Does anyone think that Blizzard can actually change the game so that people like it?

[Miffinat0r]

At this point; No.

I say that because I think as far as the franchise goes WoW would need a sequel to reset the pallet.

As far as a game design goes, I think WoW has burned a lot of bridges with casual players that I don't think can be repaired.

I'm going to explain why:

First is the gameplay philosophy and design. Blizzard's lead team basically are all 2nd generation MMORPG players. Many of these guys started out in UO or EQ most likely but didn't understand or see the fear that Smedley and McQuaid had about endgame and how it can impact the rest of the game. So without seeing that mistake they doubled down on the formula that those dudes made and took it to its logical conclusion which is where WoW is right now. A game where there's a ton of things to do but only 3 avenues to do things that the game cares about. This philosophy adheres to the idea that any player will become a better player if they do: M+ or Raiding. That's where all the resources go toward, and as a result, you can see how the community treats one another. This kind of philosophy pits people against one another and adheres to a strict interpretation of "Git Gud".

The second is the community. WoW started out like most Golden Age MMORPGs as a social game first and a game second. But with the advent of social media and the increasing influx of voice-based multiplayer games, the novelty wore off and people left the game. However much like almost all the Wester studio MMORPGs, there's a firm belief in some kind of libertarian-esque hands-off attitude toward how players treat one another. From this hands-off approach, we got attitudes that players treat other players as tools and not people. WoW has a reputation of being the most toxic MMORPG out there. The reason for this is because at the time all the tech guys thought not moderating was good for freedom. But as FF14 has shown you more players are happier in environments where players won't beat you up for meters, gear, or anything really. The inability to want to foster a community where people are nice to one another is yet another reason the game won't come back.

I really think these are the two driving factors as to why the game won't come back. It's just inhospitable to players as it punishes you for being not has hardcore as Limit is.

[Soon-TM]

@Miffinat0r out of curiosity, what was the warning about (the one made by these Smedley and McQuaid dudes)?

[Miffinat0r]

@Miffinat0r out of curiosity, what was the warning about (the one made by these Smedley and McQuaid dudes)?

It would lead to a division of your playerbase. You need to constantly uplift all players, and endgame will naturally do that but your job as a MMORPG dev is uplift those who cannot do that.

Smedly iirc privately didn't like raids. McQuaid did but agreed with Smedly back when they were friends before SoE.

I don't like Smedley but he also had a good quote when he was interviewed about EQN and how MMORPGs need to look at what DnD groups do and model off of that interaction as the future of the genre.

He knew the genre very well.

[Amarys]

No, it is literally impossible to make a game people will like.

It is called the law of lowest common denominator - to maximise the number of people who don't hate something, you have to offer the least offensive, the least interesting and the least of everything.

That's why shows like Big Brother etc were so popular, they managed to find the lowest common denominator for the maximum audience size.


So what we should so is go back to when Blizzard didn't listen to customers - but built the game base on expertise, but that's not going to happen since all those people are gone.

Nah not really true. The reason why WoW has so many haters is that they keep flip flopping. They made a game and it had a player base that more or less liked it. then they changed it around and the old players hated the changes but stuck around, hoping for things to get better while the new players loved the game. Then they changed things around again and again, each time drawing different kind of players but making the older ones dislike or hate the changes.

I don't think it's possible to "fix" things at this point since all those waves, at least those who are still playing want different things. Pleasing one of these groups would just make the others hate it more. This isn't really a problem with the lowest common nominator games. You either find it interesting enough or go play something else, so these games don't generate nearly as much haters as WoW does.

[Biomega]

They can't make EVERYONE happy, but it shouldn't be too hard to make MORE people happy.

It's about hitting that sweet spot between how much you're changing, and how many people that makes happy - change isn't free after all, both in terms of development cost and in terms of alienating established players. Finding the optimal point is tricky, but it's not impossible to at least do a reasonable approach.

WILL they do that? Hard to say. There's many factors at play.

[Glorious Leader]

I think tier sets from vendor was a big mistake .

The only mistake was removing it.

- - - Updated - - -

Everything you listed as harm I don't know why it's harmful. If both can get the same item but one does it by doing content that's easier but does it longer than the player who does the harder content but gets the items faster why is that a problem?

None of it was harmful. It was a completely arbitrary and ridiculous decision by the developers in order to bait more people.into raiding and placate the people who only wanted to raid log.

[Tyris Flare]

TBH the question isn't really whether they can change the game, it's can they release content faster.

I just noticed that we are coming up on the 2 year anniversary of patch 8.3, Jan 14th 2020. in 24 months, the game has only had 3 content patches.

At that pace, pretty much all the other complaints voiced here and everywhere else are just noise. Even if every patch were amazing it would be a disaster.

[schwarzkopf]

Nah not really true.

Yes really true, been established since the dawn of public entertainment. Hope that clarifies your error.

[Zantera]

The only mistake was removing it.

I don't know, I think once they added crap like VoA where people got free tier/pvp gear from faceroll easy bosses and they also put tier gear on vendors it really muddled things. I'm not against the idea of making gear available in different ways, and I think 9.2 sounds interesting with the promise that things like m+ or pvp can help to get the new tier set. However I always felt gear from vendors was such a lazy feature in itself, at least especially when you just go there to change some badges into gear. It didn't really feel rewarding or satisfying IMO.

[Glorious Leader]

It didn't really feel rewarding or satisfying IMO.

It was for everybody else who had little to no interest in raiding which happens to be most people. Nothing was "muddled", wtf does that even mean?Like im sure the developers agree with you but they're retarded and couldn't retain players because evidently not being "muddled" is far more of a priority than providing a rewarding experience for the player base. Your opinion is wrong.

[Kumorii]

People do like it... There's also people that don't.
Weird question tbh.

[Teriz]

I can't wait for the new expansion to be announced. These type of threads are tiresome.

[XMD7007]

Way too much "mandatory", character power level related content. This needs to stop, full stop.

Progression, the one which increases power, should be like this:
1. Get to max. lvl.
2. Get the best gear.

These two points should be achievable by 100% of the wow player base within two weeks, if they play 1-2 hours per day, almost regardless of how incompetent they are.

The hard and grindy stuff should stay in the game, but it's only for transmogs, achievements, ratings, rankings, mounts, pets, titles and so on.
I think everybody would benefit from this, people could always instantly play the game without feeling like they have to first "work" like two hours each day, before they can do what they want.
Parallel progression systems need to go and never come back, like borrowed power, covenants, conduits, torgast skill tree, legendary farming, socket farming and all the other junk they are throwing at us.

People should always have the feeling, that immediately upon login, their character is ready for everything, even if the player is not, because he lacks ratings or achievements and therefore gets rejected by the community (which is ok). But in this case he can start working on his deficits directly, without having to do 10 hours of time devouring junk every day, that's not directly related to his issues (no rating, no achievements).

Yes, some may say this is not an MMO then, because character progression is a central element of any MMO. Well, I say character progression stays in the game, it can also be as time devouring as they want it to be, but it must not be related to character power level.

Also, I agree with Venruki:

[Amarys]

Yes really true, been established since the dawn of public entertainment. Hope that clarifies your error.

It maybe true for most big franchises but not for WoW since WoW did not follow this blueprint from the start and did not try to appeal to everyone. It started out as a niche game and tried to appeal to D&D nerds and fans of the RTS games. They didn't even change into this model later and have always tried to appeal to different but divisive audiences.

[Miffinat0r]

Way too much "mandatory", character power level related content. This needs to stop, full stop.

Progression, the one which increases power, should be like this:
1. Get to max. lvl.
2. Get the best gear.

These two points should be achievable by 100% of the wow player base within two weeks, if they play 1-2 hours per day, almost regardless of how incompetent they are.

The hard and grindy stuff should stay in the game, but it's only for transmogs, achievements, ratings, rankings, mounts, pets, titles and so on.
I think everybody would benefit from this, people could always instantly play the game without feeling like they have to first "work" like two hours each day, before they can do what they want.
Parallel progression systems need to go and never come back, like borrowed power, covenants, conduits, torgast skill tree, legendary farming, socket farming and all the other junk they are throwing at us.

People should always have the feeling, that immediately upon login, their character is ready for everything, even if the player is not, because he lacks ratings or achievements and therefore gets rejected by the community (which is ok). But in this case he can start working on his deficits directly, without having to do 10 hours of time devouring junk every day, that's not directly related to his issues (no rating, no achievements).

Yes, some may say this is not an MMO then, because character progression is a central element of any MMO. Well, I say character progression stays in the game, it can also be as time devouring as they want it to be, but it must not be related to character power level.

Also, I agree with Venruki:

What you're describing is called evolution I'm here for it.

[Soon-TM]

What you're describing is called evolution I'm here for it.

This reminds me of a talk I had the other day with a RL friend, whom I used to play a lot with. He hasn't even played SL, so he asked me what was it like compared to BfA. I more or less explained the endgame to him, and told him to try the game, since it was on sale here come the holidays.

He lasted two weeks before saying "screw this".

[kiramon]

I don't know, I think once they added crap like VoA where people got free tier/pvp gear from faceroll easy bosses and they also put tier gear on vendors it really muddled things. I'm not against the idea of making gear available in different ways, and I think 9.2 sounds interesting with the promise that things like m+ or pvp can help to get the new tier set. However I always felt gear from vendors was such a lazy feature in itself, at least especially when you just go there to change some badges into gear. It didn't really feel rewarding or satisfying IMO.

Not sure if how you get gear should feel satisfying (vendor vs random drop), or getting power from the gear you got should. They should probably cut down on slots (rings and amulets should probably just be one jewelry slot, for example). Ff14 got rid of belts ‘but they’re transmogs in wow so yeah.

Currently neither is very satisfying though.

[Cthulhu 2020]

They could make the game appeal to a wider audience. But they're currently gliding on WoW token sales, so they'll keep milking WoW til it's dry.

As someone else said, minimum effort for maximum profit.

[ztkraptor]

I'm not trolling.

The game got too Woke for me.

When they started changing TBC Classic I dipped.

[Stormwolf64]

They could make the game appeal to a wider audience. But they're currently gliding on WoW token sales, so they'll keep milking WoW til it's dry.

As someone else said, minimum effort for maximum profit.

Lol they can't. That is exactly what contributed to the games downfall to begin with, it has just spiraled in the seemingly innocent baby steps it did back then. How about simply going back to simpler times with no terrible systems which are only annoying and also relevant for 1 expansion. Just gear, abilities and you. Can't be simpler.