Blizzard didn't destroy WoW. The community did.

[Worgenmaniac]

Classic WoW was designed by Blizzard devs. As stated by Chris Metzen, in Classic WoW the World is the main character. It was the "World" of Warcraft.

Battle for Azeroth on the other hand was designed by the WoW playerbase. That is the MMORPG this community ended up designing. All the complaints and demands by members of forums like MMOChampion are what created Battle for Azeroth.

Now how did we get here? Why is Retail WoW no longer an MMO or an RPG? Why is the World gone? Why has Retail became a singleplayer lobby based game? Because the playerbase demanded it to be this way.

When did this shift begin? It actually began midway through Vanilla. Players began complaining about Battlegrounds. They didn't want to have to run to the instance portals in Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains, or Ashenvale. They wanted to queue for every battleground at once. They wanted to teleport to the instances and not have to wait. Blizzard caved in. They added Battlemasters which allowed players to teleport into instances across the world. Instead of running across the world zones, you could now teleport past them. You now had players standing in the same spot in Ironforge and Orgrimmar queueing over and over again without leaving the room. This was only the beginning.

The Burning Crusade brought flying mounts. The community thought it would be an "awesome" idea. Land mounts were too slow and clumsy. This not only shrunk the world, but also lessened player interaction in the zones. Compare your experience riding your mount through Kalimdor in Classic to using a flightmaster to fly across it. Flying literally allowed players to bypass the World. Imagine flying at 280% speed compared to running at 60% on land. There are literally members on this forum arguing that flying mounts increased player interaction and World PvP. How delusional can you be? Blizzard capitulated to players like this.


Players complained. Wrath of the King gave us crossrealm dungeon finder.

Players complained. Cataclysm gave us crossrealm raidfinder.

Players complained. WoD gave us sharded crossrealm zones.

Communities like MMO-Champion are what spawned something as lifeless as Battle for Azeroth.

[Grogo]

and now here we are...packed WoW classic servers!

[Luxeley]

Here's the problem with your argument: you're completely ignoring Activision's destructive influence. All of the changes you mention occurred after the Activision/ Blizzard merger. The helm of Blizzard changed from a mid-sized gaming company catering to a passionate fanbase into a AAA gaming company catering to shareholders.

[Dhrizzle]

Friendly reminder that WoW is still chugging along and hasn't been destroyed.

[gunnmen01]

Yawn.... Cross realm, lfr/lfg, flying ruined the game. Heard this all before.

[Kaver]

Classic WoW was designed by Blizzard devs. As stated by Chris Metzen, in Classic WoW the World is the main character. It was the "World" of Warcraft.

Battle for Azeroth on the other hand was designed by the WoW playerbase. That is the MMORPG this community ended up designing. All the complaints and demands by members of forums like MMOChampion are what created Battle for Azeroth.

Now how did we get here? Why is Retail WoW no longer an MMO or an RPG? Why is the World gone? Why has Retail became a singleplayer lobby based game? Because the playerbase demanded it to be this way.

When did this shift begin? It actually began midway through Vanilla. Players began complaining about Battlegrounds. They didn't want to have to run to the instance portals in Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains, or Ashenvale. They wanted to queue for every battleground at once. They wanted to teleport to the instances and not have to wait. Blizzard caved in. They added Battlemasters which allowed players to teleport into instances across the world. Instead of running across the world zones, you could now teleport past them. You now had players standing in the same spot in Ironforge and Orgrimmar queueing over and over again without leaving the room. This was only the beginning.

The Burning Crusade brought flying mounts. The community thought it would be an "awesome" idea. Land mounts were too slow and clumsy. This not only shrunk the world, but also lessened player interaction in the zones. Compare your experience riding your mount through Kalimdor in Classic to using a flightmaster to fly across it. Flying literally allowed players to bypass the World. Imagine flying at 280% speed compared to running at 60% on land. There are literally members on this forum arguing that flying mounts increased player interaction and World PvP. How delusional can you be? Blizzard capitulated to players like this.


Players complained. Wrath of the King gave us crossrealm dungeon finder.

Players complained. Cataclysm gave us crossrealm raidfinder.

Players complained. WoD gave us sharded crossrealm zones.

Communities like MMO-Champion are what spawned something as lifeless as Battle for Azeroth.

Sure. Good talk.

[Wrath of the Bolvar]

And many of these additions were good, and if you don't like them you can play the game without them.

Don't like flying? Don't fly. The world will still feel as big as it used to.

Don't like matchmaking dungeon finder? Don't use it. It can't be used for mythics now anyway, so if you just do mythics you'll never have to use dungeonfinder. Same goes for raids. Just don't do LFR and it won't ever have an effect on you and you can enjoy your normal/heroic/mythic raids.

Everybody can play the game in whichever way they like. What is the problem now exactly?

[Dhrizzle]

Here's the problem with your argument: you're completely ignoring Activision's destructive influence. All of the changes you mention occurred after the Activision/ Blizzard merger. The helm of Blizzard changed from a mid-sized gaming company catering to a passionate fanbase into a AAA gaming company catering to shareholders.

The merger was done under the auspices of Vivendi, a massive multi-national corporate conglomerate that had owned Blizzard since before WC3 was released and maintained the majority share of Activision-Blizzard. It was much later that Acti-Blizz became an independent entity.

[Notdev]

Players complained. Wrath of the King gave us crossrealm dungeon finder.

Players complained. Cataclysm gave us crossrealm raidfinder.

Players complained. WoD gave us sharded crossrealm zones.

Communities like MMO-Champion are what spawned something as lifeless as Battle for Azeroth.

I don't disagree with most of your post, but I have a few counterpoints
I'm not sure if the auto dungeon finder they gave us mid WoTLK was a super requested feature. I spent a fair amount of time on the forums, both MMO champion and the official forums, and I don't remember seeing a ton of complaining from players that wanted an automated dungeon finder that formed the group for you and ported you to the instance.

Cataclysm gave us LFR because cata needed somewhere for casuals to raid, due to another stupid change that Blizzard made, which was combining 10/25 man lockouts and difficulty. This was one of the single worst changes Blizzard ever made because it demolished the pug and casual guild community, which in turn demolished server communities. Which lead to all but the top 40-50 servers being turned into wastelands, which was a snowball effect as people on dead or dying servers transferred to bigger servers which made the dying servers die faster. I had characters on 4 servers throughout Cata, they ALL were wastelands by mid MoP. Blizzard has since come out with a better fix with flexible Normal and/our heroic mode, but LFR is too popular to just remove. So LFR was a poorly thought, bandaid fix to a terrible decision Blizzard made.

Which lead to the need for crossrealm zones. Completely empty zones were a real issue that was solved by sharding/cross realm zones. It was a needed change, and again something that happened because of Blizzard's bad decision.

[CptEgo]

WoW is destroyed? I didn't get that email. Better than ever in my opinion.

[Orwell7]

Blizzard was _ALWAYS_ a thief regarding ideas. Everything including TLV and Warcraft1.
Then Blizzard killed the competition, by stealing the best ideas and polishing them. The polish was marvellous, almost bugfree, fast responsiveness in combat, you name it.

Seeing WoW's success (which was primarily because Wacraft3 and the Blizzard trademark), other studios just wanted to copy the game. But they couldn't beat Blizzard in it's own game.
Unfortunately this meant that innovation in the MMO genre just died. Blizzard had nowhere to look for new mechanics, and all their decisions (gameplay!) was based on one thing only: keeping MAU's as high as possible, while maximizing profits.

Just.. just look at the mess bfa is. If this was released in 2005, Blizzard would have been dead already.

[Itori]

The features didnt ruin the game, but the community definitely has. The toxicity of the WoW community is infamous. Ive been playing the game since vanilla beta and you could just see it decline over the years, its like being at a job for a significant time, you used to wake up and be in a decent mood but now you just cant stand going to the shit hole anymore but do anyway because its better than starting over somewhere else.

[Worgenmaniac]

Here's the problem with your argument: you're completely ignoring Activision's destructive influence. All of the changes you mention occurred after the Activision/ Blizzard merger. The helm of Blizzard changed from a mid-sized gaming company catering to a passionate fanbase into a AAA gaming company catering to shareholders.

The Activision merger was after WOTLK.

- - - Updated - - -

And many of these additions were good, and if you don't like them you can play the game without them.

Don't like flying? Don't fly. The world will still feel as big as it used to.

Don't like matchmaking dungeon finder? Don't use it. It can't be used for mythics now anyway, so if you just do mythics you'll never have to use dungeonfinder. Same goes for raids. Just don't do LFR and it won't ever have an effect on you and you can enjoy your normal/heroic/mythic raids.

Everybody can play the game in whichever way they like. What is the problem now exactly?

This mentality is so wrong, and I hear it so much from Retail players. It is an MMORPG. Massively Multiplayer. You actions affect those of other players. If you use LFD or LFR or Battlemasters or flying mounts, you are removing yourself from the world zones. That is one less player to interact with in the world.
If you were the only player not using these tools, then you would be in an empty world.

[Shakana]

Classic WoW was designed by Blizzard devs. As stated by Chris Metzen, in Classic WoW the World is the main character. It was the "World" of Warcraft.

Battle for Azeroth on the other hand was designed by the WoW playerbase. That is the MMORPG this community ended up designing. All the complaints and demands by members of forums like MMOChampion are what created Battle for Azeroth.

Now how did we get here? Why is Retail WoW no longer an MMO or an RPG? Why is the World gone? Why has Retail became a singleplayer lobby based game? Because the playerbase demanded it to be this way.

When did this shift begin? It actually began midway through Vanilla. Players began complaining about Battlegrounds. They didn't want to have to run to the instance portals in Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains, or Ashenvale. They wanted to queue for every battleground at once. They wanted to teleport to the instances and not have to wait. Blizzard caved in. They added Battlemasters which allowed players to teleport into instances across the world. Instead of running across the world zones, you could now teleport past them. You now had players standing in the same spot in Ironforge and Orgrimmar queueing over and over again without leaving the room. This was only the beginning.

The Burning Crusade brought flying mounts. The community thought it would be an "awesome" idea. Land mounts were too slow and clumsy. This not only shrunk the world, but also lessened player interaction in the zones. Compare your experience riding your mount through Kalimdor in Classic to using a flightmaster to fly across it. Flying literally allowed players to bypass the World. Imagine flying at 280% speed compared to running at 60% on land. There are literally members on this forum arguing that flying mounts increased player interaction and World PvP. How delusional can you be? Blizzard capitulated to players like this.


Players complained. Wrath of the King gave us crossrealm dungeon finder.

Players complained. Cataclysm gave us crossrealm raidfinder.

Players complained. WoD gave us sharded crossrealm zones.

Communities like MMO-Champion are what spawned something as lifeless as Battle for Azeroth.

I agree. 'We' are the ones to blame. Playerbase is the one to blame for such demands and changes. I only ask changes now because of how irritating it has been. BUT i don't think vanilla is the solution. It just show us how a game is without being on the media and how a game is being on the hands of the media. It also only happens like this because there's toooooo much people playing this game. If there wasn't they would probably not listen how they do. And they shut their eyes and ears now and their creativity start running out day by day. This is a result of people asking and asking everyday for new stuff and complaining, even classes at some point had to be too much nerfed cause others cried they were too "OP". If it's some bug that makes the class too OP and invincible, then that's something to change, but because you got ganked by same levels as you and you go cry wanting a change, that's just your damn problem, but they still do it, they nerf it. And then it's a snowglobe, people from that class that was nerfed start complaining, and then that's how the complaints spread. WoW creators, the original WoW, they had a lot creativity, but to be honest, every expansion has it's pros and cons, even vanilla that is simple.

[Jtbrig7390]

Here's the problem with your argument: you're completely ignoring Activision's destructive influence. All of the changes you mention occurred after the Activision/ Blizzard merger. The helm of Blizzard changed from a mid-sized gaming company catering to a passionate fanbase into a AAA gaming company catering to shareholders.

You do realize in the history of Blizzard that there is only two years they wasn't owned by another company and that time was in the late 90's.

The blizzard you see now is how Blizzard has always been.

[Mukind]

So you're blaming consumers for blizzard having no creative soul left???

Okkkkkkk

Might as well blame human nature while you're at it lol

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Personally I think the issue is that as the years went on, people have cared less and less about their "online reputation" or any form of decency. Don't get me wrong: good people who play the game are still out there. And even back then there were the bad apples. Fast forward X amount of years and more and more people just don't care about how they come across online.

[Mukind]

Personally I think the issue is that as the years went on, people have cared less and less about their "online reputation" or any form of decency. Don't get me wrong: good people who play the game are still out there. And even back then there were the bad apples. Fast forward X amount of years and more and more people just don't care about how they come across online.

OP is talking about the metrics not some intangible social aspect brah lol

the metrics say retail is what we want, and we got it is his point.

I would disagree tho i would say the metrics point them in the direction of taking the most money possible. They don't care what we want only what we'll pay for.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Other than the fact that I disagree heavily with your assertions about the live game, I do totally agree that the game is in the state it is in, good or bad, because they listen way too much to the community.

I don't know why so many people fail to see this, honestly.

Its clear to me without much thought.
People can not decide on what they want.
Some want easy some want hard.

You can not please everyone, but they try to, and it has hurt the game in many many ways.
Either way, I am very pleased with what BFA has become.
Had a rocky start, but so did Legion and now we have had two tremendous endings to two back to back expansions after WoD's failure.

I do feel this thread is ironic though.
The "community" is what ultimately makes it impossible for me to enjoy Classic in the long run.
Too much elitism and rush mentality in a game with extremely little difficult PVE, and the no-changes crowd makes it assured that the game will never improve.

You are right on both fronts!
The community is just its own worst enemy.

[Mukind]

They haven't listened to teh community for years

They listen to the metrics

And teh metrics say they need to rat fuck you to keep u subbed, so they do.

TBC they mighta listened. Long way from that, bitching will never beat metrics in 2019 blizz