World of Warcraft is not a game

[ClassicPeon]

Not wanting to dictate anything, just showing up that, in my eyes, wow is less than a game but more of meaningless button pressing to get you from one tiny "entertaining" moment to the next (cutscene, NPC monolog etc.), driven by the desire for something that in the end doesnt really matter to obtain (quest reward, emissary chest, loot in general).

But yeah, i guess thats my personal point of view, and others have a different stance. what's fine. Probably i am just disappointed that it turned out like that for me.

Sounds like what you have been doing is basicly the story mode for the game. Which is ez ofc. Its the story mode. Plenty of games offer story mode.

[MrLachyG]

No I’m pretty sure it’s a game. If you’re not having fun playing the game then yeah something is wrong so either take a break or change the way you think about the game

[Ryzeth]

Oh look another bait thread, where the OP posts some garbage blog post and then doesn't actually reply to anything in the thread.
There should really be some kinda ruling against these.

[Redsoldier06]

Try out other MMOs, I've tried every top MMO out there and the only one I've stuck to is FFXIV.

[tamarin]

So just to be clear, you dont consider movies or music to be entertainment? You should stop, honestly, this doesnt end well for you.

i said that games must be entertaining, not that everything entertaining should be games

haven't you heard of syllogisms in high school you dribbling idiot

[Boddhi]

Oh look another bait thread, where the OP posts some garbage blog post and then doesn't actually reply to anything in the thread.
There should really be some kinda ruling against these.

Take my reply and stand silenced forever.

[Deferionus]

I recently came to that realization after just letting my sub run out and played something else.

WoW is not a game because 90% (or more?) of the activities do not offer the slightest amount of challenge at all. Your character pretty much is immortal in open world content, you press your few buttons to kill a mob, or 5 or 10, rinse and repeat to reach X of Y or to fill up a bar. That makes levellling more of sequence of cutscenes and NPC doing things with some button pressing in between. A video "game" for me is "playing", that means reaction, hand eye coordination, getting used to AI patters and appropriate reactions to them. At the beginning you fail, the longer you play the better you become, in the end you master the challenge and move on (either to next difficulty or you pick another game).

So what about instanced content, i.e. raiding? normal difficulty no challenge at all, even if individuals fail to deal numbers or to not stand in fire, in the end your raid group as a whole will balance that out. Being bad at the game has no other consequence than having to wait for the others to complete the encounter.
HC raiding is where the earliest kind of challenge comes into play, but as its grouped content, indiviual failings again can and will be balanced out by others individual skill. Apart from that, in a real game you can just keep on training by repetition as often as you want. But you cannot train a HC raid encounter as you can train a rogue-like run. You need to wait for raid night, when you got a good group you can faceroll through encounters without your individual perfomance mattering. So to actually become a better -player- it required a bad group that enabled you to repeat the gameplay as often as its required to master it eventually. But again, this only once per week.

If you want to "play" the game (meaning learning gameplay patterns and success wherei failed before) using LFR (leave out nuisance like toxic players and leavers) you have to wait 30-60 mins as a DPS, so thats not really an option.

I realized WoW is nothing else than a way to spend/waste lifetime. Everything is kind of pointless, loot is pointless, character strength is pointless, your skill is pointless because it's either not required at all, or required at a level you cannot reach because you cannot train into it. So you what you actually need to do in WoW to have some challenge is go through all those not challening activities, socialize with people for scheduled activities and those people need to have an average skill level of yourselfs one, to neither get carried nor others being an obstacle for your skill progression and success.

After i realized all this i lost all interest in Shadowlands, as now i always have the idea in mind i am not playing a video game here. I just press und click buttons without any feeling of pride and accomplishment. It's entertainining yes, at least the first time you see some content, but it's not "playing" as i understand the term.

Quite a bummer for me actually, WoW was my favorite and only game for a very long time and now i realize i should have actually played other "real" games instead.

Depends what you want in a game. For a long time I played WoW mainly to get better at PvP in the game. After I hit a pinnacle there and a similar realization I did not play much for 5 years or so. I eventually started to play again because I enjoy the immersion into the world as gameplay.

Ultimately you have to realize EVERY game and in a sense EVERYTHING you do is a waste. You beat dishonored? Great game, good time, but in 5 years what did you gain from playing it? Or Skyrim? Or Mario? Every video game you ever played was a time sink. At least WoW stays around, adds new content, and has a progression and social aspect to it. Call of Duty they will release a new one next year.

Even more so, 150 years from now your great great grandchildren will know very little or nothing about what you did with you life. Just that you had sex, got pregnant, and had a kid that led to their lives. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, so do what you want to enjoy the time you do have and try to make positive impacts where possible.

[qwerty123456]

the reasoning is simple: games are supposed to be entertaining -> a trivial activity is not entertaining -> therefore a game that is trivial is not really a game

but you know, if you like watching paint dry, i'm not judging

Where does it say anywhere that games need to be hard to be entertaining? Or that hard things are entertaining? I can guarantee that if you are constantly getting instant killed as soon as you land in a match of fortnite you aren't being as entertained as you are if you easily beat a bunch of levels in candy crush.

And of course you are judging you just compared "trivial" games to watching paint dry.

[arkanon]

i said that games must be entertaining, not that everything entertaining should be games

haven't you heard of syllogisms in high school you dribbling idiot

the reasoning is simple: games are supposed to be entertaining -> a trivial activity is not entertaining -> therefore a game that is trivial is not really a game

This is what you said. You said;

Games = entertaining.
Trivial activities ≠ entertaining.

We have explained to you that many "trivial activities" are entertaining to many people - watching sport, sitting on the beach having a beer, fishing, listening to music - the list could go on endlessly, as its entirely subjective. But your claim that trivial activities cannot be entertaining is the core of your argument, and has been entirely disproved.

You can try and be all high and mighty as much as you want, it doesnt bother me in the slightest, especially when you are attempting to argue something so pathetic and simplistic.

Now, if your argument was "i personally enjoy games that challenge me, and thus I dont enjoy simple games that dont offer that" then you would be having an honest and open discussion.

[tamarin]

Where does it say anywhere that games need to be hard to be entertaining? Or that hard things are entertaining? I can guarantee that if you are constantly getting instant killed as soon as you land in a match of fortnite you aren't being as entertained as you are if you easily beat a bunch of levels in candy crush.

And of course you are judging you just compared "trivial" games to watching paint dry.

and here come the inevitable rando with the inevitable false dichotomy. games can only be either impossible or trivial, obviously. great job, qwerty12456

[Cerilo]

By that logic, there is very few things that count as games. God of war? witcher? mass effect? diablo? fallout? deus ex? not games, too easy, cutscene chasers, no reaction time, or hand eye coordination needed. Fortnite? Hand eye coordination, reaction time! Game!

Probably a troll post though, since that opinion is so bewilderingly without merit that it cant be serious. In case its not, just quit then, there's probably a handfull of real games for you to play out there.

[qwerty123456]

and here come the inevitable rando with the inevitable false dichotomy. games can only be either impossible or trivial, obviously. great job, qwerty12456

Did someone just kill your puppy or are you always just rude to people?

[Mirishka]

Not wanting to dictate anything, just showing up that, in my eyes, wow is less than a game but more of meaningless button pressing to get you from one tiny "entertaining" moment to the next (cutscene, NPC monolog etc.), driven by the desire for something that in the end doesnt really matter to obtain (quest reward, emissary chest, loot in general).

But yeah, i guess thats my personal point of view, and others have a different stance. what's fine. Probably i am just disappointed that it turned out like that for me.

That's a stupid argument. No video game 'matters' in the end because they're, you know, video games. If you want to spend your time doing something that matters, drop gaming altogether and go do volunteer work for the disabled or taking calls at a suicide prevention center.

[tamarin]

Did someone just kill your puppy or are you always just rude to people?

im just rude to annoying idiots that are always eager to reach for the same logical fallacies to make their points. so yeah, i'm pretty much always rude on wow forums

[Boddhi]

Where does it say anywhere that games need to be hard to be entertaining? Or that hard things are entertaining? I can guarantee that if you are constantly getting instant killed as soon as you land in a match of fortnite you aren't being as entertained as you are if you easily beat a bunch of levels in candy crush.

And of course you are judging you just compared "trivial" games to watching paint dry.

But you must admit that WoW single acitivity gameplay is not feeling satisying or exciting at all. It's actually regarded as a chore that people tried to come by with mass pulling and excessive AOEing to reduce it to a minimum. It more feels like an obstacle between you and your reward, that you will eventually receive no matter what, without the slightest amount of setback.

Truth is the game was turned trivial af so a) everyone can p(l)ay it and b) nobody is leaving because of frustration he/she cannot success instantly at something. And this is just not how video games are working normally. This is how "keep people in activities they need to pay for regularly" works. Dopamine is not generated by offering something to master but by creating desire for something actually meaningless and making people do trivial unsatisying things for it as long as possible.

[Nite92]

....

Uhh, wtf? Why does a game have to be challenging? Obv. there are people who want to be challenged 100% of the time, well then go play Dark Souls or LoL. But many do not, I for example, like to be challenged some of the time. Like in WoW. I can play through the story/open world laid back, chatting with friend etc. but I also have the option to push m+ 1 hr later.

And btw. If you think that classic was "hard", you are just wrong.

[qwerty123456]

im just rude to annoying idiots that are always eager to reach for the same logical fallacies to make their points. so yeah, i'm pretty much always rude on wow forums

You mean like the logical fallacy that games need to be hard to be games?

Maybe its not other people but yourself that's the problem. Maybe try not going on forums?

But you must admit that WoW single acitivity gameplay is not feeling satisying or exciting at all. It's actually regarded as a chore that people tried to come by with mass pulling and excessive AOEing to reduce it to a minimum. It more feels like an obstacle between you and your reward, that you will eventually receive no matter what, without the slightest amount of setback.

Truth is the game was turned trivial af so a) everyone can p(l)ay it and b) nobody is leaving because of frustration he/she cannot success instantly at something. And this is just not how video games are working normally. This is how "keep people in activities they need to pay for regularly" works. Dopamine is not generated by offering something to master but by creating desire for something actually meaningless and making people do trivial things for it as long as possible.

Wow is an MMORPG. So of course there is going to be "easy" content for people to experience as its trying to tell a story. And if it was so trivial then why are so many people crying about covenants making it so they can't use what ever is op in each situation? Clearly there is plenty of hard stuff in wow just because some players choose to play on easy mode doesn't mean there isn't any challenge. Have you mastered all there is to pet battles, pvp, arena, raiding? If everything in the game is trivial then it should be no problem to master every class in every situation and yet how many people do?

[arkanon]

and here come the inevitable rando with the inevitable false dichotomy. games can only be either impossible or trivial, obviously. great job, qwerty12456

Oh the irony - you are trying so hard to sound clever, but have disproved your own argument as.........a false dichotomy! You have claimed that for something to be defined as a game, it must be challenging. You have ignored all the other possibilities along a spectrum of difficulty, from ultra casual games that offer no challenge - no death mechanic, they are more like an interactive narrative, through to games that are extremely challenging.

You also entirely ignore the fact that many games offer multiple difficulties - meaning if we apply your logic to certain games, they are a game when played on the hardest difficulty, but suddenly stop being a game when played on easier difficulties.

You know what thats called? Yes you do! you used it in the above post! Let me help you out a little more, since you are clearly quite confused:

A false dichotomy occurs when a limited number of options are incorrectly presented as being mutually exclusive to one another or as being the only options that exist, in a situation where that isn't the case.

[Nite92]

But you must admit that WoW single acitivity gameplay is not feeling satisying or exciting at all. It's actually regarded as a chore that people tried to come by with mass pulling and excessive AOEing to reduce it to a minimum. It more feels like an obstacle between you and your reward, that you will eventually receive no matter what, without the slightest amount of setback.

Truth is the game was turned trivial af so a) everyone can p(l)ay it and b) nobody is leaving because of frustration he/she cannot success instantly at something. And this is just not how video games are working normally. This is how "keep people in activities they need to pay for regularly" works. Dopamine is not generating by offering something to master something but by creating desire for something actually meaningless and making people do trivial things for it as long as possible.

Dude, it is an MMO. MMOs are meant to be grinds. It is perfectly fine because you do not like it anymore, but just you not liking it does not make it a bad game.

[Shedaar]

Oh right...
There are websites to help with that kind astuff OP