The State of World of Warcraft – A Current Analysis and Retrospective

[PriestRela]

The State of World of Warcraft – A Current Analysis and Retrospective

Some of you may remember a epic rage (well mild aggravation) post from days gone by, written by me on the subject of the MoP announcement at Blizzcon....

LINK HERE

It was given such rave reviews as:

“A thoroughly well written QQ post!” “I agree with most of the OP points!” “You are clearly a racist, xeno-phobic retard!”

…. and Si'skel the Blood Elf and Ebert probably gave it thumbs in some sort of elevated or de-elevated position, I couldn't really be arsed to check...

But I'd like to revisit it in retrospective and provide analysis of World of Warcraft as it is today and my own points I raised oh so long ago.

This starts with context of the post of course.... it was before Dragon Soul was released and I'd like to start with: I apologize for my clearly held belief Dragon Soul would both be of astounding depth and quality that it would be a raid for the ages. I was clearly too hopeful and woefully naive. (For those of you that bother to skim it it). Back to topic... the post was breed from two events, the blizzcon announcement and my shocked state of “tell me your kidding, this is a joke right?”. The other being a violent argument in my realms trade chat with a someone that voiced dissent with the idea of the xpac being woefully harassed.

So, time passed and a decided to take some of the advice in the thread and give MoP a test drive... I figured, in my shell shocked state maybe I was being too subjective and not objective enough to see positives. So I'm going bullet point some of my own arguments and provide commentary on myself to see where I was wrong, and where I felt I was right.... (I'm not obviously gonna hit each point)

• Theme Change: Of course this is a subjective topic to each player/reader and YMMV. I formally argued the theme of the xpac didn't fit with culturally entrenched western RPG themes (namely Dungeons and Dragons) and the overall established lore of the world. As it stand's I'd like to correct my former self that the environments, look and feel was not as off putting as I formally thought it would be. In fact, some of the zones gave me flashbacks of the Schzo basin , and even TBC zones. Even the panda's weren't that off putting.
  
  HOWEVER... I still maintain that the tone of MoP is about as jarring a shift as splicing 5 mins of the film Chasing Amy into the middle of the game ZombiU …...but not for any environments, npcs, stories, or any panda's fault. The real fault of the theme change was the philosophy change of “GO SLOW”. As a long standing raider, foot to the floor min maxing and slamming my head off the wall until I was practically declared legally retarded was the name of this game. It was part of feeling epic, and progressing a character to see it grow.... instead I was given a Yugo and told to hit the tractor trailer lane (for eu readers: lorries) in a traffic jam.
  
  
• Progression Paths – Formally, I was down on VP from questing and using LFR as a gating crutch to drag out content patches by forcing time commits of once a week looting. I glossed over “VP from quests” as I didn't think then that there would be a drastic nerf to VP from Heroics and other sources. I also wrongfully stated that gear would be LESS grind-y to obtain with once-a-week LFR lockouts.
  
  Boy was I wrong, but very right. I was right in the effect that gating would be used to slow progression unduly because of the clearing speed of Cata raids, but was wrong about how. Dallies being used as a brick wall in which Blizzard beat you over the head with was something I never considered at all, even with the “VP from quests” announcement.
  
  
• Class Changes – Homogenization of classes still sucks, sky is blue, and film at 11. IMO this made things hard to balance and ended up neutering Disc priests badly out the gate only to have them seriously OP after a“fix”.
  
  
• Ruining Old Content/Soloing – I voiced this concern strikingly early. …
  
  QUOTE: My concern is that older content will be effected badly, mostly in the realm of my favorite side sport in extreme soloing. I love to be able to challenge my skills, knowledge of class, and creativity to down a level 80 raid boss.
  
  Of course that was written at level 85 when it was pretty hard to do in most cases. But back then, I was attacking the proposed idea of a stat flatten. Yet another strangely wrong prediction that I was right about..... I just didn't foresee the solo nerfs and slight modifications so people can farm pets and mounts as if it was a mindless world mob grind. I'm really sad this happened.... I will continue to address this later.

Now I debated myself a bit... lets look at MoP now.... its issues and my less than previously optimistic views.

In the interest of full disclosure: I am unsubbed. I stayed to slightly inside 5.1. I DO NOT plan to resub at this time (or for 5.2). I'm not ruling out the possibility of re-subbing in the future at any time subject to my whims, the weather, presidential polls, acts of god(s), CIA mind control rays, or any forces known or unknown.

Objectivity and Subjectivity are hard.... a lot of people lack understanding of the concept when dealing with emotional contexts or things they care passionately about.

These two concepts are at odds when someone addresses a public forum where both run at fever pitch, but I feel my issues previously and current.....which thoroughly evolved over time..... can be dissected. This part is an exploration into problems with the state of the community and the game as I see it today.... which leads nicely to...

• The Myth of the Silent Majority – I see this trolled out quite often, especially by blue posters on the official forums. The myth of the faceless, nameless player that's just content with everything. It's like they are a quantifiable gray mass of neutral-ness that has no thought, no feelings, and more importantly to the person making an argument on its behalf....no complaints and agrees with the status quo.
  
  Like the idea of John Q Voter in elections..... that middle of the road person that agrees with [insert name here] policies and beliefs. There's two major issues with this for WoW …. if they are indeed silent, MAYBE you haven't captured their attention yet...which means less customer retention. Or, on the flip side, MAYBE they stopped caring.
  
  Look at my original post, for years and years I loved the hell out of WoW..... and a lot of that original post was born out deep seated love and caring about something for which I was passionate. So I submit, maybe there is a silent majority.... the ones that lost the ability to continue caring and lost their passion and did not speak out for support or dissent.
  
  Or, maybe it's just a myth to promote the idea of “nothing is wrong here” at Blizzard....either way, its bad for the game.
  
  
• The KGB(lue) Posters – Something I've noticed lately, following the blue posts and tweets here on MMO-C …. is the rather large upswing in aggressive, almost “screw you” type replies to players. Some of it is of course earned...... but re-read some of the various blue communications and it seems increasing hostile. This is of course subjective, but I see it as a systemic problem of MoP and “the new” blizzard (as it seems called now) .
  
  I always get the feeling reading some of the responses as a down right hostile blame to the players, an echo of the losses of Cata.... almost to say “we tried it your way, and your an idiot”. Granted most suggestions are rather stupid, but good intentioned. As stated above, when people lose passion is when you should start to worry.
  
  
• Lack of Real Content/Good Content – A subjective argument, but I feel MoP (so far....this is a HALFTIME REPORT) lacks real content. The raids staggered gating, LFR ilvls questionably skewed higher for later raids IN THE SAME TIER, facepwn heroic 5mans, paper thin scenarios all lack real soul. There is a spark missing from them, they lack that Heroic Shattered Halls trash pull ass clinch or the epic feeling of running from the Lich King in HoR or even the 5th wipe keyboard head smash of an early Cata heroic. It's all too spread out weak content for a longer service life.
  
  Then there is the raids, best summed up with the phrase: Bored, Bored, Bored, Sha put me to sleep.....literally snoring on vent.
  
  And that’s all before we get to the concept of dallies....which follows nicely into...
  
  
• Dallies Blow (but not for the reason you think) – What can I add to the mountain of daily hate that hasn’t already been said 50 million times in all caps rage?
  
  Destruction of the game....that’s what. Sold as an alternative time sink or as an optional fun thing to do.... they are anything but. They cause social isolation by removing MMO elements by making the game a crappy version single player version of Skyrim, act as artificial time sinks to stretch content and cash follow to Blizzard and hard wire gating to slightly more interesting content.
  
  But that’s only a fraction of the issue, there's hastening player burn out, and frustration....
  
  And the coming economic collapse of Azeroth through time to production shortages, automation, uncontrolled liquidity injection, and rampant inflation.
  
  WHICH … I'll post in another thread.... (because I wrote a bunch more about this specific topic and would like to do it justice and drop AH sales data and graphs I generated to illustrate effects and discuss economic theory. Plus I'm more than sure it would hijack the thread here badly).
  
  
• And Finally...the Community... In the OG post that spawned this retrospective and reflection upon myself, I lashed out at the community and the way it behaves....
  
  I maintain my belief in the subject, but now want to explicitly wax-lyrical about how I personally see it. When an old veteran player talks about wanting vanilla, or TBC, or even Wrath back....... to a point, what they want back is a social aspect above all. In days of yore, you had to rely on yourself being liked and your personal rep on your server. Prove yourself a good player and you were in, prove yourself a asshat...you were shunned... Today none of these controls exist. Piss off people in a random? Who cares you won't see them again..... Piss off your server? Gquit and name change....pooof new person. Really piss off a server....realm change!
  
  The sense of faction is gone... I will never forget the desperate battles on SW bridge to stop the horde raid or fighting Dumble's gang of retards as they attempted their hourly raid of Goldshire..... the dramatic fights over Auberdine (still miss that town, for 6 years had my hearth there) between levels 15s and all the way up to 80's (in wrath). No one cares anymore.... ransack a town, and no one responds anymore.....hell does anyone but me still use /WorldDefense?
  
  The sense of need of each other is gone.... the design of the game lately seems to push solo pursuits and the sight of other players as “interaction”. CRZ and hub areas are NOT social interaction! Working together, stopping threats and working as a team IS social interaction (either in raids, dungeons or PVP). On top of that, everyone is now so focused on best gear, dps/hps, achievements, and the almighty ilvl simple activities like pugging, randoms, and BGs can be as frustrating as shaving your privates with a rusty cheese grater! (further reading: see gearscore). I've seen new people berated for having blues and greens (having just dung 90) for poor dps and booted in 5mans..... like you didn't start a new toon, alt, or had to catch up before? No catch up mechanics in the world will stop this and makes taking breaks or jumping in late a nightmare of an experience.
  
  And then there is the elephant in the room, the dissenters and the true believers. This rift is as decisive and deep as ever, just look at the forums...official and otherwise. Anyone that dislikes anything about the game is a “hater” …... anyone that likes an aspect is a “lover” and the fighting gets more intense. It doesn't help that this expansion is more polarizing than anything in the past (closest thing I remember is LFD debate) with almost all aspects being equally loathed or loved. This attitude however hampers real discussion …. and by proxy any real change. If real discussion occurs, and real debate occurs then Blizzard as a company could respond to better feedback, instead of flamefests.

While I've tossed in the towel at the moment, I still maintain an active academic interest in the game, community, and business side of things....i still deep down hold some obama-ist “hoping for change” mentalities. This is how I see it......and interested to hear some input. Do I hope looking back in retrospective on myself will help anything? I'm guessing not... this may just do no one any good at all. Or maybe, someone....somewhere....ah....who knows....prob just another “thoroughly well written QQ posts.” but at least I can look back and debate myself and evolve opinions by careful assessment of myself.

[Toxigen]

Current state:

Everything except for bleeding edge progression HC raiding is mind-numbingly easy.

That is all.

[Deleted]

yey love these threads i love wow but hate what its become .. so aye im living on nostalgia on what it used to be like (when i think of wow that is)
currently unsubbed as of 3 months ago, but still interested in all things wow and hoping, just hoping blizzard do a radical U turn..
http://flavortextlore.wordpress.com/...ecline-of-wow/ also sums things up greatly... (thx toxigen again)

[khalltusk]

Thanks for your input but I mostly disagree with you on the state of the game.

I'll cover some points from my prospective.

Your points on the gating and quality of the content I completely disagree on almost all the points. Aside my own reservations I had about dailies and i've since come to quite like them in time.

On your point about community.

Sigh - I see this often. I was in a top raiding guild in vanilla on our server. There were 2 horde guilds ahead of us. I knew most of the alliance players who were in the major guilds on their side and chatted to them on IRC faced them in battle grounds etc. Yes it was fun BUT now I can add those people to my friends list. I can now finally have a character on either faction on the same account on the same server. There are more ways to interact with the other faction more ways to communicate.

There were some good things - a list of reputable crafters and what patterns they had. We also listed raid progress on the realm forums. The issue with this and the "community" was that some people took advantage of it. People who were not liked often black listed and ridiculed. Lesser guilds mocked quite openly by the "bigger" guilds. The worst was the aq40 opening event. all the big guilds who were the top 4 on our server (2 alliance 2 horde) helped 1 guy get the scepter quest done.

It wasnt a vote either. The biggest guild basically bribed or got his mates in the other guilds to strong arm their entire guilds into helping them do this. Our guild didn't help the alliance guild with this what so ever we got a fair bit of flame for this as well. We did the AQ opening quest stuff on our own as we didnt feel the need to spend our downtime helping one mans greed we were busy getting nefarion down and on farm (we killed him prior to aq40 opening on our server) and a lot of our time when not raiding was farming for materials to raid with when we were "requested" to help with the scepter quest.


Now don't get me wrong it was quite nice being a part of this "little community" as it were but it still exists now its just that many guilds simply don't care. Its not the games fault its the players. We have more tools now to build a realm community people just don't bother to do so.

[Deleted]

um we have less reasons to build realm community dude..
people, pull your asses out of your heads lol.. wake up n smell the coffee ;p

[khalltusk]

um we have less reasons to build realm community dude..
people, pull your asses out of your heads lol.. wake up n smell the coffee ;p

Why is that? Let me guess "LFD and LFR?" Those are for people who want to raid but can't commit to a raiding guild or for people not good enough skill wise to raid in normal/heroic.

Aside those I see no other reason why there should be no community. I have a large friends list and keep in touch with a lot of people. I even talk to other players *gasp* while in game. I also do not drink coffee as I think it is vile.

*slight edit* LFD - is of course for everyone to use. If you had to get a group the old fashioned way it took quite a bit of effort. Going to a city spamming trade and forming a group. Luckily I did most of this via guild or irl friends or my friends list. A lot of unlucky souls spent a large portion of their time having to get people into their group. I first found LFD when I rejoined wow for the cata pre launch. I was leveling a DK to be a tank and while leveling I did a dungeon as dps. It took 15mins to get into the group. After that run I thought i'd give dungeon tanking a go while leveling and my queue went and popped up instantly. Never looked back since. Love LFD tool I get a dungeon when I want and where I want

[Shampro]

um we have less reasons to build realm community dude..
people, pull your asses out of your heads lol.. wake up n smell the coffee ;p

Pull your head out of YOUR ass, as you delicately put it. Stop liveing in the pass, its whats ruining the experience in the game. The tools are there, I interact with lots and LOTS of people thanks to Battle.net system, I make friends when we grp up for World Bosses, I make friends when we go out to attack an Alliance base or city. Like I said, the tools are there, you just refuse to use them period. Its not the games fault, is yours . Also like Khalltusk very well stated, I dont drink vile or roten coffee.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

And you couldn't post this in a similar thread why?

[PriestRela]

Thanks for your input but I mostly disagree with you on the state of the game.

I'll cover some points from my prospective.

Your points on the gating and quality of the content I completely disagree on almost all the points. Aside my own reservations I had about dailies and i've since come to quite like them in time.

On your point about community.

Sigh - I see this often. I was in a top raiding guild in vanilla on our server. There were 2 horde guilds ahead of us. I knew most of the alliance players who were in the major guilds on their side and chatted to them on IRC faced them in battle grounds etc. Yes it was fun BUT now I can add those people to my friends list. I can now finally have a character on either faction on the same account on the same server. There are more ways to interact with the other faction more ways to communicate.

There were some good things - a list of reputable crafters and what patterns they had. We also listed raid progress on the realm forums. The issue with this and the "community" was that some people took advantage of it. People who were not liked often black listed and ridiculed. Lesser guilds mocked quite openly by the "bigger" guilds. The worst was the aq40 opening event. all the big guilds who were the top 4 on our server (2 alliance 2 horde) helped 1 guy get the scepter quest done.

It wasnt a vote either. The biggest guild basically bribed or got his mates in the other guilds to strong arm their entire guilds into helping them do this. Our guild didn't help the alliance guild with this what so ever we got a fair bit of flame for this as well. We did the AQ opening quest stuff on our own as we didnt feel the need to spend our downtime helping one mans greed we were busy getting nefarion down and on farm (we killed him prior to aq40 opening on our server) and a lot of our time when not raiding was farming for materials to raid with when we were "requested" to help with the scepter quest.


Now don't get me wrong it was quite nice being a part of this "little community" as it were but it still exists now its just that many guilds simply don't care. Its not the games fault its the players. We have more tools now to build a realm community people just don't bother to do so.

My problem with dailes stems from economic reasons than others. Rampent liquidity injection and the rise of botting... or slighlty more accurate... the sudden mass increase in botting due to the loss of production time. Factor in the rise of demand for production with patches and raids, you have a perfect storm of increased demand that can only be supplied by automation. Again, im putting a massive amount of data together for this... it will take time.

On community issues, its more the isolation and rewards of automated tools and the abuse of others it allows. Think more 'game theroy' wise... if its possible to get more doing it method A than B....always go with A.

---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 02:10 PM ----------

And you couldn't post this in a similar thread why?

Because it was a retrospective on a previous post i made, to examine evolution of opinion and further advance it...think of it as part 2.

[Banzhe]

Now don't get me wrong it was quite nice being a part of this "little community" as it were but it still exists now its just that many guilds simply don't care. Its not the games fault its the players. We have more tools now to build a realm community people just don't bother to do so.

This is such bullshit!

Yes, there is a immensely minor fraction left of community these days, but it is not the players fault.., it is basic human nature to take the path of least resistance, and when the barriers that made sure players would behave n' interact to achieve anything was there, the asshattery n' mongol flock was so little n' insignificant, that they were easily blacklisted n' / or ignored. (Yes, some realms was made up entirely of these fucking retards)

Do you think people irl would behave n' act as they do today if laws was removed?- Damn right they wouldn't.

It can never be the players fault, that a game that is built n' founded on social interaction, cooperation etc, is being axed n' chopped so hard, that there no longer are any consequences regardless of actions taken.., all in the name of Joe Random n' his accessibility n' ease of life, someone that never debates constructively (if the person even sees a forum before moving on to the next brain fart of a game), and if he / she does, the title is: AMFG BLIZZ NERF LFR 2 HARD U STPID OR WAT MOE LEWT I PAY TEH ZAME S OTERS?!??!?!- followed by the exact same phrases in the post itself making a normal persons eyes bleed even more!

Oh, and Fyi; Being able to "communicate" through an id across factions isn't the kind of social interaction players of old are talking about, you could do that on your phone, on stinky facebook, or some other media.., you can't be this fucking clueless!

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were working for blizzard with those responses, it's the exact same where players are left with: What?- did you try n' avoid responding with ignorance.

[khalltusk]

What data are you acquiring and from where? I am calling major BS on that. I don't get the need for automation in any aspect of wow. BOTS are for people who plan on making IRL cash from wow or people who want to cheat just like any other game or mmo. I've seen 50+ bots in vanilla doing strat runs its nothing new.

What economic reasons do you have for dailies being an issues? Surely you don't mean in game economy that would be just absurd. I earn more cash by doing dungeon runs than i do from doing dailies.

Game community - you are blaming LFD and LFR? I do LFD a lot along with LFR I still choose to talk. I've been in raids with guilds and speak often. It is my choice. Blizzard is not at fault thats personal responsibility of the players to choose to communicate. LFD i've had people added to friends lists because of it and in LFR i've had other DKs ask for tips on certain things and had them added to friends. Seriously please bring some relevant points or data to this or its just wild speculation.

[Deleted]

love you khalltusk and shampro BLIZZARD are GODS how we should all bow down to thee and praise the lard !!!! lal

[Shampro]

love you khalltusk and shampro BLIZZARD are GODS how we should all bow down to thee and praise the lard !!!! lal

You never make a good point, make a racional and contructive post please, you've been saying this the whole thread and every thread. That is, if you want ppl to atleast take you seriously.

[Deleted]

de ja vu??

Infracted. Please post constructively.

[khalltusk]

This is such bullshit!

Yes, there is a immensely minor fraction left of community these days, but it is not the players fault.., it is basic human nature to take the path of least resistance, and when the barriers that made sure players would behave n' interact to achieve anything was there, the asshattery n' mongol flock was so little n' insignificant, that they were easily blacklisted n' / or ignored. (Yes, some realms was made up entirely of these fucking retards)

Do you think people irl would behave n' act as they do today if laws was removed?- Damn right they wouldn't.

It can never be the players fault, that a game that is built n' founded on social interaction, cooperation etc, is being axed n' chopped so hard, that there no longer are any consequences regardless of actions taken.., all in the name of Joe Random n' his accessibility n' ease of life, someone that never debates constructively (if the person even sees a forum before moving on to the next brain fart of a game), and if he / she does, the title is: AMFG BLIZZ NERF LFR 2 HARD U STPID OR WAT MOE LEWT I PAY TEH ZAME S OTERS?!??!?!- followed by the exact same phrases in the post itself making a normal persons eyes bleed even more!

Oh, and Fyi; Being able to "communicate" through an id across factions isn't the kind of social interaction players of old are talking about, you could do that on your phone, on stinky facebook, or some other media.., you can't be this fucking clueless!

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were working for blizzard with those responses, it's the exact same where players are left with: What?- did you try n' avoid responding with ignorance.

What social interaction are you talking about? Realm forums were where most of the interaction took place (aside IRC) I did quite enjoy that side of the game. Blizzard has not removed your means of using communication. I use the battle net chat service for all my friends regardless of server or game. I am far from clueless so please enlighten me what social interaction are you expecting? You mean in game face to face? We still do that by playing and typing... the same as always.

There is still an aspect of the game that is tough, its called heroic raiding and challenge modes. Enjoy as you still need a guild for at least one of those and the other requires a good group to get the best times and you form those in the old fashioned way. (A sad fact I can not do heroic raiding due to time and we are just getting a group formed over the next few months to try our hand at these challenge modes)

I was playing during vanilla and believe me a lot of people got black listed for good reason by the guilds on our realm. But there were abuses where certain guilds were black listed as someone in a top guild simply didnt like them. Double edged sword that.

[Adramalech]

love you khalltusk and shampro BLIZZARD are GODS how we should all bow down to thee and praise the lard !!!! lal

Do you ever say anything that makes sense? If you want to refute someone's points, spouting bullshit and putting words in people's mouths isn't the way to do it. In fact, you only make yourself look like a fool and weaken your so-called "argument". I'm probably wasting my time since chances are, you'll keep on doing that, but trying won't hurt.

[PriestRela]

What data are you acquiring and from where? I am calling major BS on that. I don't get the need for automation in any aspect of wow. BOTS are for people who plan on making IRL cash from wow or people who want to cheat just like any other game or mmo. I've seen 50+ bots in vanilla doing strat runs its nothing new.

What economic reasons do you have for dailies being an issues? Surely you don't mean in game economy that would be just absurd. I earn more cash by doing dungeon runs than i do from doing dailies.

Game community - you are blaming LFD and LFR? I do LFD a lot along with LFR I still choose to talk. I've been in raids with guilds and speak often. It is my choice. Blizzard is not at fault thats personal responsibility of the players to choose to communicate. LFD i've had people added to friends lists because of it and in LFR i've had other DKs ask for tips on certain things and had them added to friends. Seriously please bring some relevant points or data to this or its just wild speculation.

The data i'm putting together is marketing data from..YES...in game. One of the major side sports i liked in wow is market control, or simiply playing the AH.

I play on a few servers, i have kept expansive spreadsheets dateing back to TBC on transactions. Everything from fel iron ore in TBC to crafted epics in Mop. If i bought or sold it ... i have data on it. A full database with transaction ids and sell ids to track profit and loss, moving avgs by day, report generation and investment tracking on my wharehoyse guilds. (and a full inventory management system, that can tell me after i put in sales info what stock i have...what needs production...and what needs to be bought. )

I started to notice some very specific things, and after some anaylsis...im putting in some major work on it. There will be a thread on it in the near future.

And yes, alot of bots are gold farmers....but the general cost of living in wow is in significant increase...

[Venant]

The worst was the aq40 opening event.

I totally agree with this, so many people were complete jerks with this and would start the event either in the middle of the night or right before a reset so that only their person would get the mount. The guy that got it on my old server was such a huge jerk that he even screwed over another person in his guild who was about to be able to get the mount, but then again he was also a paladin that took the guilds first thunderfury and made his girlfriend an officer to rig their loot council.

In response to the OP, I think the key to having fun is to not quite feel like you have won the game but to be far enough ahead to feel like you are in a good position. If you are in the first or second place guild and perhaps the top 50 in ilvl on your server you probably feel good about things. Flying around and killing the ridiculous number of rare elites they added in makes the game more interesting, I wish they would expand this and put rares that drop fun items all over the place not just pandaria. It is fun to level an alt and twink it out at lvl 80 in MoP gear. It is infuriating to pvp against a group of twinks in lvl 80-84 BGs because your team will just get GY camped. Overall the expansion is better than wrath/cata, it is difficult to compare the current WoW to BC/Vanilla since the game is so different now. Its much easier to do a few daily quests nowadays than have to clear every heroic 5 man back in BC.

[Deleted]

not bothered tbh dude, i dont play anymore. i just like getting up peoples backs

[khalltusk]

The data i'm putting together is marketing data from..YES...in game. One of the major side sports i liked in wow is market control, or simiply playing the AH.

I play on a few servers, i have kept expansive spreadsheets dateing back to TBC on transactions. Everything from fel iron ore in TBC to crafted epics in Mop. If i bought or sold it ... i have data on it. A full database with transaction ids and sell ids to track profit and loss, moving avgs by day, report generation and investment tracking on my wharehoyse guilds. (and a full inventory management system, that can tell me after i put in sales info what stock i have...what needs production...and what needs to be bought. )

I started to notice some very specific things, and after some anaylsis...im putting in some major work on it. There will be a thread on it in the near future.

And yes, alot of bots are gold farmers....but the general cost of living in wow is in significant increase...

I'll reserve judgement for that part of your post when you post your data in fairness.

As for general cost of living in wow. what increase? I am self sufficient. I had a DK tank with BSmith and mining. I have a 85 shaman with mop top level alchemy who does my transmutes. I spent about 10k the other week and farmed it back about 1 week of doing some LFR/dailies/dungeons and old raids (pets sell quite well on the server I am on)

I spend gold on repairs only at the moment. Flasks are easy to make. In vanilla wow I was poor as sin on my shaman I had maybe 20g on me at any given time during a raid day. That was being poor. Now I have 12k I am not rich by many standards but I have more than enough to play the game.