Haha, no sadly we do not agree on that.
That was at the end of BFA, and they were miserable. They had a mechanic where you constantly receiving corruption, and if the corruption level hit 100% you were ejected from the instance, so you were effectively on a timer. There were various ways to reduce corruption, that involved hitting checkpoints, killing bosses, finding consumables in the instance, and utilizing a power that you could purchase and upgrade with currency that you obtained in the visions. Like others have said in other threads, it was a Monkey’s Paw system where Blizzard basically said, “We’ll let you play solo, but we’re going to guarantee that you’re miserable the entire time that you’re doing it.”
If Blizzard treated raiders the way they do solo players, I guarantee they would be up in arms. Imagine the game deleting all the current run’s loot and locking you out of the raid for the week if you failed to clear it after two hours. They would never dream of that. I don’t know why they think it’s fun to treat solo players like that.
I mean, Blizzard’s philosophy is on their website, so it’s not up to you to agree or disagree with that:
"### Gameplay First
Everything we do at Blizzard Entertainment is based on the success of the gaming experiences we provide our players. The goal of each discipline within the company – be it art, programming or customer support – is to make our games as fun as possible for as many people as we can reach."
https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/
“As fun as possible for as many people as we can reach” - solo players are reachable. So thus… should be a pretty valid hoop.
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No, it isn’t. Your gear was locked behind the neck level which was even slower to level up in solo content.
SL hands you a full set of ~180 ilvl gear just by completing the covenant campaign. BFA didn’t have anything remotely close.
That does not pertain to World of Warcraft directly.
If it did, you would not need to be advocating for this.
It would have happened decades ago.
Are you saying that Blizzard Entertainment no longer develops World of Warcraft? When did that happen? Otherwise, what gives you the idea that Blizzards stated goal as a company doesn’t apply to WoW?
Because they do not develop the game directly based on those goals, so what other explanation is there?
You’re missing the point of this thread. This thread is not about ‘how high can the ilvl we’re given go’ it’s about the feeling of progression. Right now we’re handed ilvl gear. And then… we have nothing to do. At all.
Azerite, while not a great system, at least made it so everything you did contributed in some small way to a gradual growth of your character. So it at least made it feel worth it to do stuff.
Ah so Blizzard’s design philosophy… doesn’t apply to Warcraft… a game designed by Blizzard designers…
That’s… some logic.
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It would be impossible to tune anything that tightly. The class and even spec balance would have to be perfect. The fact is there is no substitute for the difficulty of large group coordination. That is why it does not have to be equally challenging, just equal time commitment.
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Its just a general company policy.
They aren’t going to be able to adhere to those universally in every game they produce of course.
Its hard to believe that anyone would think they could.
Class/spec balance wouldn’t need to be any more perfect for solo content than it does for group content. All classes would need to be able to do it. Just like with most content.
Philosophies are what companies ASPIRE to. Which means it’s their goal. They don’t always succeed, but they push towards it. And thus, it should be reasonable for us to ask them to push towards it since it is what they state is their goal.
the main argument against this is “its an mmo! if you wanna play solo go play a single player rpg” which i feel is kind of ridiculous given how broad the rpg genre is. anyone with any experience in rpg games will tell you world of warcraft is completely different then something like skyrim. and it definitely isnt just because of the multiplayer
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Provided it came without compromising other goals, you would absolutely be right.
That’s been the problem the whole time.
I’ve been working for software development companies for over 20 years now. Company goals are universally applied. There may be pockets within the company that fall short of those goals, but flagship products tend to conform pretty strictly to company policies.
So why has this game failed to do so for 16 years?
you’re gonna have to define progression first then because azerite was holding your powers hostage until you reached tresholds. i.e. halting progression
I don’t get your point in being on this forum at all. You seem to be advocating that we not provide feedback unless it doesn’t change the game at all. Which is ridiculous. The point of feedback is to help illustrate things the game is either not doing well or not doing at all. And right now this is one of them. Shadowlands is not doing solo content well. And if they don’t fix that, it’s going to hurt them financially.
I mean progression is pretty easy to define:
Progression is the act of gradually moving towards a goal.
So in gear terms, progression means that the things you do directly contribute to you getting better gear.
In an Azerite system, the Azerite you got gradually increased the ilvl of ytour neck, which gave stats, and unlocked additional powers you couldn’t access before you got it.
Similar to how when you’re first leveling your character gaining levels unlocks additional abilities. Those abilities being locked behind higher levels doesn’t mean that gaining levels is not progression. It is, in fact, the reason WHY gaining levels IS progression. Because there is something waiting for you as you gain those levels.
Someone failing at a goal for 16 years isnb’t a reason to stop hoping they’ll succeed at it. It’s a reason to start calling them out on their failure. ESPECIALLY if they regress and push further away from that goal.
It hasn’t. Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK hit those goals successfully. They faltered in Cataclysm, but at least they made the effort to course correct. They’ve only failed in the time since. You’re asking the wrong person why they’ve fallen short in the time since. I suspect that Ion, who generally receives all the criticism, isn’t even the right person to blame, either. He’s just the figurehead. There’s a whole product management team that’s neglecting their product.
That would be up to them.
Its more important to think of it objectively, instead of what you want the game to be.
If there is a dramatic gap in the game’s content styling, and that has been a trend for a long period of time, they must not actually be losing money on it, or they are fine with doing so for some reason, right?
Once you think of it that way, its easier to understand why these conversations go this way, because you are effectively suggesting you know better than people who get paid to handle all this.
Solo progression already exists. Its called the Group Finder.