WoW has excessive vertical progression; it needs horizontal progression; it's clear.

[Echo of Soul]

forcing people to repeat mundane easy content in order to open the gates of content they actually like is nonsense.

Exactly. Let's say I'm a heroic raider. When a new tier drops it's kinda insulting to have upgrades drop from Normal or LFR. Like what was the point in getting all the heroic gear last tier in order to be ready for the next tier? It feels like all your time and effort is instantly wasted.

[Poppincaps]

I was talking about gw2 in the second paragraph there. It has vertical progression reduced but it's still very obviously there and the gameplay is too simplistic compared to wow (basically all the abilities available per-battle can fit on a console controller) (and artistically it appears less developed but that's subjective and off topic). ff14 is partly a replica of wow (according to the main dev) and I found it a mess on story but it's off topic anyway since it has a lot of vertical progression too (which is never a requirement to have an ..mmo and an ..rpg (it's just what wow devs do and others replicate)).

- - - Updated - - -


You're only saying there that the vertical progression is reduced. If a WoW player picks it up now on a new gw2 account: they won't feel it doesn't have vertical progression.

It was never required in order to have either an ..mmo or an ..rpg.

- - - Updated - - -


no reason to have it at all. let people compete for achievements and mounts and other collectibles (with RNG as well).

forcing people to repeat mundane easy content in order to open the gates of content they actually like is nonsense.

What? I never said Guild Wars 2 doesn't have any vertical progression. You said it has a ton of vertical progression. It doesn't. Every expansion to Guild Wars 2 has increased the horizontal progression in the game and hasn't touched the vertical progression.

[epigramx]

You have 15 abilities in normal combat in GW2, i doubt the typical WoW rotation uses more than that.

oh it's so much different in wow. there are classes - and especially the pure DPS classes - that can have more than 30 different spells and abilities in fight (don't forget that potions and other class-agnostic abilities are technically spells too!).

the most important factor about this is healing: it's practically impossible to heal on a professional level without a mouse: wow would have to literally delete the current healing paradigm for that to be changed.

- - - Updated - - -

Exactly. Let's say I'm a heroic raider. When a new tier drops it's kinda insulting to have upgrades drop from Normal or LFR. Like what was the point in getting all the heroic gear last tier in order to be ready for the next tier? It feels like all your time and effort is instantly wasted.

And the devs are probably naive when it gets to them believing that's addictive or even profitable. They could just have achievements and mount drops and other collectible drops (with RNG too) to keep people interested. A lot of us just don't play because of all that wasting time for vertical progression and the "game is still profitable" defense is thinner by the day when the internet now has 10 times more gamers and the game fewer.

- - - Updated - - -

What? I never said Guild Wars 2 doesn't have any vertical progression. You said it has a ton of vertical progression. It doesn't. Every expansion to Guild Wars 2 has increased the horizontal progression in the game and hasn't touched the vertical progression.

I answered to that. Your perspective is from an old account that has already (vertically) progressed a lot.
Give a brand new account to a wow player and good luck convincing them verticality is low.

[Poppincaps]

oh it's so much different in wow. there are classes - and especially the pure DPS classes - that can have more than 30 different spells and abilities in fight (don't forget that potions and other class-agnostic abilities are technically spells too!).

the most important factor about this is healing: it's practically impossible to heal on a professional level without a mouse: wow would have to literally delete the current healing paradigm for that to be changed.

- - - Updated - - -


And the devs are probably naive when it gets to them believing that's addictive or even profitable. They could just have achievements and mount drops and other collectible drops (with RNG too) to keep people interested. A lot of us just don't play because of all that wasting time for vertical progression and the "game is still profitable" defense is thinner by the day when the internet now has 10 times more gamers and the game fewer.

- - - Updated - - -


I answered to that. Your perspective is from an old account that has already (vertically) progressed a lot.
Give a brand new account to a wow player and good luck convincing them verticality is low.

...you don't know my perspective. I started playing Guild Wars 2 in November 2022. You can get full exotic gear which is 10-15% behind BIS gear by just spending a few gold. You can get full ascended trinkets very easily and while ascended weapons and armor may require getting into endgame content, it's really not any grindier than gear through a single season of WoW.

There is vertical progression, but relative to any other MMO on the market you spend so much less time on it. In WoW, every new major patch brings new vertical progression. Every new expansion in Guild Wars 2 does not.

[Aucald]

I was talking about gw2 in the second paragraph there. It has vertical progression reduced but it's still very obviously there and the gameplay is too simplistic compared to wow (basically all the abilities available per-battle can fit on a console controller) (and artistically it appears less developed but that's subjective and off topic). ff14 is partly a replica of wow (according to the main dev) and I found it a mess on story but it's off topic anyway since it has a lot of vertical progression too (which is never a requirement to have an ..mmo and an ..rpg (it's just what wow devs do and others replicate)).

I've not played GW2 myself, but I've always heard that it was actually more mechanically dense than WoW was, so I'm surprised to hear it described as "too simplistic." FF14 plays a lot like WoW and does have vertical progression, but the vertical progression isn't anywhere near as required to access its various difficulty tiers, nor is it as much a factor for successfully winning encounters compared to knowing and dealing with boss mechanics. So if you're looking for an offering with less emphasis on vertical progression I would definitely say it qualifies.

We've already discussed and disagreed on the whole RPG argument, so I'll leave that untouched.

[Drjew]

Here is How. This will be lengthy. How ever we need to bring in more content (That is already there) and achievements that mean things other than your vertical gear grind.

Some Ideas you might have heard from others, I'm not one to read forums or write in them. I've created this account today in hopes, (likely won't happen) that this will somehow push to the Blizz office.

Battle Pets
- We have 10 unique pet families.
- When one of these pet families is out (summoned) it provides a unique buff to aid in your adventures.
- These buffs will be active when conditions are met.
- PVP of any kind isn't active such as Arena, BGs, RBG, and War Mode.
- Not in current content such as Dungeon and Raids and other similar content like Mage Tower and Torghast if it is the current content such at Time Walking Mage Tower event.
- These buffs are intended for all open world questing adventures and dated content that is also dated.
- Buff lasts one hour with it sharing a 30 min CD with the other pet families.
- These buffs do not stack with other players.

- Human Pet family - Provides a 15% reputation buff for 1 Hour. Also increases received currency tokens by 15%.
- Dragonkin - Rewind time and reset a locked raid or instance that isn't current.
- Flying - Increases flying speed from 310% to 360%. Grants access to flying inside instances.
- Undead - Increases Leech by 20% and no longer have a after death run back. An addition, when looting a humanoid NPC you have a chance to find old relics to aid in archeology of your choice. Also can find extra relics while surveying.
- Critter - Summon a critter to help you find extra materials for crafting, such as mining, herbing, disenchanting, finding extra cloth, skinning, and fishing.
- Magic - Increases all magic damage by 10%. In addition, increases the chance to find rare and extremely rare loot off of open world NPCs by 30%.
- Elemental - Harness the winds when killing an NPC and increase your movement speed by 50% for 1 min. The elements grant you a 30% increase in finding extra loot from non-boss NPCs in instances. Also grants a 5-yard radius that deals AOE fire damage around the player.
- Beast - Increases physical damage by 10%. In addition, increases the chance to find rare and extremely rare loot off of open world NPCs by 30%.
- Aquatic - While crafting, has a chance to double or triple the chance at a duplicate item. Also grants a boost to fishing, +25. Once Max fishing is achieved. Enables a chance to find loot from all tables including Raid Bosses and rare NPC drops.
- Mechanical - Increases gold looted from NPCs by 300%. In addition, finds extra loot from bosses.

So, let's move onto the overflow of all the mounts. With hundreds of mounts to gather, many are forgotten and never used.
It's time to redesign. No longer will every mount be able to fly freely. With the exception of collecting the rarest mounts in game to unlock amount that grants free riding as we know today.

Collecting Ashes of Al'ar, Fel Blade Infernal, Acended SkyMane, Colossal Umbrahide Mawrat, Mechagon Peacekeeper, Chosen Tauralus, Blue Marsh Hopper, and Shackled Ur’zul. However, it isn't limited to those mounts. Those are just some examples. What you'd need is 20 rare mounts that are obtainable in WOW. Once you collect them all, you are a god and can fly freely. For those who haven't obtained them all. They would follow the new mounting system.

It would be best to describe them in categories such as speeder, jumper, flying, swimming, and climbing. Essentially, most mounts you have would be converted to skins. So instead of collecting mounts, you then would collect skins. as an example.

- Flyers -Drakes, dragons, birds, carpets, rays, hawks, Mech flyers etc would gain the ability to fly. Much how dragon riding exists today but in a more limited version.
- Speeders - Horses, Raptors, Chopper, TruboStriders, etc would run at a 200% speed.
- Climbers - Rams, Goats, Razor Wings, Skitterers, Spiders etc would be able to climb up the toughest mountains.
- Jumpers - Cats, Bunnies, Foxs, Frogs etc would jump higher and further than other mounts.
- Swimming - Seahorses, Basalisks, Turtles, etc would have a 300% speed increase while in the water.

Once Youd obtain the 20 rare mounts, that would give you access to the rarest mount but at a cost. You can freely transverse the world as you wish with no limits, however at a reduced speed.

Unlocking all in game skins of a category will enable the ability to gather while mounted while riding that category.

How do we make the old relevant again? Do we revamp? Blizz seems to think that's the answer. There is already so much content that has been forgotten. What is needed for true horizontal progression is making achievements matter.

When you reach 5k Achievement points, you will have access to a vendor in Thunder Bluff and Iron forge that grant you cosmetic appearances. You then spend your achievement points to buy the items.

When you buy an item, your achievement points will reduce, however, the achieved achievement points wont and will keep building to 10k, then to 15, then to 20 and so on. So Youd have access to a Vendor at 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k, and so on.

Another idea to make old content relevant again is to have item sets that reward achievement points. Take the Defias brotherhood gear set for example, once you collect that set, Youd get achievement points and also be awarded and choose between a Dagger or a Face Mask. In addition Youd receive a title of Brother "your name". Another addition, since that is classic content. Completing other classic gear sets will also reward you a item like the Defias Bortherhood did. Once you complete the gear sets for that content, you would have gained all those cosmetic items and achievement points. You would then go to a vendor located near the achievement vendor located in Thunder Bluff or Iron Forge. If you lost the items you can ask the NPC for duplicates. You then take those items and combine them to make a Token. That token can be traded in for the grandest cosmetic item available from that content that cannot be obtained from anywhere else. To get more tokens, the NPC will inform you that you need 8 token fragments. Through this weekly, a token fragment can be found at the end of a raid or dungeon. Only one can be gained every week (Account Wide). Once all 8 have been gathered, you combine them to create the Token.

This can also be pushed onto mounts and pets. Once all mounts and pets are obtained from that content, Youd receive a skin that cannot be obtained anywhere else. This skin would be exclusive to that content.

Classic - Grants rocket shoes as a skin and cosmetic appearance. When summoned your mounted speed is 200% (Speeder)
Burning Crusade - A Flyer Skin that when used dawns Illidan Wings on your back. When summoned your flying mounted speed is 280% (Flyer)
Wrath of the Lich King - Wield Frostmounre and freeze the water around you allowing you to walk on water and swim at a 300% speed. (Swimmer)
Cataclysm was Dragon Content, so you'd expect another flyer.
Pandaria, with the release of Monks, Youd have a jumping mount here.
Warlords of Draenor, A climbing mount would have to go here.
Legion, Some cool spaceship flyer mount.
Battle for Azeroth, Jumping mount here.
Shadowlands, A Speeder.
DragonFlight, we already have the Proto.

But this is adding horizontal progression. Gives the players something to do. What would be a complete failure is having a cosmetic vendor and all the cosmetics be shit (Like the current Dragonflight vendors.) No one wants to grind for shit. It HAS to look cool. Period. Shop level quality.

Also, mini games need to be added inside taverns. Blizz has hearthstone, why not make that a lesser version for taverns?
Adding cards, poker, dominos, etc would be a HUGE time sink for ALOT of the players. When content dries up, there is still something to do. How about adding in gambling? I for one want to hear stories of how people lost all their gold in Goldshire. We know that /roll was VERY popular so we know it will work. A dueling arena outside of Storm Wind and Org, bets can be placed by those watching and those participating. There's so much potential here and it's not even a zones worth of work. Most assets are already in the game.

I haven't even gotten started on housing. Where achievements can be displayed, gear sets on dummies, and maybe a cool little deck to put a chair on so you can watch the weeds and crops grow. Make it instanced. Have players choose between Xpack Locations. Then add a service, 15$ to change locations.

Hopefully an idea gets back to them. Who knows. Pissing in the wind. LOL

Have a good weekend all.

[Al Gorefiend]

So you want to get rid of what makes an mmorpg a rich and cool genre in order to please pvpers ? A tiny portion of the playerbase ?

Just call it "PvPer Inclusive" and it's very on brand nowadays

[Wewlad]

Vertical progression itself is not the problem but rather the ilevel inflation which is due to a number of factors including the number of difficulty tiers and to compensate for the gear surplus resulting from so many sources giving it.

At least for myself, gearing on Retail is completely unsatisfactory since absolutely none of it sticks around between patches, so one feels absolutely no attachment to any items they acquire.

[epigramx]

Vertical progression itself is not the problem but rather the ilevel inflation which is due to a number of factors including the number of difficulty tiers and to compensate for the gear surplus resulting from so many sources giving it.

At least for myself, gearing on Retail is completely unsatisfactory since absolutely none of it sticks around between patches, so one feels absolutely no attachment to any items they acquire.

no reason to have power from gear at all then. what is the point of wanting your ilevel to not be nerfed if you also want new gear with power?
just remove the annoyance and let people play the content they want with the rewards being all horizontal progression (e.g. RNG mounts).

[Stickiler]

no reason to have power from gear at all then. what is the point of wanting your ilevel to not be nerfed if you also want new gear with power?
just remove the annoyance and let people play the content they want with the rewards being all horizontal progression (e.g. RNG mounts).

I don't want RNG mounts though, I want Healing number go up

[Thirtyrock]

~100% of pvpers hate vertical progression from day 1 and ~100% of pvers hate it within ~2 weeks of new content; people often cite guild wars 2 as an answer to the excessive vertical progression of wow but it obviously has a huge amount of it too so it doesn't solve anything; the genre in whole suffers with fewer players than it had at its peak because the wow devs are fixated to vertical progression because they want more fees when it probably makes them less if people hate it.
wow has to be more of a sandbox; drop in a massively-multiplayer world with a rich role-playing experience; none of that ever required to grind for mundane repetitive tasks in order to open a gate into pvp or pve and that made its ugly teeth known in the 2020s when the novelty of the rest great elements of the game isn't a monopoly anymore.

Let me translate that for you "I don't want to play an MMORPG, I want to play a skyrim like game based in the Warcraft universe"

Ok, now that we're clear, go petition Blizzard to make that game. I'll sign on. But leave WoW as is, because it's in the best place since at least MoP from my point of view.

[Arkadia One]

There will always be people to nag about any new additions, for example garrisons was a neat feature IMO but didn't catch on.

[epigramx]

Let me translate that for you "I don't want to play an MMORPG, I want to play a skyrim like game based in the Warcraft universe"

Ok, now that we're clear, go petition Blizzard to make that game. I'll sign on. But leave WoW as is, because it's in the best place since at least MoP from my point of view.

All fallacies already answered. You never had to mindlessly grind to have an mmorpg; you only had to be an mmo and an rpg both of which have nothing to do with repetitive grinding; other games' devs blindly copying the wow devs are not proof of anything either.

Also: games with 4 buttons or generally gameplays that can fit on a console controller have nothing to do with wow; wow has extremely in-depth gameplay that is almost unheard of elsewhere (especially for healing mechanics); nobody offers the suggested combo.

[Thirtyrock]

All fallacies already answered. You never had to mindlessly grind to have an mmorpg; you only had to be an mmo and an rpg both of which have nothing to do with repetitive grinding; other games' devs blindly copying the wow devs are not proof of anything either.

Also: games with 4 buttons or generally gameplays that can fit on a console controller have nothing to do with wow; wow has extremely in-depth gameplay that is almost unheard of elsewhere (especially for healing mechanics); nobody offers the suggested combo.

It still boils down to you wanting a completely different game style than WoW has ever been. That's fine. But changing how WoW's progression has always worked, at this point, is asking for a completely new game. I don't want a new game. I want the same type of game with fresh content at a decent rate. Right now, we have that. WoW is in a GREAT place; I want the devs to continue in the direction DF has begun, not change the game entirely.

[Gaidax]

Ah yes, "horizontal progression" - a fad word of the month.

I'm not even sure the whole premise has a leg to stand on in context of WoW and its 20 years of theme park content to collect/achieve/complete with more being added every year.

[potis]

Ah yes, "horizontal progression" - a fad word of the month.

I'm not even sure the whole premise has a leg to stand on in context of WoW and its 20 years of theme park content to collect/achieve/complete with more being added every year.

"Well Gaidax, i got told, told, because i havent actually played it, and saw this youtube video about GW2 saying it HAS HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION, i dont know what it means, but the guy in the video said HE IS WEARING THE SAME GEAR FROM 2012 and therefor WoW should become the same, so i dont have to inspect THE BAD BULLY MYTHIC RAIDER wearing 420 ilvl items when i can only wear 395 by collecting bear crap, i am gonna make the 200th post the last 2 years requesting free Mythic items again, but i will put in THE WORD HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION THIS TIME".

20 pages summed up for you.

[Gaidax]

"Well Gaidax, i got told, told, because i havent actually played it, and saw this youtube video about GW2 saying it HAS HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION, i dont know what it means, but the guy in the video said HE IS WEARING THE SAME GEAR FROM 2012 and therefor WoW should become the same, so i dont have to inspect THE BAD BULLY MYTHIC RAIDER wearing 420 ilvl items when i can only wear 395 by collecting bear crap, i am gonna make the 200th post the last 2 years requesting free Mythic items again, but i will put in THE WORD HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION THIS TIME".

20 pages summed up for you.

The good indicator was that OP was blocked and the thread was filtered out, I stumbled onto it by accident through quick links in the frontpage.

Some people just can't get it through their skulls that WoW is WoW, it is what it is for 20 years soon and most of Blizzard's attempts to change its progression system ended up in a spectacular failure.

So yeah, let's make yet another thread wishing for WoW to become X/Y/Z. Yeah, OP bruh, just go play X/Y/Z and that's it - you ain't going to wake up to a whole new different WoW neither tomorrow nor in 5 years.

[Shadowferal]

It still boils down to you wanting a completely different game style than WoW has ever been. That's fine. But changing how WoW's progression has always worked, at this point, is asking for a completely new game. I don't want a new game. I want the same type of game with fresh content at a decent rate. Right now, we have that. WoW is in a GREAT place; I want the devs to continue in the direction DF has begun, not change the game entirely.

Pretty sure Blizz wants to draw in more actively paying subscribers.

[VinceVega]

no reason to have power from gear at all then. what is the point of wanting your ilevel to not be nerfed if you also want new gear with power?
just remove the annoyance and let people play the content they want with the rewards being all horizontal progression (e.g. RNG mounts).

But i want to become stronger and feel/see that. I LIKE farming and playing the game for new gear. And feel stronger.
New expanions resets it and i can start again with new content. LOVE IT. That is why i play wow.
Gameplay and new gear.
All the ohter stuff is nice to have nothing more.

The needed squish every few years is something i can live with.
But just playing for transmogs? No Thanks. Is there even a Single player RPG without vertical progression? Is there any game? Candy Crush maybe...

Even strategy games like Cities: Skyline have vertical prog with better more effeicent building you get while playing.

[Amariw]

In pve OP is wrong, people enjoy wow pve exactly because of the treadmill. Feeling increasingly more powerful vs internet monsters is a big part of the fun.

In PVP its true not many openly attest to wanting a gear treadmill. But they were heard, and there really isn't one anymore since DF launch. The best way to gear is to spam honor and then conquest, which you get rather quickly. This scales past heroic (honor) and even mythic (conquest) raiding gear, and thanks to high Versatility ratios compared to pvp is by far the best gear you can get.

The conquest farm is a bit of a chore but you get it by simply playing. The honor farm is insanely fast and puts you very close (411 instead of 424 ilvl or so). So the best way to play wow pvp is to simply play wow pvp, no grind required.

Do you still play wow pvp OP? If so, what else do you want?