I N G in between.
You can get Gladiator by winning 1 game and losing 1 on 2400, so you may end up on Glad with 2410 rating (example). Well, too bad Rank 1 is 3200+. Why isn’t there a more ‘recent’ 2700 3v3 achievement? Or another temporary title for reaching 2800? Another weapon enchant? Free Repairs?
And what about 3k? There isn’t even an achievement.
If you have pushed Gladiator but you are not good enough for Rank 1 or you do not ‘enjoy arena’ THAT much to just play it for fun, then you may very well lose all the incentive to do arenas for the season.
Note: the reason why I’m mentioning free repairs twice so far is both a joke but also an input towards diversifying rewards. To give more immersion, it would be nice if being a better player would reward you with ‘convenience’ stuff and not ‘just’ better gear. Imagine having a 5min CD on your Hearthstone if you are really good at the game. Why not?

More interactions between factions and ‘world events’ or effects
Back in Legion, there was a different world buff at the Mage Tower every week. Imagine if that buff would change and be assigned to the Alliance or Horde according to who has farmed more Stygia in that region. The buff could even be +5% honor earned through BGs…I don’t know. These things are pretty small but they would encourage people to log in, maybe contribute towards something that could ‘matter’, it would let people chat about it on Discord like “Oh this week the Horde won!” or whatever. This is just a quick example obviously

More unique looking transmog sets for more ‘difficult’ content
MoP Challenge Modes were a damn huge success. The same goes for the Artifact Challenge. People literally had a reason to level up all of their alts and complete that content. If it’s been so damn successful, why not do it more often through the years?
In BFA they waited until 8.3 to create something similar to the mage tower with Visions. Now we have Torghast. The path is correct and to be fair I’m not here to bash Torghast. But can anyone tell me why wasn’t it possible to do 10 masks visions in BFA and maybe get another reward, or earn ‘Coalescing Visions’ so you would indirectly have more keys (maybe account wide)?
In Torghast, what about being able to do “Layer 16” for the standard wings (so layer 8 x2 in difficulty)? Still 6 floors but just twice as difficult.
It could give you a cosmetic reward AND give you double Soul Ash so you don’t have to run through Layer 8 twice.
Again, this is just an example off my head. Imagine if they made a Torghast ladder with some titles and rewards by adding affixes (similar to Mythic+).

I’m ignorant but these things certainly don’t look so difficult to create or think about, and I’m no genius.

If anyone agrees with these ideas, I’d love if they could be brought up somewhere. Reddit? US Forums? MMO-Champion? I hope it’s not ‘just’ me but I’m convinced that these things would have a very good impact. This stuff could INITIALLY matter for 10% of the playerbase but I think that a lot of people would play more if they knew that there were very nice rewards for pushing arenas more, for doing Torghast with a nice group, or to push M+ higher. So it would indirectly encourage far more people to play more and pay their sub 1-2 more months before freezing waiting for the next patch.

Hope you enjoyed the read.

I feel that it's necessary to state that even if i stronglybagree with just about all your suggestions the "WILL" in the thread's title is a bit presumptious at the very least.

Also point number three was literally implemented during TBC, WotLK and Cata, and it rocked until it ran into things like faction imbalance, so i feel that would somehow need to be accounted for.

[dadoodoo]

Mythic+ Ladder (or a better system of rewards)
I’m not referring to Shadowlands dropping little loot in M+, that doesn’t matter and doesn’t bother me too much. However, you do not have any reason to go beyond M+15 at all. An external score on a website means nothing.
Why not have a ladder that gives you titles or mounts? It would be great.
Either that, or for example completing all dungeons at +20 could reward you with a title. +25 could give you a different mount or even ‘free repairs’ for 6 months. I don’t know, the possibilities are endless and these 3 things I just mentioned honestly do not sound TOO TIME CONSUMING to implement. The mounts could be a recolor, who cares, it would still be something.

More arena rewards
Back in WOTLK you had “The Flawless Victor” for 10 wins in a row above 2k.
Today after getting Glad (which has never been this accessible before), you literally have 800 points of N O T H I N G in between.
You can get Gladiator by winning 1 game and losing 1 on 2400, so you may end up on Glad with 2410 rating (example). Well, too bad Rank 1 is 3200+. Why isn’t there a more ‘recent’ 2700 3v3 achievement? Or another temporary title for reaching 2800? Another weapon enchant? Free Repairs?
And what about 3k? There isn’t even an achievement.
If you have pushed Gladiator but you are not good enough for Rank 1 or you do not ‘enjoy arena’ THAT much to just play it for fun, then you may very well lose all the incentive to do arenas for the season.
Note: the reason why I’m mentioning free repairs twice so far is both a joke but also an input towards diversifying rewards. To give more immersion, it would be nice if being a better player would reward you with ‘convenience’ stuff and not ‘just’ better gear. Imagine having a 5min CD on your Hearthstone if you are really good at the game. Why not?

More interactions between factions and ‘world events’ or effects
Back in Legion, there was a different world buff at the Mage Tower every week. Imagine if that buff would change and be assigned to the Alliance or Horde according to who has farmed more Stygia in that region. The buff could even be +5% honor earned through BGs…I don’t know. These things are pretty small but they would encourage people to log in, maybe contribute towards something that could ‘matter’, it would let people chat about it on Discord like “Oh this week the Horde won!” or whatever. This is just a quick example obviously

More unique looking transmog sets for more ‘difficult’ content
MoP Challenge Modes were a damn huge success. The same goes for the Artifact Challenge. People literally had a reason to level up all of their alts and complete that content. If it’s been so damn successful, why not do it more often through the years?
In BFA they waited until 8.3 to create something similar to the mage tower with Visions. Now we have Torghast. The path is correct and to be fair I’m not here to bash Torghast. But can anyone tell me why wasn’t it possible to do 10 masks visions in BFA and maybe get another reward, or earn ‘Coalescing Visions’ so you would indirectly have more keys (maybe account wide)?
In Torghast, what about being able to do “Layer 16” for the standard wings (so layer 8 x2 in difficulty)? Still 6 floors but just twice as difficult.
It could give you a cosmetic reward AND give you double Soul Ash so you don’t have to run through Layer 8 twice.
Again, this is just an example off my head. Imagine if they made a Torghast ladder with some titles and rewards by adding affixes (similar to Mythic+).

I’m ignorant but these things certainly don’t look so difficult to create or think about, and I’m no genius.

If anyone agrees with these ideas, I’d love if they could be brought up somewhere. Reddit? US Forums? MMO-Champion? I hope it’s not ‘just’ me but I’m convinced that these things would have a very good impact. This stuff could INITIALLY matter for 10% of the playerbase but I think that a lot of people would play more if they knew that there were very nice rewards for pushing arenas more, for doing Torghast with a nice group, or to push M+ higher. So it would indirectly encourage far more people to play more and pay their sub 1-2 more months before freezing waiting for the next patch.

Hope you enjoyed the read.

The game is already reward reward reward reward i have a better idea for you that doesnt include more rewards

How about make the rewards harder to obtain thus for making the rewards more......rewarding? undying achievement anyone?

everything is easy you just need to grind for it and collect your reward. same goes in real life

you work for an ipad
you have an ipad gifted to you

which do you value more? subconsciously you are going to feel like the one you earnt is worth more even though its not.

the game is unrewarding because everything is so dumbed down, easy, free and its just a matter of a grind, the answer isnt more free rewards, its making the rewards more......rewarding by making them harder to obtain.