Yeah it should be “what came first the chicken or the chicken egg?”
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It’s the only thing that makes sense
Thing is, most of the stuff you’re talking about here isn’t actually bad and would be something that has to be handled or at least addressed in any game lasting as long as WoW did with as many players as it has.
First time we play a game like Fallout 2, we probably get a bit overwhelmed by the options and perks and choices… and then we start to find the things that work while still progressing through the game with our otherwise bad choices as well.
Then we replay it a 3rd or 4th time and hyper focus our skills and limited resources and suddenly we not only wipe the floor with every encounter but we can anticipate everything that’s going to happen and the game is now just a big sandbox with a surprising number of trivial enemies to screw with.
Every game becomes like this, even the “hard” games like Dark Souls. MMOs are persistent and require the nonstop grinder to keep us coming back, but everyone just keeps getting more and more savvy as we keep playing. I honestly believe some of the deliberate “flip-the-table-rework” decisions were done just so people would have to rethink how to play in order to recapture the sense of “new, a bit uncomfortable, but now I have to grow again” that every actual new game has.
What I’ve grown to dislike with Blizzard most is the lack of COMPLETION of good ideas. Cataclysm could have been so much better had they tied the world together more and spent more time on all the reworked zones. WoD left nearly half an expansion worth of material just on the cutting room floor and we got a disjointed story, a mess of progress, and severely neutered Garrisons.
I wish they’d take more time to flesh things out, but they don’t. Everyone threw a fit when Wrath took us a year to get to Cata once ICC was out.
But the min/max stuff? That’s fine. I love it. The super hard Mythics are great for the same reason that DLC and Expansion content for games like Dark Souls are great: the fights are jazzed up in scope and polish and they’re way harder.
I mean…
The issue I have with retail gear is when they try to do something fancy like corruption or domination sockets and it breaks the balance of the game, because gear needs to be “interesting”.
The rest of the changes were pretty good tbh. Not everything retail is a mistake.
Hey, I don’t mind min/max players… If they leave me alone. It’s a big world… Share it!
Changes implemented will be based on how the game is played.
Most of the changes made to the Classic-era are due to how folks have been playing. These changes are typically met with fierce opposition here on the forums. Not surprisingly, the biggest crybabies are those who caused the changw in the first place.
I really enjoyed the QoL changes. Mount and tabard tabs, increased stack sizes, reagent bank, void storage… I could go on.
Again, I’m making observations here. The folks who seem to be the loudest to speak against changes are usually the ones causing it.
Eh see this is where things are going to go awry, calling people you dislike “crybabies”
A lot of changes were good.
A lot of changes were bad.
A lot of changes were irrelevant.
I’d wager most are in the 3rd category if we’re being honest, but people like picking fights. I’m just saying that it is impossible to have a long running game that doesn’t keep pressing the boundaries in both directions to keep appeasing the folks that want more challenge and the folks that want more accessibility, respectively.
You can be largely left alone if you stick with likeminded folks, but this is an MMO, judging people is basically the primary source of energy on which WoW runs.
Perhaps you’re missing the point, then. There’s a pretty thick irony here on the forums.
Just look at the AV premade/pally pull crap… The people who cried the most against Blizzard’s fixes were those who were abusing the system. Same thing with the instance cap.
I mean… these forums are a microcosm of the playerbase and are mostly for people to vent their frustrations. Every change is going to be met with whiners, and the irony isn’t lost on me that the people most adamant against making changes are often the reason why severe extremes are revealed and changed.
But that’s just how it goes. Every aspect of this game can be done to an extreme degree and honestly it requires a host of flags we aren’t privy to in order to get Blizzard to step up and change things. For better or worse, Blizzard can’t anticipate every abuse case and can (fruitlessly) hope players don’t take things to the extreme.
If anything, metas are good because they tend to laser focus the playerbase, thereby reducing the number of variables Blizzard needs to consider when tuning/altering/adding content.
Really though? I don’t think players in general know what they want, not at least regarding really long lived games.
After reading through the topic, I think it’s actually kind of dumb.
Of course changes come as a direct result of how people play the game, that’s… supposed to happen.
It has nothing to do with chasing meta, just addressing issues that players have. Since more players play meta than not, those ones tend to get addressed. Doesn’t mean changes don’t happen to non-meta players or because of non-meta players either.
There’s correlation, but very little causation.
If metagaming is your thing, then sure.
What were some of the primary reasons why players wanted Classic?
They wanted the wonky itemization, talent trees, the mirage of choice. Yet they go straight to a guide to have all the choices made for them, frequently ignoring all the suboptimal gear and talents.
You’re right… They don’t know what they want. It seems like they really want Retail.
I’m not arguing this. It’s kind of my point. Yet people complain about the changes.
I’m not sure where you’re going with this.
The first line I quoted of yours in this reply seems to contradict this.
All of this let us just absolutely BREAK the Vanilla experiment entirely, and shatter the illusion that Vanilla was on some other difficulty level as well (much to my glee).
What will be curious to me is how this plays out in TBCC, WotLKC, and so on and so forth. Some of the later tough encounters were very difficult, but eventually quite doable with practice. How bad will Yogg-0 be this time around? How quickly will Sindragosa die? What new crazy method will be found to make Rag-With-Legs even easier and steadier to manage?
These all tend to create a new game experience that I’m actually rather eager to consume. I get I’ve seen all of this before, but now I’m getting a true replay where I can pick the right dialog option, anticipate the “surprise” twist, and stack just the right amount of stats to get everything I want.
And for that I’m fine with the meta chasing, because the general knowledge of the REST of the playerbase grows as well. I can join a random Karazhan pug, complete with bad gear and minimal discussion, and just clear the whole place without wiping. I don’t have to be a min/max player to reap the benefits of actual clears like we had in original TBC. The non-meta chasers still get a game they get to enjoy, the meta chasers get to find new ways to break and beat everything, and it is glorious to behold.
Ok, so Meta is most effective tactic available, right? I’m defining terms, since you mentioned you didn’t know what it was before coming back to classic.
It’s not neccessarily most popular tactic available. Sometimes the meta is a pain in the butt, or requires spending resources people don’t want to, etc etc.
The most popular tactics (which are not neccessarily META, but simply what gets done the most) are the ones that tend to see development address them. Which is good- a game should try to cater to the way people are playing it (to a degree- too much is also bad).
The causation is popularity, not effectiveness. Meta just tends to be popular in the wow community.
As an example, consider PvP.
The most effective tactic is to premade, and roll alliance for fast queues. But people aren’t willing to do this due to time built up in horde characters, friends, schedules, etc. So they roll horde and ask for changes. Blizzard is making changes to cater to the popular tactic, not because of the effective tactic.
Thank for at least knowing the vocab! 
Arguably, the most popular tactics, strategies, raid comps, talent builds, etc are the meta. Folks don’t really think for themselves. They do what the guides say, regardless of how ridiculous or tedious they are.
No, they really aren’t.
Most popular is not most effective.
We can argue semantics all you want. Could you point out one of the changes I cited that really wasn’t caused by player activity? You did say I’m lacking causation.
Yes, because changes occur to things that are popular.
Not things that are meta, neccessarily.
So in both cases, they are caused by player activity. Nice red herring.
It’s not a red herring. It’s the point of my thread.
What exactly is a meta that folks aren’t following? I’m sure some exist. I’m just not aware of them.
Gearing is done via BiS lists, specs are typically made based off of what a guide says, people frequently choose their race/faction based on some dumb racial ability… Players even made mage alts so they can farm gold in ZF or by selling boost runs. Hell, there was even a lot of talk about having every melee class going for leatherworking due to the stupid drums (which also caused a response from Blizzard.)
Seriously, I’d like to know. Do you have anything?
Well, there was the pvp example I mentioned above.
And having me search for something that doesn’t prove or disprove anything is a red herring. Both popular actions and meta actions would be based on player behavior.
- Metagaming a strategy in battlegrounds is stupid, as the events aren’t scripted
- The premade thing likely violates the EULA. Blizzard gave players a gift by only braking their ability to do it
- Making a premade Horde team given the queue situation wasn’t just difficult. It was likely impossible
Sorry man… You need a legit meta. Yeah, folks called it a meta, but really it was just an exploit.
And, for reference:
Cheating: Create, use, offer, promote, advertise, make available and/or distribute the following or assist therein:
- cheats; i.e. methods not expressly authorized by Blizzard (whether accomplished using hardware, software, a combination thereof, or otherwise), influencing and/or facilitating gameplay, including exploits of any in-game bugs, and thereby granting you and/or any other user an advantage over other players not using such methods;
Wait, what?
There’s a literal button for joining as a group. How is that violating EULA?
I can’t take you seriously.
ROFL, premading isn’t cheating. I’m talking about WSG/AB/EotS here.