This was a much needed change. Concept of two factions are outdated
Change is always uncomfortable at first so I understand people’s resistance
3 Likes
Good now change more pillars.
2 Likes
Whoa now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
This is a good point. Why should anyone waste their time when other games offer actual “fun” for the mass?
Gonna use the ol’ Final Fantasy here as a comparison because it’s the other MMO I’m investing in now, but this also applies to other modern games in the genre too;
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve heavily considered switching my PvE progression over to XIV the more I dabble with the raids there. The way gearing works, the shorter instances, and the scaling with Ultimates makes it a lot more appealing for somebody like me who doesn’t have a set schedule at work ontop of chronic fatigue. (…and this is disregarding telegraphs, which makes XIV much more playable now that my peripheral vision is just gone.)
“But it’s not as hard!” - I’m getting older. I don’t care about things being as hard as possible for fun, I care about them being fun, and my ability to actually participate.
It’s getting harder and harder to schedule my life around a game, and finding out that I don’t have to for raiding was a bit of a wake-up call because my experience with raiding in other games had them treat the game much like WoW.
Sometimes, a person just wants to log into an RPG, play dress up with avatars that don’t have texture resolutions from 2004, hang out with their friends of all skill levels and make progress on something that feels meaningful, and/or be immersed. Still doable in WoW in some cases - especially counting some… recent developments RP players have done lately with the game’s engine- , but it’s fallen behind heavily on the “social without competition” factors - even the RP servers are starting to feel it with the lack of housing, and for some races, lack of customization still. (I don’t really play high elves. I got some hair colours. Woo?)
I’ve spent just as much time just posing and taking pictures with my character in XIV as I do spamming battlegrounds in WoW sometimes. Both are their own type of fun, but I can also spam battlegrounds in XIV, and very soon, all that time spamming their equivalent of battlegrounds gives me progress towards the seasonal rewards - and I can do it with my friends at any skill level. WoW? I absolutely have to be playing PvP competitively, or I get nothing for my time. (I’m over 500 prestige, and the general consensus of feedback I have from a large PvP community and my smaller ones I used to host was that prestige didn’t feel rewarding because of how brutally long it takes to get anything out of it. You can complete battle passes in other games wholly before walking out with your next tier.)
WoW really does need to look at what other games in the genre are doing, emulate what’s working for them for larger audiences, and copy it without trying to place some weird spin on it like they did with Garrisons.
Keep it simple.
And we need simple more than ever right now. (…and accessibility.)
14 Likes
Hopefully Phil hires a new director once the merge happens.
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Our group still bests people who are in their “prime” (18-24) while we are all between 31-39. We still kick their butts because we are generally speaking good players. Age will start to affect you in your late 50ies.
But the game got too time-consuming which is why stopped raiding. It’s not worth it and having simply “fun”, as you put it, is great enough.
4 Likes
Blizzard admits that sky is blue and bear poops in the woods! Got any more breaking news?
1 Like
I stopped raiding because of a minor health issue. And issues stemming from it just made it difficult to coordinate being in raid and needing to be up for appointments and such. Then after I was away, I just didn’t want to raid anymore. I’m in my 40s now and sometimes wonder if it’s just age now. Like I had all the patience and time to want to raid before. And it felt more fun. Now I’m old and curmudgeonly.
It’s partly age because we have done it way too many times before - but if the rewards or the effort isn’t worth the time, then it’s not your fault.
6 Likes
And his Free Guy Antwan sized ego keeps him from even doing cross faction correctly.
It’s just all smoke and mirrors. Cross faction is only for rated play and raiding.
Boosting is stopped only for outsiders. Management’s own boosting efforts are still legal via guilds and “friends.”
So weak, but apparently it’s good enough to fool some people who just want blizz to be better.
3 Likes
I’m afraid COVID sort of rocked me a bit too hard and I had some brain damage prior. Without not notable telegraphs, it’s getting rough for me. Literally have seeing eye-priests in PvP now, which I’m thankful for lol. I am too young for this ffs.
Granted, my experience is making me realize that WoW’s engine could do with some updates that could help both the aging playerbase, we’re gonna get there eventually, and people with disabilities. But you know how mentioning accessibility goes on these forums; git gud, and the mere thought of having telegraphs in this game breaks immersion for players who heckle folks from RP servers. 
Grumpy rambling aside, if they just removed the systems, and let people work on content at their own pace, things would be a lot better. And I can absolutely see them getting better if they change some of their mentality.
M+ is one of the biggest issues. It’s a massive time sink for absolutely no reason.
Why can’t I just pick the dungeon I want to do, and work on the difficulties I’ve unlocked? I’ve barely touched the system despite being a former Mistwalker with an embarrassing amount of CM runs under my belt. I want that back; the spending all night in a single dungeon vibes.
If I unlocked a 21 Plaguefall, I should be able to work on that 21 Plaguefall as much as I want to. But, there’s key RNG, and if you fail the key, it gets downgraded. It’s just not fun to deal with. It’s a punishment, and just makes trying new things out in dungeons not fun - leading to pugs being more miserable than they have to be too.
Simple would be walk in, select difficulty, go.
Doing dungeons I don’t want to do isn’t fun.
3 Likes
Yeah, this is absolutely worthless.
During the BFA alpha they were super stubborn. They were adamant that their internal team knew better than the testers because “they had the full picture, players did not”. This is specifically about Azerite gear.
Remember people saying stuff like Azerite is boring, class design is bland, azerite has to be interesting? and then we got passive damage traits and stuff?
Then they do it all over in SL with Covenants… just to later free it up once everyone is sick of it.
They do not learn from their mistakes. So them admitting to them is worthless.
14 Likes
It only took the Blizzard 15 years to realize this…but better late than never.
Oh, I agree. The world should feel alive and that it advances, not only when a city is destroyed (which is the only advance Blizzard does in the world.)
I was just saying that factions are something huge of the game and removing it is not something to take so slightly. It is a core structure of a game whose change needs to be taken carefully.
I don’t think “anymore” works there. Anymore would usually be used like “It’s not like the old days anymore.” It relates to a post-past statement directly.
“It’s adapt or die now” makes more sense. I mean I think we all get what you meant, but it’s a very awkward statement. You’re not referencing anything we’ve gotten past or over, so there’s no “anymore” in your statement realistically - it’s just a hanging word. Even “It’s adapt or die.” without any extra words would be less awkward.
1 Like
Ion should have been let go a long long long time ago, he is terrible for this game.
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Except DBM or it’s like are ‘mandatory’ for progression groups as it calls literally everything out and flashes a million things on the screen warning you. The game is practically designed to need these add-ons now which is getting kinda crazy. Lol
But no, don’t do it in game though.
rolls eyes
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I think is like a turn of phrase from some region. Maybe the Midwest or Northeast? Some people throw in the word “anymore” kind of randomly.
I don’t really mind it. But there are some misstatements that grind my gears… like when people say :
“I could care less” . That signifies they care to a degree, and it is possible for them to care less. They mean to say “I couldn’t care less”.
Factions were always a marketing ploy, the game was never really about the faction conflict. Ion even admits this in the interview lol. Faction pride was an incredible idea for WoW’s early brand, but now it’s outlived the use.