Blizzard engineered out the social aspect of WoW

Community General Discussion
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I listened to Holly talk about how they think social interactions are the lifeblood of WoW and they want people emoting each other hand whatnot, but I feel like they are out of touch with their own game.

When is the latest time they added a feature that tried to get strangers to meaningfully interact or have to work together. We’ve gotten:

  • M+ which set the stage for the speed running mindset that predominates the game now.
  • Delves which brought solo play into instances further removing players from each other.
  • Prey which is an open world system that is completely self sufficient, you don’t need anyone to get champion level gear.
  • Housing which is completely instanced and has no incentives to bring strangers into each others homes, it just makes guilds more segregated from each other and non-guild players.

And I can’t believe I’m saying this but removing pathfinder and making portals easy to get has shrunk the world down to just a capital city and the occasional run to go do a prey quest.

It’s just so sad to see WoW double down on being a single player game or a lobby game. The MMO genre feels dead now even though WoW is still alive.

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Why do wow players decide who plays content?
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WoW is basically 2 games now. A single player MMO for leveling part. A single player game for the entry level endgame, which doesn’t require any communication, or coordination at all with other players. Then you have the other half, which is a hyper-competitive endgame that requires communication and coordination, but the way it is designed creates a ton of friction with players.

Blizzzard is trying to cater to too many player types, and it has just made the game less social.

I don’t think the people working on the game even understand what makes a fun MMO anymore. Ion certainly doesn’t, dude has shown over the years that he is pretty clueless when it comes to big picture stuff.

Holly has some good intentions here, but she doesn’t really understand the player base that inhabits retail WoW at all, which is basically veteran players that are more worried about parsing, meters, ratings, raid world first clears, everything that makes socializing in the game harder.

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Bzzt. Automatic disqualification, stopped here. M+ did not start the go-fast mentality. Repetition did. All the way back in Wrath dungeon dailies.

As for the last time I had a social interaction, well I completed Radiant Singer today which requires a full raid of participants carefully following instructions. Social aspects are alive and well if you aren’t locking yourself away into solo/pug content, and those are still available if you want to do that.

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M+ didn’t invent speedrunning but it institutionalized it and tied it directly to progression, rewards, and class balance.

That’s why it has such a big impact on how the game is played and designed.

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M+ is not speedrunning.

The timer is plenty lenient as long as you’re putting out acceptable numbers, and taking appropriate risks for the difficulty level you signed up for.

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I don’t think they are. The social parts of the game are still there. All they’re doing now is better catering to the large part of the audience who want to play solo. We were always here. We just got by with scraps for a long time. Now we have real content.

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ROFL!!! :clown_face:

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Yeah exactly this.

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Obviously you have never done M+, but seem to have very strong opinions based on imagination of what it is.

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I ran 10 keys today buddy helping out guildies.

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It’d be more accurate to call it a time trial, but the difference is negligible.

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It’s a no-afk mode. That’s all.

Based on all the posts hyperventilating about nightmare Prey, a whole lot of players really can’t stand being told to not afk.

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Both of which can also be done as group content.

People who refuse to be in a guild were already somewhat segregated. This didn’t change much.

If you wanna be around people, be around people.

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You got this all wrong, lol

It’s that they gave people what they wanted, an option to avoid players, and also made it very rewarding, so naturally people avoid each other

It’s still quite easy to meet people if you pursue whatever your interest is

Well, no, it’s just general efficiency, not speedurnning. Dungeons are 30-40 minutes so don’t get this twisted. Challenge modes and their 3-4 minute clears were speed runs.

I mean already a thing with champ-hero gear and delves but aight

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I can’t fart on my friends anymore.

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You’re missing the whole point of my OP. I’m not saying you can’t go a find people if you really want to, Holly is saying they want to engineer connecting into the game and I’m saying that nothing they’ve designed has done that and in fact they actively design the game in ways that allows people to stay in their lane and not interact.

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You can play and should with your friends, you can also try talking to people while the group is forming (Devastating, I know.)

Same as above.

Prey is clearly not intended as group content. Why is that a bad thing?

Seeing as you’re from ED, I’d expect you to understand how housing could have rp value on its own and bring your friends there when you just want to relax together.

Do you have friends? Are you the non social one?

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Please see my above post. this isn’t about the game actively stopping you from joining a guild. ur not getting the op at all.

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No. I get your post. I simply disagree with what you present.
People not talking is a player made problem.

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If you understand my OP you would address my actual point instead of a strawman. What has blizzard done that actively incentivizes people to play together in a meaningful way like holly is talking about.

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