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

[NineSpine]

I don't know if easy is the word to use, and not to change this to a FF14 thread, but what is something "easy" WoW can do that FF14 is doing to make the community more lively? I have not played that game.

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Of course, all those are options and things you can do on your own time. We need more of that, imo.

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Next expansion: WoW Back to Basics? Maybe with an ease on systems and grinds it can get back to that? Who knows.

They could ban people for bad behavior.

[aceperson]

oh ya. wod is just vastly overshadowed by things like the garrison. the expac itself wasn't bad. the class design, quests, raids, etc were all great. the issue is blizz didn't make enough content for the expac and there was little to no incentive to leave your garrison.

i can play a fun character in a bad game for days. i can't be bothered to play an unfun character in a good game (or below par in the case of shadowlands).

[sargentos]

I enjoyed playing as part of a large community working together getting to know one another and eventually clearing the raids...

The whole mythic hell even heroic thing came about as a natural side effect of always trying to improve. The game just slowly seemed to get worse from my perspective as it seemed to slide from taking down the big bad to getting the most loot.

Now it's impossible for me to get into alts where I used to have a stable of them or find anything I want to do but raid log from all the grinds. You can't just swap in an alt and run mythic raids anymore there is an entire month of legenthy chores to do first... it makes me a little sad tbh.

Ya I mean back in Wrath or Cata I think it took maybe a couple weeks to fully gear up an alt or a toon you switched to your main. Maybe it shouldn't be that easy, but then again, how do you make everyone content and continue playing?

[NineSpine]

Dude, don't ask me my fucking opinion on something if you're just going to pretend like I'm not answering your question when I am. Either respond to what I'm saying or move the fuck on.

I asked you why other people being able to get BiS gear makes the game less fun for you. If you answer the question i asked, I wouldn’t have to ask it multiple times. This is a bad habit you have, where you treat direct questions like opportunities to pontificate on whatever the fuck you want rather than being a normal person and answering the question.

[Relapses]

I asked you why other people being able to get BiS gear makes the game less fun for you. If you answer the question i asked, I wouldn’t have to ask it multiple times. This is a bad habit you have, where you treat direct questions like opportunities to pontificate on whatever the fuck you want rather than being a normal person and answering the question.

And I answered your question. Twice. I don't know why you refuse to accept my answer so I guess it's on me for responding to somebody who clearly isn't even bothering to read my posts.

Take care my dude.

[Indigenously Abled]

I asked you why other people being able to get BiS gear makes the game less fun for you. If you answer the question i asked, I wouldn’t have to ask it multiple times. This is a bad habit you have, where you treat direct questions like opportunities to pontificate on whatever the fuck you want rather than being a normal person and answering the question.

Deflection is the most sincere form of "I don't know how to adequately respond."

What killed community is not LFG, but stratification with multiple difficulty levels and ratings.

This, in so many words.

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Ya I mean back in Wrath or Cata I think it took maybe a couple weeks to fully gear up an alt or a toon you switched to your main. Maybe it shouldn't be that easy, but then again, how do you make everyone content and continue playing?

The alt game was much more satisfying then. I could slam a toon to 80 or 85 and get purple parses in a few weeks. No branching narrative paths or arbitrary rep grind standing in my way.

[sargentos]

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.

To your last point, how could WoW make old content relevant? How do other games do it? I believe a Youtuber I watched a couple weeks ago brought up an idea of having, say, WQs in Wrath or BC areas that reward justice gear for vanity items or transmog, and WQs for the current expansion offer valor. Soulsobreezy I think was his name

[Relapses]

Deflection is the most sincere form of "I don't know how to adequately respond."

Accusing somebody of deflection when the question was adequately answered is the most sincere form of "I don't like information that disagrees with my preconceived notions so I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist."

[sargentos]

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.

Ya I'm not sure how they go back to that. I don't want to see the game fail. I said this earlier, I hope that Blizz realizes their backs are against the wall and they look and see what worked in the past and mix some of that in. Unless their answer is go play Classic. Server rep was huge for me. Back in BC, I had the Felsteel Longblade pattern, and was well known on my server for that.

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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.

Ya that's why my playtime is down and I'm on a break. We will see who returns in 9.2

[neocount]

The answer to both of these questions is people.

If WoW was a single-player game, I wouldn't play it at all. If it weren't for the great group of people I run M+ content with right now, I wouldn't be playing WoW at all. It's groups of people interacting together with the content Blizzard makes for WoW that is fun.

[Indigenously Abled]

Accusing somebody of deflection when the question was adequately answered is the most sincere form of "I don't like information that disagrees with my preconceived notions so I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist."

Call it what you like. Your exchanges are a treat to read. I don't blame folks for just shrugging you off and ignoring your bullshit.

[Chadow]

People...friends...and ofcourse because it was *new*

Everyone have stuff in life that "elevates" them and makes one excited.
I am lucky/unlucky to be elevated by other people via chat...possibly because i lack friends IRL, who knows?

I login, go to Goldshire in RP server and chat away for as many hours as i want.
That elevates me nowadays.

Back in the day though...was just a mixture of *new* + *friends*

[sargentos]

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.

The outdoor content like BFA invasions and even the pre-Legion and current Legion invasions were something to do and in Legion's case helped with alt leveling. Anything outdoor/world related would make server more active, I would hope. BOA rep for alts for example, would be great. What they are doing in 9.1.5 is a start with alts and the campaign. I just mentioned this, but the closest they got to crafted gear being what you are suggesting was in WoD, I believe. Make it useful and not just many rolling either alchemy, engineering, or enchanting. Legion tried with the quests tied in to professions but it just felt...flat.

I don't remember why they stopped the guild leveling. But if that offered say vanity items, or something similar, and therefore would require a guild to go to the open world and do things to level, that would be something to do. I remember that mount that you got for clearing Highmaul and was it BRF? on mythic with a guild group.

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[QUOTE=NineSpine;53415256]1. It was very easy to put together a BiS list for the content I wanted to do, and chase that with the intent of having it in a reasonable amount of time. That doesn't exist anymore for anyone who isn't mythic raiding.

2. There was no pay to win option.

3. Content was not deprecated the minute the new patch came out.

4. There weren't as many chores. For example, if I wanted to focus on a specific rep or two, I was typically allowed to do that. Now, I have to do whatever chores Blizzard has chosen for me for the day or week.

5. If you didn't want to do raids or very difficult content, you didn't have to, and you still had a game to play. You could spend months gearing from regular old dungeons or plain battlegrounds. Now, that phase of gearing is over in literally a few days at most.

6. The classes had a lot of flavor and utility that mattered, giving them a more three dimensional role and filling the class fantasy better.

7. Demonology wasn't whatever the hell it is now.

8. We got new abilities every expansion.

9. You always felt like your character had an aspect of every spec in the class, and that your chosen spec was just a doubling-down on one aspect of the class. Now, every spec feels like a totally different class in most cases.

10. The game was more about the world than it was about the story. The story has always been bad, but it didn't used to feel like the centerpiece of the world design.

11. Daily Quest hubs felt like areas that were actually designed for players to have fun in. The quests were built to flow together and make sense, and it felt like you were spending some time in a specific part of the world, having a coherent experience. World Quests feel like random tasks strewn about a zone.

12. The dungeon design wasn't throttled by the need for every dungeon to neatly fit into the M+ system.

13. The developers tried to iterate and improve on core systems, rather than reinventing the wheel every expansion just to throw it out at the end.

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As far as number 3 goes, I wonder if the Legion mythic plus event and Mage Tower returning is their attempt to figure out how to utilize prior expansion content, like FF14 (or what I've heard )

Also, for 11, some of my fave times in WoW was Isle of Thunder and the Timeless Isle. Just gave you stuff to do, and in former's case, a nice storyline and that treasure queue. All they gotta do is look and see what worked for them previously.

[Relapses]

Call it what you like. Your exchanges are a treat to read. I don't blame folks for just shrugging you off and ignoring your bullshit.

Considering most people on this forum don't actually want to discuss much more than the reasons the game sucks and how glad they've finally quit (for real, like really for real this time) I can't say I blame them. If all I wanted was validation for my decision not to play WoW and some dude called me out I'd be pretty salty too.

[Trollokdamus]

I was younger, less depressed, and had a guild to play with. As long as the social aspect was good I was willing to put up with questionable game design elements. I'm still playing (out of habit) but I'm on my own now, I doubt that I have it in me to join another guild.

[Ekis]

To your last point, how could WoW make old content relevant? How do other games do it? I believe a Youtuber I watched a couple weeks ago brought up an idea of having, say, WQs in Wrath or BC areas that reward justice gear for vanity items or transmog, and WQs for the current expansion offer valor. Soulsobreezy I think was his name

In regards to current expansions, I believe item level/power gains for starters shouldn't be so high that the last patch's raid or tier is completely invalidated by items from the normal/heroic versions of the current patch. Sure, maybe tier items or maybe bosses at the end tail of a raid could drop stuff that be better to promote actually doing that content but the disparity shouldn't be so high that it deincentivizes people from doing that old content.

I'd say maybe make attunements something again, but I know people hate them. They don't have to be unnecessarily convoluted or hard to complete, but it should also promote going through old content to get prepped for the new content.

World Quests in old zones would honestly be amazing, as it'd get people out into the World...of Warcraft...instead of being packed into the nearest hub or sitting in the new zones only. They've already laid a bit of framework down with Timewalking, I'm not sure why we couldn't have something like Timewalking WQ's (akin to revisiting the Argent Tournament in Northrend, for example) where Azeroth still needs protection or "we need these old mining/herb resources for the fight against Azeroth's enemies". Especially since mobs level with people now as well.

There's just so many ideas or ways they could go about it but at the end of the day there either needs to be a balance of keeping content relevant and accessible on both ends of the spectrum or they need to go back to their roots and actually incentivize going through it all to get to the end point. One thing I noticed is that all the old grindy stuff like attunements were replaced with other newer grinds that contributed to borrowed power only to be ditched by the next expansion. I may have disliked attunements just as much as the next guy but at least it got me to experience all the old content first before jumping head -first into the new stuff. And following the current trends, I'm almost certain I can wait on playing Shadowlands until the final patch drops that completely invalidates all the stuff before it within the same expansion.

[shoc]

WoW was fun when I could play with my friends. There was a time when multiplayer was novel.

These days, there's a new multiplayer game to play with my friends coming out every month.

[Swnem]

I liked that i could play alts. I liked that i could strive for gearing them in more casual ways withour having to play a lottery and days of farming to catch up with an end-game power system.

I remember in wrath i raided heroic with my main and had several alts with which to run normal too.


Unfortunely, not even that would be enough now that i am also a player of FFXIV and i have a perspective of how much WoW is lacking in comparison.
Just returning to a point before this train lost control will not be enough, though it will please me. It will take years to rebuild this into a good mmorpg again. There are many systems that were ignored or removed with the years that need revisiting. Be it housing, guild features, side evergreen content and story telling and continued evolution of classes.

Personal peeve of mine is the current talent system. The WoD system made talents exciting. You would change depending on the situation. Nowadays talents are more the look at what is best fire and forget afair.
So many mistakes were made. The game needs to reset to a past design and expand on features that are important. Not more e-sports focused nonsense.

[Saiteck]

I started playing WoW with my brother, kept playing because of friends that I got to know IRL and ingame and because I really enjoyed it back in the day. Today I play because I still enjoy it to some degree, but im playing solo 99% of the time and I have nothing better to do so I keep on playing. Have I been playing for 16 years Im gonna keep playing til the game is gone, can't stop now.

If any other game caught my interest I might quit but there is no game out there that I enjoy the slightest

[Echocho]

Accusing somebody of deflection when the question was adequately answered is the most sincere form of "I don't like information that disagrees with my preconceived notions so I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist."

But it wasn't adequately answered. You've been asked multiple times why a badge system för casuals would make the game less fun for you and every single time you've essentially answered "I don't like it".
That's not a reason, that's an emotion. Until you can give a valid reason why a system for a different target audience than yourself would make the game less fun for you people are going to keep asking.
It's okay to say that you don't want filthy casuals to have the same shines as you, there's no shame in being selfish.