Is blizz's game design declining?

WoTLK had vendor gear which already trumps all the RNG gambling/FOMO gearing that BFA features.

Also that isn’t true there is more to do now than WotLK because the badge system made running any content relevant.

PVP is the worst state it has ever been as BFA PVP is really unbalanced and PVP gearing in BFA is the worst in the history of the game.

WotLK by season 3/4 was well balanced as all DPS could put out good/great burst or good/great sustain. Cool downs were powerful and there was really counterplay due to how dispel mechanics worked back then. That is why arena participation was much higher back in WotLK than currently in BFA.

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I agree PvP gearing is a joke rn, and super painful if you JUST want to do PvP as a fresh 120 or something.

I disagree about class balance in WotLK, my prot spec still wasnt a viable tank and ret was still a joke meme spec.

I don’t think the badge system means more to do, just that you can grind at your own pace and no life it which I guess is better design? I dunno.

I also hated daily quest hubs, and I dislike the current dailies we have in Naj and Mechagon, I’d much rather fly to a WQ and knock it out real quick and not have to worry about my quest log.

The rise and fall of Sub numbers, that’s what it boils down to. People can say this and that but in the end, it’s their act that counts. Higher sub number means more people liked than disliked.

Also, it’s interesting to observe how human memory works. It seems when we reminisce the past, we remember only the good things and forget about bad things, interesting selective memory system that we have. Also, the value we give to things. It seems the more work we put into, the more we value them later.
Also, it’s interesting to see some people hating something but enjoying the processing of hating it, really relishing it, whereas for some other people, that hate can be genuine.

Because the “hidden” herb/mine nodes I bugged, in both the BC and BFA betas (for example):

Are still “hidden”, as in you can’t get to them.

We are not the ones who treat PTR, or even the betas, like a free to play Wow test. Blizzard is the one who does that. When the beta testing user DOES bug stuff, nothing happens (well, unless maybe it is something hugely exploitative that is noticed.)

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Short answer: Absolutely

Longer answer: Every post-MoP expac has been sub-standard. Legion had amazing shinies that made it seem better but it still had loads of garbage “content” and grinds that felt punishing rather than rewarding and heroic. Devs sit in their “dojo” bubble and invent new game-play that few players really like rather than going back to what WORKED and fixing things. They dodge real challenges like making flying part of the game rather than gating it and just go with what is cheap and easy and, most of all, what will stretch out content.

I miss good WoW. I don’t know who left during MoP – probably several people – but the current leadership at Blizzard just isn’t very good. Especially the decision-makers on WoW.

(Caveat: The art team is now and has always been the best.)

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Without that selective memory few women would have more than one child. Labor is painful. Probably few men would have more than one child if they really remembered being exhausted and chasing a toddler and diapers. But we don’t recall that stuff clearly while we DO remember in detail the cuteness and love and good parts.

Our ability to feel those good memories more than we do those bad memories is largely responsible for our success as a species. For lots of reasons, birth being one.

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Yes.

Blizzard has chosen profits over design quality.

I’ve played since 2005, so I do have a somewhat experienced perspective. Please keep in mind, some other players have played more than even I.

The problem is that Blizzard does not seem to grasp mentally just how much of a MINT that they are sitting on if they’d just put in the time and effort.

WoW could compete with the MCU financially if they’d put the story into a proper state. Gameplay first? More like, “Story first, Gameplay gets you there.”

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I will have to agree, but that is the trap of getting bigger, having more competition and getting into that frame of mind squeezing as much as they can out of the small amount of content they actually put out.

This is also a problem we’ve run into when you don’t have the same team in charge in their same positions with their main driving force to be creating games that are quality-fun.

Instead we are getting more traps for the weaker minded that don’t want to feel like they are missing out, casino style tactics, funneling players into these progression systems to keep you subbed.

“Time is money, friend.”

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This is really the truth.

Even TBC and Wrath were crucified on the forums when they were current.

Forums are an extremely minor community.

Also

Might want to take those rose tinted glasses off.

I think a big part of the problem since Warlords is they don’t seem to have confidence that players will stay to play the game. They’ve shifted from designing content for players and letting them have a go at it once released to designing content to keep players locked down and only able to play how the designers think they should. It’s a fear-based design. A fear that players won’t stay.

Everything is more time-gated, content is doled out in smaller and smaller bits, and they don’t trust players to make their own decisions for all manner of things, even as basic as picking a piece of gear from a vendor. Overall, players want a more deterministic game with the freedom to choose their content and Blizzard doesn’t want to allow that anymore. So, the developers and the player-base are at odds now with different goals and I don’t see this as a winnable approach for the developers.

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Shoveling out xpacks every two years became unsustainable a while ago, now they’re at a point in which they can’t stop pumping them out or everyone will unsub if a content drought extends for more than 6 months and 2 years feels like little time to fix the game at a fundamental level.

At this point, I’d rather have Blizzard put WoW on maintenance mode and work on WoW 2 or something.

than the legendary cloak?

I already covered this in a previous post, but I disagree, obviously.
Major bugs are fixed, and the PTR and Beta does help with that, but its just way too slow.

You can’t expect 10 people’s reports to fix the entire game.
That’s the problem.

Very few people play the PTR seriously.
And I don’t blame them in the slightest.
There is just no incentive to do so at all.

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At this point how could they make an actually really good expansion to a 15 year old game? I highly doubt they could pull anything mind blowing off these days. They seem like they just shovel out new ideas that will work and seem interesting enough to keep people playing. Nothing seems very new or creative but I also hold them up to very high standards.

how about just make it fun. how about going old school. nobody expects them to re-invent the wheel. go back to the wrath model. give us a big open world with two starting zones on either side and say, “here it is, have fun.”
this play the game the way we want you too is not working. the linear leveling with cookie crumbs leading you from hub to hub sucks. i don’t need my hand held the entire leveling experience.

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You’re preaching to the choir here.

I read that they make it so grindy was because a majority of the player base is China with the money, and they pay by the hour to play, so more hours more money…

We just happened to get stuck with that.

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Nope. This is the first time I have heard of this lolz

edit: Game is less grindy now than vanilla tbc wotlk etc.

Their was like a massive article years back haha, try googling.