What happened to the challenge and sense of accomplishment?

Community General Discussion
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Played since 2005-ish. Take breaks here and there, as life happens. Returned end of last year after watching The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (HIGHLY recommended). I missed the sense of adventure, fun, questing, dungeons, a guild, just the whole thing. I had gotten rid of everything when I last left, a few years back, so it has been years since I last played. This necessitated my starting over from scratch. I was actually looking forward to reliving the whole ‘wow experience’ of going through a grand adventure.

The new retail is beautiful and the graphics are great. But I am bored, and I don’t want to be bored. So I keep going back to classic, even hardcore (yikes!) for a challenge. Classic is a blast! Hardcore … well, after the flipping Murlocs killed me (again!) and lost 3 hard fought for toons, having to reconsider my options there lol.

The retail version is essentially a huge mostly passive walk through. Everything is just a ‘give me.’ It is all handed over with little to no effort. Virtually all enemies die with one push of one spell; instadeath for all enemies. It is rare I even have to use a second cast or attack. I haven’t died yet. Not once. I am up to level 74 in TWW and started a whole other toon just to try something different, hoping maybe another roll might result in something more fun and challenging.

What happened to the challenge? The sense of accomplishment? Why has the game been essentially reduced to a passive reception, Vs and active fought for accomplishment?

The sense of challenge and sense of accomplishment has vaporized, in the midst of an otherwise beautifully done game that has a great story. If I wanted to watch a story, I’d watch a movie.

Dear Blizz, I want to be challenged, I want to work for things and earn them. Not senseless grinding mind you, but put some hard enemies in there, some challenges, and make me have to strategize, ask for help from others on occasion, and earn some of this. I hate to say it like this, but this game has evolved into a beautifully done production with excellent story lines, and … I mostly just go through a few button clicks here and there to evolve the story. The sense of challenge and accomplishment is gone.

Is it possible to add some kind of slider to the game, where we can choose our difficulty level for the entirety of the game? I get the notion that some want an easy process. But I don’t. I love how the older versions would trip me up, I’d die, have to strategize, ask for help, and think about how to get past a hurdle. That was so much fun. Having to earn the next piece of gear was really fun and rewarding.

I find myself just walking through one visually stunning graphic to the next, with no sense of challenge and no sense of accomplishment.

Thanks,
-Kraftsims, Chicomage (old school toon names lol)

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End game. Leveling has never been difficult and now it’s super fast to get you to end game. That’s where you’ll find your challenge.

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So you’ve been playing HC Classic and find Retail a snooze fest?

Shocker.

I feel that in WoW these are the same thing.

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I’d stick to classic if you want hard leveling

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Easy content. Seriously easy.

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If what you are saying is true, you should contact Team Liquid and talk to a guy who goes by the name Maximum. He is the head of their RWF (Race for World First) team. No doubt he would throw someone out and make a space for you in their group.

They have won the last few times but with you on their team no one else would stand a chance.

Give it a try.

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Level scaling (aka zone scaling).

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I mean if your main source of challenge and sense of accomplishment is struggling level, that basically ended when TBC came out so you musta been gone for a while

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The best vanilla patch was the TBC pre-patch.

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When was your last Cutting Edge?

Game’s plenty challenging, if you get out of the kiddie pool.

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It’s in end game.

If you want to die while leveling, then Hardcore Classic is there for you.

I have that in the end game content that I do.

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Activision happened. They wanted the game to be more accessible not only to maximize profits and bring new players in, but also to make it so you didn’t need to no life the game and have it become a second job. Some might think I’m joking, but I’m serious, they have intentionally made the game easier and easier as the years pass by for these reasons.

Imagine if the game still played the same as it did 20 years ago, but add on all these new zones etc. It would take players forever to level, turning off most new players. Players who aged out because of life demanding more of their time would not be replaced by new/younger players and the game would actually die.

You’re Activision, you buy Blizzard, and it is making ridiculous amounts of money. How do you make more money? Bring in more players by making it more accessible. If players leave because of it, you start selling store mounts etc. This actually happened. And is still happening.

You kind of just have to appreciate retail for what it is, or stop playing, or play whatever flavor of Classic you like. I don’t say that to troll or be mean, but its sort of how it is.

I wouldn’t say retail is devoid of challenges either, they’re just in other places now, less so the outdoor world (with the odd exception of some areas). But I’d be down for some sort of revamped leveling system to put a challenge back into the game. Leveling or questing is basically a solo experience now so it hurts no one by adding that.

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There is no appeal to leveling anymore unless they radically altered the formula to be more engaging.

I don’t want my x boar kill quest to take too long it becomes dumb.

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Eh… this game has never been all that difficult to begin with. It was always the casual alternative to EQ.

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You are saying that there is no challenge, yet you’re only level 74 and are complaining that mobs die too fast?

The real challenge has always been at endgame. Get to 80, then go do raids or M+. Go get AOTC or KSH. Those are decently challenging while being relatively attainable for most folks. If you still want more of a challenge after that, go push 3K+ or do Mythic raids. There’s your extra hard mode challenge.

If you want a challenging leveling experience, then there’s always classic. Although I would argue that leveling there is not necessarily “hard”, just more tedious and time consuming. It might take 30 seconds to kill one mob and you certainly can’t pull 10+ at once and just mow them all down like you can in retail, but it’s not really a challenge. Most mobs don’t have a ton of mechanics, things just took way longer back then because the pace and style of gameplay was vastly different.

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that is the conclusion I am drawing so far, this has turned into an end game focused approach. I recall the ride to the end game being as fun as the end game. Not a bad thing I suppose, but I enjoyed the sense of exploration and challenge to get there, as well as the end game content. Thanks!

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They didn’t make the entire game easier, they made parts of it easier. Without that they would lose a huge part of their subscriptions from lower level players.

For those who want more difficult content there is RWF, HOF, CE or high level accomplishments in PVP and M+. Now if you think all of that is easy then I’m sure you would be a valuable asset to one of the RWF teams.

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there were always a harder mini-boss for each zone, etc. Sometimes ran across a higher level enemy in a house that might take a group to kill, as opposed to just a solo. That kind of thing. Grinding was a real thing no doubt in the older versions, but there is a balance and I wish we could have some fun on the climb to the top.

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I agree with you but most people equate time sink with difficulty when Classic is concerned.

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Alright look, leveling was never hard. Not in retail, not in WotLK, not in Classic. So can we stop?

Classic leveling: A chore and nothing else.
Post-Classic leveling: Still a chore.
Retail Leveling: Still a chore.

So yeah, let’s stop pretending Classic is “hard” because of leveling or needing 39 other people to beat a raid you spam 1>1>1>2>1>1>1 in.

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