My hot takes before 2024 ends, as someone who has played since Vanilla, namely on the high-end raiding and M+ scene, from DPS to Tanking (6/8 mythic right now, 2.7k rated). The takes being why I think the game has become so gatekeepy and elitist, while at the same time people wanting to be boosted, but also don’t want to learn, but also insta-rage if called out OR things don’t go their way.
I implore you to read each line first, then the reasoning, before any comments.
- Remove Mythic Raiding.
Have Normal Mode, and make ‘Heroic’ Mode the new ‘Mythic’ mode, slightly harder than Heroic now, easier than Mythic now.
Both are Flexi-raid, or 10-man sized.
Normal Mode gets you Epics. ‘Heroic’ Mode gets the best Epic gear of the patch(es?)
‘Heroic’ Mode gear looks different / has unique effects compared to Normal Mode (like Mythic now), to show off your achievements.
Raiding shouldn’t take hours to complete with the new difficulty once you have gear + experience.
: Why?
Make Raiding easier and more approachable for EVERYONE, without being gatekeepy or elitist. Instead make it an enjoyable, repeatable experience people can chill with friends with, play whatever classes they want, and can all yell or cheer when the loot they’ve been farming a while finally drops, or just try again another day or next week if it doesn’t. Log on, group up with the many others in the group finder or your guild looking to tackle one of the raids(?) of the patch (maybe 2 raids each patch instead? But again, they’re easier, more condensed, and have various loot pools spread around them).
- Completely remove M+
Normal Mode dungeons drop Greens.
Heroic Mode dungeons drop Blues.
‘Mythic’ Dungeon is timed, has affixes, and the rewards for completing up to 2k, 2.5k and 3k rating? Titles, Mounts, Special, Full Transmog-Sets and cool spell-effects. The purpose is to show off your achievements.
: Why?
Normal dungeons is for playing the game casually, with obvious gear drops.
Heroic mode is when you want more of a challenge, as well as to help people gear up to then say “You know what… I’ve always wanted to try raiding, let’s do it” and be able to join Raiding relatively easy with their gear (due to the new difficulty levels).
‘Mythic’ is the new ‘M+’ for people who want a proper challenge AND get to show off their achievements, without it becoming 'the best way to get gear; timed, gatekeeping, ‘boost me but I only invite metas or what a video tells me I have no context of understanding’ mindset)
- Remove ‘lockouts’ for Dungeons and Raids
You can get up to 10(?) pieces of gear from Dungeons and separately Raids each week. You, or your guild, choose how often they want to raid.
: Why?
Give players the freedom to choose how much they want to play, while the difficulty of said raids at the same time aren’t outrageous and sluggish or require a full team of people that are all working perfectly together and geared, NOR are players also required to farm Keys, farm Score, farm Crests, farm the BiS gear, get hard-stuck on very complicated bosses needing 20 exact people to know exactly what to do and make 0 mistakes for 100+ pulls to finally get that kill and-- not even very good loot. Onto the next one…
Make the game you log on, you grab friends or find randoms, you play. Rather than jumping through hoops before you even set foot in a single M+ or Mythic or Heroic raid.
- Makes ‘Epics’ rare again
Epics can only be obtained in Raiding, OR, as world-drops in Dungeons or in the world, they are just as powerful as Raid gear.
: Why?
The fun of seeing something amazing drop, or someone run past you with a special Epic you recognize but that YOU could just as easily obtain with gold, grinding, luck or raiding yourself.
- Why any of this?
To me, I think WoW has lost its way, and that the new way of doing things for the past 15 years or so has created a massive elitist mindset community, instead of a happy one where you’re excited to hop on and play. Instead of hopping on with friends or randoms and grinding that last bit of gear you need, it’s become a slogfest where 601ilvl, 1k rated players won’t invite a 620ilvl 2.3k player to a +6 because they want ‘the best people’ to boost them, but won’t bother learning anything themselves, or ‘Recruiters’ in guilds having to look through pages of peoples ‘logs’ to ensure they press the correct 15-button-rotations while staying alive and doing multi-tactics, as well as hoping they won’t just quit the guild once they get that 1 boss kill they want - because it’s all about boss kills now, not ‘playing’, not ‘getting gear’. They want the gear, not the players. Or raiding that has become a huuuugee undertaking, almost to job-like levels with the amount of add-ons and player-juggling needed, all to smash your heads against bosses to finally get one kill that doesn’t even ‘give’ you anything for that grind, only if you’re lucky. But for another 17 or so people, it gives them nothing. And for around 12 people, it’ll never give them anything.
So why not just make it more approachable for EVERYONE, so that suddenly EVERYONE is playing on a much similar playing field, and rooting for each others successes?
