Server transfers in large part makes it easier to be toxic. Before them if you were a nasty human being you didn’t get groups, guild invites, which meant no raiding. Guilds would keep contact with each other on who and why someone was kicked. You had to be civil because the community took care of itself.
Now with server transfers, cross realm, CRZ there is no accountability for your actions which gives some knuckle draggers free reign to be bullies.
I think its more phases. Releasing half a game and selling the rest through DLCs, loot boxes, annual passes… there’s always going to be a new gimmick to get more money out of the industry. To be fair games are getting more expensive, which is kinda funny when plenty of indie or retro games still hold up to games that cost all this money from a AAA studio that have less retention time then Dane Cook standup act.
I agree. I was thinking more along the lines of community consequences. Early in the game when players behaved badly it had a ripple effect on how they would be perceived in the community of other players and potentially hurt their options/opportunities within the game. Obviously extreme behavior would have direct consequences from Blizzard but there used to be community consequences in both the positive and negative direction that seems to have diminished over the years.
I used to play wow on my phone a fair bit in WoD when the remote auction house was up.
I don’t bother to do the table missions on my phone since I play alts and don’t have a ton of resources in BfA.
I do have a ton of Legion resources since I am still grinding rep, but I can’t do those table missions from the phone.
The difficulty is reversed and the philosophy is all wrong.
Making the game easier to solo and then capping participation at the end game creates all the toxicity the game has today.
If everyone can progress alone nobody is compelled to socialize.
If end game is designed around instanced play and the roster is limited to X number of players the leader is only going to get the very best of X.
So all the hate on raider io, the hate on party and raid leaders being exclusive, the hate on casual players being bad at the game, the entire dismantling of community in the game, the lack of a living breathing world, the time gated content, etc, etc. Literally ALL of the problems that aren’t class design problems are rooted in this design philosophy.
The better philosophy is to make the game difficult for everyone. And to remove the hard cap on participation. There are different ways to do it but the end result should be a product that heavily encourages people to work together to do things.
I used to be social all the time years ago on wow but when my first guild broke up, it wasn’t a good feeling since I took over the guild and helped it grow into something fun that eventually had people going into clicks and/or being rude to other guild members.
After leaving that guild, I’ve stayed away from joining large guilds or even becoming an officer in some guilds because I didn’t want to go through that again.
The guild I’m in now, I’ve been an officer for quite some time, helping recruit. But it took months/years to get to wanting to be there. Honestly, I could do without being an officer but I just really like helping out and recruiting.
I love the guild I’m in, although it is small and it’s hard to be online when others are online so I’ve turned to my server community.
I’ve created a community group called Stormcalled that is for people of the Stormreaver server to join without leaving our guilds. I’ve gotten many thanks for creating the community group. Most people tell me they’re happy they don’t have to leave their guilds and this community thing is probably what they’re looking for.
Unfortunately, it’s SO HARD to get people to talk. I’ve made sure the majority of the community members have the chat in their main chat box so I know they don’t reply because they don’t see it. They just don’t care to reply I feel which is the problem sometimes. If you don’t care, why should others?
I’m hoping that with me posting every day in that community chat that my Stormcalled community will grow and connect with each other as players and not NPCs to randomly queue up with.
I just feel that small conversations are dead, which is sad, because all good conversations could begin with just a greeting or a “how are you”. If only players cared about interacting…
I will entertain this!
Because everyone can do everything, there is no “this class can do this” or “this class can do that.” The game has become generic.
Why communicate with a random group you will meet once in your life and then queue into another group of people? No bond is created by LFG.
See my above response, why work as a team or play nice when you will never play with those people again?
We are all NPCs to Blizzard these days, or uhm, “Champions.”
I wish that was true, but most of the players I interact with are from my generation (I’m 24) or between 10-20 years older. I met a 16 year old ONCE this xpac.
I really think it’s young adults/middle aged adults that are being toxic to each other. Or players that were toxic as teens and still are in their adult years.
True, I was harrased daily by a guy who didn’t get to roll on an item. He was invited into my guild run as we had a slot (just ZF 5 man). He won first two rolls for things he shouldn’t have rolled on. I switched to master looter, and he was pissed that I didn’t let him roll on next drop. I gave it to other person that needed it and had no loot yet.
I told his GM about his daily harassment toward me and person that got loot.
His GM told him to stop or he would be kicked from his guild. It worked. End of story.
That’s a really interesting idea! I’d like to see a exp leveling buff or quest currency (like war resources, which I don’t like much. I miss valor points and justice points) be increased based on grouping with someone on your server. Maybe a little extra more for being grouped with guild members.
I’d also like to see guild levels again. I miss seeing trade chat guilds post their guild levels or guild achievement points.
One of the things I think would help WoW, or any other MMO, is for the Devs to be transparent about the MOST IMPORTANT STATISTIC:
How much time do you think the “average” person should be playing your game?
Because let’s approach that question from the other side: shouldn’t the “average” person be able to experience ALL of the game, including the end-game? Shouldn’t the “average” player be able to raid in some minor capacity (eg: normal-level raiding)?
Because I consider myself the target demographic for the MMO market. And most weeks, I set aside 10 hours for the week to play WoW. And I haven’t touched a raid (beyond LFR) since LK. And the reason is simply that it takes too much time.
When I queue for LFR, I can go get other things done. I can be PRODUCTIVE.
If you even wanted to try and pug a normal raid, you spend inordinate amounts of time just waiting around as the group manually forms. On at least 90% of any given night, it would take practically all of my game time JUST TO FORM A GROUP.
Blizzard needs to appreciate that 12 million people were fine to TRY the game and dump all their time into it, but that wore off quick-- it didn’t even last one expansion. Respect the fact 12 million people probably do still want to play WoW, they just don’t want to have their FREAKING LIVES revolve around it. Is that really asking so much?
I used to be in a large guild and multiple communities. I used to love being social all the time, but now it just feels like a job to actually get people to talk. I’m so sick of people “waiting” for someone else to do something or to lead things. Sometimes the people who lead things or start conversations get burn out? Because I do. It would be nice for others to step it up. The players that want community? You gotta create the community and it’s up to the community to keep the community alive. You cannot expect all the work to be done for you, by a player or a group of players. It’s a team effort that seems to be forgotten.
That sounds like an idea to be built upon. I hope this idea comes into play one day.
Most people who raid have jobs and families, they just set aside two nights a week to do a 3 hour raid and then are gone, maybe logging on again at some point to do some emissaries or keys. Back in the day you could get away with saying it takes too much time, but nowadays it really doesn’t. Especially for those that want to live the pug life.
While I agree with the general estimate that most raid for 6 hours a week, I strongly disagree that you can “keep up” with the game in the remaining 4 hours (assuming we agree 10 hours a week is a “healthy” amount).
edit to add: the other issue with even this premise is that a structured day/time IS NOT CONVENIENT. Some weeks, that Tues @8pm thing is fine. But next week, maybe Weds is better for me. Structured raids don’t allow for this in any capacity, but LFR does.
Emissaries, IEs, rep farms, Achv, Pets, Mounts, xmog, … There is A LOT of stuff to keep up with during an expansion. And while you’re focusing on “you can raid if you want to”, you ignored the fact you are just barely getting by doing that ONE thing. You didn’t even allow time to farm for mats (ie: completely unrealistic).
You’re correct that a lot of people raid 6 hours a week and have families and yadda yadda. They’re also clocking 8-12 hours on the weekend to keep up with all those other things, and I often find better things to do with my time. Life’s too short to waste running on a digital treadmill.
IEs can be cut out as you can keep up with your neck just by doing emissaries that are pretty quick as well. I’m proof of that. Reps come naturally with those emissaries and the rest is really collection stuff that can be done whenever. This expansion, like WoD can really be played with minimal effort, and the story content is even drip fed to us so its not like you have to do extensive quest lines either.
But for many adults the structure is nice as we already plan our weeks/months around other things as well. At least those of us with steady jobs, etc.
All games are dying. They’re being filled with pay-walls to every damn thing and all of the major titles before are now turning to crap. Corporations and gaming hardly mix. Gaming itself is like its own art form. Its tainted by monetization. Look at Youtube. I think there is greater content on youtube than there ever was and the same for gaming. The problem is that you have a lot of greedy people who control the show and are making things not feel good to us anymore.
It doesn’t feel good to be in a rat race. Grind is good. Thats why we always played. The problem is when there is no clear goals to be met. This game has pointless grind now. POINTLESS! You used to grind for good gear. Now it doesn’t matter. At all. I can LFR, join casual guilds and run Heroics… The only thing I can’t do with bad gear is run high Mythic +, Mythic raids, and arena/RBGs.
Its the rat race. Its like getting a car to get to your job. So you can pay off your car. So you can go to your job. Wow wasn’t like that before. Even older RPG games there is a clear progression and you actually climb the rank among other players.
No one is epic anymore. Nothing you do matters because there is nothing to achieve but a select few things left like world first/server first etc. The only clear goals left are what only 99.9% of the playerbase will never care about.
Keeping up with weekly keys is for the sole purpose of being able to do that the next week. You grind keys to get gear. You get gear to grind keys. So forth.
Before people wanted to get the BEST gear in the game so they can show it off, become OP in bgs, have a sweet looking “outfit”, be able to clear other content as well, and to have the prestige that comes with it in the community. Sadly that doesn’t really exist anymore because lack of tier sets and how the new progression is these days.
Rat race grind of today vs clear goal oriented grind of the old WoW. This sort of applies into other games as well.
You’re just proving my point. There is a massive amount of content locked behind IEs that have nothing to do with the Neck, and you have to grind your face off to get it.
If you had a player raiding, and only playing 10 hours a week, then raiding is ALL that player does. Assuming they are getting their own mats. There’s no getting around the time involved for this.
There’s more to this game than raiding.
So you’re talking about from a completionist mentality. That’s always going to be time consuming and very few people play like that.
Not completionist in the fullest sense of the word, but at least exploring SOME of that content more than just getting one of fifty new items.
Bottom line is getting involved in that stuff takes A LOT more time than 10 hours a week.
Simply said, because in this day and age everyone has been told that they are special and unique. By their teachers from kindergarten on, by society, and by their peers who are too afraid of scathing reviews on social media to say otherwise.
The concept that one does not always get their way is foreign as a concept, as is the idea that one must work for certain things. Because these people were assured of their mental superiority while they grew up, namely that they were the best at what they did (even if they were not); in the real world they are prone to violence and mob mentality; when faced with divergent opinions as they have no concept of how to debate, or reason with another in a non-violent manner.
That doesn’t work in the digital world, and so they demand Game Developers / Directors to fall in line by make threats of quitting their game, or boycotting a movie. They erroneously believe because of the delusions they have claimed as reality that the loss of their presence will be a nigh-on-biblically tremendous and earth shattering event that spells the end of the franchise. Such is the height of their arrogance.
You can see this in PVP with the people that say “Follow my strategy and we will win!” as if they were Napoleon reincarnated (who didn’t have the best record, but history isn’t taught either so…) At the conclusion where they lose, the same people fire off a “You stupid {insert X expletive}.” or something equally disgusting.
In PVE and so they believe they should be given buffs while the classes that beat them should be nerfed, and since their vision is superior to the Developers who created the game they should be heeded IMMEDIATELY! Or else they will quit, though in their most private moments they know they lack the capacity or wherewithal to do so.
If people want to blame anyone, then a person should all blame them self first and foremost, and then change. That is my advice. Be a team player, be willing to lose, and sometimes accept that you failed magnificently. Then beat your insecurities and become a better person for it.
Maybe also take a page from the Void Elves and “Question everything.” If you blindly accept a narrative without facts, or corroborating evidence; then you failed at the grand game of evolution, and you have regressed rather than evolved.