So, what didn't work this expansion?

[Bridgetjones]

I don't think it was any one single thing that happened, but the biggest single contributor was probably combining 10/25 lockouts. That backed them into a bad corner and they've been trying to correct the mistake for the past 3 years. The problem is that their attempts at "fixing" only exacerbated the problem of...

Anonymous gameplay. Sure, it's technically possible to find your own tank for a dungeon and travel there, but why would a tank wait around for a group to form when he can get an instant queue pop with no travel and better rewards? They don't/won't. Server groups are virtually dead, but playing with strangers is not a sufficient substitute.

MoP tried to ram through a bunch of Cataclysm's failed ideas (LFR, hardwired specs, dumbed down talents, ridiculous stat bloat) while walking away from a lot of what made Wrath so good (epic leveling experience, great environments and music, meaningful lore, 10/25/HM, big loot tables, shared city, etc).

TOO MUCH CHANGE! Blizz gives players too much access to too much information. If Blizz wants players to ignore 5% theoretical difference in dps, then Blizz needs to start hiding some numbers from the theorycrafters. The new talents have been overhauled every single patch; they're like a meth head picking their scabs. There's no confidence that if you enjoy X talent that it will even exist in the next couple of months. The game is balanced enough already; the problem is not balance, it's theorycrafting and the resulting player-enforced mandates. Blizzard needs to break recount, WoL, and sims and integrate an in-game meter that only works for target dummies and for practice/personal benefit.

- - - Updated - - -

I actually loved Mists. Here's a fairly candid review though; I didn't like everything.

Tier 15 - I cannot provide an unbiased opinion.

So, here's the deal though. Summer often sucks for guilds, and summer is really sucking right now. We raid fewer weeks than we fail to. Attendance issues suck. Roster churn sucks. Losing progress and failing to farm both suck. I hate raiding lately, but it's probably not ToT's fault. I do have one objective complaint, and that's the linearity. Raiding 4.5 hours/week is very harsh when you can't just choose not to do the bosses you don't care about this lockout (like you could in Ulduar, tier 14, etc.).

The problem isn't summer. Or Valentines, or Memorial Day, or Labor Day, or back-to-school, or finals, or Halloween, or vacations, or anything else. Attendance and recruitment are problems with server community and anonymous-play short-term substitutes. Not every guild has these problems, but it's a phenomenon that did not used to be so prevalent. During Cata it was happening with 25-mans more and more to the point that they're virtually extinct.

[Raelbo]

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

But, lets talk here about what, seriously, happened in mists that caused such a decline.

Or how about we accept that this is the reality of ANY game?

The only real debate worth having on this topic is whether Blizzard have done well to hang on to 7.7M subs, or done badly to lose 2.5M so far this expansion.


The basic principles everyone needs to grasp are as follows:

EVERYONE who has ever played WoW WILL get tired of it eventually (those who don't died first - same end result as far as the game is concerned). It's simply a question of how long it will take.
As the game gets older, it will struggle more and more to attract new players, because it is old.

Combine these 2 simple uncontestable concepts and the nett result is obvious.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Poster is burned out and needs to get out of WoW for some time. :P

As for the thread topic, MoP is for me the best expansion. What I did not like however:
- Valor gear double gating: There is already a gating (the cost of the piece). There should not be additional one imo. I hated the decision to gate the 5.2 valor gear to raid reputation. It forced me to run LFR just for the sake of getting rep. That's a bad design. Even if I love to daily quests, I think it should not have been gated to faction reputation in 5.0. neither. If they really fear we would gear up to quickly, just increase the valor cost of those pieces.
-A minor nitpick: Horde and Alliance main hub should not have been so close of each other. They are at war and we hear they are living "peacefully" at close range in the Vale? They should have spreaded out the 2 cities in different zones.
-Alt unfriendly. The expansion has been a bit alt unfriendly. They added nice elements to promote alt play like faction commendations to increase reputation or account-wide mounts and pets or the 50% valor buff. The next step should be to put secondary professions (or some of them like fishing and first-aid) account-wide as well.

Honestly I think we can just say LFR as a whole as a huge fail in MoP (as are dailies, but that's another post). LFR worked in 4.3 because players didn't have to run it. If they felt like getting some extra chance at gear, or just wanted to see it, or a guild were short on members, they did LFR to fill the gap.

The problem was LFR fell off at the end of the expansion as did DS as a whole because people burnt out on it. This is an issue of LFR being cleared too fast and too often, not because not enough players were running it.

So Blizz essentially mandates LFR in MoP by gating gear behind raid reps, gating normal by having LFR-quality items, etc. I hope next expansion Blizz steps back from LFR and returns it to being an optional thing. You START in flex-size, and can run LFR only if you're lacking the minimum 10 people with you for flex/normal/heroic.

But they won't. They'll still make mandatory LFR, and might make it even more mandatory because they need to "cater" to players who don't want to group, who don't want to make friends, who just want to bot and resell their account.

[khalltusk]

Honestly I think we can just say LFR as a whole as a huge fail in MoP (as are dailies, but that's another post). LFR worked in 4.3 because players didn't have to run it. If they felt like getting some extra chance at gear, or just wanted to see it, or a guild were short on members, they did LFR to fill the gap.

The problem was LFR fell off at the end of the expansion as did DS as a whole because people burnt out on it. This is an issue of LFR being cleared too fast and too often, not because not enough players were running it.

So Blizz essentially mandates LFR in MoP by gating gear behind raid reps, gating normal by having LFR-quality items, etc. I hope next expansion Blizz steps back from LFR and returns it to being an optional thing. You START in flex-size, and can run LFR only if you're lacking the minimum 10 people with you for flex/normal/heroic.

But they won't. They'll still make mandatory LFR, and might make it even more mandatory because they need to "cater" to players who don't want to group, who don't want to make friends, who just want to bot and resell their account.

I think the way forward would be

LFR - Delay it like they did in MOP have lower level items than in normal flex.

Have Flex/Normal/Heroic open from day 1. Have the loot follow like this

example Ilevels LFR: 701 Flex: 710 Normal: 719 Heroic: 728 - Then have it so LFR has items that cover all the item slots accross all the raids that are released. Flex/Normal will have the slightly more items than LFR to give some more incentive to run them. Heroic will have an additional boss/new boss phases to make the fights different and ofc some additional loot items.

It stops LFR from feeling mandatory for those who have no will power of their own. While providing incentives to dip your toes into the next raid up.

[Devos]

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.

Agree. If anything, they need to update the game engine.

[Defengar]

It just didn't improve enough on what cataclysm fucked up. Plain and simple, Cataclysm was fucking horrible, and it would have taken an absolutely amazing expansion. Even better than BC or Wrath, to get WoW back on track.

MOP was good, but it was nowhere near that good. People saw that, and realized the game wasn't ever going to be as good as it had been again, and so the drain began again in earnest.

[Iseeyou]

Pandas
LFR
12e per month whille better mmo (gw2) is "free"
-600Ksub every quarter all my mates left the game
Casualfriendly
Retardfriendly
Pvp let down
World Pvp = 0
World stuff = 0
New LCD
2005 Graphics starts to hurt my eyes

[Fenixdown]

Yeah I'd go with the alt unfriendliness. I somehow managed to level a second character to 90, but it's still only able to do MSV LFR. I just can't be motivated to do anything on that toon right now.

[Naxere]

Hmm, let's see:

- Reputation gating. Putting the other reputations behind Golden Lotus was stupid.
- Dailies. WAY too many dailies at the start of the expansion.
- PvP Balance. Getting better, but it's been pretty horrible the majority of the expansion.
- Alt unfriendliness. Feel like there's too many punishing mechanics for alt catchup. Lesser Charms being account-wide would help.

[Kazgrel]

Quick rundown:

- Alt unfriendliness: Initially this tied in with dailies, but now I would say it's due to the fact that LFR is the "replacement" for the catch-up 5 man dungeons. It was nice being able to get gear from HoT 5 mans in 4.3 combined with VP/JP gear (when JP gear was actually useful) to make a half decent viable alt for any alt runs.

- PvP poopstorm: There have been more changes to pvp in MoP than the last two expansions combined, least it seems, yet I simply cba to get back into serious pvp. For me the main factor is all my pvp buddies have quit for various reasons. One of my favorite features through Cata was converting unused VP to CP and using that to keep my pvp gear set moderately kept up, but that was taken away in MoP in favor of the god awful upgrade system.

- Conflict of interests: Touching on the last statement I made, there's all the hoopla about the item squish becoming a necessity, yet devs kept piling things on with additional raid difficulties, then the upgrade system using VP. Only thing VP should've been for is the SP:A gear, some sort of BoE 522 item (make it cost all 3k valor or 2.5k or something), and the ability to convert VP to conquest once again (which could help bolster the dwindling pvp population).

- Dailies being mandatory early on: Whoever came up with that whole gating idea with GL and the whole daily layout at the start of MoP...I hope they are working elsewhere or looking for work. By far one of the dumbest things to ever come along in the game. As noted by another poster I glanced over, they could've had BoA tabards at revered to resolve this issue for alts, but the token things tend to work the same way, I suppose. Also, I think after having been without it, I can say I would much rather faceroll 5 man dungeons to complete reps, but they have to string people along as much as they can for that $15 a month, so...

Out of time for now, because I could go on for days, but armchair developing is pretty pointless.

[Deleted]

Pandas
LFR
12e per month whille better mmo (gw2) is "free"
-600Ksub every quarter all my mates left the game
Casualfriendly
Retardfriendly
Pvp let down
World Pvp = 0
World stuff = 0
New LCD
2005 Graphics starts to hurt my eyes

-Pandas...There is also other silly races in wow. Cows,space goats and so on and you dont complain about them?
-LFR was put in to wow under cata.
-You know...play both same time?
-Why care about subs drop, its a old game and if they dont say anything about people stop playing you would not even notice it.
-Casualfriendly? well has been like that since wrath.
-Retardfriendly..well you opinion.
-World pvp...its have been dead since tbc
-world stuff...dont really know
-New LCD...hm dont know that that means
-2005 graphics? you are wrong there, wow grapfic has been update a few times. last time was in cata. My computer use to handle full grapfic in wow but now it cant without have shitty fps.

I have View your profile. Why care about a game you dont like? make no sense at all. Please stay on guild wars and LoL forums

[Deleted]

Only 1 thing for me that didn't work this expansion and frustrates me (and probably already mentioned ): skip the cinematic after Council to Tortos in ToT

[Osmeric]

Only 1 thing for me that didn't work this expansion and frustrates me (and probably already mentioned ): skip the cinematic after Council to Tortos in ToT

The great thing about LFR is you never see that cinematic.

[glycerethe]

1 word: Pokemon

[Deleted]

I hate how, for lack of a better word, unepic the game feels. In the past it was an accomplishment to be max level, kill raid bosses, get high arena rating, get your epic ground mount or flying mount, etc etc.

During Classic, TBC and WotLK leveling took time and you got rewarded on your way up. The old talent trees made getting a level feel important. Even if you put 1 skill point into a +1% hit talent your character got stronger. Now you get a talent point even 15 levels. Some of those talents are complete garbage and having to wait 15 levels to pick the only good talent is frustrating. If you wanted to level up in the past you had to quest or grind mobs. Now if you quest you blitz through the levels so fast that you'll out level a zone before you're done with all it's quests. Blizzard remastered the 1-60 questing and now you don't get to complete the zones unless you like not getting rewarded for your work.

With LFR and LFG being brought into the game killing a boss or finishing a raid doesn't feel as *cool* as it used to. When you raided from Classic through late Cata killing a raid boss was something unique to those who put in the effort to organize a raid and had the skill the kill the boss. Now you can just que into LFR, go afk, and experience killing a raid boss. Not to mention how similar the gear looks between difficulty tiers. LFR, Normal and Heroic gear look so similar its sickening. Just the thought of how Flex raid gear is going to look nearly brings me to tears.

Pvp in MoP has been plagued with insanely, over the top, strong specs in every patch. In the past there were always strong specs but they weren't so strong that you could just auto win games if you had that spec on your team. I'm looking at BM, Feral, Ele, Enhance, Shadow, Subtlety, Ret and Arms early in the expac. Some of these specs have been stronger than others but at one point in time they would just dominate pvp. Blizzard has made a bad habit of over buffing a class, leaving it OP for a while, then gutting it. Arms got this treatment, Feral is getting it's utility gutted in 5.4, Shadow had it's defensives nerfed into the ground and Hunter's stampede might as well be renamed to Petting Zoo if blizzard keeps up with their nerfing. There are also way too many super strong abilities that make pvp so hard to balance. This applies to both damage and defensive cds. Just to list a few, Void Shift, Wild Mushroom, HotW, Spirit Link Totem, Symbiosis, Chastise there is too many to list. All these super strong defensive abilities need to be in the game because of all the massive dps cds. A class pops all their offensive cds at once and you or your teammate are forced to use a big defensive cd or you just die. The things that make the game fun, seeing big numbers (healing or dmg), also make balancing nigh on impossible.

I could go on but I think that is enough complaining.

Note: I still love this game and play every single day I just think some aspects of the game were better in the past. I didn't mention any of the things that have changed for the better because its easier to pick the stuff I don't like. But many parts of the game have massively improved.

http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...praise/cbbzrj4

[Glorious Leader]

But they won't. They'll still make mandatory LFR, and might make it even more mandatory because they need to "cater" to players who don't want to group, who don't want to make friends, who just want to bot and resell their account.

LFR being made "mandatory" isn't about "catering" to players who don't want to group. I mean that's part of it but that's a very narrow view. The overarching goal (as with almost everything in mists) is to make the content they do spend lots of time and money producing as effecient and wide reaching as possible. The goal is to get more out of raiding which historically did very little to entertain the huge mass of their audience. It was an economic calculation meant to save raiding as content. It's a very cynical economic calculation and has very little to do with "fun". I get the feeling they sat at a board meeting one day and said "yea they'll be cool with lfr and dailies so fuck dungeons and everything else really except these scenarios we can just pull from existing crap already"

What infuriates me the most about that is the developers take a position that in Cata people were just doing dungeons to gear around patches instead of raids and bosses and that was effecient but not fun. Well NO you fuckers, you developers made are the ones making the effeciency decisions here. The players by and large just weren't calculating like that, at least I don't think they were. They keep saying this is fun but no it's not. Don't you think players are more adept at figuring out what's fun?

[ItachiZaku]

I think this expansion was fine, the only problem I see is the game slowly drifting to a lack of class uniqueness. Melee is mostly the same, ranged is mostly the same.

The Alt issue people bring up... I feel no difference. Gearing, leveling, rep etc is exactly the same, the repeating raid aspect is the same as it has always been. If ever asked to go to Naxx or Ulduar or Dragon Soul, Firelands, Heart of Fear on an alt... meh, all the same junk really. Seen it, done it, no point in grinding it out every week on multiple toons.

[Devos]

It just didn't improve enough on what cataclysm fucked up. Plain and simple, Cataclysm was fucking horrible, and it would have taken an absolutely amazing expansion. Even better than BC or Wrath, to get WoW back on track.

MOP was good, but it was nowhere near that good. People saw that, and realized the game wasn't ever going to be as good as it had been again, and so the drain began again in earnest.

I am a big fan of BC. Since Wrath, the content difficulty seems to decrease.

[Deleted]

good:

Challenge Modes (feels rewarding)
Pet Battles (nice feature)
Brawlgar/Brawler's Guild/Arena - (except Hexx**)
Isle of Giants (before Oondasta nerf)
Proving Grounds (what i read)
Legendary Questline (really good fun)
some achievements
new battlegrounds are mostly fun (Silvershard Mines is favorite)
5.2 and ToT in the beginning but after having cleared LeiShen five times, it just felt boring


bad:
LFR
Scenarios (perhaps easy to implement but doesnt compete with 5-player dungeons)
Heroic Scenarios (only way players want to gather VP at all now)
there is not one new 5-man dungeon since the launch of mop
amount of Dailies with 5.0
Patch 5.1
new talent system (liked the old trees and its flexibility)
too many changes overall in MoP, too fast release of content
professions feel boring, especially archaelogy

ill add more

[Deleted]

Personally,I think the main general problem in MoP is simply the expansion theme.Alt unfrendliness,LFR,constant changing/re-balancing/what-not to PvP,dead general World PvP,Dailies,endgame etc etc has been already present in Cata.Some things like dailies,alt unfrendliness etc. got worse,some things got better (sort of) :P.The expansion (at least to me) has a massive "filler" feeling to it,the story wasn't really interesting and was just sluggish.Also,personally I feel people have been underwhelmed.From all the promises of rich lore development,big amounts of new end-game content,the war between the Alliance and Horde etc. we didn't really get much.Although the idea of Scenarios,Challenge modes,Pet battles (etc.) seemed great at first,all these features kinda fell behind and became completely minor in the face of more pressing/important matters like raiding,gear,dailies and the rest.