Does WoW need a "Wizard" mode?

[Crimson Spears]

So because you don't like ANY of the game, they should make a mode that lets you skip it?

No, you should just stop playing. You don't like the game - Why should they do anything for you?

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If you don't enjoy the game's mechanics, you don't enjoy the game.

Asking them to make bigger mechanics isn't going to make you like them more, and they have no interest in helping you "skip" the "tedious" parts. Their game isn't made to be skipped.

Calling that "weird ass logic" just makes you sound silly. It's the most straightforward answer I can give.

Not really it is really weird logic. I enjoy the same content in the game ive enjoyed for over a decade but because they added padding to it somehow that changes the core mechanic of the game?

I don't think asking to skip easy mode if you enjoy hard mode is some bizarre ask. I find it weirder to be forced to spend hours in the mindless mode to get to the hard mode.

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Its not though. See my page 2 post. And im not against the idea in the slightest. Id love you muppets (affectionately) being given your own progression system. Id love nothing more than aotc being the literal end game in terms of gear and everything else being flexxing. Id love nothing more than blizzard to say "at aotc youve officially beaten the game in terms of power, but now we're going to throw every affix we can design (balance be damned) at you idiots using a leaderboard (just TRY and break the meta!), and we are gonna reward you for your standing at the end of the season". I really want this. Horizontal progression from aotc. No more world first! No more mythic raiding, just a seasonal leaderboard with an infinite difficulty (and untested) curve for the hc to push (raiding is number one!). You get a playpen universe only you and players like you can play in. You get tonnes of cosmetic rewards and bragging achievements (leaderboard is on every notice/activity board in game).

You (and all the guilds jostling for position), need to work this puzzle out. You guys will be endlessly entertained. All you want to do is raid, right? Im gonna give you all the raiding you could ever dream of. Then put you in competition with every other raiding guild in existence with a leaderboard, then continually up the challenges with every affix, enrage timer and countdown (the same thing i suppose) i have at my disposal. Is it balanced? I dont really care. Solve for x.

Hell, why not wizardry you? (though it should obviously be out of reach of the mainstream playerbase - at say 25 so if it truly matters to you, you'll do it, but not so that it makes the current plus 15 crowd think 'i can do this and its such an amazing reward, so i suppose i need to do this!' - i can/need to do this are two very different perspectives that one should balance around). But the point is, you and all the other top 1000 can fight it out in a playpen sub game universe for bragging rights. Your world first heroic denathrius kill is meaningless in the scope of things because thats just step one. Youve basically made it to the ladder. Now you gotta fight for your spot.

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point is: You get your shit (something to actually push thats actually challenging and rewarding), we get to cap out at aotc making players who just like playing the game, finish their shit and MAYBE feel incentivized to push forward applying to guilds like yours.

Oh, i forgot. Id also shower you with titles, mounts (never again collectable) and gear effects no one else remotely has or could even get. If you missed it, you aint getting it again. (just so we're clear, you're getting showered with rewards for being world top 10, some rewards for being world 100, and a reward or two for being top 1000 - im taking care of you). They aint ever gonna be repeated. We are blizzard. We have the literal best talent in the world to design you some unique shit like a scarab mount (with more polygons) or a title (its like, a sentence! words are infinite!).

Point is crimson, your scope is way too narrow. I want to scythe you off from the rest of the game completely. I want to give you a challenge so difficult you'll never beat me. You just want the same bullshit, but free for accomplishing something like 10-20% of the playerbase could do right now within a week of its release (and the next 20% would finish by the time 9.1 rolls out).

That aint elite. Thats basic as shit.

I mean that honestly doesn't sound to bad don't get me wrong I would be happy just skipping my way into mythic but if that is on offer im all for it.

[ippollite]

Its so much more fun, right? Plus, as a casual, we dont have to design the mainstream game around the best players, just the top 75%. The top 25% can either flex or join you guys. Its win win for everyone. Now your op has genuine bite. No more net neutral!

[uopayroll]

Food for thought. Would WoW function better if there was an extremely high difficulty mode for content that once cleared instantly rewarded all of that modes progression?

For example say you beat wizard mode torghast. You unlock all leggo patterns and soul ash is instantly fulfilled for all future crafting. Lets say you get all your keystones done at level 20 suddenly all your conduits are filled.

That was the high end player base isn't dragged into other people's progression systems and muck them all up for both parties, while by the same token wizard mode would be hard enough only a small fraction of the playerbase could do it keeping that progression relevant for others.

Just what we need, another thing cluttering trade and LFG...Selling Wizard mode boosts and carries and then the elite players wizard mode was for come here and complain how anybody can get it and they are once again not special enough...

[Crimson Spears]

Its so much more fun, right? Plus, as a casual, we dont have to design the mainstream game around the best players, just the top 75%. The top 25% can either flex or join you guys. Its win win for everyone. Now your op has genuine bite. No more net neutral!

I mean... I just want to skip over progression systems clearly not built for me in mind to get to the part of the game I enjoy.. I don't really see the need for more then that but if its offered why not take it?

To be honest I feel this conveys what im trying to get across better I have a feeling people think this is some "lord over other people" kind of thing its not.



Just replace the whole race thing with raider,pvper, mount collector etc.

[Kokolums]

Which doesn't change the fact that they were universally despised.

I'm not saying IEs weren't.

I'm just saying at least it had that utility. the Maw doesn't even have THAT.

[anon5123]

Some people just forget to enjoy wow. I was looking at my guild today just to see how many were tagged raider. So many have been offline for weeks to months. These were the guys pushing high m+ keys and raided at the highest level. They just burnt themselves out.

There is nothing wrong with "burning out" on a game. You are not obligated to keep clearing everything every single week until the end of time.

I only played Shadowlands for about 2 months because that's all it took me to get 10/10 heroic and +15 on every M+. By that point I was bored of running the same dungeons and raid so I quit. Just because I quit doesn't mean I don't enjoy playing, it means I already enjoyED playing and there's no more new things for me to enjoy.

Quitting a game because you beat everything =/= "forgetting to enjoy it"

[Crimson Spears]

Which isn't wrong. The Maw is also universally despised.

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It is a bizarre ask, because it ignores that the game is based on progression first and foremost.

They didn't "add padding." They have always had "padding" so you couldn't jump straight to the most difficult content. The hardest content always had a wall before it - You couldn't start Vanilla and go straight to MC, you had to level to 60, then dungeon grind, attune in BRD, THEN you could go to MC. You couldn't start BC and immediately go to Sunwell, you had to level, then dungeon grind, then gear up for Kara, then attune and gear up for SSC/TK, then attune and gear up for BT, THEN after getting gear from BT you could go to Sunwell.

The point of the game is to do easy mode, then move to medium mode, then move to hard mode. You level (easy), then dungeon grind (medium), then raid/mythic+ grind. ("hard") Prior to the removal of attunements, there was also progression in first tier (easy), second tier (medium), and last tier (hard), and that SORT OF still exists today, but with a skip mechanic for the first two tiers and a normal(easy)/heroic(medium)/mythic(hard) system to replace it. It always has been. You've never been capable of skipping easy mode. (That is, without a group that is already capable of doing hard mode, but you can still do that today if you feel like it.) This is because the game is a social, multiplayer game. The point isn't so you can get to the end and quit - It's so you and dozens of other people can keep playing together if you so choose. You can't consider just one person's progress when talking about dozens/hundreds/thousands of potential players.

Nevermind that you "finishing" and quitting, removes you as a potential player from the pool of players looking for groups. This solution of yours, only hurts the community of the game by removing the best geared players from the pool of people still going.

Removing that progress, is literally removing the point of the game. If you want them to make it so you can just quit - Then just do so. Nothing is stopping you, and nothing prevents you from quitting if you don't enjoy the parts of the game you refuse to do.

I think you see the situation as too zero sum.

To bring up an example from the expansion I loved the most but fear I will never enjoy as much again TBC.

In TBC I could very comfortably enter most heroics upon level cap ( I recall I had to do a few normal runs first for rep for a few... I think it was zandermarsh I hated the quests in that zone.). Once done I could go directly to kara and shortly after gruul then mags. I was able to go comfortably from dungeon to raids without any hitches.

My problem with the current design is how badly the game wants me invested in content I don't care about. To be honest its why Mage tower is remembered as a rare success story and Torghast will go down as one of the great failures of game design. Right now if ptr was live in my current gear without any of the new torghast talents I could easily do a layer 12 run comfortably. What good does it do the game to force me to repeatedly do this solo content? I don't enjoy it, I am not challenged by it, I have no investment to the point I only briefly check the talents to make sure I don't take the epic power that kills me... There is nothing there that interests or excites me.

What harm is there in allowing me to do an extremely difficult version of this content ( that I might actually enjoy) and be done with it? It wouldn't rob the targeted audience of its progression and free me up to fast track into high mythic plus (my best is a 22 key) and pvp ( I am horrible at pvp but managed a person best this season at 2k).

I just feel that game is to worried about making sure I do all the content rather then making sure I enjoy all the content if that makes sense? I understand that these systems are not designed for players like me and I get that players like me are an extreme minority, I just don't think its to much of a ask to simply be fast tracked into content I do enjoy if it doesn't injury any other party and only requires a minimal amount of effort to produce.

[taheen74]

Food for thought. Would WoW function better if there was an extremely high difficulty mode for content that once cleared instantly rewarded all of that modes progression?

For example say you beat wizard mode torghast. You unlock all leggo patterns and soul ash is instantly fulfilled for all future crafting. Lets say you get all your keystones done at level 20 suddenly all your conduits are filled.

That was the high end player base isn't dragged into other people's progression systems and muck them all up for both parties, while by the same token wizard mode would be hard enough only a small fraction of the playerbase could do it keeping that progression relevant for others.

You really don't understand the concept of progression, do you?

[thunderdragon2]

Some people just forget to enjoy wow. I was looking at my guild today just to see how many were tagged raider. So many have been offline for weeks to months. These were the guys pushing high m+ keys and raided at the highest level. They just burnt themselves out.

Come to think of it, I don't really enjoy wow at all either. I have my KSM, I have my CE, I just logon to see if I can get into a heroic and parse.

i dont forget to enjoy wow, its just hard to do so when you try to do 5 keys today and 4 of them are abandoned mind way

[Crimson Spears]

You really don't understand the concept of progression, do you?

I suppose I don't.. in my mind progression comes from tackling harder and harder challenges as you get better at the game.

[Hellobolis]

first step would be defining what "extremely hard" is. that's a big enough question on it's own, especially in a game where 99.9% content gets passively and actively nerfed over time.

the big risk you run with "extremely hard" is that by the time even good players can do it, the rewards are already obsolete.

[Zig Zug]

All the kids will whine to mummy that Wizard mode is too hard, and then Mums with Creditcards will complain to Blizzard, and Blizzard will cave in and nerf the difficulty..

We have seen that a thousand times, when they add hard content.

Looool....I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

[neocount]

I'm not really sure where this obsession with "difficulty" comes from. Difficulty is not intrinsically fun. To me, difficulty is an extremely lazy way to try and fix something that's not fun. Some of the most fun I've had in video games, personally, did not stem from difficulty. Rather than difficulty, I'd like to see Blizzard spend more time making their game more fun and engaging, and less repetitious and difficult.

[Crimson Spears]

first step would be defining what "extremely hard" is. that's a big enough question on it's own, especially in a game where 99.9% content gets passively and actively nerfed over time.

the big risk you run with "extremely hard" is that by the time even good players can do it, the rewards are already obsolete.

I feel like most mage tower fights during the patch they launched would count myself barring maybe the grim totem one.

[starstationprofm]

Because you enjoy playing

If everyone unlocks everything there's no reason for the above average players to stick around. The average LFR mouthbreather should not be equal to the Mythic raider in unlocks.

[Crimson Spears]

Again: You are looking at this PURELY through a YOU lens, and not a WE lens.

If YOU want to do the hardest content in the game - The game presents itself with a progression path for you. Dungeons into Raids. Just like back in BC. They added MORE because they want people to have MORE should they desire MORE. Back in BC, as I'm sure you recall, just raidlogging was commonplace, as it was in Wrath, and then Cata. It wasn't until MoP and the Legendary Cape that people actually had something to work on OUTSIDE the weekly raidlog.

It doesn't do anyone any good to have Torghast - It's current implementation was always going to be horrible. I can go back a year or two and grab my old posts where I directly called out that Torghast would be a massive failure from the start - There was simply no way they were going to introduce an endless mode, and if they did, they'd never balance it correctly. Even what they ended up with is absolute garbage, the legendary being tied to it is the only thing that keeps anyone doing it at all, and I'm partly convinced that's WHY the legendary is tied to it in the first place. But a bad system happens every now and then. It's just unfortunate this happened to be THE big system for Shadowlands. (Kind of like how Islands flopped for BfA...)

But the harm in letting you do an extreme version and be done, is precisely what I said before, ESPECIALLY the middle:



Imagine if the world first players, and everyone decent enough to clear Mythic, just instantly stopped playing. Imagine how many fewer people would run Mythic+ dungeons. Imagine how fewer players would pug raids. Imagine how fewer players would PvP.

Now imagine how many players would do that extreme difficulty, then unsub because they had all the gear in the game and wouldn't need any more until next patch.

You'd be signing a death warrant to basically all content above Mythic+15, and all the content UNDER Mythic+15 would become much more difficult without those geared players to deal high damage/take less damage/do more healing. There's already an overabundance of bad players in the group finder - Removing the few skilled players from it does nobody any good.

The problem with your counter point is its wrong. Now we can argue how wrong but that doesn't change the fact its wrong. By providing rewards for power needed in harder difficulties in these types of content you can no longer go from dungeons to raids. You can argue you only need to do torghast once to get the legendary that completes your class but the moment you start that argument you have already forfeited the argument your making.

Its telling you use the word work rather then have fun so often. I don't see the value in forcing people into tedious content. I don't enjoy the content why hold me hostage inside of it to get to content I enjoy?

Its my experience that mythic raiders are rarely the ones to quit in a patch. They go more dormant and happily raid log or push mythic keys so you don't see them but flat out quit is rather rare. You are weirdly pointing to the most stable player base who from the inside looking out have mostly quit over being forced to do chores not from finishing their content.

[Crimson Spears]

That's not true at all. You can in fact go from dungeons to raids - You don't need the legendary, it's very good and makes you deal great damage, but you ARE capable of going without it.



Because in context, "people actually had something to have fun on OUTSIDE the weekly raiding" doesn't fit. "work on" is more correct. Most of the activities to build character power are not fun. They haven't been since early on in the game's lifespan. That hasn't changed.

The fun comes once you HAVE that character power, and can watch all the things you struggled with previously melt in front of you.



Is this the moment where I reveal to you that Mythic Raiders also have the most content to do in the game? Like, by definition, because they do all difficulties, they have the most to do, and thus, take the longest to unsub.

That's not surprising. They won't even get their BiS until AFTER the raid is already cleared multiple times over. Of course they're going to be subbed the most.



And now you're pushing it to the other extreme - Allowing them to quit because they are instantly finished with all the content. That is not a good option either. Is it making sense yet, or do I need to redescribe it a third time?

The game benefits as a whole from having fully geared players interacting with lesser geared players. It does not benefit when the fully geared players quit, or stop doing content.

I mean what good is there in debating this further if you think the legendary items are optional for progression?

I don't think I would of ever started playing this game with the mentality that progressing in it wasn't fun.

[TbouncerT]

So if I am understanding this, you want an ability in-game to skip the line? instead of doing the natural progression of Norm > Hero > Mythic style of play, you rather just be allowed to start at mythic?

[Crimson Spears]

So if I am understanding this, you want an ability in-game to skip the line? instead of doing the natural progression of Norm > Hero > Mythic style of play, you rather just be allowed to start at mythic?

More or less yes.

Only thing you missed is I would focus it more on filler content like torghast and conduits rather then dungeon and raid difficulties those still sort themselves naturally without time locks.

[Thage]

Never going to happen.

If Blizzard doesn't timegate content and big surprise they've been doing it since Vanilla (instance id resets are a form of timegating) players will simply quit once they got all the stuff and people will no life it until they do.

WoW is a reward driven game and either they timegate stuff or make the grind infinite like with AP.

I fail to see why this must be an either-or situation. It's not Blizzard's responsibility to moderate peoples' time spent ingame, insofar as nolifing the game. The players are, assumedly, either adults themselves (and thus responsible for their time spent ingame), or living in a situation where there is an adult within their vicinity considered responsible for monitoring their behavior to ensure they're not unhealthily engaged with the game.

When people discuss 'timegating,' rarely are they referring to the instance ID resets, it's almost always the egregious time gating in world content, like in Suramar or the Covenant questlines, where things are timegated for the sake of drawing out playtime over weeks because that's better for "the metrics." Unfortunately, designing everything based on spreadsheets is not the best way to design a fun game, especially when you couple this with what can only be called an addiction to building and discarding new systems every two years for the simple sake of doing so.

People should be trusted to push world content at their own pace, because the people who like world content will still like it once they're done all the storyline quests, whereas timegating burns them out by causing them to artificially hit walls at awkward breakpoints, and people who dislike world content just want to get it over with ASAP so they can move onto the group content or solo content of their preference, with timegating only serving to frustrate them as they hit those same walls that artificially slow down how soon they can move on to the aspect of the game that they prefer.

By the logic Blizzard is using, and has been using since WoD, we should timegate leveling on expansion launch, so people aren't doing unhealthy 24-hour sprints despite the people doing so being adults perfectly capable of making their own decisions.