Where did I say I wasn’t casual? I have raided mythic before sure, but not since the first tier. I was gonna bring that up, since people are assuming I’m an elitist who’s trying to invaladate every casual players opinion. 
You didn’t include yourself in your post. In fact, the first time that you wrote the words “we” was when you began to be condescending.
Yep. I was trying to avoid having to read another dozen posts stating the obvious, but it does appear condescending. I should have left that part out, since it was clearly futile. Live and learn right?
Well, saying the word gap implies that no middleground or grey area (which i guess that means LFR and Mythic only exists by implying this way), it’s on a spectrum. It’s not “Your either hardcore or your not”, it’s much more nuanced then that.
From a perspective as a somewhat casual, i can’t see removing things as a good thing, like reforging for example. I loved Reforging because it allows me control over my gear and where to allocate my stats, if i want more hit, i’l gladly do that. More RPG’s need something like that really, something that truly makes a gear you have yours that isn’t just enchanting and so on, while also making it powerful.
Marketing hype.
I don’t know, i seen plenty of choices to be made during my 8 years of playing WoW.
Being casual doesn’t mean your automatically alright with something.
Lets not associate those two things together like that, because you don’t have to be a casual to dislike or like anything, and in the same way with hardcore. From my opinion, I dislike the idea of easily swapping covenants, but i dislike the idea of perma locking it for the entire expansion, (because this isn’t true single-player mind you). I like the compromise that Blizzard set out where you can leave and rejoin enough, but it will be long ways up to get back to the point you were before.
People can care whatever they may please.
It’s just another blizz catchphrase, which typically get thrown out when they try to put a positive spin on changes they think will be unpopular.
7 Likes
Don’t mind me
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
5 Likes
I’m fine with the changes. It’s like choosing your class and spec. It’s not even like they lock you into your choice. If you want to switch, you can.
The only thing that needs to happen is proper balancing so that no single covenant is good at everything, even within a single game mode.
3 Likes
I mean this is the stickler. Blizzard have NEVER managed to balance a “different but equal” style of power. They failed with Legiondaries, they failed with Azerite Traits, they failed with Essences, they failed with Corruptions.
So what you’re saying is that Covenants are Morally Grey?
1 Like
Not if the game’s Singleplayer. Hello Mods. 
I thought WoW is supposed to be an RPG? 
Also, solo content still exists last time i check.
Most underrated comment ever. 
It’s okay. No one else is buying the meaningful choices line either.
8 Likes
Choices exist in real life, but apparently you never had to make any.
Mmorpgs by design are social games. WoW thought it would be smart to add more and more solo content and we’ve seen what most of that has done via opportunity cost.
Garrisons cost a bunch of WoD content and a raid tier. Solo content like the mage tower aren’t a problem because they force players to learn better reactions to mechanics.
Every bit of solo content added could have been group content but the game has shifted farther away from being a social game and is losing more and more players over time.
People come for the cool looking content or story but used to stay for the community. What are they staying for now, oh right they don’t stay. They play a few months and leave till the mext expansion.
1 Like
This is only a tiny fraction of the players. Also you can’t change anything too much when Ion belongs to Elitist Jerks especially, who knows what other devs are in Mythic raiding guilds.
What does this have to do with your above paragraph?
Why would the top players play the same way as everybody else? They’re the ones that build the meta, its everyone else who plays the same way as the top players.
Assuming you’re remotely serious about going into high end keys and Mythic raiding. I shift between the meta talent build and my own talent build frequently, I pull even MORE dps on Single Target with my build than the other.
Also if people didn’t copy meta builds, every single player going into serious content would have to spend at least 100 hours through trial and error and theorycrafting before they come out with what everyone already knows.
That argument is like saying everyone is copying scientists even though they built the science that exists already, you doing your own research will only prove their findings.
Heroic and mid-tier keys.* Those levels are so flexible nowadays especially at end of expansion when everyone is catching up to 460+ on their mains.
I dont know about the real reasons but I can tell you that this problem exists even before Modern WoW. In fact, playing non meta specs were very punishing in the old days to an extent. Times dont change in this case.
The devs have taken steps to have players make the free choice to choose their own builds and only suffer 5-10% loss of hps/dps for deviating from the meta, which is negligible for most content and some would argue, at the extreme ends of content too. Anyone can become a Pseudo-Mythic Raider because it is tradition the first 3 bosses are so easy every raid tier now.
Man Ralph’s tongue must be dry af from all that boot licking, seriously I wonder what he hopes to achieve by idolizing everything Ion does, does he think Ion himself will come and reward him or something? It’s kinda pathetic…
2 Likes
looks at the past MMO’s and back at you.
Well define what you mean by a social game first. If were talking about something like Second Life, then yea, the game is definitionally designed to be social, and leans towards that, which i guess you can say it’s a Social game, because all you can do really is chat and make literal vitural content. But in terms of MMORPG’s like WoW where it just takes the idea of needing people to complete group content in an online game, i don’t see what makes it specialized for socializing. Does it has social elements, sure. But a social game?
WoW had solo content since it’s inception, you can solo vanilla/classic while leveling just fine.
WoD was just rushed out of the door really.
Well Visions, Torghast and Leveling can also be group content as well. Are we just going to ignore those because you have the option to solo?
Plus if i want to socialize with people, i’l gladly do it on my own terms. I don’t need the game to prod me to do so.
And some people just stay for the content, and wouldn’t care too much for the community aspect.
WoW is real life now?
3 Likes
They tipped their hand with Torghast. They put in timers and said if players have the ability to wait 10 minutes between pulls many will feel the need to do it. Players are very competitive and will do whatever it takes for the sake of their parses.
Mages don’t complain that they can’t use rogue abilities. They don’t complain because it isn’t possible. We do however carry around 8 sets of gear and swap constantly in the raid… not because we want to, but because we can.
Blizz knows all this and is simply putting in a few more “can’ts” so we do feel like we have to.
It reflect it, as dies mist fictional works often do. You just want what you want, and that’s it.
The timers don’t exist anymore lol. Also, it was the casuals complaining about wanting to spend 10 minutes between pulls.
If nothing rlse, all this drama is really highlighting to me how deep the culture gap is between people who play the content (and see the character as just a tool to overcome the content/challenge/ladder) vs people who play the character (and see the content as a collection of activities for their character to take part in). I always knew the gap was there, but didn’t appreciate just how deep it was.
(But even that division is an oversimplification as clearly there are people comfortable starting with a fixed choice of class yet who still want to morph it endlessly to adapt to specific situations - i’m still struggling to find the best words to capture all the diversity of perspectives/playstyles)
1 Like