There is still hope for Warcraft, its never too late

Im sat here wondering if I have the patience or the energy to write a post on this forum as deep down I know its a waste of time, no one will read it and those that do will probably just be the local forum trolls full of clever but pointless rejoinders. Honestly don’t waste your time or energy because I really couldn’t care less, no offence intended.
I haven’t posted on here for years, hell I have only played wow a few fleeting times over the last 4 years…… (where as prior to that I was hardcore)
I also don’t really care what people think, for me this is a kind of catharsis. Have my say and then put it to rest, so here goes;

Despite people predicting WOW will die its still here, still has subscribers, still has elements that are fun but those of us who played this game from the beginning know its lost its soul…………its not lost something magical, in fact its quite straight forward……… Its killed off its social and community aspects. Most us know this but for some reason Blizzard remain oblivious to it ;

1/ By making the join dungeons and raids simply a matter of pressing a button and queuing up they have removed the need for Guilds and friends to find and attract the right class of players which in itself forced people to talk to each other. It also made certain classes crucially important to guilds. Well now you don’t really need a guild and you don’t really need to talk to people much certainly in the early stages of the game.
When I came back to Wow last year after a 3 year absence I joined a number of guilds and found them to be dead regardless of how many members were active (zero communication and no social), the end game content seemed confusing , with multiple expansions and each time in an effort to simplify the game, blizzard tinkered and played with previous content making some irrelevant or in the case of the night elves removing one of the loveliest and most sentimental levelling areas in the game just for a bit of Cheap excitement. Therefore I chose to try and level from 1 to 80 because as ageing old timer this was the part of the game I was most comfortable with and sentimental about………

2/ Also now you can pay over a bit of cash and instantly have your new class levelled up instantly but without the long learnt experience that goes with each class and the roles they must play. This also reduces the need and importance of certain classes and the need to nurture friends or guild mates who have them.

3/ Finally there is a reason why so many gamers like me are desperate for Classic Wow to come back……………because that part of the game worked, it wasn’t over complicated, the dungeons hadn’t been simplified so you could stroll through them with zero party interaction, planning or experience. To win in places like Naxrammus took true dedication, experience, knowledge and team work………it had to be earnt. If you take all that away along with the social element then whats the point ?

Blizzard needs to go back to basics. take classic wow 1 through to 60 as the template and start again but with heart rather than cold suited board room decision making

My big fear is they will give us Classic Wow but with crappy antisocial looking for group mechanics and instant levelling options incorporated which would render it almost pointless. All we want is 1 to 60 in its classic form but perhaps with sharper graphics and resolution. Shove all the other gimics

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I wholeheartedly agree with your post Helliconia, but you are only scratching the surface of the problems. In my opinion most problems with current Wow can be divided into 3 categories.

  1. Comminity: most of the problems that you have mentioned.
  2. Classes: General balance, class progression, the general feeling of each class.
  3. Gear: RNG, free loot, ,master loot …

I think most of us could write a smaller essay of the problems in each category.

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Problems 2 and 3 you mention would happen with almost any game that’s grown too big and again would be solved by going to back to a basic template and starting again, after all that’s we are talking about doing anyway isn’t it ?
Having two versions of the game, right ? classic wow along side the rubbish modern version……………

I edited my post above to add a point and that’s the quiet fear that blizzard will give us classic wow but with included looking for group and instant levelling options which would make it a pointless exercise.
The best thing about wow was its social aspect, I made so many friends in those days and i’m still in contact with some a decade later

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Didn’t actually read a lot of your post but I think I get the point anyway.
Surely it is saveable, if moneyvision stops pulling crap like they have done now, and that new pet to fund e-sports…The money for E-sports have ended up in their pockets and now they want the people to pay for what they want
Like this nightmare https://www.pcgamesn.com/activision-cfo-bonus
I bet 10 of those millions could have gone to, oh I dunno, E-SPORTS MAYBE?
5 million is already PLENTY.

Plus, people in WoW are nasty, I haven’t even bothered raiding cause running even Uldir on Normal requires Curve and mythic gear for the group creator, like come on people don’t be that unreasonable.

Somewhat agree, somewhat disagree.

Can’t say that I learnt a lot from leveling anything. You just don’t get put into situations where you need to use your whole toolkit. Also, since the game is 14 yers old now, who wants to go through all that stuff for the umpteenth time? Paying is a valid option though I believe they gouge on prices, thats a separate matter.

:notes: The Times They Are a-Changin :notes:

World of Warcraft is in many ways a nice study in the development of gaming over the past 15 years, right?

The way the game has evolved over the years reflects all the industry standards and trends and consumer behaviors that have since appeared in the gaming space.

WoW is still a game we play today because it keeps up with the times, not because it doesn’t.

Hopefully WoW Classic will be a viable alternative to those people who seek the old, frozen-in-time experience of World of Warcraft as it used to be.

I’d wager that people who long for the old days don’t have an issue with World of Warcraft today so much as they have an issue with gaming as a whole today.
I mean, if you dislike the lack of player communication and social bonding within World of Warcraft today, then isn’t that a dislike that extends to pretty much all current video games? That just seems to be an industry and player trend across the board. There are very few games being released these days that embody the design philosophies and gameplay trends that World of Warcraft had 14 years ago.

Time’s changed. :confused:

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1 - When players are in charge of who can and can’t participate in dungeons it excludes great chunks of the playerbase. For many LFD/LFR has opened up far more content.

I was one of those people who never got to do any dungeons while levelling or in general because people were not very nice to new players. You can see the ridiculous demands made by PuGs for raids. We do not need more of that excluding non friendly grouping.

I have made more friends since those changes than before. I started to play in TBC and found WoW a very unfriendly place.

2 - I’ve never understood this argument. When our classes change completely with patches, new expansions etc we aren’t forced to re-level to relearn to play them. It’s not impossible to boost a character and learn from those last 10 levels. It’s more fun for a start, you actually have abilities.

Equally there are those who level from 1/20 to max and still have no idea what they are doing. It’s no guarantee.

There are too many levels and it’s not like the experience you have when it’s a fresh expansion. On my Dark Iron Dwarf I did two zones of ‘vanilla’ then moved on to Northrend, did one zone then moved on to Pandaria, got very bored ended up mostly gathering treasures, moved onto WoD did one zone’s worth of treasures and bonus objectives, moved on to Legion. That is on Alliance with the 30% WM buff that gives XP boost.

3 - I think Classic is going to be great for all those people that are longing for a game of the past that simply doesn’t exist any more. I also think it’s a great way for those to experience a Vanilla style game that they never got to play the first time round.

I do hope it’s a success but I really feel we wont be able to tell until it’s been out for a number of months. Many will go and try it. Those that will actually want to stay in it, remains to be seen. I am praying I end up on a busy server and not a dead one.

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I 100% agree with this, yes you can pick up a few things by levelling, basic tanking/healing for example but the difference between doing something levelling and doing something at endgame is massive.

Boosting to 110 isn’t a bad thing, especially once you have been playing the game for a while; and most players boosting have.

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As a casual who has put his next renewal on hold, I’ll add one thing:

The way we think about gear.
It’s not loot anymore it’s your xxx reward. In the transition to the current system of world quests/emissaries/mythic chests with certain tresholds of interactions to roll the loot casino, the fundamental way we think about these things has changed. There’s a lot more entitlement. Possibly, where previously excitement used to be. “Why should I do content y, what are the rewards?” It feels different, and not in a good way.

Perhaps the worst issue , though, is when designers start thinking about rewards instead of content. Warfronts being a good example. Lovely, lovely mounts, both from the drops and the marks of your faction vendors, but such mind numbingly boring ways to aquire them. Repeating a meaningless grind to roll the slot machine on a weekly or biweekly basis does not make for a good gameplay experience.

TLDR: The good weapons and armors don’t drop from the exciting enemies you defeat, but from the flashy graphics in your adventure guide. The UI is taking over. We’re being turned into gamblers.

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I agree, I don’t think the system itself is flawed, but rather the difficulty. I never spoke to anyone when I did the daily heroic in wrath pre-LFD because I could just hit renew and close my eyes till I had to refresh it. On rare occasion it went beyond hello while waiting for a full group, but it wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of social interaction.

TBC and Cata heroics (pre-nerf) you needed at least some sort of coordination and it took a bit longer so you ended up chatting.

What would you suggest instead? I mean, the bread & butter of MMORPG gameplay tends to revolve around a long-term goal that you make incremental progress toward, usually requiring effort through some menial tasks like killing monsters or completing quests or gathering materials.

So if not that, then what?

“I was one of those people who never got to do any dungeons while levelling or in general because people were not very nice to new players. You can see the ridiculous demands made by PuGs for raids. We do not need more of that excluding non friendly grouping.”
Yes that’s true, you would definitely get cliques at higher end raiding but that’s the way people are unfortunately, human nature. So you needed to join a smaller less successful guild or a levelling guild and make friends there………… in classic wow there was just a hell of a lot more socializing period and for me it was the best part of the game. I was a guild master of some large guilds and I like to think I did my bit to help build some thriving social communities. That’s all been destroyed by looking for group and instant levelling. It makes classes less important because anybody can make say a tank in a few hours. It all removes the need to communicate and yes it may be the way modern games are going but does that make it a good thing or even right >?

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I am not entirely sure, at this point the core gameplay loops and rotations are losing their charms on me. I like crafting in games in general, and more of an emphasis on that might help make the player economy and interactions feel more important, I guess. Otherwise, a clear line of progression is nice, but with all the different difficulties of raids and dungeons, the different tiers of gear bleed into each other in every direction.

Idk. I feel like my sword shouldn’t be the generic “Shadra Silk Sword of whateverness” given to me by the tortollans for helping baby tortoises drown themselves. It should be a specific bosses’ weapon, stolen from his stiff, dead fingers after me and 4 other murderhobos invaded his home.

It’s a generation thing, I think.

I mean, if you have memories of World of Warcraft in Vanilla, then you’re at least in your late 20’s now, if not in your 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s+.

Your memories and thoughts about those days of old are really only relatable to other veteran gamers. Good luck trying to convince the younger generations that the future lies in a past that’s entirely unknown to them.

I mean, look at the most popular game right now: Fortnite. That game is anathema to everything Vanilla World of Warcraft stood for. But Fortnite is incredibly popular with tweens and teens alike.

And naturally, if you go a generation further back from yourself, then you’ll find the really oldschool veterans of MMORPGs who look with disdain upon World of Warcraft Vanilla, because it’s a family-friendly, overly-rewarding and entirely casual MMORPG that’s a far-cry from classic games like Ultima Online or EverQuest or even Dark Age of Camelot. To those people, WoW is in some way the equivalent of Fortnite! :crazy_face:

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I’m not talking about higher end raiding. I’m talking about people being horrible to a new player during TBC. I could not do regular dungeons while levelling because people were just plain rude and mostly elistist.

People have different experiences but I never got to do dungeons unless I outlevelled them and then went back to do them solo. It is a miracle I stuck with WoW at all but I treated it as a single player for much of my levelling experience. The toxicity people complain about today existed back then too.

The difference is those elistist scumbags can’t exclude players from regular content like dungeons while levelling, nm/hc dungeons at max level, LFR etc. It’s a format that is open to everyone providing you meet some minimal ilvl requirement.

Yeah, I think there’s a sense of oversaturation in many aspects of the game. But it’s difficult to really be against that, because it’s a consequence of there being a lot of content in the game. I mean, the amount of rewards correspond to the amount of stuff you can do. If there are many rewards, then it’s because there’s a lot of content you can do.

So yeah, it’s a bit like eating too much candy and getting a tummy-ache. Candy is good, but if you devour too much of it too fast, then it’s not so good. :crazy_face:

Fun thing is, while WoW with BfA is losing subscribers left and right.
Old school Runescape, an MMORPG from 2007 is growing more and more(if it was on steam it would be in the top 5 of most concurrent users).

Sure. And there’s definitely a surge in Remastered games and HD-versions and so on these days. And I’m sure WoW Classic will be a great success too.

But in the grand scheme of things it just pales in comparison to the younger generations and their gaming preferences.

Fortnite. Minecraft. Pokemon Go. Etc…

These games are a far-cry from the design philosophies that drive oldschool games like Runescape or WoW Classic. But they are ridiculously popular. There’s no competition.

My boys grew up with me playing Classic now their in 19 and 20. They tried wow when they were younger in Vanilla and enjoyed it. They comment the present wow is nothing like Vanilla. Fortnite is popular now because it fresh and they change things , think of league of legends on the monthly or quarterly they change it and so its fresh. The present wow does not and the cycle and time gating is very frustrating for the younger people today when the games above are different but fast paced. They don’t do fortnite they became bored and moved on. The point you made about being a generation thing made my boys laugh ,does he know what he’s talking about my eldest said lol. They remarked a game is a game if its fun great if not they try something else always been that way I guess no matter what age or generation you are.

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Well there’s always the odd exceptions. :wink:

But generally speaking, I don’t think I would be entirely off if I said that the average age of a WoW player is higher than the average age of a Fortnite player.

And there are a heck of a lot more Fortnite players, so they’re the ones that create the major trends in gaming and set new industry standards. It’s why every game seemingly needs to have a Battle Royale mode these days, right? :upside_down_face: