Thoughts on rebuilding the wow community

[Doomchicken]

Dude. I can whisper to someone "Hi! How are you doing? Let's meet up at the Dalaran well and assemble some friends and shoot each other with our Endothermic Blasters!!" and he could be "Ok!" and we both show up at the well and there is no one there. Because we happen to be on different shards. This is not a Kokolums problem. This is a Blizzard problem.

It is a kokolums problem if you weren't smart enough to invite them to the same group so you get placed in the same instance.

[Kithelle]

The wow economy is linked server specific tho. If they merged all auction houses into 1, it could have negative effects. The economy would become 100% bot controlled as in prices would be undercut so low that you either are a major botter or herbing and mining are useless.

And that would be a bad thing? The economy is in the trash right now...paying 9kg for a shitty green 2 handed sword that I'd likely dump after a few levels make a lot of sense.

Wouldn't lose a second of sleep if prices went down.

[Irian]

A few big fundamental changes could, I think, but I feel like it has so little to do with the actual ease or method of communicating and far more to do with the design of the game, both pre- and post-cap. I've thought about this stuff at length in the past because I've observed in other games what makes communities form and what encourages people to not be assbags to each other. My thought is that improving the community can't come at the cost of convenience, at least not directly, so it doesn't feel like a punishment rather than a natural thing.

1. Reward positive player interaction. As in, a simple LoL or FFXIV or even Overwatch-esque "thumbs up" system with minor cosmetic rewards for leaving good impressions on pug players. Playing into WoW players' number and collection fetishes it should have a number as well as a publicly viewable method of display, either through cosmetic rewards or a number that is visible on the inspect screen.

2. Classes need to synergize again. Stuff like single-target buffs, group buffs, group utilities and synergy are fun in a party or raid environment and make content feel less redundant. At the moment I see no difference in half of the classes in my party because they all do the same shit with a different coat of paint on it. Stuff like the warlock giving you dark intent or a party member using a group damage cooldown during a burst phase is interesting, has a lot of nuance and can make or break a good player. It's another way to show you know wtf you're doing. This game isn't Diablo and it should stop designing its classes like Diablo, it's an MMORPG and should demand synergy.

3. Gradually erode servers even more. Yeah server communities are dead, RIP but there's very little that can bring them back now that they're gone, at least not without shooting the game in the foot. Instead I'd be strongly in favor of servers being little more than a nametag and economy, and having players able to choose between PvE or PvP or RP or RPPVP through an ingame switch like how they intend to do PvP servers next expansion. Perhaps only players on the denoted RP servers have the option to opt into RP and RPvP, as a way of almost ingame categorizing themselves as "in character" for players who are interested in that kind of thing to convene and not be harassed, and to be able to separate the harassers more easily and enforce stricter rules given the ease of opting out.
Server instances would still be a thing but they'd be more malleable, with a player on, say, Kel'thuzad automatically moving to Dark Iron if they have a raid group there. Additionally I'd like to make server instances more transparent, with the ability to manually select, say, "Dalaran - Sargeras 3" instance if you want to do a trade with someone without partying. It would also lead to people naturally selecting "hub channels" and staying around their own instances as hangout locations, as I've seen happen in many games.

[Marrilaife]

And that would be a bad thing? The economy is in the trash right now...paying 9kg for a shitty green 2 handed sword that I'd likely dump after a few levels make a lot of sense.

Wouldn't lose a second of sleep if prices went down.

Prices won't go down because for 90% of population it's better to vendor that shitty green 2 handed sword they just looted off instead of reposting it on the AH for 6 months paying listing fees in hopes someone buys it. Only people who bother are transmog sellers and they only bother in hopes of high profit, because sell rates of greens are 1 in 300-1000.

Not knowing how the economy works doesn't make it trash.

But yeah, feel free to go on a low level mob killing spree and post greens for charity prices if that's your cup of fun. I bet no levelling player will ever buy them, if they sell, it's gonna be to transmog flippers because the item had some potential in their spreadsheets.

Not even mentioning the fact there is 0 reason to buy levelling gear because quest rewards cover that well enough (and will be improved further on in 7.3.5), oh and also: heirlooms exist.

Why should prices be low, anyway? Was it better when you had to grind hours and days to get your first mount, instead of just selling a stack of linen cloth on the AH and having every mandatory expense more than covered?

This complaint literally reminds me of all the threads about "tokens are too expensive because I can't have WOW:F2P edition with putting zero effort into obtaining gold".

[Kithelle]

Prices won't go down because for 90% of population it's better to vendor that shitty green 2 handed sword they just looted off instead of reposting it on the AH for 6 months paying listing fees in hopes someone buys it. Only people who bother are transmog sellers and they only bother in hopes of high profit, because sell rates of greens are 1 in 300-1000.

Not knowing how the economy works doesn't make it trash.

But yeah, feel free to go on a low level mob killing spree and post greens for charity prices if that's your cup of fun. I bet no levelling player will ever buy them, if they sell, it's gonna be to transmog flippers because the item had some potential in their spreadsheets.

Not even mentioning the fact there is 0 reason to buy levelling gear because quest rewards cover that well enough (and will be improved further on in 7.3.5), oh and also: heirlooms exist.

Why should prices be low, anyway? Was it better when you had to grind hours and days to get your first mount, instead of just selling a stack of linen cloth on the AH and having every mandatory expense more than covered?

This complaint literally reminds me of all the threads about "tokens are too expensive because I can't have WOW:F2P edition with putting zero effort into obtaining gold".

It's called greed...

[vindicatorx]

No thanks. I want to play with the people I already know and I don't really want forced to interact with the rest of you people.

[Marrilaife]

It's called greed...

Welcome to capitalism. Working as intended. A seller that wants infinite price for their item is as much or no less greedy than a buyer that wants everything for free.

[Loxotron]

With recent game design when you can cruise through content without interacting with anyone, it is impossible to establish community, that's it.
There are few initial steps they can make towards it but probably will receive a backlash on forums from recent players, so there are few my ideas:
1) Make a good part of world content/quests not doable in solo, you can put many group quests in the end of the chain so to be able to fininsh it people will start to look for each other's help.
2) Remove some QoL that auto queue you for content (for example make at least some dungeons available only through normal grouping without queue, same with raids), also improve the diffuclty on the lowest levels of all dungeons/group content, so it won't be possible to faceroll it, both for leveling and end game, since players has to learn how to cooperate in groups to achieve the success.
3) So previous clause leads to class changes, so they won't be copy of each other with different animation, there should be synergy between classes, also some unique cc/buffs.
4) Rewards system should be changed as well, harder group content should award you with stronger items which should be unachievable in solo, that will put a good incentive for players. Basically all solo content should award you with items that only prepares you for group content either pve or pvp, but never should be on par with it.

[Kithelle]

Welcome to capitalism. Working as intended. A seller that wants infinite price for their item is as much or no less greedy than a buyer that wants everything for free.

Who said I wanted it for free? Nice of you to put words into my mouth.

[Deleted]

Bots aren't the only problem. The sheer scale of an economy of millions of players would be impossible for a human to manage. Can you imagine browsing through the AH with 100 000 AH fanatics and another 500 000 bots each posting a thousand single-stack auctions of some crafting material?

Yet Valve manages with their trading market.
Blizzard can deal with the bots and deal with the AH exploits but they don't.

[kamuimac]

It's called greed...

no its called listening to retarded youtube guides who promise you to make milions of gold from 2 hours of farming only conviniently "forget" to tell people that in order to do so someone needs to buy that shit and it takes usually couple of months to sell each piece

[netherflame]

Great idea! condense servers and drive the people who thrived on low pop realms away, further reducing the playerbase and prompting more mergers that push more people away and thus continue a cycle

'thrived on a low pop', so people who are nobodies on servers that aren't relevant. Thanks but no thanks, this is an MMO.

[Marrilaife]

Who said I wanted it for free? Nice of you to put words into my mouth.

Wanting to buy "as cheap as possible" is the same as seller wanting to sell it "as expensive as possible". 9k is not infinite price either. It was an example.

Anyway no idea why people cry about "high prices". If prices are high go out there and make easy gold. Low level greens are not a good field because it's extremely niche. Same as irl you won't easily find clothes for 2 meter tall people because they're so rare many companies don't even bother making them. But let's take a commodity that is daily sold in decent volumes: flasks. First people cry flasks are too expensive, then if they look into crafting them, they complain mats are too expensive and profit margins too small, and then when they look into getting mats themselves, they complain farming herbs is shit gold per hour. That's what we call a paradox.

[Girrag]

There's no reason for that. There's no point in community for regular player. You can consider other player as badly programmed bots and still be able to see everything.

[Kokolums]

It is a kokolums problem if you weren't smart enough to invite them to the same group so you get placed in the same instance.

It is stupid to have to take that step because the social aspect is the lifeblood of wow. The less social it is, the smaller the playerbase gets. You do NOT add layers of complexity to the social aspect for this reason. Horrible idea. Absolutely horrible. Players shouldnt have to jump thru hoops and get creative with game mechanics just to be social.

[Pickynerd]

As you can see here, NO ONE can agree on what would "make the community better", so at this point there is not a thing that can be done to improve the "community" of a game that is more than 13 years old.

Welcome to the MMORPG life cycle.

It will happen, I've seen it many times over the years, sadly it comes while the game is on its death bed.

[Doomchicken]

It is stupid to have to take that step because the social aspect is the lifeblood of wow. The less social it is, the smaller the playerbase gets. You do NOT add layers of complexity to the social aspect for this reason. Horrible idea. Absolutely horrible. Players shouldnt have to jump thru hoops and get creative with game mechanics just to be social.

If pressing one button is hoops I'd hate to see you actually try something complex.

[Deleted]

I love how whenever 'fixing the community' comes up people only ever talk about what Blizzard can do, not the simple things that they can do but quite simply aren't.