Influencers got their will, Bliz listened to their feedback, yet noone plays game

[WowIsDead64]

Dunno. Blizzard use these "influencers" as their community managers instead of hiring their own ones and making them work properly - not just silently sit on forums and do nothing. Blizzard assume, that if streamer with 100k subs tells X and 100k subscribers like it, then this X is good for 100k players. But they're just partially right. Game has much more problems and more serious problems, than they say. Blizzard still don't understand, what casual players want. They treat casual players, as solo players, who want souls-like solo challenge or some long term grind. Completely wrong.

[Albertillo]

The game is actually great currently better than in years.
The problem isn’t garbage system missing, it’s the lack of actual content. We need dungeons/raids/quests.

The grind of the same old 8 dungeons days in days out is just boring. And it’s not by giving garbage AP at the end that it would fill any different (it would be worse, because not only would the grind be the same but you would actually fall behind if not running the hamster wheel non stop)

8 dungeons per season and 10ish bosses is lazy ass content. We pay ~15$ every month, that’s more than microsoft game pass FFS !!! Players just expect more in 2023, and blizzard should definitely release more content.

And don’t get me wrong, I love this game, playing since vanilla release and not stoping any time soon. But while DF is mechanicaly good (if not great) and for the first time since for ever it looks like Blizzard is actually trying (not always good, but we had a lot of balancing even a spec rework before even season 2). But the game just feels a little too small for everything offered outside wow (I didn’t log for the last 3 weeks, playing a lot of other great game). I love the feeling of not fallong behind while not playing tho. I just wish we had more to do to keep me playing.

But what is your solution? For blizz to release a dungeon every week or month so you don't repeat the same old ones? that's simply not realistic and I'm sure some people would complain for the amount of new mechanics they have to learn.

Making raids and dungeons which are more or less unique take a lot of development time (they have to think the theme, make the art, design the encounters...etc), and if we have this cadence of big patches every 6 months or so and small patches with a bit of content every 2-3 months, I think it is not reasonable for them to make a lot more dungeons. To solve that we have the new approach of 4 current dungeons + 4 old dungeons, which is not a bad idea in my opinion.

The thing is that players normally don't consider it content if there isn't a proper reward with more ilvl than they have already, so as long as people do M+ and get high ilvl, I think it is difficult to make relevant content that people can consider worth to do. The new ring place is not a bad idea though, gives a reason to participate in the new isle until you get the effects you want.

I'm actually not playing these 2-3 weeks either, but I do not think that the content is lacking, we have a lot of things to do in the world and they put a bit more with this new small patch, although honestly it didn't make me want to play more hours, but still it's new content. I think I will play way less than normally until 10.1, but that's not a bad thing either. Sometimes is good to disconnect.

[Malkiah]

Raids/M+ are skill based contents.

but that's only partially true, because they are also numeric based and that is a function of ilevel and secondary power.
yes skill plays a huge part especially on the higher end of M+ or early stages of progression in mythic raiding, but there are still raw HPS/EPS/DPS throughputs required in order to meet certain basic mechanical checks.
this has always been the case for the overwhelming majority of the playerbase.

but on the flip side of that your own argument has a flaw in it that defeats your position: if M+ and raids were purely skill based, then ilevel or AP totals wouldn't matter anyways since it's all about skill - thus, some kind of secondary character progression system shouldn't even matter.
so, which is it?

Why you insist that hard locking player power needed for skill based content behind weeks and weeks of dailies in non-skill based content is a good thing is beyond me.

first of all, i'm not insisting on anything.
secondly, my position is that granular progression of character power over the course of an expansion from all forms of content is IMO the superior design paradigm for a persistent open world RPG.

i won't pussy foot around the fact that yes my ideal game state allows for the possibility that certain people will be mentally incapable of not forcing themselves to play the game in a manner that they dislike.
on balance, i consider that an acceptable downside.

I love DF exactly because I can just raid and do M+. I don't play any less without dailies, I play the same amount of time and within that time I can do more of the content I like.

which is fine, but you could do that over the entirety of the last 7 years as well.
for you, nothing has changed in the game except for your own personal psychology.
for me, the amount of content i'm capable of engaging with has been substantially decreased.

one of those changes exists only in the minds of certain people. one of those changes in an objective material fact.

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"It's fine that Blizzard forces me to play parts of the game, because *I* like those parts. If you don't, you're wrong, your opinion is wrong, you're playing the game wrong and you're having fun wrong."

Cool story.

are any of you people capable of engaging with the actual point i'm making, or are all of you able to do nothing but revert to your strawman fantasy?

"it's fine that blizzard makes multiple options for player power progression across all types of content even if some number of people are psychologically incapable of not abusing those avenues in a way that makes them dislike the game. if you're one of those people who does that and expects the game to be diminished so that neither of us have the option of secondary avenues of progression because you can't stop yourself from doing it in the stupidest way possible you're wrong, your opinion is wrong, you're playing the game wrong and you're having fun wrong"

if you want to go ahead and argue with *that* which is what i'm actually saying, go for it.

[towelliee]

Yeah eff those guys I miss BFA damn it GIMME THE GRIND

[Lolites]

We need dungeons/raids/quests.

and we have that, plus other things on top of that...
also, if you dont want to repeat the same content you are playing wrong genre of the game...
as for repeating dungeons, in DF they work on that, we will have different dungeons in S2 which is improvement over having the same for whole expansion, and even bigger over having dungeons but no reason to go there 2weeks into expansion as it was before M+...

[ThrashMetalFtw]

and that ultimately is the fascinating question at the heart of all this that we simply can't answer - which position has a larger number of people.

i think DF is unfortunate as an expansion because i love playing wow and having lots of wow to play, and there is less objectively a shitload less wow than there has been for the last 7 years.
you (and many others who post here) like DF because there is nothing to do and so you don't have to play it and you enjoy that more.

given that DF seems to have been designed from the ground up to be a present gifted to the "raiderlogger" crowd and yet M+ and raid participation is down across the board, it makes me wonder about raw numbers vs. vocal minorities.

DF objectively has more content outside of the regular raid/M+/PvP now than it ever did before. The only difference is that said content doesn't give direct player power any more. It still gives indirect player power, because you need to spend a shitload of time farming rep or farming outdoor mobs for the best profession recipes, which are BiS in many slots...


The borrowed power of Legion/BFA/SL all had EXTREME issues in the first patch or two: Too much grinding required to keep up and bad/zero catchup mechanics. Legiondaries before the changes to drop rates and before they were rebalanced midway through the expansion, was the single worst thing that ever happened to WoW.

All three expansions were decent in their last patch, when the borrowed power system for each expansion had been tweaked, balanced properly and given real catchup mechanics, but then they just threw those functional systems out, only to start with a new broken system the next expansion (hence the hate for borrowed power in general...).

[Rockefellah]

Dragonflight didn't pull me in. It's the first expansion I didn't buy in the first months (most I've pre-ordered).

For me it has nothing to do with these 'complaints'. I very much liked the game how it was in Vanilla, Cara (minus the last tier) and Legion. If/When those are being rebooted (waiting for a new Vanilla Season of Mastery).

What these share in common is that the outside world and instances were challenging, required communication among players and encouraged community building with a guild or with other players.

[Grimbold21]

Your premise is false.

These "influencers" have always played other games, and if anything, it was the versions of the game that had all of these systems that gradually pushed their curiosity towards other games.

[loras]

the amount of activities that offer you character power progression (even if it's exceptionally marginal) that are not doggedly grinding ilevel via M+/raid/rated PVP have been reduced to zero, where since 2016 there have been activities that offer you character power progression (even if it's exceptionally marginal).

that is a reduction from "more than zero" to "zero" from one expansion to the next.
there is objectively and quantitatively less to do in this expansion at this point in the lifecycle than there has been to do at any other point in the last 7 years, barring end-of-expansion content droughts.

we are basically in that drought, we have been since the expansion went live, and by all accounts we will be until this expansion is over and god willing they go back to a model for WoW that includes actually having anything to do within the game that constitutes player power progression that isn't tied to chasing ilevel via M+/raids/rated pvp.

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and what about when they do that, and whatever thing they implement is something you love but i hate? or vice versa?

IMO the this comes down to a simple question of which group of players wants there to be more game to play more often, and which group of players wants there to be less game to play less often.
i personally feel that the philosophical side of this argument is automatically with the people who enjoy playing and want enough content to allow them to play more.
the people who don't like playing, or don't have time to play, and want the entirety of the MMO to be *lesser* so that they can play less but not miss anything is a completely bankrupt and degenerate viewpoint.

There is less to do that grants player power progression.
Unless you're not an endgame pusher type, like most people, then there is plenty of power gain.
The factions eventually award 405 ilvk crafts in example, the primalist storm gave 389 (even if i definitely agree it's a shitty event).
Zskera vaults give a single nifty 424 ring that allows customisation play while also increasing power.
The catch up stuff now goes to 395, which may be substantial for those uninterested in instanced endgame content, bit it also works for alts.

Now i do agree that the overworld also needs its own proper reward track, not ending at 389 or 395 or whatever, but the thing is that that sort of fairness gives raiders an aneurism since they feel perpetually entitled, disadvantaged, "forced" and as if having done injustice to them if the game awards anything that doesn't force 20+ unwilling-yet-enticed-by-loot morons into mauling their agendas just to knock down virtual loot piñatas that at their worst just require more addons to defeat.

So while i understand your ire the pretty much "fake" power gain as provided in earlier iterations since 2016 is just replaced with a stark honesty: "We're not actually rewarding you with in-game power if you don't do what we want you to.".
After all if everyone "gains" you might be fooled by seeing the numbers go up, but in practice nothing is actually changing.

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"It's fine that Blizzard forces me to play parts of the game, because *I* like those parts. If you don't, you're wrong, your opinion is wrong, you're playing the game wrong and you're having fun wrong."

Cool story.

Not entirely sure whether you're mocking him or yourself here.

[Malkiah]

There is less to do that grants player power progression.

that's a fair distinction, and being honest it's something i was doing more or less unconsciously - this game is fundamentally a power progression RPG, so in my mind "stuff to do" is synonymous with "character power progression".
anything that doesn't either directly or indirectly (ie: rng, or delayed reward activities such as the vault) progress player power is what i'd consider a side activity.
and while side activities are absolutely vital and necessary and good, IMO most game content should be should designed towards rewarding player power in some form or another.

so, yes... there is less to do that grants player power, which to my mind functionally equates to there being less to do.

Unless you're not an endgame pusher type, like most people, then there is plenty of power gain.

but, and i think this kinda hits it squarely for me, that power gain has an extremely low ceiling (which requires very little time to do).
and once you hit it you're back to the wall of a lack of anything meaningful to do.
this is why i'm not a fan of "ilevel is the only mechanism that exists to increase player power", that design system always has a hard cap on it and that hard cap is exponentially easier to hit the lower you are.
(not that ilevel as the primary mechanism is an issue, that's true in basically every game that has items - but it being the *only* mechanism is problematic)

[schwarzkopf]

It is difficult to do the new content without other people, so I tend not to log on due to lack of stuff to do.

TLDR - want to play, but given I'm stuck with solo - I don't.

[edw]

Well if you are a developer at Blizzard and instead of coming up with great content you implement influencer's ideas ... something is really wrong, maybe ... just maybe those developers are incompetent.

[Warning]

DF is the first expansion I havent bought. It had nothing to do with no borrowed power, I think its good that borrowed power is gone. I didn't buy it because the game looks bad and yet again further away from the WoW i used to like.

The new UI looks worse, the spell effects, sound effects and animations were already worse compared to the old ones, particularly for undead. The evoker class looks completely out of place and trash to me, also adding yet another thing with over the top mobility to a game that already has far too much of that and I didn't enjoy the class when I tried it on beta. Besides that the antagonists look dull with terrible dialogue. The talent tree is decent at least but not enough to save the overal generic look of the game.

[Vilendor]

These are my reasons not playing, do with it whatever you want:

-I don't care about the expansion theme, the dragons and their lore

-I want my druid flight form and the ability to fucking stop and look around in the air

-The permanent "we should punish and penalize the player, because that's content" mentality from Blizzard. Want an example? Why couldn't m+ instances give buffs instead making your life miserable? This is your 4325th time doing this instance, if you do this and that you get insane buffs and you can finish in 15min. Naaaaah, interrupt 5 flameballs at once while dodging instant kill deathzones and we also tripled the life of every fucking mob in the instance.... have fun!

-There is literally 0 new or innovative content, all we do since ~10 years is world quests, rep grind, raid and mythic+ All they do is rename them sometimes into "renown, coventants, seasons, whatever" to fool the dumb and sell it as new content (and no, i don't have any idea how to refresh this)

-Mythic+ is an atrocity against humanity, mindless trash grind on a timer in 8 instances, promoting negative player behavior and toxicit which makes half the playerbase with unviable/suboptimal classes quit the game after getting their 423th decline in the group finder.

[MrLachyG]

For years influencers have complained about all the "main stream" issues about the game. Like "REMOVE BORROWED POWERS" and "REMOVE MANDATORY CONTENT".

Just to be specific, I am talking about people in this sphere:
- Asmongold
- Preachgaming
- Belluar
- T&E

Just to be clear, those influencers are just echoing how they see their communities talk, so it's more of a community thing. I am not trying to hate on the influencers.

Influencers have made video after video complaining about the same things and tunnelvisioned on certain things like

- no more borrowed power
- no more required content that force you to log in every day
- no more infinite AP grinds
- no more Sylvanas
- more focus on permanent systems like
* talent system
* battlepass system
* crafting system
* flying system
- more communication about the future patches and plans

We all know the list they dreamed of is kinda accomplished in Dragonflight.

Influencers no longer have anything specific to complain about. Great, I guess the game is so fun now?

Because to me it seems they all have never played the game as little as they do in this expansion.

And the influencers have just conveniently moved on to other games, while simutatiously have nothing to complain about. "I'm just not that into the game right now".

I seriously worry that Blizzard took the influencers feedback way too seriously to heart, but the reality is that following them does not make a game that people want to play.

What do you think?

what are you talking about? all those people still play the game. T&E are playing right now, Preach plays but doesn't stream it. Asmongold hasn't streamed on his main channel in ages, dunno what that's about and Bellular I don't think streams at all. I am pretty sure A & B play they just don't stream it. and yes, they all advocated for the removal of those things, because they were fucking shit. It was a chore to log on during Legion and BfA because you had to be farming AP to get your weapon/neck to the highest level you could. doing every single world quest, doing Islands over and over and over again, running dungeons over and over again. Shadowlands at least removed the mandatory endless grind to a degree but it had it's own problems. and look at what we have now. an expansion where you don't have to log in every day. an expansion where you don't have to grind at all if you don't want to. it's fucking great!

[Dawon]

These are my reasons not playing, do with it whatever you want:

-I don't care about the expansion theme, the dragons and their lore

-I want my druid flight form and the ability to fucking stop and look around in the air

-The permanent "we should punish and penalize the player, because that's content" mentality from Blizzard. Want an example? Why couldn't m+ instances give buffs instead making your life miserable? This is your 4325th time doing this instance, if you do this and that you get insane buffs and you can finish in 15min. Naaaaah, interrupt 5 flameballs at once while dodging instant kill deathzones and we also tripled the life of every fucking mob in the instance.... have fun!

-There is literally 0 new or innovative content, all we do since ~10 years is world quests, rep grind, raid and mythic+ All they do is rename them sometimes into "renown, coventants, seasons, whatever" to fool the dumb and sell it as new content (and no, i don't have any idea how to refresh this)

-Mythic+ is an atrocity against humanity, mindless trash grind on a timer in 8 instances, promoting negative player behavior and toxicit which makes half the playerbase with unviable/suboptimal classes quit the game after getting their 423th decline in the group finder.

Fully agree and also why I dont even login 1 times per week now. This expansion is a new low in laziness with NO new dungeons at all, we got a couple of old ones and we got a few slices of the world map with just additional trashpacks and bosses. I really grew to hate this expansion as everything feels insanely copy/paste and outdated. I stopped raiding in mid SL and then slowly started fading on m+ as well, but DF killed the remaining m+ joy for me as I didnt even get to experience new layouts, just same boring shit I do WQs in.

I do admit that if still raiding was a thing, yeah I'd probably play more and grind m+ harder for gear, but without raiding, this expansion died insanely fast and I'm already unsubbed, something I wasn't expecting to happen that fast. Sad!

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

The community has always had issues with not really liking the game, it seems.
I'm not honestly sure how to fix this, but from Blizzard's perspective its easy.
Stop wasting time doing 180s every expansion. The community does not know what it wants, and making one segment happy just makes another unhappy.
Make an MMORPG the best way you know how, and stop worrying about pleasing people who wont stop talking about how unhappy they are.

The game is not the reason they are unhappy, otherwise they would stop playing it.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

completely misrepresenting a post to create a strawman that you find easier to feel smug about - now *that* is peak MMO-C.

i mocked people for having kids and moving on with their lives and yet also still wanting to retain the same level of prestige in a video game without having to actually play it in order to achieve that level of prestige.
those are two very different things.

I mean you were clearly antagonizing people's decision to have kids and a real life lmao. Go back and read the tone of that post

Anyway, audiences often age with a product. Thing about how if you go to see a band in concert, everyone is usually in a small window of age. Fans age with the band. Same thing is mostly true of WoW, so it makes sense to follow that audience.

[stormrage666]

The game as it is, for me, needs a lot of improvements so I can go back to play. Maybe on 12.0 I might return.
But... yes, it got better.
But still not to my standard point to play it again. It reached 0, it's going up... slowly but it's going up...

[Soon-TM]

Yeah eff those guys I miss BFA damn it GIMME THE GRIND

Actually, The Grind™ was perhaps one of the least bad parts of BfA. The Azerite system, stupid corruption and especially the incredibly shit story (even for the already low Warcraft standards) were much worse offenders.