Why was World of Warcraft dumbed down that much?

[Shahad]

It only feels like it because now we have the dungeon journal placed in front of us. It details all these spells/abilities from all the random adds/sources in the fight, and it feels like a novel. Basically every fight in Throne has a ton of crap you just ignore in the journal, because it's out of your control.

There's a lot of fluff still, and plenty of fights that look more complex than they are. Heck, you can say Heroic Lei Shen is a combination of spread/stack, cause it is, but turns out it's pretty hard. Council in Throne looks crazy, right? Look at the list of abilities from the Illidari council 6 years ago, pretty similar. Much more deadly too.

Not true. The dungeon journal doesn't just make the fights look more complex than they are, the fights themselves have more mechanics per raid boss. Here is an excellent article from restokin: http://www.restokin.com/2013/04/the-...tion-overload/

And you can't compare a tier's third boss with a tier's last boss to demonstrate that the complexity has remained the same. The earlier bosses are almost always easier than the last one.

[Skulli]

IMO some miss the point. Its not all about the difficulty.

Of course going to a trainer in Stonard or whatever wasnt hard but it was part of the RPG feeling. Some grind aspects have to be in game
They may be tedius, even boring but IMO some of them should be inside in MMORPG.

And sure leveling back then was not rocket science but keeping an eye on your mana, watching that you dont pull more than 1-2 mobs at once
was a good part of the leveling process. People need to feel a danger in the world and conquer some sort of "challenge", be it in dungeons or while leveling.
Sending people all over the world for some quest was also a nice thing, people that didnt mind could skip it and others had a good afternoon with it.

Harder dungeons required some sort of social interaction, be it gathering the group, traveling and then finally doing it.
Most of the users that complain in this thread about "dumbed down content" dont want super hard heroic difficulty world but just some elites here and there, group quests, worldmobs that cant be aoed all the time and so on.

If you want to get max level asap to farm your LFR, then of course those things are not for you. They will slow you down.

[SamR]

It only feels like it because now we have the dungeon journal placed in front of us. It details all these spells/abilities from all the random adds/sources in the fight, and it feels like a novel. Basically every fight in Throne has a ton of crap you just ignore in the journal, because it's out of your control.

There's a lot of fluff still, and plenty of fights that look more complex than they are. Heck, you can say Heroic Lei Shen is a combination of spread/stack, cause it is, but turns out it's pretty hard. Council in Throne looks crazy, right? Look at the list of abilities from the Illidari council 6 years ago, pretty similar. Much more deadly too.

Illidari Council was not hard. Neither was Illidan himself. BT/MH was a really easy tier compared to even T5 or Sunwell. Only reason there weren't more clears back then was the insane attunement gating. The bosses that raiding guilds had trouble with that tier were Archimonde(I swear I clicked the tear before I landed!) and Mother Shahraz(OMG Blizz, RNG blows!). Both were nerfed while the tier was active before either was killed by more than like 50 US guilds.

[Kurgosh]

Because "commitment" is something that should be required to play a game? I'm commited to my job, my friends and family, maybe some other hobbies that I consider more important.

Commitment isn't needed to play the game. It's needed to play the game at a high level. You're not even rejecting the idea of commitment to a hobby, just this particular one. Why would you denigrate those who choose this particular hobby as the priority, instead of poker, or baseball, or beading, or gardening, or whatever floats your boat?

[Rotted]

A need for class trainers is gone, because now one is magically gifted by a powerful God of some sort with new abilities. There's no more joy of eagerly awaiting that spell you see in the list several levels ahead.

I do miss this, seeing "that spell" you wanted to work towards to achieve. I also found by doing this, people learned their class's better.

The mobs are pathetic, and the classes are overpowered in PvE. A low level character could easily take on 5 or 6 mobs before seeing any sign of difficulty in fighting them. What ever happened to having to be careful, actually working to complete a quest or dungeon? You simply AOE them down now.

Quest wise - Yes and no, I'm more than willing to bet your using looms on your characters to down stuff, I remember when I leveled my first char, a pally, I had to go against mobs my own level, one on one, maybe two if I was a level higher, but never anything above my level, I died lots and then there was my mage friend, who could go to a zone 3 levels higher and aoe them down, and that was during BC. so while I was getting creamed, he was canning like you mentioned. So from my PoV a small buff was needed to some class's but generally things do die to easy now

Dungeon wise - its a joke now tbh, dps can do the pulling and canning, my mate leveled his monk and was running into OK solo and aoeing down 4 -6 mobs in there at a time solo. I would like that "threat" back in dungeons where you had to rely on the tank,

Spell tooltips showing you when to use your spells, how to use them and in what kind of scenario.

I dont see this being a negative tbh with you. Again going back to my first char, I was young and my talents were spread into ret, holy and protection, I saw a talent I wanted, got it, moved on to the next one. I would of liked some sort of tool tip explaining some spells and how they work, maybe not when and where, but a rough quick note would of been nice.

Talent trees. Seriously, what is this? I feel like I am in a game for 6 year olds when I look at this. Could they have dumbed it down anymore? I feel like the next step is merely choosing what spec you want, and I expect that change to happen in a few months time.

I do like the new talent trees, but I do want our old talents back, and not just the "you have to hit the last talent before you can go into a secondary talent tree" crap. Moving on to my 2nd character, which started me on raiding, I enjoyed being 3/4 demonology and 1/4 destruction or vis versa, which ever one it was.

Dungeons. Why must they show us where each and ever boss is? Heck, even the introduction to instance maps annoyed me a bit. Part of the fun of dungeons was running it a few times before coming across a boss you hadn't seen before, because it's off to the side and new players wouldn't normally know of it. Now we have "Go here for this boss, and this one, and this one, and this one. And don't worry, they're incredibly easy. In a few levels you could probably solo it."

I find the dungeon journal handy tbh with you, however from the point of view of a new player, then yes I agree with you, its fun to find new things. However, I think the instance maps were something that was well needed. The original sunken temple.... I loved it, nice load of exp, loot and laughs, but finding those dammed statues always confused the hell out of me (again I was young remember) it was frustrating a rough guide wouldn't of hurt. And again, boss's now could do with a buff

Raids. The LFR is a great example of this, instant gratification with absolutely no commitment required. No preparation required, no need to know what the bosses do, no nothing. Just go in, spam 3-4 buttons and you're done.

I can't speak for heroic raids, but the challenge is there if you want it, LFR only shows content with a gear reward, you can't jump out of LFR into heroic raiding, on dead servers its actually a good idea because new players can gear before applying to raid guilds. Should it be harder? yes maybe, or they should clamp down more on people who afk and waste time essentially getting boosted. But LFR is a positive not a negative

Blizzard is trying to make the game appeal to a younger audience to get the new generation interested in the game. And that's a completely fair goal. However, doing it how they are isn't the right way to go about it. They're making this game boring and disappointing to those of a mediocre intelligence level, and underestimating those of the new generation. They're more intelligent than many will give them credit for, and they do not need this level of simplification of it.

In the end they are losing the quality players. The ones that can make it an amazing community, the ones who do not need their parents money to afford the game. The ones who I love to find in a guild and spend hours and hours playing with.

I want a challenge, I want to have to think, I want that excitement back. Because soon i'll feel like i'm playing Farmville, with dragons.

Is this something that was asked for? Quality of life went too far? Did a group of mentally challenged people petition Blizzard and say "This game is so difficult, I don't know how or when to use my spells and skills.... can you hold my hand?"
Or did Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, think that dumbing down this game to such a level that there is no learning process now is a good idea?

The game today feels as though every cheat possible has been turned on. Warriors and Warlocks are vastly different to the one I rolled all those years ago.

WoW feels like a game with GODMODE enabled. that is hardly compelling or enticing. "The worlds BEST MMORPG" has turned into "The worlds EASIEST and most accommodating MMORPG". That is NOT how you retain subs. The game has lost millions of subs and now they're relying on people loving the "fresh car smell" of WoW, which will definitely fade with time. Basically they've decided to aim for short term profits. that's it. Works well now, but if the game every does collapse, i assert that the kernels of that failure are being planted now.

And I'm sorry but there is a huge 12 marked on it, showing the minimal age for the game, based on your writing, I'm assuming your a little older than that of course they are going to try to make it simpler

[Frozenbeef]

I do miss this, seeing "that spell" you wanted to work towards to achieve. I also found by doing this, people learned their class's better.

I can remember going bankrupt on my first character because all the skills/ ranks :S

[Deleted]

You only talk about ... 10% of the offered content of WoW 2013...

You made it to Gladiator PvP already ? Since only 0.1% can get it, I don't see any merit in your words.

The offered content is SOOOO huge these days, the WoW stuff is too challenging for any normal player anyways.

And I am not even talking about time sinks but ... Skill... From competitive PVE, PVP to such things as the upcoming competitions in ...Pet Battles ...

Seriously.

What the hell does anything I have said have to do with -my- PvP rank or PvE progression?
I was talking about; leveling, raiding, gear grinding, proff grinding, PvP ranking, Honour farming. It was all one GIGANTIC timesink, there was no difficulty involved beyond managing to get a large number of players to work as a team or to find the time to actually do pretty much anything. And the same goes for anything non-raiding related to, the ENTIRE GAME was built around you spending as much time as possible grinding something.

And I am not even talking about time sinks but ... Skill... From competitive PVE, PVP to such things as the upcoming competitions in ...Pet Battles ...

Then why bring it up? And PvP is actually more skillful of late due to the resilience changes making gear LESS important than skill, plus what the actual crap do Pet Battles have to do with the game's difficulty?

Either I'm being mean for the sake of it, or you just talked out of your arse for the sake of it.

[Glorious Leader]

I am of the firm belief that you never even played back then and are basing your wild ass assumptions on the Onyxia MOAR DOTS video to justify your anti-social behavior or just being bad so nobody wants to play with you.

I am of the firm belief that I don't really give a shit what you believe. That was my experience and it's obviously the experience of many others. I'm not basing it on the many whelps guy I'm basing it on the assholes I had to go through until I finally met the group of players (in wotlk) that I liked plkaying with and stuck with throughout. What you believe in this matter is irellevant. BC was not the glory days. BC was a shit hole in alot of aspects. You met alot of bad people and some good ones to. It wasn't all bad. But I perfectly understand and absolutely applaud the developers robbing the cliques who ran these raid guilds of all the fucking power they had over other peopel.

---------- Post added 2013-06-27 at 06:53 PM ----------

It only feels like it because now we have the dungeon journal placed in front of us..

No he's right it has. With the exception of end tier bosses most bosses in vanilla and bc were literally stand their and dps. Run out once every minute. Go ahead and look at every boss in hyjal. Even just on the surface of the dungeon finder you'll see it's astronomically different. Christ the developers have said this as much to. Raids in the past didn't have very much going on. Well now they do. Why the community or members of the community remain in denial about this I will never know.