The worst thing about today's WoW

tl;dr: I play Wowhead more than WoW.

Absolutely nothing is intuitive about this game any more. Random normal bosses have more mechanics than raid bosses did a few expansions ago, and most of them make no sense at all. Onyxia deep-breathing? Of course, she’s a dragon. Bosses shooting rays in four directions while dropping puddles? wut. The first couple expansions, you needed guides; then you needed addons; now you need to go through hell – as much abuse as a community can heap on you – for a few runs just to know where to begin to research.

Non-intuitive is not the same thing as challenging. It’s just stupid homework at every. single. stage. “Get in a helpful guild and get carried.” Okay, but why does a successful game not function without third-party websites and assistants? When we have to install a dozen mods to get Skyrim to run right, we call it what it is: bug fixes.

Even world quests and chests need wowhead on alt-tab. And for what? I can’t think of a game where the reward-to-research ratio is so bad. And because of that, people are in berserk mode: bored, rushing, irritable. Which means group content is a special nightmare with everyone except the closest of friends.

I remember my first mythic+, a few expansions back. I dropped the keystone in before some of the group had entered. Wow, cursing in three languages. Fair enough, it was a new mechanic, even back then I probably should have known to ask before clicking. Fast forward to tonight, when I went into a heroic dungeon that I far out-geared, picked up some item that gave me no indication I now held the life of the group in my hands, and suddenly I’m reliving that first mythic+ experience: cursing, raging, etc. How would I have known this? I picked up the quest inside, there was no mention in the Adventure Guide afaik, there was nothing on the quest item that warned it wasn’t just a quest item … It’s like all these situations exist JUST to make the game as hellish as possible. And. For. What?

Quests with key mechanics not even mentioned: don’t step on the purple blobs or the race resets, the clicky is underground, you have to wait until next week, there are EIGHTEEN FLOORS this time, etc. Your rewards: some anima, with 14 ways to spend it and no clue which does what. Surprise, alchemy stones stink this expansion, thanks for grinding up all that way for nothing, should have read the wowhead comments first, idiot ha ha.

Anyway.

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The “worst” thing is the current dev team.

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thats long

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You don’t need to be “carried” to be explained the mechanics. Run some zeroes with your guild to help explain mechanics.

The assumption that I need to do research out of game, to know what I am doing, and run a bunch of add-ons, kills the idea of instances for me. It did as far back as Cata.

Having to run a cookiecutter build has always annoyed me.

Mostly, I just hate teh general way instanced fights are done. Too much like Simon says kinda stuff. I don’t enjoy learning things by rote or having to memorize when and where to step.

Too much like piano lessons, which I bailed on ASAP.*

*Evidently I had potential, but was uninterested in the whole concept. It never got fun, there was never a time where I just sat and played for the fun of it. It was always a chore.

Which is how I find group content.

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Agreed. Simon says, or linedancing. Memorize some random steps, repeat as mindlessly as possible.

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That about sums it up… There is no “one” thing.

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No, the worst thing is timegates that restricts our ability to play our own way and pace.

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Never thought about it before, I don’t mind the research and it’s just something I do and something I would do for any game you put in front of me. Never would I just get a game and start playing it, I’d have to look it up first and then go on a ‘best for me’ spree of information gathering. I can understand though how that isn’t appealing to everyone.

One thing that bothers me though is when people say you need wowhead and addons. Off the top of my head I can’t think of anything where you need third party stuff, if you want to get it done as fast as possible then yeah you’ll need to research but if you don’t mind doing your own puzzle solving or trial and erroring then you don’t need anything but your nugget :slight_smile:

If you don’t know don’t touch it :laughing:

If you look just above and to the left of my character you’ll see an icon

https://i.postimg.cc/pd6rz6gf/image.png

You can’t tell from the screenshot but the icon is colored, that means it’s … :thinking: in the same “side” as me (I don’t know how to put it :man_shrugging: ) if I’m outside and my objective is outside the icons are colored, if I’m inside/outside and the objective is in the opposite then it’ll be gray.
You’ll also notice the little down arrow below the icon, that means it’s below me elevation wise. This of course only helps if the clicky shows up on your minimap. (My map is overlaying my character so I don’t have to look away to see stuff)

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You’re not wrong even though they’re trying to do some good. It can’t heal the past wounds.

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So learning is bad now?

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I agree, just trying to pug m2’s can be an absolute nightmare…I watch vids, have done em 20 times on heroic, and m2’s can 1 shot an over geared group.

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I can’t speak for the actual new raid mechanics, but pretty much every effect in M+ is clearly telegraphed. The game itself often straight up TELLS YOU the boss is doing something deadly – SD Kaal for example.

The tool tip for the Naaru shield, for example, very clearly states what it protects you from. It require some reading comprehension and a bit of thinking, that is all.

I love the newer more complex style of mechanics because it very strongly highlights the idea of “bringing the player”. It’s SO satisfying as a frost dk, a maligned underperforming class, to basically out dps and out-survive a meta fotm class because they were DEAD half of the fight because they either didn’t know what to do or thought they could ignore a mechanic.

The number of people, for example, who still don’t know the 4 beam boss in HoA CHANGES DIRECTIONS is ridiculous. Like, just watch the damn boss; you’ll see him change directions. He moves VERY slowly. Puddle underneath you? That’s on the tank, they should be slowly moving backwards after like every second puddle so everyone has room.

Sure, the guide does not say all of that. But it does say, beam does X damage and puddles do Z damage. Put two and two together and figure out “oh… maybe I should try to move the boss away from the puddles…”

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That’s asking too much of OP though. Two and two… dude, that’s math, he’s trying to play a video game! Back in his day you just mashed the A button and that was fun!

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The amount of research you have to do outside of the game is NUTS now. In Legion and BFA, sure I would occasionally use Wowhead, but in SL, just so far, I have used Wowhead more than all of Legion and BFA combined. NOTHING is intuitive or explained in-game anymore.

How the heck was I supposed to know I have a magic grappling hook, that I never picked up, that mysteriously only works with weird mushrooms in Maldraxxus? I thought I would have to, you know, obtain the grappling hook like I did in Stormheim.

Sure I don’t mind complex things that I have to figure out…but the stuff in this expansion just makes no sense. It’s so counter-intuitive it’s ridiculous. I see people grappling around, go “I must’ve missed the quest that gets me the grappling hook, let me go to wowhead AGAIN and figure it out” after looking everywhere. Only to find out, oh, that’s not something you find, you’re just supposed to know you can do that. WTF.

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I love education, but hate school.

School is a forced one way. Education needs diversity.

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This expansion seems to be catering to the top 1%. While I enjoy doing hard content. There needs to be chill rewarding current content not just farming transmogs.

Player Housing would fill that role. I think Ion is way to focus on making the game overly-complex to make player housing.

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I don’t think it’s the learning that’s the problem it’s the outside resources increasing efficiency.

If you take two players, one with no addons and no out of game resources and one with whatever addons and outside resources he wants and have them both play the one with outside resources will get more done faster than the guy without.

Is that a problem? :man_shrugging: but it’s understandable why some people would not like it.

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Player: What does this boss do?
WoWhead: skeet skeet skeet to the windows to the wall!

laughs in pvp because pve is scary

The last time i did pve was in the first patch of legion running mythic keys when they were new, everything since then has just felt overwhelming to me tbh
lfr for me atm is basically me going “help what does this mean” when dbm puts menacing words on my screen :smiley: fun times

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