What kept you playing WoW in the past? What made it fun to play?

[scubi666stacy]

Without devolving into the nitty-gritty of every aspect of what went wrong:

1.) Social aspect of the game is just a shadow of what it once was, and that was a huge part of my enjoyment

2.) More deterministic options when it came to gearing rewards were great, but was dropped in favor of more layers of randomness.

3.) Despite my love for doing/completing the hardest raiding content, the mechanics and design of raids have moved way too far towards difficulty and away from accessibility/fun for everyone. Their decision to design raid content around the assumption players have boss encounter mods was probably the worst decision they made in this regard, but it's still one of many.

4.) Goals for players either being removed, bloated over time, or becoming more obscure/endless. This includes changes to how loot works, systems, 'seasonal' progression across the game, etc.

[snip]

6.) The game design actually reflecting the designers putting fun and the experience of the players first was great, while actually having a back-and-forth dialogue with the players that didn't spit in their faces. But now, this doesn't occur, where feedback is increasingly ignored and the devs are increasingly combative towards feedback that doesn't align with their narratives.

I could keep going with this list, but it'd start getting into overlapping issues as many of what I've stated above intertwine with each other to cause other systemic problems. It's not like a lot of these issue just happened in Shadowlands, as many have been present for many expansions. Some are the result of obtuse design, some are the result of experiments gone wrong but never purged, some are Blizz just being stubborn. Regardless, there's no indication that any of the above reasons will be addressed in the near future. I've never been one for hype driving my gaming decisions, as I generally buy 'hyped' game way after launch if I'm not currently enjoying the creator's previous content... and I don't think even a 10.0 sweeping overhaul could really bring me back in. Pretty much all of my friends in and out of the game no longer play WoW for various reasons, so Blizz has an insanely uphill battle to even get me to consider coming back since they don't even have peer pressure on their side.

This. Also Blizzard seems to hate altoholics for some reason, but at the same time they don't want to implement at least something similarity to a system which FFXIV has. We don't even get shared reputations.

[Valhalladin]

For me the game itself is just fun. When you strip it down to its core and what it’s about that is what I enjoy. It’s when they add all this other bullshit in terms of endless gear progression and systems is what ruins the game for me. If they kept most things simple without overdoing it the game would be in a much better place.

[Ekis]

For me, it was the following:

1.) Obvious progression paths. Somehow this was lost towards the last few expansions, but I liked when I had a linear progression option available. I liked when I knew I had to get through all of the older content to do the current one. I hated attunements a bit, but in retrospect I like that it gave me actual things to look forward to completing, and felt damn rewarding when it did. I knew what gear I wanted to target and how rewarding it felt to get over that hurdle and get that piece.

2.) Actual finite grinds that didn't affect how I could do when I needed to take a break in college or for RL reasons. Stuff like Azerite and Artifact power absolutely sucked the soul out of the game to where if you had to miss a week or 2 you literally fell behind and it was hard as hell to catch up. I liked being able to turn off the game for a few days or raid log, come back and still feel relevant.

3.) Friends and the social aspect. In the past expansions I made friends that I played with for multiple expansions. It saddens me to look at my friends list and see people that haven't logged on in 4-5 years who quit for the same reasons I did. I liked the fact that I needed to be social to get more out of the game. I liked the fact that some things in the world was dangerous without a ragtag group of homies coming to help. I did not start playing WoW to go single-player on stuff; that's what I had a Playstation for. I distinctly remember needing a group to kill that panther in Thousand Needles, played with that couple that showed me the ropes for years. Maybe it's nostalgia speaking but over the past expansions I've found it hard to do that unless they were in the same guild as myself.

4.) The world in itself. One thing that has bothered me since Legion is the fact that mobs level with you; how is it that I've killed the final big baddie of an expac and have all this awesome gear, yet mobs I should be facerolling by that point somehow are only minimally easier? All of this power I've obtained feels useless because of an arbitrary reason to keep mobs relevant. Also, the exploration and danger that came from rolling around in contested areas.

5.) Feeling like my time played was actually valued. I know, Blizzard is a business and all, but I've never felt so alienated as a customer than I did in the past few expansions. What's the point of submitting feedback during alphas/betas if it's going to be ignored? I wanted to see the game that I've been playing since Dec. 2004 (almost 17 years now) still be successful.

6.) Last but not least, since this is part of the previous ones but I felt it needed its own point: Content staying relevant for an entire expansion instead of every patch. Sure, every now and then catch-up mechanics and gear need to be implemented for newer players, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why they decided to go to another extreme of devaluing older content because plenty did not reach the final content. I get it, they want to get value out of their work and have more people see "endgame", but instead of keeping things relevant, they swung so hard to the opposite side of the pendulum that literally all old content did not matter any more when the next x.1 or x.2 patch dropped. So what not a lot of players got to see Naxx when it was relevant back in vanilla. Seeing that decked out warrior in his T3 gear in Org or getting popped by that T3 Rogue gave me something to work towards so I could be like them.

[DechCJC]

At this point it’s just a culmination of changes to the game that I disagree with over the years; I’m not the target audience anymore, though honestly I’m not sure who is. They try to appeal to everyone these days and by doing that seemingly appeal to very few people.

[Trumpcat]

What I get from this thread is that basically when the people whose names are currently being erased from the game, references removed, cancelled on Twitter and made to silently quit worked on the game it was far better.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

My guild, and the game not requiring a massive amount of tedious grinding to do high difficulty content.

Since my guild was half murdered by Mythic raiding (the other half is IRL was always emphasized as taking precedence over the game, some people got married, had kids, finished uni, etc...).

Until the game gets decently quick to jump back into, there is zero chance of me returning because my own IR has even less free time than I did back in Cata/MoP. Finding a guild on top of having to crawl through 40+ hours of shitty systems and grinding through tedious as hell content isn't something I'm willing to do, when I can just play a game that is significantly more fun without having to worry about shit like making sure I've done enough shitty content to play the fucking awful slot machine that is loot in SL.

[Zantera]

It's weird because I took breaks in both Wotlk, Cata and then kinda gave up in WoD and this came a lot down to the fact there wasn't really much to do. It mostly started in Wotlk which turned out to be the alt expansion in my experience because you would level an alt to max level, get caught up super fast, get bored (because aside from Ulduar the raids weren't that great imo) and then you'd start over. This kinda wore me down eventually and running laps around Dalaran, and then SW/Org in Cata was like a meme.

While Legion/BFA/SL have all had some problems as well, I haven't actually hit that point in any of them. In Wotlk/Cata the game felt a lot more empty at max level outside raiding IMO and with more added features in more recent times, that's kinda gone. Something like M+ really filled a big hole for me because dungeons were sadly useless through multiple expansions after the first few weeks and I found no joy in doing 'daily hc' for 50 valor points or whatever just blasting through a faceroll easy dungeon.

[Loveliest]

There's one thing that makes the game fun and most people don't realize it. It's having people to play with. That one expansion you thought was so awesome - you probably had an awesome guild and had a lot of fun. I mean sure, some people are always alone, but most of the time it's the playing with other that makes it good.

The game in itself, judged as a single player game, is pretty bad. What elevates it and makes it fun is people - and not pugs, but actual playing with friends, guildies, progressing, laughing on chat etc. When you don't have these things it's easy to complain, to see the bad parts, to see how everything feels "toxic" or "imbalanced" and so on, easy to be unhappy. When you play with friends you tend to not really give much crap because you enjoy playing anyway.

[bloodkin]

The two most important factors were the social aspects of the community and openness of the goals a player could work for.

Back then, a char took ages to level and build up, making each character valuable, this coupled with oldskool servers and no name changes meant that you could build a reputation on a server and knew a lot of people on it, which was great for making communities.
However, now it's easy to changes names, get a new char, switch servers or be in a different shard. These factors fragment and devalues the social systems in wow, with entire servers now filled with strangers.

Gearing used to be far more straightforward. Loot drops were dedicated, badges could earn you some nice pieces and there were some reps with good items. The only rng was the boss lootdrop, which could already be annoying but still rewarding. I also think that the extreme ilvl increases further reduced the value of gear as you replace everything ever tier or more. Certain pieces of gear or weapons could be so good (or bad) that they had a rep of their own in the community, which was also nice. Now, loot is little more than random drops with no name and no variation in stats, loot has been homogenised to death with the loss of complexity of stats and they build you could make with them.

Edit: dailies, although grindy, were also solid part of the game, you kew how much rep you could earn each the with sometimes a fun little extra or piece of loot, the world had value beyond direct rewards and had long term valuable goals. Now, world quests only hold value for direct rewards and those are entirely random, as are the rewards. I have always hated wq, as the only connection to some random activity in a random place was an annoying talking head on the spot, who just starts to talk and make requests without asking, and blizz has no options to ignore these popup adds in the open world. You can't even move about in peace in wow anymore without shitty popup adds nagging you to collect 20 bear asses for lil old granny.

You could conclude that the current set of devs have no clue on how to make wow good at wat it used to be the best in. Wow has slowly turned from a open goaled, social rpg to a random slotmachine infested with shitty in game popup adds.

[Polymorphin]

When you could just play arena without grinding a full time job in game just to be relevant.
And MoP Class Design <3

[Th3Scourge]

Playing with friends, being able to play alts easily, interesting lore to be invested in.

Basically WOTLK era

[Osmeric]

The game was fun when it felt like Blizzard valued having me as a customer.

[crusadernero]

tbh its become such a hassle to have more than 1 character to play at max lvl. I loved when you could lvl up an alt and in realtivly short time do current content. Now its to much hassle and I cant be bothered with it. I would often switch to alts when I felt bored/done on my main, but last couple of years I havent bothered. I play my main when new content is out, and unsub.

[Super Kami Dende]

Story used to be decent, having Valor/Badges giving a currency that allowed for progression that was controllable, Devs that weren't virtue signalling dipshits.

- - - Updated - - -

There's one thing that makes the game fun and most people don't realize it. It's having people to play with. That one expansion you thought was so awesome - you probably had an awesome guild and had a lot of fun. I mean sure, some people are always alone, but most of the time it's the playing with other that makes it good.

The game in itself, judged as a single player game, is pretty bad. What elevates it and makes it fun is people - and not pugs, but actual playing with friends, guildies, progressing, laughing on chat etc. When you don't have these things it's easy to complain, to see the bad parts, to see how everything feels "toxic" or "imbalanced" and so on, easy to be unhappy. When you play with friends you tend to not really give much crap because you enjoy playing anyway.

MoP was my favourite expansion in WoW, but was the first Expansion I stepped away from raiding and didn't have a large group of friends anymore as they dwindled during Cata.

So your hypothesis isn't universal.

[Asrialol]

I'll never understand people who say they resub for mage tower or stuff like that; content that is completed in a few hours. Do they mean that they stay subbed after that's done with, or do they instantly cancel their sub?

Personally I've taken breaks either if friends has quit, or if I've had IRL stuff going on. Longest break I've had was 1.5 years.
I've been continiously subbed without interruption since 2006. I get billed once per year and like other services I pay for, I might not use them for a while but then jump in now and then, etc.

This game is only fun to me if I play with people I enjoy playing with. If nobody else is online, why bother.

[jazen]

Valor gear. Being able to work towards the second best gear in the game over a long period of time fromm running daily heroics, LFR and some daily quests. As soon as Blizzard sayd fuck you to that playstyle I moved over to FFXIV where it's the norm.

This for me, although I still play as I enjoy the game. Have cut way back on how much I play.

[Lochton]

I know right now many have stopped playing WoW for many reasons. One of the biggest arguments I see is the endless systems Blizzard creates (domination shards, artifact power, etc), coupled with grinds like Korthia and Torghast, a storyline that doesn't seem well thought out, and a severe content drought.

However, back in Wrath, MoP, and even Legion (even with grinds) the game was a lot more active than these last 2 expansions. Honest question, what was different back then, before most of these systems and grinds came in to play? Was it more content, like the Mage Tower, Argent Tournament Grounds, Isle of Thunder, etc? Was it another way to get gear, such as valor and justice gear that lasted I think till MoP? Was it more alt-friendly back then (boa tokens sent to alts for rep during MoP, for example). Or was it you had more friends who played?

If Blizz eliminates or really reduces how many systems or grinds we get in 10.0 and actually listen to their player base, specifically what should they do to bring you back to play, or play more

Since the dawn of WoW, what has kept me playing has been a concoction of curiosity, and still is. I play to meet people, I play to experience content, I play because I'm an altoholic, I play because I like to help people, I play because I'm a mediocre completionist (only at 30k achievement points), I play to enjoy roleplay with people, I used to play for raiding/rated PvP too but stopped end Legion/start BFA as being a parent too away that time for obvious reasons.

As for what they should do, they should adjust focus on content, not just instanced content, but world content. Add more out there, instead of in here. Raiding/Mythic+/Arena/BGs are all great but it should not be the majority of the game, not at all. Giving an offering of solo content such as Mage Tower and Torghast is great but again, it is more something to set aside. I'd rather see more zone events, not just World Quests, but like BFA had invasions.

Make the ability for crafting to be part of the image again, crafting should be able to make LFR rated gear, just not a full set, and said gear should be able to be upgraded (upgraded to the highest ilvl possible for LFR (intro for normal raiding)) by gathering currency from world content. Professions should get an addition every time a new LFR comes out, give people the ability to construct some parts (4-5 pieces), and find the rest among world bosses, or LFR(Or better). Some of the equipment made by professions should have a demand to bring people out to collect, as well as in, from the dungeons.

With crafting being able to make gear with the ability to upgrade to intro normal/mid-normal raid, I would like to see raiding gear have the ability to be upgraded too, but said gear can only get upgrade currency from M+ and Raiding.

I would like to see PvP have its own gearing once more, so that achieving power within PvP is gained by doing PvP, and not the auction house/M+/Raiding.

Of course, I'd love to see the story develop without leaving behind loose ends but we cannot control their storytelling, I just know there are so many topics still to handle.

I'd love to see reputations being account-wide, not its progression but its stages. If you become honored on one character, then all your characters are honored, and so on.

I'd love to see the ability to expand the bank, either with more storage, or another tab for crafting materials.

As for guilds, I'd love to see guild advancement and leveling to be part of the world again, of course without AoE Ress, or AoE Teleport, but other things, such as even more XP bonus, crafting discounts, more discounts to traveling, etc.

As for classes:
Paladin: I'd love to see a Ranged DPS spec
Death Knight: I'd love to see Unholy being rebuilt to be Necromancer, a ranged DPS with the use of minions.
Warrior: The return of the Gladiator, but as a spec.

Shaman: An Earthwarder spec, give them the ability to tank.

Demon Hunter: A ranged DPS spec.
Rogue: A ranged DPS spec, Dark Ranger.
Monk: A ranged DPS spec, in the name of Chi'ji.

Mage: A healing spec, Chronomancer (Absorbs, barriers, and Hots).
Priest: A void corruption melee spec (Shadow/void with the use of a dagger and enhancements).
Warlock: A Minion Tanking spec, management of a Demon bound for tanking, setting a spec for you, and the demon, keep your eyes on the prize.

In addition, a Tinker class with the ability to Tank, Healer, Melee DPS, and Ranged DPS.

As for world development, it is about time we see Gnomeregan progress, as well as being introduced to Undermine. Would be delighted to see Gilneas, but we've only just recently secured that and would need some processing. I would love to see structure updates in textures and maybe update the map with the addition of new villages, others being removed, etc.

In addition to updating the world, some dungeon entrances might become unavailable, and I would love to see a loremaster/storyteller kind of NPC, there to "tell you the story of this place" (aka, bring you inside the dungeon/raid/lfr, of your choice).

As for dungeons, I've asked many times before, and I dream about it still, especially seeing that even FFXIVv2 has something close to it, an exit portal to the raids and dungeons, but instead of putting you where you were, it should put you right outside the location.

And of course, there is a huge wish for the support team of Blizzard Entertainment to take up the mantle as headhunters, and make it more unbearable to be botting. They should stop the waves, if they see a bot, or enough evidence of botting, the blade must fall right away.

[cuafpr]

friends / guild was the number one reason but that is gone as I'm basically the last one "playing" ... and i haven't logged in a few weeks... What ultimately killed it for me was system on top of system with RNG on RNG. It felt like a chore to keep up with each system, and no longer felt like i was progressing my character due to the lack of badge gear (not this M+ badge stuff they are trying). The game lost the play to have fun feel and became play to max this system out..

[Daedius]

Friends and guildies of old.

[loras]

- Non-tedious interesting gameplay, primarily of classes.
- Interesting PvP.
- Charming storyline.
- The sense of playing in a continuous fantasy world.
- Customisation of characters, gear and world in a more comprehensive and meaningful manner
Even just gems in those stupid colored sockets gave me more interesting choices than, say, BfA, it's also pleasant to know that there's a finite number of clearly defined systems: Glyphs to customise abilities, gems to toy with stats, enchants for stats & on-hits (moretheless) and set bonusses for flavor of the month.
And while i like transmogs it does reduce a piece of gear mostly to a stat-block with an (often) uninspired or uninteresting aesthetic.

- The world used to be designed as a world, also with flying kept in mind. The initial idea of this was to prevent just a few zones from becoming the sole end-game zones, and to allow max-lvl players to return to previous zones, now with flying unlocked and thus capable of engaging in content more relevant to their present power level while not negating past zones. Mind you that it's not just flying that can be used like this, though it is the most easy one design-wise.
- There used to be a bit of hope that the systems would keep improving, but after they completely chickened out of vehicles, garrisons and other sorts of developments, well, it's been hard to stay positive about the potential for improvement. At least BfA tried to keep at it with the innovation, even if it wasn't the most succesful: Generated content in terms of isles, "going back to rts roots" combined with base building for warfronts, roguelike content with the visions.
Honestly that stuff was pretty cool, but now with Torghast it feels both unrewarding yet still mandatory, and to make matters worse the rewards are glorified uninteresting uncustomisable flavorless stat-sticks with too-powerful to ignore yet still uninteresting effects.

- There has also been a breach of trust between players and devs when it comes to, among others, gold and other forms of time investment. It's a mistake to think that players and developers are on different teams here; both want players to have a good time for a long while, ultimately. Yet when things require absurd and unjustifyable amounts of time/gold then things definitely start to grate and grind. If i can recalculate a virtual dinosaur with an auctioneer on its back back to real life currency and have to conclude that you ask, as you yourself define, the equivalent of several hundred euros for that virtual dinosaur, then greed has clearly blinded you, and none will fail to notice that and draw their conclusions from it for all the rest you produce, especially when things like the current legendary-item acquisition so clearly demonstrate the willingness to go far beyond what could reasonably be considered not to be "pay to win".
- The ever growing amount of unavailable content and goodies. No, swallow your bullshit regarding "BuT iT's MoRe SpEcIaL nOW" or "EaRn It" or some variation thereof. It's a videogame, your e-peen has zero value, the difficulty is nigh-trivial for most functional people and the sole thing holding them back is time and attention investment. Nothing should become unavailable ever, period. ESPECIALLY when it is related to accessing parts of the world and story *glares at the war of thorns story quests*, as this turns the story into an incoherent mess even more. Also it's a cheap and tacky way to draw back people in the short term, yet for evident reasons loses them in the long term.

- The abandonment of past content. SL made some structural efforts in this regard, but Legion (partially unintentionally?) made the world feel alive again by involving it in the right moments. But honestly it needs a comprehensive approach to keep the world (yes, every aspect of it) at least somewhat coherent and relevant. Just reusing a couple of dungeons from each expansion for a short period of time really doesn't cut it either.

- The continueing issues with gearing, where raiders for some reason deserve special treatment. Just adapt all forms of content to give improvement gear at a reasonable and reasonably certain pace, yet do not force people to do any of the three paths (mythic+, raiding, pvp) if they do not want to. Do however allow people who follow multiple paths to acquire gear at a somewhat quicker pace, and use them in all three paths. Personally i think that should culiminate in to a few things, namely:

1. Every gearing path having a bad luck guarantor in the form of a currency-for-gear-improvement system akin to pvp currency.
2. Every form of activity should allow you to get better gear quicker by being better at what you do.
3. All gear acquisition should allow some amount of luck in gearing so that costs in i.e. skill or currency can be bypassed.
4. Gear should provide a tangible bonus to your character, but it should not grow so exponentially as to be the ultimately dominating factor in contests of skill.
5. Finally you need to keep giving noobs and terrible players a means to advance at however slow a pace if you want them to keep participating in a certain sort of endgame activity, as you do need the populace to justify any resources going that way as well as a constant flow of fresh blood to keep the scene dynamic (or alternatively: To keep it from hemorrhaging into irrelevance). So do away with hard skill thresholds like what you can currently see in mythic+ and pvp and rather make it so that better rewards just require one to either be good, invest a lot of time or to be very lucky.