I can't stay away from this place

Community General Discussion
53

I don’t agree with your sentiment at all although it seems you have to have the final say on it and I’m not allowed to reply. Those that want Classic can go and play it without ruining the modern game for the rest of the playerbase who prefer Retail. Removing all the benefits of Retail are not going to improve the game IMO.

There is no community in PuGing, it is mostly I will keep my head down, my mouth shut and hope not be removed. Group finder/LFD was the great improvements made to WoW. I actually got to do the dungeons and see them at the right level. I found people very toxic when I started playing.

It is a myth in Classic. Most groups form, say very little to each other, complete the content and go their separate ways. There is just a huge tedious amount of time wasted in Classic forming a group, travelling and completing the dungeon. Doing dungeons in Classic is an ordeal, it’s not fun and takes a huge amount of time. Spamming multiple channels trying to form groups is not fun or a good way to spend my time, travelling for up to 20 minutes to get to the location is not fun, waiting on others to get there is not fun. Just so that we can do a dungeon. The system is archaic and unproductive. I’m very glad group finder exists in Retail.

There is lag in Classic, I’ve played it a considerable amount over the last week or two and lag is definitely a factor, especially when people are gathering in SW for the head to drop. You can’t even use the flightmaster or get near him. Incidentally I have never claimed there is phasing on Classic but I do remember when they introduced breaking down Org into phased sections. There isn’t really a lot to Classic. It’s a fairly small game these days.

I understand fully what gives the community feeling, we just don’t agree on it. You want something I don’t. As I said, I want to have non CRZ end game, I would be happy with all CRZ gone unless you group with someone but I think that is unrealistic seeing as that was a response to levellers feeling alone, something I considered a luxury back in TBC/Wrath etc etc. Remove WM so that we aren’t sharded and dial back on all the phasing players away from each other unless it’s for storyline purposes. That will give the community feeling back where we get to see each other again. Removing flying, portals etc is just creating huge inconvenience for people, that’s not improving gameplay, that’s making it worse. I like that no matter what time of day or night I can find a group for things because of CRZ.

However, I don’t think we will see WM removed, I don’t think it’s even practical at this stage. All realms are ‘Normal’ and people can opt in and out of PvP. So I think there is little hope of feeling more connected to people from my own realm. They can’t really remove CRZ because WM is based upon it. Blizz care about the world looking busy although ironically some shard make me feel more alone.

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54

The problem that I have with this is the sheer number of times I’ve responded to it. You’ve definitely had your say to me and to the world - to suggest otherwise is utterly ridiculous.

Again I must give the same old hoary speech: Delivering classic is not the same as delivering the old WoW experience. Classic is done to death and explored fully, which is leading to what effectively amounts to exploits. The game is so metagamed and played out that raids are going down instantly and events and requirements are known years in advance. Everyone already know all the solutions to all the problems and know all the fights and how to solve all the challenges in all of them.

That’s not a world of danger and mystery, like Classic promises to be and was when it came out, and many of us want that.

… wow, okay.

You sure seem to play it an awful lot for someone who doesn’t want WoW to be like that.

So we agree, and the solution that Blizzard has come up with is reducing the amount of zones you go through, thus reducing the map size. If you wanna go to the older expansions, obviously CRZ is needed, but it shouldn’t be needed for the BfA+Shadowlands experience. The map is made small enough that a single realm can cope with it.

This design solves the map size issue without removing content, and that’s precisely the kinds of compromises I want to talk about. It’s not unrealistic at all - they’ve almost done all the work already!

And you continue on agreeing with me when you say you don’t.

I think CRZ to the extent of being “invited to another realm” is just going to have to be a fact of life at this point. That’s one of the things we just can’t rid of because people have relationships across servers.

Flying and portals means you’re not in the actual world and you’re certainly not persistently moving around it, and thus whether it’s CRZ or not becomes irrelevant. But we’ve beaten this horse to death as well, so let’s just agree to disagree.

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I find Classic a grindfest with lots of things to make it as slow and time consuming as possible. Levelling is a chore, the quest are mostly just to direct you to places to grind mobs, under the guise of getting drops that are fairly infrequent.

The lack of tag sharing makes it fairly antisocial, the nabbing ore, chests, stealing mob tags etc is rife. We have seen that kind of anti social behaviour return in parts of Retail as well with dailies being used for Uldum and Vale quests.

I have spent more time that I would have liked in Classic. As far as I’m concerned I had my rose tinted goggles moments when Classic launched and I did my Horde hunter but a friend asked me to play with him recently and it was his game of choice. So we are levelling a couple of Allies together. I have more addons for Classic than I do for Retail to try and get some basic functions back.

Flying is amazing, it’s the most immersive form of travel, I get to control where I’m going and I can take in the views, take screenshots, appreciate the landscape etc. Afk-ing on a flightpath is not a good way to spend your time, in Classic it is even worse as it takes so long to fly anywhere. At least I have a second monitor these days and don’t have to actually alt tab out. I see no connection being afking to travel and community no. I do a huge connection between being sharded away from my fellow Draenor residents, being put in with people from other realms and the lack of community because we don’t see each other anymore.

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You are entited to your own , I’ll take classic and the way Failzard handled it over retail anytime, good not all the people went or loved classic imagine the horror if most of the people from retail would have take on classic same trash community , no thanks happy x-pack and don’t forget to stay between each others.

Back on topic it is just a place i spent some time for a moment some period when i move on for something else i do not look back.

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The mere thought of me being in these triangle graphic hell, taking orders from some cocky “veteran officers pass it all gUyS” so their buddy could roll some gong makes me want to :face_vomiting:
I could never be a classic player, even in 2004 when I was 13 I had some self respect

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58

It needs to be acknowledged that the main contention here is between one form of travel and another form of travel that is perceived as restrictive and boring.

I’ve been playing death stranding recently and I have not witnessed a single person saying “this game needs flying”. There are countless other games that dont have flying and nobody asks for it.

The issue is the connection to the environment and the value that is placed upon that. If the gameplay on the ground or on flight paths was fun gameplay, then nobody would be looking to avoid that.

I dont even think ishayoe ever said they wanted flight paths. The entire reason this was brought up, was the town effect. The incidences of running along on your merry way and spotting someone you recognise.

How often do you think you run from the flight path to rage fire chasm these days?
In the past, you might have made that run and saw many names you recognise on the way. That simple feedback works on our underlying feeling of belonging. It’s part of our instincts.

I see a load of players in boralus every time I hearth, but I don’t recognise a single one of them. As a result o no longer even look at player names. Also, if I say anything, I go ignored. So for all intents and purposes, they aren’t there. The game feels empty due to things like this.
When I talk annobosy responds, I feel just that little bit more lonely. I felt that way when the community I was in stopped responding. I felt that way when i was posting in their discord and my posts would go completely ignored and they would start a whole other conversation. It feels even worse on discord because those posts stay there. I cant just assume everyone missed it.

Classic wasnt perfect. Tagging was bad back then. It was certainly anti social. Blizzard have improved a lot of things. But some things have been badly diminished.

It feels very cruel and mean and dismissive when someone says “you have classic, go there”.
I dont think that is what people want.
I think if I was on draenor, I would feel elated if I was running along questing annual spotted a blood elf named “punyelf”. Either in general chat or in the world.
But that would probably never happen.

Blizzard have to cross realm or shard or phase or whatever because people are running around and dont see anyone. They feel the world is empty. Theres nobody running around. Because they are all flying or using portals and because the world is huge. Do we really think bfa zones will be more lively when it’s the main levelling path?, no, there will be hardly anyone running around because the fastest way to level is to fly.
I know full well, I am levelling a on alt through pandaria and I cant imagine taking it the slow way.
Once flying is opened up in draenor and legion, etc. I worry that i will feel like i want to speed it up and will fly in those places too and that incidental journey on the ground will be lost. Because i will want to fly to make levelling quicker.

But that raises the question… how many people are levelling through those zones because they want to be in those zones? Or how many are actually just trying to rush through?

How do blizzard get people to actually spend time in the world? They make the world something that people want to do. Not something they have to do.

I think… the level squish is good. The bringing all players into the same starting zone and for levelling is good. Having more players to get into the current zones more quickly is good. Having no flying to start with is good. Dont know what happens when flying comes… but maybe they can find a way to make staying.on the ground engaging and fun? Reducing cross realm thing is good. It would certainly.be good if they reduced the NEED for grouping up, and at the same time make it easier for people to make a group if they want to. Communication should be key, so I think an automated system is bad. People need to be able to pay attention and respond to each other. Here also needs to be more responsibility. It should not be so easy to just kick someone from a dungeon group. But also, not so easy to afk.

This reply became much longer than I intended.

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59

A game that does not have flying can’t be compared to a game that has flying. Many modern games without flying have fast travel networks. Only Vanilla/Classic did not have flying every other expansion in the World of Warcraft did.

As I have said repeatedly. The effect in towns is a problem caused by not being on your own realm any more. We are all sharded in WM on and off and that is all CRZ. Wanting to destroy flying, portals and travelling will not help people be more visible to each other in towns and out and about. Being realm based will. However those days are long gone.

Isha believes very differently and is entitled to do so. We have agreed to differ because I would hate the game they want to turn Retail into and they aren’t happy with the game Retail currently is. To be honest, Blizz can never actually please everyone, no matter what they do.

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60

People hang out in Orgrimmar. You see a lot of the same people around. I give out free cats. But outside that you get fragmented into War Mode on/off and mixed into other realms. Though turning War Mode off I see a lot of people from my own server instead of some random shard, and on Alliance when I’m always War Mode off I’ve run into the same people many times in Boralus. Had people from one guild all hanging out on one specific fence and there was usually someone there.

I will go War Mode off for Shadowlands so there might be more of a community vibe then.

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I think another issue that ruin community is that boosters can spam and advertise on trade non stop.

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Given that warmode off sharding seems to prioritize sharding you with people on your realm, I wonder whether the new connections would make it possible to have shards that were full of only the people on your connected realms? At least in the current zones and other populated places like capitals.

Having only started in WoD, I have no experience of what the community was like in the past. I don’t have a problem with how things are now, but I suppose you cannot miss something you haven’t experienced.

I’d agree that many conversations that would have happened in gchat previously are now happening elsewhere (e.g. discord) but imo this is often better as those who aren’t online at the time don’t miss out on the discussions.

I’m not a member of any in-game communities, but I expect that many of them fail because they are either not busy enough, so die out, or become too busy and you lose the sense of familiar faces. I am a member of the FF discord made up of fine forum folks, and that gives me plenty of social interaction with lovely people. This, together with my guild, gives me all the social aspect I could desire. But, as I said, if I’ve missed the glory days of something better, I’ll simply never know.

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Well if anything WoW just caught up to the other games on the market.

No one wants to be friends or play with you just because, people want to surround themselves with people that can improve themselves.

Meritocracy is the standard now, WoW is a very social game, if you bring something to the table. If you’re just a casual who doesnt do any raid, arena, or m+ content well then you’re not interesting, why would someone want to play with you?

Games stopped being social gatherings like Habbo Hotel like 15 years ago

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64

delete crz

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Removing War Mode would do most of the work there. Especially for Horde where War Mode on is like, the default, and people from PvE realms get fragmented all over the place.

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I wonder if the community aspect of a non-sharded warmode off mode would be enough to appeal to those who just have warmode on, as you say, by default for the extra bonus with no real risk? Perhaps it would help even out the faction imbalance in warmode? But I have no idea how important that feeling of seeing the same people is to others. I barely pay attention to others (both passing in the street irl and in game), so it’s not really important for me personally, but based on this thread, it clearly is for others.

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I’m on Draenor and it certainly doesn’t feel like that priority exists.

Just now in the Pyramid I can see players from Tarren Mill, Drak’thul, Stormreaver, Burning Legion, Bloodscalp, and a few from my own Realm.

I don’t run into the same people repeatedly in the shards because it’s just too big a mix. I rarely run into my own guild members out in the world, let alone actual other Draenor players :(.

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Removing the War Mode bonus might be a start… Then it’s mostly people who like to world PvP in there, and they’d have rolled on PvP realms in the first place.

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69

Hmm, that’s interesting as when I have WM off I see loads of players from Emerald Dream and Terenas (as well as people from other realms too) but maybe it’s different for the larger realms? I dunno, I just noticed there was a marked difference in the realms where people I saw are from when I had WM off as opposed to on. Seems to be the same situation for Alliance on our realm, as Kyrel has commented on this and also likes to find and /lick my guildies for fun! :laughing:

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70

I figured this was worth experimenting with but bear in mind it’s just me and by no means conclusive :laughing:

I went on my mage and turned WM off. Now I’m surrounded by players from my realm.

Pure theory but it could be the bulk play with WM off and you can find enough players to shard into WM off. WM on could be more tricky, if less players use it there may be a greater need to shard with users from other realms.

Currently I’m not willing to give up the WM bonus though. So unless they stop giving me PvE rewards in WM on, I’m unlikely to take the 10% loss.

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71

Why does it have to be about destroying something? I tried to focus on improving other aspects of the game. I get the feeling you’re being over-defensive.
All I suggested in my post was that we could have it so that flying and portals etc are not as necessary and not as desirable. not by making them worse in any way, but making it so people feel like they want to stay on the ground, within the environment more, rather than flying. there are many people that feel like the better part of the game is in the air. evidently this is a problem because this game is not a flight simulator. if this were pilotwings then I’d say yeah of course, flying is key. but this is world of warcraft. it’s originally a mmmorpg, now it’s a mmoaa (ation adventure) . none of these game genres are synonyms for ‘flight simulator’.

The way the game currently is, makes flying necessary and the most fun way to play for many people. that needs to change if the game is to stay true to it’s core.

as long as most players would rather fly up in the sky, rather than run along the ground along with their friends (like we used to do when we used to attack stormwind back in TBC) the game is having a crisis of identity.

Absolutely 100% do not remove stuff that is already there… just make the game more fun in other ways so people will naturally want to go in that direction.

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It’s quite funny I started on a PvP realm, I hated having to die constantly or having the hand in NPCs slaughtered and have to wait for them to respawn. Eventually I moved to a Normal realm and I loved that I could get on with things in peace.

So now they offer PvE benefits I’m back in the PvP mode I don’t actually enjoy because I want the extra resources.