Blizzard I sincerely hope this makes it to your eyes. Although it is unlikely so I probably wasted money. However without further ado here is why I purchased time.
World of Warcraft has lost a lot of it’s fun for me and in my short absence I was trying to examine why that could be. I realized something though the longer I am gone the more appealing coming back to play becomes. There is just simply more content to bite your teeth into if you stay away. World of Warcraft currently has a massive issue with time gates that sucks the fun out of the game and leaves a person just not wanting to play. But time-gates alone isn’t the issue but rather the lack of enjoyable rewarding repeatable content while we wait for that new content to come or the gate to unlock.
I understand the lack of rewarding repeatable content is because people in certain circles don’t want to do chores in the world. However I ask you the Developers of the game to look at the title of your game. World of Warcraft Why did the game get that name. Did you want your game to be a hub of endless dungeons, raids, and instanced pvp? Or maybe you wanted people to experience the World that your rts games exist in. Do you feel today that the World really plays much of a role on the game we play today? I personally don’t think so. I feel the World has lost all it’s value and this feels especially true in Shadowlands. This I feel is the Crux of why I don’t enjoy your game anymore. You killed the World in World of Warcraft. I beg you bring back the game I enjoyed, Invest in the World again and pull away from making Instanced content so much more important then the world we are suppose to be experiencing.
Activision has been putting makeup on the corpse of WoW and reselling it to you for almost a decade now. Blizzard as it was doesn’t exist anymore and the suits that run stuff and know jack sh@t about gaming don’t care what you think.
Not trying to be mean but you need to just move on.
WoW is now a fundamentally different game then it was in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath. It’s tailored to an entirely different market. It’s turned from a fairly loose themepark into something … I don’t know how to describe it … a skinner box reward system for highly … dedicated? … players.
You may find Classic a better match for what you’re looking for.
Agree with this totally, there is so much artwork and design and NPC’s in past expansions that we could use for new content and storylines and yet they are long forgotten unless you are rushing to reach endgame content which leaves a lot of the player base disappointed
Thanks I wanted to make sure I was able to tell them exactly what was wrong in my opinion so the feedback could be more valuable to them then just a random complaint. Sadly I feel Blizzard doesn’t really ever read these things that much unless they are trending which appears this one will not be. I am a little disappointed but I honestly expected as much.
For me, the thing is im not unsatisfied in particular. It oscillates day by day. But im looking at the horizon and genuinely concerned. I can see the warning signs. And they’re very much in line with what you wrote in your OP.
The two pressing questions i guess at the moment: Will the next patch release before the LFG wall becomes completely insurmountable for the casual playerbase. We know how the community functions. The free drops are over soon. Realistically the casual playerbase will be around ilvl 200 (assuming covenant maxed, a decent ilvl lego, maybe a bit of conquest, possibly a decent item or two from the vault from lfr and a couple of world boss drops). But they’ll still be behind the main pack by some way.
Then we’re in the cap phase. Unless they get into LFG they have no more sources for gear. But they cant break into LFG because they are so far behind competitively. This is precisely what we saw in wod, and i cant legitimately see why it’ll suddenly play out any differently this time around.
This is crucial. How long blizzard take to offer the next content drop will basically define how long they keep those players subbed, or whether they lose them altogether. Because once that renown campaign wraps up, what are they doing? Whats the content for them? Sanctum upgrades? Im just not seeing that.
And this brings us to problem 2:
What drops in 9.1 and how they stretch it out? Because they seem hyper fixated on optimisation and keeping that world game outlet down to a minimal (so you dont ‘feel’ like you have a laundry list of chores to get you into the real game), they likely have to time gate it to protect the playerbase from themselves. And as you mention, the WORLD (of warcraft) has very much lost its identity as a source of engagement. Its just a tool to funnel players from calling to calling.
Its a very precarious position. Im hoping theyve thought very hard about this. Because if they havent, this is wod 2. And it will follow the exact same path of its progenitor.
I agree with all your additional input. It really does feel like they forgot the lessons learned with WoD. A handful of drawn out World events for a currency Apexis Crystals then, and Anima now. Really isn’t much of a reason to play. Thank you for contributing and bumping the thread. The more information shared here and the longer we stay ontop the higher chance a developer may get their eyes on this.
Its so strange that they miss the wood for the trees. Like, if they just answered this one little question, they can design for that playerbase.
“What is my reason for logging in?”
If i ask current blizzard that question, they would, 100% guaranteed give me a list of all the things i can do right now in game.
But thats not the question im asking, blizzard! Im asking what are my reasons for logging in? Why should i be motivated to do any of that stuff? Whats fun about it? Why is it fun? Whats the emotional rollercoaster im about to experience. WHY should i log in?
To be completely fair, they have nailed the ladder and progression minded players motivations. But they seem to have forgot why legion added in all the other stuff in the first place.
It’s already feeling like WoD 2, and following the same path. I mentioned that in another thread just last week.
All the progress made in Legion and BfA as far as content that actually uses the world has been walked back to WoD levels so that raiders and mythic pushers “don’t feel forced” - and designing the entire game to cater for min-max’ers with no self control is not a great way to treat the vast majority of the player base, who didn’t sign up for World Of Instances.
I mean, just to come back to dexters initial point… what is the world in this game? Okay, first, its the vehicle for the leveling story. But then what is it? Its just the place where you go do your callings? Do you have any other reason aside say resource gathering to explore or adventure in it? Nothing rewarding drops in it. The side quests are nice i suppose, but theyre pure completionism content. Theres really nothing in there. Its crypto-instanced content. Instead of a portal you take a flight path. Theres no reason to think ‘oh, while im here…’. Its just a bounce from one calling to the next, then back to the turn in before heading to torghast or queuing some other instanced content.
Am i being a bit unfair. I feel like i am. Its always been like that, right? Im struggling to really pinpoint why it feels so much smaller though. Why the curtain was pulled down that much quicker this time around? Maybe its just that there’s fewer world quests, or maybe its that the rewards feel absolutely fixed (2 gold rewards, 1 conduit/item for callings), gold with a slim chance of a green 120 item in the actual world itself. I dont know what it is exactly. Perhaps its just that theres no meta thing to work on. They usually distract me. I just cant quite put my finger on the difference (if there even is one), but it feels so sanitised and predictable.
Whatever it is, they need to add more crunchiness to it. And that means really annoying the raiders who HATE the world and have had it all but designed out of the game.
I didn’t recognize you, Dexter, until Ippollite said your name in the above post. You’re an old one and I remember reading many conversations on these forums that you were involved in years ago, though, I can’t remember which expansion/s it was. Just wanted to let you know you were recognized.
It’s all that and more. The world just lacks depth and excitement. Even in Classic we would at the very least get mega events like AQ where everyone had the ability to contribute to this massive project. The World felt important and alive. But now even if we don’t put the reward in the equation of things. The world just feels lacking. Out of touch. It doesn’t feel important.
I posted this in the other thread and i feel it accurately describes whats happened. Its why i keep using words like sanitised and optimised. This game is now super clean. All the barriers to progression are removed. Your path is completely clear to just play LFG content.
The game needs more crunchiness and resistance to it. The rough ground if you will. The place where random stuff happens, where you can one day be on top of the world and the next in the pits of pure frsutration. Right now that game does exist. But in the three pillars (raid, mythic plus, arena). But not so much anywhere else. Its been sanitised, all the annoying rng and grinding has been pulled out of it.
I gave a list of stuff in that thread that had been simplified ‘for my convenience’, but why not add another one.
Why am i being given 3 renown tokens a week. Why am i not spending my time farming my renown over the course of the week by doing callings and general world content like side quests, killing rares etc? Because, that would give me a reason to do those things, right? That would give me at least some feeling of a goal im working on? Instead, i do three things (save some souls, collect 1000 anima, play the story), and thats me done.
And we know why they decided to do it that way. It’s grindy and inefficient, and people dont want to feel burdened to do it. Its rough ground. We want to buff that out of the game.
But… Thats been my gameplay for about a decade.
No but ipps! Cant you see! This is so much better! Its so much more efficient, now you can get into the real end game of LFG much quicker and with less resistance!
Yep, and that’s the thing that annoys me more than anything. The raiding/mythic+ crowd wanted everything removed that they saw as “forcing” them to do content they didn’t want to, so they could just raid/dungeon log and be done. And yet some of these people constantly pull out the “if you want the rewards you’ve got to do the work” mantra - when they were NEVER willing to “do the work” of keeping up with world quests and other world content.
Yes, I know it’s “not all raiders” but the loudest shoutiest voices got listened to almost exclusively by the devs with Shadowlands, and that’s why we’ve ended up with tiny, grindy zones, worthless world quests that are almost always way below your item level, useless professions, a constant push push push towards instances as the only form of progression, end game content like The Maw and Torghast tuned for raiders and not those doing world content, etc etc etc.
Sorry but to me , the bigger the world is(vanilla for example) the more pointless space exists . The more time it actually takes to do quests and move about …
Everytime we’ve had something nice out in the world … players troll , grief , try to make money , try to make gold …
Lets take TLPD , Aeonaxx , Spirit beast rares , Poundfist , etc …
Also feedback is a personal thing , to call it valuable is stretching it a LOT. They could lose as many players as they’d get back …
Its not valuable at all , lets take any subject for example . They listen and do that feedback , they lose the same amount of players that this feedback suggestion kept.
This isn’t a 100 000 player community , we have a million+ voices …to have a collective feedback would require way more than the few voices heard in this forum …so no im not trolling , i actually run a company and personal feedback is valued due to how small our customer base is .
I meant it’s valuable in the sense that it costed me to give it. I only subbed to leave the feedback in hopes Blizzard might read it and take it into account. I want to continue enjoying WoW but if they continue down this path where the world doesn’t matter and only instanced content does. Then I won’t have a place here anymore and I don’t want that. I spent so many years in the game and I would lie if I said I don’t have an emotional attachment to it at this point. I have lots of memories tied to the game and I would hate to leave the game. However If they don’t give me a way to enjoy my time here. I have little choice.
but the loudest shoutiest voices got listened to almost exclusively by the devs with Shadowlands, and that’s why we’ve ended up with tiny, grindy zones, worthless world quests that are almost always way below your item level, useless professions, a constant push push push towards instances as the only form of progression, end game content like The Maw and Torghast tuned for raiders and not those doing world content, etc etc etc.