Blizzard appears to be repeating a pattern we’ve seen with retail WoW by making significant changes based on feedback from a relatively small segment of the player base.
This version of the game is neither Classic nor Retail, and some of the recent adjustments feel misguided. Slowing experience gain because some players believe leveling is too fast seems counterproductive. Likewise, reducing item and blue-quality gear drop rates because there are concerns about loot abundance feels like an overcorrection.
At the same time, longstanding gameplay and class balance issues remain unaddressed. For example, low-level druids who focus on Balance still face poor itemization options, often being forced to choose between cloth gear or agility-based leather items that don’t properly support their specialization. Playing an Intelligence-based druid can feel unnecessarily punishing, especially when compared to classes such as Paladins, which can level significantly faster and more efficiently despite being lower level.
In many ways, some of the same class and itemization problems that existed in Vanilla are still present. Yet the development team’s focus seems to be on reducing experience gains and loot acquisition rather than addressing core gameplay concerns that have existed for years.
If this direction continues, I would not be surprised if the player population declines significantly within the next year, potentially reaching levels below those of traditional Classic servers.
It’s also important to consider the audience that Forever attracts. A large portion of the player base consists of older players who have careers, families, and limited gaming time. For those players, logging in for an hour or two after work or after putting their children to bed should still feel rewarding. Reducing experience gains and lowering drop rates makes meaningful progression harder to achieve in short play sessions. When players feel like they can spend their limited time online without making noticeable progress or obtaining useful gear, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify continuing to play.
100% they aren’t listening to the player base nearly as much as looking at their data. That’s why you see a lot of people screaming about something and nothing being addressed, too. There’s PLENTY they aren’t doing because they know the numbers in the back, we don’t. Same goes for when they do make changes.
They look and measure the inflection up or down and make decisions from there.
sure sounds like your asking for retail it does indeed exsist. all that stuff your talking about is the classic experence which is what the game is suppose to be “in the spirit of vanilla” an expansion of the first year of wow exc…
just play for 2 hours enjoy your time and play another day? i don’t see the problem here
The classic experience is not reduced xp and nerfing everything that was in vanilla. Bring back vanilla gameplay and stop trying to make everything harder.
As a healer why would I need to level cooking? I can heal myself. I just need water. Now I have to level cooking and sit by a fire to get the same xp as I would in vanilla. Why am I not doing the same damage as in vanilla? oh, because I need sp now. Where do I find that? not on most quest rewards. Level 27 wearing lvl 17 gear that I crafted myself because it’s better then quest rewards because this is the only gear I am getting with sp on it. It’s beyond frustrating.
My husband sitting next to me hearing wand, wand, wand, wand, wand…“oh, F. I’m going to die…Oh, I died”. Then he askes if he needs to come help me.
This is not made for the average joe after work player. This is beginning to really piss me off. I have played since 2004 and I am really struggling. And no, I don’t like retail at all. So don’t tell me to go there.
Oh, and most of the guildies that started with me when beta opened have stopped leveling. They already gave up.
yeah i’ve played since the game came out myself, i am not having any problems.
currently because of the quests you actually get more xp doing the dungeon 1 time than you would have in classic. even with the nerf. “dumb yes”
while i agree they should restore regular spell damage and regular mob xp, i do think they should bring quest xp back to normal values. dungeon mob xp is an easy fix they need only make it so you A. are limited in the number of times you can enter a dungeon per day or put a cooldown on it “shrug an hour maybe” and B. make it so if your not the right level range for the dungeon you get no xp “for full party”.
they should infact revert many things to make it feel more like classic. however thats neither here nor there, it does not detract from playing for 2 hours and enjoying your time.
have people forgotten what classic is like i don’t actually see the problem here. i still regularly play classic and HC along side the beta and wowf does indeed seem to be faster to level which is expected with more quests.
i don’t really expect all these current things to remain from beta into official though but when you already have RMT going on in the beta blizzard doesn’t really have a choice but to do something give it time.
Backend data does not measure player satisfaction. For example you may have 5k priests make it to level 30 by now. Those may be hardcore priest lovers and will force themselves to level just because they love the class and want level 30 benefits to see what the class can do. But that does not account for what the average joe will do with the class. These are the players that have paid money to play the beta. These are players who will go out of their way just to try what they love. Now if we listened to player feedback and satisfaction about how playable it is, that would be a big improvement for long term success of the class. Just because people are doing it now does not mean that average players who want to try a new game are going to stay. You are relying only on statistical data of hardcore players. If that is your market then that is okay. If you want the average player who didn’t pay for the beta you need to also listen to player feedback and satisfaction surrounding the comfort of playing the class for long term success and max profit.
You know people who are not streamers are reporting to their guilds, reddit and friends out in the world about how the beta is going. That is going a long way in first impressions about player satisfaction. If we complain to them then they’re already having a bad impression of the game before it’s even released.
not trying to minimize what your saying here but the struggle is part of the fun the game has a target audience and a goal, more changes are coming i think every class in the world is complaining right now. and the leveling is a bit faster than reg classic based on what im seeing.
The average time to reach level 60 in the original 2004 release was like 8-12 days “ingame” for nolifers, for casuals it was like 15-30 days some people took a year or more some never made it.
that average in modern day classic vanilla is like 100-300 hours now due to much more player knowledge.
i actually looked up those stats just to be sure, in wowf i have like 4 lvl 30’s with a /played around and about 40 hours and i was not speed running just doing the quests dungeons and naturally following along the world.
the game does need work it probably should have cooked for like 1 more year but changes should come.
This is the sentiment the turned retail into a “Themepark” MMO. Everything is SUPERFAST and you dont have to really try. No trying to build connections, no trying through dungeons, just faceroll and you’ll succeed, don’t worry. No trying in open world content because nothing is really dangerous if you can push 2 or 3 buttons. Just log in, run some SUPERFAST dungeons and log out with a feeling of having accomplished something. You know what? There is already a game for you in Retail, this one has been announcing ALL OVER THE PLACE that it will be a slower paced game that feels more like the original WoW experience.
ALSO : a large portion of the player base in WoW Forever is the player base who were gaming as adults with young families when WoW originally released. (and that’s how WoW became what it is today, everyone coming to the forums saying exactly what i quoted above) Those players are who’re here, we are now mostly done raising kids, a LOT of us are retired and cant handle “twitch” gaming nor are we interested in a blurred lvling experience. We have already learned that the end is not the goal, the journey is. The vast majority of the “Adults with young families” currently aren’t the ones this game was supposed to cater to, they have Retail. This was supposed to be a DIFFERENT SPEED than retail.
Agreed, I played SoD and this version feels like it will be on a similar timeline. I don’t see the longevity. Just has a lot of additions that no one really wants or is excited about except for UD paladin.
Circling the drain is a bit pessimistic, but I get the whole ‘click bait to read the thread’ thing. Modern internet.
I do think that Blizzard are being insanely conservative with their choices. They think SoD went “too far” from Classic, which is like saying that taking a step down from the front step/porch of your house is going too far from home.
A lot of private servers really pushed and innovated on what Classic+ could be. We’ve seen basically none of that here so far, and nothing to indicate from their statements and Blizzcon presentation that we will see much of it, beyond new zones.
They advertised gameplay enhancements but have provided nothing to smooth or enhance the actual gameplay of Classic WoW. We still have the same awful competitive loot tagging system, selfish world gathering systems that encourage griefing your fellow players to get a leg up over them, and a dungeon finder system that leads to sitting there, boredly whispering dozens of groups “Room for X?” until you get an invite, or get bored and stop trying.
If Blizzard wants Forever to succeed, they need to stop trying to make it “Classic Era but with new zones” and make it “A modern re-imagining of the world of Classic” like they advertised it to be.
if you need dungeon spam, WoWF is not for you. go play classic era or retail