End the war on solo gameplay in WoW (Part 1)

[Snozh-malganis]

@Feltomydeath-herod

Spoken like someone who never held a position of responsibility or accountability in a fast food establishment, never mind had to deal with insufferable people on a daily basis.

Your assumptions are hilariously wrong.

Worked in multiple fast food places
Worked in guest services at Target for 3 years

@Feltomydeath-herod

Maybe you worked in fast food. Can’t really say for sure. Good for you that you had an easy job, if you did. Doesn’t really make it indicative of everyone else’s experience. Get some perspective in your life.

As someone that has worked actual hard jobs yes fast food is an easy job.

@Feltomydeath-herod

This is the obnoxious, mean-spirited troll equivalent of the prank youtuber’s “It’s just a prank, bro!”

Yawn

[Misbecky-argent-dawn (Misbecky)]

@Snozh-malganis

massive airforce base

Touche

I hated smelling like french fries. Makes a bad perfume.

[Olfen-ursin]

@Antiman-bloodhoof

WoW is an MMORPG, not an MMORPGGG (Massivly multiplayer online role playing grouping game). MMORPG just means there is a massive amount of players playing the game their way. We had decent, and rewarding, solo content before, like Horrific visions, even though those could be done in a group as well.

Friend, they are a lost cause. No amount of reasoning with them will change their minds.

They’ll be saying this until WoW gets put into maintenance mode, at which point they’ll cite the excuse that WoW is just too old of a game to stay relevant as an experience.

Nothing works.

[Snozh-malganis]

@Misbecky-argent-dawn

I hated smelling like french fries. Makes a bad perfume.

Fries weren’t so bad.

Old grease and sewage are worse lol

[Antiman-bloodhoof]

@Olfen-ursin

Friend, they are a lost cause. No amount of reasoning with them will change their minds.

Eh, maybe I am replying to them but trying to reach the ones that will still listen and think in order to show the devs, themselves and others what they really are: a loudmouthed, idiotic minority trying to tell the majority they are wrong.

[Olfen-ursin]

@Antiman-bloodhoof

Eh, maybe I am replying to them but trying to reach the ones that will still listen and think in order to show the devs, themselves and others what they really are: a loudmouthed, idiotic minority trying to tell the majority they are wrong.

They only feel like they’re the majority because they’re the only ones left playing the game. In a sense, they are.

But anyone with a functioning brain knows well enough that WoW used to offer a lot more as an experience than what it offers right now, and its hyper-focus on things like mythics and raids are partly the reason why WoW has gone from 12 million to well under 2 million (allegedly) in the last 12 years. The actual majority moved onto other games because WoW was no longer the game they wanted to play and/or fell in love with.

[Mustachio-eredar]

@Olfen-ursin

But anyone with a functioning brain knows well enough that WoW used to offer a lot more as an experience than what it offers right now

Guess my brain doesn’t function. What was the older experience?

I played Vanilla/TBC/Wrath and all I remember are grinds upon grinds with the occasional dungeon sprinkled in. Oh and… being a terrible player.

[Kaitashi-earthen-ring]

That’s what I remember. It was solo friendly in comparison to other MMO’s on offer at the time. Also crafting seemed a bit more relevant.

[Pyromor-shandris (Pyromor)]

@Antiman-bloodhoof

Eh, maybe I am replying to them but trying to reach the ones that will still listen and think in order to show the devs, themselves and others what they really are: a loudmouthed, idiotic minority trying to tell the majority they are wrong.

Actually,with this one nothing would work,reverse psychology is a test of mental abilities under pressure apparently this the method he is using. You will never win in that game,he can do no wrong and you can do no right in his eyes.

[Olfen-ursin]

@Mustachio-eredar

Guess my brain doesn’t function. What was the older experience?

I played Vanilla/TBC/Wrath and all I remember are grinds upon grinds with the occasional dungeon sprinkled in. Oh and… being a terrible player.

I won’t really try to deny that WoW’s core foundation has always been raids and dungeons, but having played this game for most of its lifespan, I feel like the game’s design has become more unraveled and less nuanced.

I think the largest difference between old-school WoW and new WoW is that when I’m playing new WoW, I feel like I’m always aware to the fact that I’m doing a grind because the content generally isn’t that engaging or rewarding. In Classic, even if I don’t make a lot of progress or gain a lot of levels, the game had a way of making you feel like you had accomplished something by the end of your play session.

Game design is tricky, especially with grinds. You have to trick the player into feeling like what they’re engaging with isn’t a grind. Classic might be significantly more grind-oriented, but because the game is more nuanced in its design/has more going on with it, it never feels like it is.

A good example is leveling. Leveling in Classic is grindy. There’s no denying that, and obviously, the leveling experience in Classic isn’t for everyone.

That said, both are designed in fundamentally different ways. Leveling in Classic is a much more fulfilling experience. The gear you get actually matters, the levels you obtain can be the little push you need to overcome a difficult encounter, and the spells you obtain always build upon your class fantasy.

In retail, leveling is an extension of the endgame. It somewhat has a purpose, but it’s not really trying to be its own thing. I feel like they could remove leveling tomorrow and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference to the overall game because its been so centralized around endgame group content.

Which brings me to my next point: No matter how much people want to say solo players are an extreme minority and always have been, it’s simply not true. Leveling was a complete experience; enough to make people engage with that part of the game only. Professions actually mattered and felt good. Secondary professions were routinely updated and added more depth to side activities.

The entire world lended itself to solo content. It was a massive world filled with secrets that weren’t directly marked on a map for you to find. It was a sandbox that wasn’t so rigid in its design.

I feel like people have been led to believe a false narrative about what this game used to be.

[Blitzkareeg-area-52 (Blitzkareeg)]

@Snozh-malganis

Like mythic raiders being forced into Korthia and mplus and pvp?

No you are not! Di it exactly like i use to! Do dungeons, then do NORMAL raid, then move to the higher tiers! Thats exactly how i had to gear while i was raiding. We didnt have things like M+ to get cheat gear to raid!

Dont talk to me about raiding, been there done that for many years. We even had to raid in the snow! Uphill both ways!!

[Sinelius-proudmoore]

Exactly!!! If people here want a SP WoW, go play WC3 or Skyrim. MMORPGs are not SP games.

[Snozh-malganis]

@Blitzkareeg-area-52

No you are not! Di it exactly like i use to! Do dungeons, then do NORMAL raid, then move to the higher tiers! Thats exactly how i had to gear while i was raiding. We didnt have things like M+ to get cheat gear to raid!

Mythic raiders are required in most guilds to do Korthia.

[Antiman-bloodhoof]

I have not seen anyone ask for WoW to be a single player game, just content one can do solo. Single player means you are the only one playing, multiplayer, in the case of WoW, means you can see and run into other players in the world. In other words, solo play =/= single player. Can you group with these other players? yes, if you want to, is it required to do so? nope. Even when I am doing solo content, I still see other players and we sometimes help each other out without grouping, so are we solo players or are we just players doing things our way?

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Olfen-ursin

@Mustachio-eredar

Guess my brain doesn’t function. What was the older experience?

I played Vanilla/TBC/Wrath and all I remember are grinds upon grinds with the occasional dungeon sprinkled in. Oh and… being a terrible player.

I won’t really try to deny that WoW’s core foundation has always been raids and dungeons, but having played this game for most of its lifespan, I feel like the game’s design has become more unraveled and less nuanced.

I think the largest difference between old-school WoW and new WoW is that when I’m playing new WoW, I feel like I’m always aware to the fact that I’m doing a grind because the content generally isn’t that engaging or rewarding. In Classic, even if I don’t make a lot of progress or gain a lot of levels, the game had a way of making you feel like you had accomplished something by the end of your play session.

Game design is tricky, especially with grinds. You have to trick the player into feeling like what they’re engaging with isn’t a grind. Classic might be significantly more grind-oriented, but because the game is more nuanced in its design/has more going on with it, it never feels like it is.

A good example is leveling. Leveling in Classic is grindy. There’s no denying that, and obviously, the leveling experience in Classic isn’t for everyone.

That said, both are designed in fundamentally different ways. Leveling in Classic is a much more fulfilling experience. The gear you get actually matters, the levels you obtain can be the little push you need to overcome a difficult encounter, and the spells you obtain always build upon your class fantasy.

In retail, leveling is an extension of the endgame. It somewhat has a purpose, but it’s not really trying to be its own thing. I feel like they could remove leveling tomorrow and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference to the overall game because its been so centralized around endgame group content.

Which brings me to my next point: No matter how much people want to say solo players are an extreme minority and always have been, it’s simply not true. Leveling was a complete experience; enough to make people engage with that part of the game only. Professions actually mattered and felt good. Secondary professions were routinely updated and added more depth to side activities.

The entire world lended itself to solo content. It was a massive world filled with secrets that weren’t directly marked on a map for you to find. It was a sandbox that wasn’t so rigid in its design.

I feel like people have been led to believe a false narrative about what this game used to be.

I feel like comparing the leveling experience of the base game (with 5+ years of development) to an expansion is fairly disingenuous.

Even as early as TBC, and as reminded with actively playing TBC classic, leveling was pushed to the wayside in terms of the main draw of the game.

And as expansions compounded, the requests for level scaling so players could level anywhere became louder and louder, always stating how other games use level scaling and it’s great. Of course not everyone likes level scaling.

[Pyromor-shandris (Pyromor)]

Imho,a true single player game is different than a solo ,solo is an individual that is a lone wolf and does content in his own time his way,this can be also in an MMo with others as people do solo content even in a MMo.

Single player doesn’t go by this rule is it strictly yourself,no outside parties ,no other people in game.

People get these messed up and complete miss the meaning.

[Axeyourself-illidan]

Thanks for the reply. I just used one of your ideas as an example. The demand might not be only limited to mounts and titles and I got what you said “cosmetic rewards”, that’s why I said “an alternative way”.
The issue was that blizzard will fall into a forever project to maintain 2 separate PVE content/systems 1 for solo players and 1 for hardcore players. And lacking distinguishment between those 2 will result in ppl abandoning hardcore content AKA game design and content creation effort wasted.

[Pyromor-shandris (Pyromor)]

Imho,the two should be separated as one is always set lower than the other regardless of the expansion. They should never mix as raider -mythic + would complain they need the gear the other has ,which isn’t what they do now at all.

Make solo gear for world open world content make it special only to the way of play or change the npc’s in the game to better balance and not force people to group.

[Sinelius-proudmoore]

They should go play ESO then, you can play most of it solo. WoW was designed to be played with people, not solo.

[Pyromor-shandris (Pyromor)]

Solo are you playing the game at dailies or are you playing consistently in a group ?