The Design Priorities of WoW

Community General Discussion
1

I’d say after 17 odd years in this game, that’s really the problem here; and it’s been a major part of Warcraft’s problem since day one. Blizzard’s design priority to date has been shaped by people who honestly should be designing with the interests of the 97% of the player base in mind. Not a hyper toxic 3%.

Understand this. The purpose of this post is not to bash anyone who likes hard content. They are not what I reference when I say “the 3%”. There are plenty of reasonable and decent people who like insane challenges. They enjoy and beat it without becoming bloated by their self worth.

Additionally, the purpose of this thread is NOT a passive request to nerf the Mage Tower. It is neither of those things. Having content like this which is insanely difficult is good, because it gives the players something to aspire to conquer.

That is healthy for the game, and if you get a hard check of humility; then take the loss as the lesson it’s intended to be, and claim victory next go. Then you can also celebrate a job well done.

Yet at the same time, there is an issue that should be discussed. I do feel that WoW needs to stop enabling the 3% to carry on as they do. What I speak of when I say “the 3%” is this. We’ve all seen them.

The 3% as I define it, are the guys and gals who punctuate every sentence with “Lol!” and a disparaging statement about ‘filthy casuals’ and ‘welfare epics’. The guys and gals who tell you “gitgud scrub” or try to kick you from a instance if you ask for information on a boss. The guys and gals who tend to abuse the afk feature in Battlegrounds.

Old Blizzard created this atmosphere. But New Blizzard can and must change it. Old Blizzard fostered this mentality. New Blizzard must break that cycle. This is not a call out thread, but an earnest question to all employees in the company who are hurt or feeling betrayed.

Does this language and the nature of the below rant sound familiar?

Here’s a trip with Mr. Peabody in the Way-Back Machine…

Now while I know very well who wrote it, when it was written and why it was written, it may surprise the rest of the forums or some employees to learn that this post was not written by an angry World of Warcraft player. Far from it.

Oh don’t get me wrong. The author was very heavily involved in World of Warcraft, but it has been my stance since the start, that such people are the ultimate problem in WoW.

Blizzard, you had to deal with the author of this post because of what was alleged about them and I will not dive into all of that. It’s your ship. But because these things do affect us the players as well, I have an honest question.

If you do not tolerate men or statements such as this, and say that such mentalities do not reflect your values, I believe you. I’ll take you at your word, and I will support you on the clean-up of the game.

But if this is not what defines you, then I have to ask… Why should you support or accommodate what amount to the above poster’s spiritual children in any fashion, at the detriment of the rest of the player base who is still here, and rooting for you?

I am not going to be the one to say “Do X or else!”, like this guy did. If I did in the past, sorry. My bad. I’m human. Cadaverous or living impaired last I checked News at 11 from Undercity. Wait, I need to get out before… oh god… the fumes— send help.

Jokes aside, I support and hope you will add more challenging content in the future. But at the same time, I hope you will remember what your primary player base enjoys as well and adopt that as your core design mentality going forward.

We all need to be better. You need to stop tolerating this sort of mentality or rewarding it. Players need to take a deep breath and chill. Especially after what happened. Especially now with the world we are living in.

I only mention it, because it’s where we’ve been. It’s not who we can become. We know that this is precisely what happens when you stroke the ego of someone who has no business being treated like a “rockstar”. They are never satisfied and just become a bigger erm… bad deed doer.

Additionally if at any point past or recent I have contributed to it, then consider this my apology. I just do not like double standards or hypocrisy. Those are my pet peeves, and that’s because I believe firmly in a very high and very impartial bar being set when it comes to justice.

You either get it, or you don’t.

Some Suggestions to Improve WoW if your still reading.

I. Merge a Couple of the Timewalking Weeks. Ditto to PVP weeks. This would let players have more options at any given time. Not a bad thing in my estimates.

II. Consider cross faction grouping. Not calling for Factions completely dissolve, but consider making it so that Alliance and Horde can work together as the NPCs do.

If what the Alliance says about their raiding scene being in danger is factual, then it is what must be done. They have an equal stake as customers as Horde players do, and the human behind the keyboard deserves at least that much respect.

Crap that was too long. Way too long. Oh well. It’s the last time I post this much, but I had too much coffee tonight. See I got a Kuerig for Christmas and can I just say to all of you wonderful people how lovely it is to drink real coffee instead of the Folgers Crystals I’ve had to stomach for 20 years? You have NO idea.

7 Likes
2

Change timewalking to a monthly event, 12 timewalking events per year. Polish up a few more past patch cycles with timewalking M+. Simple, easy, pro-player, game fixed. Don’t like the new stuff? Here, go play the 3.3 dungeon set with current tier item level.

2 Likes
3

I think you forgot to mention $ as the first priority

2 Likes
4

Any business always has that as a priority. It should be implied that pleasing a majority will always be more profitable for the company than appeasing a minority. This is why me and my friends have always said that while WoW is great, it could have been so much more had it just catered to more than a small subset of it’s playerbase.

But that’s all a matter of the past. No one can change it.

But one can change one’s present and turn WoW into the greatest comeback story. The way is there, the materials and the concepts are there; it just needs a strong steady hand at the rudder. I have to hope Ybarra is up to it.

5

So engaging in your TLDR since that’s the actual points of your post. I think your explanation is pretty far off base of what your actual points are, since nothing in the attitudes of the playerbase or devs are especially relevant to these points.

Pretty hard to disagree. It sucks have to wait approximately 4 months for specific timewalking events to roll around like if you want DH Glaives or (now) Mage Tower or TW M+.

It’s kinda hard to merge them together completely since that just dilutes the playerbase participating in those events.

My solution would be that Timewalking Raids and Mage Tower are up regardless of what Timewalking week it is, so long as it’s timewalking. Timewalking M+ is expanded on and instead of becoming a Timewalking event, we just have a couple dungeons rotated in and out each season.

The playerbase isn’t big enough to support two mutually exclusive factions and over the years they’ve been condensing where almost every server of any note is extremely polarized to the point where it’s affecting regions as a whole, with NA Alliance and OCE Horde being struggle street.

Of the top 10 biggest realms on RaiderIO, there is only ONE actually balanced realm (Quel’thelas) with 7 of the other 9 having a split thats about 9:1 or higher, and Frostmourne and Ragnaros having roughly 4:1 splits.

IMO Factions should work like the Scryer/Aldor from a player perspective (minus the choice, that should still be tied to race). The factions don’t like each other, you’re not allowed in the other factions quest hubs or bases, etc, but there otherwise aren’t barriers between faction interaction.

Factions aren’t really a mechanic that works when there’s such a huge gameplay incentive to play the most popular one because of huge population disparities.

1 Like
6

The 97 percent wouldn’t need a faction join. Because they can still do anything unless they are top 100 guild type players. The 3 or dare I say .3 percent of players.

7

I was playing EQ at the time that Furor wrote that right before going to work on WoW. He was a pretty opinionated person back then.

8

Nah, let TW be an ongoing event, with the expansion cycling every week. That’ll put any given TW expansion (Wrath, TBC, Legion, etc) on a 7-week cycle, which fits pretty well into the 2-month game time option on the store.

1 Like
9

The weekly rotation of TW is so limiting, there’s so much content that can be timewalked, but the weekly pacing has kept it very narrow. Mage Tower extension I think showed a better path forward. Having those timeworn keys for a more reasonable period of time made the game feel so vibrant, and with a longer cycle they could do things like timewalking raids and LFR, and other larger content pieces much more meaningfully and accessibly.

10

How is a weekly rotation of TW expansions limiting? I honestly fail to see it. The 5-dungeon event can be knocked out in a dedicated afternoon, and even then the expansions that offer TW raids allow raid bosses to count as dungeon clears. The Mage Tower extension should be seen as an exceptional circumstance – it is a high-difficulty, short-session, highly-repeatable event that can theoretically fit into any timeframe; the outcry leading to its extension stemmed from the outcry against the existing TW cycle, in which any given expansion only rotates around approx twice a year.

Having TW always active, with the expansions cycling every week, would do away with those circumstances. As far as timeworn keystones are concerned, something interesting they could implement could be persistent keystones (they carry over from event to event of the same expac) and/or universal keystones (timeworn = used on any TW dungeon; Eternal = used on any SL dungeon; and so forth).

11

But why? Were you held prisoner in a Folgers factory? Do you live somewhere that has a Folgers obsession to the exclusion of all other coffee? Were you on a jungle excursion, got lost and Dan only packed a 20 year supply of Folgers?

I neeeeed to knooow!

12

Tradition! My grandparents drank it, my father drank it, and by thunder I drank it!

I didn’t know what I was missing till I realized I could have teas also in addition to coffee. Heaven has a name and it’s name is a excellent cup of Chai or Earl Grey. Yes tradition… One that in this case I was happy to terminate with extreme force. :smile:

13

That’s every company, even peoples preciouses, so it should go without saying.

Corporations and their faces aren’t your friends. This is day one stuff.

14

Ah well i totally understand. My old man drank his coffee black and would go on a tear every time i or anyone even suggested something could be put in coffee, so i didn’t drink it at all for the longest time. Decided I’d try some cream and sugar despite him. Drank 2 cups a day since.