Is wow [kinda] dying ?

[Aerensiniac-argent-dawn]

play with friends

Let me just ask this up front… do you know what the game looked like before sharding and lfg?
Cause “playing with friends” you can do anytime anywhere with anything.
Having a server worth of people who actively socialized cause it was a requirement to how the game worked back then, is something completely different.

Nowadays the concept of playing with complete strangers and making friends on the internet is no longer something new and exciting. People nowadays choose to not deal with other people.

And this is the crystal clarity level bs that blizzard themselves started to believe over the years, along with idiocy like the notion that nobody wants skill trees and the rest of the listen and believe trash.

Playing the game will automatically push everyone towards optimizing.
You will constantly, perpetually, nonstop find yourself levitating towards options that get you the results the most optimal way possible.
However. Social experience in games is an acquired taste.
You will never want it until you try it cause you will have no damn idea in the first place what it is and what you are losing out on.

Even in the worst possible case, this should be something up to the players, but its not. WoW streamlined itself into oblivion and destroyed every form of social aspect the game EVEN COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE.
Can you understand that concept?
You cant socialize even if you wanted to cause wow is ****ed into oblivion by sharding and lfg features which team you up with bots.
Ofcourse every data you can get from wow will support the notion of ppl wanting to single player cause the 10 million people who didnt want to already pissed off, and you literally have to bend yourself over backwards and tie yourself into a knot if you want to have any form of social experience in here.

TL;DR:
The idea that ppl want to solo is retarded. People are forced to solo at this point. No part of this is voluntary, nor good, and nobody who started to play the game past wotlk will have any concept of what it means that ppl recognize you and greet you, in cities, in the world, in dungeons cause you are server locked and keep on meeting eachother, and memories naturally start to accumulate.

You could write an entire book on how much wow has lost over the years just by streamlining and the addition of convenience features.
Then the absolute and utter retardation of design choices such as the disabling of boosting just comes on top of it all cause **** you if you want to help someone with their progress.

[Quothnor-silvermoon]

play with friends

Let me just ask this up front… do you know what the game looked like before sharding and lfg?
Cause “playing with friends” you can do anytime anywhere with anything.
Having a server worth of people who actively socialized cause it was a requirement to how the game worked back then, is something completely different.

Nowadays the concept of playing with complete strangers and making friends on the internet is no longer something new and exciting. People nowadays choose to not deal with other people.

And this is the crystal clarity level bs that blizzard themselves started to believe over the years, along with idiocy like the notion that nobody wants skill trees and the rest of the listen and believe trash.

Playing the game will automatically push everyone towards optimizing.
You will constantly, perpetually, nonstop find yourself levitating towards options that get you the results the most optimal way possible.
However. Social experience in games is an acquired taste.
You will never want it until you try it cause you will have no damn idea in the first place what it is and what you are losing out on.

Even in the worst possible case, this should be something up to the players, but its not. WoW streamlined itself into oblivion and destroyed every form of social aspect the game EVEN COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE.
Can you understand that concept?
You cant socialize even if you wanted to cause wow is ****ed into oblivion by sharding and lfg features which team you up with bots.
Ofcourse every data you can get from wow will support the notion of ppl wanting to single player cause the 10 million people who didnt want to already pissed off, and you literally have to bend yourself over backwards and tie yourself into a knot if you want to have any form of social experience in here.

TL;DR:
The idea that ppl want to solo is retarded. People are forced to solo at this point. No part of this is voluntary, nor good, and nobody who started to play the game past wotlk will have any concept of what it means that ppl recognize you and greet you, in cities, in the world, in dungeons cause you are server locked and keep on meeting eachother, and memories naturally start to accumulate.

You could write an entire book on how much wow has lost over the years just by streamlining and the addition of convenience features.
Then the absolute and utter retardation of design choices such as the disabling of boosting just comes on top of it all cause **** you if you want to help someone with their progress.

Alright, so the game I mentioned it called “Tibia”. It has been around since 1997 and because its cilent is so old it doesn’t have a lot of features.
Tibia is basically a grind game with no level limit. You level up in game by almost only killing creatures which take around 5 or so minutes to respawn again. The number of creatures by area is actually limited by a small fixed number, for example, let’s say that floor 0 of whatever area has 6 cyclops. Once you killed them you have to wait a lot of time for them to respawn again. We have what’s called “hunting spots” which are the areas with the creatures which give out the most exp by monster.
Saying this, in Tibia you have 3 options: either you compete with others for some hunting spot and hold each other back (the exp is divided by how much damage player X and Y did to the creatures), you socialize and ask whoever is there for a party or you leave a look for another spot.
Like I said in my previous post, you get bonus exp when you are partied up with someone else. You also kill creatures faster because there’s 2 of you and agenerally you get much more what we called “exp for hour”.
There’s also quests which require a party of all the classes (there’s only 4) and places so hard that are only safe for a party.
In Tibia you have every reason to party up and be in a guild.

Tibia has nothing of what I see claimed by WoW players that killed the social aspect of the game. There’s no dungeon finder, there’s no group finder, there’s no sharding, there’s no instances whatsoever. The only thing that was added later was the auction house. Being a sandbox game, every server has their own atmosphere and community. You have “famous” players, “infamous” players, always see the same faces and there’s just a handful of guilds per server. In most servers there’s also what we call “dominando guilds” aka guilds which control the server by limiting quest services, controlling hunting spots, etc, etc.
I should also mention that when you die in Tibia you actually lose exp and depending on if you have “blessings” or not you could lose up to 3 levels, your inventory and a piece of gear. “Blessings” are expensive, especialy for new players.

Yet, the majority of players prefer to play solo. In Tibia’s subreddit there’s a lot of threads asking there class X level Y can hunt solo.
Even after a hour of so of spaming the “advertising” channel and get into a party to hunt with, there’s never really much interaction. Actually, it’s pretty identical to WoW. Some groups talk, some groups just say some random things one time or another, but most are silent.
When I started playing people were more sociable, like WoW, but as time went on, people weren’t so interested in dealing with other people.
In all the years I’ve played Tibia I don’t remember many times where people accepted when I asked them if they wanted to party up or was asked by someone to party up instead of competing for the spawn.
Ironically, it was in WoW where people randomly invited me to a party when they noticed I was doing the same quest as them.

I am not saying that WoW is perfect and that Blizzard didn’t drop the ball in various things, I am just saying that people don’t do much besides the easy solution which is to blame Blizzard.

I can’t say why I think people don’t want to socialize as much as before, but I do notice it. Not just in Tibia and WoW, but pretty much in games in general.
To me, personally, sometimes I don’t feel that much inclined to deal with people because nowadays I have much less time to play, I am much more stressed and tired. When I come home and play I don’t have much patience and energy to interact with strangers. I remember when I was a teen and there was MSN I was really amazed and excited by how I could talk with my friends and anyone in the world, nowadays that’s just the norm.

This may be a giant post, but I just wanted to explain more in detail on why I say that people mostly don’t socialize by their choice and why I don’t think it’s some “blizzard bs and people can’t socialize”.
I’ve come from an old sandbox game with incentive to socialize and yet, the social aspect of it, it’s pretty much the same as in WoW.

[Ternezia-blackmoore (Ternezia)]

Let me just ask this up front… do you know what the game looked like before sharding and lfg?
Cause “playing with friends” you can do anytime anywhere with anything.
Having a server worth of people who actively socialized cause it was a requirement to how the game worked back then, is something completely different.

Of course I know, I started playing in 2008. Dungeon finder came in patch 3.3.0, which was summer or autumn of 2009, before the release of Cata. But you very accurately pointed something, albeit unwillingly, about how flawed the system before LFD was: " Having a server worth of people who actively socialized cause it was a requirement." Just look at it this way: is socializing as a requirement (forced socializing) a good thing? What about people who might not want to, due to various reasons (tired, busy, kids crying, problems, whatever)…I personally do not see such a system as well thought-out, if it forces anything on anyone.

It’s a matter of personal perception, but I wouldn’t call it real socializing. It was like a long time travel in a bus with different strangers - you have to cope with them, they have to cope with you so to get things done. Real socializing is when you have some choice with whom to play - it is in guilds, communities, friend list, etc. you get to know people and they get to know you…then you gradually cling to people with same interests as yours, ways of thinking, age.

What did the “socializing” before LFD? Forcefully gathered diverse players into temporary groups, making them spend time together to get things done. “Oh, that dude, I don’t like him but I have to stand it because he’s one of the few geared tanks on my realm who agrees to do normal dungeons.” Or “Those are kids, doh, but I have to.” Any difference between now and then? Almost none, only now you have a choice for an instant queue. One’s pleasant social experiences remained with guild mates and friend list, and it is same now.

You may say that my experiences from pre-lfg are too grim and unrealistic, but in truth a person always choses “a group within the group”, so to say - his group. The existence of friend lists proves it. If we had meaningful social interactions with the “crowd” on our realms then, we wouldn’t need the friend list.

You cant socialize even if you wanted to cause wow is ****ed into oblivion by sharding and lfg features which team you up with bots.

There’s a sticky thread “Post if you want to find friends”, which is a lot more useful than forcing people together. One can read and chose whom to add. The tools for socializing are there, they are not destroyed by LFD.

The idea that ppl want to solo is retarded. People are forced to solo at this point. No part of this is voluntary, nor good, and nobody who started to play the game past wotlk will have any concept of what it means that ppl recognize you and greet you, in cities, in the world, in dungeons cause you are server locked and keep on meeting eachother, and memories naturally start to accumulate.

So it seems you never felt yourself being overwhelmed during that times? I did. I logged to the game and was instantly dragged into things I wasn’t always in a mood for. Who did what to whom. Who ninjaed what from whom. XX is a girl irl and how does she look. Does she have big … stuff. How much I suck as healer. Wait, how much I suck as healer? Ew. “Why do you keep silent, are u mad at me???” No, I am just tired. “She is mad at me for no reason, what a b… !”

Believe me, people want to solo, for various reasons, often because they get older, have serious jobs, families, kids, or just grow out of all this, and this kind of Barrens-chat “socializing” is not fun for them anymore.

[Wushupanda-outland]

i would like to add on why i think people dont socialize.

Believe me, people want to solo, for various reasons, often because they get older, have serious jobs, families, kids, or just grow out of all this, and this kind of Barrens-chat “socializing” is not fun for them anymore.

when i played Runescape when it still was in its diapers, i played with people of all ages, parents, children, teens, students and whatever you can imagine. actually a good online friend of mine back than was in her 40s and she had a 14 years old daughter if i remember correctly (but that was like 15 years ago). age or work was not a problem, people CAN make time.

the biggest killer of socializing is TECHNOLOGY. the first was TV. the TV was invented as a mean for making families closer, which it did, until people bought a second and third television, syndication, more channels and more tv shows came.
the second killer came in the 2000s. it came in two forms: in games it was smart AI and none-gaming was social network (facebook as the pioneer). i was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s and multiplayer in computer games meant bring your friends to your home and share a keyboard to play golden axe. why? AI was stupid and couldnt be a second player. but the AI got smarter to a point devs implemented it to games which inadvertently led to the killing of socializing. they also make singleplayer games only because that sells.
wow started as another mmo which required you to play with others, but it brought in aspects from other games to stay relevant and eventually we got solo game in a multiplayer game.
and then we have social network, kids these days dont need to go outside because wifi is more than enough.

there are ways to make people socialize and bring the community together, i dont know what, but its not impossible. smarter people than i are probably trying to figure it out on a daily basis. so giving up on that shouldnt be an option.

[Cherryperry-outland]

you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

[Alewin-magtheridon (Alewin)]

I think what is often forgotten, is that helping those people through those raids, if we still had the old system you referring to, helps yourself and everyone else to new raiders.

This too. Sunday afternoon alt-runs were a thing for many guilds. Some alts and new joiners, some characters from the progression raiding team, hitting a raid the latter didn’t really did any more. Fast, smooth, friendly, the new folks/characters got double the loot opportunities, and you knew that if you were boosting someone’s alt that week, they’d be boosting yours the next. It was a legitimate social feature.

But nothing about BfA has been designed for social features

And yes, I know that technically we can do this now because there’s no lockouts and characters can run it as many times as they like. But it’s dull to hit the same instance twice. That we have BoD LFR > Normal > Heroic > Mythic instead of Uldir > BoD is completely baffling, imho.

One reason I’ll be giving Classic a shot. I miss the progression chain.

[Wushupanda-outland]

most people who came late into vanilla/bc didnt even try the earlier raids. like today, people went to the later raids as soon as they could, and got boosted by guildies.
so change the name of 10 to normal and 25 to heroic. same thing. people just run the latest instance over and over again until they get the gear they want.

vanilla was different, but raiding was raiding (was easier though).

[Brianboru-outland]

They are not trying out new stuff ? Maybe it would help them to try out even more new stuff if people wouldn’t wish the developers death , just because they didn’t like the new feature.

The first three present zero in game fun or challenge. Four, five and six are just a grind mechanic to log you in daily. Seven is both fun and challenging. Eight is just a race, something there are enough of already.

[Dhaz-grim-batol]

I am having fun playing the game, and i have no trouble finding people to play with, maybe because i play healer /tank.
I don´t believe the game is dying, I do fell that the comunity is being more and more toxic and with “snow flakes” that will quit the game if… but never do, or unsubed players that still raid the forums to to troll and just trow shade.

Play with friends, join communities, make friends!
If the game is not giving you what you want just stop, you will get frustrated and burned.

[Elendrys-silvermoon]

I’m an altoholic so I started a second account for BFA thinking I’d have lots of new cool races to play with. But alas no such luck. I don’t enjoy soloing or grinding, so while I am still enjoying the game, I don’t think I’ll enjoy it much longer once I grow tired of my boosted character and a few other old-world racially locked ones like deathknights and demon hunters.

[Arvidkingen-doomhammer (Arvidkingen)]

No game rules forever, my son.

[Crowzer-argent-dawn (Crowzer)]

As I said on other thread, after a 6 months break yeah, I feel the game quite empty even I play a very popular server, at least on its time.

[Ishayu-frostmane (Ishayu)]

wow you are hostile! i haven’t even spoken to you before to warrant that reply.

Honestly… I get why you’re upset at getting a response like that, but let me tell you: It’s from the heart, and it’s not directed at you.

I don’t mean to defend him in the sense that I think he should do that, which I know is hypocritical of me because I do it myself, but my God you have no idea how emotional some of us old-timers can get over LFR, LFD, CRZ, etc. and we practically take it out on anyone who defends them, because Blizzard won’t listen, people who don’t play anymore already agree or don’t even know how bad it is now, and those who agree with us… well, they agree with us, so we just get the same negativity thrown back. I’m sorry it is this way.

These systems slowly but surely (as they were added) eroded the game we loved and replaced it with something we consider vastly inferior, and therefore, in a sense, they took a game we loved and poured 8 years of our lives into at that point, and threw it out the window.

To say that there’s a lot of people who are sad or upset about the state of WoW in the wider gaming community would be an understatement. There are millions and millions.

It’ll be interesting to see how many of those millions come to play Classic, and how many stay.

[Trelw-alleria (Trelw)]

I feel the game quite empty even I play a very popular server, at least on its time.

@Crowzer: Argent Dawn is more alliance biased than it used to be in the past… and since RP realms have sharding off, it also impacts things.

@All: I ran some preliminary checks on how different months seem to compare as far as leading CensusPlus users are concerned…

April so far vs. May 2016: Up 2, down 7, ties 1
April so far vs. November 2018: Up 6, down 3, ties 1
April so far vs. January: Up 6, down 4
April so far vs. February: Up 8, down 1, ties 1
April so far vs. March : Up 6, down 4

I have to say preliminary, because due to time difference to US and WCR servers, the month will actually not technically end until 08:00 tomorrow my local time. In other words, there are still about 10 hours worth of incoming data to be accumulated and uploaded. I also have to run adjustments due to differing lengths of months.

[Narumi-sylvanas]

In a way i kinda get why they went that direction, to keep play time high across the entire expansion.

But I feel how they went about it wasn’t well planned out or there was an error in their methodology on how to do it.

TBC was better! The only time gate was your own play time!

my favorite time was probably in TBC. maybe they should just copy-paste TBC in a new region and see what happens.
today they lock flying behind that damn pathfinder which is exclusive to people who play certain amount of time a day. they should make pathfinder easier and accessible for everyone (maybe that is another subject, but still bothers many players, including me)

Maybe they are too afraid to ask 100k gold for training or more.

[Bandicoot-genjuros (Bandicoot)]

The epicness has come to an Game over…

[Hiyetha-defias-brotherhood (Hiyetha)]

We need LESS (single) player-driven content.

We can leave that kind of junk around, for those that like it.

But, having challenging content that REQUIRES coordination of people or groups is what makes the game great.

Why not both? We have Mythic+ and Arena, as well as raiding for competetive aspect, and also great quest lines for those who like the RPG story aspect of the game. It’s perfect!

[Peacemoon-argent-dawn (Peacemoon)]

We’re all dying my friend. Unless we’re already dead.

[Vintoleth-ghostlands (Vintoleth)]

Honestly… I get why you’re upset at getting a response like that, but let me tell you: It’s from the heart, and it’s not directed at you.

I don’t mean to defend him in the sense that I think he should do that, which I know is hypocritical of me because I do it myself, but my God you have no idea how emotional some of us old-timers can get over LFR, LFD, CRZ, etc. and we practically take it out on anyone who defends them, because Blizzard won’t listen, people who don’t play anymore already agree or don’t even know how bad it is now, and those who agree with us… well, they agree with us, so we just get the same negativity thrown back. I’m sorry it is this way.

lol dont worry, he didn’t upset me just open hostility off the bat like that rarely gets you the allies you’re looking for.

i am also an “old timer” (started 2 months into TBC) and i agree that CRZ is terrible and has actually made low pop servers even worse, and LFR has been done all wrong and does ruin the game in its current format i guess. i have suggested before making it a 1 man scenario so people can see the raid/do quests/experience the story, but they cant use it to spam gear every week. 1 piece of normal lvl gear, per raid/tier, though they can spam the scenario for no reward other than experiencing the raid/story as much as they want.

but lfg… when i did some research to make that comment, or another, i saw an old “lfg” tool that existed during tbc/wotlk before the lfg we now have since patch 3.3. its sorta basically the same idea, but you could only queue for 3 dungeons. there was no bonus reward for completing the dungeon, you didn’t get auto ported to the stone, and you couldn’t queue for all dungeons, or get a random one selected from the pool of all available dungeons. so, it wasn’t massively different to what we have now.

i didn’t remember this system before i made the comment. i only remember calling out in cities, or various zones looking for players. but it turns out i was wrong, and there was a basic “lfg” tool already in game for tbc and wotlk. this makes the argument against lfg a little more mute, unless you are talking about the interaction that took place during the time it took 2 people to get to the stone?

i would def scrap CRZ though. and would also consider scrapping LFR if it wasn’t for the fact that some people might not see the raid while current anymore. especially when they can house massive chunks of the story, like atm someone who could not get into BoD would wonder “why is Rastakan dead?”. although, the only raids which have real “story” continued on from the outside questing would be (maybe BT), ICC, DS, ToT, SoO, and everything after and including BRF. all the other raids, only have stuff alluded to them. they aren’t massive parts of the expansions core story arc.

[Jaigo-silvermoon]

Yes no perhaps