Warfronts -> you'll get kicked in 1 min here in EU, I've tried it.
Only 1 world boss drops top level gear, like once in 2 weeks and it's a random drop - not guaranteed. Also it's like 3 different items, where do you get items for the 13 other slots?
WQ facerolling is not AFKing.
So in the best case you can get a FEW 380+ items in a few months with your brilliant AFK gearing strategy. Everyone decked in 380+ including me got all or almost all of their pieces from high level group pve, so gtfo with your lies.
I think most expansions have had things that were too casual/too easy but then things on the other end as well. People say BFA is the worst when it comes to afk:ing for loot but then I think back to WoD and how the garrison gave us a mission that rewarded raid loot for not even doing the raid. They backed up a bit in Legion so that the mission at least required you to physically kill a boss (which was a good change) and now they scrapped it all together.
It's always a constant change of trying to figure out where to set the bar and I think one of their biggest problems is it takes too long for them to find the balance. Dungeons and "daily hc" was a joke in Wotlk, then came Cata and heroics became roadblocks for a lot of the people who got used to the bar set in Wotlk. Similar with LFR, which never used to be hard, but some of the mechanics on bosses actually proved too hard for the LFR crowd (think Elegon floor or Durumu beam just as two examples) but now it's become even more of a joke.
As someone who raided since BC, mechanically current bosses are more difficult than wrath. Even lich king if you look at him closely was just a huge numbers check and not so bad mechanically. But were bosses actually tuned numbers wise high or were guilds of old just more casual? Top guilds did not do any splits in WOTLK for gear, they did not have an army of alts ready to class stack every boss etc. Yes I know Paragon had some splits for extra attempts in ICC. But that was last raid of the x-pac and they had like 1-2 splits that were undergeared. Even then they had some splits for attempts only because ICC was super time-gated. Something everyone complains about now, but in ICC after first 4 bosses were released, you had to wait 4 weeks to do more bosses. And you couldn't do heroic until you did Lich King on normal. So you were just sitting there bored waiting for raid to slowly unlock.
Now we have M+ gear, pvp gear and now residuum gear which means top guilds overgear content way faster. Limit and Method are doing 8 splits so that every raider can buy 2 415ilvl azerites as soon as new raid starts.
Raids and content are not easier, the only people who say that havent seriously raided in a while. Try doing Mythic Fallen Avatar pre-nerf or KJ in ToS pre nerf and then tell me raids are easier now.
WotLK was the apex of WoW with the best villain.
It will never reach this peak again.
(and my DK was so overpowered haha)
The majority of the people who play dota 2 will probably never play another MOBA game, I mean we are hardcore dota fans, i fucking love dota 2. I have tried LoL but never tried hots, never will.
But i still got it. Time isnt relevant here. You get it or not thats important. Nobady cares if you get it in 1 or 6 months. You should not earn this type of gear ever. There is so many mythic guilds strugling to find players to do mythic. And when you ask people what quit mythic raiding they all have same answer. ,,Why bother?,,. You can do casual content and eventualy you will get same outcome. Yes it will take more time i guess. But far far less play time. Most of it is just waiting not actiualy playing. So for less effort and time spend in game i have same outcome.
My mage is 376 imtelvl with 7 days, 13 hours, 49 minutes of play time. Lot of that time was spend farming mogs. What is your playtime as mythic raider?
And i dont get why you againts this. I literaly want me as casual player for you to have exlusive gear what i should never own. Isnt it kinda stupid to fight againts this whe you are mythic raider?
This is so true! There was harder stuff in WotLK as well. Most people just didn’t care about Alone in the Darkness, Firefighter etc.
However, there was one thing where WotLK was objectively harder and more complex than Vanilla and TBC: Class design and abilities. WotLK basically gave birth to the idea of dps rotations. And allow me to remind you: A lot - like a LOT - of players fucking HATED that! Which is funny now.
So there you have it: Most of WotLK content was fairly casual, but the class design became more elaborate and you actually had to engage your brain to some extend to maximise your output.
"people really loved it". Ok, how many people?
Do you really believe HotS would have been more successful as a pure Dota/LoL clone? Even if that was possible, would that even be a good thing?
Pretty much the one really great thing that I see most HotS players praising it for IS what it innovated in (talents instead of gear, shared levels, objectives, shorter games with more teamfights, etc).
Sure, there's plenty of people who like that complexity of gear, xp/gold farming and all that jazz that HotS doesn't have to the same extent, but how many of those would actually leave the game they were already establish in?
It's the same shit with WoW - it became a marker in MMORPG, with everyone else trying to clone it. The thing when you try to directly compete with such a big game, is that even you do everything like it, what reason do the players have to leave the game that they already invested hundreds of hours in for yours, if it doesn't offer anything new?
HotS is far more likely to have declined because of its monetization (especially the move to lootboxes without direct purchases) and overly forced push on esports than it ever did because of it's design or gameplay.
Anyway, personally I would defenitely prefer if WoW had taken a different route, but I think it's fairly shortsighted to assume that "targeting this casual MMORPG community that barely exists" is what causes the numbers to keep dropping.
What I mean is, how exactly that the numbers wouldn't keep dropping regardless? How are you sure that this measure (of targeting a more casual audience) didn't actually increase WoW's lifespan, and if they hadn't done it WoW would be long in maintenance by now?
I'm not saying they're always right, far from it, but I would think if not changing the game was more profitable (ie it held more subscriptions for longer), Blizzard would likely have data to assume that and do it (if anything, for business alone). It's fair to assume otherwise, but don't state it as fact.
*sigh*
I'm going to make a copy-paste of this considering how often it needs to be repeated...
WotLK increased only twice :
1) When it was released, which means that the actual design of the expansion was still unknown, but wasn't supposed to be a great break compared to TBC - so it simply carried from the good reputation of TBC.
2) When Cataclysm was announced, and this announce was made with claims of going back to the roots (blue gear, harder 5-man, etc.).
So basically, two rises, each one being mainly due to the expansion around it. WotLK itself didn't grew anything.
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Yeah, kinda agree on everything here.
you can call me anything you want but a factor ON TOP on what is wrong anyway, is that wow is on the level it is right now is the fact that they f**** the bot developers and killed almost all bots which existed
to farm gold, play pvp to farm armor and stuff...
yeah go on call me crazy or stupid but I PERSONALLY think, that is a huge factor aswell.
you can and you could notice as soon as they had downed honorboddy a lot of the playerbase left or never came back because they got banned.
Thank you for the honest and concise response.
So as the WoW playerbase has stalled out and dried up over the years, the OP argues we have shifted towards less casual players. Wanting a more meaningful(?) experience as opposed to one that is somehow cheapened by accessibility.
I might suggest Legion proves that a highly modern and accessible WoW model still makes sense and works. OTOH, BFA Islands and Warfronts are a disaster because they are so utterly cheap and meaningless. I enjoy Mythic dungeons and Raiding, so my own experience may support the OP in this regard.
The badge system was worse than current shit storms? Are you actually kidding me? Get out of here, you clearly weren't around for anything past WotLK.
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Half of my BGs are still bots, so no, I don't see your logic. Bots don't populate a game with meaningful interactions and groups man. I am not as down on bots as other people are though.
Legion wasnt great expansion. It was ok expansion. We came out of WOD so it wasnt hard to make people excited. Legion had problem to retain players.
Legion also showed there is huge demand fpr exclusive and challenging content. Yes Mage tower. It was most exclusive content in Legion and also most well recieved feature. People alway say game has to be casual and accessible to survive yet both those things do exact opposite. It drove most casuals away from game. You need exclusive content otherwise whats the point.
You mean the game which had ALL OF ITS RAID CONTENT BEATEN IN UNDER A WEEK OF RELEASE ON HARDEST DIFFICULTY. or that paragon members at the end wod said only yogg+0 was only really hard in wotlk and they put bosses from wod, cata and mop higher than most wotlk bosses and now that method is still striving forward. as mechanically nearly all of wotlk bosses were joke only algalon, yogg+0 and lk hc25 was hard but paragon got the world first kill on lk25hc while they tank dc'ed for sometime in fight and then you compare it bosses like pre nerfed mythic KJ. Also good way to solve how ha hard the boss is is to count how many pulls it took for the world first team to clear for paragon lk25 hc took 170 kills and lets compare one that isn't even a final boss fallen avatar mythic with over 400 pulls.