Is WoW Still Immersive?

[Scummer]

WoW has been progressively less immersive as time has gone on. Particularly on the Alliance side after Cataclysm. I feel this is largely because jokes becoming about gags and jokes rather than the story. It completely breaks the immersion of the game when I'm suddenly confontred by WoW's Rambo, CSI Westfall or Harrison Jones.

The odd reference or gag is fine. But there are far far too many at this point.

[DeltrusDisc]

I've always been one to get very involved and 'into' games... I can tell you, flying above zones instead of riding through them... makes a BIG difference.

Yes, it's slower, and it's not advised if you're trying to compete for mining nodes, etc, but if you want to be immersed, ride on a land mount.

[Dormie]

Look at it this way, was it really immersive sitting in trade waiting 1/2 hour - 1 hour for a tank, only to get to the dungeon and have the tank leave half way? Sure pre dungeon finder it was a little more immersive, while not by much, but some things need to be sacrifice for the game to get better.

Yes. The LFG channel helped that. And it didn't always take that long. I've played on a BC private server a good bit that usually only has 400 people on at max and it doesn't take me as long as you just said to find a group as a fury warrior. People like to exaggerate that.

But despite the hassle, it IS more immersive than clicking a button, waiting close to the amount of time you just said, and suddenly being beckoned and then instantly transported to some place where you don't even know where the entrance is if you had to go there. The immersive part wasn't even necessarily being at the entrance. It was having to go through the world to get there, AND having to go through the world getting out(if you didn't hearth). IDK how many times I ended up just wandering around after doing a dungeon because I was already out in the world. LFG doesn't even give a chance for that.

The thing I hate the most now is that with CRZ and the other cross realm stuff, it no longer feels like 1 cohesive world.

[Deleted]

The thing I hate the most now is that with CRZ and the other cross realm stuff, it no longer feels like 1 cohesive world.

I think CRZ is okay. You can always play with other players by inviting them to your group.

What I do believe would help is if Blizzard merged a few of the very low pop realms together to begin to build some form of community on one, bigger, realm.

Is the technology there yet? Who knows?

[Shepherd57]

Immersion Makers

• Reading Quest Text
• Playing the in-game sound instead of other music - this allows for good in-game atmosphere

• Playing the game with friends

I don't find many games immersive to begin with. This game is so real I have to read what people want to tell me. This game feels real because it comes with theme music just like my life. That doesn't mean games can't be enjoyable though.

[Deleted]

It's immersive if you make it so, but you have to try hard tbh. For example, this is how I levelled up my main in Pandaria:

• Riding around exploring places without going after anything specific - particularly places like the islands in the sea etc. (which also brought some danger when I arrived at the daily islands and went for a ride round those) along with the occasional foray into higher-lvl lands and also a few kills on higher-lvl mobs and on the elite lobsters as I passed through each zone. (I was going after those though, due to the fist weapon)
• External music still works along with the in-game sounds, but it has to be some of your favourite stuff.
• Reading quest text and following the storylines, without trying to look at the world map (stupid auto-questhelper should have an option to turn it off).
• One visit only to each instance on the way up, and only after completing the questlines leading up to it.
• Levelling professions along the way, including the secondaries wherever possible. (except first aid cos I have a tailor alt)
• No gear changes until lvl 90. (although I had full T13 HC BiS, I'd imagine those with less might not have been able to)
• Toggling XP on/off (using the experience eliminator in SW) to ensure that I never outlevelled a zone.

The illusion of being in a world is long gone, and everything always remind you you're "in a game".

Probably cos it's not very "big" now. Smaller continents, flight paths every 2 feet, every player you meet is a hindrance not a help (and from another server too), and no danger whatsoever from your surroundings.

[Deleted]

This game is so real I have to read what people want to tell me

Hopefully the next expansion will introduce some more voice acted quests.

[enchanted]

Short answer, wont go into detail and expansion bashing but: Kind of. But is it the same: Definitely not. I felt more immersed during wrath and BC

[yjmark]

imho - you forgot the most important:

Immersion Maker:
1) New Game - you are more immersed because you don't have anything else to really take away your immersion.
2) Internet doesn't tell you everything to do for every step of the way. You actually discover stuff on your own.

Immersion Breaker:
1) Playing the same game for thousands of hours over 8 years.
2) Visiting websites/playing beta so you already know everything before you even play it

EDIT - And no, I don't find WOW immersive anymore. Mostly for Reason #1 I listed above.

[Poppincaps]

Immersion is something you have to be open to. If you don't want to be immersed, then you won't be.

[Deleted]

1) Playing the same game for thousands of hours over 8 years.
2) Visiting websites/playing beta so you already know everything before you even play it

1) I do agree actually since I've been playing for a good 7+ years now. Playing this long does have some wear and tear on immersion.
2) True but not everyone does this.

[Dormie]

Bosses having 4 different difficulties, also immersion killing.

[Deleted]

All i could read was... oh ait its an actual post with some true statements
Salute!

[Deleted]

Bosses having 4 different difficulties, also immersion killing.

I think the fact that you can see the raid content in LFR results in the lack of encouragement to form guilds and raid higher levels.

Flex raiding will fix the issue of needing exactly 10 or 25 players so hopefully players with an odd number can play together. On the other hand the only thing flex, normal and heroic raiding offer is an extra challenge and different coloured with better stats.

[Stabbs]

For me, immersion-killing elements deal with the more visual aspects of the game. For example, seeing two (or more) NPC's standing in close proximity to each other that look exactly the same. The best example I can think of off of the top of my head are the two rows of guards right outside of the Sunfury Spire in Silvermoon. There's like a dozen guards there who are all identical to each other. Although I just listed one example, this happens in MANY more places throughout the game. I'm not a developer, but would it be too hard to be able to randomize NPC's before adding them into the world?

Also, how many times have you walked into a cave/inn/cathedral/keep/barracks/lumber mill and thought to yourself, "Wow, this looks exactly like every other cave/inn/cathedral/keep/barracks/lumber mill that I've ever been in!"

[Morros]

A lot of things have killed the immersion in WoW for me, and it isn't really just WoW I think, it's a lot of games.

For one, after playing ToR, reading quest text is boring, absolutely boring. Cut scenes and having a story that is tailored to your specific class really does a lot to break up the monotony of general questing.

Full blown cut scenes aren't even needed. GW2's mild, mainly audio, cutscenes were fantastic enough to keep me following along.

Addons are another big things that I never realized until recently, I started WoW at the early onset of Wrath, and I was in love with the story at the time that I went back and did a lot of Vanilla and BC attunement quests just to do them. As time progressed though, WoW became more about watching Recount and maximizing DPS than actually paying attention to any sort of story going on inside a dungeon or raid.

Almost like a big spreadsheet, not as big as Eve Online, but it's getting there. After playing ToR for a while, with no real Recount, or other addons, it was really refreshing.

From my point of view it's all in the design. I'm just burnt out on WoW, I had my time in it, and it just doesn't give me that spark anymore, I don't hate the game, I still miss my Death Knight very fondly, it's just not what I want from a game anymore. Even tried Rift with it going Free to Play and it just didn't do it for me.

With ToR I can easily feel immersed in that universe, I can relate to whatever class I'm playing and the "chaarcter" I've built for them based upon the cut scenes I've done.

[Sierra85]

Bosses having 4 different difficulties, also immersion killing.

I think this hits the nail on the head quite a bit actually. I remember them saying "oh we don't like players killing the same bosses on 10 & 25man difficulty so we'll merge the two ID's into a single lockout.

in 5.4 there will be 3 means of killing the same boss each week. That is backwards to immersion.

[Deleted]

how many times have you walked into a cave/inn/cathedral/keep/barracks/lumber mill and thought to yourself, "Wow, this looks exactly like every other cave/inn/cathedral/keep/barracks/lumber mill that I've ever been in!"

Too many times haha.

[reckoner04]

I think the biggest immersion breaker has been the questhelper addition (or whatever you want to call the blue zones and question marks on the map) because with it, you aren't really navigating the word anymore. Without it, you were forced to read at least some of the quest text and you had to actually look at the world and process what you saw on a much higher level. This way you actually felt like you were in an actual place and had to discover the land.

I don't find many games immersive to begin with. This game is so real I have to read what people want to tell me. This game feels real because it comes with theme music just like my life. That doesn't mean games can't be enjoyable though.

Books are so immersive, there are letters everywhere, just like in real life.

Immersion and realism aren't the same thing.

- - - Updated - - -

I just hope Blizzard's approach to more immersion (since they have acknowledged that it suffered) won't just be "more cutscenes/voice acting/scripted events", because that's not where WoW originally drew its immersion from. And they aren't that good anyway, imo.

[Sildor]

Risk free gameplay that provides no consequence to decision making on the part of the player does nothing for immersion.

No, this game is not immersive. Some of the environments are, but the best of those are ones that you're basically whisked through while leveling, or skip entirely.

Couldn't have said it better.
Flying mounts and LFD are the two main culprits.