Ask yourself, “What was it that first sucked me into WoW?”. While you ruminate on that question, allow me to give my answer. I started playing in 2008, after playing oblivion to death, I was in search of a new high fantasy fix. I remember seeing the box for Burning Crusade at Wal-Mart and thinking, “eh, what the hell. I’ll give it a go.” So for me, it was the fantasy appeal. The Tolkien-esque aspect.
Now ask yourself, “why did I stick around?”.
For me. It was the sense of a wide open world, ripe for exploring. The unique and somewhat self-contained stories of each zone. Running to BRD down the chain hanging over molten lava. The general feel and aesthetics of the game. When I was in a capital city, it was alive with people of all stripes. Someone dancing on the mailbox, people sparring outside of the gates of the city, raiders looking cool on their awesome mounts and armor.
I wanted to experience it all.
So I grinded my butt off. Leveled up my warrior. Cutting my teeth trying to tank as arms in black fathom deeps. My group members asking what the hell I was doing, I had no idea , but I was having fun. The joy of making your own custom builds while not relying on some “meta” to guide you into the most optimal build. It was truly a sandbox where you could do whatever you wanted.
But as time moved on, the content became harder and harder, not only in difficulty, but in ability to access it. Large chunks of story gated behind difficult group content. I was missing out.
Then in Dragon Soul, blizzard introduced LFR. I was overjoyed. It was torture wiping over and over again on spine of deathwing, but it was also a lot of fun. I was able to join people I’d never met and try to tackle these challenges.
It was exciting.
As time moved on, group content became easier and easier to come together and complete.
We had mass summons, we had flex raids, we had LFR, group finder, old school trade chat, and eventually cross realm grouping.
All of these things enhance what I believe is the true foundation of what makes WoW the best MMO that ever has been. The community. The sense of a living breathing game.
There were millions upon millions of players. It truly felt like a living world.
Fast forward several expansions, and people have drifted away from the game for whatever reason. Even with server mergers and cross realm improvements, the world feels more empty than it ever has.
It’s sad.
I feel like I’m living in “I am legend” when I log in. Barely anyone I. The cities. Barely anyone in the world.
This isn’t the game it used to be. And I don’t mean in the sense of Vanilla vs Retail. I am talking about the world which seems to have flatlined.
So how do we move on from here?
My proposal is to remove all difficulty barriers.
Make socialization and group content easier than ever to complete with other people.
The are multiple reasons why group content has become so difficult to do.
The over inundation of difficulty levels.
We need to remove the separation of difficulty barriers and ease grouping restrictions.
Make it so we can flex raid mythic raids. Make it so you don’t have to have a certain amount of tanks, healers, or dps. The holy trinity of MMOs is outdated and doesn’t stand on its own legs in today’s gaming environment.
Make it so we can cross faction group with people to get things done.!
Make it to where mythic raids scale to your ilvl. We know that blizzard has the capability to do this.
If we use scaling technology for mythic raids, it would be much easier to get groups.
Not only that, but the game would be based on skill, not some artificial item level score that’s based solely on RNG.
If a fresh max level character can perform the mechanics of a mythic raid, why shouldn’t they be allowed the opportunity to raid a mythic raid?
All difficulty barriers do, is make the game unnecessarily difficult and sow division amongst the community.
Please, restore the community aspect of world of Warcraft and put the world back into world of Warcraft.