I could make some educated guesses why but I don’t really know why devs decide to make the game more and more annoying. Every single aspect of the game right now is designed to annoy a normal person
This might be a long rant but I will try to be fast. sorry for grammar mistakes - it’s too long to go through it and its too late to have a fresh mind and not make mistakes lol.
Endgame
- Basically every single season, they release every endgame content awfully scaled. 90% of times it’s overtune, very rarely undertune. Despite extensive beta testing they never fix “bugs” reported for months etc. It’s… annoying - how can I call it? You just know that the Very Big Gaming company will release an extremely bugged season where you will suffer from bugs or “exploits”… This is maddening - OTOH you can wait till they fix things but OTOH if you don’t do the rat race fast you will fall behind the curve of gear/rio/progress so ppl flock to suffer in buggy content.
Raids
- Devs obviously keep catering to the “Eleet” of the PvE and make the raids “more interesting” - which means they have to come up with more and more new weird mechanics. As such, the raids require more and more coordination which is a problem in a game where majority of players seem to operate via PuGs.
- and since past raids were usually PuG friendly with exceptions (rohkalo, gnome in BoD), the notion of raids getting harder and harder is definitely a bad direction
- Devs prolly get paid for coming up with the dumbest traps and mechanics … on trash. Does anyone enjoy these neverending trash trains? They are rarely difficult, occasionally tricky but always annoying. From weird knockbacks and stuns to being perma kept in combat and taking forever to kill.
- Running and running and running. Why there is not enough checkpoints - why do we really have to waste real life time in a non-timed environment to get back to boss? To wait for a new player to join? It’s not new but it’s not even a new take to ask - why do we get the raid environment where we just constantly waste time? Somehow the last boss is usually with close respawn and no trash in front of it - for the “eleet” to be able to do faster wipes on it XD running is for plebs, insta respawns are for the Top Dogs.
- I technically like group loot rolls because I can occasionally win multiple items per boss but… a lot of time, probably more often than not, you can end up not being able to roll on a single item that dropped. You feel like you are feeding others gear.
- The rewards for completing the raid are not quite fine. You don’t even get a good chunk of ingame gold for defeating the last boss (covering ur endless repair bill).
- Fight for tokens of tier sets… every single season people are metaphorically killing each other to get the tier that is mandatory after 1-3 weeks to do any content. So people will throw 100-400k gold on you to grab the token you won. You might sell and not do content later? I liked Bfa with no tier sets - sure you wanted bis azerite but non-bis azerite worked as well… better than no tier set, eh? Tier sets are horrible and basically increase toxicity at start of every season.
- Somehow tier tokens except catalyst are not availble through M+ or PvP for reasons unknown. It’s still better than Ye Olde Times but everyone is fuming until they get the set.
- Mythic ID is rigid but it shouldn’t - when they require us to shill 90 “aspect” tokens to get a craft or myth track has 6/6 - maybe let us have a bit more chance to down mythic bosses with pugs? keep rigid ID for like a month then make it flex so pleb can PuG some more? IDK why is this still a thing when you can flex ID everything else?? Prestige? bleh.
Mythic+
- Oh boy… where to start? The keystone system can be defended by biggest apologists but we all hate it one way or the other. The depletion mechanic is horrible and punishes key owners so people are apprehensive towards making their own groups. But getting into groups is GIGA hard because everyone is 1) following meta 2) afraid to deplete their key - resulting in a very toxic situation. Then people will leave at the sight of mistiming.
- Affixes - on paper - cool - exciting - in practice something that makes people mad. Some of them are or were non-affixes - some are absolutely brutal for no good reason. But it could be part of the game however…
- Timers - the affix that reduces your remaining time per death that was “buffed” in TWW is just a joke… not only the dungeons are full of random one shot mechanics and brutal HPS checks - if you die - not only you lose a lot of time (15 sec x 5 deaths…) you have to run back… wasting more time - no surprise I hear people fail timers a lot. It was easy to predict. There is more stress - and more room for toxicity.
- There totally could be a timer-less version of equivalent M+ levels with lower rewards but no - let’s torture players shall we?
- the rework of gear and vault levels is absolutely awful in TWW. with no extra crests it’s only gonna take more and more “grind” to complete your gear. Keep grinding, boi. This is disheartening from the very start… In an environment where you will fail a lot of M+ due to tight timers and affixes… GL with that.
- Harder to obtain myth track gear. A slap in the face of M+ enjoyers. Go mythic raid with your non-existent 20 man myth guild…
Delves
- all about delves has been said, I won’t say more than 1) poorly scaled 2) annoying mechanics 3) not looking or feeling as advertised 4) too much RNG on "hero track maps 5) non balanced for solo for all classes 6) having to collect keys from extremely boring outdoor events is painful ngl…
Seasons
- No, I don’t hate seasons per se but according to timelines availble online and devs’ announcements - we are getting more “Condensed” seasons and expacs and it feels bad - seems like we are more in rush than anything. You can’t enjoy the game in a chill manner - you need to take part in the rat race because the season ends soon - We had seasons/patches lasting over 300 days!!! that wasn’t bad at all imo - time to do stuff or take some breaks. Contrary to the popular belief, it shouldn’t be a goal to keep you playing non-stop - it’s a corporate approach - unhealthy and toxic in its own way.
- With shorter seasons and bigger gear ilvl range - you are never completing your gear unless you are an unemployed hermit no life… GL with that. The gearing is always chasing the dragon but this time it just gets worse and worse.
- And even if you get really good gear, for some reason the “norm” is to make the next season’s gear so much higher in ilvl that your hard earned and grinded gear is replaced by world content bad items xD This is saddening too.
PVP
- IDK but “Solo” queues are killing this already dead-ish game mode. It was supposed to be the lifesaver but … it’s awfully implemented. Solo shuffle is giga toxic, long queues and dependent on not a single player being a baddie. Solo RBG… with duo queues - it’s cooked and unfair a lot. Meanwhile non-solo queues are dead in 2 ways - not enough players wanting to do it - everyone left wants to follow the meta so hard that no one wants to play with anyone. week 2 and you can sit hours with all pvp gear in LFMxD
- Awful balance every time with only rare balancing patches. Hero talents were predicted to make the game awful in rated PvP - stuff was reported a lot - and barely any devs’ preparation or nerfs and as usual - the game is released with certain classes/specs disgustingly OP. They never learn and ignore the problems. It’s not fun to play your spec and face like DK every game who is somehow now the most mobile and most immortal class ever… Jeeeesus
- still no separate way to get a tier set for PvPers :3
Outdoor content
- OK so basically… the events scheduled on specific Server Time are… what really puts me off. Of course - you need them “rarely” so more people participate… but if they are “soloable” a lot - why do we need people? Make them more often so you dont have to wait forever - and since a lot of them start at the same hour… you are cooked to choose from. This was mostly a problem in DF but in TWW the theater troupe being once an hour is kinda annoying too - there is no advantage in doing it in big raid vs solo-ish.
- treasures… some are EZ u go and pick… some are so convoluted that without addon/wowhead you wont really have time to “figure it out”. like the chest in hallowfall or crabs in isle of dorn… GL figuring it all out on your own, you know? So you take your addon and follow all steps because you value your time. Great gameplay.
- Herbs/ores seem to be way more rare than in DF and more importantly overloadingthem doesnt even grant too many extras. You have to fly and fly and… oh, it’s harder to keep up with vigor now - how quaint. Even something so basic was worsened.
- Zones are extremely small. Seems like every expansion tries to put out a map of zones that are smaller than the previous one - don’t quote me on that but … in TWW it seems extra bad. Yet despite them being small, they were designed in such a way that travelling BETWEEN THEM is extra timey.
- they really needed to release the season to increase spawn rate of a bunch of world quest npcs… again.
- The extra rare mount npcs… theytry new things with this beledar but the fact he spawns in several locations with no clear indication… every time many people will just never reach the location lol. but that’s a small thing tbh.
- Remember the release and treasures being on 5-60 min respawn timer? Why do they do that every time again?
Professions
- I don’t think they are VERY complicated but “annoying” is the right word imo. You need to do A LOT of reading and analysing (or monkeying a guide) to get it right with no refund and uh…
- To be ahead of the curve - you need to do profession shuffling - dropping old profs learning throwaway ones to get acuity
- Somehow even “mettle/acuity” was worsened - you don’t get freebies - you have to do…
- a Gold Loss Patron Work Orders… Because we hated public work orders with no tip and no mats, they decided to force us doing them for NPCS XDDDD Some of the orders might be cheapish but some were ridiculous, like expecting me to throw null stones for getting measly 30 acuity and 50 gold
- there is still no good indicator of what your crafter can really do rank-wise on your craft. And do we really need FIVE ranks on crafting? obviously only r5 matters. And with concentration it’s actually even harder than before to get a crafter willing to get you one. Concentration is now extra pricey. Plus some small items use ungodly amount of it.
- after 1234525 expacs of free-for-all cloth farming, now only tailors get cloth??? that’s annoying. Now doing outdoor content as non-tailor is griefing yourself lol. Who asked for this change exactly???
Report system
- the constant abuse of reporting other players is one of the greatest turnoffs in this game rn. Being afraid of saying anything cuz they can mass report you is idiotic. Saying something in a heated exchange can get you banned if you are unlucky… what is this? People get mass reported for crafting and no one is doing anything??? Meanwhile “advertisers” of “communities” are spamming day and night… the very same people with the same names. How quaint.
The players
- This isn’t a direct fault of Blizzard but the game design enables and encourages extreme toxicity in any mid to high serious content. Being afraid to deplete a key, waste time on progress etc… makes it extremely difficult to even get into groups. Then we have this RiO and Warcraftlogs and now if you don’t take part in rat race and fall behind in any “stat” you are basically cooked. You can’t catch up on great vault or missed raid IDs… now you can’t even get easier gear in M+.
- Getting friends or guild is not exactly an answer. for M+ you need exactly 4 other people. not more not less. if less - you have to pug and can fail. if more - someone will be left out. In guilds - I avoid them now since I had bad experience but I hear from people all the time how awful officers and GLs are. giving loot to friends/wives etc. not feeling like reporting circumstancial stories but this was happening … always. And participating in “guilds” requires not having much dignity in the long run if you end up in the toxic one - and a lot of them are toxic on every level of gameplay. Findin the right one is a long journey.
- Getting into groups and organizing pugs takes waaaay too much time and effort and the wait times are exacerbated by things like lack of warlocks or too many other groups being up - there is not even a function where the game would suggest you join your raid with “another raid on the same boss” etc. xd
- the experience whre you are missing some rio or a few ilvl and you are suddenly unable to “PuG” (both ways - people won’t join your group!) - is not only dishaertening but makes your rat race mandatory.
- You either go into the rat race or you are out. And need “luck” and more persistence and wasting more and more time.
- Boosting - so many people are boosted that it’s unreal - you can check someone and still end up with a stealth boosted andy that ruins your run.
- bots and AH bots -the fact that this game has some weird policy on letting bots run rampant for periods of time is perplexing but a lot of was said on this - I don’t like how it’s handled.
- The META - for some reason all andies feel they need to follow the 0,1% top tier metas even tho the mid content is usually balanced in a way that most groups in any comp could clear it… (varies by the patch)… it’s so annoying when you get kicked out or straight insulted that you play “the wrong spec” even if that spec is literally unironically 1% in “computer generated dps list”… jfc
- the meta is partially on players and partially on blizzard that allows this imbalance happen every season despite extensive PTR reporting…
Time Required to Play
- Let’s get down to business… there is too much of everything - every patch adds too much of… all possible meaningless rewards… there is too much to complete per week per character. And if we take any aspect of the game, god forbid you try to branch out into various conent - you will find out that WoW is no longer your second job because
- To be GOOD at this game and DO STUFF THAT IS OFFERED you essentially have to treat it as both your first and second job… and a hobby as well. The amount of menial stuff + the time wasted on “Waiting for content you wanna do - queues, LFM” and the time it actually takes to do the endgame thing … you will find out you are in an endless loop of tasks with a side dish of the actual content. The amount of time you have to waste on the most idiotic things is beyond ridiculous. While it kinda gets better at time but rn… even things like “Dornogal portal in ORG/SW is in a far room you have to do extra running for” xD
- Like if you think I exaggerate… to complete a 30 minute M+ you don’t need to spend 30 minutes… you need to spend way more - you need to find a group and that alone can take you 30 minutes and you might not even be done with it by then! now imagine you fail the run - finding a group and 20 mins in a failed key down th drain…
Alleged alt-friendliness
- When they announced warbands I was like - yay! I will play alts now - I made an army of alts just to find out that DF was more alt friendly and TWW might actually be the least alt friendly expac in a while.
- It’s because it’s harder to catch up on gear on alts as ilvl from content will require more “ilvl” etc that you won’t have on alts. In DF you coulda be gearing the alt on 6+ or 7+… and end up with acceptable stuff and crests
- Except warband-wide faction and some low level gear you randomly get, there is not much to push alt-friendliness. it’s a psyop. Don’t do alts.
HERO TALENTS
- I can’t even start on this properly. Back in Vanilla we had “big” talent trees with obv 1 cookie cutter build but it was it… it was being expanded until they said “too much lets dosimple talent tiers” go MOP- 4 talent choices or something - ok gg.
- we get back to complicated trees that are kind of… cringe - on surface we have a lot of talents but 1) not all specs - frost mage for instance has very few talent choices at all, most of them dead anyway 2) and even with a lot of talent nodes you … are still limited hard to a very specific build
- only a few cases of specs can enjoy “major talent choices” - in other cases for reasons unknown devs decided it’s best to make certain ta;ent choices giga mandatory thru certain synergy of talents or mastery etc… but also lets put it this way - a difference in talents in similar gate/node can be like 5-10% dps difference and none of that is intuitive.
- essentially you can’t just yolo feelcraft any build - you will find out that by sheer logic and probability your feelcraft is wrong and the 3rd party program will count how awful your talents are - you need to take the cookie cutter or you are cringe, griefing and whatnot. Why would you play a spec that does 20% less dps.
- “no spec does that” - well, frostfire frost ST DPS was pretty much 20% dps behind Spellslinger Frost last time I checked. Was allegedly changed a little but still Spellslinger is the only choice.
- certain talents are extremely useless and untertuned and others are so OP you can’t miss them and I ask - why - nerf the OP talent and buff the worse one - make the choice more into “feel of rotation” than having 1 build that is OP and anything else is griefing. I get some talents are mandatory like BIG CDs but damn… some stuff is giga unintuitive - the “half of GCD on tiget palm” WW talent was like “why would I take this” but then its top dog… until they nerf it? how can I know that?
- Hero talents require addon tracking in many cases to play optimally.
- I won’t go through all HT of course but e.g. spellslinger frost is so bad they actually decided to rework it on PTR because 1) everyone hated it 2) no one could play it without addon/WA 3) you still would fail since the timers were extremely tight and inhumane. But the tracking goes to many other classes, like diabolic ritual, flurry strikes, conduit bonuses etc… like sure you can yolo ignore but in fact… you will lose A LOT of dps if you don’t. some of that stuff is just mandatory or you are trolling yourself. Top theorycrafter for mages said that not tracking spellslinger via WA will result in over 20% dps loss
this is not something to ignore. - and instead of giving clear in-game indicators to this “important stuff” - they decide to ignore it. Poor “bad players” tbh…
- Also - some hero talents encourage “degen minmax” gameplay. Flurry strikes req. weird tracking and holding energy spending to release dps in certain moments xD - spellslinger requires you to predict with WA when Storm is gonna happen so you can pre-sling instant ice lance XDDD this is unreal. Not even gonna mention some degen stuff with spell queueing on sunfury mage that was covered on wowhead… what is this design? Was supposed to be flavorful yet most specs have one GIGA better hero spec and it all requires 3rd party addons to play well LOL. Why… WHY.
I’m not sure it’s all I wanted to say. This is pure rant and… I might just be done. At this moment I’m set on letting the sub run out. I know nobody cares about me and you can keep the “there is door” bit for yourself - but also… many people bring up these issues and many leave the game for those reasons. Some of the more hardcore addicts might not see the problem but when you find out the game gets emptier you will understand why. The thing that keeps people playing is “habit” or “Addiction” which means those people will take anything thrown at them no matter how bad - the fact a lot of you couldnt take 2 weeks of “chill preseason” shows how bad it is.
This game is too big to die completely but devs seem to be doing the Walter White meme bit to design the worst kind of all possible content that can be designed.
Nothing seems to be improving - if they even make a one step in the right direction, they instantly do 5 backwards…
