The Current state of World of Warcraft.

[Rall]

I just read this opinion piece on the state of WoW.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-destructive-legacy-of-blizzards-world-of-warcraft/

I haven't played WoW since the shortly after the release of Burning Crusade, at that point Blizzard seemed to abandon the last pretence of WoW being an RPG or having any real persistence in the world. I'd playing since release, and I'd really just had enough.

I was interested in how it was going since it's been 8 years since I last player.

Is this article really representative of the current state of the game? I'd like to hear the opinions of some of the current or recent players. Is this all they managed to achieve after 11 years and 500 million in development?

P.S. I'm still holding out on a true open, skill focused, persistent world MMO - similar to the first few years of Ultima Online.

 

[Poseidal]

I haven't seen it much in what it is like now (mostly played during Vanilla). From the looks of things, it isn't anything like it was anymore.

The money gone into development is likely gone into assets and content though - new ideas are likely going into their other games on the side rather than into WOW directly.

I think that pushing narratives into the game has done a lot to erode it. It was more interesting as having a setting where the player would be than some kind of plot.

Maybe there's a market for co-op dungeon runners, and drop the pretense of MMOs altogether?

 

[Insomnia]

I started playing WoW a month or two after the release of Burning Crusade. Loved every second of it! I remember it took some serious time to level up to 40 to get the first mount.
Some year after, the time it took to level from 1 to 60 was shortened. And access to mount was lowered to lvl 30. I quickly started raiding after I got my epics from random instances. Raids like Karazhan became routine.
I have fond memories of that time.
Lich Kicg was very cool too. But somewhere after the launch of WotLK something happened. All of a sudden it things became different.
Instances were easier, leveling was easier, mounts at level 20, bonus gear that lets you get a percentage more experience with each kill, buy instant level 70 toons, etc.
Everything became mainstream.
I turned to private servers for a while.
After I returned to retail WoW again things had changed big time.
The introduction of Gear Score...... I.Cannot.Tell.How.Much.I.Hate.Gear score.
Things just deteriorated, gone were the souls that burned for this game.
Now there was CoD teens everywhere, spreading all kinds of crap.

And finally when Blizzard announced Cataclysm, I couldn't take it. They were ruining the lands I "grew up in" and changing the mechanics I really liked.
So I quit. Never looked back.


I do find it funny that it takes a significant rig to run this game on ultra at 1080p. The engine breathes 90's graphics, and I feel the engine hasn't been properly updated and optimized, they just added effects after effects and increased the draw distance. Bit silly....


But, WoW took a serious place in my life for 3 consecutive years. And I have no regrets I put all that time into a single game.

Here's my last vid with my former guild, taking on Festergut on 25man. I still remember it!
[video=youtube;pyHdiooNs6Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyHdiooNs6Q[/video]

 

[adoredtv]

I always quit and went back to WoW, every single expansion. That finally ended with the latest one, Warlords of Draenor though. I actually enjoyed Pandaria - it was a good expansion, but everything about the game just started to feel like a pointless grind. It's a pure treadmill designed to keep you in it. Stuff like "looking for raid" was another nail in the coffin for me. Easy mode content with welfare epics is not what gaming should be about.

Money talks though, simple as that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of old-school WoW'ers like myself hate the way the game direction went but they're basically stuck playing it for whatever reason. Every 3 months or so the gear is reset and you do the same stuff again and again...and again and again.

All WoW is doing now is holding back the genre. It's doing more harm than good.

 

[Surfinjo]

I played it for a wile as well, up until Pandaria, which I thought was kinda lame, to say the least.

I generally enjoyed it. But found I was continually being crowded out by people who seemed to be levelling up characters to sell. I didn't really care too much, even though they would rush through dungeons, but they generally kept all the best gear for themselves and once near the end, would dump most of us so their characters could take the most points.

On the subject of once good games, has anyone tried Lord of the Rings Online? That too seems to have gone downhill with the latest expansion. As with Wow, too easy to level, all the emphasis on pushing everyone to the final battle. As an indication, I've seen so many clans simply folding because no-one is turning up any more.

If Elite Dangerous doesn't improve itself pretty soon I dare say it will be going the same way. I haven't even loaded it up for almost a week now.

Perhaps someone should tell these game designers that the job is not a one off. They do actually need to keep doing some work.

 

[Rall]

I'd love to see a completely level-less 100% skill based fantasy/medieval MMO again. I don't like how the Modern MMO's seem to be so level and gear focused.

I'm keeping a close eye on The Repopulation though. Maybe that'll turn out okay.

 

[Insomnia]

I'm actually quite curious about what MMORPG Blizz is making after WoW. World of StarCraft? Or even better World of Diablo!

 

[mossfoot]

It would be interesting to compare the state of WOW when thinking about the future of ED... What, if anything, do we need to worry about?

 

[Kittyhawke]

I left a little before Pandaria hit, and I haven't looked back. Mostly enjoyed myself, did a little raiding and lots of battlefields. But it started feeling more like work and less like fun.


Made quite a few friends, who I still keep in contact with via FB as they're mostly overseas.

 

[WlLL0W]

i played world of warcraft for a while.

i got to level 37....

shortly after i was killed by a butterfly.

i never played the game again.

 

[Insomnia]

I left a little before Pandaria hit, and I haven't looked back. Mostly enjoyed myself, did a little raiding and lots of battlefields. But it started feeling more like work and less like fun.

If there's one game that feels like work it's Elite.
Wow never felt like work imo cuz there was sooo much you could do.

 

[Sepharus]

I still consider WoW to be my main game. I doubt many older players will rush to its defense right now as it is so different from what it was, but for me it still has value. This might be because I run a really strong guild (we are meeting in Denmark for our bi annual get drunk together weekend in 2 weeks, super exited!) and having great friends to play with makes all the difference. LFR sucks, but if you are part of a regular raid team you don't need it. We gear new players up in the previous tier as a group rather then subject them to lfr!

I will admit, every expansion goes overboard with something, Pandas was all about daily's, and the latest one has earned the game the name World of Garrisons. I will also say that yes, the classes have been dumbed down a lot, if things keep going this way I would say within 2 expacs class will be mostly a cosmetic choice! But no one ever mentions that the raid bosses are sooo much more complicated then they used to be. It's not all getting dumbed down, but it is more about endgame then it ever has been before. Leveling is trivial now.

 

[Surly_Badger]

It would be interesting to compare the state of WOW when thinking about the future of ED... What, if anything, do we need to worry about?

1) inflation
2) keeping the demands for easier levelling (phrased as "less grinding") from winning out
3) avoiding gear-inflation (leads to grinding)

One big problem ED has not got, which is interesting, is that each player's experience is still pretty much their own. In WoW you've got a lot more face to face player interaction where gear quality is paramount. In fact WoW is designed to encourage that, which encourages grinding, which makes the game a grind, which makes Blizz have to 'reset' the top tier of gear with each new expansion. Since ED players are more or less alone in the universe you can have people (like me!) who don't care if they don't have an anaconda because I like to explore and I don't need one. In WoW you can't be anyone -- or even go to certain areas -- until you unlock gear by grinding.

WoW has tried to inject meaning and purpose into the game by substituting gear (epic quests) and locked areas for interesting content. I think FD is doing good things with what they are doing with powerplay and the active universe.

- - -

Wow never felt like work imo cuz there was sooo much you could do.

Yeah, like "collect 12 dripping bat spleens for my aunt's tea"

I agree with you that ED feels like work sometimes but that's b/c it lacks quest-lines that give any sense of purpose. Players are supposed to provide their own sense of purpose and some of us have trouble with that. The quest-lines in Draenor are much better than the older expansions; but they still are not that good. When I think of games that had quest-lines that were interesting and made sense I think of Baldur's Gate and Skyrim.

Edit: EVE has one thing that's kind of interesting - players are able to band together and effectively create emergent quest-lines. It sounds like ED is going that way with powerplay and that's very very good. I have longed for a game that actually has a mechanism where players can create detailed emergent in-game quest-lines. What do I mean? Well, for example, if I could hire someone to go scan a certain system for me, and pay them. Now, of course, I'd need a reason to do that. So you need a whole sensible purpose-driven underlying system that makes such things practical. ED is getting there. Imagine if I could decide I wanted to build an orbital, and decide how to build it and what I needed, then have a system to get other players on board with it and gather materials, etc. EVE sort of has that kind of thing. WoW guilds sort of have that thing (when they gear up new guildies) .. ED is heading that way and needs that sort of emergent purpose-driven game-play.

When someone posts "I am bored" here they are saying that ED lacks a way for players to reflect their purpose in the broader game, or adopt a collective purpose. I agree that it lacks that. If it's going to survive it's going to have to get that or it'll just churn through players. (Look how excited everyone got over the Soontill relics plot-line. There are some people - like me! - that eat that stuff up.)

 

[Sepharus]

Just read the rest of the article (probably should have finished it before posting!) and while it has some truth to it, it does feel a lot like the writer is blaming Blizzard for something that appears to be happening across the whole internet. It's on the news everyday how someone has gone too far on facebook or twitter. Take a look at Reddit, or 4chan or any of those types of sites over the past 10 years, across the board its all gotten steadily worse. Online gaming has been no different, why is that Blizzards fault?

 

[Kittyhawke]

If there's one game that feels like work it's Elite.
Wow never felt like work imo cuz there was sooo much you could do.

*scrunches nose* Not really. Doing Daily rep grinds, preparing for raids, doing raids again and again, etc. It was people that made that game fun. Oh, and I had fun collecting mounts.

Elite doesn't feel like work. I'm not going a run for the 50th time to get a bit of gear in time for a raid. Nor do I wait in queue for a battlefield, or dungeon. I do what I want when I want. Works for me

 

[Surfinjo]

I'd love to see a completely level-less 100% skill based fantasy/medieval MMO again. I don't like how the Modern MMO's seem to be so level and gear focused.

I'm keeping a close eye on The Repopulation though. Maybe that'll turn out okay.

The thought has occured to me as well.

I'm actually quite curious about what MMORPG Blizz is making after WoW. World of StarCraft? Or even better World of Diablo!

I played Diablo. Completed once, then it was all the same again. ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Sad really, great graphics and the story line is brilliant. But working to a single objective like that?

 

[Insomnia]

*scrunches nose* Not really. Doing Daily rep grinds, preparing for raids, doing raids again and again, etc. It was people that made that game fun. Oh, and I had fun collecting mounts.

Elite doesn't feel like work. I'm not going a run for the 50th time to get a bit of gear in time for a raid. Nor do I wait in queue for a battlefield, or dungeon. I do what I want when I want. Works for me

I agree that people made the game fun. But it also made the game equally bad.
If WoW had a offline mode, I'd choose that.
And yeah you had to grind your way through the game. But since there was so much stuff to grind it never became boring. ED only has one thing to grind: credits.
Before I quit WoW I started grinding achievements. That became quite enjoyable, which I never thought it would be.
WoW has been around for like 10 years now. I wonder what ED would be in 5 years....

 

[Kittyhawke]

I agree that people made the game fun. But it also made the game equally bad.
If WoW had a offline mode, I'd choose that.
And yeah you had to grind your way through the game. But since there was so much stuff to grind it never became boring. ED only has one thing to grind: credits.
Before I quit WoW I started grinding achievements. That became quite enjoyable, which I never thought it would be.
WoW has been around for like 10 years now. I wonder what ED would be in 5 years....

True enough, warcraft brought out the best and worst in people for sure. Eh, I was never one for achievements and trophies, although I did some.

It will be interesting to see where Elite ends up. I think it has a slightly more niche market than a game like warcraft, so who knows...

 

[adoredtv]

10 years ago(!)...LEEEEROOOOOOOOY!

http://metro.co.uk/2015/05/11/that-leeroy-jenkins-warcraft-video-is-ten-years-old-5192573/

 

[Purple Rain]

I just read this opinion piece on the state of WoW.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-destructive-legacy-of-blizzards-world-of-warcraft/

I haven't played WoW since the shortly after the release of Burning Crusade, at that point Blizzard seemed to abandon the last pretence of WoW being an RPG or having any real persistence in the world. I'd playing since release, and I'd really just had enough.

I was interested in how it was going since it's been 8 years since I last player.

Is this article really representative of the current state of the game? I'd like to hear the opinions of some of the current or recent players. Is this all they managed to achieve after 11 years and 500 million in development?

P.S. I'm still holding out on a true open, skill focused, persistent world MMO - similar to the first few years of Ultima Online.

It's all true, unfortunately. There's something about Blizz' mentality and attitude that almost seems to have been corrupted by its association with Activision in allowing it to buy it's way in and take over publishing the game (Blizz has since - apparently - bought back control) somewhere between the end of WotLK and the release of Cata.

I've played since BC, tolerated Cata (although. imo, that was the defining moment whem the game began its downhill spiral), MoP wasn't too horrendous although the instances were a bit of a sad and sorry joke, but WoD was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and that's when I began to search for a good private Wrath server (I personally like Dalaran-WoW).

To me, it seems as though Blizz is deliberately trying to influence a new generation of young players by promoting anti-social attitudes and 'loner' behaviours. That's not something I condone. Gone is the friendly atmosphere, helpfulness and genuine, we're-all-in-this-together' kind of fun, replaced instead with vile trade/general chat and attitudes and completely silent, unsociable, instances and raids. Now, it's just dog eat dog, ridicule, cyber bullying and race hate. Yes, it goes on and Blizz does precious little about it for fear of losing more subs.

It's no longer the game I used to love. Blizz isn't interested in truly listening to players and returning to the roots that made them No.1, so.....they're bleeding subs and they will continue to bleed subs until they've finished stripping the game down to its barest components and start flogging it off as a F2P.