When did WoW convince itself Raiding is the only thing that's important?

[Gourbaak]

Arround 2004

[NineSpine]

they aren't the same but they are both obviously rep progress.

If the content you enjoyed stopped rewarding gear and started rewarding sockets, I doubt you would act like these are all the same thing, so please stop wasting your time and my time.

I suppose it's possible i am out of touch with the absolute bottom of the barrel of "causals" if you can even call them that.

You mean the 50% of the player base that doesn't raid or do M+? Like I said, completely out of touch, but now also arrogant about it to boot. With attitudes like this so pervasive in WoW, is it a surprise normal players don't want to be around you weirdos anymore?

if you think the only difference is rather the quest are localized or not then I also have nothing else to add because you must be trolling as you already pointed out the further differences in a earlier post but are now pretending that there the same other then being localized.

It's literally the only difference. You made up a bunch of horseshit, but ultimately that is the only difference. It's the same amount of quests, with the same variety of activities, just placed in different places at different times, and you are acting like this is some earth-shattering change that will bankrupt Blizzard. It's clear you don't have a real argument here and have latched onto this strange point because you've decided that doubling down is easier than coming up with a coherent argument for your point (because their isn't one), but unfortunately for you, confidence in a bad point doesn't make the point good.

Man if you want to talk about being out of touch this is a prime example. You haven't had to do any of the similar things from legion onwards that hasn't stopped people from forcing them self's to then complaing on mass.

Nothing you said changes that they wouldn't have to do it. Anyone doing hard content would cap on the currency easily from doing the hard content. You re now arguing that someone who is capped and cannot gain anymore of the currency is going to, for some bizarre reason, go try to obtain more of the currency that they.... cannot get anymore of... by running content they don't want to. It's nonsensical on its face.

[Caerrona]

I seriously cannot understand this logic. I've raided before, I'm sure most of us have, but I wouldn't say it's the be all end all of a video game. It's just a minigame to do with more players at the end of a character's leveling career. Where and why did this become the main focus of the game? I was watching Asmon's video last night and I think he brought up a good point--which is that the reason so many players think Raiding is the only thing that matters is because when WoW was coming up the content creators that were promoting WoW were all from the high-end/semi-high-end raiding communities. This gave the game a false sense of where the priorities arise from.

He was convinced in the video that the game tries to focus too much on the Mythic Raider Player and the Average Joe who does nothing but play once a week. While I don't disagree with the Mythic piece, the more I thought about it I could see the Average Joe piece too. But I suspect that was Activision trying to get new players to play--looking at you Mission Table and Level Squish. Those feel like corporate decisions. But the Mythic Raider piece is entirely the Devs fault. The people in leadership on the Dev team focus way too much on the Mythic Crowd. Most players don't even touch heroic raiding, yet why is it always seem like the center of the conversation revolves around Mythic Raiding.

As I finished it I was watching it with my roomate (old WOW player) and he said when he tried WoW again he noticed the leveling experience was ruined, and when he got to endgame the only thing people talked about was raiding. His conclusion was that it's no wonder the population shrank because it feels like the game thinks it's a good thing if everyone is striving to be a Mythic Raider, and he said how do you expect people to have fun under that system?

I love the wow community. So unbelievably delusional.

You are an actual idiot if you can't grasp the fact that the only time the game haan't been raid or die is legion onward. The proof is already here, just look at the classics, play for 1 week than raid log.

[NineSpine]

PvP gear had rating requirements on most slots so always surprised to hear people talk about how casual it was. If even had 2 tiers of rating requirements for weapons.

Higher end PvP gear had requirements. Lower end did not.

Wintetgrasp really depended on the server, some servers had factions that never won all week.

And? Would you also say that the game shouldn't be considered about raiding because dead servers don't have enough raiding guilds? It's a silly point.

ICC gearing is basically what Shadowlands is based on, it paved the way. 3 pre made raid difficulties/gear, 13 item level gaps between difficulties, last boss dropping 7 item levels higher.

I guess the difference is back then people felt 251 ICC10 gear was “good” and now the equivalent which would be 226 is absolute trash

It seems like it is a constant struggle to get some of you to understand that the issue here is not who had higher ilvl, since that is what y'all are absolutely single mindedly obsessed with, but rather what the gearing progression path looked like for people who weren't raiding. In those days, the progression gearing path for a player that didn't do HC content was fairly long, especially compared to today. Icecrown came with three dungeons that had a new higher ilvl for those players, it had an epic weapon quest for a lot of those players, and it had a ton of emblem gear to buy.

- - - Updated - - -

I love the wow community. So unbelievably delusional.

You are an actual idiot if you can't grasp the fact that the only time the game haan't been raid or die is legion onward. The proof is already here, just look at the classics, play for 1 week than raid log.

I played classic for the full run and stepped into a raid... maybe three times... and I never ran out of shit to do. I ran out of shit to do in SL in a month.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean at entry Wrath has lots to do I guess, discounting the copy-pasted ultra easy Naxx. But the dungeons only reward Badges are and are a total faceroll, the only really good thing from rep is the SoH shoulder enchants if memory serves, and tradeskills may "have depth" but they don't contribute that much to power. Casual activity in Wrath nets you some mediocre Badge gear that doesn't fit every slot. Want to get that GS up and don't like PvP? Raid, bitch.

Every profession in Wrath had awesome top end rewards, especially for non-raiders.

As usual, your personal single minded, deranged obsession with who has higher ilvl is clouding your ability to understand the point. For a non-raider, the badge gear was substantive, long term progression. The gear from trade skills was valuable. The gear from reps was valuable. The fact that someone else doing raids could get better gear is completely irrelavant.

- - - Updated - - -

You can't really have rewards that scale well with difficulty, because everyone has a different (non-linear) difficulty curve. Certain groups can blast through +15s all day but struggle with 20s... others blast through 10s and can't do 15s. It's not a curve, it's often closer to a backwards L shape.... easy, easy, easy, IMPOSSIBLE... but everyone's gets steep at a different spot. As a result, it's always going to be more efficient to do the lower content that's easy.

But yeah, a weekly cap would be fine with me, except kind of annoying if you wipe on a boss all week and don't hit your cap the way you normally do. Except I would make it a seasonal cap or something where catch up is quick, because catch up has been horribly broken in this game quite often over the past few expansions (farming essences during nyalotha was the worst!). It's no fun when it's a situation like SOO where it took like 16 weeks to cap valor on your gear, so it took 16 weeks for alts to catch mains - similarly with legendary ring upgrading by 5 ilvls a week for like 20 weeks.

Although to be completely honest, I prefer an increasing zone buff that you get for free instead of having to go get a weekly cap, but that defeats the op's goal of having things to do. (except my argument would be that it automatically nerfs the raid, giving you more to do in there).

This is the sort of overcomplicating of a simple concept that has caused so many problems in WoW. We don't need to make every system some overly detailed clusterfuck in order to avoid fringe cases.

Currency that upgrades gear.
Weekly cap.
Get it from almost all content.

That's it. It doesn't have to have all kinds of obnoxious, needless contingencies built in for the six people that are doing mythic progression but don't fight any heroic bosses so aren't going to get enough kills, or whatever weird situation you are appealing to.

[klaps_05]

I think it was a combination of 2 things. Blizzard doesnt care about advertising the game as much as the MMO genre is just not popular with newer generations and 2. mythic raiders/high keys players/pvpers are who basically advertise the game.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It's literally the only difference. You made up a bunch of horseshit, but ultimately that is the only difference.

This is your own post but now the only difference is them being clustered and I’m making up horse shit?

Old quest hubs had related quests that you could do all at once. There were areas made for this content, there was a story to be told through them, and it existed as an interrelated slice of content.

You must just be trolling at this point I’m not gonna bother.

[NineSpine]

This is your own post but now the only difference is them being clustered and I’m making up horse shit?


You must just be trolling at this point I’m not gonna bother.

Notice how nothing you highlighted said "More quests". Everything you highlighted could be done by quest location and quest text. You can keep acting like that location and text is what dictates the cost of developing content, but the more you do the more you look like you just don't like to admit when you are wrong.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Notice how nothing you highlighted said "More quests". Everything you highlighted could be done by quest location and quest text. You can keep acting like that location and text is what dictates the cost of developing content, but the more you do the more you look like you just don't like to admit when you are wrong.

I have nothing to add if you truly think making dedicated locations for the quest and having people write quest text/a story around them is free.

[justandulas]

Because they’ve turned WoW into a seasonal Diablo 3 or destiny 2 like game rather than a proper mmorpg where you build upon each patch and expac rather than reset.

Everything is all about the raid, and everything else is about quick gear meant to boost you for raiding. The whole game is only as deep as the latest patch.

[Jastall]

As usual, your personal single minded, deranged obsession with who has higher ilvl is clouding your ability to understand the point. For a non-raider, the badge gear was substantive, long term progression. The gear from trade skills was valuable. The gear from reps was valuable. The fact that someone else doing raids could get better gear is completely irrelavant.

Why does it always have to devolve into angry ad hominems with you. It makes you seem singularly close-minded.

Anyway I talked about getting better gear, not just decent one. If you merely want decent (c. 226, bit lower on some slots) gear, there's tons of options. Non-M+ dungeons, low-level PvP, WQs, Korthia gear, LFR, hell I think some non-leggy profession items go up to 220 or something but I'm not subbed ATM so I can't check. I don't know what you're even on about if you believe this was a Wrath thing only.

[NineSpine]

I have nothing to add if you truly think making dedicated locations for the quest and having people write quest text/a story around them is free.

All of the quests already need locations and text. This isn't additional to what they already have to make for every quest. This is the strangest hill to die on. Even if every quest magically needed a second set of quest text, which is such a bizarre thing to insist on, do you honestly think that a paragraph of text is the difference in development between something being cost effective or not?

- - - Updated - - -

Why does it always have to devolve into angry ad hominems with you. It makes you seem singularly close-minded.

Anyway I talked about getting better gear, not just decent one. If you merely want decent (c. 226, bit lower on some slots) gear, there's tons of options. Non-M+ dungeons, low-level PvP, WQs, Korthia gear, LFR, hell I think some non-leggy profession items go up to 220 or something but I'm not subbed ATM so I can't check. I don't know what you're even on about if you believe this was a Wrath thing only.

"Decent" and "better" don't mean anything unless you are making comparisons, and comparing to what people who do higher end content get doesn't mean anything. It's funny that you chastised me for saying you are single mindedly obsessed with who has the higher ilvl and then you double down on that idea after I specifically said that that is not the issue.

Why do I have to repeat myself? This is about the time it takes to make progression without doing rated pvp, M+, or raids, and the reality is that you can be fully geared out in less than a week easily. There is no substance to the progression without those three activities. Do you understand yet? Do I need to repeat myself yet again? I do not want to be fully geared and done with all the content I like in a week. That is boring. Do you get it? Can you process the concept that we don't care about who has the higher ilvl? Is this getting through to you? Do I need to write it out in yet another way? Will the fifth time be the charm?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

All of the quests already need locations and text. This isn't additional to what they already have to make for every quest. This is the strangest hill to die on. Even if every quest magically needed a second set of quest text, which is such a bizarre thing to insist on, do you honestly think that a paragraph of text is the difference in development between something being cost effective or not?

Again this is your post, you are the one who said daily’s have there own areas and there own story bits that world quest lack and I even agreed with you that mop was like that and that If they were going to expand the system they’d have to copy mop and go further.

Old quest hubs had related quests that you could do all at once. There were areas made for this content, there was a story to be told through them, and it existed as an interrelated slice of content.

And yes I don’t think blizzard would hire new devs or move existing devs working on other things to make areas for them or write for them, the extra hours of work/pay it would cost I don’t think they’d invest.

[Coniferous]

Higher end PvP gear had requirements. Lower end did not.



And? Would you also say that the game shouldn't be considered about raiding because dead servers don't have enough raiding guilds? It's a silly point.



It seems like it is a constant struggle to get some of you to understand that the issue here is not who had higher ilvl, since that is what y'all are absolutely single mindedly obsessed with, but rather what the gearing progression path looked like for people who weren't raiding. In those days, the progression gearing path for a player that didn't do HC content was fairly long, especially compared to today. Icecrown came with three dungeons that had a new higher ilvl for those players, it had an epic weapon quest for a lot of those players, and it had a ton of emblem gear to buy.

[COLOR="#417394"][SIZE=This is the sort of overcomplicating of a simple concept that has caused so many problems in WoW. We don't need to make every system some overly detailed clusterfuck in order to avoid fringe cases.

Currency that upgrades gear.
Weekly cap.
Get it from almost all content.

That's it. It doesn't have to have all kinds of obnoxious, needless contingencies built in for the six people that are doing mythic progression but don't fight any heroic bosses so aren't going to get enough kills, or whatever weird situation you are appealing to.

Agreed but there are still complications that to me make sense. For example, a season cap or some sort of fairly quick catch up mechanism makes sense - it’s no fun to be permanently behind because you started late or went away for a week.

I also think it makes sense that the cap goes up more quickly with harder content, or maybe you get bonus currency that week (and yes I know this contradicts the earlier point that catch up should be quick, I believe trivially so).

[Hellobolis]

raiding isn't the only thing important in wow. but it sure is the selling point of the game. maybe M+ is a big selling point too these days.

if you want world content, pet battles, roleplaying, pvp, etc there are all games that do that much better. i certainly wouldn't keep my subscription active year round just for those. then again, subs are no longer the primary income for the game so maybe just having 1-2 months worth of content per patch cycle is worth it nowadays.

[Jastall]

Okay, so what about post 9.1?
Unless you're still supposed to wear Dom Shards in 9.2, which i doubt will be the case.

Which is like, two slots, at best and there you even rely on the weekly Chest in order to acquire the best possible version, so good luck on that.

Due to the sheer size of the itempool, it makes it very difficult to acquire specifc items from the vault.
You can obviously play more M+ if you want a specific item, but i think most players will burn themselves out doing 10 M+ dungeons every week just for having the best possible odds at a few items, if M+ isn't their main avenue.

And in order to get solid Items from PvP, you need Rating, which is naturally harder to gain.
It's not like in TBC, where you can play 10 games a week, then buy anything but Shoulder and weapons after X weeks.

Speak for yourself, personally i just combined Rep grinds with doing dungeons where i still need items / badges, which made the whole thing super efficient.

Of course I speak for myself. That is all anyone can do. But profession rewards were mostly replaced by WQ rewards, with some items from the open world sometimes being extremely powerful (IE Arcanocrystal in Legion) to the point loads of people felt forced to farm that boss over and over.

And sure, trinkets are two slots- but open world items being BiS was also a rare case as you said yourself. Did it happen, sure, was it a rule, not at all, and it varied a lot from class to class, just as the value of going for the BiS varied depending on how much better the item was and how much harder it was to get. It's not like those TBC BiS items coming from dungeon bosses didn't have a shit drop rate sometimes as well. And the rep grind and dungeons were done simultaneously because they were one and the same anyway. I don't think that to be very interesting design, but then again neither are Emissaries or daily hubs. Apart from a few standouts like Suramar I don't think WoW's ever done reputations in a fun way, it always devolves into a mindless bar filling simulator, timegate or no timegate they've always bored me.


Since I don't want to go around in circles on this, my main point is that I feel the game already rewards non-raid activities plenty, certainly since Legion at least.

[Djuntas]

I mean, power progression is vastly what they incentivize and continue to provide the bulk of the content towards.

So of course it’s what’s most people care about.

Beyond power progression there is collecting and achievements, which are fairly shallow in their current states and mostly for niche audiences.

Shallow not in quantity of things in those systems, but in quality of things in those systems.

Thats true, but its still my main drive. I wanna make my millions of gold AH playing, mounts and nerd points. Gear for me is extremely pointless unless I was a sweaty 1% player. Gear has no point else besides speeding up grinds.

Anyway yes, I wish my side of the game had better quality for sure.

[Miffinat0r]

Right at release, because then-Devs were former EverQuest players, where raiding was the ultimate form of gameplay.

Well tbf Brad McQuaid and Jon Smedley both warned what would happen if you went down the route of hard organized group content.

[Raven]

When things are added to the game players only count the raids as content so clearly its the players who has decided only raiding is important, not Blizzard.

[Aurabolt]

It didn't, players did.

This x1000.

Thread should've stopped here.

[NineSpine]

Again this is your post, you are the one who said daily’s have there own areas and there own story bits that world quest lack and I even agreed with you that mop was like that and that If they were going to expand the system they’d have to copy mop and go further.

And yes I don’t think blizzard would hire new devs or move existing devs working on other things to make areas for them or write for them, the extra hours of work/pay it would cost I don’t think they’d invest.

But there are already quests... with text... in places... so this is just putting the quests and their text and their places together. This requires adding nothing now. It's just a matter of organization.