So, what didn't work this expansion?

[Nearmyth]

Before the expansions release, Blizzard stressed and stressed the idea of being able to log in on your main and always have something to do.
Did they achieve this? Yes.
Are these things interesting and fun to do? Do you look forward to them every time you log in? Not in the slightest (generalizing here).

That imo is the biggest hindrance of this expansion. There's plenty of endgame, heck some of it good, but most of it is boring, tedious, uninteresting... (looking at dailies, cooking, farms, etc...). It all just feels small scale, not very significant.

They stressed getting back out into the world and having things to do. I feel that if they made these things actually feel somewhat epic and significant, they would be a lot more fun. There wasn't much anticipation, or excitement, not much of a "goal." But this ties into the main villain/army discussion which is a different subject.

So I agree with you Trassk.

This expansion is definitely better than Cataclysm, yet has lost just as many subs. It's weird how that is.

[Seezer]

MMOs were NEVER cutting it at least not to the degree that wow did. WoW only cut it because it was less MMO then well every other MMO. Their is a direct corellation between the developers embracing conventions of the MMO genre and the decline in the subscriber base. That doesn't mean it's a causation but I do think their is something there. Just not sure how you'd go about proving it.

Of course not to the degree wow did. WoW was just a fluke. And when the magic wore off, it's done. Nothing Blizz does will gain subs again. Nothing they do will stop people from leaving. They've tried putting faceroll content in. They've tried putting difficult content in. Nothing is stopping it. The rise and fall of wow can be attributed to a few things. Vanilla-BC people coming from EQ saw that there was something way cooler than EQ out there. That built the rep. People flocked to it. 2007 WoW is introduced to the rest of the world in Southpark. Add in the barrage of Ozzy WoW commercials during wrath, and there you have it. WoW is at it's peak. Alot of ppl tried it out. Now, the inevitable fall is happening. It's not really to do with anything other than, the game is getting older and older. And in todays world, people always want new things.

[Glorious Leader]

Before the expansions release, Blizzard stressed and stressed the idea of being able to log in on your main and always have something to do.
.

Their was alot wrong with cataclysm. Why the developers focused their efforts on the above is beyond me. The system that were actually casual friendly in cataclysm WORKED FINE. They didn't need to ne retooled to give some players (the tiny minority who play 20-30 hours a week and only want to play on one toon and don't or didn't pvp seriously) more to do.

The reason that the end game is tedious is because you feel like you never get anywhere because well if you did then you'd run out of things to do on that one guy and then you'd have to go onto an alt or something.

As for going back into the world I don't think for a second it had a god damn thing to do with fun or epic. It had everything to do with effeciency and economics. THey spent all that time and money in cataclysm rebuilding the world and got very little player use out of it. Well screw fun they were going to FORCE players out into the world to use those assets. The same mind set behind lfr.

This expansion is most definetly not better than Cataclysm, my suspicion is it will lose even more subs by the time it's done and I think it will even have the effect of breaking the trend of players coming back for the next expansion. Theirs a Simpsons gag in the Simpsons behind the laughter episode where the ratings dive and viewers are yawning at the show because it's boring but they're not just yawning. Their yawning angrily. Well I think people yawned in cataclysm, I think they're yawning angrily in mists.

[Frogged]

It was the first expansion whose full raid content was available in LFR. I have nothing against preventing casuals from experiencing the game. Quite the opposite. Having LFR gives an avenue to finish every piece of content in a day (which, ironically, I just did within 24 hrs on my Mage alt). People get bored and stop subscribing. A game without any difficulty or length is a game that a large portion of the population won't continue to play for very long. This is, of course, following a steep decline from Late WotLK where LFD was introduced. Before this, the numbers peaked. So MoP's loss of subscribers is one part momentum, one part new bad decisions.

This is all opinion, of course, but I think it's hard to deny that the game had nearly double the current subscribers without LFD/LFR and while there was still some challenge and (what we'll jokingly call) "grind." The moment longevity and difficulty requiring real effort are re-added, the subscriber count will see a climb again. Unfortunately, Blizzard has chosen short-term gain over long-term investment, despite all information pointing the other direction.

Edit: Because someone will inevitably bring up Cataclysm Heroics: The problem wasn't the heroics, it was the LFD in combination with the Heroics. Again, a problem with LFD.

[Glorious Leader]

Of course not to the degree wow did. WoW was just a fluke. And when the magic wore off, it's done. Nothing Blizz does will gain subs again. Nothing they do will stop people from leaving. They've tried putting faceroll content in. They've tried putting difficult content in. Nothing is stopping it. The rise and fall of wow can be attributed to a few things. Vanilla-BC people coming from EQ saw that there was something way cooler than EQ out there. That built the rep. People flocked to it. 2007 WoW is introduced to the rest of the world in Southpark. Add in the barrage of Ozzy WoW commercials during wrath, and there you have it. WoW is at it's peak. Alot of ppl tried it out. Now, the inevitable fall is happening. It's not really to do with anything other than, the game is getting older and older. And in todays world, people always want new things.

Well I agree to an extent but I do think we ought to give the developers some credit. They recognized the unappealing aspects of the mmo genre and tried to move away from those conventions and were successful doing exactly that. Can they turn it around? Maybe not. Should they return to what made them a success? Well ironically IMHO yes but that just means making the game less mmo like and continuing the trend of moving away from tired and stale MMO conventions.

[Seezer]

Well I agree to an extent but I do think we ought to give the developers some credit. They recognized the unappealing aspects of the mmo genre and tried to move away from those conventions and were successful doing exactly that. Can they turn it around? Maybe not. Should they return to what made them a success? Well ironically IMHO yes but that just means making the game less mmo like.

Honestly, they need to update. SC has been around for what? 8 years? Diablo has been around for like 20? Warcraft what 20? WoW is coming up on ten years. It's time for something new from them. Let WoW fizzle out, take dev time away from the game and focus it all on Titan. Get that shit out. Make it good, release it.

[Glorious Leader]

Honestly, they need to update. SC has been around for what? 8 years? Diablo has been around for like 20? Warcraft what 20? WoW is coming up on ten years. It's time for something new from them. Let WoW fizzle out, take dev time away from the game and focus it all on Titan. Get that shit out. Make it good, release it.

I actually agree to a large extent. In fact I think they need to update all their games. They need something new and unique. Like maybe that's gaming as a whole I don't know. We can take Blizzard as a microcosm though. Their building games based on 10-15 year old models with limited changes here and there (and often not every good changes) but fundamental based on game play models from like 15 years ago. Yea I agree. I mean they still need money obviously and I still want to play wow to some extent or another but yea it is time for something new. Everything has already been done though, hard to see what they can do...

[Schadow]

I read about the first 5 pages before I started typing mine. Most of the things mentioned come down to my list as well, but one thing I haven't seen is this:

-The healing has changed. Drastically. I don't know exactly what it is, I can't explain it either, but I do not enjoy healing as I used to do the past versions, hell, even cata healing I enjoyed more than currently in this expansion. I guess it boils down to too much (active) mitigations (absorbtions) and too much passives (smart heals). There is barely any active healing involved, where you see HP go up, as opposed to Vanilla, BC and Wrath (Cata to a lesser extent, but it was still there).

That is also why I do not like the current expansion, the healing is so drastically different and I find it hard to cooperate with it. I don't like it. Also, healing community turned into HPS meter whores, at least half of it, which is definetly what I did not signed up for when I started playing. Meters is for DPS, keeping those meters alive is what healers are for.

[SL1200]

Scenarios are glorified group quests disguised as replacements for 5 mans. I find them extremely boring, especially the heroic ones. Heroic my ass, i could solo them with my hunter.
Why exactly can't we que for them? They're beyond easy, it's a joke that we are not able to que for them, this is a step backwards. The worst thing about scenarios is that no loot drops in them except the fail bag at the end.

No 5 mans... For me this is all it would have taken to ruin this expansion. They might as well have ripped out wow's backbone. I used to grind them normal mode and heroic mode on all my alts and I really enjoyed doing that for 3 expansions.

The setting is awful. Pandaria is a racist caricature of China with a bunch of racist Asian stereotypes thrown into it too. Do a /silly with a pandarian character. The people who made the Charlie Chan movies would be proud. Was this supposed to attract players in China? If it was blizzard has really lost touch with reality.

Dailys and double gating. What could i say that hasn't already been said about this. I'm just going to leave it alone and say yeh dailys and double gating sucked in mop.

In game rain every 2 hours lasting 6 hours. I guess this doesn't bother you when you live in a bright sunny place like California. Illinois isn't like that, It's usually cold or rainy here, and when it is I don't log into a game to see cold rainy places. Valley of four winds is beautiful when it's a sunny place, when it's raining, It depresses me, i hate the in game rain.
We wsed to be able to turn it off in bc, but unlike bc, blizzard doesn't give a shit about the players any more.

[Fullmetal89]

-The healing has changed. Drastically. I don't know exactly what it is, I can't explain it either, but I do not enjoy healing as I used to do the past versions, hell, even cata healing I enjoyed more than currently in this expansion. I guess it boils down to too much (active) mitigations (absorbtions) and too much passives (smart heals). There is barely any active healing involved, where you see HP go up, as opposed to Vanilla, BC and Wrath (Cata to a lesser extent, but it was still there).

That is also why I do not like the current expansion, the healing is so drastically different and I find it hard to cooperate with it. I don't like it. Also, healing community turned into HPS meter whores, at least half of it, which is definetly what I did not signed up for when I started playing. Meters is for DPS, keeping those meters alive is what healers are for.

I completely agree with you on this. I loved playing Disc during Cataclysm, probably the most fun I've had healing ever and I've been healing since Karazhan on my holy paladin. Even though Disc has been really strong this whole xpac I feel the same way about healing as you do. Can't really narrow it down to one thing but its just not fun anymore, not like it use to be. Its gotten really really boring, even on my resto shaman which was my favorite PvP class.

[re1gn1te]

Honestly I'd like so see a return of the tabard system. Maybe they implement it kinda like they did in MoP where let's say you need to get exalted with the rep on one character before you unlock a BoA tabard. Also LFR killed the incentive to raid for allot of people, it's actually hurting the game allot more then it's helping it no matter how many people use LFR, but Blizzard will ignore this since they see a ton of people using the system they think it's doing well. Now we'll have LFR, Hardmode LFR, normals and heroics all with the same gear. Sure the ilvl is different but that's quite meaningless. I just think having an exclusive game is much better then having a completely inclusive afk / drool on keyboard and still get loot game. But even with its major flaws, and its series of loot piñatas, I'll still keep playing because I've found a good group of people to raid casually with. I think for allot of people the biggest reason they keep playing is the people they play with.

[MasterHamster]

The fact that so many (cough) are looking back at Cataclysms valor system/dungeons is a bit funny. Especially considering those were bashed to no end on these very forums.
Ya, how we loved 4.3, when you needed to have 5 alts to keep yourself reasonably occupied. When you went from the 4.0 dungeon batch, down to a mere two (ZA, ZG), and then Roleplay Forever Hour of Twilight for like a year. I am SO glad they didn't fall back to the same shit, adding "more" dungeons that ultimately reduces the size of the pool of dungeons you do.
And even the Tabard system that made factions into faceless, storyless item-vending helm-enchant machines. Some would even want that back.

What didn't work?
Alts in 5.0. Ever since gearing alts has become easier and easier. No, I can't boost my new 90 to full LFR BiS (*giggle*) in 4 days, but atleast it's keeping me occupied for a number of weeks.

Dailies and factions. Or rather, it's apparent that there was a need for something to explicitly tell the play that they didn't need to do dailies every day, because of the valor cap.
But somehow there was a giant mob of people who thought they'd be left in the dust if they didn't. Reasonable people kept it to perhaps 2 rounds of dailies per week and still had no issues spending valor. Funny how that worked.

Re-doing factions, now at this point 5.0 faction items are pretty much useless anyway, but to be fair, the 100% bonus weren't enough. An alt shouldn't have to go through the story again, the waiting. This was an actual issue and if they are planning to go with a similar design again they better have a standard that after reaching exalted once, all alts start at Honored, or halfway to Revered. "Reputation by Association" Yay!

[Osmeric]

I think continuing to render casual guilds irrelevant was a huge mistake. Go hardcore or go solo, that's the philosophy of this expansion.

[Glorious Leader]

The fact that so many (cough) are looking back at Cataclysms valor system/dungeons is a bit funny. Especially considering those were bashed to no end on these very forums.
Ya, how we loved 4.3, when you needed to have 5 alts to keep yourself reasonably occupied. When you went from the 4.0 dungeon batch, down to a mere two (ZA, ZG), and then Roleplay Forever Hour of Twilight for like a year. I am SO glad they didn't fall back to the same shit, adding "more" dungeons that ultimately reduces the size of the pool of dungeons you do.
And even the Tabard system that made factions into faceless, storyless item-vending helm-enchant machines. Some would even want that back.

While the feedback given out was certainly concentrated it was apparently not universal. The system in 4.3 was far better even if meant you (and by you I mean the guy who plays 15+ hours) had 4 or 5 alts to keep occupied. While YOU (again that same group) may be glad they didn't it go back to that old system it came at the cost of lots of players who walked away from the game when it stopped rewarding them and when their 2-3 hours a week wasn't rewarding them as much as it was before.

Tabards were a good thing. Instant catch-up and new dungeons was a good thing. In fact virtually all of the casual friendly systems in cataclysm were a GOOD THING except for a small but apparently vocal minority of players who play one guy and want to spend like 20-30 hours a week on that one guy. If that means that guy is put out well to bad. It's a far better business decision and IMHO a far better game design decision to put that guy out and offer the variety that comes with playing lots of alts.

Mists is a colossal failure and it was all centered around giving YOU (once again that same group) something to do when for the most part it wasn't necessary. Most of those players who play more than 20-30 hours are so hopelessly addicted they'd just do the content on alts and be satisfied with it.

[SL1200]

Never felt compelled to come to the internet to bitich about Cataclysm. It wasn't perfect but at least it was WoW. MOP doesn't even feel like wow.

[Flaks]

I actually want to say that all those things that were cited as reasons for the decline in Cataclysm were completely wrong because ALL of them were addressed and the sub loss continued.

It wasn't the slow content updates because WotLK saw the highest sub numbers in the history of this game NINE MONTHS into a patch. It might have been hard heroics though I think that might be debatable. Despite the forum outcry people still continued doing them. It wasn't because raids were bad because t11 is hailed as one of the greatest tiers in the history of this game. It wasn't that there wasn't enough to do because leveling alts in Cataclysm was more active than even in WotLK.

I think the main problem was that Blizzard got players used to a certain playstyle: that being jumping into the game, getting your shit done asap and being done with it until the next content patch...and even coming back was a maybe unless it's the final patch of the expansion. Between easier/useless heroics, replacement of heroics with scenarios, LFR, absolutely terrible PvP, Blizzard has catered to the worst possible playstyle for maintaining/gaining subscriptions. You can't shoehorn players into a million dailies when the time-sink USED to be leveling alts. You can't gate gear behind things when the precedent was being able to gear up to the current tier via heroic dungeons.

Instead of making things that worked better, they completely scrapped them and/or went to OLDER ways of doing things that they'd already moved away from.

[Osmeric]

I actually want to say that all those things that were cited as reasons for the decline in Cataclysm were completely wrong because ALL of them were addressed and the sub loss continued.

Casual guilds were given raid content? Um, not yet.

[Glorious Leader]

Blizzard has catered to the worst possible playstyle for maintaining/gaining subscriptions.

Which is of course what they tried to address in Mists. Well it didn't work. People still unsub and sub around patches and the cost of all of this is that casuals aren't engaged.

[Euerfeldi]

I like how this thread is already 12 sites long and he "What worked" not even 1

[Tirilka]

I don't know, for me it all worked. Mists of Pandaria is the best addon that I have played, even better than TBC. It's just that I was tired of WoW for 5 years so I took a break for half a year. But since I returned, it has been incredibly awesome and fun. It's also the first time in a long long time when I really felt the RPG part in WoW - the first half of questing in Jade Forest (Alliance). No flymount til 90 played a great role in this.

Though Golden Lotus dailies were too much. Reputation from one quest was minuscule, and there were a lot of them. It's much worse than 4 dailies with greater rep reward, even if just in mind.