Unofficial Marketing Study

[Jikate-Stormrage]

Greetings all. I wanted to ask the community a question and try to see where the pulse is on challenge within the World of Warcraft.

I’m not here to post my own opinions, nor belittle anyone else’s. I wouldn’t consider myself an overly casual player, yet I’m not the most hardcore either.

Do you feel like a more challenging Azeroth would improve your gameplay experience? This would include making the world environment more dangerous. Dungeons that scale and reward appropriate gear for appropriate gameplay (read: the run is challenging and highly dangerous, requiring CC and strategy over hectic timers). Questing zones that may require a party of 3+ adventurers to even survive the simplest of pulls (think of a zone with rewards that contains only elites, only out geared in the next expansion). In game reputations that, once exalted, offer crafting recipes that equal Mythic quality (with item turn ins for crafting items needed from the faction).

Such a system could further a players interaction with the world around them. Offer an alternative path for character progression (albeit extremely prolonged versus more contemporary means). Allow for increased opportunities for meaningful organic group/social interaction.

[Azerate]

No, world content is not where I want the difficulty to be.

[Jikate-Stormrage]

No, I want it casual friendly.
And stop making social interaction happen in 2019 games.

Thank you for your response. The concept I was leading towards was not removing the current level of casual play. But something between “smash face and stomp everything” and “if I want a challenge it must either be mythic raiding or the rush of a timed run”.

[glowpipe]

you already have challenging group content, its called mythic raiding. forced interaction out in the regular world is a thing of the past. many players play at different time, i mostly play at of peak hours. You telling me i shouldn't be able to enjoy the game i am paying for monthly? because i can't find players to do simple tasks with ?

A mmo needs to cater to all kinds of players. the more we have of everyone. solo, group, skilled, lesser skilled, the more people paying, the better it is for the game in the long term

[zlygork]

I'm fine with increasing the dfficulty, so long as it is not measured in reactions/second. I dont want to feel like I am playing guitar hero in the open world.

[toffmcsoft]

I'd like an RPG back where GEAR actually matters in PVP.
To be honest, just take everything Classic wow has to offer and put that out with updated raid mechanics, updated graphics, a few additional specs & classes.

[BoemBox]

The major issue with leveling in retail is not that it's not challenging enough (although mob health could be tweaked slightly with higher exp as a trade off), it's that the rewards are too few and far between. This is actually one of the reasons why I'm excited for a possible level squish and why it could do a lot for the overall health of the leveling game, even if the required time to 60/70 is essentially the same. Fewer levels will allow them to give you either a talent or an ability every other level, it make quest rewards feel a little more exciting as you'll be able to use them longer - it's all those little things that have eroded over time and have left the current 1-120 slog feel rather barren.

In terms of the endgame - I don't have an issue with timed M+ runs myself, but I definitely think more dungeons like Karazhan and Mechagon will be good for the game. Challenging outdoor content won't really go over too well and kind of clashes with the widespread desire to have flying available early on. Just look at Nazjatar for instance, that place was fairly challenging at first and people hated it.

[Toxuvox]

I'd love if there was some actual AI in certain outdoor situations, and perhaps a change in how certain quest mobs react to what we as players are doing. However, if making Azeroth more challenging simply means increasing mobs health or how hard they hit, then no. I liked the feeling of power progression that my gear and experience bestowed.

[Firedemon]

More challenging azeroth, sure.

Removing the timers from the dungeons and increasing difficulty would just lead to waiting for bloodlust or any othet major cooldowns on pretty much every hard pull/boss.

[GreenJesus]

you already have challenging group content, its called mythic raiding. forced interaction out in the regular world is a thing of the past. many players play at different time, i mostly play at of peak hours. You telling me i shouldn't be able to enjoy the game i am paying for monthly? because i can't find players to do simple tasks with ?

A mmo needs to cater to all kinds of players. the more we have of everyone. solo, group, skilled, lesser skilled, the more people paying, the better it is for the game in the long term

Blizzard made a mistake catering to people that dont want to group in an MMO.

[TwoMana]

You didn't really define what you mean with "challenging" so it isn't entirely easy to answer to your "study".

Tasks requiring situational awareness, reflexes, simultaneous multi-tasking "skills" should not be in the open-world content. This type of content should be in solo instances like the Mage Tower, M+ dungeons, raids and PvP instances. I'd gladly have more of these and I'd love them to add more. Warfronts and Islands could be part of this, but currently aren't.

If you mean difficult as in "requires a huge time investment" then I don't want them in Azeroth either. Having certain tasks "time gated" is fine, like achieving flying or following the expansion main quest line. There should be things you can't complete on first day. But I don't want to go back to killing 990 boars and collecting 3 boar asses. That sucks.

So in conclusion: No, I don't want Azeroth to feel more challenging.

I want Azeroth to tell me a good (ok, I'll settle for decent) story, to entertain me for 10-or-so levels, to show me great landscapes and new art assets. I want to discover cool things and be surprised by the zones. I want to solve puzzles (like the secrets that we've been solving on Discord). I want the world to have that kind of stuff. I don't want it to be "difficult" or "challenging". There are other places that are more appropriate for those things.

I’m not here to post my own opinions, nor belittle anyone else’s.

But I see you did..

(read: the run is challenging and highly dangerous, requiring CC and strategy over hectic timers).

So I guess you've never actually ran higher keys - because you'd know they actually require CC and hell of a lot of strategy.
But yeah, you think the timer is "hectic". It actually isn't if you plan your strat and actually use CC, you know.

Remove the timer and you'll be waiting for BL for every pull. Super fun.

[glowpipe]

Blizzard made a mistake catering to people that dont want to group in an MMO.

not really. Making it their main focus was the mistake. Neglecting the others.

[Raelbo]

At the start of the expansion, once we hit 120 the world environment was somewhat challenging. And while that certainly made the game more engaging, I'll be honest that it got tedious really quickly. There is plenty of challenging content in the game that one can chase after, there's no need to make the routine stuff challenging as well.

[Aggrophobic]

Greetings all. I wanted to ask the community a question and try to see where the pulse is on challenge within the World of Warcraft.

I’m not here to post my own opinions, nor belittle anyone else’s. I wouldn’t consider myself an overly casual player, yet I’m not the most hardcore either.

Do you feel like a more challenging Azeroth would improve your gameplay experience? This would include making the world environment more dangerous. Dungeons that scale and reward appropriate gear for appropriate gameplay (read: the run is challenging and highly dangerous, requiring CC and strategy over hectic timers). Questing zones that may require a party of 3+ adventurers to even survive the simplest of pulls (think of a zone with rewards that contains only elites, only out geared in the next expansion). In game reputations that, once exalted, offer crafting recipes that equal Mythic quality (with item turn ins for crafting items needed from the faction).

Such a system could further a players interaction with the world around them. Offer an alternative path for character progression (albeit extremely prolonged versus more contemporary means). Allow for increased opportunities for meaningful organic group/social interaction.

You have that already. It's called m+ and mythic raids. It's odd that you missed this, it's been in the game for quite some time.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Greetings all. I wanted to ask the community a question and try to see where the pulse is on challenge within the World of Warcraft.

I’m not here to post my own opinions, nor belittle anyone else’s. I wouldn’t consider myself an overly casual player, yet I’m not the most hardcore either.

Do you feel like a more challenging Azeroth would improve your gameplay experience? This would include making the world environment more dangerous. Dungeons that scale and reward appropriate gear for appropriate gameplay (read: the run is challenging and highly dangerous, requiring CC and strategy over hectic timers). Questing zones that may require a party of 3+ adventurers to even survive the simplest of pulls (think of a zone with rewards that contains only elites, only out geared in the next expansion). In game reputations that, once exalted, offer crafting recipes that equal Mythic quality (with item turn ins for crafting items needed from the faction).

Such a system could further a players interaction with the world around them. Offer an alternative path for character progression (albeit extremely prolonged versus more contemporary means). Allow for increased opportunities for meaningful organic group/social interaction.

A zone designed to be done as a group could have its fun, it shouldn't be the basic questing progression though. Definitely the game needs to be much harder than retail that's for sure, but forcing players to not be allowed to do anything on their own is not a good idea.

Dungeons will always be ran with the idea of doing them as fast as possible. Wasting time is not enjoyable for anyone. That being said, absolutely nothing stops the game from having hard pulls the require CC and also doing them fast. You can apply CC fast and kill the rest fast and move on to the next pull fast, etc, everything is just player actions, they can all be done fast. No one gains anything from doing things slowly except bad players who can't keep up with respectable pace. Playing fast is a skill, if you need time to stare at the screen and do I don't know why, get better.

[Lightforged]

Having played Classic for 2 weeks now, I really enjoy how threatening the open world can be. You have to think about what you pull and consider CCing. You cannot just shotgun everything down.

Having said that, I am not sure how you could replicate that onto live without upsetting people.

[XDurionX]

No, world content is not where I want the difficulty to be.

This. The only thing an increased difficulty will achieve is even less players.

[Justpassing]

There is no going back.

[Zenfoldor]

Blizzard made a mistake catering to people that dont want to group in an MMO.

I absolutely agree with this. IMO, there are plenty of single player RPGs out there that offer a better single player experience than WoW. WoW's goal should be focused on creating positive interactions between players while adventuring in a shared world. IMO, that is the strength of the MMO genre, and why WoW exists today.

What is the World of Warcraft mission statement. Once you have that mission statement, then you can work backwards to determine how the game should be balanced.

[Justpassing]

I absolutely agree with this. IMO, there are plenty of single player RPGs out there that offer a better single player experience than WoW. WoW's goal should be focused on creating positive interactions between players while adventuring in a shared world. IMO, that is the strength of the MMO genre, and why WoW exists today.

What is the World of Warcraft mission statement. Once you have that mission statement, then you can work backwards to determine how the game should be balanced.

And I disagree completely. I'm going to pull that card but your business / mission statement can't be "We're gonna do X, if you don't like it play something else" - not at this scale of a business. And I can't stress this enough: It isn't about Activison or Kotick, but unless you're an indie guy with a game of a playerbase of 50 people, you can't say that.

WoW got to where it is today beacuse of trying to cater to everyone possible - think "jack of all trades, master of none" - and at this business scale it's a very wise approach - notice that I'm saying wise, not correct, as I am currently not subbed either and personally I think that's okay.

I mean, to make it more clear: Even relase of Classic is a form of catering to people's whims - they are expanding / retaining their playerbae with classic servers. It's all business, people. You should be able to see this.