You want it your way and deny the others their way.
“Max level is for current content only and you can’t have it!”
Keeping old raids relevant is simple. Literally nothing to do. They are as is. You can go in, play the mechanics, fight the creatures, take loot.
As such, having Classic editions is a bit more work between the installers, servers, skills, anti-botting and what not.
(To be frank, my suspected actual argument is jealousy, or maybe the lack of a carrot: some people could have BiS by playing old, well known content, while others would learn new stuff. God forbid it’s for the fun of doing it! In any event, some technical compromises could be had, like the very last content offering a little higher item level, as well as gear decay to keep encouraging people to get new pieces.)
Firstly none of that content is obsolete. It gets used by a large number of players for farming mogs and mounts. Also it gets used in Timewalking. Now more could (and should) be done with timewalking to make use of older content. But simply having all dungeons and raids as current content all the time would kill the mog farming playerbase (not a small number) and dilute the players too much as trying to organise a raid group for 1 of 25 raids would be next to impossible.
Stop comparing a game without any progression besides achievs and fashion to wow. I agree something has to be made but never ever compare fashion wars2 with wow. Just move to GW2.
If they can fix their scaling it’s absolutely do-able, as people have pointed out, “the other MMO” does it just fine but the other way around, basically permanent time walking, it scales you down to how strong you’d have been at the time when you could first do that instance.
Buuuut Wow’s also had it’s core systems changed, removed, f****d by a pole, then replaced numerous times and that old content was simply designed for a completely different game.
Also I think Fated is just a system for current expansion raids - past expansions would probably come under the label of Time Walking like Time walking Black Temple.
Fated will result in better raids, as now that content can be brought back across the expansion they can justify investing more resources into each boss having bespoke animations, which will make fights more exciting as well as making them far more readable.
Also before someone blasts me with the “hopium”… your skepticism is warranted but they’re clearly changing Wow and their target audience for it, why else would they be adding things that could only really stand to benefit controller players (interact button and dynamic targeting)?
The only thing that matters for Blizzard are their treadmills: Mythic+ and Raiding. They don’t have to work on that. They design it once and the people run the same content over and over because at the end of the run is a small pot of gold.
Blizzard don’t want a 12 million player base that has different interests, they prefer a 2 million player base that pays for tokens, for boosts and are happy with that sandbox they live in.
Just because a certain game is not to your liking that does not make certain things less better made than in WoW. For exapmple the account bound systems in gw2 are leagues ahead than what we have in WoW. Also 10 years later since gw2 launched with a button for NPC & object interracting Blizzard are finally implementing it.
Showing the good parts of different MMOs and comparing them to WoW is a good thing so this game can get better.
But open world really is dead in my opinion. Would have been awesome IF we had something to do there. Let me give you an example. I realluy liked how in BFA i went back to Darkshor and did things in it. That is what i am talking about. Open world is good for leveling but other than that it is obsolete. Blizzard should improve on Chromie time.
2nd how hard is to have a TW event each weak? There are 7 expansions + Vannila = 8 games of content for TW. So 2 months of different content each week.
3rd make 1 raid atleast per each TW event.
WoW has it’s great things, too.
But yeah, while other games have been innovating Wow didn’t really care because they were top dog.
I’d say the mass exodus of 2021 is what’s pushed them, but Dragonflight is so far into development that most of the choices in the recent change in direction were probably made in 2019/2020.
Going into Dragonflight Blizzard is doing what it always did best, stealing ideas from other games and then presenting them all together in a fun way that is appealing the a wider audience.
It’s been so long since WoW actually innovated on anything that it feels alien, most people are even doubtful about it, but it is happening, I just hope it persists.
It’s also the most connected the Wow team has felt to their player base in a LONG time, I can chat to a zone designer in their comment section on Twitter, I can chat to quest designers, people who’ve designed the wild life in the dragon isles, this is a stark contrast compared to the BFA/SL testing periods when everyone was telling them things were bad and they were saying we were wrong.
So yeah, bringing up how other games have done things better should absolutely be happening so WoW can be improved even more, however turning it into a subjective “X game is better than Y game” argument is not something we should be doing.
Time walking should be a permanent rotation, I love dungeons but hate M+, I’d love a less competitive yet also challenging dungeon event/system to play through.
I miss that level tiers used to matter more. And Professions. Every 10 level bracket had its best gear and places to farm stuff. Now there is nothing but dungeon spam to 50 and it takes 24 hours max. Now gear stats are boring and rng.
Leveling is currently a time gate to the content people actually want to play.
Talent trees will make it feel better, but the actual content will still be recycled from previous expansions, and not in a good way because they’re scaling is naff.
As someone who only started in WoD I can safely say I’ve never cared for gear, only that it bumps my ilvl up so I can get past the gear-gates on the content that I actually want to play.
I’m really hoping that changes, maybe even remove the gear gate so I can go into a dungeon and be like “Damn, I need to get better gear to get past this challenge!”
Removing the gear-gate on content would also let people do self-imposed challenges where they see if they can beat X dungeon with no armour and stuff, sounds dumb but a lot of people find those self-imposed challenges fun.
I know. Just missing PvP side. We used to be able to level through BG’s. But now the gear accuisition and stats are bad. And XP from PvP is an insult purposefully.
They kinda already are, but not quite on everything (Dracthyr soar nerf lol).
BUT ANYWAYS back on topic!
WoW is changing, and I think evergreen content is part of that change, maybe not for all old content, but certainly for all new content going forward.
you started at the beginning of the games decline then…
im kind of sad to hear that as i think you would of really enjoyed pre WoD wow.
do yoursaelf a solid and give classic Wotlk a shot…
it will never live up to the old days because of lack of RDF and the community just isnt as good in 2022 as it was in 2012?? (i guessed) but it was one of the better expansions for all types of players.
I actually really enjoyed my time in WoD! Questing through it was solid, I was in a WPVP guild, it was great!
…Then Legion kinda killed my consistent enjoyment lol, ever since I’ve just returned for expansion launches and last content patches.
I have jumped into Classic, it’s quite fun, philosophically I do prefer it… but given I’ve got ADHD the annoying drop chance for quest items from mobs (kill 50 bears and only get 5 bear guts etc lol) I just kinda get bored eventually.
Even now it feels like a massive game full of life and players, even with all aspects of the game meticulously documented, it’s still like that, which gives me hope one day retail can feel more like that.