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

[Gaidax]

For what it's worth, leveling experience is absolutely atrocious for a new player.

They did an effort to make it slightly better with Exile's Reach, but once that done - there is a void of crap between that and getting to latest expansion content.

IMO, they should think about some sort of evergreen follow up to Exile's Reach that gives players a coherent experience story-wise and system-wise. Some kind of future proof story at least for the few expansions that's on one hand offers a complete on the rails experience and on the other hand introduces new players to the world and how the game plays beyond first few levels.

[FelPlague]

I quit playing because:

- extremely toxic community for random players
- all the people I used to play with quit and finding a good new community is difficult when you're casual
- I don't have time to sit and watch videos and study every dungeon before trying them and would rather learn by playing
- the game revolves entirely around M+, which I would love if not for the above problems

All of the things DF fixed are great, but they can't make up for this shit.

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Also, even if they solved the problem by splitting group finder into casual and competitive populations, the game population is in a death spiral.

If you want to understand why, just try getting someone new to start playing. It's a horribly unfun game to learn and the starting experience is extremely off-putting.

I find this funny considering a massive complaint is M+ is the underdog of the 3 major pillars, raiding and pvp being MUCH easier to gear into and complete.

[Asaliah]

I find DF very limited and simplistic but I acknowledge the effort to adapt to new players' tastes (that aren't mine at all but I'm a fossile now).

To me not having borrowed power sucks because I genuinely liked them and they were the fresh new thing in the past (I completely understand why lots of people hate them tho).

In DF the only real new thing is Dragon flight. And that's it. There are some QoL stuff yes, new zones yes, evoker that feels already played before.

Based on the IGN article ("Blizzard Producer Claims Studio Is Creating 'Crisis Maps' as More Employees Depart") I understand that it is not going well for the DF team and Blizzard in general so I guess DF is already under maintenance mode and we shouldn't expect much in the future.

Man I really wish they weren't bought by fat Bobby.

[Palapop]

....
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?

....

Firstly, I always puke when I hear any of these names.
Got ~20 mins /watched on their videos total.

BUT.....

Secondly, all the things you listed there- I completely agree with them.
SHARP decline in WOW started with "modern (Legion) era". Aka ultra-rng slot machine with legendary items, weekly gear chests/vaults, borrowed power grind.

THANKFULLY we got rid of it. Hopefully once and for all!


So, whats the point of your post? You want borrowed powers back? To be forced to grind the hell out of it just to be able to play the game?

Yes, game is 100x more fun compared to previous few expansions.

Does grinding borrowed power equals to having fun in game to you? Is that the point?

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I find DF very limited and simplistic but I acknowledge the effort to adapt to new players' tastes (that aren't mine at all but I'm a fossile now).

To me not having borrowed power sucks because I genuinely liked them and they were the fresh new thing in the past (I completely understand why lots of people hate them tho).

In DF the only real new thing is Dragon flight. And that's it. There are some QoL stuff yes, new zones yes, evoker that feels already played before.

You find grinding borrowed power fun activity?
You can do same with pets, mounts, tmog, gold, professions. If grinding is the only thing you like.

grinding borrowed power is NOT content. it's chore.

Based on the IGN article ("Blizzard Producer Claims Studio Is Creating 'Crisis Maps' as More Employees Depart") I understand that it is not going well for the DF team and Blizzard in general so I guess DF is already under maintenance mode and we shouldn't expect much in the future.

Thats good.

Having overcrowded developing teams never brought any good content.

WOW is prime example for that.
EA too.
Ubisoft too.

And the at other end of the line- we have Plague Tale (Innocence + Requiem) as living proof of how SMALL DEV TEAM can make MASTERPIECE!

I see Blizzard dev team being overcrowded with forced diversity where no one is doing what they should be doing. Instead they force their own agenda/propaganda/beliefs in game and force-feed players.

If you check fan-made projects on internet how "small amount of time" is needed to recreate mount, weapon, town, zone, area, assets.... then you can see how lazy and useless wow devs are.
(I quoted "small amount of time" because these fans do it as side activity. While Blizz devs have their fulltime jobs doing nothing.)

[pinkz]

a lot of streamers realized they can make more views/money playing something besides retail, this started in BFA for some along with the cash cow 2019 Classic WOW release

many called DF a good expac, because they could soak up the gravy, quit, and go to other games for more gravy

WOW imo is still for the low percent, Blizzard still doing raids for the .01% and still over tuned. of course there was no real Beta or PTR for DF, but that imo usually don't matter, because blizz doesn't listen anyway and they go live

[Soon-TM]

Many called DF a good expac, because they could soak up the gravy, quit, and go to other games for more gravy.

That's why I am convinced that most streamers are Blizzard sock puppets, even if they might offer a very mild criticism every now and then (which of course, shills everywhere will label as "hating" omegalul, but that'd be a different discussion altogether).

It's in their best interest to be in good terms with the company, since how could you be privy to the devs' comings and goings otherwise? How could you get invited to closed betas, or interviews with even the lead dev if you weren't effectively an unofficial PR employee?

[Jastall]

For that to make sense, they'd need to also revert a decade and a half of changes to the levelling experience. Cutting XP gains in half right now would just mean more time spent in the atrociously boring and uneventful levelling they've made, it wouldn't be a return to the times when levelling was actually enjoyable

The times that the people playing Classic, and that thus would be the most likely to enjoy, skipped as fast as possible after the first go around?

Leveling is nice the first time, it's inevitably a chore on the fifth or tenth for the vast, vast majority of players. There's a reason no credible MMO out there makes it a primary focus.

[Mastacow]

for a lot of people no required content == no content. I'm one of those people. I did my mythic+ and my raiding. outside of that i have nothing to do because i'm not required to do it. So I go play other games until next season.

The game is basically a dungeon crawler with side content now.

[Shadowferal]

Levelling different classes took me into different directions.

[InfiniteCharger]

Blizzard's revenue model is to make expansions separate from whatever content and lore came before so it can be put behind a pay wall. This has always been the achilles heel of the game as there is only so much you can do to provide gameplay within limited zones and dungeons. That was never what an "mmo" was supposed to be as opposed to a continually evolving world that changed over time. Sure, nobody wants to revamp the old world, but the old world should never have gotten so stale to begin with. If people didn't experience certain events when they were relevant, there is no need to keep them around for decades just because. I would argue that each expansion should have an impact on the entire world even if it is just new quests and world events that can be gated behind a paywall. Heck that could even include new versions of old dungeons with new bosses and loot associated with the new expansion. Gimmicks like artifact weapons and alternate progression systems tied to world quests can only hold up so long as meaningful content.

[Alroxas]

For what it's worth, leveling experience is absolutely atrocious for a new player.

How so? You finish Exile's Reach and through Chromie Time can do any expansion content. Players can pick from any number of expansions to do and mostly can do them at a steady pace to reach the start of the newest expansion's content. Typically this is about 60%~70% of that expansion as leveling content.

Compare that to the older system where players would need to level through over 100 levels of "content" just to get to the current expansion one.

IMO, they should think about some sort of evergreen follow up to Exile's Reach that gives players a coherent experience story-wise and system-wise. Some kind of future proof story at least for the few expansions that's on one hand offers a complete on the rails experience and on the other hand introduces new players to the world and how the game plays beyond first few levels.

First, this is kind of problematic as you would need to amend the backstory after each expansion to bring players up to speed. Second, much of WoW's story is told through many different story "lanes". From pre-rendered cinematics to quest text to in-game cinematics to raid content, it's going to be pretty difficult to summarize in-game.

Honestly, I think CC such as Nobbel has done a great job at summarizing the lore for players if they really want to dive deep.

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of course there was no real Beta or PTR for DF, but that imo usually don't matter, because blizz doesn't listen anyway and they go live

No, there was plenty of Beta and PTR for DF. And Blizzard does listen to player feedback. Case in point, no borrowed power in DF (so far).

[Selah]

I mean, my understanding of influencers and the general public's opinion both is that the expansion is great. It is reportedly fun. But yeah, people have moved on. You can't forget about the very real context of the last 5 years. Two expansions that were largely seen as failures and each expansion just got worse. People feel extremely burned, and while things are seemingly improving with the game it doesn't change that. You also have to remember too, those weren't the only two expansions that were bad. There was also WoD and Cata. Out of the 8 last expansions (DF isn't included because it's still being released), 4 have been bad. It gets old having bad expansions. I do mean bad, not just "meh" expansions.

Then people leave and go off to other games and find themselves having a really good time. FFXIV really was the big one to catch those players and when they got over there they realized that only one expansion was scuffed at launch but then the team turned around and redeemed it during the following patch cycle and then just released two incredible expansions back to back. And you can set your clock by their patch cadence.

Now, this isn't me just saying "WoW bad, FFXIV good" but more putting some context as to why we can't just say "look, here's a good expansion, it gave the influencers/community a bunch of what they wanted and no one is coming back because it didn't actually make the game good." Two things can be true at the same time, one being that the expansion is good, and the other being that WoW has caused extensive damage to it's reputation and will take a lot of work to get people to return if they're ever going to return at all. To use an example, if your favorite restaurant burns every other meal you order from them, after ordering 4 burned dishes from them you're increasingly less likely to go back to them and keep bringing your business with them. It doesn't matter that the other 4 dishes were spectacular. Especially when there's another restaurant just down the street that serves the same types of food, doesn't burn your food, and is now serving dishes of the same quality at a faster rate.

[Donkeywing]

some context as to why we can't just say "look, here's a good expansion, it gave the influencers/community a bunch of what they wanted and no one is coming back because it didn't actually make the game good."

my understanding of influencers and the general public's opinion both is that the expansion is great. It is reportedly fun. But yeah, people have moved on.

Oh please, those influencers/community don't know what they want and they certainly don't understand simple concepts like causality. Many of them either tolerated or supported the enormous pruning, which directly led the way for borrowed power systems. Something which, to this fucking day, they don't understand/accept. They got what they wanted. It's not like the pruning & borrowed power happened overnight, this was a years long development cycle and many of them supported it.

On top of that those 2 'failed' expansions were, for a large part, developed upon the system designs from legion (I believe that's what you consider a 'good' expansion). If the community wanted to lose its mental state over systems design, perhaps they should've done so 5 years earlier. Thinking the community or influencers are free of blame here is disingenuous. They definitely contributed to the current state of the game.

[prwraith]

I liked this game best during cata, where once I finished the char It was done outside of raidlogging. I just made more chars if I wanted to do more. Was good times

[BeepBoo]

The game is basically a dungeon crawler with side content now.

I agree, the game is the perfect MMO I've always wanted. Feels amazing to finally get it.

[AcidicSyn]

How so? You finish Exile's Reach and through Chromie Time can do any expansion content. Players can pick from any number of expansions to do and mostly can do them at a steady pace to reach the start of the newest expansion's content. Typically this is about 60%~70% of that expansion as leveling content.~snip~

This is for existing players. New players do not have chromie time. They go to exiles reach and then to BFA and then straight to DF.

[Selah]

Oh please, those influencers/community don't know what they want and they certainly don't understand simple concepts like causality. Many of them either tolerated or supported the enormous pruning, which directly led the way for borrowed power systems. Something which, to this fucking day, they don't understand/accept. They got what they wanted. It's not like the pruning & borrowed power happened overnight, this was a years long development cycle and many of them supported it.

On top of that those 2 'failed' expansions were, for a large part, developed upon the system designs from legion (I believe that's what you consider a 'good' expansion). If the community wanted to lose its mental state over systems design, perhaps they should've done so 5 years earlier. Thinking the community or influencers are free of blame here is disingenuous. They definitely contributed to the current state of the game.

Okay, cool, now I want you to apply this reasoning to the competition. Does that mean that the community surrounding FFXIV is just better at game design and content delivery than the WoW community? Very quickly this reasoning falls apart. Obviously they're just as insightful as the WoW community. It's not the duty of the community to design the game, that is Blizzard's responsibility. The responsibility of the community (and influencers) are to provide feedback.

To stick with my restaurant example. If you go into a restaurant and get a pizza and the pizza is bad, it's not your obligation to tell the chef how to cook the pizza, it's your obligation to just inform them of the problem. You're welcome to provide feedback to the chef about what some potential solutions might be but at the end of the day it's the chef's job to correct the issue with the pizza. If he can't correct the issue then you're going to leave the restaurant, if enough people leave the restaurant then it's the job of management to investigate why the chef can't cook the pizza right.

[Spey]

Check the amount of EU (FULL and HIGH) realms, and compare them in retrospective to numbers in shadowlands. Your topic is pointless. And then i suggest you re-think your insufficient statement that "no one plays the game"

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...how many servers are running the game today?

[jeezusisacasual]

Oh please, those influencers/community don't know what they want and they certainly don't understand simple concepts like causality. Many of them either tolerated or supported the enormous pruning, which directly led the way for borrowed power systems. Something which, to this fucking day, they don't understand/accept. They got what they wanted. It's not like the pruning & borrowed power happened overnight, this was a years long development cycle and many of them supported it.

On top of that those 2 'failed' expansions were, for a large part, developed upon the system designs from legion (I believe that's what you consider a 'good' expansion). If the community wanted to lose its mental state over systems design, perhaps they should've done so 5 years earlier. Thinking the community or influencers are free of blame here is disingenuous. They definitely contributed to the current state of the game.

Those systems are fine if the content around them is top notch meaning those systems are the cherry but exactly the pie where as both situations those systems attempted to be the pie instead of the cherry. BFA would have been hailed as fantastic if the azerite armor system would not have launched and came with traditional tier sets along with the azerite neck powers at the start.

People rarely give a game another chance down the road post launch and to be honest the dev's and leadership have to predict where the gaming landscape is going instead of relying on past successes. They get 1 chance to hold the audience otherwise they might as well give up and you can clearly see the passion they gave BFA but no one gave a shit because again they messed up at the start which might not be fair but who cares about being fair anymore anyway. If i mess up at HSBC do you think they give a shit about my time with them? Also the pruning has been a blessing since they are rolling back the bloat they added with more then 1 spec this expansion.