What kept you playing WoW in the past? What made it fun to play?

[Asrialol]

You said you were out before you replied twice to me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did thoroughly enjoy reading the banter between you two.

This post right here was unfortunate as it completely ruined the "typical MMO-C poster" vibe you had in the previous posts.

[Coldkil]

If i have to think about gameplay, it's actually the lack of so called "features/systems". I liked the game when it was just log in, do dungeons/raids. I don't get why to do what i always did in 15 years now i have to spend every single minute of my free time doing stuff i don't care about or don't like at all. We had just raids and optional world content and everyone was fine with that - until rushing through the game as fast as possible became the norm and suddendly "there's not enough content".

However what counts the most to me is the social aspect of the game. Having a good guild/group of people to play with makes even the most annoying content fun to me. WoW raids and dungeon have always been and still are top notch, it's just the whole "you have to go through this steps to do that" that sucks bad. I remeber Blizzard removing attunements from the game, now they're called "AP" or "Soul Ash" or "Azerite" and apparently they're super good. The fact you can enter the raid istance without any of those doesn't mean they're just mandatory.

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So your question could be "What could make you expand the activities you participate in" which is obviously not having to grind other bullshit to do it optimally.

Basically this. I want to do A, i should be able to just do A and enjoy the game. Not having to do B, C, and a bit of Z because some stuff cannot be obtained anywhere else. It may be a balance problem (PvP/M+ trinkets for raid) or just fodder to make people stay online more (Thorghast, Azerite/AP, etc).

[Echocho]

I also don't think games SHOULD encourage engaging with more difficult content.

That's why I think a great model is to give you gear fast if you do hard content but more drip fed if you do easy content.

Everyone can get to the same place eventually if you put in the work, it's just different paths.

Also if you choose the easy path it should probably be more of a time investment.
A raider may raid for 3 hours every week for their piece of gear but a casual may have to do 5-10 hours of LFR, daily heroics and WQs and they can only get one piece per week where a raider could get more.

It's a good compromise in my opinion. I don't think it's reasonable to be angry at someone eventually getting the same gear as you when you've had that gear for months.

It also comes with the added benefit of segregating the community. Fewer "bads" in pugs and m+ dungeons and fewer tryhards in matchmade content.

[arkanon]

I enjoyed the combat, and, I enjoyed the gearing process and the content being completed to obtain the loot. These things are no longer true for me.

[Athulua]

I played the most in late Cata, the entirety of MOP (except for the second half of 5.4 as this patch lasted for 13 months without any content coming) and then early WoD.

The main driving factor was that my characters were fun to play and there was still a significant amount of skill & knowledge that separated shitters from good players. The game had some grinds too, such as daily quests in 5.0. But these grinds weren't evergreen, I remember doing a lot of quests only for the first 2-3 weeks of this expansion, after that they were kinda redundant and once I hit exalted on my main I never touched them again. This is nothing like Legion / BFA / Shadowlands emissary system that makes players do them for the whole 2-year expansion.

Grinds are okay if they have a clear end point to them. Hit Exalted and be done with that shit forever. Never come back. Attain Challenge mode Gold and never have to grind those dungeons again (unless you want the tmog on your alt). Nowadays they just move the goal posts every patch and make you re-grind everything you already grinded in previous patch. The same mythic+ with more HP, the same Torghast with more HP, the same world quests with spongier mobs. This is boring and repetitive, furthermore you lost the main driving factor for any grind - the definite end goal. You just know that the goal posts are going to move again in 9.2 and you simply can't be bothered.

If they at least tried to shake things up more and design an entirely new loot table for M+ for example. So there is no IQD anymore, there are completely NEW trinkets there. But no, they follow the path of least amount of resistance and make you re-grind for that IQD but with slightly higher item level.

[Adamas102]

You're free to play the game at whichever level you feel comfortable. I didn't mean to imply that the game should force you to do something you're not comfortable with. But if you are only comfortable doing WQs and grinding the easiest content in the game, why should you be rewarded with the best gear? For both Legion and BfA it felt weird as fuck to randomly get a BiS item from a WQ. And while I get that there are "no victims" in this kind of scenario, it just never felt like it belonged in this game. But to each their own.

Not the best gear, but the key phrase was to not feel like you're lagging waaaay behind by doing a certain type of max level content. It's the same argument against having BiS drop from world content which I do agree is not good design since that makes min/maxers who gravitate towards raiding feel like they need to do content that they don't want to do. Titanforging threw things out of whack, but in terms of max base ilvl for WQ gear I think Legion and BFA were in a good place (in the second half of the expansion at least where emissary chests could reward up to normal raid level gear). Enough to not make world content feel like a slog AND enough to be able to do the pinnacle of solo content (Mage Tower and 5 Mask Visions). Maybe SL will get there after the final content patch, but right now WQ gear is below LFR quality (after maxing out renown) and the upgradeable gear is a massive currency grind. Not a good place for casual players to be IMO.

[Kralljin]

A few reasons, but the elephant in the room is: Character progression.

I think they completely homogenized gearing to a point where it's utterly bland, uninteresting and their latest attempt at "spicing" up gearing with corruption was an utter clownfiesta.

I completely dislike the concept of the weekly chest, where you feel compelled to engage in content every week because this box pretty much remains a source of gearing until you're literally done, which is very difficult because you have only limited control over the items that appear in the weekly chest.
Disregarding that it's one of those "I have to do this on every Alt every week" elements that make me just not want to play Alts.

Also that gear becomes completely invalidated with each patch is just straightup stupid.
In Classic and TBC, the game actually grows with the release of each phase, in modern WoW, it just feels like you're moving from one ride to the next, then you only ride this one on every single character until the next patch comes out and you instantly move on.
Disregarding that invaliding character progression every ~6 months feels terrible, there has always been some form of a "reset" in WoW, but this frequency and the fact how little overlap there is nowadays between tiers just goes way too far.
When TBC came out, i still wore a ton of Naxx pieces even into Heroics and Karazhan because they were damn solid pieces - and it didn't bother me.

[Osmeric]

Except I did answer it. I said that I don't have a problem with badge systems further than me preferring the current system since I like the feeling of loot coming from a dungeon instead of a token. I even went further and said that I'm also fine with more deterministic loot options as I feel the current system is a bit too reliant on RNG. I then went even one step further and clarified that I'm fine with everybody, even filthy casuals, having access to gear up to the Heroic item level. I simply do not think that BiS Mythic gear should be deterministic nor should it be on a vendor.

I can agree with all this, up to this point.

This is too much of a reward for doing literally nothing. I believe that a game should encourage its players to engage with difficult content and the best way for that to happen in WoW is to keep the highest rewards locked behind the hardest content. You want to frame my viewpoint as "hating casuals" when I'm simply stating my opinion on a subject.

Here I disagree. I think the devs have ruined the game by focusing too much on the Mythic level players (and rated in PvP). So, I don't think the devs can be trusted with having "players engage in difficult content" as a desirable goal, any more than the devs can be trusted with creation of off color humor in the game. So I would not allow the lesser players to get Mythic level rewards, but I would do so by removing Mythic level content and rewards entirely from the game. Had the devs shown the ability to focus on the majority of their customers without straying back to focusing on the upper fringe this would not have been necessary and a FF14-like system of cosmetic rewards for hardest content could have been maintained. But they have gone hardcore too much.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The game used to be a lot more about getting with a group of friends and accomplishing what you can. Now it feels a lot more about just paying a group of people you don't know to clear it for you and then just logging off. Of course this isn't an absolute statement and of course some people will snip this line out of thier whine quote reply to make it appear so.. but I stand by the statement.

[Vasilisa]

Friends were making this game fun. Sadly 95% of them left the game already so there is not much for me left in Azeroth.

[ek0zu]

A bit of everything back then, the slow paced lvling not knowing at all where to go next, the endless pvp in boobty bay onwards, the dungeons, when i reached max lvl the grind towards more and more pvp ranks, the raiding beating one boss after another, spending months for the end boss of the X raid, slowly building reputation among the people in the server.

[Demithio]

Wow during its prime (vanilla/tbc/wotlk and even some "new wow" expansions) used to be an adventure. I started in 2005 with vanilla and could go on and on about things. However, its all been said before I'm sure. WoW has been dying a slow developer induced death for some years now. Blizzard had turned into a diversified mega corp with many hands in the pot. I seriously doubt much of any of the developers have truly enjoyed their jobs for quite some time. All this has a lot to do with the state of the current game.

[confety]

Honestly it was nearly enough to not feel Blizzard stabbing me in the butt with a needle because if i dont do this list of boring chores i dont want to do then my character sucks in a semi"oficial" way.

Now i want to level some characters in retail to play sometimes but the mere thinking of renown makes me not even wanting open bnet.

[draugril]

It was better as a RPG than as an Esport action game.

Speaking more to this point, it appealed to a broader audience. Even if I was a top-tier, no-lifer that spent virtually all my free time in-game and then some... I could still play with my less dedicated friends. If we all went into BWL together, they enjoyed the experience of simply hanging out with friends, whereas I was still completing the top-tier content so I didn't feel inconvenienced by doing content with my friends.

These days, if you aren't doing the content that is incredibly catered to your level of dedication and skill level, you're playing the game wrong. Why would I run normal with my casual friends when I should be starting Mythic? What is the point of doing a +2 key when anything less than +15 is pointless?

[Demithio]

Speaking more to this point, it appealed to a broader audience. Even if I was a top-tier, no-lifer that spent virtually all my free time in-game and then some... I could still play with my less dedicated friends. If we all went into BWL together, they enjoyed the experience of simply hanging out with friends, whereas I was still completing the top-tier content so I didn't feel inconvenienced by doing content with my friends.

These days, if you aren't doing the content that is incredibly catered to your level of dedication and skill level, you're playing the game wrong. Why would I run normal with my casual friends when I should be starting Mythic? What is the point of doing a +2 key when anything less than +15 is pointless?

Really have to agree with this. The game was far more 'seamless' back in the 'day then it is now. Back in lets say TBC / wotlk era, we used to run all sorts of older or 'outdated' content with other people. One example, even though my raiding guild was T6 we still ran karazhan until the end of the expansion. It was just fun back then, even to do lesser content with other people and friends. All long gone now.

[draugril]

Really have to agree with this. The game was far more 'seamless' back in the 'day then it is now. Back in lets say TBC / wotlk era, we used to run all sorts of older or 'outdated' content with other people. One example, even though my raiding guild was T6 we still ran karazhan until the end of the expansion. It was just fun back then, even to do lesser content with other people and friends. All long gone now.

And again, it spoke to immersion. You were raiding the Black Temple, or Molten Core, or wherever else, as a "real" place within the game world. Ragnaros has a set level of power. He is an entity. The second you introduce difficulty levels is the second you break all pretenses of immersion in this content - Arthas is only as powerful as I decide he is. I am not an adventurer exploring the world and confronting villains - I am a gamer turning a dial to optimize my experience and the world exists in service of me.

[ItsRainingMetal]

The server community, where everyone knew everyone, made it fun. That's all gone now and WoW is not for me anymore.

[T-34]

You see, for some people fun doesn't lie in doing whatever kind of content you and your pals find enticing, but rather in acting like big, angry gatekeepers. After all, what can possibly be more fun than classifying your fellow players into worthy or unworthy?

Normal players don't care one bit what other players think about them.
Normal players find other players of the same mind-set as them and play with them and ignore everybody else.
Normal players don't even know that "evil gatekeepers" exist.

Only entitled and toxic players have problems with "evil gatekeepers" as they rely on other people to carry them through content.

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And again, it spoke to immersion. You were raiding the Black Temple, or Molten Core, or wherever else, as a "real" place within the game world. Ragnaros has a set level of power. He is an entity. The second you introduce difficulty levels is the second you break all pretenses of immersion in this content - Arthas is only as powerful as I decide he is. I am not an adventurer exploring the world and confronting villains - I am a gamer turning a dial to optimize my experience and the world exists in service of me.

You are right, but with just one difficulty a lot of players will either be unable/unwilling to complete the content or a lot of players will get bored very quickly because the content is to easy.
Whom should the game be balanced around?

[Sin of Pride]

Speaking more to this point, it appealed to a broader audience. Even if I was a top-tier, no-lifer that spent virtually all my free time in-game and then some... I could still play with my less dedicated friends. If we all went into BWL together, they enjoyed the experience of simply hanging out with friends, whereas I was still completing the top-tier content so I didn't feel inconvenienced by doing content with my friends.

These days, if you aren't doing the content that is incredibly catered to your level of dedication and skill level, you're playing the game wrong. Why would I run normal with my casual friends when I should be starting Mythic? What is the point of doing a +2 key when anything less than +15 is pointless?

I tend to agree with this. There are to many difficulties in wow I honestly think they should of capped it at 3. Make normal that is the current mythic 0. Heroic the current mythic 10 and mythic the now mythic 15.

You might want to add a endless style mode after that like mythic+ but don't have it related to anything but cosmetics. I recall having a lot more to do in tbc,wrath,and even cata pugging or putting together guild groups on off nights to clear out old raids for those last few upgrades or make an alt run.

You can't really do that anymore and the situation is made infinitely worse with the amount of bullshit they add to grind. I used to run three alts one tank and two dps usually a melee and a range character (never could get into healing beyond farming mage tower) now try as I might I can't get a new alt going with the amount of dull boring content blizzard expects me to grind to get them off the ground.

It looks to be getting marginally better in 9.15 but for the love of god remove choreghast from leggos... yes its better you can grind it all at once or whole leveling but its still a fucking boring experience.

[Kralljin]

You are right, but with just one difficulty a lot of players will either be unable/unwilling to complete the content or a lot of players will get bored very quickly because the content is to easy.

I think Classic and TBC have shown that a sizeable audience can enjoy a game despite not being super difficult, you just need other elements that make up for it.
And Classic, nor TBC or any other "Classic version" for that matter are flawless, Classic in particular is in many ways very flawed by modern standards.

I'm not saying that difficulty is bad or a lack of difficulty great, but it's not some ingedrient makes a game good.

Whom should the game be balanced around?

I think that's rhetorical question, so i'm going to point out that both extreme ends did pretty solid damage to WoW.

The hardcore community certainly went over the edge in terms of class balance / design, homogenization and its drive to balance certainly is a factor, i also think that Blizzard kicked off an arms race between their encounter design team and the hardcore community, the modern encounters, especially later mythic encounters have become so extremely complex that it's utterly unreasonable for anyone but cutting edge players to overcome them.
When you have encounters where even people that play this game as their job require over 300 attempts, i think the difficulty went over the edge.
The delta between the lower end of raiding and upper echolons have become so extreme and Blizzard has actively fed into this - on both ends.

On the other hand, designing the game around an audience that frankly cannot be arsed to do anything is also bad, nothing is allowed to take time, require effort or anything and any piece of content must be accessible for everybody, despite the story quite driving a narrative of "This is only for the Elite".
A modicum of exclusivity certainly adds flavor, yet this flavor is something that Blizzard completely rejects and thus the base level of the game turns into this completely bland mush that simply is attractive to nobody because any flavor might upset someone.

The only thing Blizzard has to do is to not throw virtually everything at this exclusive content, but that's where they should be smarter about Asset re use and generally focus more on content rather than polish every corner.
I think you can make raids that are for the more hardcore players, you could make a raid like SWP that re uses a lot of assets, they could add Hardmodes again like they did in Ulduar, but instead, they just chose to add another layer of difficulty and call it.

Even if you want to disregard that, the bottomline for me is, rather than building an Online World that has something for different playertypes, they rather created three branches of endgame, with just varying levels of difficulty.
Players aren't supposed to engage in different aspects of the game, everybody should play the same game at the difficulty they feel comfortable.
And honestly, outside of those Raid encounters, you could get a PvP / M+ Experience in other games.