If Blizzard shot the game in the feet, it was the community that dug the grave.
As far as my experience goes as both casual and hardcore player with over 30 characters both Alliance and Horde, the community should be THE first to blame for the games demise.
The game has turned into min-maxers galore, with little to no role-play elements present in, you know, an RPG game? Even more so, if you actually want to play the game, you HAVE to minmax now as that is the only way you get invited into groups. Off-meta spec? Nope. Off-meta class? Definately nope. Off-meta covenant? Good luck finding a group. Whenever this problem is presented to the community - 90% responses are “git gud” and “stop being a casual”. For reference - this is my second, relatively fresh account that I started to main closer to Legion. In BFA I had problems looking for a group or finding a guild to play with. The reason? Off-meta classes that I usually prefer to play as they are more fun to me.
Another problem is the elitism. It is next to impossible for a newbie to learn how to play this game without someone to guide them. The new tutorial island is a joke that barely scrapes the sirface of the game. Whenever I encounter a new player, they always say stuff like “please don’t shout, I’m new” or “Sorry, I’m new here”, implying that this is most definately the first thing the community does when it sees people making mistakes. Whenever they ask for tips, the “git gud” argument gets back. Do people not see how this turns people away from the game? Even more so, it’s next to impossible to socialise in this game anymore. It used to be that people actually cared and fostered new players and helped them out, teaching them how to play, or at least that’s how Russian servers were.
I think it is time for Blizzard to do something to encourage people to actually socialise and bring community together. My first solution would be to rework the existing mentor system they have. It currently has no incentive for experienced players to actually participate in it, why not give out some cosmetic rewards, resource tokens or something like that to compensate for the time people spend teaching new players the nooks and crannys of the game. My second solution would be to remove “communities” and make guilds cross-server, as “communities” basically do that but with no benefit whatsoever. Part of the problem with server population is lack of guilds or groups to play with, however making guilds cross-server would ease this problem as you wouldn’t need to switch servers just because you have no-one to play with. My third solution - incorporate guilds into the mentor program. This is a no-brainer, as people would be able to learn together about the game and have easier time finding people to play with, all this while also having some experienced players guide them through.
This happens so rarely it’s a miracle to find one. Nowdays everyone just skips through content and barely does anything else. I used to be in a raiding guild where we would play together, although I would hardly say people actually enjoyed raiding, or WoW as a whole. The entire guild now plays Valheim on a separate server, so yeah, they made friends and quit because there is next to nothing to do in the game unless you want to hardcore it. Which is why I said that you have to minmax. Also, how are you supposed to make friends when no-one invites you to groups? If your answer is guilds - they are currently useless and broken as many people just sit in guilds for bonuses and such.
My friends moved to SWTOR, Valorant, and FFXIV. It is almsot impossible to me get new friends when my last friend who is playing how playing only on horde, and only reason able people who are funny and kind in my opinion are in alliance on other realm.
Baby steps. It wouldn’t be enough to just rework the game. The community needs to change and become more united and less uptight first. What would be the point of reworking the game when the new players would be turned off by the existing playerbase? One of the reasons other MMOs succeed now when WoW bleeds is because their communities are actually leagues more welcoming and less stingy.
Game design is also a product of community. If community wants the game to be a certain way - developers cater to that. AFAIK that is how the game used to be untill MOP. Even then, the community was, really, not much better.
Could be because majority of high-level players that play the game competetively are playing horde as it has bigger population and used to have better racials.
No she is casual, she never do normal raids or m+ dungeon above 5. she plays horde because she hate void elfs.
Also players who go to horde because of high level content are mostly trash people.
That means, you have a choice to pick those “friends”. Now, someone like me, went completely solo, aka, I have no in-game “friends” to play with.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a social person. I don’t have social anxieties or anything remotely similar but when it comes to WORK IN A TEAM, community overall is filled with degenerates.
Pug community doesn’t exactly have rules. It also has some competent players (reason why I suggested cross-server guilds instead of community tabs as the latter ones are basically useless). The rules are set by the group that initiates the search for pugs, who are, in vast majortiy, hardcore minmaxers who will punt you out of the group for any and all wrong pick in your talents, class, spec, covenant and so on.
For everyone “having to minmax” the amount of people not min maxing in my groups is quite high.
Thats only an issue if you are either a feral druid or a enha shaman. Enha for example needs a buff or change of their kit in general
That isnt really the issue. Our guild even went as far as having the ONLY VENTHYR PROT WARRIOR with a Sylvanas Mythic kill. At least if we would upload the log. Unless some other guild didnt upload theirs as well. And Venthyr for Prot Warriors on Sylvanas is more than just not the meta. Its literally trash.
It has been like this since always. Its called common courtesy. Youre new and the odds are high youre in here with players that are not new? Inform them before hand so they can mentally prepare and even guide you if necessary. This is especially important for Tanks and Healers
Cant second that.
Hard disagree.
Still the case on the realms i play on. If this is aimed towards the russians realms then post in the russian forum.
Pretty much this.
If a game’s developed in a certain manner, the community will be molded to represent that game.
Got a developer that encourages full-on min-maxing while leaving everyone in the dust if they don’t min-max along? You get a game like World of Warcraft.
A developer that makes a game that encourages players to be all manners of treacherous, all the while ignoring any concerns another set of players might have, be it reasonable or less so? You get a game like Sea of Thieves.
A developer who’s first goal is to make a game that would have people enjoy it, all the while trying to foster a community that gets along with itself as opposed to getting at each other’s throats for one reason or another? You get a game like Final Fantasy 14.
You can see overall player sentiment in these three games and you can see how much a development studio has an effect on what kind of community comes out of it.
To be fair, If I were to rework WoW, I would probably put more focus on the RPG part of the game rather than MMO, as in complete 180 to what Blizzard does. I would kill for a CRPG in WoW setting but alas, this will not happen. As for specifics of reworks - remove the dual faction system, it had served its purpose and no longer makes sense, make class order halls relevant again and add more quests and rewards to it, scale old content to the current level (dungeons and raids) outside of timewalking and make it into a feature like FF14 does, add more specs to classes and more tallent selections for more flavour and rp reasons.
You complain about min maxing and want THAT? Ye no thank you. Besides the design of some fights make this more than a nightmare. The nerf to DBM makes Archimonde Mythic a nightmare specifically.
Thats just a recipe for balance disaster. They cant even manage to properly balance the current amount.
Yes I do, you can clear content without having to minmax, believe it or not, people just want to be better then everyone else in the game, which fosters the elitism. More content variety means more avenues for players to enjoy the game. That is how the system works in FF14 AFAIK.
Do we even need balance anymore or are we demanding balance due to PvP? If it is the latter then I’m sorry, PvP in an MMO RPG is a mistake and should not be tried unless that is its main point. PvP in WoW was always an afterthought and it would be best if it stayed that way (and that comes from someone who actively PvPs from the start of shadowlands on multiple chars).
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, though I certainly see some people in favor of those being removed.
Personally they’re all fairly good ideas on paper, but their design certainly annoy people, given how the excitement of getting a legendary effect is often met with a “Bah, I got a useless one!”.
Not sure what you mean by “Spec specific buffs” though.
