could it be that WoW is failing because the expansions are way too small?

[therealbowser]

No. /10char

[Stormbreed]

I don't think that the current expansion model is working well. The 10 levels and 4-5 extra areas worked in tbc and wotlk but there were other things that saved WoW back then. Each expansion should be as large and fundamental as vanilla. There should be way more levels, areas and things to do, They are trying to make up for this with terrible mechanics like azerite but I don't think that's enough. Each expansion right now feels as a patch equal to the size of argus, this is extremely cheap work by blizzard.

The devs have to remember why people loved rpg games in the first place and that was for getting rewarded by doing more grind. Right now you don't get any reward by doing more grind. The grind doesn't have to be spamming world quests and mythics only.

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

Game has more players actually playing the game now then ever before, but the casuals dies off way faster this time. I think we are in a good spot. 2 night a week guilds are 6/9 and feel like they have something to play for 1/2 way though the 2nd tier.

Sky is not falling.

[rohoz]

you mean after let-down after let-down of expansion ranging back all the way to fucking wrath where promoted content ON THE BOX was cut prior to release?

vanilla? Remember vanilla box had a nelf with glaives

[Dystemper]

Game has more players actually playing the game now then ever before, but the casuals dies off way faster this time. I think we are in a good spot. 2 night a week guilds are 6/9 and feel like they have something to play for 1/2 way though the 2nd tier.

Sky is not falling.

LMAO Look , there is no way in hell there are more players actually playing then ever before. That is not even up for debate. Blizzard knows BFA is a failure, why else have they had al these cash shop items , Q&A etc etc. The game is bleeding subs.

[Fumu]

The trouble is they went full theme park. Before, expansions had big areas. Sure there were areas full of...nothing, but that’s what it’s like irl too. The terrain was also relatively easy to traverse and even before flying was introduced, terrain in vanilla was mostly flat and navigable and hills were either easily scaled or had fairly obvious paths (with some exceptions, like that troll cliff in Azshara or ghost running to Mara before summon stones existed). Now zones feel so cramped and packed with mobs that it barely feels like an RPG. Narrow paths with no room to explore and all mobs are now daze machines which are not even interesting or tough to fight, just incredibly tedious. There’s nothing to explore or discover. Treasure chests aren’t worth it, any path other than the One True Way devs want you to use is so packed with mobs or invisible walls/unscaleable mountains that it’s not worth bothering, and everything just feels weirdly cramped and labyrinthine in general. This is not because of the game’s age, but because of the design direction the game took from WoD onwards.

Nagrand BC vs. Nagrand WoD is the perfect comparison. BC Nagrand may have had a couple of hairy areas but those areas were super obvious on the map (the fel cannon area, the Eredar part with the giant portal, etc.) The only slightly hard to find place was the one Ogre cave, and even that was at least fairly obvious from the ground. The design of Nagrand itself was largely flat, navigable terrain that used the lore and sci-fi edge to make it not feel like Generic MMO Grassland #487. Its floating islands had fun little easter eggs.

Now Nagrand WoD edition? AGGRO EVERYWHERE. Pain in the ass mountains, cliffs and caves that made no sense and were not as easy to spot on the map. Cringey GW2 ripoff jumping puzzles made with an engine/camera that handled it about as well as Donkey Kong 64 did, on an engine almost as old. And of course, forced Pathfinder highlighting these issues because you can’t just ignore bad terrain by flying over it. Even the music shows the difference. Matt Uelman is obviously not with Blizzard anymore but instead of keeping a ‘chill, yet eerie’ ambient vibe for the zone, they went with an overly bombastic and dramatic orchestral score that while well-composed, didn’t really fit most of the zone’s vibe. Old vs. new Nagrand was like asking 2 art students to create a vase, and one makes a vase with a simple but beautiful design while the other student submits a polished, glittering, gem-adorned turd.

It feels like the moved over D3 devs wanted to keep making D3 so badly that they turned WoW into D3. Launch D3. Ew.

[Eleccybubb]

Game has more players actually playing the game now then ever before, but the casuals dies off way faster this time. I think we are in a good spot. 2 night a week guilds are 6/9 and feel like they have something to play for 1/2 way though the 2nd tier.

Sky is not falling.

HAHAHA.

No it really doesn't.

[Soon-TM]

Completely agree with @Fumu - the way zones have been being designed since WoD onwards is really off-putting. The worst came in Legion, with its huge mazes and unnatural cliffs EVERYWHERE, Highmountain being the cherry on top of the cake. Things have improved a bit in this regard - but just a bit. Northern Vol'dun and Zuldazar are still great offenders, and make you wish you could fly over all that crap asap.

[letssee]

wow is failing because the philosophy is fked, and since the philosophy is fked the content will never be good

[Fumu]

Completely agree with @Fumu - the way zones have been being designed since WoD onwards is really off-putting. The worst came in Legion, with its huge mazes and unnatural cliffs EVERYWHERE, Highmountain being the cherry on top of the cake. Things have improved a bit in this regard - but just a bit. Northern Vol'dun and Zuldazar are still great offenders, and make you wish you could fly over all that crap asap.

I agree with this 100%. Legion was the absolute worst from an "exploring" perspective, especially Highmountain. It actually made me quit long before the RNG/Endless AP grind/Legendary fiasco could get to me, and I didn't resub until flying was added. I actually like BFA's ground design more than WoD or Legion so far. Sure it's got offenders like northern Vol'dun, the part of northern Stormsong where the WB spawns, etc. but it's nowhere near as pervasive as Legion is and as long as you have a pond skimmer mount, the terrain is mostly fine. Still overly path oriented and so full of mobs it doesn't feel realistic, but nowhere near as frustrating to navigate.

Too bad the rest of BFA sucks so hard. Even if the devs collectively lost their massive hate-boner against the Z axis and added flying today, it still wouldn't exactly be fun...just less painful to do WQ "chores".

[quite an expert in wow]

there is a lot of content, just that most people choose to only play a minor part of it

[Ettan]

Its time to let it die in peace.

[cparle87]

YES.

The badge, emblem and point system is better than this stupid rng fiesta.

You're looking at badge gear with rose tinted glasses. There were problems with badge gear, and people complained endlessly about how bad it was. You talk about RNG. How about the RNG of hoping the badge vendor even sells a piece for the slot you haven't gotten a drop from, then the RNG of hoping it had good stats for the spec you play? I remember my guild's main tank desperately needing a new... belt I think it was, cause she was still using a heroic version from MSV when we were progressing more than halfway through ToT. There was a belt on the shado-pan vendor that was like a 35 ilvl upgrade, but it had stats that were so bad for her tank spec it was actually a downgrade. That was quite common, especially in MoP. Going into WoD and Legion one of the things Blizz did was try to bring all the secondaries closer together. For feral druids, for instance, a piece that was majority haste was basically a dead stat, as it was worth 1/3 of the next worst stat and 1/10 of our best secondary, and 1/20th of agility.

[Fumu]

You're looking at badge gear with rose tinted glasses. There were problems with badge gear, and people complained endlessly about how bad it was. You talk about RNG. How about the RNG of hoping the badge vendor even sells a piece for the slot you haven't gotten a drop from, then the RNG of hoping it had good stats for the spec you play? I remember my guild's main tank desperately needing a new... belt I think it was, cause she was still using a heroic version from MSV when we were progressing more than halfway through ToT. There was a belt on the shado-pan vendor that was like a 35 ilvl upgrade, but it had stats that were so bad for her tank spec it was actually a downgrade. That was quite common, especially in MoP. Going into WoD and Legion one of the things Blizz did was try to bring all the secondaries closer together. For feral druids, for instance, a piece that was majority haste was basically a dead stat, as it was worth 1/3 of the next worst stat and 1/10 of our best secondary, and 1/20th of agility.

MoP also added Reforging as a decent bandaid. That’s not really a badge issue, that’s a stat issue. Going more bonkers with RNG than a trash tier mobile gacha is not the solution to problems like the one mentioned above. In fact the “ilvl means jack because of (reason)” is as bad as ever between Azerite and RNG traits on top of the usual awful stat priority balancing.

The thing that made me quit BFA was getting a 40 ilvl upgrade Azerite cache after an absolutely brutal KR+11 pre-nerf early into the expansion. It simmed as a 100 dps upgrade. At least back in the day if you saw vendor gear that was trash, you had the option of skipping it, or trying to make it work with reforging. Now there is nothing but rng, layers upon layers of it, and it’s even worse than Vanilla because between WF/TF, personal loot, and stat randomization it’s much harder to target specific needs now.

[Sencha]

No, it's because it has become an action single player game for casuals.

[cparle87]

MoP also added Reforging as a decent bandaid. That’s not really a badge issue, that’s a stat issue. Going more bonkers with RNG than a trash tier mobile gacha is not the solution to problems like the one mentioned above. In fact the “ilvl means jack because of (reason)” is as bad as ever between Azerite and RNG traits on top of the usual awful stat priority balancing.

The thing that made me quit BFA was getting a 40 ilvl upgrade Azerite cache after an absolutely brutal KR+11 pre-nerf early into the expansion. It simmed as a 100 dps upgrade. At least back in the day if you saw vendor gear that was trash, you had the option of skipping it, or trying to make it work with reforging. Now there is nothing but rng, layers upon layers of it, and it’s even worse than Vanilla because between WF/TF, personal loot, and stat randomization it’s much harder to target specific needs now.

How is "40 ilvl upgrade is barely an upgrade because it has bad azerite traits" any different from "40 ilvl upgrade is barely an upgrade because it has bad secondary stats"? The problem is the identical, but you're trying to claim it's worse now.

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No, it's because it has become an action single player game for casuals.

Forgetting WoW became popular in the first place because it WAS casual. Stop using casual as an insult for "kinds of players you don't think deserve nice things."

The game is not centered around mythic raiders, gladiators, and people who push 20+ keys. Their problems are not the player base's problems. The game is for the player base as a whole.

[crono14]

They could have added 30 new zones and 50 new raids and 1000 IE maps and 100000 WF's and BFA still would have been a dumpster fire. The problem is every fundamental system in BFA is broken. The biggest for me personally was the GCD change and pruning of even more skills from my class. Simply put, my class is no longer fun to play at all which makes me not enjoy every other piece of content I could ever do. Gameplay and class balance is at an all-time low, so nothing else in the game matters.

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Care to elaborate?

Yeah the content in the game was fun, horizontal progression system, deeper character customization and progression, better story, and gameplay overall was much more fun. Pretty easy.

[Xemioza]

I dont see that “WoW is failling” but seen same comments since wotlk...I know a lot of ppl who are enjoying the game and not crying on forums, “oh this is broken, thats broken”. They are just playing...not givin a f.. about you whiners xd

Dont like it ? Why bother playing?

[Gaidax]

Yeah the content in the game was fun, horizontal progression system, deeper character customization and progression, better story, and gameplay overall was much more fun. Pretty easy.

TBC better story? *falls off the chair laughing*. Heck, even WoTLK - the shining moment was Ulduar and not Arthas degrading into some moustache twirling cartoon villian with his constant "Muhahahaa, you have defeated my useless minion #454 - this is all part of my master plan! Next time will not be so easy."

No, cupcake, what happened back then is a simple case of WoW being head and shoulders above the literal technological and gameplay nightmares that were a thing back then. WoW started getting pounded as soon as actual modern games started creeping up and ironically they succeeded because they have out-casualed WoW, beating it in its own playground, for example LoL.

[rohoz]

How is "40 ilvl upgrade is barely an upgrade because it has bad azerite traits" any different from "40 ilvl upgrade is barely an upgrade because it has bad secondary stats"? The problem is the identical, but you're trying to claim it's worse now.

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Forgetting WoW became popular in the first place because it WAS casual. Stop using casual as an insult for "kinds of players you don't think deserve nice things."

The game is not centered around mythic raiders, gladiators, and people who push 20+ keys. Their problems are not the player base's problems. The game is for the player base as a whole.

30 il azerite not being an upgrade is patently false, though.
Unless of course you're comparing tank traits to dps traits... which still may be close

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TBC better story? *falls off the chair laughing*. Heck, even WoTLK - the shining moment was Ulduar and not Arthas degrading into some moustache twirling cartoon villian with his constant "Muhahahaa, you have defeated my useless minion #454 - this is all part of my master plan! Next time will not be so easy."

No, cupcake, what happened back then is a simple case of WoW being head and shoulders above the literal technological and gameplay nightmares that were a thing back then. WoW started getting pounded as soon as actual modern games started creeping up and ironically they succeeded because they have out-casualed WoW, beating it in its own playground, for example LoL.

Arthas in WoTLK was so fucking awful, jesus. WoTLK ruined what little appreciation I had for him as a char

[crono14]

TBC better story? *falls off the chair laughing*. Heck, even WoTLK - the shining moment was Ulduar and not Arthas degrading into some moustache twirling cartoon villian with his constant "Muhahahaa, you have defeated my useless minion #454 - this is all part of my master plan! Next time will not be so easy."

No, cupcake, what happened back then is a simple case of WoW being head and shoulders above the literal technological and gameplay nightmares that were a thing back then. WoW started getting pounded as soon as actual modern games started creeping up and ironically they succeeded because they have out-casualed WoW, beating it in its own playground, for example LoL.

Your opinion is yours, and mine is my own. So trying to argue this is any way is a waste of time. For example, I might love a story from a movie which you hate, so arguing about it is pointless. Otherwise you are just trying to assert your opinion as fact which I obviously don't agree with.

My guess is you don't actually know anything about all the lore between Illidan, Lady Vashj, and Kael'Thas or any of the other iconic characters in Warcraft lore and are merely spouting nonsense like so many others on these forums. While my favorite stories are WoTLK and mostly anything before, there have been some high points after that.

Anyway, good day.