https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQzdAsjWGPg
Let me begin with a story.
2004 - My cousin introduced me to this game called World of Warcraft. I didn’t own a computer, but he let me play on his account. He didn’t get mad that I enjoyed the game and tried to play it every time I went over - when he was farming for raids and such.
2007 - I got my own account and Burning Crusade, my grandfather got it for me as a birthday present. I still didn’t know much about what I was doing. I played on the server Ner’zhul, had no friends, joined a guild called Leper Colony. The leader joined it because - even in 2007 - people were a bit elitist. So, he made a colony of ‘lepers’ that helped one another out. I introduced friends from school to the game.
2008: Moved to roleplay servers, made mistakes, learned writing, and it became a passion in life that shaped me all the way through college - to the point I’m starting my own business and writing my own tabletop RPG. It was during this time I started tanking and raiding when Death Knights released.
Cataclysm: I enjoyed the difficulty, switched between a tank and mage. When LFR released, I opened portals to old Dalaran in front of the Eye of the Iris portal in Dragon Soul. My guild on Wyrmrest Accord laughed for days about that.
Mists of Pandaria: Got to be one of the highest rated monks - gnome monk in the world before raid release, deleted the character because I felt that the class was boring… I’ve deleted a lot of high level characters.
Warlords of Draenor: Thoroughly enjoyed the start, got disillusioned when developers said they knew what fun was and we didn’t.
Legion: Started rough, evened out after listening to complaints and around the third patch it was nice. Tanked all through that expac.
BFA: Hated it… absolute hatred.
Shadowlands: This is what finally killed it for me. I will be posting a list of concerns that plagued me over the years.
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Developer Attitudes -
A. During Classic, some classes felt incomplete. During TBC, everything became viable - no spec or class was, functionally, broken on a core level. Wrath of the Lich King further expanded on this. Cataclysm cut talent points in half.
B. Despite the above, we had Dev water-coolers, Devs explaining what they were doing, why they were doing it, and so on.
C. At some point, the developers became antagonistic toward the customers. You do not tell another human being what fun is. See the egg-timer argument from ex-devs of Blizzard. If you are hostile to your customers, your business doesn’t do well in the long run. Stop listening to bean counters and play your own game.
D. Some players are jerks, yes. But people only give criticism if they care about the product. -
Game Design vs Classes
A. If you’re going to make mechanics dance-dance revolution and give certain specs and classes the ability to move and cast on the run to compensate for this - you better let every caster move and cast. And I’m not just talking about a Slipstream talent.
B. With everyone having a gap-closer, root break, silence, bounce, stun - turret casters are a dead philosophy as they can be permanently disabled. Melees only have to worry about bounces or stuns to be disabled in content when casters have arbitrary amounts of trash thrown at them in PVE that just disable hardcasting.
C. Wheelchair Classes - classes that have no movement-speed buffing abilities despite the ability to tank - when every other class has some form of mobility. -
Mandatory Grinds and Time-Gating
A. Blizzard was rough on this in Classic and TBC. Eased up in Wrath. All of a sudden, it returned in Shadowlands… worse than ever before. We no longer have an option on how to play - we HAVE to get our legendaries, anima, and so on or risk being permanently behind. If you’re raiding, this is unacceptable.
B. Players are paying the price of a Triple A game (in my case, bought collectors’ edition). There is no excuse to arbitrarily gate them out of things they’ve paid for. Imagine if Ubisoft made it to where players could only do one chapter of the Assassin’s Creed story every week. Either give us a complete first patch with everything we’ve paid for. We’re paying you $15.00 a month on top of the price of a Triple A game. You’re taking advantage of our time investment over the years to stretch out your earnings.
C. Loot nerfs are just another form of time-gating. Prove me wrong. -
Content
A. We’re paying more for less. We’ve paid $60.00 to do the same dungeons for the next few years or however long it’s going to take for the next expansion.
B. None of the systems have changed from BFA, you’ve put a new paint job on them. While, granted, Conduits give the illusion of choice, they’re just like Azerite powers - the best ones win, period. World Quests are World Quests.
C. Borrowed power: Covenants should have been balanced. There is no reason more than 90% of players should be picking the same covenant other than they like it (not forced to take it).
- I’m writing this not as to burn down everything on the way out, I’m writing this because, at one point, I genuinely cared for this game. I’ve come back a few times since I’ve quit, but I’ve never, ever hated a first patch of a single game this much, despite doing the content. Laugh all you want at my 3/10 heroic. I didn’t have fun with raiding, I didn’t have fun with mythic+. The mechanics feel like I’m playing dance-dance revolution while pressing a few buttons when I’m not playing dance-dance revolution. It’s become more mechanics than gameplay, I feel (I’m not saying mechanics need to go) that punishing and wiping entire groups because of one player’s mistake is just getting way, way out of hand.
Goodbye, folks. I loved the guilds I was a part of, the friends I’ve made, and the friends I’ve lost - either by quitting or receiving more grim news.
I love this game for the memories it left, not for what it’s become. 24 days left on the subscription. Ask me anything.
