I have been away from the game for a while as I play multiple MMORPGs, i.e. WOW, FF14, GW2 and ESO, and several other single-player story narrative games such as Dragon Age.
I have recently come back into the game and started a new character. I wondered why the player base is so fractured and why the only people genuinely enjoying themselves in the game are people who treat the game like a single-player RPG or a D&D campaign setting.
The thought came to me after I saw the Preach and Ion interview where Ion was describing a player who played every day to do World Quests. I donāt think he meant this literally, but I certainly think he was describing the RP crowd of the game who treat WOW how someone would treat a D&D campaign where the loot chase or dungeon/raid grind is not the actual game.
It got me thinking about what might be a fracture between experience motivated players and reward-motivated players. I saw this early on at the Beta stage of the Shadowlands. People were detailing the fact that they wanted to pull the Ripcord on the covenant system and wanted access to all the powers because they wanted to have the choice to be optimal. It was due to how it would hinder their progress in the content they wanted to do, such as Mythic + or heroic/mythic raiding. However, I also saw another significant portion of the community who wished to make covenants more fixed or permanent. They agreed with Ion that identity in the overall setting was being filtered out.
The conversation came when people were having a serious discussion on spec identity and the overall class fantasy of the game. This conversation leads to Blizzard reworking classes to give them a more diverse set of tools from other specialisations of their type, i.e. a frost mage could now use a fire spell.
It has left me wondering who the developers are building this game for and who is their primary audience. Itās easy to say that WOW is the best when itās a broad church, but thatās not usually the case when it comes to products. Usually, it has no value or meaning if itās not necessary, like bread or water.
I wanted to get other people in the community actual opinion on what seems to be different wants and needs. WOW has attracted and kept many diverging and engaging communities over its life who may want completely opposing things in the game and ask a genuine question who is the game for? Who should it be for, and how can we rectify this community problem when so many of us lack empathy or care for someone elseās needs or wants?