Heirlooms are antisocial and bad for WoW

[TheLucky1]

right? game didnt get less social, people did, you would think with literaly having a proof now in form of classic people would finaly understand it, but no...

I can't judge the players in 2004-6~ that got a kick out of that there were real people behind that character/avatar in front of them that could type in the chat.

But it's 2021. These things don't excite anyone anymore except it's their first time on the internet, i won't say that there aren't certain upsides and qualitys to classic/tbcc but it's just not in the zeitgeist of modern gaming and we have seen that clearly after the hype died down.

[Shaetha]

"Animals raised in isolation aren't always the most functional. The only positive relationship this animal has is with that crane."



Buffs in vanilla were social activities. When you ran around in the game world in vanilla, seeing another player was a positive experience because they might buff you with fort, int, mark, thorns, etc. These buffs were impactful and helped you (unlike a fort or int today in the game world). In turn, this helped foster a positive environment, helping to imprint upon new players the importance of social skills.

Modern WoW stripped this social interaction out. Fort / int is much less impactful and so people generally don't cast it on each other. Buffs are found in solo activities like conjuring a set of heirlooms, or doing a world quest and clicking on an item on the ground that rewards a 5 minute buff. This is detrimental to the game and the social experience.

WoW needs a new talent tree - a helper tree. Putting points into it gives you the ability to buff fellow players. The buffs you get from looms should be on that tree, and reimagined as spells you can cast on others. Enchant buffs could be on the tree as well. So may some potion buffs like trolls blood. If you want to put buffs on items lying on the ground, make them only castable on other players, or add them directly to the tree as well. The tree could include social networks connecting you to other helpers for bonuses.

It seems like such a minor thing, but is greatly impactful in the long term.

The community stripped the social interaction by the loudest of them being entitled whiners who can't accept it isn't 2005 anymore. This is fact. Deal with it.

Nevermind the fact there's plenty of social interaction to be had if you don't avoid it. The game just doesn't force you into it as much.

[kenn9530]

I would be *perfectly* fine if everyone against this idea quit WoW. The game would attract tons more players than it loses with this and other social changes.

Just face it you have no idea what is good for a game let alone an MMO, the content WoW does best already supports players being social amongst each other, its the player that chooses not to be social or not, the game has nothing to do with it.

Heirlooms are bad for the game because they make gear, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game, irrelevant.

You are not forced to use heirlooms, its just a way to level alts faster and bypass the old content faster, gear is easy to get in WoW so its hardly an enjoyable aspect in WoW.

[haiyken]

I would be *perfectly* fine if everyone against this idea quit WoW. The game would attract tons more players than it loses with this and other social changes.

Vanilla was very social without specific systems designed for it to be social. Social doesn't come from the game, it comes from the players. I think it's almost impossible to design any kind of system to create social interaction that would work as intented. It's especially impossible nowadays with how social interaction on the internet evolved and was reshaped. It obviously influenced MMOs and WoW in particular. The internet and social interactions online were a lot different back then, and it's key to understand why the game isn't as social as before. People change, it's that simple. You'll probably say that in Classic, there is a lot of social interaction, but here, social interaction is create through friction. The game has so much friction that make social interaction mandatory. To do group quests, to do dungeons or raids. People interact because they have to. Just look at the Looking for group channel to see that it's a constant spam flow of incomprehensible acronyms and numbers. It's not social. Of course players do chat a lot more during dungeons or around the world, doing the random emote when taking the same boat and giving each other a buff, but it's not very deep either. It's flavour, more than anything else. It's meaningless interaction. I did a bunch of quests with another player, helped him do quests I already did, then added them to my friend list, but I know I won't talk to them again either. In Retail, players don't even bother with that because, let's be honest, it's not needed because there isn't much friction. Still, people can have a chat in the general channel or the guide channel. But it's just not appealing. Social interaction exist in guilds and around streamers, that's pretty much it. Adding new systems to force social interaction will not work. If there is any gain for one player over the other, it will be abused, players will be harrassed to get the perk of "playing" with other players but without any kind of social interaction. Because in the end it's not about the systems, it's not even about the game. It's about the people, the players. You can't force players to play together.

[Kokolums]

People passionate against this idea is a GREAT identifier of toxic people. If you cannot handle spending a few seconds buffing someone else, I doubt you will get along with people in parties and raids. This is an MMO, not a single player game. Catering to people who like looms and self-buffs just makes the game incredibly toxic.

[Kithelle]

How in any way are they antisocial? Especially now with nerfs where you could get better gear from dungeons...all heirlooms are is a slight timesaver if all you do is quest.

It sounds like your problem is the fact that they nerfed class buffs...

[kenn9530]

So the way to make leveling better is to make it easier to “bypass”? Why have leveling then?

A core part of wow has always been, “yay, look at this drop I got!” With heirlooms it’s, hey here’s some vendor gold.

Leveling cant be made better, WoW has had a terrible leveling game from day 1, heirlooms actually make it better so you can skip it faster.

If you want to level without them thats your choice, the whole point in heirlooms is to get to the endgame faster.

While you level looting is not interesting at all, the only time that was true was the first time you played the game, so beyond that loot serves very little purpose while leveling.

[Eapoe]

Ah yes, another thread that comes down to: we aren’t social creatures so please force us to be social so we don’t have to actually work on it ourselves.

[Calfredd]

People passionate against this idea is a GREAT identifier of toxic people. If you cannot handle spending a few seconds buffing someone else, I doubt you will get along with people in parties and raids. This is an MMO, not a single player game. Catering to people who like looms and self-buffs just makes the game incredibly toxic.

But you are the one who created this idea and you are one of the more toxic people on these forums.

[kenn9530]

It’s terrible but it can’t be made better? That doesn’t make sense…

What doesnt make sense, WoW has have around 2 decades and has not made leveling better at all, its still the same bland experience you just want to finish as fast as you can. Heirlooms at least cut down the time that that you waste while leveling.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Funny just how often the most toxic people wanting rollbacks and a worse experience for everyone, are also the ones whinging the most about the game "Not being social anymore!!!!"...

Heirlooms are for established players wanting quicker leveling for alts, first and foremost. I don't need you nor Blizzard to police my social interactions, I'm quite capable of finding people and making friends all on my own. Heirlooms never once prohibited me in my very sociable approach of saying Hi, giving advice when asked, not being a dick to new players, finding Discords etc... One cardinal rule for this game is: There's always people wanting the same thing you do, be it to RP or push high level content. Anyone being a delicate wallflower, whinging about the "good ol' social days!!", is his/her own problem.

The only antisocial thing in this game, is some of its players.

[Varitok]

Everyone comes here to bitch about how the game isn't social anymore yet will refuse to try to interact socially in the game. I have made friends through Group Finder, it's just about if you're willing to try.

[Advent]

People passionate against this idea is a GREAT identifier of toxic people. If you cannot handle spending a few seconds buffing someone else, I doubt you will get along with people in parties and raids. This is an MMO, not a single player game. Catering to people who like looms and self-buffs just makes the game incredibly toxic.

You say that like it's supposed to mean the same thing to everyone. It doesn't. It never has, and it never will. Get off your high horse, please. For everyone's sake.

[Chumahki]

They provide buffs that should be allocated to social play. If you want leveling buffs, they should come from other players being generous and casting a spell on you instead of opening a menu and clicking an icon.

So instead of earning and enjoying my own rewards, I should be forced to rely on the charity and generosity of others? Big pass on that one, pal. They already nerfed the heirlooms to just about useless, anyway. My alts only wear them now so they don't have to loot anything or worry about gear while leveling.

[Henako]

People passionate against this idea is a GREAT identifier of toxic people. If you cannot handle spending a few seconds buffing someone else, I doubt you will get along with people in parties and raids. This is an MMO, not a single player game. Catering to people who like looms and self-buffs just makes the game incredibly toxic.

People not agreeing with you doesn't make them toxic. It just means they don't agree with you.

For what it's worth, I don't agree with you either. I think your proposed change would accomplish nothing because nobody would ever bother with it, and that's pretending it's something that needed to be fixed in the first place.

[Puri]

I assumed this was some necro thread. But no, it's from today. Someone in 2021 complaining about heirlooms.
Not only are the buff they provide pretty pointless, their item levels equals that of a level appropriate green item. And I really cannot follow what they have to do with social behaviour in wow.

[Lane]

Heirlooms are basically worthless these days except as cheap leveling transmog and not having to worry about gear upgrades. Anything blue is better and sometimes even quest greens are better depending on the content you're doing. I didn't care about losing the EXP buff, but I was annoyed they got nerfed from being on par with dungeon blues. I wouldn't have bothered getting them in their current state.