WoW is now quite an old game, and despite that, or maybe because of it, it still retains a number of game core mechanics or game design issues that seem absolutely outdated to me but have yet to be addressed. While it is a bit of a rant, I’m also looking forward to the discussion to see what players of this forum find issue with.
Please limit the discussion to actual mechanics and design philosophies and leave out things like class balance (Blizzard may fail at class balance, but at least we know they are trying).
I’ve listed a few that I will discuss in my post as the most outstanding ones for me, however, feel free to post your own :
3D is still hard in 2020
Evading mobs and ‘still in combat’ bug
15 year old User Interface
3D
The game’s handling of game mechanics in three dimensions is still mostly broken. This becomes painfully obvious each time we’re made to fight in 3 dimensional structures (boats, Tol Dagor). Lines of sights don’t work properly, mobs are pulled and attack through walls and ceilings (but you can’t fight back), aoe spells are wonky as hell…
Other examples abound, fighting most creatures on hilly terrain for instance will result in all kinds of broken spells and animations that prevent proper play. The path-finding of flying mobs in 3D is also broken as hell (see the fathom rays in Nazjatar trying to navigate the mushroom forest).
All of these issues date back to Vanilla, it was slightly embarrassing then, but forgivable due to the scale and novelty of the game (and the absence of flying), now it’s just embarrassing.
Evading mobs and ‘in combat’ mechanic
I can’t play a single day without being faced with either an ‘in combat’ bug or an evading mob. I don’t think this should be considered normal.
The evade mechanic was originally designed to prevent players from abusing mob’s poor AI to kill them without fighting. It made some sense in Vanilla as back then, rewards from killing mobs were still a large part of a player’s economy. Nowadays, a fishing bot would probably net a gold farmer more money than one killing endless trash mobs.
So the reality of the modern WoW evade mechanics is that it mostly punishes players for bugs in the game world by making them unable to kill their enemies and leaving them in combat for ages. I think this is poor game design and should be addressed.
The game UI
The game’s main UI is 15 years old and has seen very little change in that long period. It is consequently terribly outdated by modern standards and only tolerable as is because of the large ecosystem of add-on that exist for the game.
I think a general UI update is long overdue, especially as the shrinking player base means add-on development has slowed down as becomes apparent after each major update.
I can’t believe something as basic as a waypoint and coordinate system still requires a dedicated add-on. Things like an agro and dps meter should also really be part of the core UI at this point.
The UI is pretty much a non issue since WoW allows for a vast array of addons and players can custom tailor a UI to their exact wishes, that way the devs don’t have to try and make a ‘‘ok’’ ui for everything since you can just make whatever gives you the information best.
But yeah, they really ought to look over the in combat status.
The user interface is actually pretty good. It is very informative in many ways.
It doesn’t have a dmg meter no, but a way pointer? The one we have works fine for me, what exactly are you missing?
I run the default UI for everything except I add a bag addon and a dmg meter. I also have DBM, but the default UI already provide most of the features DBM does.
I actually really like the Blizz UI. It has been and remains my favourite UI in any MMORPG I’ve played, with FFXIV’s being on par. The only thing I’d like to add to it is the freedom to move UI elemen…- oh wait, Move Anything. I’m good.
Evasion/In Combat? Know the pull range and know terrain limits. Honestly, in general gameplay it’s not a big deal and while travelling out in the overworld, get the mount equipment that prevents Daze and you’re golden.
With regards to “3D”… My only gripe with it is seeing the health bars through the walls/ground/ceiling.
World of Warcraft is actually really well crafted if you’ll pardon the pun, more than you give it credit for.
Spot on, OP.
WoW’s weird 3D is also one of the reasons I am not fond of Tortollan WQs - the field of view is just weird and so is sometimes the decision when the missile is considered a hit or not. 3D combat in WoW is just weird.
Likewise, the lack of any improvement in 3D navigation gets very obvious when they make a zone like Argus or Nazjatar when you spend a lot of time to find the quest area only to realize you’re on a wrong level and will have to run around for several more minutes.
As for UI… yep, pitiful. How done we don’t have the option for spell icons next to the damage numbers? How done many spells are still using icons from original W3 (so now W3 reforged has better icons than many WoW class abilities). Why do we need an addon for auto-repair or auto-sell-junk after all those years? Why are only some instances marked on the maps? Why no built-in coordinates when it’s the fastest way to cooperate when finding a rare?
And yeah, combat system and evade.
First, mobs should not be possible to overaggro when tapped just by passive self-heals from HoA, especially if they’re full overheals and the effective healing is zero.
Second, mobs should have some self-reset mechanic and so should combat… outside of dungeons and raids, NPC not taking or scoring a hit in 10s should self-reset (unless it’s due to immunity-type spell). Combat should be cleared way faster in a similar way and way more responsive. Critters should not be able to put players in combat when they’re hit by a toy that deals no damage.
Third, there should be some decent pathing both on ground and in flight. Flying mobs should actually fly. Mobs should follow the same rules as players (no scaling walls, have fall damage, etc - it’s 2020 FFS). Flying hunter pets should fly along with the hunter - how done this is not a thing in 2020? Weird pathing for charge abilities, leap requiring a path. I could go on… I’ll mention one more thing: WoW should have some better 3D system and actually have mounts glide downward and always flap when flying up instead of random.
In conclusion: yeah, the game engine and UI is dated. WoW2 is really necessary because I doubt it’s even possible to fix some of those issues.
With Tol Dagor seems that, when they edited cannons with 8.2, one of the interns double clicked on the blocker planes and moved those… And since this intern was cut from team, then no one else has taken 2nd look about blockers. Thus 3D is broken. Not by much, but few inches is enough to cause havoc as we see today.
I think Blizz uses minimal ‘blockage’ to have this game run better on lesser systems, but they shouldn’t cut corners in environments, where it does matter - i.e. dungeons.
My games UI looks fine. It differs from vanilla, true.
