If you are unsubbed, what are your conditions to return?

[MidnyteTV]

I've been out of active raiding since I cleared ToS. I was a guild leader since SoO through ToS.

My wife bought me BfA and I played for a month, knowing I didn't have the time nor the will to play the game full time, so I just leveled some toons to keep them up for the next expac.

I've been thinking about returning just to try and pug some normals or maybe join a community that does normal mode raiding.

But I keep asking myself why would i spend $15 a month on one game when I've been enjoying the games in both my Steam and Xbox library that I didn't have the time to play when I was playing WoW. I also though about what i didn't like about the current game and my interests and what is stopping me from subbing.

So here goes nothing. This is what it will take for me to resub and give WoW another go around, for the next expac (I think BfA is just not worth it at all). Remember, these are mine and mine alone, both as a 11-year veteran of the game and consumer that understands my own PERSONAL value of my time and money. For those of you that wish to share yours, I make no judgments.

1. Get rid of any and all requirements to play the allied races. I really want to roll some of the allied races but just don't have the will nor the time to go back to old content to do them. I don't mind paying for race changes, but don't make me go back for old reps. I will pay $15 a month to play a new race that I've never tried before, especially horde side, to raid and explore the world with.

2. Bring back Master Looter for Guild groups only. Part of me wants to bring the band back together and run my guild again. Part of what made the experience more enjoyable was the loot system my friends and I agreed upon, which was EPGP. Part of what makes raiding enjoyable is gearing up and watching your character get more powerful. EPGP made it clear to the guild and to each member where they stood in terms of getting their next upgrade.
Having PL and not knowing when you will get gear, and having issues with how trading works, does not appeal to me at all.

3. A new class, preferably a ranged class. I've rolled every new class they have ever introduced, and even mained a DH in Legion. Give the game a new class and I will play it, even if it is just an alt that does dungeons and LFR. They will get my money if they do this.

4. Make raiding a more desirable path for players, making it easier for people to find a guild/raid to enjoy. IE: Tier gear, or make the most desirable gear come from raids.


"The whole point for a lot of hardcore players is to show off your advancement. So we chose the best gear to be from raids, so we can recognize someone’s achievements based on their gear. The tradeoffs is that you lose everyone looking different and users expressing creativity. And if you try to have both, you'll end up muddled and somewhere in the between."
- Former Blizzard VP of Design Rob Pardo, speaking at the Austin Game Conference on WoW design strategy.
Raph Koster's Website, AGC: Rob Pardo's Keynote September 6th, 2006

Mythic+ and other systems are great for catchup/challenge, but raiding has always been a much harder, more challenging form of content. Make raiding great again.

5. Reduce the subscription fee to $10-12. While in 2004, the sub fee was $15, and that $15 was a lot more valuable than it is today, I am currently a the sole breadwinner in my family of 3. I only have so much entertainment money to spend. And right now, my $12 for Netflix is worth WAY more than a WoW sub.

I know these are probably tall orders, but hey, they are my conditions and if they are not met, then Blizzard isn't getting my money. Hell, I'd be happy if they did 2 or 3 of the five and probably resub.

[LuminaL]

eight point two

[Schattenlied]

Class design that isn't as shallow as a kiddie pool.

Every other problem this game has right now pales in comparison to it's utter shit class design... I can live with all the other problems, I can't with that.

[Throwme]

Flying. Pure and simple. Been unsubbed since shortly after launch and only came back to have plenty of time to do Pathfinder 1, so I was ready to unlock the rest ASAP.

And it's going to continue like that with future expansions, as long as they insist on delaying flying for so long. It's stupid.

[Boricha]

I'd probably resub if the class design improved dramatically. I might not play a ton if all the other problems were still there, but I'd queue pvp.

[Lithostrotos]

For class design to dramatically improve, that would be the main thing for me.

[Kuntantee]

I will soon resub for Classic. I gave BfA a chance, it's a shit expansion save Dazar Alor raid which was not enough to keep me subbed.

What would make me play Retail? Going back to RPG roots and making the game an RPG again not an action/adventure/collectors game.

[stevenho]

Wow has ran its course for me.
Played since EU and Korean betas, unsubbed after Nighthold.
Will fuck around in classic for a few months, then go back to not playing any MMOs due to waste of time.

[rogoth]

for me it's a threefold problem, right now i can't justify the cost of a sub due to being off work sick and only recently returning to work so need to keep up with my monthly payments and such, add to the fact that i can no longer keep playing at a level i used to back in ye olden days (both due to time commitments and also due to alliance raiding being on life support at this point), and finally the game is just stale, i have seen most if not all the game has to offer over the years and doubly so when they started reusing so many old boss mechanics instead of making new ones (due to technical limitations), it started in MoP and has continued on since then the best comparison to me was in terrace of endless spring with tsulong, that fight was just a reskinned version of valithria dreamwalker from icc, or the protectors of the endless being a copy/paste of the iron council from ulduar so yeah it's the lack of innovation in the game and the sheer amount of scaling back on content and trying to pass off a pile of shit covered in gold as new that's driven me away more than anything else.

[Beazy]

If Blizzard fires everyone who had a vote in the decisions of the last three expansions, I would def come back and play.

[Samuraijake]

less BR players ... and players not humping dps/hps meters so much that they lose the ability to analyze how they died to mechanics

[Gondule]

Returning August 27th for Classic. That was enough, might try retail if it gets better post BFA.

[Samuraijake]

I will soon resub for Classic. I gave BfA a chance, it's a shit expansion save Dazar Alor raid which was not enough to keep me subbed.

What would make me play Retail? Going back to RPG roots and making the game an RPG again not an action/adventure/collectors game.

i caught a reddit post saying that they are once again resetting the AP grind.. causing players to refarm yet again.

[DarkAmbient]

Gonna resub for Classic but I'm probably not gonna play retail until the next xpac other than maybe doing Pathfinder.

[Schmilblick]

Better classes.

[Sliske]

The game is in freefall right now. There is some hope (the most recent being Ion finally admitting what we've been saying for years - that class design is the most important thing and classes have felt awful for 6+ years) , but for the most part its so hard to turn this shit around now.

I have 25,000 hours put into this game. I stopped playing a few months ago. The last year or so of me playing was basically just me cruising through achievement stuff. Once you hit 27000+ ach points though, the things you can do in the game that don't involve heavy use of your abilities are.. running mount farms.

Everything else in the game is painful to play.

M+ is plagued by class design, with rogues being mandatory last i played, some healers being worthless during grievous weeks, some tanks being laughable while others doing more dps than all of the dps. Not to mention on top of all this, none of the classes are even fun. Just take the example of BDK in Legion vs BFA. In Legion, you had your movement ability, your aoe grip and your shield. Now you have just one of those.

Random BGs were another big thing i played. I have roughly 700,000 HKs on my account. However, the reason everyone loved playing BGs was that we could flaunt our pve gear. It wasn't serious nor was it suppose to be balanced. It was supposed to be just dumb fun. Well, now with how slow pvp combat is, its no longer fun. Your pve gear doesn't matter and in most cases will massively decrease your burst. On top of this, we've not had a decent BG added since Cataclysm. Back in Cataclysm, they realised, at least in part, that they could just go with the winning formula. We got twin peaks and nobody complained. Now, they seem insistent on never touching the winning formulas again (AB and WSG), with the abomination that is Seething Shore, the cancerfest that is Kotmogu and the hybrid mess that is Deepwind Gorge.

Raids, honestly, raids are fine. Raids issue has always been class design. If class design is really boring, raids are boring. The way i've said it for years is like this - it doesn't matter if you're listening to the best song in the world, if you're listening to it through busted up earphones. It doesn't matter if you're staring at the most beautiful woman on the planet, if you're looking through greasy, fogged up glasses. And so on. I don't care how good your raid is. I'm not going to play it if my class feels like its lagging because you put a GCD on an ability that hasn't had one for a decade.

Arena. Arena is decent this expac, but as always, arena's problem is balance, especially in 2v2, where most people play. A major part of climbing in 2v2 is adopting apathy. Apathy that you have no hope of winning. Idk how balance is right now, but i'll take the example of feral / disc. This is a classic really disgusting combo. For many comps, this is quite literally just your comp, but way better. It runs faster, it has more cc and more often, it has more burst and more often, it has better defensives and so on.

Blizzards complete disregard for what made pre-flight era good.

This one is just frustrating. Ok, we can all admit - whether you love flying or not, that you had fun in classic. Right? You loved it. It felt huge. You had no problem travelling either.

Right, moving on - why doesn't it work in WOD onwards? Simple - zones are more complex now. Lets just compare westfall to tiragarde sound:

- How far do you think you could autorun in one direction before hitting a fence, wall, tree or hill?
- How far do you think you could autorun, or travel, before running into a large group of mobs?

See what i'm getting at here? its not about being able to fly or not. Nobody cares about that shit. You could fill the sky with mobs that daze you and people would hate flying too. Its about ease of travel and in vanilla, that ease what at its peak. Like with everything else in vanilla, it was super easy, but took a long time. In WOD onwards, its the opposite. Every piece of travel feels like a short gauntlet. Like you're playing the floor is lava. The second you leave a flightpoint, there are 3 bears, 2 wolves and the orcs hunting those bears and wolves up next to you, dazing the fuck out of you and forcing you to kill them. Yes, forcing you to. You can't just run, because 40 yards in all directions are another 5-10 mobs. A further 40 yards has another 5-10, and so on.

Travelling sucks in WOD onwards, with BFA being the peak of just how awful this shit can actually be. Travelling around Zuldazar doesn't feel like i'm in some dangerous jungle - it feels like i'm walking through an elementary school wearing a big neon sign that says 'free fortnite skin codes.' - Every 10 fucking seconds i'm swamped by a bunch of mobs that pester the shit out of you and all this leads back into my original point - class design.

No one would give a single solitary fuck about this mob density if we had our cool abilities back. Remember when a bunch of mobs hopped on your dick and you whirlwinded as a fury warrior and it actually did damage? Remember when you pressed cleave? Remember when you thunderclapped as arms and all the mobs started bleeding for tons of damage? Remember when your consecration did damage?

Like, fuck. I guess i'll end this post here. Suffice it to say - this game will have to have a comeback on par with StarWars Battlefront 2, or Warframe in order to pull back me and most other players.

[MoanaLisa]

1. Get rid of any and all requirements to play the allied races. I really want to roll some of the allied races but just don't have the will nor the time to go back to old content to do them. I don't mind paying for race changes, but don't make me go back for old reps. I will pay $15 a month to play a new race that I've never tried before, especially horde side, to raid and explore the world with.

2. Bring back Master Looter for Guild groups only. Part of me wants to bring the band back together and run my guild again. Part of what made the experience more enjoyable was the loot system my friends and I agreed upon, which was EPGP. Part of what makes raiding enjoyable is gearing up and watching your character get more powerful. EPGP made it clear to the guild and to each member where they stood in terms of getting their next upgrade.
Having PL and not knowing when you will get gear, and having issues with how trading works, does not appeal to me at all.

3. A new class, preferably a ranged class. I've rolled every new class they have ever introduced, and even mained a DH in Legion. Give the game a new class and I will play it, even if it is just an alt that does dungeons and LFR. They will get my money if they do this.

4. Make raiding a more desirable path for players, making it easier for people to find a guild/raid to enjoy. IE: Tier gear, or make the most desirable gear come from raids.

• No one is required to play allied races.
• Agreed.
• Game already has too many classes. A new one will just replicate others except for flavor.
• Entrance into organized raiding is more a player-inspired problem than anything else. A lot of people have made up their minds one way or another about raiding. An extra few ilevels isn't going to change that.

[Terahertz]

More abilities, more abilities off the GCD (at least ones that weren't before the GCD apocalypse), a core change in philosophy that brings back meaningful character progression and that won't ever pull off the same stunts as removing abilities and randomly putting abilities on the GCD.

Pretty much the impossible I guess. You'd be more likely winning the lottery than for even 1 of these things to happen.

The thing that saddens me the most though is that I simply have no desire to even play WoW anymore. With past expansions I at least wanted to experience the leveling experience but even that doesn't interest me. Just the sheer amount of pruning they've done and how how with each expansions I was more so afraid of the nerfs they'd be doing to my mains rather than be excited for fun changes has made me insanely cynical.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but WW monks have pretty much only lost things going from Legion to BFA. Paralysis nerf, FoF stun nerf (PvP), Leg Sweep nerf, Touch of Karma ner(have to spec into a talent to bring it up to par to Legion ToK LOL).

[Alopex Major]

I realize most of these are unrealistic, so I accept I'll probably never play WoW again, regardless:

- Merge factions for PVE purposes.
- Make my classes engaging and fun again. Related: I want my Combat rogue back instead of a cheesy pirate joke spec.
- I no longer have time or desire to raid, and I don't like M+. I need something fulfilling to work toward. Badges/honor gear filled this in the past.
- Lower RNG for everything -- gearing, rewards (particularly paragon caches, these are ridiculous), and professions.
- Make professions valuable and relevant again.
- Hire some devs and/or writers who value and care about the Alliance experience and storyline. I pay the same as horde players, I want the same quality of quests, mounts, and storylines.
- Delete void elves and revert all the janky-ass BFA lore. (Ok, this one won't happen, but maybe it was all a dream?)

[Clevername]

Do everything that ffxiv does but better. Like....
Listen to your fan base.
Make crafting exciting.
Ban addons.
Make an engaging storyline.