So, what didn't work this expansion?

[Hoddie]

Want people hooked to the game? Give them things to do on their main.

Absolutely. I don't think anyone I knew had a max level alt until Wrath and then seemingly everyone had loads of them. Probably because the last tier lasted so bloody long. I never understood the desire to have 11 characters on the same realm. That's fine if that's what you want, but expecting to be able to have them all geared and ready for end-game raiding is not realistic.

[Karon]

There was a video that showed what it wrong with MoP

It took him less than a day playtime to level his 85er, equip him and kill lei shen in LFR.

He did everything there was to do if you want to play a game in which you have to kill the big, bad villain.

Everything else would be the same thing just with other numbers printed on them.


But hey, Blizzard knows that we want that shit.

[Venziir]

Game is getting old, and the first impression of the Pandaren seems to have done quite a lot of damage. Personaly, MoP is amazing through-and-through, but eh.

[BEYR]

For me, it was definitely the dailies. I pushed through the first round of dailies and hoped for some sense of achievement only to be presented with 100 more dailies. The only time I've felt excited hitting exalted this expac was getting my cloud serpent. And I cheated with the eggs and did it in two days. There's just way too much to get done for the limited play time I have.

And to beat a dead horse, the lore for the Alliance is just god awful. And I'm not even upset about the complete lack of any victory for the Alliance. There was a complete lack of any real story whatsoever. And this is two expansions running. At least in cata there was a pretty equal story line with a Horde hero as the main focus. This time around, it's 99% Horde politics and the Alliance can hep out a bit here and there. The overall story is good but dear lord its boring from the other side.

Also, completely changing core class mechanics several times during this expansion (and just before).

[Osmeric]

One thing they did is turn up the health of world mobs. As a result, all that stuff you do out in the world feels (in comparison to previous expansions) like you're playing in slow motion. It's ultimately exhausting. I think this was part of the backlash against dailies -- the content inside the dailies became less enjoyable.

[Deadraline]

My issues (and main reasons why I quit--some of which have already been named by others in the thread) were that first off the game went from being alt friendly to just me focusing on one character, and being as I have never enjoyed just focusing on one main it kind of disappointed me. If I had more hours in the day to play then I am sure I would have been able to focus on a few more (hopefully...) but being as I work and have two dogs and a hubby to take care of, it wasn't always realistic for me to start playing until sometimes 7 or 8 at night, and since I had to go to sleep at 9:30 pm to be up in the morning for work, it was hard for me to get much of anything done on one character, let alone leveling any alts. It just didn't make much sense for me to keep paying for a game that I could barely play anymore...

And granted my schedule hadn't changed at all--when wrath was out I could spend 20-30 mins a night doing dailies, still have time for say a Vault run, do my "daily frost" run, and still have time to spend an hour or two on an alt leveling or even just doing a couple more dungeons on alts that I had already leveled to 80. And I raided on nights where I didn't have work the next day and could usually raid 2 nights a week plus any short raids or if we only needed one or two more bosses downed, I could jump in and do them on a work night and still have time to do the other things I wanted to do on my character or alts. In cata, it was basically the same way, and when LFR came out it helped a lot with gearing my alts, by the end of cata I had my main geared in full HM DS gear, and my alts were all in a mix of LFR and normal DS gear (some were full normal, and some even had one or two pieces of HM gear on them as well).

Now doing all that still took a lot of time, and it required months of work to get my characters each to that point playing on my limited play schedule. But it was something I could do and enjoyed doing because everyday I could "mix things up" by playing a different character, getting to play a different role outside my normal one from time to time was nice, and it just felt more relaxed when I played...like a game should feel. Then I got introduced to MoP, which meant spending every waking minute of my night doing dailies (sure whenever you maxed out a rep it was 5 (give or take a little) less dailies you had to do, and sure eventually you could get it down to just spending an hour on dailies whenever they came out with their new island if you had to solo them like I did many times). But then there were the other issues.

I didn't enjoy any dungeon in MoP. None of them felt very fun or memorable to me. The fact that they re-did some of the old vanilla dungeons was nice. And that they added some battle pets to the game in some of the older dungeons and raids was also cool. But it wasn't really enough to keep me there since ideally I would only be running those dungeons until I got geared enough for LFR/Normal mode raids, and then I would just run randoms to fill my valor cap at the end of the week for whatever points I couldn't get between raids and dailies. And to add to that, the fact they didn't add any new dungeons was a real disappointment to me. One thing I have enjoyed throughout the games previous expansions is when they add the new dungeons that help build into the story before the final raid/s are released. It was always fun to see the story progress in such a way that felt like you were discovering an evil plot or merely just taking charge and knocking out part of the enemies defenses.

Scenarios were nice, but I felt they were trying to push people into running them over dungeons for this expansion--understandable in that they wanted their new feature to succeed, but because scenarios did not feel very rewarding to most people (getting valor is nice, but people like to see loot even if they only end up selling it for gold or d/e it for mats). And don't get me wrong, scenarios could be fun. But I never at any point wanted them to "replace" my dungeons for this expansion. I understand why it was done, I just don't think it was in blizzards best interest to take that path. Some people only like running dungeons and LFR (and I am sure that same crowd could enjoy scenarios) but I used to be mostly a dungeon runner back in vanilla and BC, so I can understand why those people would feel frustrated or upset about not getting anything new as far as their favorite content in the game...it'd be kind of like those of us who raid not getting to see any new raid mid-way through the expansion and having to run the first tier of raids until the final raid is released at the end. It wouldn't be very fun for us to run those same 3 raids over and over, just like it isn't fun for those who enjoy dungeons to run the same ones over and over without even getting one new one. Some people might have quit just because blizzard said they didn't plan to release any new dungeons and I am willing to bet a few people quit over that.

I could go on and on in all honesty of things that made the game less fun or whatever. But at the end of the day, my reasoning always comes down to the same answer; I was ready to move onto something else. I haven't quite found what I want yet, but I am ready to move onto next gen gaming. Honestly, I may not be done with WoW "forever", but I am just tired of playing the same game that I have been playing since high school (I was 17 when I started and am now turning 25 in a few months). It's been close to 8 years that I've been playing and I am just ready to move on. I think more people are feeling the exact same way and there isn't much blizz can do about that. I probably would have kept playing if I didn't feel like I had to spend every waking minute of my time off on the game trying to "keep up", or where I felt like I was having more fun. But it's like any cycle really. I have had friends that have quit WoW as well as family, the less people you have to play with the less fun anything can become. Some people just quit because they don't know anyone anymore in real life that plays and they would rather do something with friends/family than with strangers.

Plus the issue with servers becoming more and more empty and still nothing is done. I was on a dying realm and it isn't fun to be on a low pop realm. I would literally be flying around outside of the main city and not see a soul. That doesn't feel like an MMO to me...I expect to see people when I am playing. And it would takes hours just to find one pug for a simple normal mode raid (even just the first few bosses). And if someone left in the middle? We would pretty much have to scrap it for the night simply because we couldn't find anyone else to replace that person in the amount of time we had left. That's what makes LFR look to be the most appealing way for your everyday person to raid. Granted if you take LFR away then it opens up more people willing to try and do 10 mans, but at the same time some people would just get so frustrated they would quit the game entirely. I don't think LFR is a bad thing, I just think it might be wise for blizz to make LFR share a lockout with Normal/HM. This way, people can progress just like that. They do LFR til they get to a certain point, move onto Normal, and if they choose to they can do HM's. Most people are satisfied with Normal and I think sharing a lockout might help push people to go into the next level.

All that aside, I hope blizzard figures something out and if not, well it was fun while it lasted.

[Simplex]

I think the removal of daily quest daily cap had really bad consequences. It was a cool idea to let people do as many dailies as they wanted. What they didn't anticipace was people doing them all every day to have them finished as soon as possible to be able to AFK in cities while posting whiny threads on blizz forums. Faction tabards surely aren't a solution IMO, after days of endless dungeon farming people would hate the game just as much.

Devs also tried to bring back some kind of exploration of hidden items, weapons, lore objecs, many rare mobs... well who found them all without using a guide/map raise a hand. Community sites, while helpful, are damaging the game in a different way too. Noone makes you use them... noone makes you do dailies or use LFR either, yet so many hate those.

[BEYR]

noone makes you do dailies or use LFR either, yet so many hate those.

Yea, they really do. Unless you like to lvl and then unsub.

[Baine]

So, as we know the news of the sub decline is all over the place now and endless throwing of words ensues from it.

Maybe subs have not much to do with the game itself and and more the market (economy, competition, market trend for MMOs) or socialization (less friends online makes the experience less interesting).

[Deleted]

the necessity to do so many LFR's, and to some extent dailies for reputation, and for me persoanlly, the biggest flaw: the legendary quest not being shared among your characters just to some extent. I'd like to see the runestones/sigils/whatever requirement cut in half, if you have already done the quest on one character

I tend to switch main character once every expansion, so for me this was really annoying, and made me stick with a char I did not like that much

[Trassk]

Maybe subs have not much to do with the game itself and and more the market (economy, competition, market trend for MMOs) or socialization (less friends online makes the experience less interesting).

I definitely agree with that. When people say how servers are having less and less, it in itself creates a knock on effect. As servers get smaller and less people, people don't have a community on there server, can't make friends there and so things together, and so more people quit as a result.

People have been saying for years now they need to merge the servers, but blizzard are ignoring it.

[BEYR]

People have been saying for years now they need to merge the servers, but blizzard are ignoring it.

That's because merging servers=dead game after early MMO's did exactly what Blizzard is doing. They would rather have 20 dead servers than appear to be shutting down.

[Shampro]

I definitely agree with that. When people say how servers are having less and less, it in itself creates a knock on effect. As servers get smaller and less people, people don't have a community on there server, can't make friends there and so things together, and so more people quit as a result.

People have been saying for years now they need to merge the servers, but blizzard are ignoring it.

If by ignoreing it you mean they are implementing Virtual Realms which by itself is basicly better than merging yeah I guess

[Deleted]

Pandaria deviates too much from anything else on Azeroth i think...

[Milchshake]

Over-tuned 10 mans and the downstream effects they have.
I get the idea of the first 1-2 bosses of a raid should be a gear check, but its kinda flawed. Especially for the raids that ship with an expansion. The first few bosses should be flame Leviathan easy, to get people hooked into the raids. Save the gear/skill checks for later bosses. Save the dozen mechanic fights for the last boss.

Based on my experience, frustration with the end game drove people away. Whats the point of tedious rep and valor point grinds, for a marginal improvement in beating a boss with with so many wipe mechanics. That ShadoPan exlated cooking pan isnt going to help if someone is standing in the wrong spot.

My friends and I may not be the best raiders, but we're not dumb. The opportunity costs of entering and progressing through 10 mans is just too low.

[Trassk]

That's because merging servers=dead game after early MMO's did exactly what Blizzard is doing. They would rather have 20 dead servers than appear to be shutting down.

The problem is, blizzard made a vast number of servers, to accomidate the 12 million subs it had around wrath time, and even made more of them into cata. Players moved to those servers as a result.
Now that millions of subs are leaving, it leaves those large numbers of server empty. they brought So many cookie jars for there bake sale, but half the cookies are already eaten.

[Razorice]

For me, I just got burned out with WoW in general. I just don't feel that excitement anymore. Remember those good ol' days when you logged in or entered a new zone and you would get immersed into the game? Yeah, I don't feel that anymore.

[Chult]

I've enjoyed this expansion very much.

The only two gripes I have are:

At the beginning, the dailys were a bit overwhelming. No, you didn't have to do them all, but most people wanting to max their character did.

PvP has been out of whack all expansion. Either healers are gods, CC is out of control, or burst is too high. There really hasn't been a happy medium, and it hasn't been overly enjoyable.

Beyond that, I have no complaints. The Raiding has been really good so far, and the mini patches between tiers are adequate and give people something to do. If anything, I'd like them to put a little more content in them, but it's certainly better than the long stretches between anything new they used to do.

[MagicBanana]

I am really starting to think that the theme of the expansion might be to blame. There is some beautiful scenery and landscapes in Pandaria, but for some reason, the feel of the continent and Pandaren themselves don't seem to fit in with the rest of the game. I know I am not alone with this feeling as I have read similar comments before.

Also, not having a main protagonist was a mistake; focusing on the Horde vs Alliance conflict was silly because we both work together at the end anyway. It's like the whole escalation in tensions between the factions was pointless.

I agree with this. Before MOP launched everyone playing in cata like was "omg pandaz rofl, how childish, its time to quit and find a new game" yada yada yada.

But with all the people who cried about BC being the golden age of WoW and the burning legion (Sargeras) returning as the main protagonist, you can bet your ass the sub numbers are going to skyrocket back up when the next burning legion xpac comes out.

[Nathreim]

The rep grind and Legendary quests.