Casual player here due to medical issues (Parkinson’s Disease). I’ve had no problems gearing up this expansion thus far to do the kind of things that I do normally. It started out slow, but the ascension speed leveled out pretty quickly after getting the first Legendary, which was relatively easy to do months ago, and it’s easier now. (Ask a friend with some gear to carry you).
Honestly, the power gain felt good in the casual light because I wasn’t making huge leaps and bounds. Getting to the current “apex” for my gameplay style has felt more rewarding this expansion BECAUSE of the lack of drops, versus getting showered with the stuff. It’s been more of a steady climb, and I’m just fine with that.
O boy they left and blizz is in a panic atm. Wow is the causal game that took down the hardcore Everquest in 2004. Everquest is now 22 years old and love for the hardcores to come back to make it the greatness that it was.
One solution that I think is pretty reasonable to both sides of the community is just to squish down the number ilvls within the tier. The spread should be closer to 13-15 ilvls (which felt like a nice sweet spot in the past), not 30-40. Not saying it should be exactly 13 ivl, I just think there are too many difficulty tiers that have only the smallest of differences. For example, lfr vs normal. Or, heroic vs. mythic 0 dungeons.
If the power gap felt less insane, then you can do other very reasonable things, like slow down the progression in the ‘casual’ tier. That would make it feel like you were making gains within your own sphere of play and not just ‘finishing’ after completing 10 campaign quest. It would also help with other things, like making random bgs less ridiculous. At the same time, the ‘competitive’ players will still continue with the most ‘competitive’ gear.
Shadowlands has guaranteed that I will never pre order an expansion again and if I feel like it doesn’t have content that appeals to me I will just pay my sub and putz around in content I feel engaged with.
WoW’s whole philosphy when it was being designed was–follow Everquest but make combat more quick with more buttons, make it so everyone could level and the game was accessible to everyone, and reduce all time sinks that EQ had.
Everything else is literally EQ’s formula for MMORPGs. Raids–EQ. Grouping–EQ. Even the commands that we all use come directly from EQ:
/camp = Logout (EQ)
Auto-Run = Num- Lock (EQ)
Trinity system = Derivative of EQ without a needed utility
Group size = EQ had 1 more.
Raiding = EQ’s idea
Almost all of the MMORPG mechanics we know came from Smedley and McQuaid. Blizzard even made it a point when Verant switched to SoE and they began developing BC went out of their way to go grab Devs who learned under Smedley and McQuaid. Almost every root thing we think about in MMORPGs come directly from the EQ formula of how a MMORPG operates in PvE.
There’s hardly any difference between most MMORPGs today because they almost all follow this formula. The biggest different MMORPGs are EvE, GW2, and ESO. But the rest all follow the EQ formula.
WoW was never designed to be the Hardcore MMORPG. EQ was the Hardcore MMORPG. WoW was the casual MMORPG where everyone could get into raiding. Everyone could get into high end grouping. Everyone could solo to max level. Professions told you what you needed. Quests were an actual UI in the game. Mounts were created at the launch of the game. Death had no real penalty. Binding wasn’t something only certain classes could do. There were no negative XP modifiers based on class and race. You didn’t need to actually use 2 slots for food and drink that you ate just to live. Researching spells wasn’t has difficult and wasn’t mostly a thing until end game.
WoW was never ever at launch the hardcore MMORPG.
As time grew WoW became more Hardcore. With each passing expansion since WoD the Devs made the game more hardcore in terms of gear acquisition and basically turned their entire game into a game about grinding out high level content for gear. They did this deliberately by nuking the rest of the game almost to the point that levels 1-50 is just a long tutorial.
I’ve never been so demoralized in the game. I feel like I’m hitting a wall with progress. It feels like the content lull at the end of BFA for me all over again, since I don’t like raiding or Mythics. There’s nothing else to do apparently.
WoW caters to the hardcore by basically spending most of their development time and updates on Heroic Raids/Mythic Raids and high-end M+ content.
The rest of the content that they development you can tell they just slap it on just to show they have additional items. Conduit system? That looks like the prototype of a system that they wanted more out of but ran out of time. The Maw and Torghast feel like they had some grand plans for them but again ran out of time because they spent most of their development time for CN and M+ dungeons.
WoW caters to the Hardcore because they’ve made almost all other content that’s not for hardcore players obsolete. They’ve either made it so you fly past it so fast that no one’s working on it; or that the rewards they hand out are just not even worth the time.
I know this sounds nuts–but a longer leveling grind, a hard slower experience to get to end game content is actually a casual friendly system. Why? Because it’s not determined by skill/ability/knowledge of the game but rather time invested which is what casual players can offer. They may not be able to invest four 4 hour sessions a week; but in the cumulative time span of over a couple of months they can achieve the same goals because of the time spent vs the skill needed.
Removing content designed specifically for lower end characters, and longer content for lower ilvl characters has led to a direct result of increasing the hardcore mechanics of the game. Whereas EQ was hardcore because after a certain lvl (typically 10) you needed time to group to progress–WoW you didn’t. But the time sink was much longer that casual gameplay felt more rewarding. I’m serious here; Classic WoW right now is the more casual friendly experience. Why? The mechanics aren’t as insane. You don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of the game to progress, and the game takes longer and is slower; That’s a boon for casual players because it’s not as demanding.
Retail WoW has trended in one direction which is the goal is to move as many players as possible to content that’s more difficult as fast as possible. It’s like imagine there’s 2 gyms. Gym A is a more relaxed gym that takes a longer workout week program to get to the top of the program. Whereas Gym B offers a more rigorous workout regiment and has less of a time gap to get to the top. B is the more hardcore because it removes the longer workout routine and expects you to be at a higher skill ceiling faster.
Specifically. What development time is being spent on those pieces of content?
At most, its ability tuning. The development of raids and dungeons effects “non-Hardcores” because that content is also developed for LFR, Normal, Heroic dungeon quality. Its shared development with very little development time going to Mythic Raiding and high end Mythic+ outside of the occasional tuning.
This is incorrect. M+5 gives gear on par with Heroic raiding. M+5 is not “hardcore”.
So WoW caters to hardcore players because its too easy to level?
I don’t see how this caters to anyone.
Can you give a specific example of lower end content being removed that increased hardcore mechanics? This makes no sense at all.
Any answer I give you will not be good enough. Obviously I gave answers in good faith and you just dismiss them out of hand saying “Specifics!” Literally the game has designed mode after mode
I explained to you how a faster leveling system isn’t casual friendly when endgame isn’t casual friendly.
A specific would be level scaling which makes the entire process easier to get over, that doesn’t make it more casual friendly when what’s on the other side isn’t content that’s casual friendly.
If you make a game that you can hit a gear wall of 200 in about 3-4 weeks from basically just logging in and then the only way to advance is move into harder content that you’re not ready for nor want to do that’s not casual friendly.
If you make a game that you hit a gear wall of 200 in about 2-4 months, that’s casual friendly because you can solo all the way there. How is this hard to understand. The second your difficulty in content increases and you need a group to perform at an above average skill level to progress is when casual content ends. How fast a player can get there from playing the game slower determines if a game is casual friendly or hardcore.
I’m done with this conversation anyways. I tried in good faith to address you and all you did was just crappost.
The problems “difficult content” is basically controlled by exclusionary player elitists. If you are not overpowered for the content being run or not a flavor-of-the-month class will find being accepted difficult or impossible. This is quadruple true for Alliance casuals who have even fewer opportunities. The game is broken on so many levels but class and faction balance are contributing factors.
Fair access to content is another easily solved by creating queues for M+ and Normal Raids. Also, When a new raid drops, all wings of LFR should open up the week after the world first race is over.
Create long and detailed class quest lines that yield class specific abilities or transmogs. Think green fire quest or original dreadmount quest.
Everyone has the same access. So by default…its fair.
When you create a queue system for content, the content itself MUST be nerfed to accommodate. People who participate in queue systems would demand it non stop.
The issue here is that in the older MMORPGs it would take players so long to get to that content you’re referring to you would never see this issue as much as you see it now. That’s not misinformation, that’s literally just simple observations. Players before Classic launched were convinced it was the hardcore game. But as we’ve seen in a game where basically you’re at hardcore content in the span of 2 weeks vs a few months the more hardcore game is the game that you have to do hardcore content sooner. Really not a hard thing to get.
