Is WoW's combat holding the game back?

[Big Thanks]

Time spent grinding nonsense like soulshards and other meme tier "rpg" elements to be even able to play in a raid is not hard, it's tedium.
Time =/= difficulty.

The raids themselves and the mechanics were dogshit easy.

Time investment is a kind of difficulty.
Is NOT a fun difficulty for sure.

But a real life job or anything really that requires your time investment can be "difficult". IMO by the time investment it requires

[AcidicSyn]

I wouldn't mind an action oriented warcraft experience. Something with the combat of BDO or similar would be pretty enjoyable.

Separate game. If they tried to swamp out combat systems in WoW I think it would fail comically, but sign me up for a separate action rpg within the warcraft IP.

[Raven]

bring back mana management and actual use of CC and you fix most of wow

Good one, we have seen what happens when they try.

[Ausr]

In Vanilla you needed skill and experience to kill bosses. Don't push this useless crap called Shadowlands and Dragonflight need's coordination!!!
You have more addons to swift kill bosses now days unlike classic and TBC.

Tell me you didn't play Vanilla without telling me you didn't play Vanilla.

[varren]

No. Action combat in MMOs is fucking shit.

I hate that every MMO tries to chase the action combat carrot on a stick, nothing wrong with tab target for MMOs.

[Ginnung]

I like Action MMO's but I really hate this trend of everything becoming homogenized.
The same way almost all action games nowadays plays the same they're extremely formulaic ( especially AAA games ).
Same with how '' appealing to a wide audience '' just ends up meaning making things bland and '' family friendly '', why does everything need to appeal to a '' wide audience ''?
I understand the financial reasons but it's a very bleak way to approach things imo.

Another example that comes to mind for me is voiced protagonists in RPG's, I personally feel like it makes it harder for me to actually create my own character because they never sound like what I imagine them to sound like.
And when you read things you use your imagination more and internalize it differently, I find that I remember things better when I read at my own pace and that it's easier to '' half-listen '' when things are voiced.
And usually the dialogue becomes dumbed down because one voice actor has to voice so many lines so dialogue becomes shorter and shorter and less detailed.
People act as if not having voice acting/ a voice protagonist is somehow objectively worse and a problem that needs to be changed.
But people are just conflating '' it's not my preference '' with '' it's wrong ''.

As someone who likes sexualized content I see this shit all the time with that too, it's very apparent that there's certain people that are incapable of dealing with the existence of things they dislike.
And they constantly try to get things changed or removed and it's extremely irritating to deal with and really reeks of narcissism.
I dunno why people can't just accept that not everything needs to appeal to everyone and that it actually makes gaming more diverse and makes for more options when games look, play, sound etc differently.

Action combat isn't better it's just different, it has pros and cons and the way that you interact with it is different.
The same way that voiced dialogue and non-voiced dialogue is different and the way you interact with it and internalize it is different.

[Osmeric]

why does everything need to appeal to a '' wide audience ''?
I understand the financial reasons but it's a very bleak way to approach things imo.

The reason games are made is financial. If you dispute that, you basically want people to make games for you without hope of making money. Why do you think you deserve that sort of charity? Do you think the world revolves around you and people should do things for you even if it doesn't benefit them?

[Biomega]

I wouldn't mind an action oriented warcraft experience. Something with the combat of BDO or similar would be pretty enjoyable.

Separate game. If they tried to swamp out combat systems in WoW I think it would fail comically, but sign me up for a separate action rpg within the warcraft IP.

If they ever make WoW2, I do fully expect the combat to be more "action-y" - but I don't expect it to be a full-on action RPG. There's too many problems with that in an MMO setting, technical and otherwise.

Things I would expect, though, is something like the removal of auto-attacks, and perhaps a general lowering of the GCD to increase the pace of combat somewhat - along with a reduction in complexity, i.e. less buttons overall but more frequent use of those buttons. That's a more "console-y" design, irrespective of whether or not a hypothetical WoW2 would also come out on consoles (and let's face it, it probably would).

I think ability bloat right now is the biggest problem with WoW's combat, but not everyone agrees. There was a lot of anti-pruning sentiment going on, to which I can only reply "go and play Shadow Priest right now, and then come back to talk" because it's absolutely ridiculous to think that any proactive rotation should involve 13+ buttons. I think any future iteration of this kind of combat would have to dramatically cut back on this, and introduce complexity in other ways - procs perhaps that change the order you use stuff in, rather than making you use more different stuff.

Still, WoW's combat is one of its best aspects, and a big reason why it still works so well.