WoW, unsustainable in its current form!

[Deleted]

I have come to the conclusion that WoW can not survive with the model that Blizzard are aiming for!

Now I didn't raid in TBC, I only started shortly before 3.0 but my friend that got me into the game let me follow him around Org one day, I say a hunter in full T6 and I was in awe of him and even more so when I was told what he had to do to get that gear, I wondered could I ever be "that" good!!

Wrath came around and I started to learn more about the game, over the next 2 years I got better and better and then near the end of Wrath, I was that guy on his frostwyrm in full 277 gear (mostly...damn you deathbringer!!!!) and I had players ask me "wow how did you get that gear, I loved it, the attention, the feeling that I was the envy of these players.

Now the current state of the game, where everyone can get to see all content, can get gear that looks the same as the top players, there is no targets anymore!
The game needs "noobs" to see the top players and think, I want to be like that some day!!

If a boss is too hard then tough, you keep hitting your face off it till it dies, that is how you see the next boss, now I am not saying to make it as difficult as TBC claims to be, but harder that wrath! The results of this would be content would last longer, people would not burn out and overall I think people would be happier knowing they always have something to aim for

Sadly those good raiders are only a few of the total WoW population. Which means they raiders alone are not enough to sustain WoW.

For most players it starts of like "WoW look at those people, I want to be that good someday"
Some will end up there, but most won't.
Over time it goes from "Oh I want to be like that" to all the way to "Why bother if I can't ever get there?" and people quit.

To stop those players from leaving, they need something in-game that is like raiding, but at the level that they CAN play at.
... insert LFR, flex.

[Deleted]

That is not fine if you're playing a class like shadowpriest which is value for raids but shit for any small group content. It's bad game design. No sane person should support or want to perpetuate bad game design.

I completely agree with this... Blizzard shouldve done more over the years to make more specs viable.

The issues were much more apparent in PvP where the vast majority of specs were completely pointless in PvP... we ended up with all the classes running exactly the same builds... very boring indeed.

[Deleted]

The issues were much more apparent in PvP where the vast majority of specs were completely pointless in PvP... we ended up with all the classes running exactly the same builds... very boring indeed.

It's impossible to tune every spec to be equal, so you end up with the same cookie cutters and fotms dominating. So there's no point trying to make everything viable for everything. It's better to focus on making specs that specialize in particular aspect of the game and let people pick between those. That way you don't need to balance specs directly against each other, but will always have variety in group composition because you can't just take whatever random specs happen to be available.

Take melee groups in TBC, for example, you needed a buffer (shaman) and dps that turned those buffs into damage. You don't need to balance the shaman against the rogue, both are needed in the group. You don't even need to balance the rogue against the dps warrior, because you need someone to pick up the dps leather and someone to pick up the dps plate.

The same applies on higher level to melee vs. ranged dps. It's better to design fights that require both melee and ranged rather than try to balance every dps spec so that it doesn't matter whether you bring ranged or melee.

[Vynestra]

I guess it's time we throw more money at them then. Make sure it's sustainable!

[Deviant]

I personally think wow is still fixable sub wise. They launch with bad pvp season and content is consumed to quickly. I don't think elitism at the sacrifice of everything else will save the game tho.

- - - Updated - - -

I completely agree with this... Blizzard shouldve done more over the years to make more specs viable.

The issues were much more apparent in PvP where the vast majority of specs were completely pointless in PvP... we ended up with all the classes running exactly the same builds... very boring indeed.

They need to split pve from pvp that would help a ton. They also need to listen to feedback and stop over buffing everything. Someone needs to link them the define of counter play as well.

[Archermit]

People seem to think I want to bring back the day of only 1% of people seeing end game....I am not Mike Preech, I think having a large number of people seeing content is good. But people consuming content at the speed that we do means that bordom will set in and people will quit till the next patch as I an a am sure many others have done till 6.0 The problem is, at some point people that have quit will see th enew patch and think...why bother?

[Count Zero]

Why did you do that? That's a pretty stupid way to try to build a group, so you have nobody but yourself to blame. Instead try making friends, building a friend list, and then creating your dungeon teams from that. Worked extremely well for me.

Where did I say I didn't try any of that ?

[Pachycrocuta]

WoW saw it's biggest growth when it wasn't "casual friendly", as much as it is now. You know, back when the game was supposedly terrible, the game saw nothing but growth. But now that the game is supposedly the best it has ever been and only getting better, it sees basically nothing but loss.

People call for the removal of the dungeon and raid finders, and those who oppose that bring about the "I don't want to spend 2 hours in trade spamming LFM". Blizzard could have easily made finding dungeon groups so much easier, and not having to come up with something completely brand new by doing 1 simple thing: Remove the daily lockout of heroic dungeons. That's all that needed to be done, and the community would be the better for it.

The biggest hurdle of finding groups before the random finders, was finding the tanks and healers that weren't already locked out of the certain dungeon you were wanting to do. But Blizzard, in all their "wisdom", decided it would be better for the game to create the random dungeon finder. And since then, except for the release of expansions and a couple patches, the game has gone downhill.

Warcraft's current form will just continue on its current path.

[Deleted]

I was that guy on his frostwyrm in full 277 gear (mostly...damn you deathbringer!!!!) and I had players ask me "wow how did you get that gear, I loved it, the attention, the feeling that I was the envy of these players.

Erm... well, how about getting a life outside of this game?

[Pann]

WoW saw it's biggest growth when it wasn't "casual friendly", as much as it is now. You know, back when the game was supposedly terrible, the game saw nothing but growth. But now that the game is supposedly the best it has ever been and only getting better, it sees basically nothing but loss.

People call for the removal of the dungeon and raid finders, and those who oppose that bring about the "I don't want to spend 2 hours in trade spamming LFM". Blizzard could have easily made finding dungeon groups so much easier, and not having to come up with something completely brand new by doing 1 simple thing: Remove the daily lockout of heroic dungeons. That's all that needed to be done, and the community would be the better for it.

The biggest hurdle of finding groups before the random finders, was finding the tanks and healers that weren't already locked out of the certain dungeon you were wanting to do. But Blizzard, in all their "wisdom", decided it would be better for the game to create the random dungeon finder. And since then, except for the release of expansions and a couple patches, the game has gone downhill.

Warcraft's current form will just continue on its current path.

Blizzard's attempt to go back less casual friendly times with Cata would seem to suggest being less friendly to casual players is not a recipe for success.

How would removing the daily lock out help people find groups? Outside the initial rush to gear up at the beginning of an expansion players just tended to whatever was the daily heroic and then go on to other activities. Whilst the removal of the lock out might have been beneficial to those who had a friend who would be willing to another run for them the likelihood is that players would not alter their habits and just do their daily run.

Your assumption is that tanks and healers would want to do multiple runs per day and I don't think this would be the case.

[Archermit]

Erm... well, how about getting a life outside of this game?

This was the common misconception that a lot of bad players had ( I say bad, not casual!). We had a 9 hour a week raid schedule over 3 nights 1 night to clear the farm bosses and then 2 nights to work on progress. You don't have to spend 10 hours a day to claer content, you just need to not be bad and QQ when a boss doesn't run in fear of you and give you loot

[LazarusLong]

At the end of expansion, ie. Sunwell all hybrid classes were 30% or more behind pure dps classes. Remember that was the time when hybrid tax was a real thing. Rets and enhas were tolerated because they brought important melee buffs for rogues and warriors, not for their piss-poor dps.

And shadow priests as mana battery.

I like the idea of support classes (a bit like in LoTR for example), but to pull this off you need to make a huge design changes to WoW. Moving to 6x people groups for starters.

[Sierra85]

I like the idea of support classes (a bit like in LoTR for example), but to pull this off you need to make a huge design changes to WoW. Moving to 6x people groups for starters.

adding a support role to wow, is a major design shift. I'm not saying its a bad thing but it would change the way alot of the game works.

[Progmar]

Why is it every serious raider I've ever met seems to play WoW for 8+ hours a day, but every raider on the forum claims it only takes like an hour a week or some shit? lol

[Archermit]

Why is it every serious raider I've ever met seems to play WoW for 8+ hours a day, but every raider on the forum claims it only takes like an hour a week or some shit? lol

A serious raider means nothing to us. I fthis person is in the top 100 guilds then probably does need that much time. But to kill content including heroic bosses only take 6-9 hours week, maybe less. Yes it will take you much longer to kill that content but it is still possible. playing for 8 hours a day doesn't mean you are raiding for 8 hours a day.

Even if you had to farm up things to get ready for raids, you raid 3 times a week, 1 day that you are not raiding, spend one hour farming up those mats and you are sorted for 1-2 weeks raiding

[Deleted]

adding a support role to wow, is a major design shift. I'm not saying its a bad thing but it would change the way alot of the game works.

Wow already has support classes, theyre called healers.

And healers are part of the Trinity - Tanks/Healer/dps

To introduce a support class would create a 4-way of Tank/Healer/dps/Support

All looks a bit out of place in Wow to me.

[Selah]

Another "this game is too easy" thread? Really?

Tell you what, I'll buy the argument when heroic/mythic gear is being used by everyone. Until then you have no argument. Just because you can queue up for LFR and clear a raid doesn't mean you can complain about it being easy. That's what LFR is, easy-mode for people who either are bad at the game or don't have the time to put into other difficulties of raiding.

[MetroStratics]

If a boss is too hard then tough, you keep hitting your face off it till it dies, that is how you see the next boss, now I am not saying to make it as difficult as TBC claims to be, but harder that wrath!

This expansion was actually very satisfying and challenging. Have you cleared all the bosses during time of progression on 25 man Heroic?
If so, then you have a right to speak of difficulty.
But I assume you did not, and that is why you are confused about "targets" and difficulty.

"seeing the content" is not something that needs to change. You WANT as many people to see it as possible, as it validates making it.
However, a vast majority will never complete it at its pinnacle. This is why raiding is prestigious and engaging.

Regardless, people still come up to me all the time and make comments about my gear and mounts and stuff. You just don't see it because you are likely undergeared and not worth inspecting.

[Deleted]

OP, thanks for your recollection of your years in WoW. A mighty good read, I must say!

However, might I ask: During those years of yours of wandering Azeroth and the worlds beyond - did you ever come across the concept of "Heroic raids" (or as they will be called in WoD - "Mythic raids")?

I do believe they may offer precisely what you are asking for: Harder difficulty, and the accompanying awe-inspiring differently looking gear, to impress and inspire the peons and noobs with.

I think you should look into it. Heroic raids, that's it's name! Or, in WoD, "Mythic raids". Look for that too.
I don't promise it will fix your current problems, but they might.

[Hupriest]

I'm sorry but I can't stand these 'special snowflake' posts. If you want challenge, you have that option open for you and vice versa. Artificial gates should not block people from enjoying the game just because a small segment believe they will enjoy the game more if its there. Its just silly to assume that everyone looks at a heroic geared player and wets themselves with admiration. LFR allows people who just want to see the content/story to do so and though I hate doing lfr with a passion, I'm not daft enough to say that it should be taken away.