Is wow really a RPG or just an action game?

[ceall]

I'd even call 'call of duty' story mode an RPG, so yes, wow is definitely one.

[Gourbaak]

Wow is clearly a first person shooter. Or a 4X, i'm not sure.

[Nymrohd]

Almost all games are RPGs if you squint hard enough.

[melzas]

Of course it's RPG, you can play one of 3 roles, tank, healer or dps.

Anyway, you probably should stop being so obsessed with labels. After all, who cares if it's called RPG, action game or whatever?

[CalamityHeart]

Yes...? Of course?

I can't really tell what's actually being argued here. WoW being an RPG at its core seems like a fairly obvious and objective trait to me. Claiming that WoW is somehow not at RPG just seems like a really dumb and roundabout way of saying "I don't like WoW". Which, I mean, is fair enough and totally understandable. But my dislike of grapes doesn't somehow disqualify them from being a fruit, and I feel like I'd be silly to try and argue that it did.

[Gourbaak]

Yes...? Of course?

I can't really tell what's actually being argued here. WoW being an RPG at its core seems like a fairly obvious and objective trait to me. Claiming that WoW is somehow not at RPG just seems like a really dumb and roundabout way of saying "I don't like WoW". Which, I mean, is fair enough and totally understandable. But my dislike of grapes doesn't somehow disqualify them from being a fruit, and I feel like I'd be silly to try and argue that it did.

the argument is i like rpg, i don't like wow so wow can't be a rpg, it's as simple as that

[Mysterymask]

Depth doesn't define a genre either...

Super Mario Bros isn't less of a platformer because Celeste exists
Divekick is still a fighting game despite the fact it only has 2 buttons
Pheonix Wright is still a visual novel despite the non existance of porn
Advanced Wars is still a Strategy game even though it's very simple

I can go on

[Toby451]

Almost all games are RPGs if you squint hard enough.

Ding Ding Ding. RPG is such a generic term it could apply to 75% of all games without even needing to stretch the definition.




Yes, WoW is clearly a RPG.




On the note of PoE, I am soooooo happy not every game is as complex as that is. Dont get me wrong, I enjoy playing it a few weeks every season but I would be soooo burned out on gaming if everything tried to be like that.

[Caprias]

It's by very definition both things but I might have to offer a viewpoint from where the ever increasing skill ceiling can kind of hurt the classical rpg trope.

This isn't my own original take but I kind of agree that there is some merit and a point worthy of discussion to it.
A well known german ex-WoW youtuber once questioned this on his podcast and I hope I'm somewhat paraphrasing it right:

Is there a problem when the required skill to perform is too high to live out your rpg class/character/etc. fantasy and how in general what you build your character to be?
For example you want your character to be this super skilled sniper guy, the best in the west and all that jazz, but sadly you have never played much fps and are just not good at clicking heads fast enough.

Fallout somewhat circumvented this with the v.a.t.s. system and even with the worse hardware your average player had in vanilla/tbc/wotlk WoW, your combat rotation was really easy to perform, knowledge and your build was a lot more important on numbers throughput than mechanical skill.

While I wouldn't say WoW is on par with rts/mobas/fps in terms of mechanical prowess required it is still quite a bit to micromanage and keep up with for the last few years, too much for a lot of players as you can easily see by looking at logs (talking about the performance gap number, not the parse%, it becomes clear there is quite a skill gap).

I enjoy modern mmos a lot more so I'd be fine if it stays like this but I think this is a valid point.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

People count PoE as an rpg now? Does rpg just mean “has skill tree” to some of y’all?

[Lochton]

Yes. World of Warcraft is an RPG. Not really much of an argument there.

[Flevor]

Let's see here...

RPG = Role Playing Game

WoW is a Game
Can you Role Play in said game? Yes.

WoW is an RPG

It's really not that hard

[Kralljin]

I find very questionable that act very obtuse and basically say "Of course WoW is an RPG".
RPG in itself is a very loose definition, if you take the term that literal then everything from Super Mario to CS is an RPG, because you basically (role) play as a given character within a made up enviroment.

I think what the OP means is very obvious: is the primary focus just the gameplay nowadays or the overall experience?
Perhaps a better way to phrase it "Is it a fantasy driven or gameplay driven game?".

And that's in my opinion a debate worth having, does the concept of a fantasy appeal to players or should everything be subservient to the immediate minute to minute gameplay?
To give a more direct example: Class specific buffs.

Originally, quite a few classes offered some unique, often powerful buffs.
Then they caused issues for some players, so Blizzard homogenized them.
Then those buffs continued to cause problems for smaller raidsizes, so Blizzard removed more of them.
Then Blizzard thought these things are just relics of the past and ditched all of them.

Some players argue they should make a return because they add flavor to a class and push people towards having more diverse comps, rather than just stacking what is currently FotM.
Other players argue that they're just a hindrance and force people to play a given spec rather than just enjoy what they want to play.

Having Class buffs is a fantasy driven approach.
Not having them is a gameplay driven approach.

[Gurahk]

It's difficult to call it an RPG when it's so e-sports oriented.
It's missing rpg features that are standard to such as housing and good storytelling.

Housing is not a standard RPG feature, unless you're implying that all the RPGs I played were fake RPGs.

[Florena]

WoW is and always has been an RPG. If you want to argue semantics about what 'type' of RPG it is, then have at it I guess. But it is a role playing game.

[Linkedblade]

After playing some poe and eso I'm amused by the depth that these games have and the variety of builds, I think dc universe had some of it too. Wow is just way too straightforward to be called RPG, it's just a skillbased action game, it severely lacks variery. It's not that hard for a new player to learn wow, it's all about gathering experience with the encounters, everything else is more or less automatic.

Wow isn't an rpg at all. It's a chat room with a customizable avatar and some combat mini-games.

[Swnem]

Housing is not a standard RPG feature, unless you're implying that all the RPGs I played were fake RPGs.

The other big mmorpg's have it, Skyrim has it, the Witcher 3 has it. It's a staple of major RPG's, yes. It doesn't mean it required, but it's one of those major features WoW is missing.

[Demithio]

There's been so many RPG elements taken out of the game I wouldn't even know where to begin. Definitely not an RPG anymore. Itemization, character, and world involvement come to mind, among countless other things striped away over the years. WoW was never a "big cheese" on the RPG end of things, however it did have enough to be involved in the world. Now its just some action game thing.

[Otimus]

I dunno, it does feel like a lot of the RPG-ness of it has been gutted (and blaming LFG for this is fucking weird like one guy in this thread did. The best RPGs in the world don't have that. Or even online play.). The world feels too pointless (and no, having no LFG so you have to type text to people to be allowed to play the game doesn't magically make your world have meaning), but it's always been sort of varying levels of pointless. Character customization has gone back and forth in how involved it is. One of the dumbest things they've done was trying to e-sportsify an MMORPG. That always felt like a tonal and genre mismatch to me.