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

[Elbob]

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 RPG genre is pretty defined by character growth over time as you progress. I'm not sure this really falls in line with what RPGs stand for. Wanting power rewards to be desync'd from progression would probably kill the game. Can you list any examples of other mmorpgs that have a system like this?

[Echo of Soul]

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.

The great vault is just as lazy, it's basically the same thing but feels so much worse for the players. Just give us a Valor cap that we can cap doing whatever we want in the game and allow us to buy the gear off of a vendor.
Want to do 200 world quests to cap? A handful of dungeons? Clear a raid? Pick whatever you want or a combination.

[glowpipe]

They could easily gain millions of people back into the game, but this would cost money. Money they don't want to spend. They want to spend as little as possible and milk as much as they can before they shut it all down. And i have no clue why, as if they had say 8 million happy subs. Thats 8Mx€15 every single month.

[Johnjohn]

I have not played since Jan 2021. Not gonna lie, it would take a massive shift in game direction at this point for me to come back.

I doubt that will happen. I have come to accept that Vanilla WoW through to say MOP was a bit of an anomoly for Blizzard. They hired a lot of outside forces to design their first mmo (ie Everquest players) and that's what attracted me to it.

Truth is I have always thought most blizzard games were polished turds. Games that looked great and ran well, but were mediocre gamplay wise. I also hated the type of player Blizzard games attracted (young edudes who enjoyed spitting on you while they minmaxed themselves into early neckbeardery).

Playing other mmos now and really even if Blizzard did a 180, the community is so bad it would be ruined anyway.

So in a way you are right. Ironically I hope WoW does well so it keeps the morons away from the games I am playing.

[Lochton]

No, Blizzard will never make changes to the game that everyone will like in the end. Life.

[ArkantosChampion]

I do not think that they can come up with something that will return the players. They now repeats the same thing in each expansions (class hall, garrison, farm of the main resource of the expansion) and their other "forces" are sent to other NEW games

[Lolites]

They could easily gain millions of people back into the game

please, enlighten us, how
bcs usualy when people say bullshit like this they follow with idea that would make the game thousand times WORSE, so i just want to confirm yours is the same

[glowpipe]

please, enlighten us, how
bcs usualy when people say bullshit like this they follow with idea that would make the game thousand times WORSE, so i just want to confirm yours is the same

That wasn't the point of what i wrote tho, is it. Me making the game better with my own idea. Its not my job to make the game better, im not a game developer. But the developers could if they spent the time and money required and listened to feedback.
Stop making the game based on market research would go a long way for starters

[Kuntantee]

The current team is incapable of making fun games. Furthermore, in the last decade or so, they have been designing around maximal profitability. Blizzard is incompetent and greedy. It is extremely likely that they can fix WoW. I hope they do but I know they can't and won't.

[Gaidax]

What Blizzard need to do is to return to 5-6 months schedule between content drops and make them good content drops like 8.2 was.

It is not beyond possible. SL itself would have much less of negativity if it would simply be like that, instead of 8 month gaps with a weak patch in-between.

That would put things back to normalcy.

How would they make it better? Make every expansion have ~6-8 content patches over 2 years span, with each patch being smaller, but them being more frequent. Content droughts are the biggest WoW killer, this could remedy that.

[Arcreid]

Also, I agree with Venruki:

Streamers are bandwagoner, which is why there's rarely any streamer that has the "wrong" opinion, he probably said there's nothing to do back in WOD as well.

[CaptainV]

What Blizzard need to do is to return to 5-6 months schedule between content drops and make them good content drops like 8.2 was.

It is not beyond possible. SL itself would have much less of negativity if it would simply be like that, instead of 8 month gaps with a weak patch in-between.

That would put things back to normalcy.

How would they make it better? Make every expansion have ~6-8 content patches over 2 years span, with each patch being smaller, but them being more frequent. Content droughts are the biggest WoW killer, this could remedy that.

Less is more honestly:

- Less large raids, more frequent ones.
- Less raid/pve difficulties, more frequent content.
- Less Raiding focus, more PVE/Story focus with more filler content for pvers in general.
- Less hardcore, more casual.

You wanna fix WoW? Stop pandering to the LFR players and the Mythic raiders, bring back normal, bring back heroic, make mythic+ into heroic+ and only give it 5 tiers of difficulty so those difficulties "Mean" something instead of an artifical inflation of numbers and damage and random debuffs.

Its as Asmon said, theres 98% of the player base that wanted casual content, stuff that was just, open world, but not world quests, daily quest hubs with evolving regions via reputation grinds, account wide reputation, removal of factions or just some way to do pve content without factions.

Story that can be done entirely solo, no mythic only phase plotlines, raiding becomes optional side content rather than the story content of the expansion.

Break the wheel and reinvent it, and if the 1% of people that hate that are upset, fine, let them be, they're 1% vs 98% of players that generally:

- Do not give a shit about end game raiding.
- Give even less of a shit about mythic.
- Dont like pointless artifact grinds and forced grinds for progress.

Basically, just give people content that lets them progress at a snails pace or at speed as they wish without feeling like they have to wait for others to catch up, or log off cause the content isnt accessable anymore, get rid of raids as a focus point for content.

Bring back rare mobs that drop actual rare items, and what raids you do have, make them flexible for groups of 6-10 man for smaller raids, and 12-20 man for larger ones.

Less, genuinely is more, people like having more access to content and less exclusive content, its just not fun to have content only 1% of diehard players ever do when 98% of us dont care about that die hard group and never will, the age of the epeen points ended well back in the 2000nds, and nobody misses it.

[Tyris Flare]

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 have no idea what they are asking for. one of the main things that makes heroic and mythic raiding more accessible over time to everyone is the massive gear growth. People who kill a boss a month after someone else are almost fighting a different boss now with 10% less life even without actual nerfs. That is intentionally baked into the cake.

The skill and dedication stratification in the playerbase is so enormous that even 4 difficulties aren't enough; gear and borrowed power are basically an extra tuning lever.

[Niwes]

Don't get me wrong Blizzard is truly a fucking horrible company in so many ways BUT....

Say they remove borrowed power from the game and do all the stuff people say they want like removing grindier aspects and for example allowing pvp-ers to just pvp...

Won't people then say "there's nothing to do" or the "game isn't immersive" or some other bullshit. Or whatever some streamer says who got rich trashing the game he supposedly loves so much.

(not that Blizzard are likely to what people want anyway but that's a side issue)

Is there actually a universally agreed or mostly agreed pathway towards reforming the game?

I just get the impression that the dominant narrative at the moment is "whatever Blizzard do sucks" rather than any actual interest in improving the game.

you cant please everyone. and therefore you cant cater to everyone. thats a lession Blizzards greed not learned yet.

they should think about WHO shall be the target audience for WoW and dedicated catering to them and completely ignore all others. instead, they started years ago trying to catering to everyone. and exactly thats the reason why they fail in every corner and everyone leaving the game (regardless what type of target audience) because everyone is just living a compromise that noone makes happy.

years ago their greed started making them trying to please everyone to get everyones money. now they learn that, longterm, the only effect/result is: you loose everyone.

as soon as they know WHO should be their target audience, they should cater to them and stick to it. and ignore the rest 30% profit, when you trying to cater to everyone. or wow will slowly die more and more and cross the point where you be able to rescue it and wow will slowly die until it fades into the dust.

you can quote me on that. cause this is nothing new and happened before. and its obvious for someone being in that business.

[Lolites]

That wasn't the point of what i wrote tho, is it. Me making the game better with my own idea. Its not my job to make the game better, im not a game developer. But the developers could if they spent the time and money required and listened to feedback.
Stop making the game based on market research would go a long way for starters

but if you know it can be done easily surely you have to know HOW, otherwise you cant know it would be easy...

1. they DO listen to feedback, not to ALL feedback as its literaly impossible, and thank god for that, most ideas you can find on forums are AWFUL
2. "stop making game based on market research" what do you even mean by that? if they developed based on market research they would probably no longer do MMORPG, as there are games that can earn more with less work...

as i expected what you said is untrue, incredibly vague, and not helpful at all... so if you have no idea what you are talking about, perhaps dont tell how "easy" it is...
hell if its so easy, how come WoW was (as far as i know) only MMORPG that ever get through 5m active players?!

[Speedlance]

Nothing they can do, people are bored of it.

[Elias1337]

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.

WoW become too acesible for such desing to work. It worked in past becous game had actual longetivity and you coulsnt beat game on day 1. Borrowed powers are not there becouse Blizzard thought its new cool thing. Its just symptom of solution to fix problem caused by overuse of acessability.

[Asrialol]

It's trendy to hate the game now so unless they're able to turn that trend, I doubt it. Doesn't really matter if the game itself is good or not.

[Geckoo]

What people are we talking about?

This is an almost 18 year old game and it barely has any capacity to attract new players. It highly depends on a diminishing playerbase that usually comes back for new content, but is always going to be trending downwards. There is no change that can be made to the game that will change that and i don't see it as something bad, it's the most natural thing to happen and you'll have plenty of people liking the game even the day before it finally shuts down. The massive hit they took in terms of reputation has simply made this whole process go faster than expected, but it's something that had to happen and will keep happening.

Basically, let them do their game and enjoy it or not, that's up to you, but stop expecting an 18 year old game to be the one defining the MMORPG market.

[Soon-TM]

but if you know it can be done easily surely you have to know HOW, otherwise you cant know it would be easy...

1. they DO listen to feedback, not to ALL feedback as its literaly impossible, and thank god for that, most ideas you can find on forums are AWFUL

You know, there used to be these folks at Blizzard whose main task was to aggregate the good suggestions while deleting the bad ones... I think they were called CMs, but my memory is hazy... So many of them were fired iirc