The missing sense of adventurer - where did it go?

[Berndorf]

Zandalar realistic? A jungle next to a swamp next to a desert? Riiiight. This is minecraft levels of realism.

It actually can be sort of like that in the real world. There are places in the world that are essentially desert but where you have water near rivers or lakes it will be jungle like which can include swamp areas. It's like that where I am.

[Soon-TM]

If you removed every difficulty but mythic you would get that sense back. I just question if people actually want that.

Not really. Classic or BC do the exploration part just fine with a single raid difficulty, which is noticeably lower than mythic raids nowadays. Also, it isn't like you do a lot of exploration in a raid, mythic or otherwise, so I'm not sure how are the two things related to each other

[username993720]

I completely agree with the OP's assessment.
Venturing into the "wilderness" back in vanilla felt dangerous. Especially, when you encountered much higher level mobs than you (skull for level). That kind of feeling doesn't exist anymore. seeing a giant Devilsaur in the distance, for example, does not evoke feelings of dread anymore. The sense of adventuring into desolate and unexplored territories do not have a sense of wonder (probably, because we are already accustomed) or hesitation ("should i dare explore that cave).

[TheFirstOnes]

Because Blizzard has this stupid idea that more means bigger, when they're literally making everything small in the process with this dumb mindset.

[Freedom]

Familiarity breeds contempt. When I played Zelda BOTW at first the big pig enemies, Hinox, concerned me and made me think I was going to die if I got too close, and I avoided them. They became much less scary after I kited and killed one with bombs, and later became a joke as I knew exactly what to do to kill them. Same with the Lynels.

The game designer's job is to keep introducing new things that are scary and innovative, but when you've played a game since 2005, they run out of things to throw at you that are novel and scary, so you get jaded and bored.

[Keashaa]

Yes. I'm going to tell you exactly where it went and you will be shocked - clickbait.

Contrary to unpopular opinion, vanilla WoW world design had a certain structure to it. You had the "core zones" of your race / faction: Mulgore, Durotar, Teldrassil, Elwynn, Dun Morogh and Tirisfal. These zones had a heavy faction presence. As a new character, you were mostly fighting small-time criminals and minor monster infestations - believable problems for a "core zone".

The further out from your capital you went, the lesser the presence of your faction became. For example, the Barrens felt like a peripheral province of Durotar with a new corresponding set of Horde problems: collecting supplies for your settlements, fighting fringe cults and defending your settlements from indigenous locals. All believable problems for a peripheral province of a newly-established faction. The Alliance, on the other hand, were fighting corrupt administrators in Westfall and Duskwood - also believable problems for a well-established kingdom.

Now when you went out even further from the core and the periphery, that's where things got interesting. You journeyed into "wilderness" zones that had a drastically reduced faction presence. Along with this reduced presence, you had much less straightforward quests pointing you do to X in spot Y and collect Z. You'd have to figure out more on your own while traveling through the wilds - where to farm, which professions to level etc. You also encountered neutral towns like Booty Bay and Gadgetzan, where members of both factions would cooperate to survive in the wilds.

As you went further out, you stumbled into even more desolated zones. You would have places like the Un'goro Crater and the Western Plaguelands which had barely next to no friendly presence - faction, neutral or otherwise. This is where you'd start to run into some really wild things like titanic Dinosaurs eating your face. Correspondingly, you'd also find much greater treasures and valuable materials.

Lastly, you ventured into openly hostile zones like Silithus and the Eastern Plaguelands. These were the zones where you felt like you were actively in danger and they had the visuals to match their hostile and terrifying ambience.

This progression from civilization into wilderness into terrifying enemy strongholds is completely absent in post-vanilla expansion. All Shadowlands zones, for example, feel equally lived-in and you are carefully curated into every nook and cranny with little possibilities for independent exploration. In fact, I think the last time we had an "outer wilds" zone with few quests and little friendly presence was Townslong Steppes in MoP and Sholazar Basin in WotLK. Perhaps people said that MoP reignited vanilla's sense of exploration exactly because it tried to recreate that core -> periphery -> outer wilds -> enemy stronghold journey with the Jade Forest -> Valley of the Four Winds -> Kun-lai and Townslong -> Dread Wastes progression?

Today, players don't want that kind of "zone progression". They just want to do BAM-BAM-BAM!
It's a wonder we still have an open world as nearly 99% of the game play happens in instances (nothing new to be fair).

[ippollite]

Today, players don't want that kind of "zone progression". They just want to do BAM-BAM-BAM!
It's a wonder we still have an open world as nearly 99% of the game play happens in instances (nothing new to be fair).

The playerbase is optimised to shit. The only way you can stop them looking for every advantage they have over everyone else is...

And i know this is gonna hurt...

...

Make the game much easier.

Now dont get me wrong, im not necessarily advocating this, just stating how you might go about 'destroying the meta'. If I wanted to destroy the meta, id probably just do the following: scythe off mythic raiding into its own vanity/flex leaderboard system. The end of the game progression would be heroic. Mythic raiding would be the equivalent of +16-+23 keys. I'd give them all a title, some iconic cosmetic weapon/mount affix, some cool pets, and maybe some mogs. I'd even give them a leaderboard which id make accessible through the calendar or something (so no player in game could escape from). I'd also give them all the mythic raiding they could ever dream of with as many mythic plus affixes, timers, damage increases, and challenge modes (good job on your mythic zero, now do it with 17 people... now lets do it with a timer, now lets have storming, now lets have tyrann... i mean er... nah, screw it, lets have tyrannical!). The race to world first will never end for them! What joy they will have!... in their semi-caged mini game mostly away from the general playerbase (cosmetics, titles, etc, not withstanding). Actually, id make those rewards seasonal like PVP and give them an honor system style pve rating (top 3 - 2800, top 10 - 2400, top 100 - 2100, top 200 - 2000, top 500 - 1800, top 1000 - 1500). Yeah, thats what id do. No extra drops from the heroic loot table. Just raiding to their hearts content.

Of course they get a special (and super awesome) mount for finishing above 2100. Im not a monster! But as a player, you BEAT THE GAME at ahead of the curve, everything else is 'dressing'.
You also beat mythic plus at plus 15... you can go as high as you dream, but youre done at plus 15. Oh, and the first 5 levels are now on LFD. And im going to make them MUCH easier. Because what the hell is the point of a skill curve if you dont utilise it. As a token of conciliation though, you can only queue for the exact key level you have on LFD (you can still apply for any group you like on LFG and any dungeon you like - though of course can only list your own key for that dungeon on LFG), and only players WITH that key can join you. And if you mess up, you all get dumped down a rank.

Okay... you can queue with ANYONE with a +4 key, rng decides on which of the dungeons your key is now bound to (temporarily until the keystone slot is activated), and if you leave before the dungeon finishes, you are dropped a level (no cheesing for the right group with the right rng key - though im sure there'll be an exploit somewhere the playerbase would figure out). Anyways, im overthinking it. Point is, you are in LFD, you cannot jump up a key level without completing the dungeon (except through LFG). If you bail because everyone sucks, your key downranks (now you can only apply on lfd to rank 3), and if you want to boost it, well, you're either doing it through the tortuous LFD way (1 rank upon completion), or making and vetting your own group in LFG. At no point can you leapfrog through LFD. Your key determines what m+ level you can do. You cant just blag your way into a +9 with your +2 key. Thats LFG (which remains perfectly in tact and has NO CHANGES even in the 0 to 5 range - lfd is just an alternative option with MORE punishments (all your keys are on the line)).

Now lets pop over to pvp. I have ALWAYS loved the idea of RBGs. Im a team player. I make calls. I sit at flags! I do all the stuff no one else wants to do. But i hate discord/teamspeak/vent. I just like chat? I just wanna play some RBGs and get a rating, without having to organise myself into a premade (inc vetting/judgement), yeah? You know... kinda how the world worked back in 2006? Now i get my rating would be shot to fuck by this, but i reckons theres plenty of folks out there who'd want to do the same... just let me group for this with auto queue. I know, i know, its complicated and they'd need to really busily work on solo queue or something to make it happen... but just let my rag tag crew of anti social players (whom ive just now met) get through this RBG without being GY camped (bonus, why GY camp us in 2021? Honor is irrelevant in RBGs, all that matters is conquest and ranks. This is progress!). If you played vanilla at any level you were GY camped at some point by a premade (well, if you were alliance). The only difference now is that they'll three cap us in 5 minutes instead of farming us for honor on top of it. As my rank slides, i literally help my team mates out through our collective match making rank! At some point im going to have not only the experience in these BGs, but also the pride to say NO MORE!!! (and blast it on the wall with a dead daleks eye stalk), and just join a premade RBG group (with extra conquest gear making me more useful).

So anyways, thats how im breaki... i mean, er making the game less meta. Progression dies (in terms of power) at Heroic raiding/Mythic +15. Mythic 1-5 are also on LFD. RBGs are solo queued out the whazoo and on group finder if youre a masochist and just want a rating in pvp... ANY rating (RBGs and arena are on group finder (if you're insane)). LFR... i kinda want to boot. I dont think it fulfils any purpose in game. Its too challenging to be truly touristy, and too easy to be a bridge. Lets turn it into a scenario!

Two raid tiers. Normal can be buffed, heroic can be buffed, but not current mythic buffed (just... 'appropriately difficult' for the moderately hardcore leaning player). Mythic gets put in its own little play pen universe. Mythic+ 10-15 is EXPONENTIAL. Its the literal cliff face of dungeon progression (1-4 is basically a very slight hike, whilst 5-9 is a proper korean ajjuma sunday hike). 10 to 15 for the mountain climbers (and the difference between 10-15 in terms of gear is SMALLER (get this, geniuses!) than 1-5 v 6-10. As we climb the mountain, the rewards DECREASE!!! because the game should cap out at the average player (10). But we need to give the 11-15 something, so have another 5 ilvls. You'll note, no one actually complains that 16-infinity gives you NADA. And they dont because progression shuts down at some arbitrary number... its 15? Why? Who knows! Why not make it ten? Who knows!

So thats how you break the meta. You make the game MUCH EASIER to complete. Then you give players all the flex bs they could ever want on top of it.

[ShadowofVashj]

You make a fair point, but the context matters as well. The BC/MoP/BFA xpacs all take place in locations of established history, and smaller zones to boot. I think it's believable that these smaller areas would be more settled and spoken for.

That being said, you are highlighting the problem of a 12+ year continuous narrative. The "same" hero (your character) had done all of these things and have done so many incredible things, that the loss of the humble little adventurer cutting his/her teeth doesn't really apply anymore.

If anything, Shadowlands does try to reset this by having the Maw walker be a noob of sort, working your way up through the covenant.

It's a double edged sort of trying to provide new content, and also not gloss over the fact that your hero has done so much, has had many accolades, and that's why you (and the player base) keep getting picked by faction leaders to head up the new and greater challenges as they come.

[ippollite]

The playerbase is optimised to shit. The only way you can stop them looking for every advantage they have over everyone else is...

And i know this is gonna hurt...

...

Make the game much easier.

Now dont get me wrong, im not necessarily advocating this, just stating how you might go about 'destroying the meta'. If I wanted to destroy the meta, id probably just do the following: scythe off mythic raiding into its own vanity/flex leaderboard system. The end of the game progression would be heroic. Mythic raiding would be the equivalent of +16-+23 keys. I'd give them all a title, some iconic cosmetic weapon/mount affix, some cool pets, and maybe some mogs. I'd even give them a leaderboard which id make accessible through the calendar or something. I'd also give them all the mythic raiding they could ever dream of with as many mythic plus affixes, timers, damage increases, and challenge modes (good job on your mythic zero, now do it with 17 people... now lets do it with a timer, now lets have storming, now lets have tyrann... i mean er... nah, screw it, lets have tyrannical!). The race to world first will never end for them! What joy they will have!... in their semi-caged mini game mostly away from the general playerbase (cosmetics, titles, etc, not withstanding). Actually, id make those rewards seasonal like PVP and give them an honor system style pve rating (top 3 - 2800, top 10 - 2400, top 100 - 2100, top 200 - 2000, top 500 - 1800, top 1000 - 1500). Yeah, thats what id do. No extra drops from the heroic loot table. Just raiding to their hearts content.

Of course they get a special (and super awesome) mount for finishing above 2000. Im not a monster! But as a player, you BEAT THE GAME at ahead of the curve.
You also beat mythic plus at plus 15... you can go as high as you dream, but youre done at plus 15. Oh, and the first 5 levels are now on LFD. And im going to make them MUCH easier. Because what the hell is the point of a skill curve if you dont utilise it. As a token of conciliation though, you can only queue for the exact key level you have on LFD (you can still apply for any group you like on LFG and any dungeon you like - though of course can only list your own key for that dungeon on LFG), and only players WITH that key can join you. And if you mess up, you all get dumped down a rank.

Okay... you can queue with ANYONE with a +4 key, rng decides on which of the dungeons your key is now bound to (temporarily until the keystone slot is activated), and if you leave before the dungeon finishes, you are dropped a level (no cheesing for the right group with the right rng key - though im sure there'll be an exploit somewhere the playerbase would figure out). Anyways, im overthinking it. Point is, you are in LFD, you cannot jump up a key level without completing the dungeon (except through LFG). If you bail because everyone sucks, your key downranks (now you can only apply on lfd to rank 3), and if you want to boost it, well, you're either doing it through the tortuous LFD way (1 rank upon completion), or making and vetting your own group in LFG. At no point can you leapfrog through LFD. Your key determines what m+ level you can do. You cant just blag your way into a +9 with your +2 key. Thats LFG (which remains perfectly in tact and has NO CHANGES).

Now lets pop over to pvp. I have ALWAYS loved the idea of RBGs. Im a team player. I make calls. I sit at flags! I do all the stuff no one else wants to do. But i hate discord/teamspeak/vent. I just like chat? I just wanna play some RBGs and get a rating, without having to organise myself into a premade (inc vetting/judgement), yeah? You know... kinda how the world worked back in 2006? Now i get my rating would be shot to fuck by this, but i reckons theres plenty of folks out there who'd want to do the same... just let me group for this with auto queue. I know, i know, its complicated and they'd need to really busily work on solo queue or something to make it happen... but just let my rag tag crew of anti social players (whom ive just now met) get through this RBG without being GY camped (bonus, why GY camp us in 2021? Honor is irrelevant in RBGs, all that matters is conquest and ranks. This is progress!). If you played vanilla at any level you were GY camped at some point by a premade (well, if you were alliance). The only difference now is that they'll three cap us in 5 minutes instead of farming us for honor on top of it. As my rank slides, i literally help my team mates out through our collective match making rank!

So anyways, thats how im breaki... i mean, er making the game less meta. Progression dies (in terms of power) at Heroic raiding/Mythic +15. Mythic 1-5 are also on LFD. RBGs are solo queued out the whazoo and on group finder if youre a masochist and just want a rating... ANY rating. LFR... i kinda want to boot. I dont think it fulfils any purpose in game. Its too challenging to be truly touristy, and too easy to be a bridge. Lets turn it into a scenario!

Two raid tiers. Normal can be buffed, heroic can be buffed, but not current mythic buffed (just... 'appropriately difficult' for the moderately hardcore leaning player). Mythic gets put in its own little play pen universe. Mythic+ 10-15 is EXPONENTIAL. Its the literal cliff face of dungeon progression (1-4 is basically a very slight hike, whilst 5-9 is a proper korean ajjuma sunday hike). 10 to 15 for the mountain climbers (and the difference between 10-15 in terms of gear is SMALLER (get this, geniuses!) than 1-5 v 6-10. As we climb the mountain, the rewards DECREASE!!! because the game should cap out at the average player (10). But we need to give the 11-15 something, so have another 5 ilvls. You'll note, no one actually complains that 16-infinity gives you NADA. And they dont because progression shuts down at some arbitrary number... its 15? Why? Who knows! Why not make it ten? Who knows!

So thats how you break the meta. You make the game MUCH EASIER to complete. Then you give players all the flex bs they could ever want on top of it.

What's that you say? Now hardcore players would finish too quickly! Oh no! i guess blizzard would have to actually design CONTENT in the world game instead of lazily creating a lobby game to keep them subbed? (excluding of course the flex players who want that super mount for being ranked 2000 in PVE/PVP.

(ETA: Sorry shadowofvashj, i assumed this would just be added under a cute little bar as my 'edit' and not a separate post).

[slime]

And then came flying and nothing was a threat ever again.

[lolmmofuture]

it died when wow died, and before u say wow is not dead, i know its not dead, its just not the same as before either. And comparetively, it is ded

ie; late wotlk, start of cata. Every expansion since then was a different wow.

i would put wow into 3 eras

vanilla tbc wotlk, the wow msot of us grew up with and identify as the true wow, despite wotlk by the end changing stuff.

cata and mop, major major changes, but still semi accepted, also start of major loss of subs.

and then everything after that, wod, legion, bfa, shadowlands..... feels completey different. no longer the same wow we grew up with.

[ippollite]

Wod, to be fair, is still the pre meta grind. So id easily put it in the second bracket. Dont get me wrong, i hated it for coincidentally the same reasons i hate sls, but meta grinds literally define the wow 2 era (legion--> shadowlands). At least, thats how i see it.

[Stoffmeister]

I dont know man. Love how OP explained his experience and thats exactly how it felt for me too, but wow was also my first mmo. Everything was new and exciting. Now its a different time. I didnt discover thottbot until I was like lvl 40 and even then it felt like cheating. It was always last resort after asking in the general chat or asking strangers walking by. Which by itself was an amazing experience.

Its a different world today. The players have different needs and very few want to spend 1 hour or more running or looking for something. There is no mystery like trying to figure out how to solve a dungeon in Zelda on N64, you only had your brain, or someone watching. Or maybe you could call that friend you know who complated it.

Making a game experience today to be like vanilla was just aint possible anymore for many complex reasons

[Deneios]

I miss the feeling of being lvl 10 or 11 and deciding to go see other cities from Darnasus. You would go to Auberdine wait a bit for a ship. Then run trough the god damn wetlands afraid of every god damn mob because you had no idea of their agro range .Get feared and dotted by a ud warlock on a mount. Respawn and leg it to dun morogh and from there to ironforge and there take the subway to stormwind. It felt like a adventure and it took hours (stealthing the whole wetlands portion and getting bullied by a warlock) but i havent had that kind of feeling since then. Now days the zones are too linear and there is no set pieces in zones. Nothing to look for.
Where is the wonder where is the awe like the first time you saw devilsaur rendered at the edge of your draw distance. Or went to ashenvale to the place where grom killed mannoroth. SL has no character history with the places, only characters thrown in locations.

[ippollite]

I dont know man. Love how OP explained his experience and thats exactly how it felt for me too, but wow was also my first mmo. Everything was new and exciting. Now its a different time. I didnt discover thottbot until I was like lvl 40 and even then it felt like cheating. It was always last resort after asking in the general chat or asking strangers walking by. Which by itself was an amazing experience.

Its a different world today. The players have different needs and very few want to spend 1 hour or more running or looking for something. There is no mystery like trying to figure out how to solve a dungeon in Zelda on N64, you only had your brain, or someone watching. Or maybe you could call that friend you know who complated it.

Making a game experience today to be like vanilla was just aint possible anymore for many complex reasons

Im being super abrasive, but the reason is this: They keep thinking they have to design around the most hardcore player in the game. Imagine if, instead they designed around the 70th percentile player in game? The absolute mistake they made in this expansion is thinking that cosmetics were a casual thing and that hc players needed the most challenging content the game could deliver? What if they flipped that? What if hc players could beat the game THEN focus on cosmetics through some kind of paragon system for /flex? What if casual players could be encouraged to participate in the mainstream game? Thats basically the donut philosophy of vanilla wow, isnt it? The mainstream playerbase wants progression. The hardcore playerbase wants to beat the challenge. And the game should provide a system whereby they can beat said challenge and /flex.

[ShadowofVashj]

I miss the feeling of being lvl 10 or 11 and deciding to go see other cities from Darnasus. You would go to Auberdine wait a bit for a ship. Then run trough the god damn wetlands afraid of every god damn mob because you had no idea of their agro range .Get feared and dotted by a ud warlock on a mount. Respawn and leg it to dun morogh and from there to ironforge and there take the subway to stormwind. It felt like a adventure and it took hours (stealthing the whole wetlands portion and getting bullied by a warlock) but i havent had that kind of feeling since then. Now days the zones are too linear and there is no set pieces in zones. Nothing to look for.
Where is the wonder where is the awe like the first time you saw devilsaur rendered at the edge of your draw distance. Or went to ashenvale to the place where grom killed mannoroth. SL has no character history with the places, only characters thrown in locations.

You nailed it. I remember the first time I walked through stormwinds gates.

[Surfacin9]

Remember you being 4-7 years old, only playing in your neighbourhood, surrounded by people you know, then as you got older you explored more of your town, met more people, some less friendly than others, you could even get lost for a short time in a new area. But after you visited everything once, you learned the surroundings and it no longer was a novelty for you. Once you moved to another city, you felt novelty for the first few mins or hours, since you were experienced enough for cities are structured and had google maps and other things to help you, the novelty faded extremely quickly.

Now transfer that into a game.

You can't expect novelty in these situations, when you are familiar with the world, with the way the game is structured. The fascination with MoP is somewhat a recent t rend that everyone seems to be following, in fact, it was no different, except may be geometrically where we were progressing further away to the different side of the continent than we landed and the fact that most zones were separated by mountains or the wall, thus had physical borders. But in fact, any expansion can be viewed as an extention of this

Lastly, you ventured into openly hostile zones like Silithus and the Eastern Plaguelands. These were the zones where you felt like you were actively in danger and they had the visuals to match their hostile and terrifying ambience.

After those zones we reached even more hostile and unexplored worlds/continents whether it was Hellfire Peninsula, Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Hyjal, Jade Forest, Frostfire Ridge, Shadowmoon Valley, Broken Isles, Zandalar, Kul Tiras or the Maw. Each area was filled with stuff either ready to eat you if confronted or 'actively' seeking you to kill. We entered every new contitent/world in a state of war. What do you do during war while in a new area - you look for allies. In WoW the NPC 'did' that job for us with some quests trying to give the illusion that you are actively participating in that process as well.

Furthermore there's much more guidance available in game with FPs marked, clearly marked roads and paths, an arrow, area highlight on the map, handynotes. Then there's only a minority who wants to savour the levelling content, the rest try to find a way to finish it as quickly as possible.

Novelty was there because:
a) we were inexperienced and thus didn't feel powerful, were scared;
b) had less means of dealing with stuff, like aoe, cc, defensives;
c) there was waaaay less information around, so most of the time you went in blind;
d) it was a completely new game;
e) most were pretty young, naive and had less experience with open world games (not many existed at the time).

Nothing can recreate that feeling any more.

[Toybox]

I miss the feeling of being lvl 10 or 11 and deciding to go see other cities from Darnasus. You would go to Auberdine wait a bit for a ship. Then run trough the god damn wetlands afraid of every god damn mob because you had no idea of their agro range .Get feared and dotted by a ud warlock on a mount. Respawn and leg it to dun morogh and from there to ironforge and there take the subway to stormwind. It felt like a adventure and it took hours (stealthing the whole wetlands portion and getting bullied by a warlock) but i havent had that kind of feeling since then. Now days the zones are too linear and there is no set pieces in zones. Nothing to look for.
Where is the wonder where is the awe like the first time you saw devilsaur rendered at the edge of your draw distance. Or went to ashenvale to the place where grom killed mannoroth. SL has no character history with the places, only characters thrown in locations.

What you're essentially describing is stepping into an MMO world for the first time. After 15 years, WoW is always going to struggle to deliver that, especially to adults/more experienced gamers, never mind players who have played WoW for years.

[Deneios]

What you're essentially describing is stepping into an MMO world for the first time. After 15 years, WoW is always going to struggle to deliver that, especially to adults/more experienced gamers, never mind players who have played WoW for years.

Might be but i think that SL is burdened by the same thing as bfa horde side of the story. It was pulled out of no where. Alliance had history with the zone being Jaina's home and the fact Jaina killed her own father in WC3. While horde just had "well theres trolls there"

SL zones are just "well theres dead people there"

[Varaben]

My opinion is Blizz worked too hard to make the game easy. They introduced difficulty sliders on PVE content so that if you can't do the "real" content, there's an easy version you can walk over. But the difficulty treadmill doesn't make the game more engaging, it's makes it less engaging. Because you've seen all of this content before. Doing Normal then starting from scratch in Heroic raid just doesn't feel good like single difficulty raids did.

Point is, that "adventure" is gone when the content is so easy on the baseline difficulty. And even though we know the "real" content is the harder one, it feels cheap since you've already done it before. Maybe 2-3 times before (LFR -> Normal -> Heroic -> Mythic).