LONG POST WARNING
This survey is about why many have left or have lost interest in the roleplaying aspect of World of Warcraft. This is an open survey where anyone who feels compelled to respond can do so. Whether you are currently subbed or not, no longer roleplay in game, never roleplayed in game, a new player interested in roleplay, or an existing player wanting to get into roleplay.
I am no actual scientist, this is not an actual scientific study. I hope to post my results and discuss the results in the form of a video essay, forum post, discord post, and/or charts. This began out of personal fascination and frustrations with the lack of focused discussions.
These reasons came from forum posts, discord server discussions, and talking with other players about their ideas or personal experiences. Descriptions are based on the general ideas that went into the initial reasoning.
If you have suggestions for the survey please keep it polite and respectful. If you wish to respond to another participant in the survey, please do so respectfully. People can feel deeply connected to their character(s), stories, or the game, please respect that connection. Follow the general guidelines with responses.
Response can be here publicly, or sent to me privately. Please keep responses to one per player, this is off honor as I have no real way to fact check this. if you do not wish to respond or participate in the survey you do not have too, and you do not have to tell me that you do not. If you do say so you will be counted in the results.
Please list what aspects of these categories have led to YOUR reasons to stop roleplaying or decrease your interest in roleplay. Do not add reasons you think are affecting other players. You don’t have to agree to every part of the description to use the reason. Feel free to add your own description on why you choose that reason. If none of these are reasons that you relate too, please respond with why none of these reasons match yours and what your reasons are. If you have no reason to have concern or do not have any concerns over the current status of the roleplay community please respond by saying so.
Category 1: Blizzard & Community
- The Lawsuit - You don’t want to support Blizzard’s business practices in regards to the actions noted in the lawsuit.
- General Business Practices - You don’t like the current focus of Blizzard. You don’t like Activison.
- General Community Practices - You don’t think Blizzard listens to their community.
- “Pay to win” / Microtransactions - The amount of mounts, pets, toys, boosts, etc in the game’s store is too much. Tokens have allowed a “pay to win” system.
- Monthly Fee - You don’t like the current subscription model. You no longer can afford the prices. No longer worth the price. You don’t like the 6 month sub & mount/mog combinations.
- Esport/high level focus - Blizzard has stepped away from “casual” play. Blizzard has shifted focus to better support the esport and high level play in the game.
- Influencer Issues - Streamers and Youtubers have too much sway over the community. Influencers don’t address problems you feel they should. They affect the game too much.
- Overall Community - The community is too “toxic”. The community is not helpful. There’s not enough people in the community. The community has too many “trashy” or perverted players.
Category 2: Gameplay
- M+ and Raiding (Actual play) - M+ is too difficult, Raiding is difficult.
- M+ and Raiding (Progress) - Rewards do not match the effort. It’s too much of a struggle to progress and clear bosses/keys consistently.
- M+ and Raiding (Players) - “Pugging” for this content is annoying and/or frustrating. You don’t have friends/guild members to run with.
- M+ and Raiding (Interest) - You have little to no interest in doing these activities.
- PVP (Actual Play) - Class balance has made this mode frustrating. Pvp is difficult.
- PVP (Progress) - Rewards are not matching the effort put in. It’s difficult to progress and get higher scores consistently.
- PVP (Players) - The pvp community is too “toxic” for you. “Pugging” is annoying or frustrating. You don’t have friends/guild members to run with.
- PVP (Interest) - You have little to no interest in doing this activity.
- Warmode - PVP or World PVP is simply not your thing. You’re annoyed that the Alliance gets rewards for participating, but not the Horde.
- Warmode (Players) - You’re tired of getting “ganked”. There’s too many “toxic” players. You are annoyed with the lack of support outside of “ruin” groups.
- Class Balance - There are classes that feel overall better than others to an extreme degree that it no longer feels worth dealing with. You feel locked out of content or tiers of content due to your class.
- Racial Balance (Gameplay) - You feel like your and any of the races have noticeably weaker racials than others. The racials feel useless.
- Faction Balance (Gameplay) - There is too much of a faction imbalance in the gameplay aspects… You see factions from a gameplay purpose as useless.
- Time (in Game) - You feel it takes too long to get your “chores” done. You don’t like the time gates. You don’t like how long it takes to complete in-game activities such as dungeons, raids, or battlegrounds.
- Time (out of Game) - You currently have an issue outside of the game limiting your time to play the game. There’s a different game you would rather be playing.
- Current Systems - You don’t feel the current systems work well. You find the current systems too annoying, boring, or difficult to use. The current systems are so important to higher end content you’re worried about making the wrong choice.
- Roleplay (Gameplay) - You feel there’s no current in game reason to roleplay. The LFG change hurts your roleplaying ability.
Category 3: Cannon, Lore, & Story
- The Shadowlands Story - You don’t feel connected or care for the SL story. You don’t feel the SL story is up to your standards of writing.
- Previous Story - Any of the former expacs have caused you to lose interest in the story. An old expac had led to you losing respect for the writer’s or story’s direction.
- Outside of Game - You don’t like how the story can progress outside of events in the game. You don’t like how you have to read books, look up wikis, play other games, etc, to get to know characters/events/settings you like. You do not like how your favorite character/events/settings are handled in outside materials.
- Retcons - You don’t like how many or what retcons have occurred in the story and lore.
- Changes in Character(s) - You don’t like how your favorite character(s) have been altered via retcons or story direction. Your favorite character(s) don’t get enough attention or screen time. You don’t like how your favorite character(s) have died.
Category 4: Roleplay
- Character and Story Conflict - Your character(s) would not work in the current story. You have no interest in trying to fit your character into the current story.
- Character and Environment Conflict - You don’t feel your character fits in with any of the locations in the game. You don’t feel like your character can exist in the current locations of high roleplay. Your character doesn’t come from any of the worlds from in the game.
- Character and Gameplay Conflict - You feel the current gameplay system causes issues (ex: Chromie Time). You feel you cannot enter into high pop rp area’s due to your faction (Hostile NPCS). You feel like gameplay activities such as WQ or others cause conflict in roleplay efforts. OOC players playing are distracting.
- Character’s Personality/Story - You no longer feel connected with your character’s personality or story. You no longer wish to express your character’s story in roleplay.
- Character’s Personality/Story (Other Players) - You feel like other players will or other players have given you trouble over your character’s story or personality.
- Other player’s Personality/Story - You have issues with other players’ character’s story or personality in general. One or multiple characters of other players’ have annoyed you.
- Character’s Appearance - You no longer feel connected to your character’s appearance. You feel like you cannot get the look you want with current customizations, mogs, mounts, races, classes, etc.
- World RP - You feel there is not enough roleplay traffic outside of hubs. There is a lack of world rp on your server. There’s a lack of questing roleplay.
- RP Events (Locations) - There’s not enough events in areas you like to roleplay in. You are bored with the same locations being used for events. You can not access some locations due to level locks, alter timelines,etc
- RP Events (Time) - Events happen on days/times you cannot attend. Events are too short or too long. Your favorite event got cancelled or you missed one you wanted to attend.
- RP Events (Activity) -. There’s not enough people or too many people. You feel there’s not enough interaction during events. You don’t like the activities at events.
- RP Events (Interest) - You have little to no interest in attending an event.
- Other player’s Methods - There’s not enough people who roleplay in a method you use. You feel other player’s have too long of posts or too short of posts.
- Other player’s Themes - You are annoyed with the themes of other roleplayers. You feel there are no themes your character can fit into. There’s not enough opportunities for your wanted theme of roleplay.
- Other player’s Conduct - You don’t like the amount of “trolling” behavior. You don’t like how often you get “gmodded”. You don’t like how other players treat you (as a player). You don’t like how strict other players can be.
- Guilds & Friends (Positive) - You much rather roleplay within your friend’s/guild’s storyline or theme. You rather roleplay with your friends/guild members. You rather attend only Guild/Friend hosted events.
- Guilds & Friends (Negative) - You don’t have friends/guild members to roleplay with. Your guild has disbanded or stopped roleplay activities. You no longer have interest in your friend/guild story or events.
- Discord (Negative) - You feel too many people have moved to discord to roleplay. You feel that only way to keep up with events is via discord. Guild have moved to discord.
- Discord (Positive) - You rather roleplay on discord.
- Forums - You feel there is not enough roleplay on the forums. You rather roleplay on the forums.
- Other platforms - You rather roleplay on other platforms.
- Fan-Fiction - You feel like your character(s), stories, wishes could be better accomplished through writing fanfiction. You feel your fan fiction could provide better settings/events/interactions with oc or cannon characters better than roleplay.
- Roleplay Creativity - You no longer feel roleplay can provide the creative outlet that you need.
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