Adventure ... and world design. (and how it died)

Community General Discussion
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I just returned to Wow yet again, and looking forward to that feeling of playing a brand new world in the form of new zones and quests. Part of a dying group who still care about open world I guess.

Despite level design only getting better with each expansion, It seems each time there is new content to explore, the experience becomes less and less significant or special, and I have some thoughts as to why this is.

Flying killed adventure.

That’s it in a nutshell. But to elaborate, its the same reason why nobody reads quests, or why nobody could tell you the name of the first little town you come to in the first zone of Dragonflight. Nobody cares when you can just skip over anything and enjoy dragon riding (basically a mobile mini game). This is not how we used to think about World of Warcraft and is one of the main reasons Classic did so well.

Yes we want old half broken and imbalanced specs the way we remember them! But we also miss that sense of exploration and adventure that is completely absent from modern Wow.

Level Design & a lot hard work wasted

Blizzard believe that that they are giving players what they want (I’ve heard this before somewhere). Flying and dragonriding. Endless portals to everywhere. Dungeon finder. Being able to get from one side of the world to the other in no time at all and back before you’ve even completed a world quest.

I don’t understand why you would have so much work put into some extortionary world building and adventure potential in a new place, to then have this all made worthless by
systems designed to make things as fast as possible - in complete opposition to the RPG at the core of this game.

Its not the players fault they don’t read quests

…Or care about open world. This is bad overall design and to me this is Ion again, and issue that he simply doesn’t understand the game, and has never done for years. From one bad decision to another.

When the devs try to find a solution to open world apathy, we get badly voice acted quests. We get Delves. We get World quests. We get War mode and on and on and on.
All the while completely missing the problem and never once asking themselves the question;

Why is playing in a bare bones starting zone killing 10 boars for a quest in classic more exciting to most wow players than all the fancy ‘features’ of modern wow? Because all these ‘features’ could be mobile games for what they are worth.

This is not the reason anyone play wow.

What happened to the RPG and the adventure at the heart of it all?

It died with flying…

What are your thoughts?

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Highly questionable. It was exiting 20 years ago, when game industry was different, games were different, people and life were different. In current days, if you release a game, with core mechanic to kill 10 boars with one button and then run 10 minutes to quest giver, for the developing costs of million dollars - this game will fail so hard on the market.

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When was this to begin with?

Because may i remind you that flying was “invented” in TBC to address a core need:

People wanted to get to their instances FAST. Because lets be honest here. We spend more time at max level raiding/dungeoning/PvPing than leveling. Since 2004.

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Agree that games have changed a lot.

I do also think a lot of people (perhaps only in this dying group of open world players) still miss the adventure aspects of wow. Why put so much into building this world if its not important?

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For those who were able to hit it possibly, but at the time stats were posted and we could see that in classic only 10% of created characters made it past lvl 10 and only around 50% of accounts had a max level character. Leveling was the game for a massive amount of players.

In this sense I think the OP has a point, I do think the problem is flying but if we make the flying worse and or remove it, we will run into different problems.

Although i cannot say why side I stand on as I do enjoy convinience and use my fair share of it, but I do miss the feeling of adventure and the DF zones feel the worst they have in while.

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You want that, and you can have it, it’s called classic realms.

It’s not, at least for me… But it ones again shows, classic realms is for you :wink:

I’d argue it died from badly written stories.
If blizzard could actually make some compelling characters I might actually pay attention to it.
But a forced political narrative? No thanks.

If it was flying, why did the player base grow in TBC and Wrath? you know, when flying was added?

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I can’t help but hear behind all this the fact that OP wishes for changes, that 1. are already great appeal of Classic versions so we can always roll a char there 2. will inevitably lead to sour taste for a looot of people.

I think it is good there are options, but I don’t want to get my retail experience worsened just because changes present in Classic, which I don’t play for a reason.

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Flying was fun when it was added. And is still fun today. Still destroyed large parts of the game though

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It is most certainly not exciting but it’s still the basis of many quests in the game. Go kill x and gather y from them.

I personally find Classic insanely tedious, from the actual combat to getting around to forming groups for dungeons, to the oh look here is stuff you will have to group up with random strangers for and then never speak to again. Other people love all that, they think it’s a huge part of their game and that’s fine. We all like different things.

I find flying incredibly immersive. I’m not a fan of dragon riding it makes me feel ill. I guess you could say it’s too immersive. But I adore exploring from the air and as soon as we can I unlock my traditional flying. I’ve done all my grounded exploring by then. DF mixed it up and DR was incredibly well received. Going forward new players will also get DR as DF becomes the starter expansion in TWW.

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For you.

That is a very important part you forget. And for many people it made the game better.

And luckily we’re in a day and age where we can have both. People like OP can go enjoy SoD for example, while those that like retail, can play retail.

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if you are the type to fly over stuff and skip over reading quests, then that’s a you thing. Personally I already have about 17 years in this game; there is no magic left for me exploring zones I’ve walked through thousands of time.

Now when I get new content, I read quest texts and take my time to go through them even though I have a flying mount, so that entirely just dismantles the arguement that people do not read quest texts because they have a flying mount.
people do not read quest texts because they don’t care about quest text. That is the only reason people don’t read quest text.

Fully agree don’t even need to read leveling is a chore because in 60 whole levels of leveling up to the current expac; you are not challenged in any meaningfull way and its basically like playing a game with godmode cheats on which means that after the first 5 levels it becomes boring and the remaining 55 you just have to chew through without it getting any more exciting.

Yes it is, everything is a conscious decision on some level, you making the choice to mount up and stick to the map indicators without reading the quest text? that is a conscious decision

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This so much… No story tickles everyones fancy, some will always just skip it.

For me personally I skip the story, if I want a good story I pick up a book. That might change if blizzard stops shoving political BS down my throat one day, who knows.

Agreed again :stuck_out_tongue:

Not sure what logic the poster was trying to make here… How is it not the players fault for not reading the text?

I guess you could argue it’s blizzards fault for not making the quest interesting enough so everyone wants to read the quest? :thinking: But it would still be the players decision and fault for not reading it.

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The good news is that there’s nothing stopping you from not using flying or the dungeon finder. If you prefer to explore on foot and assemble groups through zone chat, then go for it!

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I will read every quest text on my first run through. I love that. But it’s not exciting ever again on any alt. After that it’s just accept and go.

You can only get that brand new feeling once. Then it’s done.

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Flying killed world pvp, cataclysm just put the final nail in the coffin.

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And nothing of value was lost. :joy:

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Agree with a lot of these responses.

It’s hard to change this back now, and flying is definitely something fun for a lot of players. You couldn’t see how this could be taken away now. Although the doubling down with dragonriding has me worried.

But my point is that the adventure element so the game has been diminished over the years in the eyes of a lot of players. Especially the more casual player base who enjoys world content, but also new players who would struggle I think.

Again agree that Classic is here for those players like me - but again there is still all this level design in modern wow that feels like like missed opportunity.

Not the players fault - was referring to how good design (or bad) steers user activity.

I still love getting on ships - It feels like a rekindling of something about wow long past.

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I disagree with this.
TBC and Wrath were great to explore. So was MOP. All had Flying although you had to wait until you’d leveled before accessing it.

For me what killed exploring and adventure was the small maze like zones with high mob density and limited routes to anywhere. This started in WoD, ramped up in Legion, eased off a little in BFA and ramped up again in SL.

Back in days of yore you could wander around in most directions and find a camp, village, fort or whatever. Sometimes a bread-crumb quest might lead you there others you just wandered into it on your adventures.
Back in Wrath era we had 10 zones, all bigger than the little ones we got WoD - SL.

I think the best way to implement flying was to level and explore on foot but then at max level when it came to “chores” (for want of a better word) like doing dailies / WQs, gathering herbs or ore, going to dungeon entrances et al then having flying is a must.

Flying is not the enemy, zone design is.

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  • Classic is too slow (And I already did it all when it was current content - not re-hashed)
  • Retail is too bloated with need-to-know-and-react stuff (One mob can have 3 things you need to be aware of, and there are 3 different mobs each with 3 different abilities in the same group; don’t get me started on bosses).

I am very bored, and yes I am trying to play other games, but I have that irk still that I - WANT - to play WoW…
… I just have no idea what I would do, or why, and get overwhelmed with the feeling only described as “Meh”.
:dracthyr_cry_animated:

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Agreed, story content has very little replayability. Like some movies, they might be amazing the first time … but after that, it’s kinda done.

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