I have played World of Warcraft since 2006, I never missed a months subscription, thats a long time. I was never an epic player - but I loved this game. It was a place to go as I overcame the loss of 4 children after my divorce, and later through dark times of bankruptcy. I revelled in the UI and addons, UI design was something I really enjoyed. The community was great (most of the time), I have been in some great guilds over the years, the two that am in now raid regularly and I get to participate when I can in amongst young children and a work schedule.
But Blizzard.
The game isnt family friendly, its all oriented to getting better gear which has to be supported by pointless and boring hours long grinds to gather azerite or artefact power just so you can feel welcome in a raid, heavens forbid you take time to be with your family. This is now exacerbated by the e-sports speed runs and the stupid world first celebration promoting the idea that the best gear is the only way.
I loathe gambling. I am someone who when he sees a poker machine den, I just want to rip it apart, and sadly - thats what this beloved game has become - a gigantic poker machine.
I like people, but dare not join groups outside my guild - you can 100% know there will be some kind of abuse in a PUG these days.
So. This isnt a rant about me quitting the game. I havenât unsubscribed. I hope you will come back to what WoW used to be. ButâŚWoW isnt that safe place anymore.
I have started playing another MMO - Final Fantasy XIV. Perhaps it isnt quite as large a world, or perhaps quite as artistic world. But everything matters in that games world, getting to the end game is as important as the end game itself. The people are lovely. But Im not here to spout about Final Fantasy XIV.
I am here to tell you what the players of that game call us. WoW Refugees.
And I am. We are fleeing something that was once great, with despair in our hearts to begin again in a better place. More and more are appearing every day - we have a Facebook page in the Oceanic region for FF XIV and every day more wow refugees drift in.
These arent players that wanted mobile, they are players that wanted an MMO - they still want to play an MMO.
Blizzardâs design push for esports and âengagementâ (aka - keep people interacting with the microtransaction platform as much as possible) has been a massive detriment to the game.
Theyâd probably be making more money and keeping more people interested if they werenât trying so hard to push monetization and make people feel obligated to log on instead of wanting to log on.
Crazy to think that they have customers who desperately want to buy their product and yet keep pushing them away.
I can 100% agree on the gambling aspect. The loot problems in this game is getting out of control. But for everything else, Iâm sorry but youâre wrong. I love mythic plus speed runs. Itâs one of the most enjoyable experiences int he game to push high keys with friends. I loved the MDI, I found it insanely entertaining. The world first push isnât even sponsored by Blizzard, thatâs all community driven, showing how entertaining that can be by the regular 50k - 100k viewers Method had the entire time, and Blizz isnt even involved outside of keeping an eye out for tuning and bugfixes.
If you played vanilla you should be aware that the game requires a fraction of the time to gear up for raiding. I remember having to raid 12+ hours a week for progression. I can do it in 4 - 6 hours now. I remember some classes like warlocks having to log in hours before raid to prepare (making soul shards or something?).
And as far as pugs go, pugs are pugs buddy. When was they last time they were a good thing?
Pugs were great before Dungeon Finder was added because you had a reputation to uphold. If you acted like a giant turd then nobody would group with you anymore. All you had left to do was stand around in Org reading posts on the realm forums about what an turd you are.
Welcome to an mmorpg. Rng and community (good or bad) is all a part of it. I really donât understand your gambling comparison though. If anything gear is now too easy to get. I was mythic geared last tier with only having killed one mythic raid boss. I am slightly over heroic raid geared currently after having run heroic partially only twice, and expect to be mythic raid geared by the end of the tier only having killed one or two mythic bosses again this tier. Gear is by no means a gamble.
Iâm struggling so, SO hard to stick with WoW through this BFA nonsense but I feel so⌠Alone.
All of my friends have quit and all of my guilds across my toons, sans Gnomeregan Forever, have died with no more than a seldom single player logging in.
Time walking brings out further toxicity in the community to the point where youâll be damned and immediately vote kicked for " lol afk" if you need to ask to even check on your own crying child.(Hell with the
greedy spastic team, family is family)
My friends, who are now in FFXIV along with hundreds if not thousands of WoW refugees,are absolutely flabberghasted that Iâm still here and warned me quite a while ago that it is going to get progressively worse when they jumped ship when they saw the water leaking through the floor boards so to speak.
I love this game. I love it unlike any other form of entertainment but Ion Hazzikostas, the soulless lapdog of Activision, is truly the death of this game.
I have had to balance wow with family responsibilities since 2004. I know I canât raid besides LFR. I just do the best I can to take advantage of catch-up mechanics since I am always behind the curve. I donât kid myself into thinking that I need to compete in a top guild. Pugs are still fun.
There was an poster on the OW section who was a heavy investor that called blizzard out on this practice and said it has a dangerous direction. Also called out what would happened, of course everyone called him a E-vestor and didnât know what he was talking about.
Well after the lay offs he came back and linked to his old post and made some people eat their words.
This is true, Iâll give you that. But at the same time, there so many players in the LFG tool that, through either being new to the game or just not caring, seem to have such a lack of intelligence it make you wonder how they remember to breath. And unfortunately LFG pairs these people with skilled players and generates toxicity.
I donât know how to fix this other than giving every person an IQ test before applying to a group. Weâve tried to use all other kinds of metrics like Gearscore and Raiderio to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it doesnât even come close to what server community used to provide.
Similar story here. Iâm enjoying a mini-Renaissance thanks to random bgsâŚbut eventually the "lotteryâ style of playing the game will finish me off.
Island Expedition Lottery
iLevel Lottery
Azerite Trait Lottery
Thereâs more, but those are the ones that annoy the hell out of me. Gearing has always been pretty linear this expansion, but at least it was reliable.
In lieu of talents and abilities we getâŚAzerite traits. But those are a lottery style. It would be SO much better if these were sockets to fill with traits or something, but instead there are is a reasonably good chance that unless you grind hard core you will never get the âperfectâ mix of traits you are hunting for.
You can simply earn your raid-ready endgame gear through successive runs and token drops per week - youâre not even screwed over if you donât get/win a token drop. When you win a roll after the next run THEN youâre drop locked for the week! You can keep doing raids and trials until you get what youâre looking for!
Not to forget the tomestone gear you can earn thatâs endgame prepped and efficient to tackle the highest levels of content to get better gear that you earn via tokens and baubles that you trade in and CHOOSE WHAT GEAR YOU WANT FOR THE GEAR SLOT - EVEN THE WEAPONS AND THE ACCESSORIES.
That is miles and miles ahead of WoWâs RNG Mercy loot system.
You donât like endgame content. So FFXIV will be great until you get to the end. You say you donât want to grind for gear yet please let us know what your /played is. Iâm sure it shows that you used to grind. WoW is the same and you changed.
Not really .the game is being handled by noobs that donât know know what they are doing .
That is not the case with ff14. The director of ff14 doesnot come out with stupid face on q&a like ion does .
Itâs really not Blizzardâs job to make a game that is family schedule friendly. That being said, you clearly havenât played older MMOs, like Everquest. Now that was a timesink, to say the least. By comparison, WoW is a dream. Heck, current WoW isnât remotely as âhardcoreâ as older xpacs were. You can take time with your family, thatâs called prioritizing. In other MMOs, if you didnât spend all your time trying to grind away at the various systems, youâd fall behind and never catch up. WoW has plenty of catch up systems in place that, while they wonât give you the best gear, at least let you be viable. It wasnât like that back in the day.
I feel you on the RNG aspect. Itâs frustrating.
PUGs have always been kind of abusive. Thatâs just the nature of the beast. At the end of the day, itâs just some rando, so who cares what they say?
I think youâve got a case of rose-colored nostalgia here. Iâve played since Vanilla, and thereâs always been toxic jerks. I donât really know what you mean by WoW not being âsafeâ anymore. These days, nobody really uses general chat, and with sharding/CRZ, you can essentially have a zone to yourself at times. Sure, PUGs can have some idiots in them, but instance chat is white noise to me at this point. You could do a heroic/LFR with chat turned off entirely. My 2cp.
![:cry:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/cry.png?v=6" ":cry:")