The 5 worst decisions blizzard has made to Wow - Your opinions

[Honkeymagoo]

I think the thing I miss most was having my server be its own world. Server competition doesn't exist in its old form and I think that's demoralizing. You can also play the game in total anonymity now, killing a lot of potential relationships. There is just too much focus on creating and endorsing worldwide competition that rewards almost no one. I think heroic raids played a role in this. They took a great mechanic from Ulduar and overemphasized it. I've seen similar reactions from people outside the game. If you want to kill someone's enjoyment and motivation for learning an instrument, just show them a few dozen videos on youtube of someone who is better than them despite playing for the same amount of time.

[Deleted]

The introduction of 10/25/normal/hardmode/heroic raids in WOTLK, which in my opinion killed the feeling of progress. When I first killed Illidan I killed Illidan, not the 10/25/LFR/Special Olympics edition. And to actually fight him I had to work my ass off, clearing T4 and T5 raids. Just watching the intro speech between him and Akama was a tasty reward.

Sorry, forgot to mention the other four points.

2.Turning strategic and planned pulls, using CCs/LOS, in a big lolAOE fest.
3.Removing the uniqueness from every class. Bring the player, not the class does not mean Let's give the same mechanics to everybody and their mothers
4.Destroying the server community.
5.Pandas, because fuck them.

[Metallikiddd]

1. Kalgan
2. Arena
3. Kalgan
4. Arena
5. Kalgan

Get rid of both ASAP!

[Anakonda]

I do not understand why people hate LFR so much. To me this was one of the best decisions Blizzard made. Perhaps it should be changed slightly (i.e. loot ilvl etc), but the fact that they made it easy to find an easy version of the current raid for your main/alt is amazing.

Back in tbc/wrath/early cata my alt gameplay was "level to 90", "do heroic dungeons to get gear", "run around mounted afk in org, spamming trade chat trying to get a run somewhere". Eventually you gave up waiting and rolled another alt, only to arrive at same point. Even with guilds doign alt runs, there was only so much you could get organized.

The fact that i can make an alt, and then raid with it in a relaxed atmosphere that both teaches me the boss AND my class in a raid environment without having to worry about fucking upo other people's run is brilliant, and is in fact one of the things that i enjoy in wow.

Inbe4 casualfag accusations - before i quit hardcore raiding in cata, i was in a realm first EU50 guild. And i still love LFR.


That said, back to the original thread topic:

1) Dailies. Even back from TBC days, i fucking hate dailies. I would much rather grind mobs or do pvp (and i hate pvp) than do dailies. And yet i have to.

2) Justice and valor currency. This might be a weird one, because i know how this is a good thing for many reasons, but i still cant help feeling that it just takes the feeling of a reward out of getting loot... *shrug*

3) PVP stats. Back in ye olde days, the main difference between pve and pvp gear was that pvp gear had more stamina, and possibly more pvp-oriented set bonuses. However it was still very much viable to play pve in pvp gear and vice versa (i do remember wearing pvp gear on mage during MC raids in vanilla). These days unless you have 12319213 resilience, gtfo from pvp (and if you have pvp gear, gtfo from raiding you scrub).

4) achievements that require whole group to deviate from intended boss tactics. While i completely understand achievements/rewards for things like hardmodes, etc, when there is an achievement that you need to do that requires you to turn the boss around 30 times then jump onto a volcano and sing a song while your healer is dancing naked near the entrance, your chances of completing that while in a progression-oriented raiding guild are zero. When you ask your raid leader if you can do this achievement, you can almost hear him consider it in his mind: "Hmm, we can either spend 40min getting a useless achievement while wasting a heroic attempt on the boss.... Or we could kill the boss on heroic, giving us better experience and gear... Yeah.... No."

5) Biggest thing for me. The overabundance of mounts, titles and pets. Back in vanilla (and early tbc), there were very limited number of ways you could differentiate your character. Every person had access only to their racial mount, or the mount from another city (which took quite some farming), or if they were EXTREMELY lucky, a random drop from zg or stratholme. Which meant that whenever someone DID get lucky with a new mount, he or she became the center of attention. Same wit htitles - apart from the pvp titles, there was only ONE title that players could obtain - the Scarab Lord. Which means whenever you saw someone wearing a title near you, it immediately added some respect for that person.
Now lets zoom forward a few years. There is an achievement to collect 300 mounts, 500 pets, and you can get like what, 150 titles? Oh yeah, that rare dragon mount dropped for you. Congrats. Go and stand near 173 other people all on different mounts. Feel special yet? No? You're just doing it wrong then.
Not only that, but even for the rare mounts which were unique, they started making them less unique by adding alternatives - either recolors (Legendary scarab lord - archaeology blue scarab), easier requirements (Anzu no longer needs people to use their alt/friend druids), or just plain out "pokemon blue/red" (6 colors of direhorns, 15 colors protodrakes, flying carpets, jewelcrafter panthers, etc). Right now we are in a situation where i would much rather have half of my mounts removed just to make collecting them as much of a "rare" thing as it used to be, rather than "dip your hand in, grab a handful".


EDIT: As bonus points, and after having read some above replies, i'd like to add the following to the list:

-Destroying the server community
-Making every class feel the same
-Making it much easier for lower-tier players to get higher-tier gear (and thus access to higher-tier content).

To elaborate on the last one, i dont want to make the game for hardcoreonlyzomglul, what i mean is, previously a lower-tier player had to put in much more effort to get higher-tier gear and content, which in the process (at least in most cases) turned him from lower-tier to higher-tier player. Now, however, you get people with full normal clear progress who ask why it hurts to stand in fire.

[Therougetitan]

1. Cash shop
2. Scrapping Azjol'nerub as an awesome zone
3. Pandaren as a neutral race, I feel them as Alliance/Mogu Horde would have been better
4. Killing off Kael'thas/Vashj/Illidan in BC with very little story
5. The win 5000 pet battle achievements

[purebalance]

The funniest thing about homogenization is that now the classes who have something different are seen as OP. Locks have 2 unique raid abilities and suddenly are just the biggest raid utility in the game that pallies try to claim they have less than a lock(lie). Any class now that has something someone else can't do is deemed OP

[Blorgorize]

My Top 5 Worst Things for WoW

1. Archaic mindset of tagging, loot mechanics and xp nerfs while in 5 man groups. Honestly, this is where Guild Wars 2 completely stomps WoW. Players are rewarded for helping each other out instead of chain pulling mobs are no longer tied to the original assailant. This is also why I absolutely adored the Timeless Isle. Raids and Dungeons should still share the loot due of course, but world content needs the players to have their own loot table and not punished for grouping up in 5 mans (Not Raids) to nourish a healthy community. I can say without fail that revoking these changes will instantly improve the community overnight.

2. The Zerg Rush mindset that has been slowly creeping with the introduction of WotLK, less reliance on CC for PvE, unlike PvP. Players should be rewarded for using all of their abilities are their disposal instead of being harassed for not mashing their AoE abilities faster.

3. Replacing the HELP tab with the SHOP tab. I have no qualms with a vanity store, just don't boot an essential feature to the menu. Especially with the shop appearing on the character selection screen on the PTR.

4. Lack of interest in keeping dungeons as an acceptable form of end game content for PvE. There is so much emphasis on raids for PvE that players often forget dungeons exist. I personally rate Shadow Labs, Shattered Halls and some of the pre-nerfed Cataclysm dungeons as my favorite WoW PvE content of all time. Hopefully Mythic difficulty is extended to dungeons to give the 5 mans a proper challenge, unlike the speed runs that said Challenge mode has devolved into.

5. Stuns. My least favorite type of CC, especially when they are directed towards players. Silences, Roots, Knockbacks, LoS and the like all accomplish the same thing but still give players a chance to react rather than an NPC or PvP I.W.I.N. button. There should never be an instance where a player is completely helpless, a single item made to directly counter stuns that must be equipped to be used is bad design. This is a plague in any video game in general though, and will take many cycles to wean the community off of this toxic and ultimately destructive gameplay mechanic.

There are some other annoying things about WoW, such as the current linear dungeons, lack of separating PvP from PvE, or Blizzard's Pendulum style of reacting to the community in extremes, etc.

My Top 5 Best Things for WoW

1. Transmogrification. The days of everyone either wearing the same current Tier armor or an assortment of quest greens and blues is finally behind us. At least now there is a resemblance of individual identity in a game that lacks unique player models.

2. Connected Realms. I personally play on a realm that died after the migration to the popular realms, this is a very welcome boon for the population and a functional auction house once again.

3. Dynamic Events are finally gaining steam in WoW. We are at last getting sustainable events that occur often in the world environment (at least for Draenor), which should help breath some much needed life into the first type of content WoW players enter. This should have spearheaded the Cataclysm World Revamp IMO.

4. Variety. Wow is truly the king of the MMO genre for good reason, players have so many options for playstyles ranging from the traditional PvP and PvE all the way to handling the world enviroment, playing the auction house or revisting old content alone for example. There is so many options to play WoW that it can actually overwhelm players, you always have something to do.

5. The steady return of class quests. I loved the massive chain to earn Rhok'delar, and I feel this was far more legendary than that silly RNG bow from Sunwell, when you saw a hunter with Rhok you knew they were at the pinnacle of their class and could easily handle even some world bosses on their own. Warlocks are leading the charge for the hopeful return of class quests via the green fire with 5.2 in Mists of Pandaria. I hope Blizzard does the same in Warlords of Draenor. Shamans and Paladins are the most likely candidates for the class quests if they continue in this expansion.

[purebalance]

To the people claiming dailies, there has never been a mandatory daily the entire existence of them. MoP dailies were not even remotely mandatory. All dailies are for supplemental gear and vanity items and always have been. You could easily have forgone the dailies in MoP as it was easy to do MSV in heroic blues with a spattering of epics from Sha including the guaranteed boot quest and the fact that you're slightly away from revered with Klaxi upon finishing their zone. Cata dailies same thing. The vendor gear didn't compete with Firelands gear anyway.

[Airwaves]

1. Cata
2. Cata
3. Cata
4. Cata
5. Cata.

They listened to the whiners like idiots and they lost there motion with the game. It they did cata like wrath they would have upwards of 20 millions players now but the whiners cost them the motion. And they know it.

[Anakonda]

To the people claiming dailies, there has never been a mandatory daily the entire existence of them. MoP dailies were not even remotely mandatory. All dailies are for supplemental gear and vanity items and always have been. You could easily have forgone the dailies in MoP as it was easy to do MSV in heroic blues with a spattering of epics from Sha including the guaranteed boot quest and the fact that you're slightly away from revered with Klaxi upon finishing their zone. Cata dailies same thing. The vendor gear didn't compete with Firelands gear anyway.

Except you couldnt spent valor in MOP unless you had rep with shado-pan/lotus/etc.

Id love to watch you be in a raiding guild and tell your raid leader that you dont have better gear because you cba doing dailies. Have fun.

[Palinn]

#1) Heroics. This started the slippery slope of redoing content..
#2) 10man/25mans being considered "equal". Was noticeable that this would be impossible to balance from the start, and it was.
#3) Resilience. PVP or PVE only stats just alienated the two communities.
#4) "dishonorable kills" - they disappeared but UGH when they were around.
#5) Talent system change. I agree that old talents were a lot of "filler" but there had to be a better design than to just remove talent tress entirely. (talent choices we have now are NOT trees, obviously).

[Anakonda]

#5) Talent system change. I agree that old talents were a lot of "filler" but there had to be a better design than to just remove talent tress entirely. (talent choices we have now are NOT trees, obviously).

THIS. So much.

[Dazu]

1. LFR - It's not needed & never was needed. It's just a way the entitled crowd makes it feel like they are actual raiders. When they truly they are not & don't deserve the gear as LFR is suppose to be about seeing the content, not about getting gear or using it as a gear path. Either Blizzard removes the feature or removes the gear.

2. Class homogenisation - No classes have any uniqueness anymore (Basically it)

3. In-Game Store - The Blizzard Store / Battle.Net Shop are fine, we don't need a shop in-game. People need to stop being lazy, they can log off & use the store than log back in. That only takes 5 - 10 mins.

4. Removing the Prestige in-game - Attunements, Epic Items being obtainable (Purple Gear & Legendaries) & Realm First Achievements. Now just like Hand of A'dal, Atiesh, Corrupted Ashbringer & Amani War Bear. If you never got them during their times than you can't get anymore. Honestly I wish the same applied to other legendaries like Warglaives, Shadowmourne, MC Sulfuras & Thunderfury.

5. Making Game easier for Whiners / Entitled Casuals - Nerfing Herioc Dungeons & making them easy, Its better to say this as not all Casuals are entitled or whine for nerfs. I would be happy with 500k - 2 Mill WoW players, if that meant removing all the entitled garbage & whining players.

Regardless for the things I hate about current WoW, Every other MMO that is out is worse than what WoW is today. So of course I still play the game & enjoy it. But these are the things I hate that Blizzard did to the game & if they atleast removed 2 or 3 of the things I said I would be extremely happy. I have no problems with LFD, but I do wish we had the option to do Hard Dungeons even if it meant not using the Dungeon Finder.

I think LFR was needed, but, it needed to require skill/dps etc by every person. Maybe a fight like Norushen where everyone needs to pass their test in a trackable way. The last 2 LFR's I did we had DK's in blood spec dpsing, doing sub 20k and we still killed the bosses easily. LFR raid boss should require somewhere near 2 million raid dps minimum for example (17x dps @ 100k each, 2x tank @ 75k each = 1.85 million raid dps). However I think the cross realm flex will sort this out as the terrible players try to do flex and get kicked repeatedly.

Homogenization is hard to say either way. Vanilla/BC models were terrible to be honest. Being stuck in a singular spec for most classes, or if you were lucky a singular hybrid dps for buffs in a 25man wasnt good setup. I do hate how they removed niche spells like judgement of light/wisdom, replenishment/VE passive, VT and we have almost no raid buffs now in total. I remember when paladins had 4 possible raid buffs alone + an aura, having those kind of numbers of buffs IMO was a good thing, provided none were essential to a raid etc, such as hero was for SWP and shadowpriests were for mana battery to mages/healers etc.

3. I dont really care, I looked to see the prices of a few things in game and that was it during the christmas specials so. Dont think it needed to be added in game though either.

4. I understand removing some such as the war bear, ones which required either skill or dedication in their current time. Glaives, shadowmourne etc I dont agree with, they were purely RNG based, there were terrible players who got say a glaive before some of the best rogues or warriors did simply because of loot RNG for a guild. Im making a shadowmourne now because I want the mount/other goodies too. I helped the guilds warrior do it during progression so had no chance to do it during ICC as a result. War bear would however be a joke to get after BC, it was easy enough during BC let alone when stats went crazy in wrath. Plus they gave alot of notice to remove those 100% items so people could get them prior if they wished.

5. Heroic dungeons were easy since 6 months after BC launched, and prior to that were overtuned to start BC off (A bogstrok which came in groups of 4 in H Underbog hit harder than any kara boss except Spite, Prince and Bane? the summonable dragon). I did every heroic in BC as a tank, healer and dps, aside from very early on I never used any CC except on possibly a buffing mob. I was doing Ramps, BF and Shattered halls daily in under 1 hour combined, in Kara geared group (my tank being the exception). Wrath was no different, Cata was no different after the initial nerfs went out, and MoP were no different. Only vanilla was vastly different in dungeons to me, and thats more likely to be because of playing a paladin who struggled to truly tank until BC spiritual attunement came into the game.

Im not dissagreeing with you however, just saying the way I saw those things.

My personal things would be :

1) Seperate PvP/PvE game. Vanilla PvP was fine, although bursty. Almost anyone could global another but it was all RNG. Not this CC my toon 15 straight seconds even with a trinket/EMFTH racial used, seriously fear, stun, horrify, fear, stun, silence on a caster, when 2 people can solo another without them getting a cast off when they do 10% of their PvE damage is crazy, also adding to that PvE damage scaled too high, but when I then PvP in PvE gear having a incin which usually goes to 250k crits, crit for 25k is stupid. Requiring PvP gear to even attempt to PvP was a bad idea, atleast at one stage id kill a bad PvP'er, now I cant even kill a healer off on my warlock without PvP gear, in world PvP, his instant casts outheal any burst I can do.

2) removal of tanking stats. No defense, no bonus armor, almost no variation to gearing a tank. And the thing that followed, no crushing blows anymore. I miss needing to aim for certain stat levels for coverage. I miss block value as a stat.

3) LFR in its current form, see above for why ^.

4) Lack of attument progression path. I dont want long boring attuments back, but something to work towards, and not killing all wing bosses in LFR to go to the next wing etc. Maybe, with a few hard heroic dungeons, require an item from the final bosses to gain entry to the first tier raid, regardless of if its LFR or Normal etc. Make something that if the person is terrible the group will most likely wipe (maybe a MC mechanic if they dont avoid bad stuff, like Cho'gall) so its harder to carry people through.

5) This stupid focus on itemlevel for everything. full timeless gear = 496 ilvl but its terrible gear compared to other 496 items, even the 535 items are worse than alot of the 502 stuff from ToT LFR. I understand to some extent, but the focus needs to switch back to skill > Gear.



To those saying the talent system. I go through about 40 tomes per week on my characters. The only time I changed my prot pallies spec during BC was to remove redoubt when it became pointless (table coverage without it) or to work around class changes. My rogue never changed talents at all (combat - was no spare points) as I always had swords. My lock never changed talents after I went Sac spec as there was no spare points etc. Really the only time I ever did anything was when I was changing trees. There just was no variation in BC trees. Wrath/Cata gave some choice but generally only in utility spells again (reduced sprint for a rogue or improved feint etc). This is really no different than what we have now, we can change our utility when we want, is a AoE stun or a single target fear better on this boss? Is having a AoE pulse heal or single target large HoT better etc. I do agree it could have been made a little more entertaining though and with more being a little more viable.

TLDR : We seem to have the same variance now as any other time in talents, just we place 1-7 choices not 71 points.

[Sett]

1. Worgen
2. Cata
3. Arenas
4. CRZ ( Not connected realms, but cross realm. )
5. Voice chat

[DoffyKing]

LFR LFR LFR LFR LFR
LFD Kill the social aspect of WoW

[Deleted]

1. Blood elves
2. Transmogrification

That's all.

LFR LFR LFR LFR LFR
LFD Kill the social aspect of WoW

The social aspect of WoW sucked anyway.

[Deleted]

1. DUNGEON BROWSER
2. CRZ
3. Guild Boni

Oh yeah, and Bloodelves.

[Attitudecomp]

My opinion,

1. Friendship reputation. I've known Nat Pagle for how long and I'm a stranger??
2. LFD ONLY for the fact I either forget or don't know where the actual dungeon entrance is anymore.
3. Hozen. They annoy me more than goblins and I play Horde.
4. Having weeds or vermin show up in the untilled mounds after harvesting. That annoys the crap out of me.
5. How easy the acquisition of epics are. They're just not...epic anymore.

[Krommm]

CRZ
Arena (couple in generic pvp imbalance)
Merged 10/25 lockout (no longer a problem in WoD)
LFR
Story Divergence (Even in fantasy there is some logic, just look at SoO end cinematic, Garrosh escaping going back in time but alternate dimension excuse to merge with present, always must be a lich king + Tirion being useless, butchering of DW's character and Green Jesus throughout Cata and many more blunders)

The game generally improves, but those are probably the worst decisions I can think of off the top of my head.

[Deleted]

these are going to be mostly recent changes, because my memory is bad.

1. making pve gear better than pvp gear in world pvp and bgs
2.homogenisation of classes, i get the idea behind it and making the game easier to balance, but it made classes less unique, which is what classes need i think.
3.ruining old AV and wintergrasp. i, and many others enjoyed large sensless battles, even on my low pop server in wrath we would fill 2 raid groups for wintergrasp and just duke it out with the alliance, then they made it equal numbers and cap on players there. i hope the zone in WoD feels like old wintergrasp.
3.mage level 90 talents.
4.baseline resilience. gearing up should be apart of pvp, though i do believe wows pvp system needs an overhaul to stop newly dinged players being matched up against full arena geared teams
5.shared lockouts in pve.