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

[Thage]

I think this is largely a matter of differences in opinion, OP. For players like me who play games to chill and have some fun knocking stuff out, WoW's changes in Wrath, 4.3, and MoP have largely been a good thing. As far as Blizzard's stance on silent majorities, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here as they have more avenues of collecting feedback than we have of giving it (ingame chat logs and data are the big ones, and one of the Blues confirmed a short while back that they do browse third-party websites to get a feel for the community's thoughts without Blizz present) and the people who're into the game enough to post on even a third-party fansite like MMO-C and the o-boards are a lot more hardcore than the median WoW player.

I can sympathize that for more hardcore players, the changes marginalizing them can suck, a lot. The problem is there are simply overwhelmingly more casual players than there are hardcore players, and the market's been shifting since 2008 to capitalize on that market in earnest. Before Wrath, the lion's share of WoW's budget was going toward content for the top 1-5% of the player base with everyone else basically told to go sit in the UBRS/Kara corner unless they were lucky enough to get poached by a guild doing TK/SSC (which broke many guilds up due to Kael and Vashj). Since 4.3, LFR has basically made it viable again to pour dev money into big, epic raid environments with crazy visuals flying everywhere because now they're developing raids for a much bigger portion of the player base than they were traditionally.

[Bigface]

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.

rational* constructive* people* at least*

(Sorry, the errors were making it hard for me to take you seriously...)

[PriestRela]

I think this is largely a matter of differences in opinion, OP. For players like me who play games to chill and have some fun knocking stuff out, WoW's changes in Wrath, 4.3, and MoP have largely been a good thing. As far as Blizzard's stance on silent majorities, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here as they have more avenues of collecting feedback than we have of giving it (ingame chat logs and data are the big ones, and one of the Blues confirmed a short while back that they do browse third-party websites to get a feel for the community's thoughts without Blizz present) and the people who're into the game enough to post on even a third-party fansite like MMO-C and the o-boards are a lot more hardcore than the median WoW player.

I can sympathize that for more hardcore players, the changes marginalizing them can suck, a lot. The problem is there are simply overwhelmingly more casual players than there are hardcore players, and the market's been shifting since 2008 to capitalize on that market in earnest. Before Wrath, the lion's share of WoW's budget was going toward content for the top 1-5% of the player base with everyone else basically told to go sit in the UBRS/Kara corner unless they were lucky enough to get poached by a guild doing TK/SSC (which broke many guilds up due to Kael and Vashj). Since 4.3, LFR has basically made it viable again to pour dev money into big, epic raid environments with crazy visuals flying everywhere because now they're developing raids for a much bigger portion of the player base than they were traditionally.

Well your absolutely right, Blizzard does have more avenues of data than any of us would... but i still don't believe in the concept of the "silent majority". This concept is how they force a design or idea upon us to keep us pacified. Take for instance, in cata....the silent majority wanted more challenge ......and well......look how that worked. Then the silent majority wanted it easy mode ..... and look how that worked. Today, the major big players have imploded, merged, or cut to 10 mans. This is a social issue of the game now and the aristocraticy of the community...

The thing blizzard seemed to not notice is that you need these hardcores, regardless of percentage of player base. Yes, there are a ton more casuals than hardcores, but the hardcores provide a social service to the game in the effects of teaching others....providing theorycrafting....guide/video making.... and more important than all: motivation. It's human nature to want to be as good or better than the next guy. Having a target to shoot for is important. This is being slowly eroded. Go back to wrath and TBC... raid participation was WAYYYYY lower in TBC than in wrath. Was it simply that it was easier......was gear better.....or was it communication was better. Way back in vanilla there were guides of course, but it also required huge time commitment. In TBC, attunements and tiered gearing caused guild poaching and tier lock for guilds. But in wrath, the amount of theroycrafting, addons, information, and strats was way bigger than any previous point and gear was locked behind redoing all raids ever yweek. THIS allowed more people to raid....and people got hooked.

Its okay to have casual content, i love it..... sometimes i like to screw about too. But they basically told hardcores......go away we don't want you anymore.

[khalltusk]

Well your absolutely right, Blizzard does have more avenues of data than any of us would... but i still don't believe in the concept of the "silent majority". This concept is how they force a design or idea upon us to keep us pacified. Take for instance, in cata....the silent majority wanted more challenge ......and well......look how that worked. Then the silent majority wanted it easy mode ..... and look how that worked. Today, the major big players have imploded, merged, or cut to 10 mans. This is a social issue of the game now and the aristocraticy of the community...

The thing blizzard seemed to not notice is that you need these hardcores, regardless of percentage of player base. Yes, there are a ton more casuals than hardcores, but the hardcores provide a social service to the game in the effects of teaching others....providing theorycrafting....guide/video making.... and more important than all: motivation. It's human nature to want to be as good or better than the next guy. Having a target to shoot for is important. This is being slowly eroded. Go back to wrath and TBC... raid participation was WAYYYYY lower in TBC than in wrath. Was it simply that it was easier......was gear better.....or was it communication was better. Way back in vanilla there were guides of course, but it also required huge time commitment. In TBC, attunements and tiered gearing caused guild poaching and tier lock for guilds. But in wrath, the amount of theroycrafting, addons, information, and strats was way bigger than any previous point and gear was locked behind redoing all raids ever yweek. THIS allowed more people to raid....and people got hooked.

Its okay to have casual content, i love it..... sometimes i like to screw about too. But they basically told hardcores......go away we don't want you anymore.

I do agree with you in that raid participation is higher now than it was back then and the resources available to raiders (theory crafting and such and more importantly good raid guide videos!) are easy to access.

Back in vanilla I remember reading the onyxia guide with wonderful MS paint descriptions and pictures. Now if I want to know about a boss fight I can hit up a youtube video or check the in game dungeon journal (I mainly use that for looking at loot it must be said)

They have still catered to some hardcore people with heroic versions of raids. 25man they have let it slide down in terms of how many people still do it and they are trying to address it. I personally prefer 10man over 25. So they do help hardcores on one hand but on others they are not too kind.

My memory might not be right here but I believe blizzard stated they listened to the vocal minority on the design for raids and dungeons at the start of cata. Hence the difficulty. They said the silent majority were soon up in arms with the level of difficulty and changed it back. I dont have a source and will happily accept if someone quotes me wrong :P

[Jaojin]

[*]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....

Alright so, I'd rather not argue the first points because they are your interpretation of events... and the community is, well, jaded in many respects. This game is quite old, some of us have been playing a long time and over that time you develop numbness for some things that would enrage you before. As long as you can still enjoy the game then there is still hope, if you don't focus on what would directly make your experience better and transmit that to the devs. If you think they won't listen, I am here to tell you they do. I've submitted quite a few ideas (small things, like a counter on double time charges similar to roll so that we could keep track of them) that were implemented. They do listen, but keep your suggestions small and focused so as not to lose perspective due to a bigger scale.

For the quoted points:
First of all, it's not halftime. Probably closer to the end of the first quarter, or a third of the way through. [edit: This is an important point because implying that the expansion is halfway finished gives the impression that it is reaching a conclusion, which is not the case. The perspectives I suggested imply that it is building drama for a climax, which is more accurate. Who's to say what else Thunder King will bring, or the Siege of Orgrimmar?]

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.

You overlooked the spark. It's there (oh yea it's there) just not in your normal everyday dungeons. Which is a good thing, because I shouldn't have to wipe over and over trying to carry a bunch of meatheads through a dungeon like that. Gotta face the fact that with so many people who play this game, there are many who aren't very good players. Randomly throwing me in with them is fine, carrying them through a difficult dungeon is not.
"So, where was the spark of clenching Heroic Shattered Halls gauntlet?" You ask? Challenge modes. If you have not tried them... yeah. If you claim to have facerolled it with a handful of nobodies, then I submit to you that you should be doing something else with your extraordinary skills than playing a video game; or your just flat out tryin' to troll. For an experienced group of players, silver is fairly easy... gold however. There is no LFCM either, hand picked party that has to meet at the instance. I love these things, they feel like Burning Crusade dungeons... and if you wipe, no repair bills.

Next point I would like to address:

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.

This will be the hardest point to win; because people feel passionately about the subject, some will not listen to reason. After all, emotion and logic don't mix... so I ask you to try and exercise some rational detachment when reading the following. Dailies are not an insurmountable mountain that you must climb everyday. They are not a single player version of the game. They are not artificial time sinks. They are quests. You remember when you did quests while leveling? Well these are a rotating series of quest lines that change every day, and just like those quests... they can be done on your own, with a few people, or not at all. The only difference is: Instead of experience you get Valor (in essence you are still progressing your character, just at a slower rate than would with experience and the reward is stat increases rather than new abilities).

"But, they are the same quest lines over and over rotated around to so you don't see that your just doing the same thing over and over." Is the rallying cry I hear from across the room.
(remember, try to give me some rational detachment please because I'm trying to use logic)
Let's say you start playing as a Troll Shaman. You got your shaman to level 15 and thought "Hey, I want to try something new." So you make a Troll Warrior. When you start playing your Troll warrior you may be too engrossed in your new abilities to realize: You are doing the same quests that you did as your Shaman. When you get out of the starting zone you may realize: These are the same quests I did as an Orc. When you get to the Barrens you may figure out: These are the same quests I did as a Tauren. And now your starting to realize: Quests are not dynamic. They cannot be new every single time, they are written in code and deployed in chunks to remain grounded in the game for years. Have you never played the same game twice? Three times? Twelve? The same principles are in single player games, other MMOs, veritably all RPG video games ever created. That said: Dailies rotate quest chains around to give you the feeling of doing something different (as opposed to what you did yesterday.) Barring truly unique experiences that you may get while being out in the world randomly, it is about as close as a static system can come to feeling dynamic. I'm not saying you should love them. I'm saying treat them like every other quest in this entire game (or any game for that matter.) If you don't want to quest; don't. If you want to change up quest experiences, don't do the same faction every day.

Ultimately, fun cannot be handed to you on a silver platter awaiting your critique. You must seek it. You must find it. Because you are unique, your sense of fun is unique, and no one can create something for the masses that is uniquely tailored to your individual sense of fun. Games are tools for finding fun, not sampler platters for your palette.

If you want something uniquely tailored to your individual tastes: Play tabletop DnD (I recommend Pathfinder).

[Grogo]

Wow, I have to say OP, you summed up why I quit after 7 years playing (quit just before MOP release, subbed for a week recently again and have no plans to go back after the week was up). I subscribed to wow 7 years straight, never cancelling my account once even if i took brief breaks from the game, I still remained a paying customer. Not any more.

I agree utterly and totally with you OP, all the points your brought up directly affected why I unsubbed. The over $ 2000.00 dollars I paid to Blizz over 7 years was worth it to me and my opinion should matter just as any current players matters. I agree with the OP, he is bang on, great post.

[killidan]

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.

Most interaction was in-game, not on forums. People made friends on their realm and grouped with them for dungeons, invited them to their guilds, raided together. There was a lasting personal connection. Now, it is LFD/LFR/CRZ. You interact transiently and you forget, you move on. Blizzard killed the social aspect of the game.

People did blacklist, ignore. That was a crucial part of checks on "bad" behavior. Two others were realm trade chat and realm forums. People would ignore misbehaving players, expose them on trade chat, bring qq to forums. It forced players to behave better, not to ninja, not to insult, not to be unfair. You could still do those, but at your own risk. Reputation mattered, it was part of building a toon up. Now, LFD/LFR/CRZ removed those checks. It doesn't matter if one behaves badly, there are no consequences.

The concept of realm is fading away, it's not possible to connect with people from other realms or regroup without the RealID. Let's be frank here. People do not want RealID, people don't want to reveal their ID. We have jobs and employers who feel entitled to stick their nose into our free time and have a dislike for gamers. Remember the Dem candidate in some New England state who was exposed as a WoW player and her in-game chats were published by GOP? Like that. Blizzard is asking a lot when asking us to risk real life livelihood for RealID so that we can group with other people?

To conclude, it is not possible to have lasting social interactions with people on other realms for most players. The social aspect of the game is dead. It's an almost single player game where people do dailies and LFD/LFR.

[Grogo]

I rarely make predictions and really I am pulling this out of my ass, it is not a fact BUT...

I feel/suspect this is the year WoW loses a shit ton of of customers compared to years past.

[khalltusk]

Most interaction was in-game, not on forums. People made friends on their realm and grouped with them for dungeons, invited them to their guilds, raided together. There was a lasting personal connection. Now, it is LFD/LFR/CRZ. You interact transiently and you forget, you move on. Blizzard killed the social aspect of the game.

People did blacklist, ignore. That was a crucial part of checks on "bad" behavior. Two others were realm trade chat and realm forums. People would ignore misbehaving players, expose them on trade chat, bring qq to forums. It forced players to behave better, not to ninja, not to insult, not to be unfair. You could still do those, but at your own risk. Reputation mattered, it was part of building a toon up. Now, LFD/LFR/CRZ removed those checks. It doesn't matter if one behaves badly, there are no consequences.

The concept of realm is fading away, it's not possible to connect with people from other realms or regroup without the RealID. Let's be frank here. People do not want RealID, people don't want to reveal their ID. We have jobs and employers who feel entitled to stick their nose into our free time and have a dislike for gamers. Remember the Dem candidate in some New England state who was exposed as a WoW player and her in-game chats were published by GOP? Like that. Blizzard is asking a lot when asking us to risk real life livelihood for RealID so that we can group with other people?

To conclude, it is not possible to have lasting social interactions with people on other realms for most players. The social aspect of the game is dead. It's an almost single player game where people do dailies and LFD/LFR.

I see what you are saying, but thats the players fault in part. Blizzard gave us a tool to get a group easier than before. If you played back then which i don't doubt you had to get a group together to go to such places. It could take a long time just to get a group to go to a dungeon and not to mention you get there and the players were bad and you wiped you then replaced them and had to go back to town to get more players. I prefer the LFD system as I dont want to spend most of my time forming a group or waiting for players to get online to run a dungeon. Now I can login hit a dungeon and when my mates come on invite them and continue the gravy train.

I had a good friends list so this didnt happen much but it was fairly common for most people I know and I certainly saw it. Also ninjas were VERY common in vanilla and tbc in any pugs I did. You tried to black list them but lets be honest aside from some big guilds black listing these people not a lot happened to them you could move server at the very worst end if you got black listed by enough people. In LFR you can no longer ninja gear and LFD its a bit harder to do. Normal raids/heroic are exactly as they were before LFR/LFD.

Social interaction as I had it was done mainly in game, then it went onto forums and IRC as well to keep in touch with guilds on alliance and other guilds on horde on our server (a nice big chat room where it was quite friendly) I do miss this aspect we had but now most of us speak on battle net.

As for jobs nosing in, never heard about that on the real ID thing about that american lady sorry. I can understand the issue there though but facebooks far worse for privacy issues and I bet you're on it right? Here in the UK if you play games at worst its seen as a bit nerdy nothing more than that.

Just so you know I have 5 friends on other servers who I met through LFD/LFR, it started as random chit chat in the instance went from there. Just like most of my wow friends were made

[valliant13]

everyone doesnt have over 100k gold nowadays? that's odd..

[khalltusk]

everyone doesnt have over 100k gold nowadays? that's odd..

I have 12k, yeh i'm poor by todays standards :P

[PriestRela]

@Jaojin

I carefully considered your point...

But i could point out raiding is not dynamic either, nor is any pve event. But the dallies, as themselves...are more less just boring to me. I'm not frothing at the mouth in hate, or really super happy to do them. They get in the way of my preferred playstyle, and that's where it could have been better. They didn't have to take cats tabard system away, or gate raiding behind them. They culd have done a more balanced mix of all those things.

Any otherwise, most of my issues with dallies extend beyond just the mere doing of the quests.... see posts after op

[wow2011]

• Theme Change
• Progression Paths
• Class Changes
• Ruining Old Content/Soloing

• The Myth of the Silent Majority
• The KGB(lue) Posters
• Lack of Real Content/Good Content
• Dallies Blow (but not for the reason you think)
• And Finally...the Community

I agree with some of your points and disagree with some. Just to give you my subjective opinion on things you wrote:

Theme Change (go slow):
This is the change that kept me playing. I do not care to bash my head against the wall until the boss goes down. I would rather progress at a pace that I am comfortable with. It's fine if I never clear all heroic mode while it's current, it's fine if I don't have BIS. I am at a point in life where I cannot devote a great chunk of time to raiding (that means I can only raid around 5 hours a week).

Progression Path:
I happen to fall into the group where I don't care to cap VP each week. I don't intend to min/max with WoW. I only intend to min/max with what I have (things that I don't mind doing). Though I do run LFR for upgrades instead for fun. I don't find LFR fun but I run it for upgrade. I guess LFR is tolerable to me while dailies are not. Raiding with a guild is what I do for fun and that is where my focus is.

Class Change:
I have only ever played druid and I am fine with druids. I don't really care about other classes so my opinion here doesn't really count since other classes simply do not matter to me.

Ruining Old Content/Soloing:
I have done these here and there for rep and good old facerolling bosses and laughing at them. I don't do these for challenges so our starting point is different.

Myth of the Silent Majority:
Not much to say here. Blizz has sub/unsub + reason data while we do not. Though I would imagine Blizzard would cater toward majority so they would try hard to please majority of the subs.

The KGB Posters:
I don't read it on a regular basis. I visit MMO when I have a low time at work. Sometimes I wouldn't even visit MMO for months and I would never check MMO/forum at home. So I don't really know.

Lack of Real Content/Good Content:
Let's see... What I consider real and good content in MoP:
1. leveling process
2. story based quests
3. normal and heroic raids
4. challenge modes
5. mount collecting
6. shield wall story based dailies
7. doing heroic dungeons for the 1st time with leading stories

So yeah, plenty to keep me entertained for 5 to 10 hours a week.

Dailies Blow:
I like shield wall story based dailies. The rep dailies I ignore. I would love to have more shieid wall story based dailies. I definitely wouldn't mind having more (lots) long story based quest chains.

Community:
Mostly agree here.

So here's my personal opinion on things that you do not like. There are a lot of room for WoW to improve still but I am ok with the current state. I wouldn't have stayed with WoW if Blizzard didn't change the vanilla/BC raiding model. I actually unsubbed during BC and resubbed for wrath.

[Dvaldin]

Nice read. I don't necessarily agree with all your points, but I can't really say that I disagree with them either.

While I still play, here's the things I know from my own personal experience with this expansion:
a) After hitting level cap and getting exalted reps I no longer feel the need -- actually "need"'s the wrong word, "desire" is more accurate -- to log on and play except to cap valor. Even then it's kinda meh since, thanks to LFR and LFD, I have seen all the content. I'm confident the desire will return with patches, but I haven't previously lost the desire to play in between patches as I have now, and the only real reason I can attribute that to is the relative newness of LFR.
b) Pretty much everyone I know stopped logging in as frequently sooner than it happened for me.
Those are the two facts I know.
I am interested to see the Quarter 2 report after six month subscriptions expire...but I'm sticking around because I want to see how this storyline ends. I think it'll be spectacular, but we'll see.

[BIt 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.

It sure does seem that way to me too.