That’s nice, so go ahead and play through Classic a 2nd time then.
I’ll take modern WoW, and that is why I’m playing retail instead.
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mobs aren’t tougher, you missed the point. I said they scale, so you never overpower them. They just follow you along. Its not fun. Yes I want it to take time. It used to be a thing you were proud of. That ding felt earned. The entire game felt like it mattered.
I don’t think scaling is the issue as much as how it’s done. Like, deadmines remains relevant content at all levels. Great. Why isn’t deadmines awarding max ilvl gear, or why can’t I spend resources to upgrade deadmines gear to max level?
ESO has an absolutely master class gear system. WoW should be so lucky to attempt it IMO. Any item in the entire game can be upgraded to max level. If you like a proc from low level zones, you can upgrade it and use it. It costs a fortune but it works.
If you like a named drop from a quest that really spoke to your heart? It’s not just a keepsake in your bank. You can sharpen that beauty up and slay the last boss of the game with it.
Ofc upgrading crap sets doesn’t really mean they’re gonna be good. But the stats are real.
Imagine being able to pull your tier 6 out of the bank, your warglaives, what have you, and still being able to use them. think of the ingame economy if blacksmiths could upgrade your old hard-won trophies to still have value?
We have a very small teaser to this system afaik currently. Unless DF is changing this and i’m complaining about nothing.
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FFXIV is successful because they cater to casuals. WoW died because they kissed the tail of the elite.
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You think that’s on the mind of new players? My guess is that most new players wouldn’t even understand that sentence much less get upset over what it’s trying to say.
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“Why isn’t my equipment good anymore? What’s wrong with this sword?” I think new players can find this question pretty quickly.
I’m gonna be honest I completely lost track of your question with my post as I’ve thought about it before lol and am passionate about defias leather.
I’d love for everything to be relevant.
it used to be relevant before scaling took affect.
New players wouldn’t have previously owned a sword that isn’t good any more. They would only have what ever they are given when they create their first toon.
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It just has to be one or the other. Either everything scales, and that means the rewards do too (and that means they scale with us.) or can be forced to do so for the sake of the economy.
Or nothing scales, and gear is actually obsolete.
I think both systems work. But wow’s at a weird middle ground, partially because of the squish.
You can level from 1-60 with essentially never upgrading your gear because the stats are squished so that an epic TBC sword will have similar stats to a Copper Longsword.
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Hot take: people never really had the time to invest in this game and other MMOs to begin with, and the gaming market has recognized that and has made games that are much easier to play for 30 mins to an hour so you aren’t glued to your keyboard for hours and hours.
WoW remedied this slightly with M+, but it’s still not really quite there yet.
All the content creators like to say “Just make the game good” and do a lot of talking without actually saying anything of substance.
You can’t change stuff and assume nearly everyone will be happy. I personally like when it took a long time to go from level 1 - cap, and felt far more invested in the new character over current speed. It was an adventure whether boring or not. But a large number of people accused Blizzard of unnaturally keeping the leveling slow to sell cash shop booster. The non-conspiratorial types would simply parrot stuff like “Leveling sucks. It’s slow for no reason. I did it once why should I have to do it again? Waste of time”
As for scaling it became a popular MMO thing like 5 years ago. It allows people to join each other at any stage and makes the game non-linear. Also not everyone likes 1 shotting everything like a 12 year old using cheat codes on a single player Playstation 2 RPG so he can go to school lunch the next day and tell his friends he beat the game in 1 sitting. No one cares
I wasn’t planning to return, and had problems getting Dragonflight working, but I then succeeded and it’s all thanks to a friend that has convinced me to come back for this expansion
I mean it was fine before scaling, and it felt like it mattered. Just because something doesn’t matter at max level doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. A level 34 dungeon felt just as important as a level 120 dungeon to me, because it progressed the story, it progressed your level, it was a stepping stone and an important one. Now with scaling, it just feels like they are catering to the kinds of people they shouldn’t be. The devs used to scoff at ideas like this and called them lazy. “wow is not that kind of game, and the day it ever becomes that, you will know that wow is truly dead” Now its like they are trying to chase an elusive nonexistant new player that never comes. Like they are addicted to new players but can’t just reach that high anymore. You wanna know why? They don’t put the work in anymore. They have become lazy and complacent, releasing new xpacks ever 2 years but never putting in any effort while earning $96.80 an hour for doing $15 of work.
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WoW is an old Horse that ruled the roost, and other games had to grind away to try and eke out their own niches and grew from there.
As WoW Backslid with both BFA and Shadowlands people got a taste for MMOs beyond the Old Horse, and some found it’s flavor lacking compared to what the new kids were doing, while some chose to stay.
Basically, unless WoW does some hard work again, etting the people it lost back without resorting to hyper-juicing the game like Legion did is going to be a tall ask and won’t happen overnight
Dragonflight is the only expansion I almost didn’t get, so…if I can come back for Dragonflight things aren’t that bad with wow.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear enough.
New players when progressing through the game will be leveling up. As they do, eventually they’ll come to understand the reality that some of their previously awarded loot or quest items or whatever have you won’t be relevant anymore.
I think the common sense of this is obscured when players are in the same stat bracket or squished or bolstered or what have you. Between westfall greens and the loot from pandaria I’ll probably be safe regardless of what I equip in the current system because of how scaling and squishing works.
Characte progression used to be a huge part of this game. It helped people get invested in their characters. “Oh i can probably beat that thing that was giving me trouble now, I’m stronger than I was last time.” isn’t a thing in the modern game. You just beat everything. Always. by design. (while leveling.)
So you’re absolutely right. New players won’t be thinking about replacing gear or “what’s the point” when the game doesn’t challenge them. But that’s not necessarily good.
I think it’s important for new players to die, and try and find solutions to problems. The scaling in wow is pretty lazy and makes this a rare problem that doesn’t have a solution outside of “ignore it.” or “get good.”
getting better at the game is ofc something they need to do, but part of that should be knowledge of how equipment works, or potions, or other resources.
Wow’s moving away from all of that and strictly focusing on gameplay. This is equipment. It doesn’t really matter. Just press the shiny buttons until the health bar is zero.
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I agree. Thats why I said both systems work. Wow’s scaling system doesn’t work well. But there are iterations of it in other games that do work. I prefer the old system you’re talking about like I said.
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If they had 2 games, 1 where we had the old system and new content, and what retail is right now. I can gurantee you that I would be playing the first as would a LOT of people. I would pay for a year of wow time. I would enjoy the grind and the gear progression. I think a lot of people would. You want welfare wow? cool go play welfare wow. Same story, same content, but there is a grind and levels to move through and none of the scaling. Where gear matters and skill matters. You want gamers? Make a game, you want babies who can’t pull the levers in the right order, make it that way too. Why do I have to be forced into welfare wow JUST to see new content?
It’s not generational issues. There’s a huge cornucopia of issues that WoW has that does not entice players to stick around unless their only focus was getting to the end-game, and really even then the end-game has to be compelling to keep them around long enough.
- The story pacing for new players is terrible and there just isn’t any excuse for it. World of Warcraft is built on top of well over 25+ years of established lore and plot with a whole series of games that game before it, and yet new players are hard-focused into a plotline that doesn’t give them anything to really draw them in, with a leveling experience designed from the ground up to funnel them into whatever is the newest content.
- There’s no way to break into the game’s economy without spending extra money on a quick infusion OR you get lucky with really rare BOE drops.
- Dungeons, up until this pre-patch, were hilariously easy and do nothing to encourage any sort of interaction between group members except to just kill what’s in front of them.
- Adding to the concerns over the story, its tone and pacing is all over the place. It’s not so much confusing as it does a really good job of giving people who care about it whiplash.
- Despite what everyone on these forums might want to insist, the game’s community is insanely toxic. New players can’t run dungeons without some form of unnecessary ridicule from players who’ve had over 18 years of playing the game. Guilds are barren wastelands of social interaction even with larger social guilds – which are basically just collections of small cliques. A new player’s only option if they didn’t already have friends playing is basically to turn off all form of chat in-game.
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