There is a sense of regret in their voices for what this game has become. Now it may be a marketing ploy but they seem to actually be surprised that they are enjoying themselves. Playing a game not catered to the audience but catered to them because they knew what they wanted to make and the direction to take it.
Please feel free to turn retail back into an RPG, it’s never too late.
The Esport people never deserved your time. They are the garbage of gaming.
Competitive players aren’t the reason why the MMORPG elements of the game were removed over time. Those elements were removed to make the game more accessible. Casual players have trouble managing 30-40 abilities, a dozen or so different meaningful stats, a complex talent tree, glyph system, etc., as well as having to interact with other players and form relationships in order to do endgame content.
I think it’s both. Making the game more accessible, but Blizz also has to keep coming up with new challenges. Like… 4 phases on a boss and each phase has 3 or more mechanics (some overlapping of course, but still many). I didn’t raid in Vanilla so maybe it was just as bad, but I am looking forward to finding out what was different. Everything I have heard makes it sound like fights really weren’t that complicated though as far as mechanics go.
Vanilla raiding wasn’t really that bad. There weren’t really any mechanics. The challenges were really in getting the raid together rather than difficulty in the actual game mechanics.
Oh darling, gamers are gamers there are no casuals…that term was invented by a lazy dev team who couldn’t balance a complex game so they invented casuals to shift the blame to them and then started to take away everything so they could balance a simplified game and when people complain they turned gamers against each other.
Vanilla WoW was a passion project. They crunched hard to make a game that they themselves wanted to go home and play. Modern retail WoW has become a means to make quarter over quarter earnings. The team that develops it is certainly trying to make the best game they can, but corporate has given them a mandate to work within and the priority is metrics they can pitch to shareholders and not “what game would you like to play.” Again, the development staff is in an impossible situation of wanting to make the best game, but the mandate is to make the game that makes the most money. If making the worst game also made them the most money, corporate would force them to make the worst game. This is the difference and how it cannot be rectified as long as WoW is a prominent component of Activision earnings calls with investors.
Darling, blizzard has been dumbing the game down for years…simple rotations, removal of talents, resist gear, keys, rep grinds for raids and so on.
As for the term casual its been around before computers however blizzard is the one who decide to use it to divide the gamers and get us to bicker with each other instead of with them. See they went from gamers making games to money grubs doing whatever to make money.
Each class still had 30-40 abilities, and each ability had its situational use. Mages with decurse for example or dampen/amplify magic for example.
I think it succeeded because it was the perfect balance between casual and hardcore. You can’t have a successful game if only the casuals or the hardcore are happy with the game’s mechanics. You need to both to want to play your game.
If WoW was already super casual, why did it need to become significantly moreso?
They changed the game in hopes of appealing to a wider audience (casual players) and making money.
Have you been looking at the “advanced dps guides” for classic?
For elemental shaman its “don’t totem twist, ONLY cast lightning bolt. if the target is going to die before your next LB, that is the only time you can earth shock”.
The BFA Elemental shaman rotation is exponentially more complicated than Classic.
I still have about 30+ abilities. I think I have about 25ish keybinds I regularly use.