A true mmorpg, ruined by the obvious

Community General Discussion
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I always disagreed with wow’s place in the genre, it streamlined and dissected a lot of genre defining elements for the sake of convenience and access.

Crafting was simplified, rp was difficult, accountability is nil.

We didn’t know it at the time because we were all caught up in the convenience of it all. It felt good, but 20 years later we’re seeing the generational effects.

Look at the community. Look at the design philosophy.

The true death of the mmo (for me) was the introduction of seasonal content with the heavy handed fomo that comes with it. It created the very community most have a disdain towards. Speed running, zero learning, rush and binge content.

I don’t dislike speed running, it has its entertaining place, but when you lead by example and we need to admit that a larger portion of our “leaders” are hardcore streamers, what do you think happens to the masses?

They begin to see the game as a meal and consume it as quickly as possible, the streamers are nice people, but the community is marred by not so nice people attempting to consume content as fast as possible. Sink or swim, baptism by fire, whatever analogy you want.

I wish the people in their 20s and early 30s could have experienced the true mmo experience where communities and developers were actively engaged with their games and the experience.

I understand those games aren’t all around anymore, but you have to ask yourself what keeps you playing? Is it the game itself, or the people you play with, when the game doesn’t give you a moment to step back without losing access to elements within it, can you truly ever leave without thinking that “I wish I could still get X.”

Anyway, these are my meandering thoughts, have a nice night.

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WoW only shifted to seasonal content because that’s what the market demanded. It’s still what the market prefers. MMOs were falling from grace rapidly.
Look at the games WoW was competing with around their decline.

League of Legends - Seasonal and the games are quick
DOTA - Same as League.
HearthStone - Seasonal and quick matchmaking.
CS:GO/CoD/BF - Matchmaking quick round matches.
Battle Royale games were starting to blow up, with ARMA Battle Royale that would then trickle into games like H1Z1, PUBG, Fornite. All seasonal. Game lengths spanning like 20-30 minutes.
POE/D3 - Seasonal & can be played in any timeframe
MineCraft - There was a new trend every few months. Can be played at your own pace.

The reality is people don’t have time to play 1 video game for 30 hours a week, and commit to 4-5 hour chunks in one sitting.

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I see them finally catering to players like myself, who like to avoid the community as much as possible. Bravo, i say!

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People were speedrunning dungeons in Wrath.

This nonsense about blaming the nefarious streamers and young people is, and will always be, laughably stupid.

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I…hope you’re not meaning roleplaying, right?

The fact it’s not difficult is why it’s always inviting for folks to try it out.

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I am so glad that i don’t have the mind virus that some people have where they have to get everything in the game and if they miss something it legit bothers them. Could never understand that.

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… that actually explains a SURPRISING amount about WoW’s game’s design.

None of them are RPGs, not really.
They’re all extremely competitive multiplayer bonanzas.

Blizz aren’t targeting the traditional RPG audience, they’re trying to coax an entirely different crowd.

This is broadly true, but belies other issues.

RPGs do tend to favour longer play sessions, yes… but rarely “30 hours per week”. It’s the difference between one longer session every few weeks (weekly if you have a lot of spare time), rather than a constant dopamine drip feed that demands your attention on a nearly daily basis.

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It makes sense if that was the only games present at the time. You would have to ignore games like Red Dead, Xenoblade, Pokemon, Nier, Bioshock 2

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seasonal content is just rebranded raid teirs

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With dial up you mean?

We progress and move forward, we no longer use hand dialed phones, we can play better looking games and with all the new tech games evolve and gain newer trends.

As you get older it becomes easy to want what you had, rather than embrace change and move with it.

Don’t be scared of the new new, seasons give players a reason to keep coming back and Dev’s a chance to introduce new stuff, that model isn’t going anywhere.

This is a video game, it is not serious stuff.

Good luck!

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The context was more “these are the games WoW is choosing to compete with”, not that they were the only ones. There is a grain of truth in saying WoW is chasing the audience of those games rather than the ones you listed, and it can be seen in multiple aspects of WoW’s design; the focus on competitive gameplay and rankings/ratings being integrated into the game being an easy example.

Though it’s true that those other games have a larger audience overall… but it’s not RPGs they tend to look at.

So there are times that WoW definitely feels like a game designed to answer the question “How do you design an RPG to appeal to fans of match-based online multiplayer games?”

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I wish there was a really good sandbox MMO out there. Themepark can be fun but I kind of miss those random interactions that you would get with people in MMOs like Star Wars Galaxies lol.

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I wasn’t blaming them, I was acknowledging that it is a result of the symptoms popularized by streaming due to the larger audience it reaches.

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I wish people actually understood what seasonal content within the context of WoW is and how it isn’t a new thing.

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Speedrunning dungeons began in classic. At one point Blizzard even started rewarding those who completed a speedrun of Baron From Strat with a piece of improved tier gear.

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Well, yes I agree with all of this. And now we don’t even have permanent wrath classic realms to play on. The last version of the game with the oldschool features, aesthetics, and roleplaying elements in the game. Such as ammo.

And they refuse to give out at least one permanent wrath classic server. Change makes sense when it is necessary. But seriously. I don’t think they really needed to remove ammo and quivers. Or the old overworld etc. They just felt like they needed to. Like the world would be in a much better place. Like no man. I still carry ammo and a quiver taking up a bag slot on my retail hunter to this very day. And no transmoggable quiver matches the epicness of the nerubian reinforced quiver. Nothing even comes close.

Cataclysm litteraly took away like 80 percent of the game. And even now, it made it really hard to appreciate that expansion. Permanent wrath classic would be a nice mix of both worlds. But, I might not ever get that straight from blizzard. And vanilla era doesn’t count and neither does classic plus or any of the other variants they have put out. I liked wrath because it was slightly easier. Specially for leveling. And I liked deathknights.

And none of the classes even function remotely like they used to in the first 3 clients.

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Seasonal content beats like 1-2 years waiting for a patch.

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But the stakes were lower in Wrath – literally nothing except your once-a-day Heroic Dungeon reward and Frozen Orbs, and once you were geared heroics were extremely simple, so it wasn’t a contentious thing. People weren’t mean about it, then.

Ironically in Wrath Classic, people were mean about it. Once the attitude had developed, people couldn’t go back.

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But the difference is you had to build your own group for that. Wrath introduced LFD queues and the dynamic of throwing a bunch of strangers together.

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That’s just weird.