I think the reason why WoW is dying is from starting to make the game’s philosophies more liberal than conservative. Even though I’m mostly liberal in real life and agree with most of the things on that side, I don’t think it works in an mmo when everyone starts from a same playing field. The reason why I agree with the left side in real life is because not everyone starts at the same level and it’s a lot more unfair for people living in bad areas who are born into that type of area and feels stuck there. Now the reason why that doesn’t work in an mmo is because everyone starts at the same level. And I’m pretty sure that’s the reason why we love WoW and mmo’s in general.
Now this leads into class design philosophy, I think when the game took more of an overwatch approach with designing classes, it completely killed the PvP scene. By making some classes easier than others by removing utility and buffing damage on those certain specs and making them still able to kill specs that are far more complex than the one spec by them just doing there PvE rotation. See when it’s designed like that there is no drive to learn those complex specs because they are just as good as the easy ones. I think this approach is super unhealthy for class design in PvP, it probably doesn’t affect PvE that much but it ruins the feel of someone like myself that plays subtlety that dies to some assa rogue in a kidney for example.
The problem with WoW PvP is not completely that the specs are too overpowered than others(even though that’s a huge problem as well). It’s that easy specs can kill complex specs. This ruins the progression of feeling attached to that complex spec and pretty much feels forced to swap to the easy spec just to put half as much effort into PvP than the complex spec you were just playing before. This type of approach to PvP is a huge problem of PvP today and why we all ask for MoP class design to return. Where you need actual skill to win vs the other player. And the skill level of all specs felt pretty much the same(a lot more than now).
Now I get why blizzard is doing this approach, to attract new players by them playing dh, dk, warrior, etc and still able to kill good players, but it will make good players that spent so much time learning there spec over the years feel less attached to it because they can die to a new player playing arms warrior for example. And those new players don’t have a drive to learn those complex specs because there is no point anymore if you can play something easy and be just as good and maybe even better. So now we are kind of stuck in World of Meleecraft instead of World of Warcraft and the question I want to ask you all is do you guys think this approach is healthy?
For example, there is 2 new players(1 is a melee and other is a caster) that just started playing WoW and is friends. They level to max level and have the same ilvl basically. So it’s an even fight right? Nope. The caster pretty much HAS to juke and predict the melee player’s kicks every time for them to do anything in the fight. So this caster has to do a lot more outplaying than the melee to even win the fight. This is the problem with the game today and by removing a ton of utility from melee specs. The unbalance isn’t so much that the class can do more dmg than the other. It’s how much skill it takes to play a certain spec and win in for example a duel or arena.
Honestly I think if overwatch heroes took all the same skill level to play at a certain level that game would be #1 fps in the world and probably be the best FPS to ever come out. For example in other fps’s, if CS:GO added a gun that did more damage than the AK47 and was easier to use, what’s the point of using the AK47 anymore? This is how I feel about certain specs in WoW right now.
This also effects raiding in WoW by making it feel less special with systems like LFR for players not as good to do the same content. This ruins character progression and doesn’t belong in an MMO in my opinion. This is what makes WoW stale to me.