New player's views on WoW negativity

Community General Discussion
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Hey so I’m fairly new to WoW with my highest character being level 85 and I’m slightly lost on why many players are so negative.

I’m completely loving the game, I’ve been having a blast, I joined a great guild with members that are all really friendly and helpful, the story so far seems great, dungeons are good fun. I’d like to be able to find raid groups easier but I’m sure I’d be able to if I really put effort into it. When people talk about the old school WoW experience I believe this is what I’m going through.

From a completely new player’s perspective, I’ve barely looked at the forums, barely looked at guides and I’ve just been playing through the game as I’ve wanted to, running around questing, running dungeons - it hasn’t felt like a ‘grind.’ What I have seen from the community is a lot of complaining along the lines of the game isn’t fun any more, it isn’t what it used to be, surely that’s the same for the majority of games?

I’ve put hundreds of hours into games like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, it’s a fairly rubbish game if you played it now however it was a really nice community to play with, if I loaded it up right now I’d probably enjoy the nostalgia for an hour or two before seeing flaws of the game crop up again as is natural, what I’m trying to say is if I had been playing that game for 10 years I’d probably be fed up with it and only find things to complain about, the same as many old school WoW players feel about this game.

Even without looking at too many guides, from when I first started playing it was imprinted on my mind that the game doesn’t ‘start’ until I would hit max level, there’s guides on power levelling, guides on speeding through dungeons/raids, guides on levelling professions in minimal time and honestly I don’t think anybody would enjoy playing the game out like this.

It’s not the greatest impression being put out to new players when they see from very experienced/long term players that they need to hit level 120 before they can enjoy the game, frankly this is a load of bollocks and the game holds up just fine while playing through it.

I’m sure that many of you who have things to complain about (maybe rightfully so?) would enjoy the game so much more if you ignored the forums/videos/people crapping on the game and just played through it as it was meant to be played, if you find an issue with the game don’t get all hell bent over it and rage that the game sucks, just let the relaxing music take over as you play.

Recently I revisited MW2, an FPS which I threw hundreds of hours into when I was younger, after returning to it for a few hours I thought the game was rubbish, I was fed up of bs mechanics and uninstalled. Not because the game is bad, but because I’ve changed, the game just isn’t for me any more.

I really do feel like WoW is a good game, there’s parts I don’t enjoy of course (collection quests mostly) but I feel like the problems with the game that a few level 120 players perceive is shoved in the faces of potential new players. Getting so enraged about £20 mounts, pets etc seems amusing to me, if you don’t want to spend £20 on mounts then maybe don’t buy them and enjoy the game for what it is, a game, with mounts, that don’t all need to be collected, it’s not Pokemon, collecting mounts won’t drastically change the experience of wow.

I see a lot of posts hating on the new levelling system, this system is the only one I’ve experience and I didn’t even notice it hasn’t always been in the game, I see very few issues with it and I’ve been having a blast playing.

WoW may not be for you any more and that’s perfectly fine, we all change, gaming trends change, business change as they try to attract new customers but there’s no need to constantly crap on the game. I understand you may have been playing for 10 years and have 5000 hours played but that still doesn’t mean that Blizzard owes you anything, nothing is going to come from you creating a post/video/livestream about how unplayable WoW is, this is just going to result in potential players changing their mind about downloading the game.

It seems to me as though everyone needs to relax, play the game as it is or take a break. Creating a toxic environment isn’t beneficial for anybody, new players and old players a like, it just creates a nasty environment that nobody enjoys.

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To be fair the vast amount of customer complaints at the moment tend to revolve around “end-game” content and other areas of the game you have yet to experience.

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I’ll explain it in three parts that I see are the main problem.

Imagine using internet for a long time, freely and whenever you like, then having the internet taken from you and reintroduced to you in a restricted time gated manner, this is the current state of the game.

Now for the second part, imagine liking your car/phone… you’ve been driving/using it for 2 years and like how it’s going and its features, now there’s supposedly a new update that is mandatory and you have to get, in which you expect it to build upon the features you like only to find out they whole model of the car/phone were changed and reinvented, some might like the changes, some not. and some of the changes were features already existing but taken away, cut up and reintroduced in a restricted time gated manner.

Now for the third part, imagine living in a philosophy, work hard get payed good, invest more to reap more, the higher your influence is the higher jobs you are interested in and lower jobs matter no more and that is reflected by your status ingame, seeing someone with a fully decked out heroic gear meant that person is the real deal, they’re good, they’re invested and they’re very likely to produce some good results.

then have that taken away and everyone is mythic geared, you are forced to invest in almost all difficuilties and forced to mix with everyone, progression loses it’s meaning and no matter how hard you’ve invested the difference between you and lucky bo the afker in the fire in terms of skill, progression and time investment is small, and your team mates have a chance to be either lucky bo, average joe or maybe titan forge into epicus maximus the skilled.

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I do empathise with those who feel progression has lost it’s meaning, and quite possibly it has however that’s my point, if you feel as though the game is no longer worth playing, then don’t play it for a little while, or try something else.

I completely understand and accept that players may feel as though the game does suck at later levels, all I’m suggesting that instead of crapping on the game and making others feel down, they take that emotion and pile it into something else that they might enjoy.

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This has nothing to do with the game being old, or people being bored - at least, bored of the game as it was.

There are only two ways something changes in this game:

  1. Blizzard believe they see a way to improve their position - running more efficiently, or some dev convinces the rest that he’s got a Bright Idea.

  2. People complain on the forums, on MMO-C, in Suggestions and Bugs, on YouTube and Twitch. And Unsubscribe. (Though, at this point, I believe the devs have half-convinced themselves that nothing they do will cause people to unsub - and they may be mostly right; there are a lot of long-time addicts here.)

People who are complaining that the devs have deliberately made the game worse are not targeting newcomers; they are trying to get the devs to listen.

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My only wow experience apart from bfa was wotlk, played it years ago for a long time.

So i come back to wow, august last year after vacation…first thoughts were literally “omfg they polished this up insanely”

Just everything, how it’s offered to you, from quests, to calls to go to other zones, just miles ahead of wotlk, everything felt just so streamlined…

As for class mechanics, one of the gripes of many around here, in my experience, i only miss two spells, deep freeze and evocation and this last one is not even that crucial, because you get a replacement in bfa that you actually have to have (some)skill to use.
Frost mage is frost mage, the principle is still the same, except they might have made it play a bit faster now.

Another complain, a very big one, has to do with loot. Namely, people have been taken away the chance to plan out their char, the path of gear they’ll pursue and it was replaced with a random system that makes you “wing it” with whatever you’re getting. Personally i don’t think it’s such a bad system as people make it out to be.
And i’m saying this as someone who got his first 400ilvl items inferior to the 375’s, 390’s and 395’s he was wearing.

People also whine about scaling…i have an interesting anecdote from earlier today…but let me just start by saying i leveled a few alts in wotlk, i know that first week after max lvl how it is in bg, warrior charges and half hp goes missing…earlier i was doing invasion, travelling from one quest to another, alone, there’s an alliance warrior on the road and i’m like, okay if he does something i heard there’s scaling which will make me not so weak…well, he charged and half hp went missing. I died 5 seconds later. gg wp, scaling.

In conclusion, i enjoy the game. I could do with some friends that pvp, but i suppose i’ll find them eventually.

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Well everyone is like you relaxed, fun, loving when they joined wow.

What they did is…
Invested 1000s of hours

And you have result in front of your eyes.
I hope you got the catch.

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at low lvl everything seem fine.
when you hit 120 the gear treadmill arpg grind show.

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I won’t get into the details but if you follow /wow on reddit and what the Game Director prays all the time, then you’ll be disappointed to see how much of a liar he is.

Needed Quality of Life changes won’t happen simply because he don’t want to see them. You’re not this far yet but they have removed the party finder for world quests because they don’t like it that you work in a group together and much faster than you should. All they care is for a metric where you play longer in the game instead enjoying it.

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My theory is that many veteran players have become increasingly distanced from the game over the years, but the many years they’ve invested into the game makes it difficult for them to quit.

So they linger. But rather than focusing on playing the game, they instead become focused on the design and development of the game.

So WoW changes from being a game to being a subject, no different from news or politics. It’s something people have an opinion about, and it’s something they enjoy discussing.

The community is basically as alive as ever, because everyone - even ex-WoW players - love to keep up with everything that happens with the game. It’s enjoyable to engage and participate in the discussions about whether the game is improving or not, and what the developers should do, and what would be most fun, and how it was back in the old days, and so on.

And the negativity originates from the fact that players are less engaged in WoW these days than they were in the past. So their community contributions usually come from an angle of: “Back in the old days it was so much better, because…”

It’s like politics. People love to discuss WoW because there are different sides to every topic which brings forth various arguments and complaints and praises.
…Mostly complaints. :wink:

You can find lots of people who lurk around on the forums without having any actual interest in playing the game. They just like the discussions.

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You don’t seem like a new guy to me.

Your “highest level” 86 sports heirlooms. You got the achievement for “loot 100 gold” on Feb-1 and the very next day you got the achievement for being level 85.

That’s not how new guys look.

You are totally new and totally not on the forums but somehow you got fed up on the negativity and decided to write a wall of text .

I am sorry, but you are just an alt who wanted to post something as if it is coming from a new guy. And your wall of text is meh.

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Really insightful reply, cleared it up for me thank you.

Melinora - Uhh I’ve got like 2-3 days in /played - I bought heirlooms for £17, I have 58k left over from the token I sold. I no lifed the game for a couple of days. I bought them as they were recommended in lots of places.

I mean you instantly assuming I’m an alt highlights to me that you straight away are driven to toxic conclusions.

I made this thread because I was generally curious, relax dude

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You made this thread in order to say “you are all whiners, shut up and leave the forums”, you just didn’t want to do this on your main.

That’s all there is to it.

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I think you should consider that not everybody is out to get you my friend.

I was just stating what was on my mind, on my only forum account

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You dont like the guides to level fast but you buy and upgrade heirlooms with real money?

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Because “they were recommended in lots of places”, don’t you get it? Totally not guides. :slight_smile:

Also, “I no lifed the game for a day or two and went from something like 15 to 85”. New guys are all doing it like this. Totally. You can check the leveling route as well. Not completing any zones, nothing, no sidewalks anywhere, straight to the top. Totally inexperienced.

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End game is a crazy “dreamspace” that we all get to.
It’s like being close to death but at the top of your game, quite literally, at the same time.
Top of your game because you have mastered your class and you live in “finger muscle memory” territory on some kind of peak fitness ledge.
Close to death because you are at the bleeding edge, max level, close to the event horizon which is the sheer cliff of content.
There is nothing beyond the curve in-game so the death that walks beside you is real [fake real] and brings you ever closer to IRL [real fake] which is horrifying.

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You don’t understand, the designers are putting more effort into the f***ing store mounts than the actual mounts In-game. And instead of fixing the game they decide to make store mounts.

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He understands, he just plays a noob in the thread.

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An illusion?..what are you hiding?!

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