Where WoW went wrong

[Deleted]

wow went wrong with people changeing. Now a days it is " i got to do X amoung of Y to get Z " or " LOL WTF BAD DAMGE LOL (kick player for being a nab) " before a dungeon could take hours,and people where more friendly, pretty much how it is everytime a new MMO comes out, in the start all are a very friendly

[Deleted]

Blizzard's (audited by 3rd party) revenue for 2012 is estimated to be around 1.4 billion dollars. (and they hover around that amount of 1.2 to 1.4 billion dollars EACH fxxkng year dependant on their launched boxes).

So unless they are into some illegal Columbian drug dealing, the figures are clear on this one.

That's why I say you people are using numbers wrong. Hardly 1/4 of subs will be from NA+EU. And a huge part of those subs will be gold farmers and also things like dual boxers.

Hence: "I'd be very surprised if there were more than 700k-800k unique and real players left in EU+NA."
Saying WoW has 10mil players is incorrect. Blizzard is so unsure of their existence that they don't fix things things like realm issues, story bias or racial traits just so that they can keep raking in the money from those services. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed whenever there are financial reports coming up but there aren't any new releases, we suddenly get a new generic pet or mount in the store which for some reason thousands of people spend real money on and never use those pets or mounts.

MMO profitability is an illusion and Blizzard are the only ones with a big enough legion to keep selling the illusion.

[Deleted]

So now we can just make a thread out of anything we see? Why should we care about that guy's opinion? Who is that guy to us?

You are not forced to care. Just stop replying to threads

OT: You can thank LFR/LFD for this.

[Unalorian]

Personally what went wrong in wow to me was Hard Mode raids. I raided semi-hardcore whole vanilla and early TBC. As soon as Ulduar hits, even thou it was great raid content, I simply could not stand to have to clear content once to have to do all over again but with more fire in the ground or something like that.

That was pretty much a killer to me because I became dead weight for my previous 2 guilds: as soon as normal mode was cleared, I would not have the stomach to do same stuff all over again just because the rest of the guild really wanted to get those extra 8 ilvl gear or achievement rewards. I would just take a sabbatical and return on next patch.

Since is kinda hard (if not impossible) to find a guild in the same mind state as me (i.e. do normal and dont bother with rest), if anything LFR saved wow for me, especially MOP LFR with new lot system. Even though it is not as challenging as before, it gives me the chance to experience content regardless.

[Surfd]

Apologies for the incoming wall of text.

The whole "every expantion makes the game less social / less of a community" thing has always bugged me, since, with the exception of the introduction Cross Realm Zones, absolutely NONE of the added convenience features have actually impacted what would be the "base" community on a server.

See, Here is how I see it:

You had Vanilla, the Base. In Vanilla, you were stuck with the people on your server. If you sucked, or were great, it generally became known. If you wanted to raid, you generally had ONE option: Find a guild. As one previous poster said, it was kind of like being in highschool. You had your guilds, cliques and clubs and whatever. Once you hit 60, and had been around for a while, you generally knew everyone and everyone knew you. If you ninjad loot or whatever, you were usually blacklisted and your name got arround. The "community", if you like, was there.

Problem the problem is (a lot like highschool) that much of it SUCKED unless you were in one of the good cliques. Dont have a guild? Good luck getting in a raid, period. In a guild? Hope you enjoy guild drama, loot drama, sucking up to the raid leaders and all that other fun stuff, cause "casual" guilds that did raiding were few and far between.

Then they added to the Base. They "expanded" our community. Linked all the players in a Battlegroup together through the Cross Realm BGs in patch 1.12.0 in Vanilla, and in 3.3.0 through the Dungeon Finder in Wrath. Now, here is the fun part. Other then shifting a large part of the end game focus away from being out in the world to "world of Queue Craft", where people mainly hung out in the capitals and queued for Bgs / Dungeons, neither of those things actually changed the ability of the players to maintain their links to the Base Community. The PLAYERS themselves chose to do that.

Cross Realm Battlegrounds did not truely impact World PvP on the individual scale. Most world PvP was, and still is, small scale interactions between small groups of individuals, which usually only escalated when guilds bumped heads on raid days or for special events or in certain zone-specific pvp type scenarios. Yes, I do miss the epic battles between raid guilds at the zone-in for places like MC, BWL, Naxx 40, and things like the Tarren Mills / Soutshore slaughers, or fighting over Nessingwary's Hunting Camp in Stranglethorn, but those things can and still do happen in the world today, if only less frequently.

The introduction of X-realm pvp did not appreciably reduce the chance you would get ganked while leveling or farming if you came across a member of the opposite faction who was doing the same. Nor did it appreciably affect the chance that you might stumble across a full out max level griefer who would spend hours ganking every hostile in the zone. All it really did was give people who wanted quick access to pvp exactly that. And it also gave you a much larger variety of people to play against, instead of the same people all the time.

As to LFD, that tool was not REQUIRED to form a group. It simply made it easier. And this is the point where I find most of the "the community is dying" arguements start to fall appart.

The Community is still there. It HAS NOT CHANGED. Instead, the PLAYERS have abandoned it. The Highschool is still there, the students are simply not interested in getting to know eachother. There is nothing stopping you from forming or joining a guild, getting to know the people exist on your server, forming groups or raids completely through server-only social connections. Noting stopping you except yourself, and the human desire to take the path of least resistance.

To make an arguement with the Highschool analogy: complaining that LFR or LFD, or X-realm BGs "wrecked" your sense of community by introducing you to all these unknown people who you have no way to "punish" for bad behaviour because they dont go to "your" school and are therefore un-touchable by the local Teachers or social-pressures is kind of like complaining that you no longer talk to the other students in your class because you just discovered that there are 5 other schools in your Town and you can instantly be placed in a random with some of them to complete assignments if you want to. Sure, if someone from another school decides not to do his part of the assignemnt, there isnt much you can do about it, but you were the one who chose to go with the random group. Why don't you talk to the other students in you class any more? They are still there, and nothing anyone has done is preventing you from doing it.

On another note, I also argue that the Server based Community is in FULL effect on the PvE scene based on one simple fact. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to get Top Tier PvE gear (ie, Normal / Heroic) stuff through any auto Grouping Tool, and always will be. LFR / LFD are there to facilitate grouping and generally increase quality of life for the "casual" community, with the side effect that the lowest common denominator also has access to said tool (but such is life). However, to get the good stuff, when it is current, one pretty much has to have a guild, and be good at what they do, which essentially requires proper soical connections and interaction with your actual Server community (barring things like Real-ID based cross Server guilds, which is another thing entirely).

The ONLY valid arguement to the loss of tight nit community I currently accept is CRZ (and to a lesser extent, Real ID grouping) because you have absolutely NO controll over meeting random people from a different server in the normal leveling world now that CRZ is in effect. Since LFR / LFD / RBGs etc were ALL confined to Instances, they really had no actual influence on your SERVER community, since those people could not affect your server, only you in the instance. CRZ actually effects the entire server, and not just the instances.

In the end however, a true Community is a dynamic and changing thing. WoW will probably eventually move away from the ingrained concept of "I come from Server X, that is my community" and migrate closer to something like "I come from Battlegroup X" instead. The only thing that really changes is the number of people you can potentially have to interact with goes up.

[mysticx]

Yeah i dont know where they got the idea that classic was like Heaven.

Seriously .. i dont.

Things were new back then, we were all wide-eyed noobs and most of all: the optimum way to do damn near anything wasn't laid out on the 'net, when that changed the way WoW was played entirely changed along with it, gone was "Figuring stuff out and experimenting", and in went "Do it like [website] says or suck!", which makes everything pretty meh pretty quickly.

[Deleted]

I agree. WoW was way more fun back then but for the love of god stop living in the past.

[Deleted]

Frankly spoken I almost do not know anybody on my server except my guild mates... in vanilla I had a full friend list..

So either I am less social meanwhile or the game is simply not about being social anymore.

[Schaapa]

It went wrong when Activision acquired Vivendi (Universal) Games.

[Toffie]

The bulk of social interaction in WoW today feels way too much like chat roulette. Meet a bunch of strangers through automated queueing systems, play for 15-30 minutes and then never see eachother again. Doesn't help that this also creeps into the persistent world through CRZ. All of this really erodes the sense of living in a virtual world and community, which was supposed to be the defining aspect of a MMORPG.

My best memories of the game will always be related to meeting other players on the same realm and bonding friendships or rivalries over the long term. Those situations became rarer and rarer as all those systems were introduced for the sake of convenience. The point of the barriers to getting to experience the content of the game was to act as a catalyst for social encounters.

I think this principle has been largely lost on Blizzard as quests, raids, etc get increasingly scripted and story-focused and making sure everyone can experience the story without having to say a single word to another player. For me, in a MMORPG the real story should be about the players that inhabit the world.

Took the words right out my mouth, couldn't have said any better myself.

[Deleted]

None of this is actually WoW's fault. Blizzard can't force a community, that is up to the players. I can guarantee that without LFG / LFR we would have the same issues. The game isn't more different, they have never changed the tools for players to interact, they just added more convenience that is all.

I'm pretty sure close to 100% of players that complain there is no community don't even try to be part of one. They assume that it will be handed on a plate / forced onto them.

Attitudes on the internet in general have taken a wrong turn, far too many people are adopting this "LOL HATIN R KEWL" approach to everything. There is no respect anymore for each other. People use their avatars as something to hide behind.

[Surfd]

The bulk of social interaction in WoW today feels way too much like chat roulette. Meet a bunch of strangers through automated queueing systems, play for 15-30 minutes and then never see eachother again. Doesn't help that this also creeps into the persistent world through CRZ. All of this really erodes the sense of living in a virtual world and community, which was supposed to be the defining aspect of a MMORPG.

My best memories of the game will always be related to meeting other players on the same realm and bonding friendships or rivalries over the long term. Those situations became rarer and rarer as all those systems were introduced for the sake of convenience. The point of the barriers to getting to experience the content of the game was to act as a catalyst for social encounters.

I think this principle has been largely lost on Blizzard as quests, raids, etc get increasingly scripted and story-focused and making sure everyone can experience the story without having to say a single word to another player. For me, in a MMORPG the real story should be about the players that inhabit the world.

And what is preventing you from forming a group the old fashioned way? You guessed it. Nothing.

The problem with your line of reasoning is that you are looking through the viewfinder on the wayback machine and saying "that was awesome when we had to do it that way", when in reality, it was not. It's kind of like saying "it was awesome when I had to go outside in the freezing cold to take a dump in the outhouse" but only because indoor plumbing hadnt been invented yet.

Which would you rather have? The modern day choice of queueing for a random dungeon, going about your business (be it questing, messing with the AH, farming stuff, camping rares, etc) and then conveniently having a group assembled for you so you can do your dungeon.

Or the "wayback" machine version, where you sat in town, and spent 20-30 minutes painstakeingly assembling a group, then another 10 minutes getting your group from wherever they all were to the dungeon, with maybe a 10-15 minute interruption in the middle of your dungeon if someone had to leave (or bailed because they got the item they wanted) and you have to hearth out to replace them then slowly travel back? Dont forget, you were not able to do much of anything else during that time. If you wanted a group you spent time either forming one, or looking for one. Often a LOT of time. While doing nothing else productive.

Sure, It "may" have been easier in the wayback version if you happened to have a bunch of friends on to do the dungeon with and could assemble your group quickly, but wait. That also applies to now.

I repeat my earlier statement. Nothing blizzard has done is actively preventing you from makeing friends on your server. The game is still an MMO, just not quite as deeply social as you want it to be if you live at or below the "auto grouping is the only way i can do anything" line.

[Deleted]

It worked during vanilla because the playerbase was much smaller and had a very different mindset and a more community-oriented attitude. Times have changed. WoW today is not the WoW made for the people who played during vanilla anymore. It's a different game for different people. It's mostly nostalgia and friends making oldschool players stick around with this game.

[zerocarbs]

The players have changed more than the game has.

By the time WoW added group-finder, the player base was already jaded and people were already assholes. If WoW removed group finder now then THAT would be wrong.

[Deleted]

That's why I say you people are using numbers wrong. Hardly 1/4 of subs will be from NA+EU. And a huge part of those subs will be gold farmers and also things like dual boxers.

It's roughly a 50/50 split between EU+NA and Asia, at least when they last published numbers with splits, unless you have any new information to say why that 50/50 would turn to 25/75 you're just pulling numbers out of your ass.

Hence: "I'd be very surprised if there were more than 700k-800k unique and real players left in EU+NA."

Anyone can play this game "I'd be very surprised if it wasn't one squirrel with a stolen credit card making up all the EU accounts"

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed whenever there are financial reports coming up but there aren't any new releases, we suddenly get a new generic pet or mount in the store which for some reason thousands of people spend real money on and never use those pets or mounts.

So first we're to believe that there aren't any real subs out there and then we're to believe that they rely on those to people to sell mounts and pets to bump up profit....

Make no mistakes it is profit, and any profit is good for a company but on the subscription line (where add in services are included) Q3 2012 was 226 million.

Cinder Kitten made 2.3 million....

Do you think that 1% extra will make a difference? assuming of course the kittens sales aren't inflated for whatever is normal because it was for charity?

I do like the last line though:

we suddenly get a new generic pet or mount in the store which for some reason thousands of people spend real money on and never use those pets or mounts.

It's classic 'what I can come up with in my own head, from my own limited experience is just what everyone else does'

Oh if only people would listen to you, I bet everything would be better, right?

[Gimlix]

Nothing went wrong, the game just got more easier to do on your own, you dont need a whole group to do a quest, you can do that alone now.
You don't need a group to do a dungeon, we got LFD.

All just got more smoother for the person playing him, and doesn't require a full group for a quest or something.
Game is basicly still same, but smoother to do alone.

Also, that picture is so over used, that picture is years old, there are plenty of new group pictures, You can't say anything went wrong, its normal that pple quit after 8 years of playing..

[Deleted]

And what is preventing you from forming a group the old fashioned way? You guessed it. Nothing.

The problem with your line of reasoning is that you are looking through the viewfinder on the wayback machine and saying "that was awesome when we had to do it that way", when in reality, it was not. It's kind of like saying "it was awesome when I had to go outside in the freezing cold to take a dump in the outhouse" but only because indoor plumbing hadnt been invented yet.

Which would you rather have? The modern day choice of queueing for a random dungeon, going about your business (be it questing, messing with the AH, farming stuff, camping rares, etc) and then conveniently having a group assembled for you so you can do your dungeon.

Or the "wayback" machine version, where you sat in town, and spent 20-30 minutes painstakeingly assembling a group, then another 10 minutes getting your group from wherever they all were to the dungeon, with maybe a 10-15 minute interruption in the middle of your dungeon if someone had to leave (or bailed because they got the item they wanted) and you have to hearth out to replace them then slowly travel back? Dont forget, you were not able to do much of anything else during that time. If you wanted a group you spent time either forming one, or looking for one. Often a LOT of time. While doing nothing else productive.

Sure, It "may" have been easier in the wayback version if you happened to have a bunch of friends on to do the dungeon with and could assemble your group quickly, but wait. That also applies to now.

I repeat my earlier statement. Nothing blizzard has done is actively preventing you from makeing friends on your server. The game is still an MMO, just not quite as deeply social as you want it to be if you live at or below the "auto grouping is the only way i can do anything" line.

your so wrong dude.... blizzard have done everything that has lead to this. its not coincidence that the community now sucks and it feels like a 1 player game not an MMO.. realm communities are silent. unless your on a realm that is so full you gotta queue to log on, then it sometimes feels the same, i.e stuff happening. but it aint the same....

your right when you say nothing is preventing anyone from forming groups aka old times, but no cunt does anymore, leading to isolation, because everything is so easy and convienient now. FUCK easy and convienient. MMOs shouldnt be about convienience. its about interacting with people around you, having a laugh and enjoying your toons progression.

LFG and LFR are very bad things. seperate 10/25 raid locks are very bad things. CRZ is fukkin awful thing.

so yea id much prefer to do things manually like before.
IN YOUR OWN TOWN YOU KNOW PEOPLE AND THEY KNOW YOU. IN OTHER TOWNS NOONE KNOWS YOU OR GIVES A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOU AND VICE VERSA..

[Deleted]

"Back during the first years of the game, commitment, friendship and determination were the dominating themes, but as it developed, things started changing rapidly and old school players started feeling disconnected from what they used to enjoy. Things became too easy and little by little social interaction merely became a choice. With the arrival of the automatic 'Looking for Group/raid' tool, all a player had to do in order to achieve better gear, achievements, levels and such was to click a button. Back in the day you would have to interact personally with each player to find what you were searching for in order to set up a successful group. Due to the 'enclosed' community of your server, you would automatically start befriending people you crossed paths with, whether it was through PVE or PVP. In the picture you get a feeling of how the game has changed from a place of group effort and friendship to a community that is more focused on the individual user." - Bonewrench

I cannot take credit for this, saw it on reddit and it said what I think anyone that has played this game this long has thought for some time.

Link to the picture referenced http://i.imgur.com/sPLBsw3.jpg?1

I read the the title and knew this was a nostalgic rant post.

Yes vanilla community was soooo much better and a group effort.......that's why those no lifers camped the IF bridge everyday for 5 hours in their T2-3 to brag. Absolutely no issues with egoistic pricks and bad behavior.

The game hasn't changed that much, back then the server was hardly united. Guilds vs guilds and people mouthing off in chats.

[Adramalech]

It's really easy to look at the past, mention all the good things in your memory, but completely disregard the overwhelming amount of bad things that were there at the same time. Have things really changed that much? They didn't. The community is fundamentally the same it was 8 years ago. People may not like this word, but saying otherwise is nothing more than nostalgia. I am not with saying these good moments and experiences didn't happen or weren't as good as you say, I am no one to say that. But it's foolish to omit the bad to paint the past as something better than it actually was.

We all have fond memories of the past, not just in WoW. We all remember all the awesome experiences and events we went through, all the awesome people you met along the way. But that doesn't mean, in any way, that the past is is better than now, because for every awesome moment, there was at least a bad one, and a few moments of nothing.

[Toxigen]

http://flavortextlore.wordpress.com/...ecline-of-wow/

That is all.