You went over a lot of gameplay reasons which I didn’t know about nor consider on my own, so a big thank you for putting that into words. But as you said, there’s other stuff that matters as well, and social psychology is a big reason why.
To immerse oneself, not feeling like you’re alone or socially excluded (i.e. you see others but there’s no communication) matters a lot as well, and to achieve that socially fulfilling feeling is mapped out in pretty great detail over on project horseshoe, from a design perspective.
Social circles and repeated visible encounters matters a lot for achieving proper immersion. Retail is more of a lobby-based game now. (“Repeated visible encounters” refers to encountering the same characters repeatedly, to create familiarity and social perception.)
I vary between “this is relaxing and rewarding” and “I hate this game it is stupid ragequit” but I seem to have found my stride with a troll hunter of all things.
Ain’t it funny how school could feel burdening and difficult to deal with at the time, whereas now I am confident I would be able to do all of the homework for top score AND enjoy the game without a need to neglect RL? If I just could teleport back with the current brains and attitude that is.
Then again, if I truly went back, I may behave childishly again, just because I can! xD
i know right i was playing the same spec as i do in retail a ret paladin
but in those runs and lower level scarlet monatery wings i saw something retail lacks
think shadow labs first boss drops plate legs and our paladin healer doesnt need them
so he let me keep them
was great to see a full scarlet set ret+aoe whirlwind axe in a scarlet monastery run
thanks to that axe he was doing great damage
yes two rets in the same wings finishing some dungeon quests
what fun that was
its either the first boss purple legs or bloodscale legguards of the beast(str/agi/stam)
i am not leveling said paladin right now so can i swap between both
And this is exactly what a group and I are doing. We have made some friends while running keys together and added each other to BNet. Now whenever we online we whisper one another then hop onto a discord channel and spend the evening running keys together. It becomes a whole new experience running keys having laughs rather than having someone flame or rage quit just because they can. If it wasn’t for meeting these folks I guess I would have canned the game too as I have to agree. That immersive feeling just is not there anymore.
I know you sound like boomer, but I 100% agree with you. But it’s hard to notice that if you sink too much into retail mindset and without taking a break and playing something else you won’t feel difference.
The automated tools and realms being merged also doesn’t help this aspect of WoW anymore, you can act like a idiot now and no comeback where as when there were defined realms and no LFG auto tools, you might aswell start a new character as you got black listed.
a) you were much younger
b) internet was much younger
c) wow was a social platform of that era - complte phenomenon which suddenly gave milion of lonely teens feeling that they belong somewhere.
now we are all grumpu adoults who focus on work / family and cannot really allow themselves to immerse into games anymore not we want to.
heh i had exackly the same experience on my monk tonight :0 for some reason gambit was impossible to get into and i needed score from it
but then i got in you gotta be patient - took me around 10 minutes but it was cause
a)my monk was 1950 score
b)had exackly 0 score in gambit prior to me quiing for 16-17 :
c)had only 264 itlv and competes with milion 270 + bis destro warlocks / survival hunters for spot
well you can immerse yourself in retail but it kinda requires you to mythic raid because mythci raidign guilds are last bastion of social interactions in retail left.
because game became so hard that is disencouraged all causals from playing basicly only ones left are complete casuals who just spen whole time in ZM or mythic raiders.
Somewhat yes, somewhat no. It’s true that some people do still manage to shape social circles no matter the odds, but this is from a design perspective. And from a design perspective, a lot of it is lobby-based, which directly counters the unconscious process to immerse yourself.
what you are saying makes sense, the state of free mind of a young person cannot be replicated, I was also thinking like that, that my low enjoyment of the game was a problem on my side, but then I played other games wow classic included and I had, and still have a blast, so what this tells me is that I can still enjoy games and that the problem is not on my side, right? and it was not just a “honeymoon phase” for the other games that I played that made me enjoy them I can still play them for a whole day whole week and still feel meaningful progress while on retail I feel bored after 4 days of logging in and I had not logged in retail for almost a year.
I started a night elf hunter and I am leveling in Darkshore AND I am reading every quest text. It gets very interesting, there’s a lot of lore I was not familiar with. I am not using any heirlooms, not doing dungeons (if I will have to complete a quest doing a dungeon I will only que for that specific dungeon). I found a very chill and relaxing guild, and I am slowly leveling up my herbalism and alchemy.
I see here on forums and reddit that people can easily make millions of at least tens of thousands of gold but I never understood how, so when I find a junk which is sold for 10g or more I am super excited!! I play BM so I am also focusing on collecting pets right now.
Not wearing heirlooms and reading every quest text were the best ideas I could possibly adopt!! I get so excited every time I get a new bow or a piece of armor. And I made a friend!! from other realm but we added on bnet and we done some quests together! I even showed him the “Ghosts in the Dark” secret achievement!
edit 1: ooh and a very very nice stranger gave me 4x 32 bags for free!!! I wanted to pay the whole gold I had (95 gold) but they refused me
edit 2: and I am also trying something which seems to help a lot: I am spending less time in wow than I used to, and it surely feels like an adventure!! it took me more than 24 hours to level from 1 to 22 because I take more breaks, it feels so good!
Lol. That’s complete bull man.
You’d sit down where you killed the mobs - if it was safe. And eat/drink/bandage.
And it sucked. It was boring and slowed everything down.
Remove your gear and wear some greys. See if that makes it ‘fun’ for you.
If the devs are telling the truth the next expansion will not have any additional stuff you need to grind. So… Unsub and return or wait it out. I guess.
not quiet true, I would really go back to the Inn because it was…an Inn. I guess it was some sort of roleplaying I was doing, but I was and am playing a MMORPG after all. Is in its name. So yea, going back to the inn was a thing for me, made me enjoy the game some more.
you gotta be patient - took me around 10 minutes but it was cause 