Retail doesn’t feel like an ‘MMO’ anymore

Community General Discussion
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Title, going back & playing classic again (2nd time) has made me kinda realize: the game is too focused on solo play & almost discourages the community aspect.

I have played Blizzard games since Warcraft 1 & I’ve never really felt this way before (SL being an exception); the game doesn’t feel immersive at all & it sucks.

The ‘journey’ aspect of an MMO is completely gone due to leveling being a joke, ‘press this button & q’, & in general leveling is easy & non threatening.

You’d think Blizzard might pay attention to the insane amount of player influx as far as classic goes & think maybe focusing entirely on the end game in retail isn’t the answer.

You have loads upon loads of content from previous expansions unused, you have every class feeling like a super hero with far too many defensives & far too many offensive tools ontop of too much splash damage.

Warbands basically promotes FOTM rerolling & gearing is so easy that it promotes this kind of behavior ontop of Blizzard doing inconsistent balancing (especially when it comes to halting said balancing during AWC or MDI lmao). The sense of ‘pride’ in having a ‘main’ is pretty much gone.

Gearing feels way too convoluted & is basically thrown at you constantly, there are far too many raid/dungeon/delve difficulties in the game now.

LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic, 4 difficulty levels? Too much, reduce it to normal/heroic again. Ian has made everything way way too convoluted, too many difficulties, too many gear upgrades… the list goes on.

I really don’t remember the last time I got ‘excited’ about a piece of gear I’d gotten outside of transmog or a gladiator mount; it just doesn’t happen anymore.

The game doesn’t feel like a challenge outside of mythic raids, high delves/keys or high level PvP; it’s boring.

I have always kinda defended Blizzard with their choices but honestly, there are so many issues now with the way Ian develops the game, it’s a dang shame.

Classic for sure has it’s flaws too but honestly at least it feels like a MMO & not just a ‘push this button get in dungeon leave do it again’ simulator.

The game doesn’t feel like the ‘World of Warcraft’ anymore; it just feels like a single player mini-game simulator. Might as well just call it ‘Warcraft’ at this point, the ‘World’ aspect of the game is definitely not there anymore. It’s a shallow form of its former self only resonating with it’s past self by name alone.

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No one wants to spend 2 years leveling an alt through content they’ve already seen a million times.

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WoW’s claim to fame in vanilla was that it was the MMO you could play solo all the way to level 60. In most MMOs at the time, that wasn’t possible. There was no high-level solo content, it was group up or get nothing.

The ability to play WoW solo has always been its greatest strength. It helps to make sure that when players do group up, it’s because they want to, not because they’re forced to take that jerk everybody hates in order to progress.

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not seeing a problem here bro

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yeah i prefer classic for the journey
retail focus is end game.

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Idk maybe ppl want a skyrim-esq game thats updated more often

/shrug

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garroshtimeschange.gif :frowning_face:

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there ya go :heart:

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It doesn’t have to be that way though, they could create ways to enjoy the ‘world’ again while having end game content.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

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You have it, it’s called Classic. Enjoy.

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Most of the things mentioned were changes informed by player feedback. Warbands, a faster startup for gearing and catchup mechanisms for alts, a focus on endgame, easy rerolling etc. That’s pretty much stuff players asked for. Leveling isn’t going back to what it was. Players of this game just don’t want that anymore. I’m sympathetic to what you are saying and I understand where you’re coming from but that just isn’t this game anymore.

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Reality is that basically no MMO is designed as some kind of magical social game anymore. You do a single player leveling experience then jump into pseudo lobby multiplayer but with some places to hang out while you wait.

Thats the case for WoW, ESO, GW2, and FFXIV at the very least. It was also the case for Wildstar.

Some pvp-centric MMOs get away from this a bit but no one wants to play them.

And like, Runescape.

But both of those categories still start with a largely single player experience that leads into whatever less lobby-based endgame they use.

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Personally I love retail and I spend hardly any time on end game content Mogs/achievements/collecting things are my forever end game.

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There really won’t be anything that truly replicates that magic of early to mid 2000s gaming. The sheer awe of a giant world so unknown. The word of mouth style everyone shared, the lack of guides and easily attainable information, or even wanting to seek that info out instead of experiencing it is gone.

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Rather than expect gaming companies to rewind their modern definition of what an MMO is, you should look at and understand gamer trends and expectations, and you should adjust your definition of an MMO to fit what they really are now.

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all we gotta do is change the definition of MMO and wow is no longer a MMO.

just look at how popular classic launches are when it’s mid or late season retail. but be sure to ignore the reason they have to constantly relaunch classic servers is because they die quickly with no long term staying power.

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Big post about nothing. Just creat your community in retail, or don’t. It’s your choice. There are plenty of guilds to join.

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It’s a lobby game primarily now. You have to go out of your way to make WoW both an MMO and a RPG. You have to go to third parties for what “community” remains.

WoW is the CoD of MMOs. Which is likely why it retains such numbers as it desperately tries to do so.

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The original difficulty is what’s currently called Mythic. What’s currently called Heroic was added in Wrath.

LFR was added in Cataclysm & what’s currently called Normal was added in Mists of Pandaria.

So going back to the old 2 would mean eliminating LFR & Normal. Which I think would be fine, but just wanted to set the record straight on the terminology.

(I think a big problem with the game is that people just do E-Z Mode, proclaim it as too easy, and then… stop. Instead of doing the encounters with all the mechanics actually present, as intended. Eliminating the E-Z Modes would stretch out the game longevity and people would have more fun, since something you actually worked for is always more rewarding than something that was just handed to you.)

((As another side note, WoW is the only game I’m aware of where people deliberately restrict themselves to the tutorial, then demand that the publisher create additional tutorials for them to play - and never go beyond that.))