Hello WoW community, i’m from Holland so please excuse my english at some points. I never spoke before about problems within WoW and its community because somehow problems always got solved and there was fun all around anyway for most of us being different kind of players and all, we always found a way to cope with the situation. Sooow im gonna take my sweet time to write the biggest feedback ive ever written because i enjoyed this game for over 12 years (i’m 38 years old) and i just REFUSE to just give up on it, it may sound stupid or weird to some but i’ll do my best to use the right words. Now this being said there will be some of you who will disagree with what i have to say, however its just an opinion so i respect you just the same, this goes for Blizzard as well being the only one capable of handling ‘‘the beast’’. This comment is to all who read it but mainly to Blizzard although they probably are not going to respond to it unless it gets alot of attention.
I came in march 2009 in BC times and became a casual player since i have limited time (personal opinion: WoW is not a game, it’s a hobby because it’s endless). Being advanced or casual player isn’t a good or bad thing, you just come in and your personal life eventually determines what kind of player you become, however, when you put these different kind of players together it becomes a bad thing, it causes annoyance, annoyance causes players to get an ‘‘i dont care attitude’’ with all kinds of consequences. Leaving, migrating, exploiting, and so on, it causes a lot of discontent and eventually we all suffer, including Blizzard always losing a part of their playerbase until people permanently leave WoW.
So now we have Shadowlands, again, the environment is, AS ALWAYS, as beautyful and immersive as ever, i dont care for being max geared, i care for immersive environments and athmosphere and leveling in that athmosphere. I’m telling you: it’s gone, for example: last week i was playing a new char and was leveling in Winterspring and hit 30, guess what happens, Mount Hyal quests are popping up, i’m still looking for the words to describe the feeling i had at that moment, the game felt empty, empty like a game of patience you find under the Startmenu in windows (you’re done in 3 minutes). We both bought the SL expansion and ofcourse subscribed, but only to get greatly dissapointed by the squish. Dont get me wrong, i’m not whining for lost money, i’m just dissapointed beyond believe because by squishing the characters Blizzard tear out the heart of the game.
Blizzard speaks of ‘‘a wall to newcomers’’, most of us LOVED that wall! By squishing the game the immersive environments have lost their nature because you level too fast, i have all heirlooms and still it was a long way to go to 120 (I LOVED THAT!). But now, even WITHOUT heirlooms its like 1, 2, 3, 12, 30, 60! Most of the world is meaningless now, it’s heart is torn out and all the fun with it, it’s not endless anymore. This is the first time i absolutly dont feel like playing anymore, i had this before in the past but somehow the next day i felt like playing anyway despite the changes that happened back then.
However, this squish seems to be the deathblow to me, i’ve tried to play and enjoy it and moved to other zones but it’s gone, the feeling this game gave me all these years is just gone. I’m not mad but i lost something that i very liked to do WE ALL lost something we very liked to do, Blizzard stole that from me, Blizzard stole that from alot of us, i dont know their reasons but it’s always been very obvious that Blizzard didnt always heard their playerbase with all kinds of discontent as a result, again, i’m not bashing or burning down anybody, i just want to fight for getting back the ‘‘level 120 wall’’ (maybe we should call it The Wall to make it stick), and i believe we HAVE to try to get Blizzard moving on the matter and i KNOW i’m not alone in this but with all the things happened in the past people are not willing anymore to try to fight it. So i’m hoping for 1000s of likes and maybe we can get Blizzard to move.
No offence to Blizzard but you really could have done a way better job on this, you got the money and the resources, or are you Building Back Better? Please dont! Like Jesse Pinkman says: if you’re going after a fly you take a flyswatter not a bazooka.
I dont know very much about mechanics, i do know Blizzard has many many servers and many personnel to keep it running, iow: i/we know Blizzard has the power to fix things if they really want to. We got blessed with Classic some time ago now, those were good times again, so what about the servers? How many servers does Blizzard actually have and how populated are they? If Blizzard has space for launching Classic then maybe they have space for launching ‘‘playerbase based realms’’?
Example: Beginner-player realms and advanced-player realms. If new people come to WoW they should have a choice to play beginner realms or advanced realms and later on (if they want) paid migrate, why? Because casual players will probably never migrate to advanced realms anyway because they are being outclassed by hardcore players (i suck at PvP lol). So you use payment as a wall between casual and advanced players (making it unattractive to move to advanced unless you are very sure of yourself). Casual realms can thrive with and without advanced players but not the other way around (not talking about supply and demand), advanced players cant play with casual players because they are not familiar with mechanics (please feedback on this if you can, im just a casual with limited knowledge).
Advanced players coming to casual realms will most probably result in influenced economics, queues and more which in turn will result in more motivation with casual players. For example: the AH is PACKED full of stuff most people want to have which in turn causes players to grind for it with all kind of methods which is good for selling gametime.
The items in AH motivated me to endless grindings and now i own items which advanced players can obtain within a day and i felt like a king in there! In 2019 i reached 200K gold and i felt like a king for over 2 months! (i was so happy its childish lol) Advanced players influencing/owning economics is a good thing, it makes casual players to get grinding (its endless but overseeable thus fun to do), they litterely causing players to get going and thus more gametime sellings for Blizzard (everybody feels like a king in his own way). I dont see a problem because casual players probably enjoy WoW more then they do (sorry for that 1 advanced base! :p) because they already have everything but are ON anyway thus bringing in gametime. There are people with millions and im glad i dont have that kind of gold because if i did i have nothing to work/play for. (anyone seeing the point i’m making here?) People were unhappy without knowing they were actually satisfied, myself included. I’m absolutely convinced that these servers can be packed full if Blizzard took back their lost playerbase but then they should at least chew on what their playerbase tells them and thats the point we should be making together. Come to think of it: there is litterely division in WoW, we need to get rid of that?!
So in short: dont put advanced and casual players in the same realm, its possible sure, but its a mess, and a mess results in discontent among players and thats final, from there its ‘‘hoping for the best’’ and thats not enough. I like advanced players cause you learn stuff from them, but most of advanced players dont like casual players and that makes sense, imagine you’re on the freeway and there is someone driving 50km an hour and you cant get past him, that gets annoying if it happens everyday. There is always a playerbase which isnt satisfied and it doesnt have to be that way right?!
This stupid gap has to go and WoW will thrive again, nobody back in 2004 could’ve foreseen what was gonna happen, but with a game this big it makes sense that we’ve gotten multiple playerbases and nobody could’ve known how to deal with that only after it was too late. There is nobody specific in the wrong here, we all are (We: too much complaining, Blizzard: ignoring as a result of being more succesfull back in the day then anticipated) we started something new in 2004 and we made a mess of it by sloppy communication between playersbase and Blizzard.
Jeez, writing this comment took me over 4 hours so i hope it’s gonna do some good, if not, i can only hope there will be a day in the future Blizzard reverses this. I’m not looking for likes or fame or praises, i just want my ‘‘12 year invested hobby’’ back.
Greetings to all of you, and please, give feedback good or bad, get those opinions out there so we can’t be ignored not even by mistake, we have to try.
Victor, A.K.A Everlasting, please dont put me on ignore if you dont like what i wrote 