I tried the 3 day trial. Here's what I thought

[liyroot]

I started playing WoW in about 2005 when I was 14 or 15. It was my favorite game until WotLK where I quit for the first time. I played all of the expansions casually (played a month and quit) until Legion where I finally quit for good. I quit because to unlock the allied races, you need to grind daily quests for 2 months. I realized that WoW was just not the game I wanted to play anymore.

But last month, for the first time in my experience, WoW was completely free to play for 3 days. I've been having a lot of fun talking about the game here on mmo-champ so I figured I should try it and see what has changed. My goal was to take my lvl 45 Legion character and get to lvl 60 so I could try Dragonflight. It looks like to me, you can now level anywhere in the game, but the most popular location is the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Here are my thoughts about the game.


Good stuff ---

1. The level designers have graduated to another dimension of excellence since I last played. The game is FILLED with beautiful art and NPCs. Every little zone is treated with extreme respect. The game looks so damn good it's surprising. There are some genius map design moments. For example, this place in Kul Tiras where you need to pretend to be one of the bad guys in order to infiltrate it. The place is on an island and when you finally get up this hill, you can see the whole zone perfectly contrasted with the sky and the ocean. The entire island is animated and filled with detail. So much passion went into designing this little island you spend less than an hour inside of.

2. Class design and combat is good. I played feral and as far as I can tell, it has barely changed since wrath of the lich king. Don't fix what isn't broken I guess.

3. Rewards. The collection elements in the game are still strong. I wanted to get loot. Getting loot felt good. Pretty important for an RPG.

4. Friendly people. I went out of my way to ask people for help instead of using google or something. People were very friendly and funny. Just like in vanila wow, I could easily stir up a huge conversation in trade chat by making a few jokes. People went out of their way to help me and asking a question always got a few whispers.

5. Story. The story in BfA at least, felt like a half-way decent Netflix show. I wanted to see the end of it. Combined with the constant cutscenes, yeah, felt like I was watching a TV show. My only complaint is, it feels weird that my character isn't in the cutscenes, considering how important I am while doing the quests. Then the cutscene starts and your character just disappears. Another problem with building a single-player game on top of a MMO.

Bad stuff ---

1. Leveling is gone. I was in Kul Tiras leveling and everyone else around me was about lvl 15-20. In my Legion gear w/legendaries (item lvl 50) I was getting destroyed by mobs. Not lvl 15s. I saw them 2-3 shootting everything. Leveling seems to offically been designated into a small annoying road bump before the latest content. I don't know why it even exists. Leveling doesn't feel good and it happens so fast that you can tell the designers are trying to rush you toward Dragon-flight. It makes since since you need to pay for Dragon-flight before you can play it.

2. Bugs. I encountered a handful of bugs trying to get to level 60. My sound turned off every 15 mins and could only be restored by restarting. Also, logging out caused a lot of bugs with the quests. Quest givers would disappear and I have to restart quests a couple of times. Small little bugs were constant. Not being able to turn in. Not being able to right click a quest object (a cannon).

3. As an experiment I tried to talk to every single player I ran into in the game. I also tried to form leveling groups. Most people did greet me back, but almost no one wanted to group. I got 1 lvl 15 hunter to make a group with me, but it was extremely awkward to quest together and he quit after about 10 mins of trying. There is just no need to work with or talk to other players in the game. The story elements of the game literally are set against you grouping with people.

4. Dated tech. All of the main quests are voiced and animated. They are short and snappy. Do 3 quests here, animation, story progress, moved to the next place. It's a half-way decent single player game, which makes it feel very bad when you see these super old 3d models trying to voice sync with the dialog. It looks so bad. And because it is trying to play the same way as a triple A single player game (e.g. God of War) it looks really bad.


Conclusion ---
Just fucking around, I gained 10 levels in a day. I made it to lvl 55 before quitting. I still had 2 days left on my trial. Ultimately, the game is in a very strange state. I wanted to see the story, but the graphics are fucking shit (during the in-game cinematics). Also, I knew that I was going to hit 60 before I was even half-way done w/ the story because of how fast you level. The mmo aspects of the game are completely dead. You never need to see or talk to anyone. I just don't get why this game is even an MMO anymore.
I don't play MMOs for the single player story. I want to talk to people. I want to fight the horde. During my day of playing, not a single open world PvP event. I only saw 1 horde player the entire day. What is the point of this game again?
The level design is amazing, but at the service of nothing. In the city Boralus, there were barely 2 or 3 people. The most beautiful graphics I've ever seen in WoW, and not a single human being there to enjoy it with. I saw so many empty buildings, painstakingly handcrafted by amazing artists. And they are empty. Why can't those be player houses?

Ultimately, I totally understand why people say they want a "WoW2" now. It makes sense.

- Remove the leveling
- Focus on the in-game graphics
- Streamline the level design to just focus on the single-player story
- Remove the subscription model

These things would make for a WoW 2.

If they made the game look like Elden Ring or something, I would get it. But the game looks like shit for a single-player game. WoW shouldn't be a sub based game anymore. There is no reason for there to even be servers. They could polish the game up, and let you "level / play the story mode" to max all offline and the game wouldn't change at all. In fact, it could be much better, making the single player experience perfect, then letting you raid and such in a group online.
I think players really want to play an MMO too. When I talked to anyone in game, they normally replied back. I talked to people, but there was nothing to do together. There is just no reason to play the game together is all. Also, just based on this forum, I don't think WoW is pulling in any new blood. Alot of the people on here have over 10,000 posts and have played for 10 years. When I see my nieces and nephews, they don't even know what WoW is. All they want to play is Minecraft and Fortnite.
And yeah, this will be my last time playing WoW or using MMO-C. I wish that Blizz would make an MMO. A lot of people suggest raid logging and that "WoW doesn't have to be your main game". I don't get this take at all.

WoW costs money every month.
- Elden Ring doesn't.
- My Oculus Quest doesn't.
- Overwatch doesn't.
- CoD doesn't.
What are we paying for?

We pay WoW monthly to play ONLINE with millions of people. But you can now easily get that from other game. In 2004 it was mind blowing. Now, it feels like fraud.

WoW in '23 feels like i'm playing with myself (and not in a good way). I don't get why the game has been derailed this far off course. I could't even get to lvl 60, because I'm playing a very average single player game and it is boring. I could have more fun playing one of their streamline experiences (like CoD) and pay WAY less. Better yet, just play a triple A single player game, and LoL or Overwatch for PvP. WoW is filled with so much abandoned content, it blows my mind. I don't even think this could possibly be good for business anymore. So many quests and worlds, and systems ... all abandoned. The game either costs WAY LESS to make than I think, or someone in the leadership is really fucking up. Just a couple of ever-green systems could bring life back into the game.


Finally, what do you guys think? Did any of you play the 3 day trial? Was it good? What do you think of the current state of WoW?

[Kikazz]

SNIP

"Thank you for reading my ted talk on my trial of an expansion released 2 expansions ago, it had its flaws and was bad - @op

[Toby451]

No one wants to group while leveling because its faster to just get an addon and blaze through. BfA content is going on 6+ years old at this point. No one wants to PvP while leveling either.


Also, your ideas for "WoW 2" sound like complete shit and I pray to god literally none of those things ever come to WoW be it 1 or 2. Go play one of other cheaply made F2P cash shop games if thats what your interested in.

[kranur]

True, most WoW is quite outdated, however it's strong points are not graphics, leveling or story experience. It's the endgame that no other MMO comes even close it.

[Sialina]

What a strange post, BFA was a long time ago.

Some things to think about.

1. At this point leveling is for people that enjoy leveling, if you don't, you get a boost to max level of the previous expansion with your purchase of the newest expansion. If you do enjoy leveling and story, you can go to Either Orgrimmar or Stormwind and turn off your xp and see all the story you want.

2. Max level has a lot of "MMO" aspects, and it's been expanded on this expansion, you need to find people for crafts and any type of content that isn't very very easy, I have several people on my friendlist from this expansion with notes on what they can craft.

3. Your "wow2" ideas sound terrible, locally stored characters would lead to such rampant cheating and server abuse that it would ruin the game.

Again, if you want to roleplay while leveling, I think you need to turn to some forums to look for likeminded people, otherwise, buy the game, level to max in 4-5 hours, and start doing stuff that actually requires you to group.

[WaltherLeopold]

People who demand graphics are genuine weirdos who should be ignored out of hand, these people do not play the game and their opinion has no bearing on anything.

Show me an mmo with a focus on graphical fidelity that's either; a) good, or b) succesful.

[liyroot]

People saying BfA is outdated, I don't get it. I logged into the game. The game says go to BfA. Whadya want me to do? That's the game.

[Mysterymask]

Sigh him again




Seriously dude youve quit wow for good on this forum like 5 times in the last 6 months

[liyroot]

People who demand graphics are genuine weirdos who should be ignored out of hand, these people do not play the game and their opinion has no bearing on anything.

Show me an mmo with a focus on graphical fidelity that's either; a) good, or b) succesful.

I don't think you read my post. My argument is that WoW plays like a single player game. And if it is a single player game, it looks pretty bad compared to the industry standard. I don't want good graphics. I don' want to play a single player game.
I know we live in the instant messaging era but please read more than 3 words before responding. This wasn't a text from your mom.

[WaltherLeopold]

I don't think you read my post. My argument is that WoW plays like a single player game. And if it is a single player game, it looks pretty bad compared to the industry standard. I don't want good graphics. I don' want to play a single player game.
I know we live in the instant messaging era but please read more than 3 words before responding. This wasn't a text from your mom.

No one cares.

Stop making false equivalences and go play your single-player games that are nothing like World of Warcraft and stop trying to change other games into your homogeneous gloop.

[Zardas]

I don't think you read my post. My argument is that WoW plays like a single player game. And if it is a single player game, it looks pretty bad compared to the industry standard. I don't want good graphics. I don' want to play a single player game.
I know we live in the instant messaging era but please read more than 3 words before responding. This wasn't a text from your mom.

It maybe doesn't look as good as the most recent single player game, but it does provide way more content, and that's why many people play it as a single player game.

[Lolites]

hell, if subscription does nothing else than keeping people like this out of WoW its money well spend...

[liyroot]

No one cares.

Stop making false equivalences and go play your single-player games that are nothing like World of Warcraft and stop trying to change other games into your homogeneous gloop.

I'm just writing about how the 3 day free trial was. What false equivalence did I make?

[Lordofbelbol]

People who demand graphics are genuine weirdos who should be ignored out of hand, these people do not play the game and their opinion has no bearing on anything.

Show me an mmo with a focus on graphical fidelity that's either; a) good, or b) succesful.

this is good comment. 100% agree

[arkanon]

People who demand graphics are genuine weirdos who should be ignored out of hand, these people do not play the game and their opinion has no bearing on anything.

Show me an mmo with a focus on graphical fidelity that's either; a) good, or b) succesful.

Black desert online.

[Lordofbelbol]

I started playing WoW in about 2005 when I was 14 or 15. It was my favorite game until WotLK where I quit for the first time. I played all of the expansions casually (played a month and quit) until Legion where I finally quit for good. I quit because to unlock the allied races, you need to grind daily quests for 2 months. I realized that WoW was just not the game I wanted to play anymore.

But last month, for the first time in my experience, WoW was completely free to play for 3 days. I've been having a lot of fun talking about the game here on mmo-champ so I figured I should try it and see what has changed. My goal was to take my lvl 45 Legion character and get to lvl 60 so I could try Dragonflight. It looks like to me, you can now level anywhere in the game, but the most popular location is the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Here are my thoughts about the game.


Good stuff ---

1. The level designers have graduated to another dimension of excellence since I last played. The game is FILLED with beautiful art and NPCs. Every little zone is treated with extreme respect. The game looks so damn good it's surprising. There are some genius map design moments. For example, this place in Kul Tiras where you need to pretend to be one of the bad guys in order to infiltrate it. The place is on an island and when you finally get up this hill, you can see the whole zone perfectly contrasted with the sky and the ocean. The entire island is animated and filled with detail. So much passion went into designing this little island you spend less than an hour inside of.

2. Class design and combat is good. I played feral and as far as I can tell, it has barely changed since wrath of the lich king. Don't fix what isn't broken I guess.

3. Rewards. The collection elements in the game are still strong. I wanted to get loot. Getting loot felt good. Pretty important for an RPG.

4. Friendly people. I went out of my way to ask people for help instead of using google or something. People were very friendly and funny. Just like in vanila wow, I could easily stir up a huge conversation in trade chat by making a few jokes. People went out of their way to help me and asking a question always got a few whispers.

5. Story. The story in BfA at least, felt like a half-way decent Netflix show. I wanted to see the end of it. Combined with the constant cutscenes, yeah, felt like I was watching a TV show. My only complaint is, it feels weird that my character isn't in the cutscenes, considering how important I am while doing the quests. Then the cutscene starts and your character just disappears. Another problem with building a single-player game on top of a MMO.

Bad stuff ---

1. Leveling is gone. I was in Kul Tiras leveling and everyone else around me was about lvl 15-20. In my Legion gear w/legendaries (item lvl 50) I was getting destroyed by mobs. Not lvl 15s. I saw them 2-3 shootting everything. Leveling seems to offically been designated into a small annoying road bump before the latest content. I don't know why it even exists. Leveling doesn't feel good and it happens so fast that you can tell the designers are trying to rush you toward Dragon-flight. It makes since since you need to pay for Dragon-flight before you can play it.

2. Bugs. I encountered a handful of bugs trying to get to level 60. My sound turned off every 15 mins and could only be restored by restarting. Also, logging out caused a lot of bugs with the quests. Quest givers would disappear and I have to restart quests a couple of times. Small little bugs were constant. Not being able to turn in. Not being able to right click a quest object (a cannon).

3. As an experiment I tried to talk to every single player I ran into in the game. I also tried to form leveling groups. Most people did greet me back, but almost no one wanted to group. I got 1 lvl 15 hunter to make a group with me, but it was extremely awkward to quest together and he quit after about 10 mins of trying. There is just no need to work with or talk to other players in the game. The story elements of the game literally are set against you grouping with people.

4. Dated tech. All of the main quests are voiced and animated. They are short and snappy. Do 3 quests here, animation, story progress, moved to the next place. It's a half-way decent single player game, which makes it feel very bad when you see these super old 3d models trying to voice sync with the dialog. It looks so bad. And because it is trying to play the same way as a triple A single player game (e.g. God of War) it looks really bad.


Conclusion ---
Just fucking around, I gained 10 levels in a day. I made it to lvl 55 before quitting. I still had 2 days left on my trial. Ultimately, the game is in a very strange state. I wanted to see the story, but the graphics are fucking shit (during the in-game cinematics). Also, I knew that I was going to hit 60 before I was even half-way done w/ the story because of how fast you level. The mmo aspects of the game are completely dead. You never need to see or talk to anyone. I just don't get why this game is even an MMO anymore.
I don't play MMOs for the single player story. I want to talk to people. I want to fight the horde. During my day of playing, not a single open world PvP event. I only saw 1 horde player the entire day. What is the point of this game again?
The level design is amazing, but at the service of nothing. In the city Boralus, there were barely 2 or 3 people. The most beautiful graphics I've ever seen in WoW, and not a single human being there to enjoy it with. I saw so many empty buildings, painstakingly handcrafted by amazing artists. And they are empty. Why can't those be player houses?

Ultimately, I totally understand why people say they want a "WoW2" now. It makes sense.

- Remove the leveling
- Focus on the in-game graphics
- Streamline the level design to just focus on the single-player story
- Remove the subscription model

These things would make for a WoW 2.

If they made the game look like Elden Ring or something, I would get it. But the game looks like shit for a single-player game. WoW shouldn't be a sub based game anymore. There is no reason for there to even be servers. They could polish the game up, and let you "level / play the story mode" to max all offline and the game wouldn't change at all. In fact, it could be much better, making the single player experience perfect, then letting you raid and such in a group online.
I think players really want to play an MMO too. When I talked to anyone in game, they normally replied back. I talked to people, but there was nothing to do together. There is just no reason to play the game together is all. Also, just based on this forum, I don't think WoW is pulling in any new blood. Alot of the people on here have over 10,000 posts and have played for 10 years. When I see my nieces and nephews, they don't even know what WoW is. All they want to play is Minecraft and Fortnite.
And yeah, this will be my last time playing WoW or using MMO-C. I wish that Blizz would make an MMO. A lot of people suggest raid logging and that "WoW doesn't have to be your main game". I don't get this take at all.

WoW costs money every month.
- Elden Ring doesn't.
- My Oculus Quest doesn't.
- Overwatch doesn't.
- CoD doesn't.
What are we paying for?

We pay WoW monthly to play ONLINE with millions of people. But you can now easily get that from other game. In 2004 it was mind blowing. Now, it feels like fraud.

WoW in '23 feels like i'm playing with myself (and not in a good way). I don't get why the game has been derailed this far off course. I could't even get to lvl 60, because I'm playing a very average single player game and it is boring. I could have more fun playing one of their streamline experiences (like CoD) and pay WAY less. Better yet, just play a triple A single player game, and LoL or Overwatch for PvP. WoW is filled with so much abandoned content, it blows my mind. I don't even think this could possibly be good for business anymore. So many quests and worlds, and systems ... all abandoned. The game either costs WAY LESS to make than I think, or someone in the leadership is really fucking up. Just a couple of ever-green systems could bring life back into the game.


Finally, what do you guys think? Did any of you play the 3 day trial? Was it good? What do you think of the current state of WoW?

You don't see how this is an mmo and you haven't made it to max, raided or did m+ or pvp....
you also did old content mate and graphic isn't a huge deal in wow, you feel like alot of ppl care about it but fact is those are vocal minority

Idk how can you have alot of opinions on the game from what you experienced, any functioning adult will agree that you haven't experienced much of it, i mean the game isn't that great rn but the way you based your opinions on is very strange and weird.

[liyroot]

You don't see how this is an mmo and you haven't made it to max, raided or did m+ or pvp....
you also did old content mate and graphic isn't a huge deal in wow, you feel like alot of ppl care about it but fact is those are vocal minority

Idk how can you have alot of opinions on the game from what you experienced, any functioning adult will agree that you haven't experienced much of it, i mean the game isn't that great rn but the way you based your opinions on is very strange and weird.

Why do you think that? Here's how I played the game:

Saw "Play for free 3 days"
Clicked it
Downloaded Wow
Logged in
WoW User Interface pops a quest on my screen. Quest says: Go to BfA
I go to BfA like the game told me
Play for 1 day
Get bored
Uninstall
Write this post cause getting hate from WoW Champ is more fun than that game

That's all I did. I just played the game the only way I was allowed. The only other decision I could of made was level somewhere else, but people in trade chat said BfA was the best place.

This is current WoW, how every new player is introduced to the game. Do you get what I'm saying? Are you saying I should of kept playing?

[Dracullus]

If you get bored after playing for 1 day, game is simply not for you. Find something you like. Or not, I'm not your parent.

And devs should focus on improving WoW for people that actually like it. Not changing fundaments to please random people.

[Segus1992]

People saying BfA is outdated, I don't get it. I logged into the game. The game says go to BfA. Whadya want me to do? That's the game.

Yes, but you're posting this on a fansite for WoW. Literally everyone here (who is playing) is playing content ~5 years newer than what you played, and the vast majority have already played what you played. Empty buildings? Yes, old content. Leveling is too easy? Yes, endgame game. Leveling mostly really serves to introduce you to the story and zones at this point, and it works fine - it's as good as removed as it'll get.

To test an MMO you don't necessarily need to reach endgame to see if you like it, but you do need to put ~8 hours in. 45-55 is maybe 2-4 hours if you're a new player, less if you're a returning one. With WoW which is the heaviest endgame MMO you kind of do need to test endgame, at the very least if you plan to post a review on a fansite.

[BasilTheRat]

People saying BfA is outdated, I don't get it. I logged into the game. The game says go to BfA. Whadya want me to do? That's the game.

Here's the problem, you don't understand