Seems like a couple fundamental things not only make the game feel a bit dreary but are so systemic they might be impossible to solve without a huge overhaul, the likes of which the game hasn’t seen.
- 1st - the payment model.
Wow’s subscription-based payment model means their content has to last as long as possible, resulting in game design that’s repetitive and drawn out. The problem isn’t quantity of content, it’s quality. This affects the way every experience feels - PvP, raid and mythic PvE, open world questing - it all feels like ticking off boxes, which is rewarding in the moment but over time a bit meaningless / lifeless.
There are 12 going on 13 classes. For me it’s too much of a grind to explore just 1 alt on a limited time-budget. The repetitive quantity of the content turns me away rather than validating the payment model. I’m on a shammy with ilvl 252, mostly casual PvP. The thought of getting my Druid just to that same level feels like a chore. And we’re not even talking rated PvP here.
- 2nd - class-design.
They all have too many abilities and they borrow each other’s best stuff (the most popular classes that is), robbing each other of their unique feeling. They somehow manage to do that while giving some of the best or most fun abilities to specs within each class, unavailable to the player unless they switch to a different play style. We’ll see if the return of talent trees fixes this. The homogenization of the classes hasn’t helped the difficulty balancing them as we’ve seen. Instead they compounded the problem with all these extra systems - covenants, conduits, armor sets, legendaries - most likely a feature of problem number 1 above.
There’s no focus in the design of the abilities. The mechanics of how a class works don’t seem specific to each class. They’re afraid of armor piercing and elemental resistances. There are only 2 classes I know of with an echo effect (echo shock / primordial wave / storm bringer on ele shammy and backstab talent effect on subtlety rogue). I’d understand if nature as an element lended itself to echoing damage. So what’s the reasoning for rogues? Ele shammy is also the only class I know of with an increased critical damage passive effect. Fire mage to my knowledge just has combustion with guaranteed critical strike. But should fire damage not be synonymous with increased critical strike damage? This is just one of many minute examples. Mostly there are a lot of abilities with conditional damage increase effects, it’s not very imaginative. I know there are reasons why the may have tried many things in the past and then ditched them. But it doesn’t explain the lack of focus / imagination / mechanics specific to classes.
- 3rd - the game engine (which was custom built pre-2004).
I personally love the graphics and endearing charm they have. The issue is more with what they are capable of doing functionally with the game. I haven’t talked to any wow devs, but the way software goes if you’re on a deadline to make a feature and you never give yourself time to refactor, the system ends up needing to be rebuilt if you want to do anything totally new with the game. Even small changes over time add and build up the amount of QA and bug-fixing resources you need.
- Solutions?
It’s fun to complain, but what do we do bout it? Big corporations move slow as it is and the change to payment model, aside from asking companies to take less money, is basically a radical risk proposition without benefit by itself. And the game engine? Sure, disrupt millions of people’s play experience or build a new game. But they could do SOME things:
- Reduce the quantity of abilities each class has.
- Design classes so their mechanics are as unique and specific to them as possible.
- The talent trees are coming back - allow us to customize classes so they are specific to us too without locking some great abilities behind specs we don’t wanna play.
- Maybe do something new with the class system. FFXIV has combo-based mechanics where one thing you do leads to another or you can’t trigger an ability until you’ve used another. Multi-classing (I know, I’ll die alone on this hill) might make all the individual customization so appealing the payment model is not only not a problem anymore, but validated. Content should be designed so it reinforces itself. In PvP the reward is your success over other players. I tell ya, multi-classing where you get maybe 2 classes in one character would keep me subbed, just for the sheer variety of play I can access.
- PvE should be more casual (allowing for our individual class design) with greater access to loot. Especially when an encounter is hard and time-consuming, we shouldn’t feel disappointed at the end of it.
- Competitive min-max optimization in a game like wow belongs in the highest echelons of PvP, not PvE (in my opinion). There are people who actively want to bash their head repeatedly against a wall with no guarantee of success (which is sweet when it happens) - they are PvPers.
- Open-world questing and end-level content should lean more on playing with other people. The fights should be harder, bring back those skull-level elites and 5+ scary red level mobs who can see you from a mile away. No I’m not going back to play classic. Your journey should feel more difficult in a game that gives you so much quality of life stuff. It’s an MMORPG, not a first-person shooter you play when you have no friends. Blizzard’s got Overwatch, they need to remember what Wow is.
- Design content and encounters that are more strategic rather than only tactical. Remember the Hyjal dungeon from classic? Let’s get back to our Warcraft roots.
Just a few suggestions, I await yours (if any o ye be interested in reading such a long post). They can do all the above without even touching the engine.
Thoughts?
and you would still be wrong since it’s a raid