Ex-players cheering for the game to fail.

[rhorle]

Pretending that your "favorite take" is the norm is your problem. Just about every take I've seen from ex-players, including myself, has involved them not knowing their audience and trying to warp the game into something that appeals to a broad range of people. Casualizing the experience so ma and pa can play WoW too! Adding in farmville-esque systems to get the boomers involved! Making a game called WARcraft kid-friendly!

The audience for WoW is broad. That is the biggest problem when someone claims to have the answer for why the game is failing. Or thinks they are the target audience so why can't the game be for the target audience. There is no one type of player Blizzard is targetting with the game. That may be the problem but don't try to think for a second that you, or others, are special and the only true type of player for Blizzard and WoW.

There are no farmville-esque features in WoW. That right there shows that you don't care about the target audience but simply stupid stereotypes in order to justify to yourself why you no longer like the game. It is a 17 year old game. It either changes or dies. As classic has shown that nostalgia and "no changes" isn't enough by itself. Everything has changed.

[Frozenbro]

Apparently it's 100% reasonable to expect a video game to be appealing to 100% of its audience for the entirety of its existence.

Pretty much, if people were a bit more reasonable they would realize that WoW nowadays tries to have content for every single player out there, since their playerbase as of right now is very wide, so as a dev you need to find a middle ground, the part where i agree with blizz tho is that they havent catered to solo players, they dont cater to solo players and i hope they never do, which doesnt mean there shouldnt be content for them cause there is, but catering to them is a whole diff thing that should never happen otherwise may as well remove the MMO tag.

[rhorle]

"Everyone can do the content! All you have to do is...

You don't need addons to do most of the content. Nor are they that complicated when 99.9% of the "required" ones are simply install and forget. You don't need to analyze your logs or sim. Just look at a guide to show what is best for your characters. You don't need to watch hours of videos or streamers. The mechanics are not that extreme after 16 years.

The community can be elitist but it isn't that bad outside if random pugs. If you are spending hundreds of dollars on faction and server transfers then the problem might be more with you then the community. You don't have to perform perfectly in dungeons when you run them the first time. Most of your list is self imposed things. Which might be why you claim it is daunting because you create an arbitrary list to justify when you don't want to play or come back.

That stuff is also par for the course for MMO's and group play. People don't want to waste their time and some are more toxic then others.

[Niwes]

I think the word you are looking for is you want them to get better. Failing won't bring about anything you claim to want except basically shutting down WoW for good.

yeah, ofc. thats why i said i dont think „these individuals wanna see wow or blizz fail, in general. they wanna see modern blizz or modern wow fail, for their descisions they made, hoping they change their mind.

imo.

[Tadkins]

The community can be elitist but it isn't that bad outside if random pugs. If you are spending hundreds of dollars on faction and server transfers then the problem might be more with you then the community. You don't have to perform perfectly in dungeons when you run them the first time. Most of your list is self imposed things. Which might be why you claim it is daunting because you create an arbitrary list to justify when you don't want to play or come back.

Everyone always says this when I mention that I've had a hard time with socializing and with finding guilds, which just feeds into my depression and loneliness more. I feel like because of my struggles I don't deserve to have friends and don't have a place in this game at all. I fully admit that I'm not the most socially adept person and I seem to have quirks that turn people off. I don't know what the exact issue is but I've tried to find that good "forever guild family" since my EverQuest days.

But, I keep trying.

I wouldn't say those other things are self imposed though. What do you think would be the result if I tried to do group content without doing any of that I mentioned? I've broken down crying in real life because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get weak auras to work properly, so I would very much gladly like to ignore them, but I just feel like that's not really allowed these days.

[Gratz]

@otaXephon

Yo, do you ever post anything that is blatantly snotty analyzing of other peoples opinions? Everything you wrote in this thread is on the pretense that everyone who has any criticism of Blizzard is a total moron and just doesn't get the meta. Its all textbook passive agressive.

"oh maybe they will make the greatest game ever and everyone will love it."

Is that a real thing you actually think can happen? You over saturate every thread you are in with your snarky musings on how feedback and opinions work. Then you default to "all feedback is subjective therefore there is no good feedback" bullcrap. It is a FORUM. Stop policing it please. Nobody asked you to.

[Lurker1]

Funny thing is once diablo immortal drops ironically they will become immortal themselfs soon! they can cheer all they want mobile brings so much money its stupid good vs there pc games.

[rhorle]

yeah, ofc. thats why i said i dont think „these individuals wanna see wow or blizz fail, in general. they wanna see modern blizz or modern wow fail, for their descisions they made, hoping they change their mind. imo.

Failing is Failing. Wanting to see modern WoW fail still means that WoW would shut down. Again the word you are looking for is improve. You, and others, want to see them improve. And stop doing the things you don't like even though a lot of those have been in the game for a decade now or were never things Blizzard wanted to avoid.

[Donald Hellscream]

Because if they don't like it, then nobody deserves to play it, or some other flawed line of logic like that.

Or because they want Blizzard to be taught a lesson, not sure what good thats gonna be when the entire game shuts down but who cares about logic.

[rhorle]

I wouldn't say those other things are self imposed though. What do you think would be the result if I tried to do group content without doing any of that I mentioned? I've broken down crying in real life because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get weak auras to work properly, so I would very much gladly like to ignore them, but I just feel like that's not really allowed these days.

You don't have to watch streamers or hours of gameplay to do the encounters of WoW. Dungeons or Raids. Normal mode can be practiced with LFR and hasn't been difficult for years. You don't need to min max your character for normal mode raiding or spend hours research every little last detail. The only real addons that are expected is dbm or whatever equivalent exists unless you are a healer. Healing can be a little tough with out something like Vuhdoo to click frames to heal better.

You can play just fine with DBM at default settings. If you are good with the class or understand how things work then you can pick up a lot of the stuff relatively easily. I haven't played a tank since Cataclysm but I still could pick up and do a decent job at it today. Things are not that complicated and most of the encounters are not that complicated now a days.

[Tadkins]

You don't have to watch streamers or hours of gameplay to do the encounters of WoW. Dungeons or Raids. Normal mode can be practiced with LFR and hasn't been difficult for years. You don't need to min max your character for normal mode raiding or spend hours research every little last detail. The only real addons that are expected is dbm or whatever equivalent exists.

You can play just fine with DBM at default settings.

DBM, Dominos and Details are the three addons I know how to use. Weakauras was just the one that defeated me, but that seems borderline required by most people these days. That's just what worries me.

Was never aiming to be a champion or anything and I'd be happy just finding a guild that does normal/heroic raiding, and would be willing to take me to lower key M+ dungeons.

[rhorle]

DBM, Dominos and Details are the three addons I know how to use. Weakauras was just the one that defeated me, but that seems borderline required by most people these days. That's just what worries me. Was never aiming to be a champion or anything and I'd be happy just finding a guild that does normal/heroic raiding, and would be willing to take me to lower key M+ dungeons.

Those 3 addons are more then sufficient for even Mythic raiding and high keys. Weak auras isn't exactly needed since Blizzard has done a good job for most stuff in the default UI but there are also a lot of guides that have ones you can import then tweak images or such. Guilds that require a whole bunch of complex things are just remnants of the past. You can easily pug low keys (1-5) now with no really requirements others then item level. As a DPS though you compete against hundreds of others.

[Tadkins]

As a DPS though you compete against hundreds of others.

Which sucks because my main before I left was a mage, and if/when I come back I'm considering changing to rogue or warlock. xD

All the more reason I want to find a guild, so I don't have to stress over competition or worrying about matching up to the standards that new baked in raiderio is going to bring. I'm just trying to find inclusion.

[Relapses]

@otaXephon

Yo, do you ever post anything that is blatantly snotty analyzing of other peoples opinions? Everything you wrote in this thread is on the pretense that everyone who has any criticism of Blizzard is a total moron and just doesn't get the meta. Its all textbook passive agressive.

"oh maybe they will make the greatest game ever and everyone will love it."

Is that a real thing you actually think can happen? You over saturate every thread you are in with your snarky musings on how feedback and opinions work. Then you default to "all feedback is subjective therefore there is no good feedback" bullcrap. It is a FORUM. Stop policing it please. Nobody asked you to.

Hey man, thanks for the honest feedback. I really appreciate it. : - )

I'm glad you're a fan of my content. I've been floating the idea of starting a Patreon so that fans like you can contribute to it and help make it easier for me to continue sharing my unique perspective on this website. DM me and I'll give you the deets. Anyway, take it easy out there my guy. I'd hate to see you accidentally mistake blatant sarcasm as serious conjecture.

[Powerogue]

Well, you see, for these players it's just as easy as Blizzard re-releasing {insert favorite expansion here} and all of the game's current issues will vanish. The fact that Blizzard doesn't just re-release previously successful expansions based entirely on an arbitrary opinion of one single players' experience is the real reason WoW is failing. If Blizzard really wanted the game to be successful, they'd just allow millions of versions of it to exist so that every unique player can get the exact experience they desire from it.

The crazy thing is they're doing literally exactly that for the forseeable future and yet we still get these kinds of naysayers.

I play WoW because I enjoy it. When I stop enjoying it, I stop playing.

I'll criticize the game when I'm actively enjoying it but think some elements could be better, but I'd never want for it to fail. (like overall being invested enough in BFA to keep playing but not wanting azerite armor to persist into next expansion and wanting for outlaw rogues to get back curse of the dreadblades, as some examples. Both wishes granted, by the way, thank you Blizzard.)

[Osmeric]

Why shouldn't someone who is unhappy with Blizzard want them to fail? Blizzard failing would send a message to the rest of the gaming industry that what Blizzard did -- the thing that made the person unhappy -- didn't work. That would be of benefit to that person, certainly more beneficial to them than the gaming industry seeing that approach as a winner.

[Le Conceptuel]

You might be sarcastic, but isn't that the dream of people here since we both joined in 2008? All these threads claiming:
-Age of Conan will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW
-Aion will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW
-Warhammer will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW
-Wildstar will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW
-Ashes of Creation will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW
-New World will be different and appeal to the masses and kill WoW

...and many more that look promising...or maybe not? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH-QTKJqB5A

Over the years you had massive franchises like Star Wars, LotR and soon a company like Amazon backing MMOs and trying to make the next HUGE thing to dominate the market. Well...it should be so easy. Just listen to the feedback here on MMO-C of the ppl who truly know why WoW is "the sinking ship" "dying" and how it all could be solved.

(....yeah, I know there are a few MMOs that managed to secure a fanbase and are still active)

Honestly, I'd say that it's best to also note how those MMOs that do have fanbases are very different from WoW in nature. Note how EVE Online has its own sort of players - I imagine if there's going to be another big MMO, it will probably be more distinct from WoW than most other MMOs.

[Gratz]

Why are you being sarcastic when there is no need to be. Your entire response is sarcasm. How is that constructive? I think your content is terrible.

[rhorle]

Why shouldn't someone who is unhappy with Blizzard want them to fail? Blizzard failing would send a message to the rest of the gaming industry that what Blizzard did -- the thing that made the person unhappy -- didn't work. That would be of benefit to that person, certainly more beneficial to them than the gaming industry seeing that approach as a winner.

Because that type of hatred is unhealthy. And yes it is hatred. There is no reason to wish something to fail just because you no longer like it. It also wouldn't send much of a message to the industry. Because it is basic game design for the most part. Even things like the EA backlash with Battlefront loot boxes didn't change the industry. WoW dying wouldn't change much except ensure that MMO's likely wouldn't be much of a thing anymore.

Because WoW doesn't do anything that unusual from normal and objectively fine design. They have hits and misses but there is a reason why it is considered the standard. And wanting it to fail just because it is the standard is silly and hate just for the sake of it.

[chorx]

I'd love more than anything for a new expansion to come out and be interested in it for more than two months. I'm not cheering for the game to fail, I'm desperate for the game to capture my attention. Unfortunately, I don't think somebody in my position, married with kids -- will ever get to that point of being able to just nerd out on wow and get consumed by it. The bursts are fun. Praying for anything to fail is miserable. I'd say join the party when its exciting to you, be defined by things you like. People generally like to be around others that are defined by positivity. If something doesn't make you happy, just move onto the next thing that makes you happy, stop letting something you hate consume your attention.