WOD had great raids, reasonably good dungeons (although they become pointless soon) and "standard" pvp as pretty much every expansion, what it lacked was world content, and how well that went right?
WOD had great raids, reasonably good dungeons (although they become pointless soon) and "standard" pvp as pretty much every expansion, what it lacked was world content, and how well that went right?
It's a theme park MMO that's transitioning (or already?) to a lobby MMO.
The first three games were designed with the world being the main character, which I think is part of why they are more beloved. Cata was the start of the theme park approach, which "oddly" was the first expansion they did from start to finish under the Activision banner.
Furthermore, the game is run by the former head of elitist jerks, which was a guild/website back in the day for theory crafting and a primary hangout for hardcore dbags. It's no surprise the game is so heavily focused on raiding and M+ with little care or innovation in anything else.
Last edited by Mojo03; 2021-05-16 at 07:23 PM.
Most people probably dont pay attention to Azeroth while they're in it, but that is not the same as people not caring about it. If you remove the explorable world of Azeroth you remove a large portion of the game, and the sole thing that made it popular all those years ago to begin with. Having an entire world to sit in while you wait for an instance queue is worlds better than sitting in a single boxed-in room.
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Neither classic nor retail are games like that though. None of them made real long term use of the open world.
Swotor did with a long stroy and because it is essantially a single player game. Single player games ALWAYS trump storywise. They have more freedom and less stuff to consider like different outcomes. That is simply not possible in an MMO as long as the story is for everyone.
People are asking wow to be something it never has been. Wow is and always was and endgame centric game around raids, dungeons and pvp. The rest is tacked on to give you something to do but not the focus and i hope it never will be.
Because what wow does good it is doing the best.
Other MMOs cannot compare even a bit to it. Swtor found its neish. Like ESO. in a long basically single player campaign with a huge story and nothing else.
FF14 tried to do both, but both inferior as a result. The story is not as good as Swtor or ESOs and the endgame is not as good as wows. Not bad. Just not as good.
So there are games for every flavour. You just have to pick the one that fits the best and not try to make a game into something it is not intended.
I think you're underestimating the playerbase here, and honestly it's positively refreshing.
Because a lot of what you mention is loud on the social channels, but much more diminutive in the real, full populace.
WoW has a sort of "continuity" between the types of content you mention in the world that connects, and though i agree that it should be respected far more by devs, fora and other loudmouths alike i think that the general public truly appreciates the "World" part of Warcraft.
The devs, to their credit, seem to have realised that "something" is off, and have made attempts to mend it, however crude or unsuccesful.
I'll list a few:
- Warmode, an attempt to get people to engage in world pvp
- World quests, an attempt to make the world feel more alive and dynamic (invasions and likewise more comprehensive approaches are the more succesful variant of these to me)
- Island expeditions, a poorly executed attempt to revive that feeling of discovery and wonder
- Expanded customisations / allied races, to make your character mire "yours" and thus more of a genuine character to fit into the world
- Warfronts, an extremely poor attempt to reincorporate the RTS roors of warcraft into WoW
- Covenants, an attempt to make choices meaningful again by bonding form to function so that your choices become a way to define your character, rather than just some toggles you alter depending on what content you intend tobat that moment
So all in all i think there is reason to be more positive on this, as despite the many failures people definitely seem to realise that jt is an important aspect.
This is a signature of an ailing giant, boundless in pride, wit and strength.
Yet also as humble as health and humor permit.
Furthermore, I consider that Carthage Slam must be destroyed.
Eh. Plenty of WoW players care about the world. Have you seen how people argue with each other about conflicts and events?
The real problem is that Blizzard doesn't care about their world—they're too busy chasing after the next content patch and parading their poorly-written antagonist and protagonist NPCs around. What happened to simply existing in the world and taking in its cultures? Where's the atmosphere and the sense of belonging?
You will never know, what is cause and what is consequence. For example world is only content available for me. Problem is - Blizzard drive players like me away from their game. So, it's not only players, who should be blamed for this. Devs' actions affect playerbase. I.e. if they would make better world content, then may be we'd see more players, who like world content.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.
If it gives any kind of tangible endgame reward, players will whine that it is a "mandatory chore".
If you stuck raid-level gear into world quest rewards, people would start grinding world quests and whining about how "mandatory" they are. But if they don't give raid-level gear, people will just whine about how "pointless" they are.
Blizzard can't win.
Mandatory is generally in reference to minmax'ing M+/Raiding/PvP. Torghast is mandatory for all three types of content because legendaries are a huge power upgrade. The Maw is mandatory due to gems. Big complaint currently is that you want to push high level keys, mythic raids, and high level pvp to maximize your great vault.
It's a game, nothing is actually "mandatory". But once you contextualize it, certain activities become mandatory. You can simply decide to no longer minmax (what I did) and several activities stop becoming mandatory.
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
– C.S. Lewis
Yeah dude, bring back the glory days of vanilla world bosses!
In case the sarcasm isnt obvious, even back in vanilla the world content was trash xd unless you unironically enjoyed that world boss shit fest, but to each their own.
Yes they can. It's very simple. They can ignore the people crying about mandatory crap because most of those people did that content anyway and remained subbed. Imagine if you sold a product that people were demanding you change because they couldn't stop buying it . How fucking stupid would have to be to change it. In a similar fashion people were complaining about other content being so rewarding so rewarding they felt "forced" to consume it. How fucking stupid would have to be to change that?
Then as @anon5123 said, its NOT easy - not if their goal is to try and please everyone. By favoring one group, you risk alienating the rest, and im sure you are smart enough to know that, so im really not sure why you think it is "easy".
The potential risk of alienating a casual player is far greater and more likely to result in that player leaving and never coming back. Alienating a hardcore player is far less likely to do so. And no im not getting into the definition of casual vs hardcore again, just understand that the implications of those words as they actually have any shared meaning in the English language would denote that one group is significantly more invested and committed to the game than the other.
So yea its actually really fucking simple...
I care about the world greatly. The devs force me to not need to care about the world... big difference.
So after 17 years as one of if not the most successful mmo of all time, a genre defining game, that has maintained the same rewards structure since 2004 - now we need to suddenly fundamentally change those systems so we dont lose "casuals"...Im sure you can understand why so many people are highly skeptical.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"