WoW is now a lobby-based dungeon crawler

[Berkilak]

I suppose I can see where you're coming from. But I did play back then, too. But it boils down to "the world is big and it took long to level." I hardly think that scattering raid content counts as the world itself mattering. The entrance placement of instanced content doesn't make the world itself more engaging.

It was certainly more immersive, but mostly because we were exploring areas that I wanted to investigate from the RTS games. I wanted to go to the Dark Portal, to Blackrock Mountain, to the site of Mannoroth's demise. And I did. And then it was over. And this was value that I ascribed to the world rather than any sort of inherent value.

Back then, the world simply existed as a world first, gameplay arena second. A far second. Again, this has its merits. I felt that I was in a place that existed not because its existence was demanded by a questline, but simply because it exists naturally. But the flipside of that is that very, very little of the world actually mattered from an objective mechanical perspective.

[Mastacow]

That's the beauty of it. You can just login and get going. You don't have to waste time anymore on the other useless stuff.

The only question I find myself asking is, since they don't seem to be putting much effort into ANY of the content anymore is it worth my $15?

[potis]

It's funny reading a thread like this because I still remember the days of Wotlk running laps around Dalaran waiting for anything to do (dungeons or raids) because there just wasn't anything else. And I know others had a similar experience in TBC with Shattrah, some might even have felt it in vanilla. Definitely makes me appreciate the game these days because there are a lot of things to do that just weren't in the game yet back then. Legion forward I haven't spent any time just waiting in the city for something to happen, I always log on with a clear objective in mind for what to do.

But yeah you also have those people who are like "I choose to only do 20% of the content in the game, that means there's no content in the game"

Its natural.

No one likes being told they invested so much time and still didnt get anywhere. People like to claim "casual" "this and that", "my own way or the high way", but when you basically make them understand they are just wrong, they dont react well.

You can see it on the secondary game forums and on random comments now and then.

Someone posts asking help for their character in Diablo forum, having 380 hours played, and its like your characters on new season launch at the 6th hour because the knowledge disparity is that massive.

When things are active, people accept the comments/help cause it helps them that moment, telling them "Are you for real dude? 14 years ago in WOTLK all i had to do was Raid", they go into a crusade trying to prove you wrong, because they were simply much slower or they never reached the part of well, raid logging.

[kamuimac]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>now

what the fuck did I just wake up and it's 2010 again!?!?!?!

you didnt and he is speaking pure nonsense.

world is very much alive with ton of people doing content .

[Shadowferal]

The only question I find myself asking is, since they don't seem to be putting much effort into ANY of the content anymore is it worth my $15?

$15 is worth a lot less after almost two decades of inflation. So maybe you're getting what you're paying for. They had to cut corners somewhere, especially since most currently cancel their subscription after a month or two, staggering their money into the game...

[Osmeric]

$15 is worth a lot less after almost two decades of inflation. So maybe you're getting what you're paying for. They had to cut corners somewhere, especially since most currently cancel their subscription after a month or two, staggering their money into the game...

Specifically, $15 in 2004 would be worth about $24 today.

[Elanore Maroth]

I log in when I can and then do what I want to do, Mythic+, leveling, questing, raiding etc. Nothing is really mandatory now you can log in to do what you want and then log out. If there is nothing you want to do, you don’t log in. Best thing about this expansion.

[Soon-TM]

most currently cancel their subscription after a month or two, staggering their money into the game...

Well, if you aren't particularly interested in grinding M+/raids/arena, you get barely one month (maybe two, if you are lucky and/or said content is heavily timegated) worth of content with each xpac/major patch. So subbing for one month and then bailing out seems like the rational thing to do. As I read once in these boards, if Blizzard timegates their content, it's only logical to timegate one's money.

[WowIsDead64]

Specifically, $15 in 2004 would be worth about $24 today.

Again. Please, also provide cost difference between hardware blade server in 2004 and virtual cloud server in 2023. And I don't even talk about development tools cost, such as handmade vs AI.

[MrLachyG]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>now

what the fuck did I just wake up and it's 2010 again!?!?!?!

Yes the last 13 years have been a really long fever dream

[Shadowferal]

Specifically, $15 in 2004 would be worth about $24 today.

I wrote that confusing...
It's about the cost of resources that constantly went up, versus a price you're paying that hasn't changed in almost 2 decades.

[PenguinChan]

Again. Please, also provide cost difference between hardware blade server in 2004 and virtual cloud server in 2023. And I don't even talk about development tools cost, such as handmade vs AI.

WoW's employee count today far exceeds WoW's original development team. More than double, probably triple right now or even quadruple at certain points in the past - and I'm talking the main dev team, not the entire team consisting of QA, HR, Advertising, etc. etc.. Not even to mention better benefits, insurance, employee pay in the industry being a lot higher than 2004...

Which, if we were to go off of $ value alone, we probably should be paying something like $60 a month or more. But we don't, because that's suicide. And why we also have a cash shop and why they're exploring avenues to fuel the game's costs.

[Elanore Maroth]

I feel that some of you have forgotten that everything you do is your own choice. There is a lot to do in wow, but not everything is interesting to you. It would be wrong to only play 5% of the game and then complain there is nothing to do.

[WowIsDead64]

WoW's employee count today far exceeds WoW's original development team. More than double, probably triple right now or even quadruple at certain points in the past - and I'm talking the main dev team, not the entire team consisting of QA, HR, Advertising, etc. etc.. Not even to mention better benefits, insurance, employee pay in the industry being a lot higher than 2004...

Which, if we were to go off of $ value alone, we probably should be paying something like $60 a month or more. But we don't, because that's suicide. And why we also have a cash shop and why they're exploring avenues to fuel the game's costs.

How about outsourcing? Blizzard don't tell us, but it really feels like this game has been developed by AI since at least BFA, cuz only Legion still has that "handmade" feeling. At least they use so called "distributed" development at least since Legion. That's when you have more devs, yeah, but they're not super professional game developers - they just do some small parts of overall job. Yeah, there are more of them, that can sound great from marketing perspective. I.e. that "Our team is doubled!". But they aren't actually paid so well.

[Osmeric]

Again. Please, also provide cost difference between hardware blade server in 2004 and virtual cloud server in 2023. And I don't even talk about development tools cost, such as handmade vs AI.

The cost of providing a product doesn't have anything to do with the price that will be charged for the product, except that if the latter is less than the former the product isn't provided at all.

(In a competitive market, price does approach cost, but there are significant barriers to switching suppliers in the MMO space.)

[unknowndeath]

The idea that ai is developing wow is quite solid. You can easily draw a dragon and tell ai to add legs horns tattoos et cetera and there it is you name an animal and boom it is in wow. AI has passed the point of human production everything is done in ai. No more human production