Every expansion and and patch seems to want to push players into a single play style. One where the game is specifically designed to push every player down the same linear path regardless of what content they have historically been able to enjoy independently of others. And while an argument could be pushed forward that “WoW has always been about XYZ”, the game was never this blatantly ridged with it’s requirement that everyone experience the game in the exact same way as it does now.
I just read Ythisens post about power leveling characters at 110 and I just don’t understand why the devs would even consider this an issue. It doesn’t affect anyone else’s game if a player wants to power level their own characters. Why does Blizzard feel that they need to step in and stop this behavior?
This same issue is apparent in many other debates, such as flying, reputation requirements for story progression, Questing and achievement requirements to unlock unrelated content activities, and so on. All of these changes are specifically presented to prevent players from enjoying the game in ways that for some reason diverge from some orthodox view of how the game should be played. I think that over the long term, this kind of design philosophy is going to be significantly detrimental the the longevity of the game and should be reconsidered.
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It’s either laziness, cost cutting, control issues or a combo of all.
See, if your game focuses on letting the player do one or two things, it means you only have to focus work on those one or two things. You want people to raid more than anything, because you enjoy making that content the most, make it so raiding is easily the most desirable option.
The more things you allow your players to do, the more work you have to do to support those things. The more you support the harder it is on you. So the game play process gets streamlined.
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WoW is no longer about diversity of game play, its all about the metrics now. Hint to devs, keep diverse game play, keep it fun. The metrics then take care of themselves. Dumb the game down, limit choices, and people will not play.
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The problem with your argument is you assume that all players want the same thing (power gain) and are constantly working towards that goal. I feel zero pressure to do any content. If your argument is “competitive” then you have to earn it. Welcome to video games.
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I too only do content I’m interested and feel zero pressure to do things I’m not interested in BUT maybe you haven’t been paying attention lately but much of the content you would actually enjoy doing is being locked behind a singular experience. The examples I sited above, where Blizzard is removing the ability of characters to turn off XP gains in order to power level other charters, is only an issue because Blizzard believes that ALL characters should be forced to experience the content in a singular way.
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While I don’t necessarily agree with the anti-current-content-twink nerf, it also doesn’t affect me. I’d rather have them shut off that revenue stream (the actual rub) than to mess with scaling mobs (again).
They are holding off on players 110 or higher being able to turn off XP gains. That thread is so monsterous in size it is easy to miss. They are going to try and come up with a different solution.
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Their time played metric is at all time lows along with folks left who still play. They are desperate to force players into having to play.
When you design content for stockholders and not players this is what you get. The only fair thing they could do since they are unwilling to do the work to design the game properly is to just boost all our 110’s to 120.
The fact that removing gear in legion and now turning off leveling in bfa is even a thing is because ilev scaling does not work in a game like wow. They are simply unwilling to do the work anymore and still expect to get paid.
When you treat your subscribers like your own personal ant farm they simply quit playing.
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That is if power leveling was the real issue. My 111 paladin smashed 120’s. I was seriously thinking of level locking him but decided I rather not as I figured it would get nerfed (and it did).
Which is something they implemented years ago back when “twinking” was a thing. That style of play has never been officially supported. So they removed it because people were creating an imbalance with the Legion legendaries.
Would you prefer they shut those off?
This game literally makes money the longer people play, you do the math. The gated content is this bad due to the Chinese laws which allow Chinese players to pay by the minute or something like that. The Chinese/Korean is a good chuck of money for Blizz.
Edit: I want you to think about this. You pay 15$ a month to play content that takes like 2 hours to clear every patch. It’s a scam if you ask me.
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Every player pays the same amount per month regardless of how many hours they play over the course of that month. Suggesting otherwise is just strange.
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Can you link me to that thread?
Don’t think did the math. If you gate content or make leveling harder and introduce new races that give cool armor if you lvl from 20-120 that makes people play longer and stay subbed to lvl that long. That means you can easily keep subs.
My point is they changed this 110+ rule because they dont care for anything but money and it shows, the real reason they changed was to stop people from killing time and clear the “content” that is heritage armor. This heritage armor scam helps makes up for the lack of overall content we got from start.
Edit: plus if you keep gating content like Suramur was that means you can keep a good 4 months worth of subs for one storyline. Which is gonna he the whole Sairfang thing since people are very interested in that.
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As has been stated before. Not everyone wants to play the same way that you do. Some like to go from start to end. Others like to go from point A to D to S, to B, etc.
For the amount of time I have been playing, nothing has stopped me from doing things that are not in a strict order. I can try something that is way above me or below me and still get to the end.
Just how is it “forcing” a player to start at point A and ONLY got thru each point in order to get to Z?
I’ve been subbed for 14 years without it lapsing. There are plenty of other players who have done exactly the same thing. So, no, there is no special math I need to do.
It logically makes sense but whatever.
I was thinking exactly this when I was reading that thread.
Making people play one way is guaranteed to drive people away from the game because that one way has to meet the needs of everyone and that is an almost impossible task - this team can’t come even close to meeting those needs.
They need to start allowing choices in this game so that the game can please more people not less.
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Im not playing wow to get to some kind of “end”. I play for the activities.
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I don’t think the current development team understands the concept of Open World gameplay. There is no end to an MMO. The destination is what the player makes of it.
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