I want to play WoW but it resists

Community General Discussion
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Greetings chosen ones heroes

This is gonna be a long story depressive thread.
I understand that this will not change anything, but I still believe that my contribution can at least affect stats which could affect something in general.

Like many current wow players I had sunny days in BC & Wrath and I spent my puberty in WoW. Before I had the internet I read about wow in gaming magazines and dreamed of playing it. But not about that.

Wow for me is a big part of my life and I always remember it with a warm. This feeling attracted me to play all the time. But then I grew up a little, school exams, university, wife, real life - in short, I gave up on WoW since Cata. I am not really sure why this happened but here are my thoughts:

  1. I have lost a lot of my friends from BC because the content became much harder beginning with the Ulduar
  2. Social interactions decreased because of the dungeon finder.
  3. Dungeons became faster so there was no time to talk
  4. Even on wotlk leveling became solo-leveling, I was always interacting with someone durring the questing in BC

The time comes, I got a remote support job and I found that there was a good opportunity to play wow in a free hour! It was BFA, and it was fantastic for me. I did feel a huge jump from the wotlk, the game was so interesting for me. I was surprised by the leveling story, keys, world quests, vault, textures detalisation. The keys captivated me I was #3 enh shaman by rio on my server and #1 by alliance on my server!
I don’t really remember any complaints, the only one was that there was no new content. I gave up playing while waiting for a new patch for 3 months with a maximum gear. It was a little difficult to catch up with all new mechanics, but it didn’t feel like an issue.

The miracle happened - I brought my wife into Wow and we started playing Dragonflight. I had an interesting experience observing the new player’s rise. I feel like it is literally impossible to get into it without the wise nerd mentor (which is me currently), another way you’ll become a noob with no dps which no one wants to (and you’ll give up). The game is like throws you into the last Harry Potter chapter by explaining “Okay, this is Harry, this is Ron and this is their friend Hermione. They are wizards and fighting evil. Good luck chosen one!”.
This is a frequent question “Who da hell is that? Why he/she is so important?” even for me. There is zero possibility of understanding what is going on in-game, you HAVE TO read 20+ books, you HAVE TO play the ancient moldy strategies, you HAVE to complete all the patches of all wow expansions. Only in this case, you’ll have a chance to understand what is going on in this world.

In Dragonflight, the game mechanics became screwed. It’s gonna be a boomer’s cry but the game became to much complicated. The reason here is layering all the new stuff from each expansion. When dragonflight is your first expansion - your brain will blow up of everything. It would work well, while you getting features one by one, but when you are thrown into the sea of features you’ll get lost. I leveled up 2 weeks ago and I still don’t understand how to order tables, all the crafting addons, millions of currencies, item updates, catalyst, and open world events work.

I played as a shaman in the classic-bc-wrath-cata-bfa-dragonflight.
I liked the enh/ele/resto rotation in bc and wrath - it was easy, stable and understandable, a little boring sometimes, but I fixed it by trying the new specs and even classes.
I really liked the enh shaman gameplay in BFA it was quite complicated but fun to play.
I totally don’t like the gameplay in dragonflight because it became much more complicated and much more “burst-like”.
This issue is dedicated to all classes as I understand. The gameplay became very fast which drains me in long play sessions. You have to be focused all the time because burst-like rotation is very sensitive to mistakes. In my opinion, this kills socialization too, because everyone is too focused on themselves. I guess it is a lazy way to balance classes, because you’ll think “well, it was a bad random and I did not perform as well as a hunter on a first place in DPS counter”

Meanwhile, the dungeon mechanics became much harder too. It would not be an issue if the rotation was easy, but it is hard overall! Damn, I loved raids like Naxxramas and I want to keep spamming 3 buttons while performing the raid mechanics (Thadius is still the best boss ever for me, the game designer is a genius)! In the case of try-harding, there is still a place for calculating the best stats, experimenting with the gear, learning the optimal way to act on each boss, etc. No one wants to break the brain.

On one side the game teaches you “WASD for move” on the other side you have 16-step priority rotation and 5+ deadly mechanics on bosses, plus an extremely giant knowledgebase of your class mechanics.

Current problems for me:

  1. The game became too fast. It’s killed the socialization, which was 50% of joy for me
  2. Classes mechanics became too complicated and unpredicted
  3. New activities and features are years layered. It is hard to jump into the game.
  4. I don’t have any idea what is going on with the universe story

The wow is not newbies friendly, otherwise it is not friendly to experienced players. Then, for whom was all of this done? I believe I’m the very default player representative and these issues are related to most players, who are close to giving up or gave up already.

I want to play my favorite game, but seems like Blizzard doesn’t want me here.

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As far as I know there is no direct plan or general desire to slow down (they tried it in BFA start it was disaster). Many problems you mention here could potentially be solved by moving to Classic iterations on casual level.

Besides, we are doubling down on complex interactions with Hero talents.

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This is relative, the bfa gameplay speed was perfect for me after slow BC and Wrath. Seems like I was very lucky to jump into the s1 of BFA after the long pause. Classic is a temporary way because it will become a retail sometime.

What do you mean by disaster? Is it your opinion or there was a storm on the forum?

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I would definitely agree with Drag that Classic sounds like the perfect ticket for you.

There is Classic Era, which is Vanilla.
Classic also has seasonal variations, the current one being Season of Discovery.
If you are really feeling like a glutton for punishment there is Classic Hardcore which is vanilla but death is permanent.
We also have Classic Wrath of the Lich King which will be changing over to Cataclysm later this year.

They are all included in the subscription price and don’t require you to purchase anything.

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I would like to present you with this point of view: you are already playing the current World of Warcraft and you obviously like its current state. That’s why you follow the forum. But in general, the popularity of wow has fallen very much due to the reasons described above, in my opinion.

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The slowness of gameplay was not disaster in itself. What happened is that we went from hypersmooth, fast almost anime-like rotation flow in Legion. BFA completely overturned secondaries, and some specs went from too-much-fun to almost unplayable with this context.

I remember finishing lvl 120 and autoattacking 40% of time for no dmg whatsoever.

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Retail and Classic are two different playerbases, some do overlap. Those that like the slower pace and old systems tend to play the Classics and those of us who like the fast based flashy stuff play Retail.

I would hate to go back to the old ways but I appreciate there are people who prefer them ofc.

People all have different preferences and they are never all going to agree. I personally do not want to see the game slowed down.

Warcraft still holds it’s own, regardless of what version people want to play but it’s never going to have the same player numbers as back in the peak of Wrath.

Gaming has changed, we have a vast amount of choice available to us and many play more than one game.

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Everyone has theory about why WoW is dying. While I agree with some points around complexity (Fyrakk has more mechanics than naxxramas), I disagree with most others. Especially social interaction.
People don’t do high end gameplay to socialize but to play the game.

To me vanilla wow is a nightmare every time I level through it. The downtime, the lack of abilities to counter anything…
Ideally I want the game to be as interactive as during cataclysm and as leniently tuned as MoP.

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I totally understand you. I have the same feeling. especially professions. the UI/UX does not feel comfortable to understand. It looks like maxing out 2 professions with their specializations may take more than a year (with the time i can dedicate per week).

Currencies are a major problem. I am not sure but there may be more than 20+ currencies with their own quality levels.

Factions, renowns :frowning: I do not even talk about it. I can not dedicate 4 months for a recipe.

“If you want a less complex game-system go for Classic” is not a perfect advice I think. Those are major problems needs to be solved. There is always lots of options for players who would like to grind like there is no tomorrow.

There are updates for solo players. I can see that and I am okay with being -%20 less powerful (LFRs, custom mythic groups) compare to a proper raid grindig.

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Whatever it might be, making this another Classic would definitely not help. Retail wow fills this hole in the market a lot. Technical and mechanical approach of easy to learn and hard to master seems to be quite ok, at least to me. And I am going towards 33 yo already, married and all that world content around that.

Besides most of the problems with people ragequitting is when they meet their hard cap and entitle themselves to higher rewards than they can play for.

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I think socialising has shifted, although I never found people to be social when I started in TBC, they were downright awful and I didn’t get to do dungeons until Wrath. But that’s a whole different story and people’s experiences vary.

However the bulk of socialising is done on discords. Even guild chat itself isn’t as active and I’m terrible at noticing in game chat. Anyone that has me on bnet can attest to that.

I socialise with my friends, guildies, some communities but I don’t have time for everything. Some love to sit in voice chat but I only tend to do that if it has a purpose like doing M+/Raiding etc. I like to actually be immersed in my game the rest of the time. I try to answer people on /w ofc when I notice them. It’s easier on discord cos it’s a notification and I can just answer it whenever.

As for combat downtime is just dull. I think most Retail players prefer not to have it. Classic gamers on the other hand like the slow pace. Running out of mana after using a handful of abilties and then stood there using my wand or auto attacking bores me and it’s also why I don’t stick at them. I like to go and dabble then come back to Retail and appreciate it all over again :dracthyr_hehe_animated:

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Like I’m not talking about the auto-attack gameplay from vanila. Shaman, rogue, paladin in wrath always had to push the buttons. But it was 1-2-3-4, and not random buttons according to the priority.

Also, I didn’t mention that, but I have experience in clasic bc+wrath, and I am quite competitive player. My maxed out shamy has mimiron head and tribute to insanity. I gave up on ICC because of guild problems, but it is another story

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Yes, that is what is considered Classic gameplay. All versions up to WOTLK/CATA have this to some degree.
End of CATA and MOP saw introduction of exponentiality into the rotations which was one of the reasons the gameplay of retail doesn’t feel “old” despite standing on basic principles of 2004.

Besides if you go over class communities, you will mostly see people crying for more engaging and complicating elements of rotation (us Blood DKs for example).

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I disagree that what you mentioned as the reason. I think most vanilla players just outgrew the game… it happens…

Natural progression of an aging game … as the old players outgrow it, you get new blood in, and you start having issues with skill levels of players, and what difficulty content should be… hence you get a million difficulties that comes with its own issues…

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Don’t you feel like you are playing your rotation and not the game?
Currently, I have no time to even look around in a dungeon, I skipp all the talking heads because I have to run forward and push buttons, I don’t even sure what some bosses look like.
Easy rotation and hard raids - is a decision in my opinion

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I feel great playing this game and it is basically only game I play. I could use more complexity but I am okay with it. My rotation is my game.

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I’m sorry, but you mistook me for the wrong one. I’m still a competitive player who will look at all the guides, make weakauras, and come up with the best result possible. But I just don’t like what gameplay turned to

If I’m honest, this thread has opened my eyes a bit. I just didn’t believe that someone could enjoy the current gameplay. Perhaps the problem is really in me, or maybe it’s just that the enhancement shaman has 16 steps in the rotation that are used based on priority

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I would say that every spec in the game has one specific gameplay loop, the basic principle which is usually pretty easy to understand. That alone carries you to midcore of this game. Everything else just adds or somehow modifies that principle.

One of many solutions is to try out what might interest you and then see if something might click.

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Don’t you feel like when you play elden ring you play gamepad and not the game?

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I do recognise that from some specs I’ve tried in DF. If you look at the best, properly executed rotation from the start, it can be a bit overwhelming. I’d suggest looking at the easy mode version first, and then slowly adding in bits and bobs from the more difficult one.

It depends on class and spec. In a way I think that’s done quite well, there is a big range in difficulty when you look at the classes as a whole, which should in theory serve a large range of people with differences in ability and experience.

You may be making it too difficult for yourself by wanting to play well rightaway. I recognise your feeling on it, the gameplay at times feels less intuitive and not as easy to just jump into. Whether that is a negative or positive seems to depend on who you ask tho :wink:

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