Solution to Mages being Ignored: Quit WoW

Classes Mage
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TL; DR:

Quitting WoW is the best way to get Mage changed. Don’t come back until Mage gets significant changes. We are also listing potential game substitutes that can replace WoW during this hiatus (whether temporary or permanent)

Hey guys,

I’m noticed a number of threads recently (specifically from mages) where they are very clearly unhappy at the state of mages, with all 3 specs having major gaps/problems in their toolkits. Putting their damage aside for a second, Mage, especially Fire and Arcane, is currently one of the hardest classes in the game to play, with only the top 5-10% of performers pulling competitive damage.

I’ve seen a number of people trying in their own ways to get the dev’s attention at some of these problems, with some even going as far as to harass them on Twitter. I personally don’t believe harassment to be the answer since the incompetent dev team will now feel vindicated in their treatment of class, and will thus continue to treat it like garbage.

I believe the solution is to hurt them where it matters most: their income. If they lose a significant portion of their player base, they will either be forced to perform or will lose their jobs. This is what led to the production of Dragonflight, which in a lot of ways is an improvement over Shadowlands. But in the way of class design and rotations relating to talent tree, a lot of classes have had disastrous releases, mage being one of them (all 3 specs).

In addition to these disastrous releases, they have also completely failed to communicate to players, even after a number of well structured and thought out posts were written and sent as feedback on the forums (shoutout to Visal, Lanfear, Norri, and others).

A note about rerolling classes/specs: this is one of the worst mistakes you can make because it legitimizes the dev’s toxic behavior. By rerolling classes, you are essentially saying: “Blizzard can keep ignoring a select group of classes/specs; I’ll keep being a good little piggy and just play whatever you’re paying most attention to.”

Using this logic, the devs can continue to only pay attention to a select group of favored specs and be safe in knowing their player base will do nothing but cry on the forums since they’ll just reroll to those favored specs. And in the meantime, the non-favored specs (i.e. Arcane, Survival hunter) will die.

The problem with WoW is that a lot of people have a sunk-cost fallacity (myself included), where because you spent a lot of time on one game or class, you can’t leave it. The best way I have found to get over this fallacy is to replace this with other games that I have found to be interesting. In this thread, let’s list games that we’ve played in the past and their genres for other players to try out.

To organize this, let’s try to follow a similar format (arbitrarily, I’m gonna suggest the following):

  • Top 3 recommendations
  • MMO
  • Diablo-like
  • Real-time Strategy + Civ-builders
  • Great Story
  • First-Person Shooter/First-Person-like game
  • MOBA

Top 3 Recommendations

  • Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition: See RTS Section
  • SOMA: See Great Story Section
  • Prey (2017): See FPS Section

MMOs

  • Dofus: Turn-based French MMO with a whole bunch of completely unique classes and roles. Huge world.
  • Wakfu: Turn-based, with completely unique classes, similar to Dofus but with different mechanics (in lore, this game happens thousands of years after Dofus). I think Dofus is more popular, even though I think I like Wakfu better.
  • New World: I personally did not like this game, but I heard from several friends that they have been making a lot of improvements. The crafting/profession system was fun. The combat is weird because it’s like WoW but with FPS combat, which I am bad at.
  • Final Fantasy 14: Never played it, lots of people love this game.

Diablo-like

  • Titan Quest: This game 3 new expacs with 2 new Masteries (similar classes). I personally prefer the non-caster classes in this game, although Lightning + Necromancer is a pretty fun combo.
  • Path of Exile: Never player it, but I heard it’s good

Real-time Strategy + Civ-builders:

  • Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition: For those who don’t know, this game got around 4 new expansions since “The Conquerors” expansion in the early 2000s, with almost double the number of civilizations since that time. Highly recommend
  • Empire Earth: This game, although old and dated graphics, is excellent. I recommend the first one and the second one, not the third. Their third game was a Shadowlands-tier catastrophe. The one downside to Empire Earth is that some computers cannot run it. If that happens to you, you have to fiddle with the launch settings. Several YouTubers have videos on how to do this.
  • Age of Mythology: Similar to AoEII above, also got a new expansion with Eastern Asian mythos added. Unfortunately, I don’t think this expansion was all that great. Could be worth your time if you loved AoM back in the day.
  • Civilization 5: Arguably the best of the Civs to date; turn based strategy game where you try to rule the world (like any other strategy game)

Great Story:

  • SOMA: This game might have, hands down, one of the best stories that I have ever seen in game. I left this game wondering about what life really is (not a joke), and whether machines should be considered alive. Also horribly lonely and depressing. Overall fantastic game. 10/10. WARNING: this is a horror game.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Made by the same producers as above, but hitting less provocative subjects. Still has a great story about a man trying to purge himself of his sins. If SOMA is a 10/10, this game is an 8/10, great game. WARNING: this is a horror game.
  • Dark Anthology series: There are 4 games here: Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes and The Devil in Me. These are very much story-type games with choices and QTEs where you try to progress the story while keeping everyone alive. A lot of people think the House of Ashes was the best one.
  • Until Dawn: Same as above, made by the same company
  • The Quarry: Same as above, made by the same company

First-Person Shooter/First-Person-like game:

  • Prey (2017): Fantastic game that didn’t get enough praise in my opinion. You play in a futuristic space station trying to face off against a weird hive-mind alien species while upgrading yourself and your weapons. Also great story.
  • Dishonored series: Made by same company as above. I would argue Dishonored has as good / better combat than Prey, but a worse story (although still interesting).
  • Souls games: Dark Souls 1-3, Elden Ring, Sekiro; these games don’t need any introductions. Fantastic story and gameplay. Very difficult. GOTY award winners all around. I put them down here since people already know about them, no need for more introductions.

MOBA:

  • League of Legends
  • DOTA 2
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Holy crap… is this a “how to quit WoW” guide thread? I hope Blizzard are seeing this stuff. I honestly don’t have a good reason to justify not canceling my subscription. I should have quit a while ago because I haven’t really been playing the game at all since just a few weeks into VotI. If there’s a concerted effort/show of force mass walk out of mages y’all can count me in, lol.

P.S. Since we’re throwing suggestions around, people should check out Elden Ring, Hogwarts: Legacy, and Destiny 2.

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I think I am just going to not play mage until they change it.

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I’m rerolling enh for s2.

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You’re both free to do as you please (of course), but I actually consider this the worst possible alternative. In fact, I think you’re playing right into the dev’s toxic behaviors.

By rerolling to classes that are currently getting more attention, you are enabling them to continue ignoring mages since they know you’ll simply reroll to those classes that have gotten more attention. In a way, you’re telling them that they can get away with ignoring entire classes in favor of making a select few classes better, since they know you’ll just gravitate towards those classes.

This is not true and should never be true.

Think of the Classic WoW crowd: Blizzard was losing so much money from them playing on private servers that they re-released Classic WoW and at one time had more people playing Classic than current. The Classic WoW crowd spoke with their wallet, and Blizzard (who have made it clear that they fervently disagree with the Classic WoW crowd back then, i.e. J. Allen Brack’s famous “You think you do, but you don’t” quote) bent the knee. While I actually don’t like Classic WoW at all, the intended effects were undeniable. Blizzard lost money, so the devs were made to listen or risked unemployment.

The same thing has to happen here. Leave WoW and do not come back until mage is good (in both gameplay and damage, aura buffs will not cut it here).

Remember: you cannot force the devs listen to your ideas; they are free to do as they please. You can, however, hold them accountable for their mistakes, and making Blizzard lose income is how you do it.

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I only started playing mage because my M+ group needed a lust. Turns out it was the wrong lust class to pick. This is my first xpac on mage so with that context your opinion doesn’t make any sense.

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Well strictly speaking they didn’t. They had no alternative since if you wanted something other than the retail experience you had to play on a private server. But I get your point.

What worries me is that even a mass walkout wouldn’t be enough because there was a literal exodus during SL and what was their answer to that? DF, which was pretty much more of the same except dressed up in a better setting and accompanied by a more coherent story. WoW doesn’t need all those frills, what it needs most of all is massive work under the hood and the talent tree revamp most definitely wasn’t it.

The real issues of balance and the community demand for common sense reworks and overhauls of some specs that have been in a desperate need of change for years have all continued to be ignored and they just keep doing whatever they want (which is usually nothing).

It’s an unsustainable model, especially with their refusal to communicate, and it will all come crashing down eventually but probably not until another game comes on the horizon that can fill the massive void WoW would leave in the MMO space. Here’s to hoping that materializes soon because MMO’s have been in dire straits for years now and we desperately need that breath of fresh air.

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Going to +1 for Path of Exile… I’ve been having a blast playing that while hating WoW at the moment (and waiting for D4)

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I just don’t play my mage. I figure if enough people just play different classes, they’ll get the hint. Shouldn’t take more than 5-6 years for them to realize no one is playing mages anymore.

Also, I play FFXIV already. Personally, find the jobs (classes) in that game to be much better designed than WoW. All about personal preference, though.

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I actually don’t agree. They have to lose money, not players of a certain class who simply reroll.

The proof behind this is Survival Hunter: completely unplayed and absent outside of S3/S4 of SL (due to numerically OP tier set). This spec has been dead and they refuse to look at it. If you want your spec to be changed, Blizzard has to lose players. If you reroll into Dev FotM specs, you are encouraging them to focus on a select few specs and leave other specs in the dust. This will exacerbate their behavior until they believe it is now acceptable to clearly favor certain specs, and continue to ignore mages (like they did for survival hunters).

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play Guild Wars 2!

36 classes, Much Fun!

thank me later

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