Seems like Blizzard has lost sight of what kind of "cool shit" motivates players

[Johnjohn]

I just feel like the whole game is based around Mythic + and hardcore raids now. I feel like everything else is done with barely any effort on Blizzard's part. Its all min/maxing.

I mean people can say WoW was always about hardcore dungeons and raids, but I just don't buy it. They were part of the game, but not the whole game,

This is compounded by the fact that other games just offer way better casual and varied experiences currently.

WoW is still king or so I hear when it comes to dungeons and raids. But for everyone else, there are better options out there. I think a lot of people would agree that it started to go south after Legion.

[Elias1337]

I don't think the problem is really 'cool looking shit'. WoW in 2004 was innovative. Playing with other people on dedicated servers that you didn't have to pay for yourself, and were reliable, was still a new, novel and exciting form of gaming. The game hasn't innovated since.

Nope it had nothing to do with it. Game had way superio rewarding system and motivated players to do things. Why? Becouse game wasnt plagues by nonsenses like acessability and covinience for sake of pleasing casual audience. Its not coincidence that players lost motivation to play as game become more and more aceesible and covienient.

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I just feel like the whole game is based around Mythic + and hardcore raids now. I feel like everything else is done with barely any effort on Blizzard's part. Its all min/maxing.

I mean people can say WoW was always about hardcore dungeons and raids, but I just don't buy it. They were part of the game, but not the whole game,

This is compounded by the fact that other games just offer way better casual and varied experiences currently.

WoW is still king or so I hear when it comes to dungeons and raids. But for everyone else, there are better options out there. I think a lot of people would agree that it started to go south after Legion.

Game always wasnt about dungeons and raids becouse everything outside of those instances were not solo friendly acessible casual fest so there were actualy things what you could chase as casual player. Like hittinh lvl 60/70, getting flying, finishing attuments, getting your dungeon gear, etc... But when you make game more acessible and force eveŕyone into the game while making everything outside of it boring faceroll fot sake of acessability so players dont have to spent months leveling up than ofc everything outside of dungeons and raids will never feel rewarding. And not even mention of current insane difficulty levels implementation which reduce desire to play even more.

[Khaza-R]

With regards to Shadowlands I think they missed the mark in a few places.

For them heralding the return of tier sets so much, they could of made them a lot more exciting looking. Even something like an HD update to T3 or T10 would of had a much better reception. There seems to be a disconnect where the devs seem to think people want gear themed after raids rather than themed after their class.

Torghast feels like a wasted opportunity. Much like IEs in BfA. There's some genuine fun elements there but they couldn't help themselves to baking a grind behind it and suffers because of it. Torghast would of also been a fantastic opportunity to add a unique class / spec challenge similar to MT.

[Kallisto]

Arthas has been retconned as a bad guy and is present during Anduin's phase 1 transition. He yells generic stuff to Uther like "You will fail your world, old man!" or "You failed in Andorhal, you failed your prince!". They literally made one of the best characters, with story spanning two RTS games and one WoW expansion, into throwaway NPC during raid, yelling evil shit. Can't make that shit up.

Arthas was always a bad guy. Even before he took frostmourne he was a shitty person. After taking frostmourne he was still 100% himself with his own free will. He just did it because he wanted to. At no point was Arthas morally good. He was just another cliche bad guy in gaming. Yes he was cliche as fuck and WC3 was just as bad writing as all of wow.

[Relapses]

Arthas was always a bad guy. Even before he took frostmourne he was a shitty person. After taking frostmourne he was still 100% himself with his own free will. He just did it because he wanted to. At no point was Arthas morally good. He was just another cliche bad guy in gaming. Yes he was cliche as fuck and WC3 was just as bad writing as all of wow.

No way dude. Arthas is from old thing. And old thing is always good while new thing is always bad!!!

/s

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Arthas was always a bad guy. Even before he took frostmourne he was a shitty person. After taking frostmourne he was still 100% himself with his own free will. He just did it because he wanted to. At no point was Arthas morally good. He was just another cliche bad guy in gaming. Yes he was cliche as fuck and WC3 was just as bad writing as all of wow.

While arthas still had free will of a sort taking up frostmourn split the good parts of his soul off which then try’s to kill and it ends up as the kid under ice crown so he definitely wasn’t still him self.

[pahbi]

I really don't foresee anything innovative happing with wow.

Wow is a built house, every so often the game will get a new coat of paint and a few repairs.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

The "class sets" are actually really cool. Very powerful, and looking like they will spice up gameplay severely in season 3.
However, I do agree, but not for really any of the reasons you bring up.

They need to reestablish their commitment to the core properties of this game and innovate within that. Can't be that hard.
They are just not focused on doing so.

[epigramx]

If transmog and lore is what I cared about, I would have deleted the game many-many years ago. The realm of single player games is way better for that; this is a multiplayer game and humans by definition are competitive; multiplayer games are for showing off your accomplishments and the best way to do that is via gametypes that show off skill so in order to do that via transmog: I'd have to complete at who is better at grindings and wasting their time which is a bad way of life.

[Osmeric]

With regards to Shadowlands I think they missed the mark in a few places.

Story, setting, gearing, gameplay tempo, tuning, systems, quantity of content... just a few places, yes.

[Jester Joe]

The actual person who created Frostmourne was the Jailer. We're definitely not on good terms with him. The Primus only had the blueprints of it.

And we did spend quite a bit of time in Maldraxxus reforging a runeblade. It's even used in both the Necrolord and Kyrian campaign.

And I mean, you can't really complain too much about Legion artifacts, unless you'd rather be like, survival hunter who not only got redesigned completely but then also handed a random weapon that didn't really exist before that.

[Sucralose]

I think different players want different things based on what they have.. I know a lot of mythic raiders who simply want more cosmetic rewards and many non raiders who want power rewards.

[WowIsDead64]

...

I think, you feel the same thing, as me. I call it "Nothing makes my soul warm". I talk about dopamine. No warm feeling, that was brought be Garrisons and Class Halls. Everything feels like "Meh, just another pointless grind". And I think, that this feeling is more important, than "content" itself. Yeah, overall BFA and SL had lots of "content" in terms of being busy. But how about some satisfaction? Nope. Just grind for the sake of grind.

[MoanaLisa]

Imagine trying to design 'cool shit' for a game that has had its visual meta set for over a decade. Besides being entirely a matter of opinion it's not a job that I would wish on anyone.

That said it's entirely OK to say the game is suffering from a overabundance of 'sameness' for some time now. I think it's just hard to know what 'cool' is going to mean to someone under the age of 25, 25-40 years old, and the rest older than that.

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And I mean, you can't really complain too much about Legion artifacts, unless you'd rather be like, survival hunter who not only got redesigned completely but then also handed a random weapon that didn't really exist before that.

...or a shadow priest who also got completely redesigned, handed a class fantasy that makes them insane, and given a knife instead of a staff.

[shise]

Gear this expansion looks insane. One bad set is acceptable.

But the rest, you are right. The problem tho is the core idea of expansions. Changing the theme, quite often completely. It does not give enough time to develop themes properly.

WoD is a good example and SL has now officially joined the exact same train: rushed out content to move on.

WoD should have been out for at least 3/4 years. I mean... we are talking about Draenor!!!!! There was content for years to consume without getting bored. Somehow, they managed to half bake it, rush it out and then abort the whole idea.

Shadowlands is the same, but this time around we also had all the drama going on at Blizzard plus Corona... none of those helped one bit. Combine them to the fact that game´s quality was going downhill with all these new uncalled for systems taking over... So actually, SL is a pretty good expansion, all factors considered.


The whole "1 year per expansion" idea was a failure. Why do they need a year per expansion?

I´d much rather pay more in subs. but get better, longer lasting content. Problem is, we already pay more, but we get worse stuff.

[Ielenia]

Blizzard will never innovate again. The company is pretty much done. Anyone who thinks they will bounce back from everything that is currently happening is naive. No company has ever recovered from the amount of lawsuits and general public hatred Blizzard has garnered. Blizzard is over

How do you define "innovate"? What is your definition of "innovation"?
• Is it just "something never done by the other companies"? If so, then Blizzard has never innovated a single time in their entire existence.
• Is it just "doing differently something done by other companies"? If so, then Blizzard has always and still is innovating. Or...
• Is it just "doing something I like"?

[ro9ue]

I think there are a few good covenant armor sets for some armor classes (Night Fae Mail, Necrolord Plate, etc) and just about all of the Sanctum of Domination transmog is cool. So that's all worthwhile collection targets until 10.0 comes out. All of the 9.2 stuff looks like a hard pass from me.

[Unlimited Power]

I've taken a look at all the new class sets, and it seems like the sets in their current state (which may or may not change before the 9.2 goes live) have exactly the same model across all difficulties rather than Mythic raiding and Elite PvP being an altered model with more effects.

I've always felt that making the Mythic and Elite sets more detailed than their counterparts didn't feel so much as a reward for doing the harder content as it felt like a punishment for doing easier content. Let's be real, the detailed versions of the sets are the default look, while the other version being a downgrade.

If this is truly a sign of things to come, I'm looking forward to future tier sets a lot more than I did previously, as there will now be more than 1 version, the mythic raid (because lets be real, I'm never getting the rating required to unlock an elite set), that will actually be worth wearing.

[Echocho]

Snip.

They're like DC, it's clear that they have nobody in charge and are just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

[shise]

It is so easy.. go back to TBC style. It was the best.

Everyone had access to content at any desired level because the whole expansion dungeons and raid were relevant all the way until SWP...

There were different groups of guilds competing on the progress ladder. You had top guilds on the latest raid, others on hte previous patch. Casual guilds had a LOT of content to pick, from Grull, Kara... ZA til SSC! SSC was a HUGE raid that feed guilds for so long. But you would not burn out either, cause you could just jump into any of the other raids and someone would always benefit from it.

All raids were relevat and, for a great part, some of the gear was useful up until middle of BT...

We had normal and HC dungeons. And HC were really fun and challenging all the way til quite late in the xpansion too.. obviously for alts mostly.



Today we have 1 patch: 1 raid: M+ dungeons are shit, they are the same crap over and over and over...
Guilds have 1 raid as choice, normal, HC or Mythic. You will simply burn out because burning out is better than doing previous raids for no reason whatsoever (let´s be honest, gear matters. it is the ultimate sense of rewards in an mmo).

In BC you even had Classic content being relevant! because vanilla stuff was still cool and hard to get unless you had a nice dedicated group. At that point, the game was huge and that carried over to WotLK for the most part.

After that, it all went to hell somehow.

Now, instead of bringing more content, they grant the best gear in the game through M+ dungeons, which again, are the same core dungeons from the expansion release with layers of difficulty. Absurd.