No. Heck no. Fresh level 70 wasn’t a stupid condition for me to make my point with. My point is that it didn’t take me long to get my character to the point where there is nothing in the open world that’s a challenge. If I wanted to play with hypothetical challenges I’d make alts and play the game that way.
The open world is not immersive, threatening, and challenging. Of course if I take all of my equipment off it would be a challenge, but that’s not the point. The point is that, and it didn’t take long for me to get here, the entirely of the beautiful world that they’ve created this expansion is below me. There’s no challenge or mystery left. I can go anywhere I want, defeat anything I want, and there’s not a single piece of loot there that I would be happy to get. The other guy called BS on that. Don’t then go say that under certain circumstances that I’m wrong.
The open world now exists as the host of annoying dailys that unlock timegated, long-term rewards that I’ve progressed past long before I was even allowed to achieve them. The open world is now basically a lobby which my character hangs out or flies over in order to do instanced dungeons or raids, but only once a week because they don’t allow me to get rewards past that.
That’s all not because I’m not a kid anymore, that’s because that’s where they force end game players to find meaningful loot.
Same here. On that we agree! 
I’m in game waiting for you to solo this 50m hp rare so you can give me my 50k
1 Like
Breh I was farming rep or Azerothian Diamonds to sell if I wasn’t in a raid.
Or I was farming mats for my raid consumables.
Might have spent some time in Org filling groups too.
There is almost no chance that more people were idle in org than are currently idling while waiting on a queue or an invite in Dorn.
You can more easily play this game without ever leaving a city than at any point in its history.
Blizzard leans into it. You can’t even experience everything the game has to offer if you don’t.
PTR is ok, but you are 100% right.
The testers should work 8 hours a day, with an assistant lead tester managing a database of ranked bugs. Lead tester helps the assitant and parleys with the higher ups. I say parley because IMO, a good tester is the last line of defense of crap being put out.
No. Anybody who’s played classic has an appropriate comparison and knows retail just sucks now.
2 Likes
The point isn’t more or less. It’s dispelling the notion that sitting around in town is only a recent phenomenon. Proportionally speaking, I’d say it’s roughly the same as it’s always been.
I’d say that queued content, prof tables, and tokens make this essentially impossible. There has never been a time in WoW that you could play so easily without ever leaving the safety of the capital city.
There are people that achieve the highest levels of PvE and PvP content goals that exist without leaving town to do more than get from 70-80.
And that’s IF they even do that much, since you can just level in queued dungeons.
So if you were 35 when this game came out where does this fit in?
Do you stop learning at 35?
I think that’s a fair point but on top of that - they have worked to shrink the world at every possible corner, I mean there is a portal to pretty much everywhere these days. In the old days - especially prior to Cataclysm - traversing even the EK or Kalimdor was an actual journey without the aid of a mage or warlock.
1 Like
Your two examples for you personally having to go out into the world was for farming. Does that not exist anymore? Do people not do that now? You list tokens and crafting as reasons to stay in town but ignore that there are more reasons to go out in the world now like events, world bosses, and daily quests that were not there before.
It exists. I do it.
And then there are also plenty of people that think “I’d rather spend an hour of income than a day of farming.”
And they can. Because Tokens.
Chances are very high that more people are spending time idling (or doing things) in town than they’ve ever been able to.
Am I saying this is bad? No. I’m just saying that one thing follows another.
It’s the closest experience I’ve had to that feeling of logging into WoW for the first time back in 2004. Totally agree that everyone should give it a shot.
1 Like
That’s not an counter. Gold buying has always been rampant, officially sanctioned or not. Plenty of people bought gold to save an hour back then as well.
Buying gold was much more heavily frowned upon than it is today.
It’s literally a forum flex now. 
That’s weird because that’s exactly what happened in Classic and SoD so when you say it’s a myth, I was there and I saw it first hand back in 2004 - 2007 and 2019
2 Likes
The combat in retail in actually mindnumbing.
Mobs in westfall legitimately have more meaningful mechanics than 99% of mobs in retail.
Mobs in westfall might flee and pull more mobs which was dangerous, they might throw a trap at you, and their fireballs actually hurt. Also the game was designed in such a way that you were supposed to kite enemies.
Retail you just stand there and dodge swirling circles (or don’t, it doesn’t matter, the do no damage.)
And you’re so right about the gimmeck quests. Why can’t quests just be “hey there is an evil priest in this dark church, go kill him.” Stuff that’s action and exploration oriented.
That’s besides the point. The point is that it’s a myth thinking everyone was out in the world before doing stuff when there was literally nothing to do but farm. Plenty of people sat idle in town like they do now.