We have had this kind of conversation in EU, it’s not the first time it’s been brought up.
As long as raiding is an important part of the game, the game will have to be balanced with raiding in mind.
I don’t see an issue with the best gear rewards coming from content that requires 10+ people to co-ordinate for hours, instead of from content that requires 5 people to co-ordinate for half an hour, or content that you can solo at your leisure.
I may be biased because the raiding is what I’m here for. M+ is all nice and jolly, sure, but I wouldn’t sub to the game if M+ was the premiere end-game content.
There is one fundamental problem I do see arising from this kind of discussion though: who’s actually WoW’s target audience? What are the core design goals of the game? It’s all over the place. They’re trying to manage like four or five different target audiences who all vocally hate each other and don’t want to see anything happen to the game that’s better for the other groups if it even slightly damages their part.
The game does not catter to raider, otherwise, the game would be like it was during WOD and would not have witnessed a 50% drop in raiding participation.
If anything, the game needs more segregation between content.
Saying that thorgasht is a chore kinda narrows it down since it could have been a good feature…If it was not made mandatory.
And that’s post legion philosophy flaw that is : content outside of PVP, raiding and M+ are made mandatory in order to play in there.
Vanilla Wow became popular as the fresh and casual mmo in 2004 ( compared to everquest ), based on awesome lore developed during Warcraft 1 - 3.
Cata While it was casual it was growing, when it focus turned on more difficulties and high end players it started to stagnate.
MoP When it got a sell off expansion with completely foreign theme it lost millions of subs.
WoD focus on high end players didnt let the game sub numbers to bounce back
Legion was last time game was truly alive and i see the biggest reason in how fun it was for casuals.
May be its simplistic and biased but wow grows on low entry barriers to progression and general accessibility and dies out during elitism and exotic periods.
As far as we know, Mop might have been one of the most popular expansion. Why is it always whenever some raider hater comes up with argument, they pull some weird ranking or numbers from their butt
I think there’s some valid points but for the most part he’s just wrong. raiding isn’t in any worse shape than in the past, it just took this long for players to see through the band-aid that was holding WoW together since it’s glory days in WotLK
I’m curious to see you highlight MOP as a downer expansion. I didn’t play it because Kung Fu Panda, as you alluded to, but it seems to me looking back as one of the expansions where they really tried hard to serve up content for non-raiders. Pet battling, challenge mode dungeons, the Timeless Isle, the Black Market Auction House, and so on.
Mythic+ end-of-dungeon rewards had to be nerfed starting in 9.0 so that raiders don’t feel forced to
PvP gear had to be nerfed starting in 9.1 so that raiders don’t feel forced to
World content and soloable content gear rewards had to be nerfed starting in 9.0 so that raiders would not feel that
People are complaining all the time to get equal rewards for doing less difficult content.
I don’t think Blizzard is really tuning the game towards raiders as much as they are tuning the game so that the raiding remains the most attractive end-game feature with the best loot as well.
No regrets, i believe it was a mistake and a poor joke to add these instead of asian human customisation with normal or muscular body and samurai class to actually represent popular aspects of asian culture.
Pandamonks addition is a mokery of asia imho. I dont like it.
well I just want to say that apparently almost anyone who disliked MoP did so because of the panda theme. as for the expansion itself: blizz put in tremendous effort into that expac until the last minute and most of the systems they designed made their way into the core game.
it was one of the few expansions where both high end raiders and casuals felt the game offers relevant content to them and you guys judging it because “pandas lol” is incredibly stupid.
I’m a 30+ guy who spent around 20 years playing online games and currently I play one with orcs swinging axes and furries who talk in a funny way. the reason I can justify it to others (and myself) is by saying it has depth and complex mechanics and there’s a lot more to it than the visuals.
believe what you want, but if you only care about realistic appearances I suggest you look out the window instead of playing games
Not to mention this next part to add onto your comment even further:
There are VR games that simulate realism as well. You’d think Ryugal would put effort into playing those if he cared about the concept of realism. Especially since WoW is pretty far away from the idea of “realistic”
The best thing - even for raiders SL is not that fun. Heck, even legion/bfa wasn’t that good. Why? All of the extra systems and grinds required to be able to raid.
Good old expansions (wod and back) - hit max level, do normal/heroic dungeons and you are ready to raid. No need to do m+, farm AP, farm some currency, etc.
this may be partly due to my feedback and it actually keeps me up at night. I said a few years back that wow sux because it only has one dimension of progression, ilvl. but I was thinking more about powers unlocked through beating challenges rather than grinds or time gating. it still bothers me someone might have read my comment
I wouldn’t call it stupid.
People prioritize different aspects in a game.
Aesthetics, lore, music, theme, graphics etc can be just as important as gameplay.
The style of a game isn’t everything but it’s as important as the gameplay in my books.
I’ve basically only heard good things about FF14’s gameplay but I don’t care about the aesthetics or theme of that game so I’ve no interest in it.
To me MoP’s gameplay wasn’t anywhere near 10/10 but what put me off most with that expansion was the whole “pandas lol” Asian theme. It’s easily one of my least enjoyed expansions.
