Why was World of Warcraft dumbed down that much?

[Kakera]

Oh look another one of these threads created by a clearly uneducated idiot that hasn't played this game at a high level since classic. Moving on now.

Keep it civil please.

[Resentful]

I didnt realize that mages spamming frostbolt (or fireball past blackwing lair) and warlocks spamming Shadowbolt took so much skill.

Well you did have to use the environment other then that it wasn't exactly fucking rocket science - Example Chrommagus.

- You cured curses magic / Use your sand
- You hide when he does incinerate flesh via the walls
- You tank swap eventually
- You tranqshot

Repeat.

[nekobaka]

WoW was always a dumbed down MMO. That's why it became so popular.

WoW was a casual MMO in comparison by reduction of grinds and this trend continued all the way up until MoP. Everquest wasnt really that hard, it was very grindy.

[Chrysia]

WoW was a casual MMO in comparison by reduction of grinds and this trend continued all the way up until MoP. Everquest wasnt really that hard, it was very grindy.

Everquest was also brutally more punishing. Fizzles, spell class ranks, and deleveling experience loss.

[Chaosturn]

Well you did have to use the environment other then that it wasn't exactly fucking rocket science - Example Chrommagus.

- You cured curses magic / Use your sand
- You hide when he does incinerate flesh via the walls
- You tank swap eventually
- You tranqshot

Repeat.

Excactly. In comparison to something as simple as Stone Guards normal - not overgeared - it was a joke
Plus, there was only one difficulty available at the time.

[melodramocracy]

Oh noes! Good game design, how horrible.

Spoonfeeding you the 'what to do and where' isn't good game design, much like quests that are so blatantly obvious that they might as well not exist aren't particularly good game design either.

Also Dungeons are no longer "end-game" PVE. Merely another quick gearing up tool.

Speaking of bad game design...

LOL fuck that if you people can claim the fucking game is easy you should be able to link the god dam armory alright? You too let me see it haha cmon It's not very hard I mean really if you and the OP are going to say the game is easy with no challenging content then I'll assume your in a top tier guild 13/13 without any evidence what the fuck was the point of making a thread to cry about the game being easy when you or the OP can't even beat the hardest shit in the game.

That pisses me off like pretty bad too people talking so much god dam shit in terms of the content being easy when you're nothing.

I never said that there was no challenging content, I said it was a minority of the content. From level 1-90, currently, there is literally nothing that will kill you unless you simply kamikaze into a crowd of monsters higher level than you wearing greys, afk near something that can aggro you, or you level on a pvp server. This isn't exaggeration, it's just how weakened enemies have been made in this game during the process.

Once you hit 90, you face heroics, none of which will give you the slightest difficulty, with maybe the exception of SPM if the team doesn't know what to do. You'll get into the LFR, which admittedly can be the source of wipes, for any number of reasons. You'll do scenarios, which are completely faceroll until you reach the ilvl required for heroic ones (and then those too are fairly mild). World bosses? Die, run back, win a prize. And has Nalak ever actually wiped a group?

So out of ALL the content this game offers, challenges are:

pvp
2 out of 3 raid modes
challenge modes
maybe possibly IoT if you're undergeared.

So yeah, the game is easy, despite there being difficult things to do. There are difficult things to do in almost every game.. if the game itself doesn't allow for it, then folks make up their own feat. Is the old super mario brothers a hard game? No. Is doing a sub 5 minute game clear hard? Yes. That doesn't make the game hard.

You know why Demon Souls is considered a hard game? Primarily because there is no difficulty settings, and all players starting out face the same sort of opposition. If it had difficulty settings, it'd probably have gotten a lot less notice.

TL;DR - the whole 'if you think the game is easy, lets see your armory' stance is bullshit.

[Resentful]

Excactly. In comparison to something as simple as Stone Guards normal - not overgeared - it was a joke
Plus, there was only one difficulty available at the time.

Here I'll show you C'thun

- provide the raid within a circle like position upon the eye ball do not stand next to each other or the beam of chain death kills you ( This was the hardest mechanic )
- Kill your tentacles when they sprout on you
- Kill the ring of Eye stalks via the eye ball
- Kill giant claw / Giant tentacle
- Run from beam of death via circling around
- C'thun eats one of your raid members you kill two of his ''things'' to make him valuable / You must keep do as much as damage as possible due to ''Disgestion''
- Repeat for X amount of mins

---------- Post added 2013-06-25 at 12:18 AM ----------

Spoonfeeding you the 'what to do and where' isn't good game design, much like quests that are so blatantly obvious that they might as well not exist aren't particularly good game design either.



Speaking of bad game design...



I never said that there was no challenging content, I said it was a minority of the content. From level 1-90, currently, there is literally nothing that will kill you unless you simply kamikaze into a crowd of monsters higher level than you wearing greys, afk near something that can aggro you, or you level on a pvp server. This isn't exaggeration, it's just how weakened enemies have been made in this game during the process.

Once you hit 90, you face heroics, none of which will give you the slightest difficulty, with maybe the exception of SPM if the team doesn't know what to do. You'll get into the LFR, which admittedly can be the source of wipes, for any number of reasons. You'll do scenarios, which are completely faceroll until you reach the ilvl required for heroic ones (and then those too are fairly mild). World bosses? Die, run back, win a prize. And has Nalak ever actually wiped a group?

So out of ALL the content this game offers, challenges are:

pvp
2 out of 3 raid modes
challenge modes
maybe possibly IoT if you're undergeared.

So yeah, the game is easy, despite there being difficult things to do. There are difficult things to do in almost every game.. if the game itself doesn't allow for it, then folks make up their own feat. Is the old super mario brothers a hard game? No. Is doing a sub 5 minute game clear hard? Yes. That doesn't make the game hard.

You know why Demon Souls is considered a hard game? Primarily because there is no difficulty settings, and all players starting out face the same sort of opposition. If it had difficulty settings, it'd probably have gotten a lot less notice.

TL;DR - the whole 'if you think the game is easy, lets see your armory' stance is bullshit.

I've respected you for awhile now but cmon once more if you can claim the game is easy and be like oh my god god mode is enabled then why even bother making a thread about it when the OP couldn't even do the hard shit?

And yes Dark souls is fucking hard aka Spear guy and Fat guy but that's another tale.

[Wulfstan]

Players got better, the game didn't get easier. And besides we all know that WoW is on it's graceful decline, stop acting like this gravy train was gonna go on forever.

[madokbro]

I don't like hard games, I can try heroic raiding if I wish to participate in challenging content.

Raiding is the only "fun" thing World of Warcraft can offer as a hobby, after you reach to max level and sated your interest on mogs or mounts(takes a week), and if you don't have any interest in pvp. Completing raid finder once a week takes a few hours at best, nothing left to do for the rest of the week except grinding. Yes, the doing same quests and killing the same 8 ox-men every fucking day for some item level 489 helmet is nowhere near entertaining.

So people raid normals, try to progress through it, it's usually fun, but NOT easy for an average gamer. To perform "acceptable" in Throne of Thunder as a dps, you need to research your class, read various guides, memorize optimal rotations and tactics for fights, train and try to get experience by wiping for hours, days to orchestrate them well in a stressful raid environment, download a bunch of addons to track down cooldowns, dots, you must watch these carefully while trying not to get killed by boss mechanics, and while doing that, you must go under the stress of;

"which of the 11 fucking buttons spread all around my keyboard should I push now, I want to skip that shit, I lose time trying to reach it's keybind, fuck my little finger hurts while trying to shift + q, why is ability x is still on cooldown, OH FUCK TRAP, phew, anyway lets reapply a dot, cast some stuff and hope that I do enough, wait WHERE DID I PUT MY DISPEL THINGY, awesome I couldn't cast shit for x seconds trying not to die and I will be kicked or loot banned when they look at the dps meter, fuck I forgot to watch the dot timers while running for my fucking life"

That is NOT easy or fun at all, I don't have time or interest for that shit, as it doesn't fit the description of "hobby". Feels more like work.

You want hard content? Go heroics, awesome loot with mounts, bonus bosses, titles and bla bla. You want "kind of hard but not hard all the time, difficulty changes from raid to raid" content, awesome, normals are there for you. For me, I will be more than happy with flex mode.

[Crushima]

Let's take bets on when the OP landed his first Ra-den kill.

My thoughts exactly. Clearing the content on LFR mode doesn't mean the game has been dumbed down. Come back and link your Ra-den kill and then we'll talk.

[Oneirophobia]

A need for class trainers is gone, because now one is magically gifted by a powerful God of some sort with new abilities. There's no more joy of eagerly awaiting that spell you see in the list several levels ahead.

You..you can see the spells you're going to get in your spell book... the only thing that changed is where you see this list...
And the need to go back to a city to train.
Not sure why needless timesinks are missed.

[Crushima]

I don't like hard games, I can try heroic raiding if I wish to participate in challenging content.

Raiding is the only "fun" thing World of Warcraft can offer as a hobby, after you reach to max level and sated your interest on mogs or mounts(takes a week), and if you don't have any interest in pvp. Completing raid finder once a week takes a few hours at best, nothing left to do for the rest of the week except grinding. Yes, the doing same quests and killing the same 8 ox-men every fucking day for some item level 489 helmet is nowhere near entertaining.

So people raid normals, try to progress through it, it's usually fun, but NOT easy for an average gamer. To perform "acceptable" in Throne of Thunder as a dps, you need to research your class, read various guides, memorize optimal rotations and tactics for fights, train and try to get experience by wiping for hours, days to orchestrate them well in a stressful raid environment, download a bunch of addons to track down cooldowns, dots, you must watch these carefully while trying not to get killed by boss mechanics, and while doing that, you must go under the stress of;

"which of the 11 fucking buttons spread all around my keyboard should I push now, I want to skip that shit, I lose time trying to reach it's keybind, fuck my little finger hurts while trying to shift + q, why is ability x is still on cooldown, OH FUCK TRAP, phew, anyway lets reapply a dot, cast some stuff and hope that I do enough, wait WHERE DID I PUT MY DISPEL THINGY, awesome I couldn't cast shit for x seconds trying not to die and I will be kicked or loot banned when they look at the dps meter, fuck I forgot to watch the dot timers while running for my fucking life"

That is NOT easy or fun at all, I don't have time or interest for that shit, as it doesn't fit the description of "hobby". Feels more like work.

You want hard content? Go heroics, awesome loot with mounts, bonus bosses, titles and bla bla. You want "kind of hard but not hard all the time, difficulty changes from raid to raid" content, awesome, normals are there for you. For me, I will be more than happy with flex mode.

If you truly find normal mode that hard, blizzard is offering flexi-mode in the next patch, which should be suitable for your skillset.

[Deleted]

That's why I'm playing on a private server. Playing for free while meeting people who greet you/are social in dungeons/bg's is much better than the atrocity that is anti-social retail WoW.

Lol yea xD Since I started on scripted TBC server I found myself lightly addicted again...The difference in community is mind blowing between retail and this private server.

[Ashadelo]

I have been playing WoW off and on since phase 2 beta and I remember back in the beta days the game feeling so easy and dumbed down but that was me comparing WoW with Everyquest which the game is not. However, when do you guys think the turning point for WoW becoming dumb downed took place?

[madokbro]

If you truly find normal mode that hard, blizzard is offering flexi-mode in the next patch, which should be suitable for your skillset.

Yup, loving it.

You want hard content? Go heroics, awesome loot with mounts, bonus bosses, titles and bla bla. You want "kind of hard but not hard all the time, difficulty changes from raid to raid" content, awesome, normals are there for you. For me, I will be more than happy with flex mode.

[Dangg]

Look how complex 'rotations' back in the days were:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ba7rg0gdc

The difficulty back then was created by Blizzard making bugged or overtuned bosses and a 5k ms ping.

[worsthitmanNa]

Just another one of those nonsense threads.

WoW wasn't "dumbed down" one bit. The challenging content of the game is more complex and demanding than it has ever been. You probably also write complaint mails to your local supermarket because they offer various ice cream flavors instead just the one you prefer.

Pvp has been dumbed down but pve is only dumbed down for certain classes other got more complex.

[tylenol]

Your post history is 4 pages of LFR bashing and almost nothing else

Still waiting on your armory link, you should be 13/13 by now if the game is so dumbed down no problem

Lets go, link armory

But wait, you can't since all you have down is probably 1 or 2 normal bosses (being generous) and everything else killed in LFR because you hate it so much

[xanzul]

Actually you still do. Hence the existence of Simcraft.

Also god help you if you tried to reforge without Ask Mr Robot or Reforgelite. You will literally lose your mind - or at least develop a headache.

And even with utilities like that there is still a high chance of completely fucking it up and gimping yourself. If anything this game has gotten more complex.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 08:50 PM ----------

LOL. Ironic, if not (unintentionally) hypocritical, as causals rarely ever "cry" - they just quit - and it's the hardcore who whine endlessly on forums.

Aside from the moronic whining about dailies I don't think any "casuals" have complained about much of anything for quite some time. They have their faceroll heroic 5 mans and LFR and they are clearly happy with it and Blizzard has provided challenging content for those who seek it without locking anyone out of the game and that right there is the issue with the people who start these threads. They want to go back to excluding players from the game and anything that includes anyone is a threat to their agenda.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 08:55 PM ----------

Vanilla - C'Thun and classic Naxx.
TBC - pre-nerf Hyjal/BT/Sunwell. Hell, a lot of average guilds hadn't downed Kael'thas/Vashj before those got nerfed.
Wrath - Sarth 3D (before outgearing it, was doable but still challenging for most), Yogg+0, heroic 25M Lich King with buffs disabled.
Cata - Heroic Madness of Deathwing without the nerfs, heroic Ragnaros, Sinestra (before outgearing it).
MoP - Heroic full clear of ToT (and heroic full clears of the other raids while they were still current content).

Likely plenty of others that I'm forgetting. Every expansion has had some form of challenging content for the "hardcore" players to do. There is also really high-end PvP if that's your thing. If you're not into dragon slaying, go get an arena/RBG team to the highest rating possible.

How many of the players who have been spouting "The game is too easy now! The peasant casuals should worship the ground I walk on!" during every single expansion (and yes, that has been going on since and happened in Vanilla too) have actually done all of the above and didn't consider it challenging at all? Just curious. The difference now is the fact that players like me who can't do all of the above (for whatever reason) have other options for stuff to do now. For some reason, this is a problem.

A forum regular here got banned the other week for actually saying players should worship the ground that hardcore players walk on so yes that is the mentality of those who make these threads despite the claims of it being exaggerated.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 08:57 PM ----------

Quite often actually! As I was only 9/10 years old I thought my best plan of action would be to spec into all trees so I was balanced out and a master of everything, little did I know you wouldn't get enough points to become a jack of all trades. And I rarely made it past level 20 (I considered this an achievement) so I often found myself like 5/1/3

This is why the old talent system was so horrible. All it ever did was influence players to spec as badly and terribly as possible.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 08:59 PM ----------

Walk outside and start a random conversation with someone you don't know, at least one of you will walk away thinking the other is an idiot and you would probably both be right to some extent.

The world is full of Lazy self entitled morons and it is in the best interest of any business to cater to the majority.

Perfect example being the Iphone/ipad, It's essentially a half assed portable toy computer made for mouth breathing retards who couldn't figure out how to set the time on a old VCR yet it cost twice as much as a laptop that is capable of doing 10x more.

So not only are you elitist about gaming you are elitist about things in real life too. Awesome. You must be a joy to be around.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 09:02 PM ----------

More open and less time investment required to be at "endgame" = opens up the game to casuals*, there's way more casuals than hardcore players = more money for Blizzard (Activision)

*Casual means people who play less, can be insanely good and still casual. Casual is not = noob.


That's pretty much why LFR, LFG, weekly caps and such has been introduced to the game.
Blizzard has repeatedly said that they've always lost and gained players at the same rate (was more players coming to the game than left before) but now there's not as many people coming to the game as people leaving and that's why the game is bleeding total numbers. The very hardcore and dedicated players who's been around for half a decade should be heard and to some extent we are, still though we see a lot of moves towards bringing in casual players which I'm fine with but there's not a lot for the people that play 20-40hrs a week to do which in the end is going (imo) to be the end of this game. Wow is simply to immersive to make casual players stay and the more blizzard try to cater to them the more they abandon their loyal subscribers.

1. Wow was developed and launched as a casual game from the get go. They didn't change direction over the years in fact they have stayed the same course over the entirety of the past 9 years.
2. Activision plays no part in Blizzard Entertainment's decisions as per the merger agreement between Vivendi Games and Activision and as per Activision-Blizzard's company bylaws that are posted on their website. Without a majority vote Bobby Kotick can't do a god damn thing and since Vivendi owns 62% of ATVI that means business as usual for Blizzard Entertainment.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 09:06 PM ----------

The content might seem harder these days but the difference is back in Vanilla/TBC you relied on your raid group far more than you do now.

Razorgore being a killer example because it actually required that your entire raid group not only be aware of their surroundings but they also had to know exactly what they were doing because making one minor mistake had a domino effect on the outcome of the raid.

So those hardcore raid guilds killing Ra-den aren't relying on each other? What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously? Who pray tell are they relying on then if not each other?

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 09:08 PM ----------

Always with the HC kills as comeback, cuz time = difficulty, a game can be to easy even if you dont kill the hc bosses, hc bosses require time to kill and thats about it. Lots and lots off time. Everyone with half a brain could kill the HC bosses if they would just drop everything else like job and friends for the time and just go at it. That requires ofc that the other 9 players have half a brain also.

So the only difference between heroic mode and normal is time? Are you fucking kidding me? That right there shows the people saying heroic kills don't matter have no fucking clue what heroic modes are like and aren't in any position whatsoever to call heroic mode raiding easy.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 09:11 PM ----------

Not everyone have the time to kill HC bosses, thats all you need time and knowledge off your class and bosses. Time does not equal difficulty.

You do realize heroic bosses have extra mechanics right? In fact as far as Ra-den goes you CAN NOT even do him until full heroic clearing ToT and he is a heroic level boss with no normal mode at all. A lot more than time is involved here which you would know if you weren't a wannabe hardcore.

[Triptych]

I've never been focused on endgame or level cap activities, so I don't care to get involved with the bitter arguments about LFR and such things.

But I do kind of miss some of the gameplay elements that have been removed from the game over the years.

1. Leveling your weapon skills.

I'm one of the minority of RP nerds who loves this stuff. It felt like another small measure of progress on your character. And after all, that's a huge part of the attraction in an MMO : improvement. Getting better gear, more spells, more mounts, more achievements, more POWAH!

2. Similarly with Lockpicking and Poison Making on a rogue.

Travelling around the world in search of footlockers to skill up your Lockpicking was something I enjoyed. Again, probably the minority here. After all, many rogues didn't even bother. Which was also a point of difference in favour of those players who did bother. The ability to open boxes for people used to be a somewhat uncommon and sought after skill, something that helped distinguish you as a helpful and useful player to know.

3. The original Talent system.

Don't get me wrong, I love the current six tier talent system, there are some really fun choices there. But its one drawback, is that there are only six points during your 'career' where you get a feeling of improvement. For all of its faults, the original talent trees did provide players with lots of small incremental improvements. Every level you got a new point. Even if the improvements were barely noticeable in reality, e.g. going from +2% crit to +3% crit. I think that this is often the root cause of player dissatisfaction with the current system. The developers have acknowledged this too, but I'm not sure that they've come up with a way to remedy it yet.


These are just a few things that spring to mind.

But overall, the game has had so many fabulous QOL changes since 2004. Most of which we now take for granted. I salute Blizzard for their success in maintaining the popularity of their game over almost a decade.