What is WoW's Biggest Problem, and How Would You Fix It?

Community General Discussion
1

I can’t start a thread like this and not have something in mind, right?

But I don’t mean to dominate the discussion with my perspective on what the biggest problem is, and how I think the devs should fix it. I’m hoping that someone important will peruse the thread, and find some good ideas from us.

WoW’s biggest problem? RNG.

Why is this a problem? Because it can realistically keep players from getting the items they want indefinitely. If something only has a .5% chance of dropping, for example, then it could conceivably keep a player from getting that item indefinitely. But in theory, even a 99.9% chance of dropping could keep someone out indefinitely.

That’s just not right. Yes, there is some randomness involved and some people will get luckier than others, but no one should be kept from something they want indefinitely.

My solution? Something I call progressive RNG.

I’m a pet collector. Let’s say, for instance, I want a particular pet that drops off a rare mob. And let’s say that this pet will drop 3% of the time. Which means that each time I kill this rare, there’s a 97% chance I will not get the pet.

But what if RNG was progressive and increased for each time I kill that rare?

For instance, suppose for the first time I kill the rare, I have a 3% chance of getting the pet. But the next time I kill that same rare, that chance increases to 4%. Then 5% for the next time I kill that rare. And so on. And you could even put a hard cap on it. Like say after killing this rare 20 times, the pet drops automatically.

And if I happen to get the pet to drop before then, and I decide I want another one? (Why not? I’m allowed to have three of most pets. And some pets, such as Timeless Mechanical Dragonling, are so good that you want three of them anyway.) If RNG actually gives me the pet before I reach hard cap (or I actually reach hard cap) and I decide to get another one, I start over again at square one. Once the pet drops for me, then if I kill the rare again, I’m back at 3%. And the counter to reach hard cap is reset at 1.

So, that’s my solution. Make RNG for items to be progressive and have a hard cap, so if the player is beset by bad RNG, it will inevitably drop, eventually.

That’s what I consider the biggest problem with WoW, and that’s my proposed solution. Let’s hear yours.

3 Likes
2

Not enough pie. Add more pie.

1 Like
3

if they did this to the rng then it would have to move to the weekly part for the rare

4

in tired of farming this and I want a solution to it because that’s all I care about

5

right now? Biggest problem is a lack of development attention to details and final polish.

too much of TWW feels like it was shipped as a Minimum Viable product without any real thought behind it. Leading to some frustrating, buggy and less ideal not fun situations or even content.

Lots of great ideas that were implemented, but execution this expansion has been one of the weakest expansions for just making sure stuff worked well and feel good.

2 Likes
6

At the moment, I’m not really farming anything. I’m working particular tasks, which have guaranteed rewards. It’s just a matter of completing the quests.

7

What if I told you that it would be impossible to differentiate between this system and a static chance

8

Right now my biggest problem with WoW is that it’s a very workey game.

I’m working 11 hours a day, monday to friday. I don’t want to get home and work a bit more for entertainment lol

But ultimately that’s just how the game is. It’s not something that needs fixing, but rather a point of incompatibility between the game and my current life.

1 Like
9

you’d be wrong?

they’ve used similar systems in the past. Such as Legion’s Lendary system.

each failed roll would increase your next rolls chance

10

Yeah? And you still could get one the first try or have to wait for 100 runs to get one. Rng is still rng

11

The games has always favored no lifers. It’s just how mmos are. Maybe the newer mmos are different.

The latest one I’ve tried was new world and that game was grindy for crafting or questing everything was a grind.

Wow has made tons of leaps towards ease of access for casual gameplay. Alas easy translates to lower difficulty and casual gameplay so most people with no daily time to play end up touching the game once or twice a week and will be behind in ilvls and such for a long time. Casual weekly raids usually help you not drown under the rest of the player base tho.

And if you’re incapable of like amassing 8 hours a week to play the game in three or two hours sessions the. I don’t think an MMO is for them. Even if the game has been reduced from “play for 5 hours a day” to “play 8 hours a week” it still can be a lot.

I’m on the middle of this. I play about two hours a day 7 days a week so I can maintain progress and I’m blessed with likeminded people that raid and mplus so I’m somewhat keot afloat on ilvls but i cant really put the time to push past 10s or mythic raid this season

12

Server lag. In DF they focused a lot on outdoor content, and every single outdoor event was a complete lagfest from the launch until nobody was doing it any longer. The soup event, Grand Hunts, Fyrrak assaults, Researchers Under Fire, Dragonbane Keep - all were plagued by lag when they launched that made them just miserable to do. I forgot the worst one - the Cobalt Assembly for the ring right at launch was possibly the worst lag I ever experienced in an MMO, and it took many hours to get your ring.

This server lag destroys immersion, and taints every piece of outdoor content.

To fix the problem? I know how another MMO fixed their server lag issues - they appointed a group of engineers to monitor server wait states (what we see as lag). The group then tracked down the cause of every wait state spike over the course of a month, and worked with devs/engineering to resolve every issue. They went from hundreds of wait state spikes the first month to a couple dozen the second month, to just a small handful the third month.

Before all the “it’s your PC/Internet connection now WoW” - I have a very fast PC with 6 core/12 thread CPU, 64 Gig DDR5, Nvidia RTX 4000 video card, that I use to play two other MMOs on a regular basis. I have 450Mbit Internet service that gets me a consistent 24-27ms ping time to my world server (not login server). One of the other MMOs I’ll see a bit of server lag maybe once/week, the other I can’t think of a single instance of server lag in the last year, and they just launched a new expansion in August. With WoW it’s many instances of server lag every single time I play. Please fix this.

1 Like
13

The biggest problems should’ve been tackled many years ago. But Blizzard didn’t and with how the game is managed by the company right now, it will never get better, only worse.

One of the biggest problems imo is the toxicity in random PvE and PvP modes and that vile people can even abuse the report systems to get innocent people banned. Blizzard has always been way too forgiving and lax with consequences, which led to a very rough tone and players letting out their impatience and minor frustrations out on others. As long as I’ve been playing griefing has always been more or less tolerated by Blizz, in the open world as well as in instanced content.
To combat this it would be necessary to have a well-structured and functioning Customer Support that really investigates these situations. But seeing how the remaining CS has been cut more and more and is basically nonexistent at this point, it’s over.

I also agree that RNG in every aspect of the game is a huge problem that’s led to a lot of frustration in the playerbase, where one can sink hours and hours into farming for something and making literally zero progress. The gearing process in raids and dungeons should see a major rework that really respects players’ time and give them a chance to gradually work on itemization without having to solely rely on luck or the mercy of other players.
Same goes for cosmetic items, like mounts or pets. FFXIV has a neat system in place. A boss can drop a mount with a very low drop chance? Well, if you don’t get the mount you at least get a currency token for it, so you can buy it from a vendor after 100 kills if it didn’t drop until then. Having a goal in sight when the RNG gods don’t hear the prayers is a much more satisfying experience because the player doesn’t have to invest literal years into farming something that never drops.

14

Biggest problem with WoW: The Community

Yep. It’s my unpopular opinion. There was a time when players were just players and offered feedback to fix bugs and improve performance. Now you have:

  • Blood Elfs making bad threads about Buffing, Nerfing, or all out changing things to suit their narratives of what this game could or should be
  • Mythic gamers who can’t seem to push +17s for fun after getting Delve gear because they want all gear to be a challenge to get
  • People who want to unlock all the transmogs so they can tank dungeons in a speedo and wings
  • Others who think everything should be “earned” in a video game, turning it into a 2nd full time job
  • People who yell about the cash shop, and then use it anyway
  • Gathering and PvP bots who pretty much run rampant and unchecked by the system

And this list goes on for another 20 pages. If the forums did not exist, most of us would have to troll trade chat, or worse, use the ticketing system to report issues that are still ignored to this day. People complain if Blizz:

  • Buffs a class
  • Nerfs a class
  • Adds the wrong Mythic dungeons
  • Gives us too much
  • Gives us too little
  • Posts about anything upcoming (events, expansions, changes)

So yeah. The biggest problem with WoW is its community. It didn’t used to be, but here we sit, witnessing it day after day.

15

Too much of the world is unengaging/trivial.

The stuff that isn’t is somewhat casually unapproachable (keys, 3v3, mythic raid).

Basically no accessible difficult content for most people.

16

That depends were they bombs made in a bomb factory :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

17

The player base

Kinda hard to fix

18

Right now I would probably go with lack of a global vision, dont really feel rng is that problematic when it comes to cosmetics.

19

WoW is a great game, but far from perfect. It has a lot of flaws that I would love to see done away with. If I had to pick the biggest…?

Alliance Bias

The Alliance has the better Racials - Dwarves and Night Elves have insanely over powered racials. But If I want to play a cute little fox on the Horde…. I get a little camp and a bigger back pack.

Forget about balancing classes, Blizzard can’t even balance the races and factions.

But not just in the Gameplay. In the story, as well. So far, this expansion is basically:

“Alliance Time : with their friend, Thrall”

Jaina purges Dalaran and tries to destroy Orgrimmar, and we just quest with her like nothing. But if a Horde character does something naughty, we go through literal trials about it.

2 Likes
20

Professions. How to fix it: provide an easy to understand path to max the profession and leave all the specialty trees and KP grinds to folks with lots of time to kill. That way us simpletons can find a way to max it out. And all the gurus out there can ravage the perks from the talent trees.