Speaking exclusively to the “just go play skyrim” line, for me personally the reason I play WoW is that I always played Warcraft games. There isn’t any other alternative there. If I want to continue playing in the warcraft universe, this is it. There is no “skyrim” for it. Blizzard made the choice to turn it into an MMO. I’ll happily play a single player RPG or RTS set in the Warcraft universe if Blizzard ever decides to make it.
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I couldn’t agree more. Most people have no problem with how others play. It’s the way that content gets rewarded is where the issues arrive. Raids should always have the best gear and they should always require groups. If players don’t want to participate, fine, just don’t expect the best gear and for the love of God , stop asking for raids to be soloable. That’s when you deserve to start hearing, “Find a single player game.” Don’t like it? Then stop trying to turn this game into one.
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There are a number of issues with the MMO structure currently, a lot of them have nothing to do with design but are instead culture. I never got into raiding because there weren’t many progression guilds on my server. I enjoyed LFR when it first came out but they made it so simplified it so much it became stupid easy and not worth my time. I tried raiding normal but there was so much drama.
I used to run dungeons, I tanked and healed them a lot. But then the community started the go go mentality and I stopped tanking them and ran them less. Then they systematized go go dungeons and I stopped running them entirely.
I used to mainly run BGs. Then they took away customization and gave PvE players an advantage in them. They took away abilities, made it about spamming rotation, gave PvE players the best gear for PvP, and took away vendors and made gear random.
I used to enjoy gathering and working on professions. Then they introduced pathfinder and started forcing the things I gave up on to do professions. They put crz in and suddenly I’m competing with high pop realms for server resources.
It’s not that I want solo raids, I just want them to stop going after my play style.
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People forget Warcraft started as a single player game. It’s natural many players like single player play styles.
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I personally can’t understand playing an MMO and wanting to be a solo player. But I’m not going to knock the playstyle at all or say that you don’t belong here. But in my opinion what doesn’t belong is the mentality that players who are solo should have the same opportunities as someone who groups up with friends or a guild.
What made WoW as strong as it did was the level of community that it fostered and how it was encouraged. Not forced, but encouraged. And to be honest in my eyes if this type of backlash were going on in any other MMO on the market, the game would be dead right now.
If you truly want to believe and push that a solo player player should be able to have similar progression than a raider in a MMO, then I’m going to put forward the Skyrim mentality. Because to me that just makes no sense.
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Sometimes it’s not entirely being a solo player, it’s about the type of group content.
I tend towards the feeling that dungeons and raids are more sometimes content. I like doing them with friends, but even with that, well, even after they changed it in Cata I still hold a grudge against Shadowfang Keep because I got roped into running it over and over for most of a day because my friend wanted a specific drop. I’m nowhere near the level of the people who push themselves and solo raid bosses while they’re current, but I do like to see how well I do in the dungeons solo when I start getting the ilevel from gear a couple patches down the line.
But I like seeing people in the world, I like joining in on a world boss kill, I don’t even mind the warfronts as it’s a different style of play than dungeons and raids, and with me having sworn off tanking way back when after getting burned by too many idiots, well, it also doesn’t have the hideous queue times.
There’s other stuff that people enjoy that is in a way solo but impossible to do in a single player game is stuff like playing the AH, and probably not as prevalent anymore there was the small scale social stuff like being the person who could craft that thing that someone in chat needs, or lockpicking things for others. There’s a ton of ways to play this game in a way that interacts with the people around you without having to set foot in a dungeon or raid.
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It’s always weird to see people suggest solo play doesn’t belong in MMOs when catering to solo play is why Vanilla blew up.
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I don’t really care about players that are wanting to keep to themselves having content. If you don’t want to step into a raid then that’s fine to me. But what I do disagree with is the current reward structure.
I don’t necessarily disagree. I’m cool with the raid gear getting fixed so that it’s more powerful than the Benthic stuff. I’m not so cool with the people who want to nerf the rest of the stuff instead.
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Raiders deserve the best PvE gear. But the people who don’t raid, more than half of the population, need to have a means of progression.
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Thing is that changed when they decided to remove tier sets from the game. And yeah Benthic gear made the situation even worse considering that some pieces are far superior than raiding gear. I’m not asking for nerfs to anything. I’m asking for the reward to equate to the effort put in. Because right now the structure in my eyes is a mess.
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Maybe they think tier token and JP vendors are too hard to find?
I mean that’s part of the frustration that I have with the game. They tell us that we’ll have a hard time finding vendors but then put in RNG loot boxes in both cities. It’s part of why I left because I hate having all these tools that we used to work with and then get them taken away and lied to like I’m a child.
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It’s just silly justifications 
I read somewhere once that there are 2 types of people who think they’re smarter than others. There are dumb people who do not understand intelligence and assume they’re smart. Then there are smart people who assume others are dumber than they really are.
I look to try and have a perspective on things that don’t try to come across as demeaning to others. Unless it’s blatant that it’s trolling or the person in question is trying to talk down to me. Then I start tossing pets at them (BM joke).
I also understand that there are subjects that I’m ignorant to. And have even changed my thoughts on things based on peoples posts and have admitted to being wrong here and there. At the end of the day I want everyone to win. I don’t want the game to be elitist central, nor do I want it to be casual square. I want it to be World of Warcraft.
And I have ideas on changes but in my mind I see no point in trying to give it when the team only wants to talk down to its players.
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I think the dumbest person in the world knows things the smartest person does not, and that there is minimal difference between them in absolute terms. It takes a lot of brains to just survive, people differ by degrees not steps.
I have a BM hunter as well.
Anyways I’m excited for the warcraft remaster. So it’s only natural I enjoy single player progression. I believe many people do play solo. I do think we should get shots at the same high ilvl gear. But raiding and other group content will always be the fastest ways to get the most gear. (personally I’m liking benthic gear progression path). I wonder what the spread is with what people do most in the game. It seems illogical to focus on minority populations if you really think about. Having some more focus on single player stuff would be appreciated.
I also think of benthic as sort of tier sets now that some people mention that.
The problem with gear isn’t that many solo players want raid gear, it’s that raid gear completely trivializes open world content aimed at solo players if you allow the gap to grow too wide. (even ignoring any differences in skill and preferred tempo of play)
One possible solution would be to make seperate benthic-like buffs for each playstyle (so open-world gear would be the best in the open world, raid gear would be the best in raids, dungeon gear would be the best in dungeons, PvP gear would be the best in PvP, etc). But that risks further fracturing the game into isolated islands.
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I disagree with the shot at the same high ilvl gear. And before people start jumping on this as “the elitist trying to take things away from the casuals” this has nothing to do with my /inspecting players. It’s more to do with the fact that this randomizes gear progression.
I forget which boss I killed in M Uldir but I got pants from the encounter once we killed the boss for the first time. I then went to do an Invasion and ended up getting a titanforge that was actually better than the Mythic piece of gear. I was a little confused and upset.
When it comes to doing PvE the best gear should always come from raids in my eyes with M+ coming to a close second. Raiding is the hardest content in the game at the highest level in PvE. It should always have the best gear the game has to offer.
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I agree if you mean best PvE gear. I think the best PvP gear should come from PvP, not PvE.