A list of everything that's wrong with modern wow

Community General Discussion
1

I have played since the release, so I think i can be a pretty good judge of what, over 14 years, slowly transformed this game from something we loved, into something we love to hate. These things have been posted over and over to no end, but I thought it would be nice to have them in a short, concise list to see if we can find a common theme to the items. If you have an item of your own, post it here and I will add it to the list if I agree with the sentiment.

  • Flying mounts - drastically reduce player interaction, make the world feel small and trivialize it (kudos on realizing that and delaying flying mounts per expansion though)

  • Phasing, sharding, CRZ, x-server zones, and so on - While being a solution to population and performance issues, this is purely not worth it for the gain. This in my opinion is THE thing that destroyed WoW. Led to a total annihilation of realm communities and any sense of the need to maintain a reputation.

  • Use of gambling-like, reward-driven practices to increase playtime - this means, implementation of RNG systems that trigger the gambling hormones in our brain in order to get us addicted and grind endlessly. Endless, pointless chasing after gear makes the game about the reward, not about the experience of playing it. You might see a short burst of play time, but in the long run, people will burn out, and just simply quit. I actually made a long video on this matter - https://youtu.be/GLmMwrh5o6E. (Note: while I claim in the video that this is not Blizzard’s fault, I have since changed my opinion and I firmly believe that this is Blizzard’s fault for deliberately changing the mindset of the players.)

  • LFR, lower raid difficulties, and the de-exclusification of content - we all know what it is, seeing a Scarab Lord, or someone with a rare, no longer obtainable mount or transmog. You think “wow, what a legend”. People need something to strive towards in the long run. Something to drive them, even if they might not achieve it themselves. To know, there is this massive castle with a dragon in it that only one group of 40 people you have ever seen can kill. With all content made available to everyone, even if at a lower difficulty, this feeling is gone.

  • Teleport mechanics, especially to instances - sitting in a capital city and just queuing for instances to get ported to them takes ALL the adventure away from the game. Running to SFK as an alliance player was more of an adventure than actually doing the instance itself. Or, during raid times, meeting all the people on the menethil harbor boat to theramore, going to raid Onyxia or AQ. You even had to go to Ashenvale to queue for WSG. I think the removal of the need to travel dealt a great hit to the game.

  • Group finder and other queue systems - yes, they make it easy to find players, but that’s also precisely why no new relationships are developed within the group. People NEVER call eachother their actual nickname in random groups, they always go by the class name. In Vanilla, it was considered very rude to call someone by their class name. If it’s not easy to find a replacement and you have to spend long minutes looking for people and waiting, guess what - it creates the need for social interaction and trust. If you are a jerk to someone and make him leave, yeah, you are going to have to go back, find someone else, and go to the dungeon again. Creation of trusting relationships like this is what makes friendships and guilds spring to existence.

  • Making the player “the one and only hero” - the notion that I should somehow imagine that I’m THE one with an Ashbringer when everyone else has it is absolutely ridiculous. Noone asked for this. Similarly, garrisons. Totally destroys immersion and player uniqueness.

  • The loss of sense of a persistent world - this is mostly attributed to many of the above points like phasing and so on, but we also have things like quest item sharing in the world - I just saved this NPC in this cage, why the hell is it still there for the other player outside of my group to rescue? Why is this herb I picked up still there for this other guy to pick up? Why is everyone running around with what is obviously Vindicator Boros, but just renamed to a generic name? If I decide to escort an NPC, there should be ONE NPC in the world - it should be with me and everyone else should see it like that.

  • Integrated questhelper
    This feature plagues not only WoW nowadays, but also all new RPGs/RPG-like games coming out, even AAA titles like The Witcher 3. This feature turns players into mindless robots that go from point A to point B to point A. No actual thinking required, just the need to look at the map. This absolutely takes away all the excitement and adventure away from questing. Having to read quest text to figure out where to go, what to do, solving “mini-puzzles”… that is what a quest is about.

  • Zone-restricted, streamlined quests
    Quests nowadays are a very streamlined experience. So streamlined it feels artificial. You sweep through zones, having camp A point you to camp B, which points you to camp C, and in 99% of the cases, the quest keeps you within the zone. Some of the most enjoyable quests for me used to be those that sent you across the world seeking some rare materials from an obscure location or a special npc. Finding a quest NPC stowed away in a hidden location that was not being pointed to on the map as it does today was also really exciting.

I think the one common theme we see is that now, the game is focused on solo gameplay, while in the past it used to be focused on social interactions and immersion in the world. Rant over for now, I might return later to add some items to the list.

UPDATE 18/12:

I have read through the replies. It seems a lot of people that disagre with my post misunderstood what I’m actually advocating for. I am not advocating for complete removal of most of these features. I am very aware of the fact that we are too far in to go back now and removal of them would piss off a lot of people.

I am simply compiling a list of the core issues that caused wow’s “downfall”, in hopes that Blizzard recognizes them and tries to mitigate the damage in clever ways, resulting in a compromise that caters both to people that share my sentiment and people that have already gotten used to and like these features.

To provide some examples of what could partially alleviate the problem, for each of the bullet points:

Flying mounts
Here, I think the current solution is already pretty good. However, I would welcome it if the flying unlock per expansion would be pushed back even further, possibly to the end of the expansion.

Phasing, sharding, CRZ, x-server zones, and so on

Now this is an extremely difficult point to solve. Especially with warmode being here now. An idea would be to make abstract “super servers”, similar to how battlegroups used to be. Now, these would have to be separate for non-WM and WM. Basically, you’d have one super-server, encompassing several normal servers (super servers would contain different realms in WM, as needed of course). The players on the same super-server would see eachother, and would always default to that shard. Now, if it was needed for performance reasons, they could get pushed to a different super-server temporarily, as it is done now.

The most important part about this is that the player would know which super-server he is part of, and therefore which community he is part of. And also, he would have an in-game indication on which super-server he is currently playing . This is just somehting I thought up on the spot, and surely has some negatives to it, such as old world zones being deserted. But the point is, with enough effort, we can get a less of a chaotic solution than what is going on now. With random raid groups popping in and out of existence etc.

Use of gambling-like, reward-driven practices to increase playtime
No comment here, this just has to go completely

LFR, lower raid difficulties, and the de-exclusification of content
Here, I would remove the LFR and Normal raid difficulties, at least. I think that raiding should be something at least remotely challenging. What is the point of raids if you can just ignore most of the mechanics?

Teleport mechanics, especially to instances
I would remove the initial teleport to normal and heroic dungeons found through group finder. That way, at least two people have to travel there for the summon.

Group finder and other queue systems
This one might be too deeply-rooted in the current game to actually do anything about, but maybe I’ll think of something in the future.

Making the player “the one and only hero”
This is also one of the things that IMO has to get removed completely. People who disagreed with everything else even mostly agreed with this one. This one is just stupid. Blizzard can even do it so it makes sense from a lore standpoint. Some old god erases everyones memories about us and steals our powers of whatnot. After that, we are just a basic adventurer again.

The loss of sense of a persistent world
This point can be solved by addressing the issues above, and, instead of having per-player quest npcs and objects in the world, make them unified for everyone in the world as I suggested, but apply the Guild Wars 2 system:

  • An event pops up in the world
  • Players around, grouped or not, complete objectives to fill up a progress bar
  • The player is rewarded depending on how much he participated in the event

This would prevent ridiculous sights in the world such as seeing 15 of an important NPC at a time and pretending YOU are the one with the true important guy, or 5 people opening a cage and rescuing an NPC that is not there for you anymore because you rescued it yourself.

Update 20/12:
Here is a very relevant, very popular reddit thread that was just posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/a7rrmy/a_letter_to_blizzard_entertainment/

Some quotes from this massively-upvoted thread:

I wasn’t logging on to earn or buy loot boxes. I didn’t finish a dungeon and hope that whatever the final boss dropped would not only be the thing I wanted, but also titanforge into a super-powered version of the thing I wanted. I didn’t log on so I could fill a bar - though there were plenty of bars to fill. I didn’t play so I could gather some random source of power that would inevitably fade into irrelevance as soon as some goblin miner discovered a new random source of power. I didn’t show up to race through dungeons or to replace pieces of gear every other day with gear that was marginally better (or worse) than what I was wearing. In fact, I think I wore the same robe for 2 years during classic WoW

You stopped making an MMORPG years ago. Instead, you turned WoW into an elaborate fantasy-themed casino replicator. It’s a third-person looter-shooter designed to string players out like addicts looking for a fix.

77 Likes
2

Good for you that classic is coming soon :slight_smile:

9 Likes
3

Wrong according to whom? Because I don’t see anything wrong with anything you’ve listed. I like all of those, they are all great features Blizzard added to the game over the years.

8 Likes
4

i totally agree with you mate. Very good list. I think the most important is your second point tho. They destroyed the sense of communities

20 Likes
5

you have no clue mate get away of this thread. His list is on point and if you cant see it or understand it dont come here saying bs

11 Likes
6

According to me

4 Likes
7

He has no clue and if you agree, so do you. If you want to see “bs”, look no further than OP.

2 Likes
8

Dude seriously now, if you dont agree with this list it seems you havent played Classic or TBC.

I love the fact that after Classic WoW comes out we wont be playing the same game. And dont you dare come to wow Classic we dont need kids like you.

8 Likes
9

Maybe instead of acting like an asinine child, maybe provide some counter arguments as to why you think these things work? Don’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you don’t.

18 Likes
10

Congratulations, now you make just as little sense as OP does.

I’ve played from launch until the launch of WotLK before quitting WoW. Some of those things he has listed as “wrong” (like flying, better grouping options, better resource gathering etc.) were just the things I wished there was in the game back then.

Good for you, then just wait for classic servers instead of trying to ruin the current version of the game with your nostalgia sauced ideas.

3 Likes
11

Ability pruning also gets to me, it makes for boring rotations and rids classes of identity. Seems that Blizz just waters down classes to some degree and I don’t know why.

9 Likes
12

ok bye now. Again, dont you DARE come to WoW Classic.

13

Ah one of these threads again.
“Quality of life is bad stuff and I can only be social if I am forced to talk to people.”
Ya can be social and find new friends! Imagine that! Does it have to be from every single dungeon group? No! That would be ridiculous now, wouldn’t it?

And the thing with the hero is funny as wow is the only MMO where peeps are constantly complaining about it.
Cannot blame you though for that one, WoW does not exactly know how to pull you into the story and immerse you.

Over all
I have to ask:
How did you escape the quarantine (classic forum)? That place was specially made for you nostalgia people to drool over every annoying little detail and scream #Nochange at anyone who suggest even the slightest QoL change.

3 Likes
14

That’s what a thread like this deserved, but hell, I’ll bite.

Flying is something that’s been in Warcraft even before WoW was announced. If common soldiers such as Night Elf hippogryph riders or Troll batriders could use flying mounts back then, there is no reason for player characters in WoW to not use them. Lore reasons aside, you already have to explore the map before gaining access to flying now. You are already forced to using ground mounts at least on one character, so “trivializing the world” isn’t really an argument since you have to be out there to unlock flying.

CRZ is a godsend for players on low pop realms. If it wasn’t for CRZ, players on low pop realms would’ve been nearly excluded from any group content they’d like to do, simply because they couldn’t find more players on their realm. Not to mention CRZ makes it possible for people to play together with their friends playing on other realms. If it wasn’t for CRZ, their only option would be leveling a character from scratch on their friends’ server.

Which is nothing new as RNG was in WoW since the launch of the game. If anything, it was even worse back then thanks to limited loot dropping in raids.

Thanks to LFR most people who otherwise wouldn’t even step a foot in a raid are doing so while its still the current content now. Remove LFR and those people wouldn’t suddenly decide to go for harder difficulties, they’ll simply stop doing raids again. You don’t like LFR? That’s fine, don’t do it, go for Mythic raiding instead. Be that guy with you used to admire back in the days.

Unless you’re talking about LFD/LFR, the only way to teleport someone instance is summoning stones or warlock portals. Raids and dungeons are about the instance itself, travelling has nothing to do with the actual difficulty of raid or dungeon.

Probably one of the best things they’ve done for the game. Before it was looking for people on chat (it was also only on your realm, so an even more limited pool of players), waiting for them to move to the instance and hoping that they know what to do.

This is probably the only subjective thing on the list, it all depends on your preferences. Like it or not, players have actually done “heroic deeds”, and from MoP onwards they’ve actually done it with little to no outside help as well. I see it might not everyone’s cup of tea, I have no problem with that narrative myself.

Would you rather have everyone queue in front of Vindicator Boros and wait for the next player to end his quest so others can spam click on the NPC to have a chance to pick up their quest? I know I don’t.

Current system is much better for resource gathering as well. If someone is running few meters ahead of you, you can still gather that herb within 10 seconds of him gathering it, which gives more chance to players with gathering professions. Old system benefits nobody other than botters.

Who are you to tell me what I can’t do with my money again? Unfortunately, classic and current version will be on the same sub, so anyone playing the current version will have full access to classic as well.

Not that I’d play that smoldering pile of mess even if you paid me to do…

9 Likes
15

Good, see now we can have a conversation.
I don’t really think your example here works, because lore doesn’t necessitate gameplay. It can influence it and it often does, but there are times where it doesn’t and for very good reasons too. For example, considering how we’ve slain gods and beyond, it really doesn’t make sense that our characters still commit to trivial tasks such as collecting fishing rods or killing vermin. Does that mean we shouldn’t have that in the game? Does every obstacle need to come in the form of a demi-god or greater? You tell me what you think here.

As for your reasoning: By that logic, a person could be happy for the rest of their days so long as they have experienced happiness once in life. It doesn’t really hold up.

[quote=“Savoren-draenor, post:14, topic:14138”]
CRZ is a godsend for players on low pop realms
[/quote] Yes this is true, but it’s a plague for reasons stated by OP for everyone else who isn’t on low-pop servers. It’s a band-aid that patches up the bleeding, but tears it apart once it has to be removed. I hope the analogy works for you.

RNG has always existed, but never in the lootbox driven fashion that we get today. Favoring luck over unlocking the means to approach a loot-table in the first place is cancerous across the board. You are not being entirely sincere when you go about your argument the way you just did.

No, we are getting a ham fisted, watered down, unrealistic preview of the real thing: All the while they get to reap rewards that are akin to a participation trophy, yet they harbor stats that are worthy of great effort. Also your latter statement does simply not comply by rules of logic since you are pretending LFR isn’t having a disasterous effect on the ecosystem of competition, aspiration and motivation + bloated stat creep over the course of an expansion due to the inclusive policy which in turn has a multilateral, negative impact on an even wider list of features within the game. It also deincentivizes co-operation and encourages a “me first/I’m special” mentality.

He’s talking about the fact that we have 3 hearthstones, several portals within capitals to other places with more portals. All of which bleeds the world from its tangibility. A crucial component for the immersion factor.

Sure there is no denying that it has made things more convenient. Fact is that it chokes the life out of any incentive to make friends and connect with people. Be honest: How often do you see people communicate in LFG scenarios? Because I know I never experience it anymore and I’ve seen countless of posts on forums and heard how others experience the exact same silence. It’s a pretty complex causality so if you want to discuss the repercussions of LFG tools, it should be kept to an exclusive thread, rather than this one.

2 Likes
16

I like almost all of the things listed in the OP and think they’ve made the game more accessible and enjoyable.

Am only gonna play classic to wind up Mr Don’t You DARE now. :joy:

4 Likes
17

I approve this message 100%

1 Like
18

Flying mounts
Sorry, but you are mixing lore and systems design up here. This is not even an argument in my eyes. On unlocking: yes, I admitted that Blizzard’s approach to flying has improved very much, but after that period is gone, the world is trivialized forever, and meeting other players is restricted only to points of interest, not roads etc.

Phasing, sharding, CRZ, x-server zones, and so on
While it is a godsend for them, have you not realised there were other solutions to this issue that does not create as many problems as the current solution? And that means merging realms. But Blizzard would never do that, because that is bad PR for the game. Instead we have “connected realms”, CRZ and such.

Use of gambling-like, reward-driven practices to increase playtime
I can’t even fathom how you thought it was worse back then. RNG was there to add an element to excitement. Now you have systems using the classic total-random - disenchant for almost no currency system being used everywhere in games with lootboxes. Now the game is tailored to get you addicted to this system, akin to slot machines. In fact, many governments and international organizations are currently moving to ban gambling in games (lootboxes) - WoW is not quite there yet as it does not use real money. However, it does use the same psychological mechanisms. As much as I do not like political restrictions, arguably, this would be the next thing to ban.

LFR, lower raid difficulties, and the de-exclusification of content
Yes, which was the point of my post. If noone steps in these raids, the exclusivity will create a feeling of excitement and something to go for. Now you just add a few mechanics and yeah, the excitement is gone.

Teleport mechanics, especially to instances
I’m talking about LFD, LFR, battlegrounds. And I will disagree with that “Raids and dungeons are about the instance itself”. There are many factors that make it about more than just the instance itself. The way you find groups for it, the way people strive to take a shot at it, and so forth. This is exactly what my last point was in my original post. Focus on gameplay, not socializing.

The loss of sense of a persistent world
Obviously it is not better for everyone to queue for such a quest. I would rather for such a quest not be there at all. Instead, create quests or events that make sense in a persistent world. Guild Wars 2 handled this astonishingly well.

Gathering: yes, this is good if you like everything handed to you. But then you might as well go play Skyrim or Witcher and go solo herb picking. MMOs are there also for the sense of competetion. And btw, it does not really give “more chance” to players with gathering professions. If everyone can pick the herb up, it devalues the market value of the item by tons. And I don’t really see how the old system would benefit botters. And botting is a different matter entirely that should not be handled by patches in game design but by proper systems design.

19

I don’t mind being called a hero in a game, no one calls me that in real life :sweat_smile:
And I can’t see how that really ruins the game :no_mouth:

If this is how you feel it’s fine, but don’t call others opinion BS just because it doesn’t suit you - being a Vanilla player doesn’t qualify to be the expert either :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

A lot seem to have problems with the flying mounts, but please tell me: Do you fly, run on a mount or run?
And when you run, do you follow a path or run across the land?

I run on a path, all the time! Not because I’m a Vanilla player that likes to run, but because I write so much with my guildies, that I get a little tired of the random deaths, because I am busy looking at guild chat or Discord.
And when I run on the paths, I rarely see anyone.
So if you want to have people to interact with each other, you would have to force people to stay on the exact same path all the time - and that would make an uproar too if that happened.

I like to teleport, I hate the loading screen, but I like the convienience of the teleport - and I never sit and wait, I seek out things to do… You know, make your own adventure :wink:

The social interaction is something that I also see often as a complain thing, but I have to ask: What do you do in order to make the game more social yourself?

One of the guilds I have been disbanded some time ago, the people were complaining about no one being talkative in the guild and social - the funny thing was, that those who complained were those who were silent, other complainers were in their own little chat/conversation on Discord, not allowing others in because 50 people can’t talk at the same time.

To have to the social work, you have to make an effort yourself - I am in 3 very social and talkative guilds, and me and other socials have been working hard to get the social interaction and social gameplay to work, but it doesn’t get handed, you have to be there too in order to make it work.

TL:DR: jakkety-jak, jakkety-jak… random BS and letters thrown all over the place.

4 Likes
20

If we have to be honest here, I’d have to say rng was much wider in vanilla, it even applied to abilities going through or not (a missed taunt could wipe a raid and a missed feign death throttle hunters).

The main difference was in how well it was integrated in the game. Bosses (and mobs) were always “lootboxes” but they weren’t perceived as such - even when defeating them felt easy. Partly because there were fewer possible outcomes and partly because we didn’t see the a lootbox icon.

RNG is bad when the game systems don’t cover it well. It’s the difference between opening the lid to see what’s going on inside an old-style clock and having a clock where the lid is half open and you always see what’s going on inside. The first clock will give you a better sense of “this tracks time” - even when you know what’s going on under the hood. The second will just give you a sense of cogs moving and a display showing the end result - even when you know the effect is the same.

RPGs were always a “make-believe” experience, with the game letting you look past the fact that everything is fake and producing real emotions. When the experience stops being believable, we just see it for something completely artificial and can’t get an emotional reaction from it. (except maybe negative emotions towards the changes that made it stop being believable)

That’s how I’d summarise the problem with today’s version of WoW anyway :slight_smile:

Yes, this is correct but see above :slight_smile:

3 Likes