(Upon realizing their particular class/spec isn’t “good” in the type of content they like)
Blizzard’s theory of what happens: “I guess if my spec isn’t working so well in this content I might as well try something new. Lets see, I’ll need to spend a few weeks getting up to speed. Oh I’ll need a new legendary, better buy an extra WoW token to be safe. I’m actually a little excited about all this time I’m going to be spending getting caught up!”
What actually happens for most people: “This game sucks. It’s not balanced at all. I’m going to play something else. Maybe one day I can play WoW the way I enjoy again (or maybe I never log back in)”
I’m not in the top percent so I never notice how good or bad a class or spec is. They all get the job done for me. The meta doesn’t really apply to the average player.
I suspect blizzard suffers from a balance paradigm of if a spec is good in one aspect of the game then it can be horrible in others. Especially if there is another spec they can switch to.
Which might be ok if the class only performs one role, ranged DPS for example. But really it just creates unnecessary friction for players.
I also suspect they see this out of balance FotM meta switching as content. Which is, what ever… Kind of like when they used to design casinos to be a maze because they thought if gamblers can’t easily find a way out they’ll stay and gamble more.
Intentional or not it comes off as predatory design.
Unless it’s the rare terrible spec like one of the rogue specs in BFA or what they did to demo warlocks in WoD, I’m fine.
I don’t need to be FOTM to enjoy this game. I guess if you’re pushing world first or something it’s an issue, or if you’re relying on M+ pugging then it probably stinks because a lot of people think the way you do and will filter out people based on spec, even though everything is often very viable…
I think too many people are in the mindset of if it’s not top 3-5 performing specs in sims then it’s not worth playing. These people are just being foolish and there are too many of them.
The problem isn’t the meta tbh. Like you said, pretty much all specs are performative and the differences are minor. The problem is that everything at endgame is a timed e-sports race so player perception is “yeah, this player MIGHT be good at their non-meta class, but why risk it when my rewards are on the line?”
That’s the REAL meta we need to break, Ion’s nuBlizz design philosophy of trying to make this RPG into an E-Sport. It’s a decade old failure of a mentality at this point. Let the game be an RPG like it’s supposed to be, it doesn’t need to be the online equivalent to the Olympics(look at me being topical!).
Bruh, it isn’t the devs who decided the game is an esport. It’s the player-base.
The only thing even remotely competitive built into Mythic Raiding is Hall of Fame and Server First achievements, and Server First achievements have been there since WOTLK. And yet people choose, THE PLAYERS CHOOSE, to get sweaty about it.
Blizzard themselves literally say World First Race is a community event. Nothing, NOTHING built into the game encourages people to do World First Classic, TBCC, Season of Mastery, etc. Players are choosing to make that content sweaty. This is not a Blizzard thing. This is a Blizzard players thing.
I’d also go as far as saying there’s a U shaped curve for how sweaty players are. Some of the worst players are some of the most meta-slaving, because they think the reason they’re bad is because they don’t meta-slave or “go go go” enough.
Last night I did a couple chill 20s with the boys to line up some keys on my various alts. Nothing too sweaty about it. It’s just fun content. If the players you play with choose to be sweaty about, that’s a you thing - find people who play the game that way you want to play it.
probably for some.
For others like me its “well, blizzard, you really trashed this class/spec, so I’ll do myself a favor and play the one you actually seem to want to make worth playing. druid…druid…druid…druid…druid…druid, oh, and druid” lol
If you notice, it’s always the same handful of people constantly trying to say the actual problem isn’t the problem, all while ignoring the fact that their preferred content in WoW is so niche that Blizzard literally has to allow cross-faction at this point to keep justifying it’s continued development focus.
That’s literally the point we’re at now because of this e-sport focus. It has driven away so many players they HAVE to finally relent on breaking down the faction divide, something they’ve remained adamant in saying “isn’t ever going to happen” for nearly 20 years.
It has to do with the mass accessibility cross realm grouping has created. There are 50 dps to choose from before a tank or healer. It’s so easy to pick a meta class because a ton will apply, and since they are all faceless, why not pick the perceived best?
It’s 17 years of player migration around servers and eventually to the same faction for ease of group finding. An eventual dwindling playerbase, combined with an arbitrary line where you can’t interact with 50% of the player base at best (perfect split), and it’s natural players will migrate to 1 faction to play together and have a larger recruitment pool. Cross faction is to help alliance.
TBC classic right now has almost every single server be 1 faction dominated, where the lower faction can barely function to get raids together. Is that because TBC is esports focused??
Curious. What about the game feels like an esport?
I don’t like M+ at all. Refuse to do much of it. But there’s still plenty of game here. If I wasn’t so invested in TTRPGs I’d probably raid with my guild still, but D&D is just more fun for some of us. But nothing about raiding feels like an esport.
It’s not like M+ and arenas are all the game has to offer.
Imho,they would go the path of some sadistic method to make the player feel uncomfortable with their implications than to make it satisfyingly to the players content of playing. If it were comfortable at the beginning and less complicated,they think they haven’t done their job.
ESports have been in the game since vanilla. I wouldn’t blame anything wrong with the game now on ESports. As long as raids have existed, guilds have gotten sweaty to get to world first. As long as PVP has existed, players have competed to be the best at it. M+ is just a natural addition to that roster. I don’t like M+, but I think it gets too much blame for the game’s shortcomings.
The truth is that “esport” is buzzword thrown around because it’s low effort and carries a lot of baggage. It’s not an argument, it’s tangential to trolling.
