Over the years Blizzard-Soft (my new nickname following Microsoft’s acquisition) has given us some softball features that in turn made the game super casual. As an OG Vanilla player (almost 21 years & counting) the changes have been a minor hit or miss… yet with the latest iteration of one-click wonders for 11.1.7 it’s now become an antiquated vision of an antique mindset conjured by the overrated Ion Hazzikostas, the overengineering guru.
Coming from someone who has a very diverse technical background, the last thing you want to do for a game that’s over 20 years old is overengineer a ‘simplified’ assumption that the reason why WoW subs are tanking well into a raid season is because people don’t know how to play X class. That’s not really the issue, Ion, yet I would be happy to share a few examples as to why this game is running into the ground faster than some random Soviet Union capsule that has 100% RNG when it comes to where it will actually enter Earth’s atmosphere next week.
- Some classes are over-complex or very dated (cough, dk, cough), and need major reworks.
- Between Vanilla through the early days of WotLK I personally only used one addon… damage meters. Near the end of WotLK to present day I now use roughly 20ish addons. As the game aged so did the complexity of passives, auras, rotations (burn vs non-burn), etc. I considered myself a hard core player through WotLK, and slowly became casual as many other players that still play the game consider themselves this day. Blizzard-Soft essentially created the atmosphere many of us casual players endure today which consists of the following: Raid for 4-6 weeks, clear Heroic, and say F all until the long content drought ends.
- Hotfixes to address bugs is one thing, yet there is always a FOTM that sticks out like a sore thumb. Focus on balancing. Period.
- Implementing a one-hit wonder button will NOT fix the drop in active player participation. It’s a sign that all classes for the most part are overengineered with stupid passives that require the use of an addon or two to ensure casual players aren’t picked last in gym class (e.g. Pug M+, Pug Raid, etc.)
Best thing Blizzard-Soft can do is rethink how to overcome the massive disparity between the top 5% of players vs those who choose to be casual. A few suggestions to achieve that route to maintain player sanity:
- Rework classes that are stupidly punishing for using a simple ability that F’s their meta rotation, and fix classes so they don’t need 20 seconds of ramp-up time only to shine bright for 30 seconds then suck for 45-60 seconds.
- Let addon developers shine by not stealing their tools and making them crappier. Microsoft bought and killed Nokia & Skype along with several other companies they acquired, and at most they only stole 10% of the value of X product before killing it off. The one-click-wonder ability you’re planning to deploy will only be a repeat of what Microsh*t has done w/ competition.
- Stop overengineering fixes and focus on simplicity. Maintaining momentum & popularity requires familiarity, and if you add too many F-ing passives for players to micromanage you might as well let the game die in a fire.
At the end of the day Blizzard-Soft is digging themselves into a hole they will never get out of, and if this development mentality continues none of the Warcraft lore fanatics will ever see part 3 of the War Within Saga. As Goblins always say… “Time is money!” and many of us are losing our F-ing patience w/ stolen ideas and rotting classes.
