[Critical Review] Division is Destruction!

Community General Discussion
1

Hello.
I wanted to make this topic in the Development section of the forum, but it did not fit into any sub category there and it would not allow me to create a topic in the base directory for Development found @ https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/in-development
If a mod could move the topic to there, I would appreciate it, as that is where it belongs.

# intro

There are many people reviewing WoW these days. Sadly few of them ever say anything Critical about the game. Many of them are streamers or from top-end guilds. Recently there was a "leak" of what is to come in the next expansion, & of the reviews I saw of that - the people were just like "o, I like that" "Yes I really like that" without a bad word to say. Perhaps it is because they do not want people to see them as negative, as it would risk lowering their viewer/reader base.

These “popular reviewers” feed off the game to pander to a popularist audience, to in turn enhance their own popularity. They are not critics and they fail to give any criticism.

But since Blizzard seem to tailor the game to suit what they “think” people like or want, this calls for a more critical review of what is happening with WoW right now, for the sake of the future of the game.

When I first started playing WoW, there were over 12million players world-wide. First I played some trial accounts, probably around TBC time, maybe earlier but my interest was in other games back then. When I tried a Warlock, I just had to buy the game and this was then the time of the Lich King. So it is fair to say that I did not fully experience the first two parts of the game as End-Game content. But from Lich King onwards I have been a Guild Leader of a very large and active guild. Here I am just trying to give you a scope of where I am coming from.

Since then, the players have been constantly divided, more and more by the development choices and directions of the game.

So, let’s talk about the division…

# 1 Comprehensive talent trees.

When Cataclysm came, Blizzard decided to revamp the talent trees. With this change they also divided the different specs of the characters into more rigid specialisations. Where before players had been able to spend a few talent points in each specialisation area to benefit their own play style or their character’s playability, the door was now closed. Choices were minimised and many spells for many classes were segregated to each specialisation type. A lot of players did not like this, and thought that if they had to re-learn how to play their character(s), then they might as-well be playing some other character, or some other game.

Now as time has gone by, Blizzard have given us artifacts. First in legion with the weapon, and now in Battle for Azeroth with the necklace. With the newest artefact needing to be levelled up in order to unlock “traits” on armours, and now “essences” on the necklace itself. Just as the weapon artefact needed to be – for “more powerful spells”, (as you all know).

However, I do not see “traits” or “essences”. I see the bottom end of the talent tree when I look at these items. Yes, we now need to grind our butts off for talents which used to be a part of the character by default. I have studied games development myself, and I once had an idea for a game where all of the talents and spells or abilities would be bound to armour’ in this way, with the characters only having certain spells if they equipped a particular armour or set. But this is not the way WoW was first designed and it does not suit.

This division of the once ‘comprehensive’ talent trees has caused a division of the players. If players do not have the time to grind for Azerite, then they cannot unlock the spell advancements which they need on their armours. Likewise, if they do not have the time to constantly farm for armours, or simply do not get the drops they want, then they do not have the “traits” aka “talents” available to them to do the damage, healing or mitigation which they need to survive in more difficult parts of the game, such as high level dungeons, PvP, or raids. Now this may take a lot of time, so many players simply do not have the talents which they used to unlock once they hit max level.

With each season of BfA so far, Blizzard have crushed the XP pool for levelling the necklace [Heart of Azeroth] to make it easier for players to get its level up – in line with the new armour tiers. Again this has caused division, with some players doing everything they can to climb the steep end of the XP pool, to be able to unlock everything – while other players simply quit levelling the artefact once they hit the wall, to go and level alts (they simply do not have the time to grind it out).

This all makes it so that some players are doing far worse in dungeons and raids or PvP, than you may think that they should be doing if you look at their item level (as most do). Which in turn enhances the level of elitist based arguments amongst the players (causes social division).

End-Game used to be for “causal players” but this development choice now excludes them, confining them to do their quests in the raid finder, and then drop out of end-game gameplay. Some are lucky to even get through the raids on Normal Mode.

# 2 Classic

Now we have seen so many players flocking to play the newly re-launched Classic version of the game. Most people are saying things like “they will all come back once the nostalgia wears off!” or “it is just a novelty!” But I don’t believe that many of them will come back before season 4 of BfA, or before the next expansion is launched. Playing Classic will make them fall so far behind with levelling their artefact, armours and essences, they will be prone to stick to Classic – where they can simply choose their talents in the comprehensive talent tree. I don’t mean to continue with the last #point but the majority of players I have asked, have said that this is one of the things they loved the most about Classic (Vanilla & up to Lich King), along with the hybrid specialisation choices they had. The combination of point 1 and 2 has caused division.

Blizzard could have made the choice to somehow implement Classic content and gameplay into the main-stream “retail” version of WoW, with some kind of “Timewalking” method. Sadly they chose to re-launch old story on separate servers, dividing the players in such a way which has left many realms/servers suffering with a great loss of players. This has had a very bad effect on the guilds of those servers.

I personally am disappointed to see that it took Blizzard such a long time to re-launch Classic. With how long they took, I was expecting to see updated character models and textures. Also, I expected to see an updated user-interface, which could have include the new guild and communities interface and auction. So as to keep players in touch with their friends in BfA. Sadly these things were not implemented. With how poor the old auction was – players in classic are forced to interact with each other more for item sales and trade. Within Classic this extra interaction is a good thing for the players as they come to make new friends, but for the WoW community as a whole it is only strengthening the divide which Classic has caused.

People say that they think Blizzard did not update the interface because they wanted players to have “the full Classic experience”. But the Classic experience was in the game-play itself, not in the user-interface, which is now very dated.

Let’s face it, if players only want to play up-to level 60, there isn’t much difference between main-stream “retail” WoW and Classic. Yes, Blizzard changed some starting zones a little… The only real significant changes are the Loot modes, the talents, spells and talent tree and the user interface. Was it really worth dividing the players in such a dramatic way?

Again, this division is all development choice.

# 3 Guilds

A long time ago, guilds used to be able to recruit a large amount of players. This was needed, especially in the days of “Vanilla”/Classic because of the 40 player raids, and the “For the Alliance”/”For the Horde” PvP feats. Then, some-time around Lich King or Cataclysm, guilds were limited to 1,000 characters and no more.

At the time before the cap was implemented, some guilds on high population servers had way over 1,000 characters in them. Blizzard used to offer free character transfers from one realm to another, in order to manage the swelling population of such servers. Swelling population which could be attributed to the success of those large guilds. After the cap was implemented, guilds on lower population realms began to suffer. Some realms were merged, or “connected”, allowing guilds to recruit more active players to their following which helped those smaller guilds a lot, enabling them to grow once more to a point where social game play could flourish. Many guilds became known as “social guilds” or “social raiding guilds”. The social/casual players in them could enjoy the end game content together.

Compare that to now, in an age of “E-sports”. Now, those guilds have been rebranded as “Casual guilds” and it has become common belief that “casual players cannot raid”. See point 1 for a good idea of one reason why they cannot raid anymore (while they used to do quite well).

Since the servers were merged, not much has been done to manage the population of servers. Since Classic landed, some servers have been looking quite empty. Today I see that Blizzard has enhanced the “sharding” of realms, to give it the appearance that more players are online. But this has not helped the guilds of low population servers. With many more guilds created since the merger of realms, and those new guilds taking in the guildless players – I believe it would be a good idea for Blizzard to merge more realms at this point, even if it means that they have to offer players free name changes. Something needs to be done.

As a guild leader, I have to think of the number of players online and active in my guild. Some sharp-shooters have tried to claim that I only care about numbers when I have tried to explain this in the past, but that is not the case.

If we have 900+ characters in the guild (with many of those being alts) then we can expect to see “on average” just 20 to 30 online at a time during peak playing hours. This number does not change much at all, except towards the end of a season when players seem to stop playing and go inactive. We have to periodically remove inactive characters to fit in more active players. Many of those we remove, come back to play the game again, only to find that they are no longer in a guild. Some of them get re-invited to the guild. This is a constant chore for any leader of a large guild.

If a guild looks “empty” or has just 10 to 15 people online at peak play times, then players leave it, and this has a domino effect, on down to an empty (dead) guild.

Of course, some guilds are made of real-life-friend players, who can sustain a team for group play without the need to invite anyone else. Players from such guilds may question the need for large guilds. The need for large guilds comes from the fact that not everyone in the game is a beautiful social flower. Not everyone knows each other, and not everyone has the same routine in life. Some guilds can easily span across many real-world time zones with their player-base.

For every 30 players online, there are 10 afk, 10 doing something in the game already, and only 10 paying any attention to the guild chat. Therefore, and due to the high maintenance caused by the character cap on guilds I assert that the cap is simply too low. We need to be able to have more like 2,000 characters in the guild, or 1,000 accounts. We need to be able to have more players in the guilds so that we can make raids & PvP events. With only 30 online at a time, guilds can struggle to put together a team for a raid or PvP group of any size.

Even players from the largest guilds are forced to find random “single serving friends” known as puggers - to fill their groups (even for 5 man dungeons).

So the 1,000 character limit on guilds is divisive, and it stops players from being able to help each other through the end-game content in a social way. I know people will in turn criticize me for saying this, but I have put a lot of time into my guild, and many of the players in it think of me as a good guild leader. I put too much time into managing characters and removing them for inactivity, only to invite them back when they come back and someone else goes inactive. More players than can be, want to be in my guild, they are casual players who come and go.

The low character cap on guilds was & is another divisive development choice.

# 4 E-Sports

We are at a time now where every main-stream game has an aspect of E-Sports to it. This can be a great thing. Sadly, Blizzard chose to make it a thing for Dungeons in WoW. It was not enough for them to keep it as a thing for PvP. OK, why do I think this is a sad thing? Because players used to do dungeons in the short time before dinner, to gear-up for raiding. Raiding should be the E-Sports of PvE (IMO). Choosing to make Dungeons the E-Sport for PvE has caused division amongst the PvE players. Some players now only want to do dungeons and refuse to take part in raids or simply prefer not to. Some come to help out in raids and lose their patience quickly if any wipes occur.

The E-Sport aspect of Dungeons causes many arguments amongst players. With downgraded keys when people leave groups and players messaging others to blame them for wasted time and “broken” keys. With players not being accepted to join groups, sending frustrated messages to the group leader in order to find out why they were not accepted.

If Blizzard want to reduce this division, and keep the social group play active in WoW (originally driven by guilds), not only would increasing the character limit on guilds help a lot, but so would giving the way Mythic dungeons work – a bit of a re-think.

Is it really needed that players can get better armours from dungeons than they can get from Normal Mode raids? For those players to then try to jump straight into Heroic raids and cause wipe-outs because they simply have no raiding experience? Perhaps the rewards from dungeons should be changed, that I will leave to be debated.

# 5 War Mode

I will finish with this point. War Mode has divided the players on the servers via phase shifts. It has also divided (again) the spell traits of spells, putting some traits into a PvP only micro talent tree/choices (so PvE players even get less spell utilisation). It does not benefit every player to be in War Mode, and Blizzard try to tempt people into PvP with bonuses which are not available to PvE players. Players don’t want to feel forced to play PvP. Nor do players want to be divided.

War Mode further makes servers appear empty. There could be someone standing right beside me, from my own guild, or a good friend, but I would never know. I could talk about it more, but the post is rather full now, so maybe in replies.

If a server looks empty, people transfer to another server or quit the game, this has a domino effect, down to an empty (dead) server, and eventually to a dead game.

# Conclusion

Players do not want to be divided, as they want to see full servers, full guilds, and many other people playing the game. They also do not want their talent trees divided onto parts of armours, or PvP only pie.

The Division caused by development choices is killing this game. One divide after another, we are being left with fewer players on our servers. Fewer and fewer players in the game.

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I didn’t see anyone permanently leave for classic :woman_shrugging:
BFA content is just as alive as always, more alive on alliance now even.
Unless your raid mythic or push really high keys your HoA doesn’t really matter at all, you get levl 55 literally by existing and maybe doing the weekly islands 3 or 4 times lol.

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It does matter. It makes a huge difference. Even just the 3% stamina buffs it gives make a huge difference.

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but it really doesn’t?

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Well if we go by your character which you chose to post from, which hasn’t even done Normal Mode raids in BfA, not even the last 2 raids on raid-finder… Then I have to ask, do you actually mean it makes no difference or that you just don’t care about it?

For someone who has the worst armour they could get, lets say a tank, with the least idea “traits” so hardly any decent damage reduction… does the 3% stamina buff make no difference?

It makes a huge difference.

For a damage spec who just bought the 445 armour token from the vendor for Titan Residuum and got the worst armour they could get, but cannot unlock the “traits” or the centre ring of the armour, does it make no difference?

It makes a Huge difference.

I had Overwhelming Power on all 3 armours, then I bought 445 shoulders (random) and simulated my gear on raidbots, my damage dropped a lot. Without the centre unlocked the armour was worse than the lower level shoulders I had (because it didn’t have OP). Until I got level 65 on the necklace, the new shoulders would not improve my damage, which they now do, and give +250 dps more (or there about).

That is a big difference which it would take you weeks to get, from level 55 to 65.

We should be able to choose these “traits” and essence ranks, as a part of a comprehensive talent tree.

I think you did not read my post, you just took one small point about it to talk about. Nit picking so to speak. You replied faster than it would take someone to read through half of the topic post.

The post is about the division of development choices. See how our opinions are divided? lol.

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  1. This was originally a ret paladin, I’m playing it as prot for the tmog on the forums.
  2. Raiding isn’t the only content that exists.
  3. You literally get to unlock all the trait except one the final ring which is just ilvl and a stats by doing one quest and the 4 weekly islands.
  4. the game throws HoA level 55 at you for FREE
    Everything else past that only really matters for high end content like mythic and high keys.
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…“In your opinion.”

I haven’t only spoken about raiding here. But you would know that if you bothered to read the whole of the original post before replying to nit-pick on one part of one point.

Thanks for not saying anything contributively constructive here.

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XDDD?
nice way to avoid everything my g

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Why are you starting your ‘critical review’ which blatant nonsense such as this?!
People are probably the most critical of WoW in many years (maybe even ever).
And a big part of that is social media and streamers; unlike in years passed when you now say something it doesn’t disappear into a big hole of nothingness. It gets seen and re-tweeted, re-posted, re-streamed, reacted to by, etc etc.

Or, you know… Maybe they just liked it?!

Anyway… you made quite a post and tbh it’s a bit too long for me to read all of it because I simply don’t share your ‘doomsaying’ mindset.

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Yes, they like everything, with their over-hyped pretentious optimism, because like I said, they don’t want to put their viewers off from subscribing, or put their readers off from retweeting with negativity. In short, they are self serving and feeding off the game for popularity.

They are “popular reviewers” not critics.

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I don’t think any of them are actually ‘reviewers’ tbh.
That’s an actual profession; video game reviewer.
And streamers and such are not that.

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o, so they are just posers xD
Maybe they shouldn’t sit there making “review videos” then, hmm?

Why are you still posting here if you can’t be bothered to read the whole post?
not to be rude, but…

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Not perse (some might very well be, I don’t watch a lot of them - especially the streamers. I never understood the appeal of watching someone else play a game when I could just be playing it myself).

They can do whatever they like. Why does it bother you so much?
If some youtuber makes a video about a movie, that doesn’t all of a sudden make that person a movie critic. It’s ‘just a person with an opinion’.

Well, since you’re replying to me, I find it only logical (not to mention civil) to react back. Right? :grin:

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so you are literally just trying to derail the thread.

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tbh I don’t agree with a lot of what you said - or rather, I feel that it’s stuff that really doesn’t make so much of a difference to cause a problem. Like the 1k guild limit … no doubt that may well cause a “problem” for some guilds … but you used the example of a 900+ guild with a lot less accounts than 900, with many many alts … well firstly it’s not maxed, and secondly, with many many alts … I’d suspect there would be plenty that could be removed from the guild for inactivity. Nothing stopping people getting alts reinvited if they wanted to play them again … but in the meantime, if you’re having to turn people away because you’ve reached the max, that is a way around that problem. Regular guild roster maintentance.

I do kinda understand the point with the talent trees. I understand why Blizzard did what they did with them … because in the end, those who wanted the best options for raiding, dungeons, etc, used “cookie cutter” builds, so everyone was basically doing what Blizzard did in the end anyway (up to a point). However, for the more casual people - it was/is nice to be able to randomly pick stuff from any talent tree to suit your play style. I played for a while with another, similar, game … Rift I believe … where they took that and ran with it, creating combos where you could have all sorts of extremes based on which talents you picked from which talent trees. Perhaps Blizzard could have taken the best from both worlds … allowed the multiple choice of various talents, but also giving buttons to select optimal builds for certain circumstances. Having said that … if they did that, why would anyone do anything other than select the optimal? :stuck_out_tongue:

I have no problem with streamers. They’re an advert for WoW - classic and retail - and I do know that, although I’m not really the type of person who sits watching someone else play, others do. Just because it’s out there, and because you’re not a fan, doesnt mean others aren’t … and obviously there must be a fan base there, or they wouldn’t do it.

“end game” is a different thing to different people. Some see “end game” as mythic raiding … or any level of raiding. Other see it as the point in time where they’ve got all their alts levelled to max, they are working through their achievements, they’re having fun in pvp - I think the point is that basically there is a lot of choice and, over time, Blizzard have increased that choice.

I don’t believe that people who enjoy both classic and retail, will decide to stick only to classic, just because they’ve “lost” some time progressing in retail. We have many members who play only sporadically, or have large periods of time away from WoW … for many reasons … but it doesn’t stop them coming back. I do believe that SOME people may well stick with classic rather than retail, at least for some considerable time - but those will mainly be the people who would have lost interest/had already lost interest, in retail anyway. There is a constant ebb and flow of people playing WoW, it’s inevitable that those who have lost interest in retail may find something else catching their attention.

As far as war mode goes … it is weird, I’ll give you that. It’s strange that they are phased out. Personally I’m not sure why it wasn’t simply done like it used to be … where you set your pvp tag on … people without it on couldn’t attack you and you couldn’t attack them, but you could still see them. But … I don’t use warmode. I know guildees who do and who have both enjoyed the benefits and frustrations of it … but personally the only time I’ve had a problem with it is when I’m trying to group up with people through LFG and it turns out some are phased.

My assessment is that CHOICE is not division. It is maximising options. What is causing problems is one of the main reasons people go back to Classic, which is a feeling of community. I know Blizzard have tried to enhance that in retail with the addition of communities, but that has been to the detriment of guilds. Not because communities have pulled people from guilds, but because, in concentrating their efforts into communities and giving no effort to improving (in fact, changing the way the guild process works, from recruitment to organising to administering guilds more difficult in some cases) they’ve given the impression that they’re in the process of abandoning guilds - who are the original communities of WoW.

And you’re right … people do want to see full servers and active guilds. But it is a balancing act and Blizzard have to take into account both the number of people on a realm at the low times, and the number of people that will log in at peak times - they don’t want them too low (therefore the merging of realms), but equally they don’t want people queuing to get in at peak times. Perhaps they will learn more about how to deal with that, as they fine tune the new Classic servers, and then transfer that knowledge to the retail servers.

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I used an example of a 900+ guild yes. Which is constantly hitting the member cap and then having inactive characters removed back down to around 900 throughout each season. I don’t always go as low as 900 with it, sometimes just shave off 25 or so characters, it depends on how much time I have.

We have a guy who has 17 alts, and he plays them all. Shaving off alts is not always an option and I assure you that I do my best to manage the roster of this guild I use as prime example.

We can look at another example of a guild from the server I play on. One guy dumped his guild last season to join mine. He has now returned to re-build his old guild, and is struggling to do so even with being online a lot and pushing recruitment a lot. Things are going very slow there, and I have been recruiting as-well as many other guilds. There simply are not enough players online to fill out the guilds with active playing characters.

I have now made 2 guilds on classic, both on the same server and both have over 800 characters in them already. Both with over 100 characters online at peak times (and as many as 170 at times). Although these are different players, it is strange that they both seem synchronised, and as the evening draws into night the both go down to around 75 players online at the same time, ending up with 15 to 20 players online in the night owl hours.

I have 2 wow accounts on my battle.net account now, because I predicted we would see the numbers dwindle on the BfA server I play on, exactly as they have done, due to classic. I have 2 accounts so that I can be logged in to both versions of the game at the same time (one on each screen). Not that I should have to pay twice, I don’t see why WoW Classic shares the same login as “retail” BfA. They should be classed as 2 separate games.

With your reply to the talents, yes some people use “cookie cutter builds” but even in BfA, what icyveins says doesn’t always result in the best build for a class/spec, as the talents you choose can make a difference to damage output for example, depending on what armours you have (and which talents you have on those armours). So instead of clicking some options and spending gold to re-spec, players have to grind against a random number generator for armours from loot with the right talents on them, and the reforging of those armours comes at an insane cost. I used to spend hours running between the warlock trainer and the training dummy, re-specking and practicing rotation to max dps on my warlock. I could not afford to keep doing that when it comes to the cost of reforging the armours. Not everyone used cookie cutters or website instructions for their builds. But now they pretty much have to, and the choice is gone.

I don’t have a “problem” with streamers. Yes they are an advert, but influential. Their opinions impact their followers. Also blizzard can see them as a staple point for opinion. Not enough people come to these forums to express their opinions about the game, just a small handful. The first 2 people to reply to this topic didn’t even bother to read the op, and seemed to just want to derail the thread with talking about some half a piece of a point. This is why people don’t want to come to these forums to give feedback, they don’t want to be trolled. You are not even allowed to call someone out for being a troll here as you will get banned for name-calling if you call someone a troll. lol

End-Game is a different thing to different people, Yes! you are right on with that point. Sadly, blizzard want players to have a more diverse experience of the game, and through bits and bobs within the game, they try to push all players to play a little bit of each part of the game (which they could benefit from doing each day). Players who do daily quests (now called world quests) with warmode on, benefit more than those who don’t have warmode on. So everyone “should” have warmode on to get the same benefit from doing those quests. Some character’s best in slot essence only comes from doing PvP. Players are somewhat forced into PvP. Likewise - in order to follow the storyline, players who would normally only PvP are forced into dungeons and raids which they do not wish to do. Blizzard have not increased choice here, they have forced diversity in a way which players do not appreciate. Players used to enjoy the diversity of the talent trees and the freedom of choice of what to play, while it is now the other way around.

I personally hate doing quests. It used to be something I had to be in the mood to do, but now I am forced to do them each day to grind for azerite.

I do belive that people will split to either playing Classic or BfA. I have seen some other posters on these forums saying that their whole guild left BfA to Classic. Some saying they will not bother with “retail” until at least 8.3. The damage to BfA has been done at least for this season.

Yes it is annoying when you make a group for a dungeon only to find that half the group is in warmode and you cannot summon the rest of the group, lol.

I don’t think communities are set to replace guilds. They can be used for a tool to recruit people into guilds, but the guild and communities interface is apparently being redesigned - which is why I didn’t want to mention it here. Let’s see what they have in store for us. Hopefully it will be a help to guilds over communities.

Perhaps they will learn from Classic. But so far they have made Classic servers use the Sharding a lot. To a point where someone from my guild can be standing right beside me and not see me. I have already had a lot of players running around Goldshire searching for me, not knowing I am phased due to sharding. Blizzard seem to think that sharding is the answer. Although it may help to prevent lag when certain zones are full, it is not the answer to low population servers.

Thanks for taking the time to reply @Poisonenvy

Edit: (to avoid double posting)
With regards to there being possibly “too many guilds on low population servers” maybe blizzard could devise a way to allow guilds to become allies. Guild mergers are most often destructive and cause guilds to die when the players clash unexpectedly. Allowing 2 guilds to share an “allied” chat and still get achievements for raids or PvP, when half of the group is made up of members from each guild respectively - would perhaps be a good move.

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You didn’t actually understand what I said then, did you?
You reply to me. I reply back. That’s how a forum works.
You’re the one who’s asking off topic questions and thus steering the topic away from its intended purpose.

:man_shrugging:

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I think the problem here is that yours is a viewpoint from a different direction than mine. I don’t feel “forced” into doing anything. If I specifically want X on my character, I may have to do Y - but I’m not forced to do it. It’s a situation where if you want that specific reward, you have to carry out that specific task. Admittedly some rewards are easier for some people to get than others - stuff relating to PvP or dungeons are easier to get for people who enjoy PvP or dungeons. As long as there is nothing major hidden behind something else unrelated, major, then that’s fine by me (for example something that is an absolute requirement - cannot get into raids for example - being stuck behind some PvP achievement) - it’s Blizzard’s way of trying to get people to try new aspects of the game - because the more parts of the game you play, the longer you may stick around to play it.

I play casually. I run a casual raiding guild. I raid casually. I don’t raid anything but Normal and Heroic raids. I don’t feel that I’m forced to do anything to enable me to play that way. Yes there’s certain things I could spend a lot of time doing, to potentially improve my output a smidge in a raid - but I only have a finite amount of time and I need to balance the time spent with the improvement gained.

Potentially, serious Mythic raiders may well feel different - they may feel that they just HAVE to be maxed on azerite and all those other bits n bobs - doing all the M+ dungeons, all the farming, etc. But honestly, that pressure to do that is not from Blizzard. It is from yourself and/or your peer group. At the end of the day, WoW is a GAME and should be treated as such. If you’re not having fun, don’t do it :stuck_out_tongue:

As far as guild allies are concerned … I like that idea. It was actually a possibility a couple of expansions ago. We did it. We had an alliance with another guild where we had a shared chat channel (and you can still do this now, either through communities, or simply through creating a custom chat channel) and used an addon called Group Calendar that allowed us to share guild events (unfortunately this addon no longer works as the author has stopped updating it). Admittedly the achievements side of things might be a little complicated - there might potentially be a need to tweak the minimum member requirements in order to gain a guild achievement, for that to work, as currently I think it needs slightly over half the raid at least to be a guild member. Having said that … when we did our guild alliance, we “took turns” … so one week would be more one guild’s members, the next week, visa versa.

But “too many guilds on a server” problem is a self-solving problem. Some guilds will collapse, their members will go join other, more popular guilds. If there are still too many guilds (ie, lots of guilds with only a few members, who want to be in guilds with more members) - then they, too, will collapse … etc etc … I’ve been on the same (low-medium pop) realm pretty consistently for many years, I’ve seen that happen … I’ve also seen when a larger guild dissolves - other guilds tend to circle waiting for the inevitable sudden availability of potential new members :stuck_out_tongue:

I still believe that, if you only have 20-30 people online at peak times, but that you’re worried about maxing out your guild numbers, you might need to go through those members and weed some out. I realise that you mentioned the guy who plays all 17 of his alts - but I would imagine that would be the exception rather than the rule.

Our guild had around 850 members not that long ago … and had had, consistently, for some time - but once I started getting a bit mercenary about removing inactives, it soon went down. And you don’t even have to actually REMOVE inactives. If you think they’re likely to come back, you can stick their main in a holding rank, and just remove their alts to make space. That way, they’re still in your guild, but you have gained space for new members.

Impressive with the classic guilds … although of course the classic realms are different in capacity, I believe (?) to retail - besides … start of classic, obviously there’s going to be a lot of people around, plus a smaller number of guilds to vie for members, as it’s only generally people very well organised who initially had the goal of setting up a guild. So big pond, lots of fish, very few nets (comparitively).

You could compare that with a new retail expansion launch - we always get a lot more recruits during that time, and often double or triple our usual numbers online - we also sometimes actually stop taking new members as we don’t want to take too many new people at once, although I know that other guilds won’t necessarily do that.

Finally - I agree about Classic and retail being two seperate games that should require two seperate logins. They ARE two different games and should be treated as such. But I’m primarily saying that from an admin point of view as we’re creating a classic guild with mainly retail guild members, and it would be useful to compare character names, ranks, etc. From a player point of view - I’m either playing one or the other, not both.

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Read the whole post and it feels like just use whatever argument that fits your point.

The talents tree and these progression systems do not divide because you have to farm something to unlock traits but because how the farm and rewards are handled. The legion artifacts were very well recieved on the later half of the expansion once you could easely change spec and so on.

As for this…

Talents and classes in vanilla weren’t really “designed” you see, and even if players came to accept them there are so many issues with them that it wouldn’t be fair to use it as a standard.

About “Classic dividing the community”… For a week or two maybe, but the vast majority of classic players do not play BFA from what i’ve seen both in game and on the Classic & WoW Reddit (bit of a hivemind i’ll admit)

If anything classic bought players back to WoW and will have a positive effect even on BFA as not everyone can afford to do the vanilla end game content time wise

One of the issue in the current game is that there is too much catchup, so anyone leaving BFA for a month or two won’t be that far behind especially in term of Gear, essences and azerite. With a bunch of Friends you could get carried back yo 430ilvl easely or even through playing the game you can easely reach 420. Same for next patch as there’ll be a soft reset once again.

Lastly, War Mode moved the divide from PvP servers and pve servers to player willing to WPvP and those who don’t. It’s an overall positive change in this regard imo as you’re no longer locked in one gameplay. You wouldn’t have seen your PvE friends on a PvP server either right ?

If anything that’s a sharding issue but it’s currently the last thing holding the game together so a necessary evil until they fix their mess.

No ? They want to see like-minded players on their servers to play with. They do not need 50k players per servers, only a few hundreds playing with them is enough. Raiders want raiders to play with, and so do every player interested in a given content, outside of AH barons which do not like competition on their markets.

The last divide may as well just save the current expansion tho. Options and choices are great for the game and only looking at the downsides is a pretty bad way to study anything

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Especially if they do decide to give the reward that if you reach level 60 in Classic, you get a free boost to 110 AND BfA free in retail :wink:

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