I see this sentiment a LOT and I reject it wholeheartedly!!!
Wow has never been more accessible and provided the breadth of content as it does today.
To say wow was for everyone is just rhetoric.
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Thats what it should be, sadly not what it is anymore. For me the allure of wow used to be that while I was away from it, the world would go on without me… it constantly drew me back in and their was a big big psychologically motivating factor to log back in, see and experience the change. Those changes were mostly smoke and mirrors or community driven. The big issue wow has is that as players got smarter and can more easily see through the cracks, they have not been focusing as much effort into the community aspect of the game. The social interaction. Content wise I think they are producing but its a diminishing return putting in system after system (which is just a fancy way of saying Ion is driving the game into the ground).
[quote=“Dantëu-sargeras, post:339, topic:609124”]
LFR is harder to accomplish than heroic/mythic raiding. [/quote]
If you think LFR is harder than mythic raiding because some people can AFK in LFR then you are delusional.
And don’t go pretending that LFR/LFD created these bad players. They always existed. LFR just gave them a raid tier to call home.
I think I understand why people don’t take your ideas seriously.
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I always feel like i’m just a supporting cast next to the NPCs. Blizzard has failed miserably imo to make me feel like I’m the more important character.
The reality is if you actually join a raid group and do content people won’t let you afk and put others on follow to carry dead weight around and give loot to you because you happened to be there. LFD/LFR did incentivize players to be lazy and not play the game and still get to see raid content. It was a horrible addition to the game and has only done harm to the community.
I get you’re putting up a straw man in place of a valid argument but please don’t.
Okay? What are your own original idea’s, lets see them in a constructive manner.
You’d be wrong then man, guilds used to have people that did nothing but farm herbs,ores or other crafting materials. In WoD they destroyed that glue for guilds by allowing everyone to be a miners and herbalist that never left their house.
Blizzard has done a lot to destroy guilds and the games communities by making anticommunity options like LFD,LFR and four teirs of raid difficulty. The PVE community has been splintered into fractions and the same could be said for the PVP community. There’s very little desire to do PVP to get gear and own in BG’s. The fun has been systematically tuned out of the game in hopes of making a balanced e-sport. Now no one is happy and no one feels powerful or have any actual character progression anymore. And the power we do get is leased till the end of an expansion then removed permanently much like old set bonuses.
We’re no longer playing a MMORPG, we’re playing some communist utopia simulation where no matter how hard you work you will never achieve greatness or be better than the guy that just hit max level. It’s an ultimately flawed system designed by people with the wrong idea of what it means to progress.
I disagree and your statements are not aligned to how I enjoy wow. I know your natural reaction is to say how I am a minority and my opinion is less valuable than the aggregate of the opinions you claim to represent, I genuinely don’t care, I am a part of a much tighter knit guild now than in vanilla and am enjoying wows content now much much more than in vanilla, its just better designed and more broad… go play classic its less than LFR difficulty and much much less fun than current raids.
You’re entitled to your opinions and perspectives, I just want what’s best for the game and community.
I’m glad you’re managing to get some entertainment and enjoyment out of this abomination of an expansion, I wish I could say the same.
If that’s the case then why don’t you and your friends go level up in classic and do the raids to prove that point. I’d honestly wager you couldn’t down nef or clear AQ40. I’m not trying to be mean or belittle you or your achievements in the retail game, only stressing that classic is more challenging than retail.
I really think we need challenging content to return to the game that’s not e-sports. The world should feel dangerous and everything you do should be a risk vs reward situation. Instead of a turn your brain off and faceroll to completion.
Classic is far more engaging with less abilities and choices and yet somehow they’re far more impactful.
Then you are in denial. Never in the game’s history had their been exactly one path at playing the game as their is today. Everything in the game is a continuous linear experience where as in the past, you literally when out into the world and did whatever it was that interested you.
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Well to start lets consider the fallout if LFR was taken away. Remember what happened with flight? GD threw a fit because they had to walk like it was vanilla all over again.
I think Blizz should rework LFR to be a sort of raiding proving grounds. Solo content that teaches you the basic mechanics of the fights. Just you and 9 other NPCs… or join as a group.
Why this change? like you said some people are going AFK and getting free loot. But I do see the benefit in people who don’t have time to raid to see content and story.
Another change I would recommend to add more FOMO to raid tiers. We already have the AocT mount for the final raid tier, which is nice. But that ultimately encourages paid carries because by the time prepatch is around the corner all the high end guilds are way overgeared.
Perhasp in each raid season starting with the herioc tier a special boss that drops unique transmog, pet, mount is available. This boss would have heaving drop rate nerfs come next season. Perhaps the special mount would stop existing.
As for getting the community aspect back. I think guild halls and player housing could be a good start. RP realms would love it, casuals would enjoy something extra to work towards.
You are speaking the truth and the stars are in alignment with what you say.
Furthermore, you have revealed something I was thinking about. What happened to WoW offering different paths to end game? Now, it is one singular game play loop. Not good IMVHO. 
I’ve said the same thing many times and to make it so you can’t just afk and get gear, if you’re a healer you need to heal, if you’re a dps you need to kill the trash and if you’re a tank you must use defensive cd’s appropriately and at the end of the wing you’re awarded with a single piece of gear or that expansions AP.
editing to provide proof
I’ve had this position for a very long time.
I went through classic the first time around, ground out the Gernal title (never went for WL or HWL), cleared up to a couple wings of Naxx… the skillset that classic tests is more managerial from the guild leaders and class leads, its about logistics, tedium and monotonous gameplay, while many like those and consider those skillchecks, the fact is if you have 40 average to good players (granted thats harder than it sounds), classic is faceroll, what I mean is if you averaged out the individual skill needed from each raider to succeed in a classic raid it would be well well below that of current wows equivalent.
The class rotations are often 1 or 2 buttons, the game engine is far less responsive and the design of each boss is 1-3 mechcanics.
I did go back and leveled in classic, and cleared MC/all content at the time… it was abhorrent how badly tuned it is and the lack of engaging gameplay it has (and I know 1.12 tuning is way off but the fights are not complex, its the burden of carrying people that make it hard, which to me is really not fun).
Yeah but doing quest’s are far more engaging and what cd’s you do have feel extremely impactful. I find this to be a far better experience than the retail game where you don’t even have the illusion of choice.
We can agree to disagree but I want the game to be fun again, there’s no reason why I should be enjoying classic WoW more than the retail game but here we are. The retail game is a dumpster fire and has been ablaze for awhile. I’m surely not a minority view that the game is suffering because of all these systems on top of systems on top of systems and antiplayer systems in place that cripple your chance to succeed if you’re just returning or new to the game. You have to grind all sorts of BS that never existed in the game before and is literally killing the game.
There’s no reason why someone who just joins or just came back need to jump through hoops just to be viable to do end game content. For example the reps you need to farm in order to unlock essences or the pvp you need to do to unlock essences or the currency you need to farm to then do visions to then increase your corruption resistance to then equip corrupted gear. The whole game is antiplayer right now and I cannot understand how you support it.
But that’s fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions even if you perceive them to blatantly atrocious.
once every 30 minutes
There is one, its the concept of the player journey… in classic that player journey involves an ungodly amount of grinding and questing (much more than I have the patience for other than once every ~14 years or so), in retail there are a lot more options and avenue of content to explore.
As for systems on systems, I agree to some extent but using hyperbolic language and exaggerating the issue doesn’t help matters. For example I absolutely love the addition of the M+ system and a great many people do. I don’t think it is without flaws… and the prevalence of riaderio proves there is a massive lack of social tools in place to help make smarter groups but that the feature is also quite popular. The mentor system I think is a realy great idea to help solve this, there needs to be a way for experienced players that have the mindset can advance newer players to help get smarter groups.
The concept of having a balanced reward-challenge appropriate set of dungeon content to engage with is great (compared to solo DM tribute runs hunters do)… I’ll take live and the M+ system any day.
Also the multiple difficulties are a godsend because it allows the challenge of content to be shifted up to the player skill of the guild. Far beyond what classic was able to implement (the fact is players are just better today than we were 14 years ago, we know more, we share knowledge more, we improve at a far quicker rate… designs that worked 14 years ago do not work today).
TL;DR
I think both games have their strengths and weaknesses, people tend to bash on current wow without any idea how to improve it or the consequences of getting what they want. For example I would like to see the timer removed from M+ and more focus on the challenge of the dungeon (similar to how raids are setup with bosses being the roadblocks) but that would have many follow on effects I cant see I am sure.
I’ve literally said the same thing many times. If you can complete it then you can go to a higher level and your skill will dictate how far you get. The timer is an aspect of e-sports that I want to see removed from the game.
edited to provide proof
I’m sure if you were to search my posts you’d see I’m not making things up and a lot of my ideas are years old and I’m very consistent with my positions. A lot of people get the wrong idea from me because I come off as too abrasive but if anyone takes the time to ask me questions they’d see my positions aren’t too far off from where there’s are, I just want what’s best for the game/community.
I don’t think you are making things up at all, the forums are filled with a lot of players that feel they are not being heard, so they try to overstate, exaggerate (or even recruit others to) their position “all players think this”, “the community wants this, why wont blizzard do it”, “blizzard you are killing the game”.
What ends up happening is we get these politicised talking points being echoed around without having a meaningful discussion or uncovering any truths/common ground.
That kind of shuts down discussion rather than encourage it, wow has a lot of problems and blizzard are very very bad at acknowledging feedback and even worse at giving their rationale behind the decisions they make.
One thing I have observed is that blizzard’s rationale is almost in another language or just so far removed from my (and my guildies/friends) experience…
Blizzard: “we are making active abilities tied to covenants beacuse RPGs need to have consequences for choices”
Players(me, my guildies and friends):" we don’t like that"
Blizzard: " its good for the game… but if it works out bad we can pull the rip cord and reverse it very quickly"
To me it feels like the developers have made this more for themselves than actually listening to the community (i.e I agree they are out of touch) but I don’t think the game overall is worse today (especially looking at the breadth of content and things I can do).
Like I would really love to ask Ion, is this something that was done for the players or for the developers?
If he didn’t have NDA’s he would say it was these things were done to increase profits and they don’t care about player enjoyment.
At least that would be my guess. I just want the game to be fun again man. It feels so bad to watch what used to be a fun and enjoyable hobby twisted into some abomination, much like Diablo 3. These games aren’t fun anymore.
I think that, for the most part, they have been out of touch since Cata at the earliest. They are pretty good at bouncing back from catastrophic failure (MoP and Legion as 2 examples) when they want to though. Obviously some still hated those 2 expansions and that’s okay. This is just my opinion.
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Shadowlands yet, and that could be a good thing or a bad thing. Time will tell. If it’s bad, I will leave. If nothing else, Blizzard has made this a secondary game for me, so coming and going as I please has been pretty easy over the last couple of years since BfA was a dumpster fire.
I agree 
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Yeah don’t like the setup of bfa when it comes to azurite power,essences and corruption. Before I had a struggling hunter without good ranked essences ,so I bought the rank 3 I did have on main finally and now get very good damage.A character’s power should never be based gimmicky scams such as essences and corruption.
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