To those who aren't playing WoW, what would have to change to resub?

[khazmodan]

For full disclosure, I do plan on resubbing after 9.1.5 is released and I can complete the content in its fullest form instead of waiting through two months of subs for the same content.

That said, if Blizzard wanted me to resub on patch day a couple of things need to change. First off, content that respects my time. Instead of arbitrarily extending play time, just make content that I can just sit down and play through at my pace instead of the pace the team decides.

More open world content than just WQs and one-off events here and there. Look, I get WoW is dungeons, raids, and M+, but those things are only so engaging. After a while you want to do something else that makes the MMO aspect relevant again.

And a massive reduction in World of Systemscraft. I'm so tired of this mound of systems dumped on top of us every expansion and patch, I just want to play the damn game, I don't want deal with all the extra shit we have to wade through. Leggos are boring, choreghast is exactly that, conduits mean fuck all, conduit energy is stupid, renown serves no purpose other than to agitate, Anima isn't worth grinding until all the catch ups are in. So on and so forth.

Well said, "content that respects my time, instead of arbitrarily extending play time". Trying to find the fun in the game is just not worth it any more because you end up digging through tons of shallow mind numbing grinding to find a scrap of fun.

- - - Updated - - -

Only way for me to feel like I could actively play again, is if Blizzard made all the "grinds" account wide. I enjoy gearing up alts and shit, but this constant need to be grinding out AP is just sucking any fun out of it for me :P.
Granted, I'm probably just burnt out in general, so even that might not fix it! ^^

A good point, Blizzard thinks that altoholics must love doing the same grind on alts so they leave it all the same mind numbing experience. People that like to play alts do it so they can have a different experience and the same super long grind overwhelms the joy of rediscovering another class.

[Obvious10]

Just a general curiosity of what would have to change to make you resubscribe to WoW

Well, I have to say, I'm still playing.. sometimes doing Classic BC, and I do enjoy it, but then I do miss my retail toons which I left at BfA level.
So, at the moment am slowly leveling alts on retail, enjoying old content and doing some BC.
But am just waiting for an interesting, enjoyable new expansion, or enjoyable patch theme.....

I'm one of those who got really annoyed when Sylvana did her genocide, and we The Horde did not act properly on such an unearthly crime, making it worse cause we worked and studied with our class comrades just before in our order halls in Legion.
yes sorry, it's still my issue
a big fat ugly ..b iggest mistake from Blizz. ever!!!

So, am enjoying Thrall and Voljin time in order content.
But also ..am playing less and less.

What could turn this?
. As said..An interesting, enjoyable new expansion, or patch theme.....

- I would like to see more continuing stories, for example the Stone Mother coming back from time to time in stories, but to me, she could be a little more fun-annoying and let us do some more q's for her. Also some evolving of

- the technology used is out of sync, it's just wierd. Aircrafts versus a spaceship, with space travels (again H + A together versus Sylvana's shit), with laserbeams versus capital cities with mud huts, Orcs Orgrimmar, Troll Echo Islands and Tauren TB?? Wtf???

- also am annoyed that Blizz does not correct old and small faults, Iike the deepruntram and the moving direction on minimap. Just correct those little shits! Or make a story of it. It's there for ages, and with every exp. getting more annoyed cause it's not solved!

- also I would like to see some evolution of older groups, like Wyrmrest Guardians in their Temple in Northrend, how do they evolve over the years? There most be also good groups of Nagas and murlocs?! Like that little group of good murlocs in Northrend, what about their further story....connections with other murlocs, water-goblin etc?? Continuing evolving stories....

- I want to get rid of the sword... it's too big for Azeroth, and therefor still a threat.
Next phase could be, all races are breaking it down, but perhaps it starts first with a new expansion where underground creatures, bugs? will grow wildly or so...and perhaps an forgotten group, living underground of ?? will start their story. Perhaps a march of the underground bugs towards the Sword??? And we are warned by Sand-Gnomes??? Underground living Dark Trolls which where not vanished??? Etc. I would really like this, building furter on existing stories, and not just another one big bad guy/girl story...

- etcetera.....

Edit
Some typos

[Foolicious]

Honestly when i think the time i spend ingame is worth the money. A month of gametime isn't a lot of money, but i don't raid anymore and i don't have the desire to get good gear so i can bolster my ego with good parses. So i play for "having fun" which usually means playing the new story because im still invested how the game develops, but thats done in one or two hours usually. It's a plain answer for an mmo thats literally about refarming your gear every patch, but thats just something that doesn't excite me anymore.

[Tarba]

Just a general curiosity of what would have to change to make you resubscribe to WoW

Story not written by obvious retards. Fun content instead of time wasting content. And if they stop obviously milking addicts with their new stupid system with obvious flaws that everyone sees, that are badly fixed a patch later like "we heard you guys " , while adding an other system with obvious flaws and repeat.
It would need pretty much an other company.

[masterjc]

Just a general curiosity of what would have to change to make you resubscribe to WoW

for all these years game Lore kept me playing and I was returning to game from time to time. mostly during new patches. each cancel was longer than previous.
my life. family. work and so on

I cancelled game at start of this year and probably would never come back until my wife died due Covid
I was angry and decided to do some stupid stuff

like subscribing 6 months of wow

[Zakajz]

Remove BiS for raiding from M+ and PvP and the other ways around, or make it so that gear that you get from raiding gets +10 ilvl inside raids, gear from M+ gets +10 ilvl inside dungeons, gear from pvp gets +10 ilvl in instanced pvp.
If i only want to raid, m+ or pvp and i dont ever want to do the other content that to me is shit, let me be able to do so. I'll get less achievements than the guy who enjoys everything so he can feel extra proud of himself with that.

[Extinguished]

I haven't played since 2018.
If u ask me now, i think i`ll never come back, but time will tell.
I`ll look in the other comments maybe something will pop in to my head, because at the moment i can't see any reason to come back.

[Stoffmeister]

To those who dont play wow, why do you visit this site to read, comment and discuss why you think this game is so bad.

It really boggles my mind. All the other hobbies Ive quit, I have stopped visiting sites and communities. Games I dont like anymore I dont give a thought, I would never dream of visiting that games fanpage to talk trash about it

A lot of the reasons some of you dont play is the exact reason I still play

[Biske]

1. As mentioned by others, stop fuckin doing systems that only last for the current xpack and then mean nothing, and then we have to learn some other arbitrary single-xpack system.
2. Just let us fly after reaching cap. Honestly, the zones aren't even that interesting after you've done the questing in there. Sure, they're pretty sometimes, but they're also pretty from the air. And most WoW zones are divided in a kind of stupid way. Every zone that shares borders with another is surrounded by a range of mountains and that makes no sense. I mean, sure, leave that in if you want, but the point is, let me fly.
3. Respect players' time. Stop making everything a grind for some super minimal power increase. Stop punishing players for not always being subbed or online. Increase alt-friendliness. I don't know how they can use the excuse that they want players to see all the work the people who made the maps put in as the excuse to disallow flying, but if people want to see all the work put into the classes and try everything out, the response is basically a "get fucked. Have some crumbs from this shitty catch-up".
4. I know a lot of people don't like Torghast because they basically feel forced to do it all the time for the Soul Ash, and I agree that was an awful implementation for it. I really enjoy Torghast, which seems to be rare in the player base, but it should have been used for cosmetics (like Twisting Corridors is), and opened it as an option for alt leveling and alt catchup alongside the option to repeat the story and do the weird world quest spam. As in, keep those, but add Torghast, and have it drop gear so you don't just become technically weaker as you level up with it. Anyway, have Torghast be an OPTION for several things instead of the ONLY WAY to get bullshit for ONE system.
5. Rethink their stance on character customization. It was stupid to add all those customizations that people LOVED and then be like "aight, that's it, no more". Like, ?????????????????? Especially for races that got shafted in the customization options (humans have like 40 fuckin faces and there's some races that have like 3. Also, give trolls beards, give the allied races more shit, especially if they have a non-allied race counterpart that you could just slap some of the options on, like Mag'har and regular orcs). Also, add stance options for trolls and undead like they did for orcs.
6. Related to cosmetic options, add those stupid heritage armor recolors that are in the files. Like, wtf did you even make those for if you're not going to use them? And the racial aesthetic weapons like those void elf and nightborne weapons that were datamined ages ago.
7. Listen to the fuckin community. Like, not for balancing purposes, because let's be real, the average player doesn't have 2 brain cells to rub together, but people still know what they want to do and what's fun.

I haven't quit, like, I'm subbed, but I still want those changes. Most of what I do in-game these days is just dick around, collect mounts, pets, cosmetics, etc. but it's kind of an issue that I'm just mostly winging it for the current content. I just kind of passively interact with it.

OH YEAH, and:

8. Fuckin heal the world already. Revamp that shit with some evergreen content. Like, don't just remove all the unique rewards like when they first revamped the old world, just maybe move those same rewards to more evergreen quests and stuff. It's weird flying over the Barrens and STILL seeing shit on fire and whatever, and if you quest there, all the references are dated, talking about Garrosh and shit. I guess that's not really relevant to Shadowlands as a whole, but that would be neat.

[Kathranis]

Setting aside a certain writers cringe simping for sylvanas and self inserting as nathanos which is indeed cringe as *fuck* it just kind of feels pointless at this point.

See, the funny thing is, Sylvanas is barely in the expansion so far -- a handful of interstitial scenes between the main quests. The intro quests in Korthia are the first we've seen her in person since the expansion kicked off. Nathanos also hasn't appeared at all since he was killed in the pre-patch.

[Laytnor]

No more systems piled on top of systems piled on top of systems.
No more borrowed power unless you don't have to grind that shit like it's a damn job.
Content that satisfies players and how THEY want to play instead of content that satisfied suits with engagement graphs.
No more of the god damn hamster wheel content design. Respect player time. Grind for the sake of grind that brings zero satisfaction once you're done has run it's course.
No more sole focus on nothing but gear treadmill with muh raiding and m+. Add basic features even shittiest of mmos out there has by now, such as player housing. Especially when it's a no brainer thing to do to tie up all of existing content and liven the world up, such as introducing furnishings and trophies from old content and reps. STOP PRETENDING like adding said basic features will cost 2 raid tiers, an arm, and a leg. At this point if they added (more in depth than wod and pandaria) gardening feature I'd be more excited than for a new raid tier. I'm tired of this gear treadmill hamster wheel and the game is starved of other casual content. Just mounts, pets, and transmog farm aint cutting it.
Talking about gear treadmill, let us go back to farming gear upgrades and bis items in peace, instead of having to also be worried about garbage borrowed power and other systems.
Add some god damn soul into the game already. New emotes. New switchable idle poses. The game hasn't changed, other than new, more detailed paintjobs, since damn vanilla, when we talk about player expression.
We all know you're a corporation, but damn, at least pretend to be something other than soulless corporate drones. Interact with your community. Do nice things for them. Square Enix is also just a corpo, but that doesn't make FF14 team soulless, and they do a lot for their community. Just take a look at player attitude towards dev team in FF14 and compare it to WoW. There's a reason for that.
Nothing wrong with a few cosmetics in store, but I dunno man, perhaps be more tactful with it? Earn back some of that community's goodwill before you endlessly squeeze out whales with new store mounts and other crap? Adding more shit to the store with the current state of the game does nothing but bring more negativity and leave a bad taste in people's mouth. It's like you're not even trying to hide that you're just trying to squeeze out as much money as possible from remaining subscribers.
Complete seperation of PvP and PvE. Both in balancing, and gearing. In no scenario should a pve trinket be bis for pvp, for example, and vice versa.
Enough with the damn fun police. In what way did players speed demoning through old content hurt you, or anyone? Do you think running the same raids for months on end for that one transmog is fun? Do you have to even further screw people over by nerfing things that never hurt anyone? How about let players do that. You know what? There's no reason to even have lockouts for old content. FF14 lets you farm raids endlessly and acquire loot as long as it's not latest content.
Bring back alts. Reps should be account wide. You shouldn't need to feel like you're starting a new job once you pick up an alt. Catch up should be the default, instead of making players wait for your benevolent dev team to introduce catch up mechanics. Most of them still being shit in recent years.

All of this probably wouldn't be enough, since I lost all faith I had in blizzard, but it'd be a good start.

[username993720]

Just a general curiosity of what would have to change to make you resubscribe to WoW

This:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...be-implemented

[Bleu42]

All the top talent, and I mean ALL have left Blizzard. The ones who helped create the actually fun games of yesteryear. The ones who said they were making games THEY wanted to play. They're all gone.

Everyone who actually gets to make decisions at Blizzard now haven't a clue what made their namesake popular, legendary even. There was actually a time when players playing retail WoW would agree that working for Blizzard would be a dream job. Unfortunately, that was many, MANY years ago.

WoW has had it's world torn from it, it's immersion gutted and it's uniqueness purged. WoW is now a glorified waiting lobby for small, instanced content. The 'world' in World of Warcraft mean nothing now, just teleport to a dungeon on a continent in WoW you probably don't know the name of. The lens in which you saw and interacted with the world as is now homogenized with every other class. All the different flavors have been blended together to ensure a balanced, boring and on rails vanilla amusement park ride through the corpse of what was once great.

What would get me to resub? Classic servers. Currently re playing TBC and loving it, but we'll see how they handle any sort of evergreen versions.

For retail? Actual uniqueness (and therefore not perfect balance) of classes, removal of all LFG grouping (Yes that's right you'd have to actually find a group or start one yourself), the sudden increase in danger for the outside world including but not limited to; World Quests, Normal Quests, just plain hostile mobs, zones, elites, rare elites ect. The list could go on, but only us few who are even ON these forums would even read it, and there's only so many times I can complain about WoW in general.

[Toijin]

Nothing, the game is completely different to what I enjoyed in the past, and my circumstances and likes/dislikes have changed over time so that it no longer matches what the game currently is.

The game is probably enjoyable to people still subbed but for someone unsubbed like myself, I don't think there's anything they should or could change to bring me back. I had my fair share of fun and enjoyment and I have good memories.

[beanman12345]

a new expansion for me at this point. I really do not dig the covenant system. Don't care if they fixed related with them or not, it's a system I just find burdensome, and After legion and BFA i'm fairly confident it'll be a system that'll remain in SL, so i'll just wait till 10.0 patch.

[Queendom]

I don't think the current dev team is capabale of producing something that would make me resub.

[Ivarr]

I come back when they add O'grila to the Shadowlands.

[Dastreus]

rebooting the game with an actual long-term story in mind. AND STICKING TO THEIR FUCKING LORE. I am forever salty about "oh man you guys, the chronicles books are going to be the cannon we work with from now on" and then "LOL JK IT'S THE TITANS' PERSPECTIVE LOLOLOL"

[Qnubi]

Too many convoluted systems, borrowed power gets repetitive. I feel like WoW is just adding systems for the sake of it without checking if they improve the game. I have no idea how domination sockets improve the game in any shape or form. Boring +% increases to damage/heal etc. can just be applied with a simple permanent buff that you slowly unlock the further you progress into the raid while still being able to equip whatever you want.

Removing and unlocking flying so late into an expansion also feels completely unnecessary. I have levelled through the entire expansion on a ground mount, I did hundreds of world quests on max level, I should not need to wait 8 months to unlock flying again.

Blizzard in general is too stingy when it comes to convenience and also rewards. Anima rewards are pitiful, and then you realize they were even worse early on.

To sum it up:

They add a lot of arbitrary systems while removing as much convenience as possible and then even time-gate everything as long as possible. That's just an un-fun experience and needs to be addressed before I wanna come back.

[Ivarr]

The problem is people don't want to redo the same content. They want the modern upgrades and new content with the old school philosophies.

Yet people gladly farmed Scholomance and Stratholme as many times as they could squeeze in a day.