When You Realize the Sad Truth: WoW Players Don't Care About The World in WoW

[Soon-TM]

I kind of agree with the OP sadly. All WoW is about is a paper doll dresser upper now. Que to spots around the world, fly direct to spots, get things for your paper doll to up stats and/or look. Nothing between that matters anymore to a lot of people it seems.

Because, as @Osmeric pointed out, chances are that the kind of players who do care about the WORLD part of WoW have already left. Hardcore raiders, who are being catered to like no tomorrow by Ion & co., could do just fine without any outdoor zones at all, and as a matter of fact, one of them actually proposed an "expansion" with only dungeons and raids. And in these very boards, while we're at it.

[Pandragon]

Roleplaying and socialization aspects have been taking a backseat for years now

*looks at rp realms* Also, the way WoW was in vanilla, tbc, and wrath didnt "promote" socialization either. People are as social as they want to be. The most I ever said back then was my stats to get me into a group, what ever i needed to in the dungeon, and then "thanks for the inv". Same thing I say now.

[Naiattavain]

lol chris metzen is a genius. his ideas were better off with the game and the players. sounds like devs are getting burned out on wow creation i can accept that. stuff gets old but wow is now for nostalgia now. one game cant serve everyone shit blizzards made so much money form wow its crazy.

[Edward Wu]

*looks at rp realms* Also, the way WoW was in vanilla, tbc, and wrath didnt "promote" socialization either. People are as social as they want to be. The most I ever said back then was my stats to get me into a group, what ever i needed to in the dungeon, and then "thanks for the inv". Same thing I say now.

Nah, that's bullshit. Vanilla definitely promoted socialization. Actually, what Vanilla did was *require* socialization in that it literally forced people to interact with each other and that spawned further socialization. You wanted to join a dungeon group? You HAD to whisper someone and talk to them, or you HAD to create your own group, recruit in chat channels, and whisper back to people etc. who you wanted to invite.

Was it always fun? Of course not, but sometimes you need "pain points" to enjoy the "happy points" of WoW. It's the same concept of kids not really wanting to go to school because they'd rather just stay home and play games all day, but their parents literally force them to go to school anyway, and the kids end up making friends that way with the other kids forced to visit school, and the friendships start from there.

If you give humans the opportunity to complete their goals without ever having to talk to anyone, the vast majority of them will do so. That's why forcing people to interact with other is needed, and frankly not a bad thing at all. We must all suffer a bit to actualize ourselves and become purposeful beings.

[Azerate]

I play wow every day, and since I've completed the raid and KSM months ago, it's all open world these days. Callings, anima, rares, mounts etc. I see lots of people doing different kinds of stuff as well. Your thread is just another case of drivel usually posted by people who don't even play the game. I see all the usual whiners clapping their hands in arousal to see another toxic thread as well. Just another day at mmo-c alternate reality.

[anon5123]

WoW IS a lobby MMO, my dude.

Because Blizzard has changed it to be that way over the years.

Vanilla and TBC aren't "lobby MMOs". The world actually matters, because you can't just teleport everywhere instantly or take a 2-minute flight path to anywhere in the world like you can in retail.

[Spiral Mage]

I think this is just the kind of game that WoW has become as a result of many different factors from player-base to design approach but it was more of a snowballing effect than an intentional aim.

[Kralljin]

Yes and no.

It's also because the devs designed it that way and frankly have no idea how to design it, Blizzard knows how to design Raids & Dungeons, that's where their expertise as far as content starts and ends in my opinion.

Back in Vanilla / TBC, it also was pretty simplistic (putting questing aside, as this is another bag), you had a Faction and you gained Rep by killing some enemy mobs, said rep factions sold some items or recipes, that's about it, maybe some event to summon a boss.
It's extremely basic and some players balked at those boring tasks.

The big issue is also that making the world matter is pretty much tied to inconveniences, traveling takes more time, not everything falls over when you look at the wrong way, etc. and i a player discourse, it's naturally difficult to argue in favour of inconveniences, because that's some a lot of player simply see them.

I think this is how Blizzard frankly started to see a lot of elements in WoW post TBC, anything suddenly just became a roadblock that "blocks" people from accessing raiding - then they realized that most people have either no interest in raiding or are just too plain terrible.

Arguing in favour of them is also difficult because i think that the advantages of those are a lot less tangible, whereas the side that always favours the removal of inconveniences has a very tangible arguement on their hand - it saves time, it's a pretty simple point but sticks with a lot of people.

Of course, it's subjective, but that's the crux.

It frankly has two layers to it, the devs don't know how to design good outdoor content / integrate into the reward structure while some players simply don't want it, you can't convince a person who is solely interested in PvP / Dungeon & Raid content that the world content is suddenly good.

Personally, i think it's okay when some players don't like a given aspect of an MMO, it's supposed to be a large world and the demand that virtually everything in there is to your liking is unreasonable, MMO's are better when they cater to multiple tastes but still make it feel coherent and connected within the world.

[Glorious Leader]

I have to disagree. One of the chief complaints during WoD was that once you completed leveling there was zero world content what so ever.
World Quests introduction in Legion was a very popular addition when announced.

I’d say the larger issue stems from Blizzard failing to make world content both engaging but not feel mandatory. Anima rewards in Legion would have been a good ‘attempt’ if the world quests were even remotely ‘fun’ or ‘meaningful’.
Alas, their design team from Raids/Dungeons is clearly not the same team generating PvE world content.

You cannot have meaningful content without a compelling reason to participate. The answer isnt to make content not "mandatory", the answer is to ignore the idea that reward engineering makes it so or in fact acknowledge that if people "feel" said content is mandatory than it is fact the correct design. Theirs no reason world content can't offer a parallel progression path of equal or greater advancement than m+, raiding or pvp.

[Tyris Flare]

I've played since launch and I have never cared about the story or world, it's hardly a new phenom. Wow lore is and has always been boring and bad (to me). But it still has the best raiding and group content in the genre by a mile, and I've met many people over the years I still play with today. The next expansion could be 100% about murlocs and as long as it had good raids and dungeons I wouldn't care.

If I want a compelling story and world I just play other games (which unfortunately usually have bad gameplay)

[Cæli]

it's been a long time people didn't cared about the game
when the game was good many players left and new players came in, unaware of how good the game was, so they don't care about anything or preservation
more like blizzard's problem anyway

[Queen of Hamsters]

You don't speak for me. Neither does any other player out there.

[Jastall]

I don't know what people want to do in the open world. Dailies were hated, WQ were good at the start then hated. Story of each zone is finished. You cannot have unending story. That does not work.

You have the open world everytime a new expansion drops and then the new zones. It is current for a few months and then what? Should everyone force themsleves to still be amazed by the zones he has seen for weeks?

Also with flying there is no point in the open world. Fly up look at stuff from a new persepctive, never see other players again.

Ports to dungeons don't take anything from the world or are people in front of the raid doing something amazing i alaways missed instead of just standing there?

World content in this game has always been fucking terrible, especially compared to the intricate questlines and flavorful choices of good RPGs like Fallout New Vegas, Dragon Age Origins or TW3, or the interesting world interactions of titles like Breath of the Wild. What does WoW got? Farming nodes of herbs and ore? Quests that 90% boil down to the local flavor of twenty bear ass collecting with the other 10% being easy overworld bosses or vehicle sections (or trekking slowly to the other end of the map in Classic instead)? Dailies/WQs which are the same twenty bear ass collecting except with even less context? Treasures that lost most of their novelty a month into Mists? Of course it helps that those single-player games are designed to just end at some point, while a MMO doesn't and needs to eternally keep players busy and subbed.

In theory they could pull a SWTOR and make so much world and story content, with decent presentation, that it becomes attractive to seek it out... at the expense of the rest of the game, especially the endgame which makes people stick around once they're done with the story and initial questing bits. Blizzard can't possibly create those as fast as players consume them, and thus the retention mechanics are repeatable instances; dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas. That's how it's been since the day WoW launch and will be until the servers close in like 20 years or something.

It's always the same song and dance. People care about the world and immersion and the journey and all that jazz, until a couple months into the expac where they want to raidlog. Classic was supposed to be all about this true RPG experience until everyone was farming dungeons for XP, farming AV for Honor or speedrunning raids. Blizzard knows this very well and it's why they don't bother designing an intricate open world when many people just want to (sometimes literally) fly over it once they're done.

[Sevyvia]

The sad part of it, for me, is that I can go back and play official Blizzard Classic servers and get a feel for what WoW once was. I don't mean the community, even. It's not just nostalgia. It's a literal sense of "this is an actual world" that I get from a good few of the pre-Cata revamp zones. It's a kind of lived-in feel, a little dash of history, a little bit of a lack of that clear overarching threat that THE CHOSEN ONE must combat. A lot of people act like this is somehow something that raids or PvP or whatever ruin, but it really isn't, in my opinion. Both TBC and WotLK were okay at portraying the world of their continents. Not quite as good as vanilla, but alright. And then came the Cata revamp, and it was clear that the philosophy had changed.

People (rightly, I suppose) say that the "deathblow" to WoW was WoD, where the population dropped an astonishing 66%+ over the course of the expansion. That alone wreaked havoc on communities, but the bleeding started well before that. There can be many reasons for that. For me, it was that the game world lost its soul. All the way back in Cata. It honestly hurts me a little to look back on, because I kept playing. I'm still playing. But it isn't for the world, anymore. It's because I've made some online friends that I still hang out with. The game is really sort of immaterial to that. We could be playing any game, it just happens to be WoW. That is a real failure of the world.

[ro9ue]

Destiny is exactly what you describe. They basically looked at what WoW truly is... a city hub with a pvp queue and dungeon queue and just made that. Turned out to be pretty successful.

- - - Updated - - -

Because Blizzard has changed it to be that way over the years.

Vanilla and TBC aren't "lobby MMOs". The world actually matters, because you can't just teleport everywhere instantly or take a 2-minute flight path to anywhere in the world like you can in retail.

I've been playing ESO through most of BFA and SL which has by far the best outdoor world design of any MMO I've played. They actually have a WAY EASIER way to get around - you just click a wayshrine and teleport there instantly.

What makes outdoor areas valuable seems to be a few things. Actually being able to find valuable shit out there.... and having rares and world bosses that have fun mechanics and some randomness for replayability. Oh and how about ACTUALLY GOOD treasure chests. I can't remember the last time WoW had that. PLUS if your crafting system is very good, collecting materials becomes another rewarding gameplay experience being out there collecting stuff - ESO has no restrictions like WoW needed specific professions. You can do every profession just need to level them all up.

I could go on but I also want to point out ESO even has a fun city game with the thieve's guild being able to break into houses and steal shit then sell them in their outlaw refuges. Like if WoW had just 20% of what ESO does for the open world it would be significantly better.

So no I don't buy the whole "fast travel ruins the outdoor world" that argument is completely dismantled by ESO, and imo is just an excuse Ion pushes because he doesn't know how to design outdoor world gameplay so making people travel is the only way he knows how to keep people out there.

[Feindy]

the worst part about wow is its no longer MMORPG as they removed all of the rpg elements
thats the main difference between classic and retail
over the years they removed talent trees, skills, professions, most of the stats and leveling is reduced to 10 hours on release
the only thing we have is ilvl grinding for main stat increase

[Antontein]

OP speak for yourself and don't pull us into your fabulation.

Thanks.

[BrintoSFJ]

I want to put an argument that there is no such thing as "lobby mmo". It can either be an mmo or be a lobby based co-op game.

[ceall]

I think you are totally wrong but each to their own opinion, I tried a lobby mmo and hated it, upto you though.

2 questions:
1) what is the name of this game?
2) is it (relatively) successful?

Actually interested.

- - - Updated - - -

I think there's a huge problem facing the MMORPG genre, and that is that it exploded into popularity so hard with WoW's over-success that it attracted so many types of players who's fun is entirely compartmentalized and couldn't care less about the overarching game world. They either raid, do some dungeons, or PvP, or collect things. Roleplaying and socialization aspects have been taking a backseat for years now, it's nothing new and I won't bore you with more talk on this.

I had a thought, though, and it's pretty sad because I'm probably completely on the mark here. I think if someone came out with a new type of sub-MMO genre that completely eschewed the world out of it, it would be really successful and suck up a lot of these types.

Imagine logging into a game where all that's offered is a chat lobby with chat channels, a friends list, and the ability to queue up for different types of content. Raids are there, dungeons are there, PvP arenas are there, Battlegrounds are there, they have all their usual bells and whistles with the multiple difficulties for some and achievement hunting etc. You could literally relegate old world mog farming to a gacha type of game and people wouldn't notice a difference. When you queue up for a raid with other people, of course you zone into the actual 3D instance of the raid and do that as you normally would. Same with dungeons, arenas, battlegrounds, etc.

Leveling and professions could be entirely removed and the beginning of the game starts you out with some basic gear and a training mode scenario to learn the class. The game is just about farming loot so you can farm harder difficulties and get achievements, pets, mounts, and mogs etc.

People wouldn't hardly notice a difference and would play this kind of game possibly even more than they would WoW.

I would like that. Do you by chance know, if there's something like what you just described?

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

Because Blizzard has changed it to be that way over the years.

Vanilla and TBC aren't "lobby MMOs". The world actually matters, because you can't just teleport everywhere instantly or take a 2-minute flight path to anywhere in the world like you can in retail.

How is TBC different from retail?

5mans
TBC: put yourself to LFG 5 man HC via LFG tool, get invited and fly/get summoned to instance
Retail: same thing

Dailies
TBC: fly or get teleported (Isle of Quel'Danas portal) to daily hub
Retail: same thing

Raids
TBC: fly or get summoned to raid
Retail: same thing

Gathering
TBC: fly from herb to herb
Retail: same thing except we can't fly in retail yet