[PC Game] World of Warcraft: Catch All Thread
- Thread starter Gilgamesh
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PvP lost it's luster for me when Blizzard decided to introduce BG's as another grind fest for gear. There initial concept was great: get some honor and get some perks like mounts and battlestandards. World PvP was still great though. The major change and foreshadowing of things to come were the battlemasters. Those awesome battles at the entrances to BG's? Gone. The end came with Arenas and purples associated with the Arenas...
I think the biggest cause of WoW's decline (other then just age) is the shift to conveniences. There is no "world" in world of warcraft. It should just be called World of Stormwind and Orgimmar.[DOUBLEPOST=1374946371][/DOUBLEPOST]To further illustrate what I'm talking about, I remember playing in Vanilla WoW out in the desert region and Gadgetzan. It truly felt like I was ages away from civilization, and that was just an epic feeling of really being a hero and questing at the far ends of the earth. I quit after reaching top level in Cata. Everyone stayed in Stormwind. There's a game that does this already: Guildwars. And it doesn't require a subscription.
Personally, I love the convenience. I don't really feel it has taken away from the game at all. If anything I feel they have not made it convenient enough, MoP is a lot more complicated and dragged out when it comes to gearing progression compared to WOTLK.
Sure thing, but the gameplay, the balance, the classes, the PvP, the artstyle, the raiding, dungeons, dailies, scenarios and on and on and on is just unmatched. Sorry for being right?You can say what you want, and maybe it was the best for you, but please don't get sanctimonious and call everyone else wrong. I know it's hard for you.
Mists of Pandaria was what made me quit It had nice added things yes, but the dailies IMO were the worst dailies ever. Dungeons were fun, so was the raiding I did before quitting. However I found the leveling zones to be only alright and I hated leveling alts this Xpac and I am an altaholic. In Burning crusade I leveled a resto shaman and healing priest not through primarily dungeon runs but a lot of solo content(I found that more bearable.) I just found MoP to be a very meh Xpac.
It had nice added things yes, but the dailies IMO were the worst dailies ever. Dungeons were fun, so was the raiding I did before quitting. However I found the leveling zones to be only alright and I hated leveling alts this Xpac and I am an altaholic. In Burning crusade I leveled a resto shaman and healing priest not through primarily dungeon runs but a lot of solo content(I found that more bearable.) I just found MoP to be a very meh Xpac.The fixed the alt leveling by huge strides. The dailies were never mandatory, so you should have only done the ones you enjoyed. They were also leaps and bounds over any previous set of dailies as they told a deeper tale and each Reputations final set of dailies and final story quest were amazing.
Then again, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
Then again, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
You and 5 million other people.Mists of Pandaria was what made me quit
I don't know how anyone can straight face call the current PVP better than anything. World of Botcraft.
I'd get more info before saying much, the vast majority of those losses was in the Asian market
The ghost towns a lot of the servers are, to the point where they need to develop software to soft merge realms, says that quite a few of those accounts are in the western ones as well.[DOUBLEPOST=1375008656][/DOUBLEPOST]
And why does it matter that it's asian market? 5 million people have stopped playing. Is it less important that they're not North American?I'd get more info before saying much, the vast majority of those losses was in the Asian market
I made it clear why there was a loss of players, and it sure wasn't a degredation of gameplay.
Frank I'm just going to say, I'm sorry you had to resort to personal attacks.
Do we have actual numbers on this? Last I heard was Blizzard just said that the majority of the losses come from the Asian market where f2p has become incredibly popular. That could mean nothing more than 51% of the losses come from Asia.
They have said that the reason for a lot of the non-asian cancellations, especially among the more casual players, comes from lack of feeling engaged in the game. Which could mean that people aren't building solid relationships with their guild or other players any more. Mainly because you don't have to. You don't need to rely on a guild for finding a good party you can trust. You don't need a raid guild any more. And there is no real sense of community in a server any more. All because of the convenience of having queues for everything.
Or all those people could be wrong, and the game is more engaging than ever, and they are all just jaded, and Blizz should stick their head in the sand and ignore them because they're wrong.
The reason the Asian market is suffering does have everything to do with convenience, but in the opposite direction.
The vast majority of players in the Asian market don't play at home, they play in "Pay by the Hour" cafes. This is the reason the company in charge of the game over there does not even charge a monthly subscription fee, because no one would pay for the game by the month and the computer time by the hour. Instead they lease the game out to the cafes and allow anyone with a free account to log on.
The reason much of the asian market is dwindling is because...
A) They have a lot more competition now, like the highly popular Age of Wushu.
B) MoP is designed to be easy, but trades off by being ten times more time consuming.
To go into more detail about "B", MoP learned from the mistakes of Cataclysm by making more easy and convenient options for players. However, gear acquisition is at an all time low for time invested.
WOTLK/CATA - Release Day, Reputation and Justice gave Blue Gear. Purple Gear was acquired through Valor Points with no Reputation requirements. When a new patch was released, all former Valor Gear rolled down to Justice Points, allowing acquisition of high end gear through "low" time required content. Back in WOTLK, it was not unheard of to get a full set of T9 on a weekend.
MoP - Release Day, Reputation itself gave little to no gear. Instead it acted as a gating mechanism for Justice and Valor Point gear, in some cases gating such gear behind a whole other reputation (Golden Lotus -> August Celestials/Shado-Pan). As new patches came out, Valor Point gear, which is naturally gated to 1000 points a week, never dropped to the much easier to acquire Justice Points. No new dungeons are added either. The only way to really gear progress was through LFD, which even to a healer could see a 10-15m wait time, then go into the raid only for the RND gods to work against you. This got worst if the group itself was crap, since this dragged out the encounter further. Scenarios could work, but just like LFR, they rely heavily on RNG, meaning in ten runs you can get jack and shit.
Now imagine you are the guy sitting in the cafe, paying for every hour you can play. What would you rather do? Run some dungeons and get that hot purple helmet you were eyeing? Or run 2 LFRs in a row, wiping on two bosses, getting 25g as compensation per boss, realizing you never did your dailies to use valor? Likely you would go to the new game that gives you that, because after awhile, you lose all your engagement when the carrot starts outpacing the time you can commit to catch up.
This is where I think Ghostcrawler continues to show his inexperience in the MMO market. He grew his style of design in Age of Empires, a game based on the idea of challenge and strategy. An MMO is a different type of beast, where the idea is to be part of another world and get cool items more then anything. The game grew as each "inconvenience" was removed, and reached it's highest peak in WOTLK when it was the most conveniant it's ever been. He blundered by attempting to make Cataclysm challenging again, and blundered once again by dragging out MoP content as much as possible out the gate.
The fact is, the damage is already done. Even with the changes reverting to the CATA and WOTLK style of currency downgrading, the game will continue to decline. It will level off as a respectable amount someday, but the days of over ten million is behind us.
Oh so you mean that people aren't quitting playing because of some rose coloured view of the past but because there was a ton of bad game design.[DOUBLEPOST=1375113501][/DOUBLEPOST]
This just doesn't exist anymore.
It must be just my rose coloured past view that remembers when the game was being played outside of when we were playing the actual game. The realm forums were rife with Alliance Horde rivalry and drama. Everyone knew the realm celebrities, everyone's reputation mattered and there was a sense of community.
This just doesn't exist anymore.
So maaaad.
The bad game design came in Cata, not Pandaria btw, which is the point I made. Still, I'll try not to respond to much, don't want you responding by attacking me and not my posts after all.
Dave
Staff member
Maybe it's just the rose colored classes on me, but there's a lot of things they have done that I just plain hate. Like automatically knowing all of the flight points. Gone are the days of discovery or the excitement of being level 12 and running the Barrens to get to the next alliance FP. It took forever to do it, but to this day I remember the way it made my heart beat faster as I try and play cat 7 mouse with the Horde. Or running through the Wetlands to get the FP so you can take a boat to the next continent. Or running to Southshore through Arathi, praying that a dino didn't wander too close to the road. Because back then you couldn't ride yet.
It's not that they took the challenge out of the game, but that they took all the challenge away from anyone that was not max level or raiding.
It's not that they took the challenge out of the game, but that they took all the challenge away from anyone that was not max level or raiding.
Hahahaha! Do you remember the vitriolic animosity between Alliance paladins and Horde shamans? Man did I LOVE that rivalry.
Then they ruined it.
I don't disagree with you at all, but I was talking mainly about the non-asian decline. I'm not saying that the conveniences were a bad thing, obviously they made the game more accessible, but it's a double edge sword. That convenience killed a lot of the social aspects of the game. Which is what a lot of people miss.
Like Frank said. There is little to no server community, and almost no reason to leave the main city once you're max level.[DOUBLEPOST=1375115248][/DOUBLEPOST]
They actually admitted that was a side effect of revamping the old zones in Cata. They have changed it so new characters don't get all of them now.
Correct.
Also agreed.[DOUBLEPOST=1375115691][/DOUBLEPOST]
Yep, that has been pretty disappointing.
my baby shaman must run!
Most of the challenge that exists now lies in achievements and the legendary quest line, Brawler's Guild, heroic scenarios, challenge mode dungeons, along with normal and up raiding. Most of the real fun I still have in the game has to do with people I've gotten to know.
I do think Blizzard is planning something big with the virtual server system, and I also wonder if the resolution of 5.4 will allow Horde and Alliance to communicate with each other.
EDIT: 5.4 will also bring Proving Grounds, which is another solo-based challenge.
I still remember the mighty "George" the warrior orc, on my old server. Dude was like Tom Cruise of Kargath.
We had a guy that everybody hated because he was a pompous ass, but whenever he put out the call for raids on alliance cities people came running. It was a blast.
The days where world defense was actually a channel.
Of course, I had almost zero chance of ever stepping foot in a raid back then too.
I used to be on a pvp server when I did raids of MC/BWL and let me tell you, getting to the raid alive was often more challenging than the raid itself!
I was on a PvE server, and it still only took one dude to flag him/herself pvp to unleash a war in the pits of Blackrock. THAT was fun.
You know what else was awesome? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
Personally, I just can't stay focused on the game. Running LFR over and over to gear gets old, running dailies over and over to get tokens for bonus rolls gets old, I'm just not a fan of the generally vitriolic PvP community, and the constant streamlining and dumbing down (or in other cases severe hotkey bloat) of classes makes me feel like I'm just playing a melee/spellcaster/etc, as opposed to a specific class. MoP was a big step up from Cata, but, at least to me, the game's just not appealing anymore.
Yep I pretty much -finished- WoW too, am looking forward to FFXIV as well. I will however play through everything 5.4 has to offer, before tapering off from it again for a while.
Is the next Xpac for WoW the final one?
Nope.