What would it take to restore your confidence in Blizzard?

Wyrmrest Accord
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5000$ direct deposit to my bank account + an extra 5$ for every hour I wasted in arenas only to fall through the cart in Ruins of Lordaeron and die horribly to a bug they haven’t fixed in over a decade.

They’re so, so slow at implementing any changes we clamor for. The only time that Blizzard actually updated something in a timely manner was when they reduced the screenshake on Krosus in Legion, which many players such as myself couldn’t do because we’d get motion sick. And frankly, I feel like they only updated that because of accessibility.

It’s hard to precisely explain what made me fall out of love with WoW. The recent changes to sub cards are definitely one; sub cards were the only way for me to buy monthly sub from the country where I live, how slow it was for them to update m+ gearing, the stupid expansion gimmicks, the lack of Torghast catch-ups, the sense of pointlessness and irritation that comes from doing the Maw…

Honestly, I don’t feel like they did anything except PVP gearing right this expansion.

Adding features like housing, giving us more customization and allowing us to be faction independent would probably not restore my faith in Blizzard because they make really big fundamental design flaws. The only thing that WoW does for me that most other games don’t are: good accessibility settings (important for me because of my increasingly bad vision) and addon support.

The only reason why I keep coming back to this game is because I know how to play it. Frankly, I’ll never forget how to. It’s familiar. I can log into my rsham and trust that it hasn’t had a reinvention of its fundamentals that requires me to relearn how to play it from scratch. But I can also trust that I can log into my MW and realize that my favorite spec is once again unplayable, that whatever gimmick they added, removed or reworked has actually just moved it from one grave to another.

I could stand playing casually and roleplaying if the story didn’t feel like I was roleplaying in a comic book, which is fine when that’s something I deliberately sign up to do (SEE: City of Heroes), except, I signed up to play WoW. I didn’t want to be the big, universal hero standing against the big bad. At most, I just wanted to play one champion of many of (insert faction).

WoW really just doesn’t have anything left to offer me, I think.

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It was an observation of how much time our realm forum spends roasting Blizz, which is a lot. So no, it’s not a terrible start for Wyrmies. You’re just in the wrong forum.

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I want the Jailer to win, and the peace out and never see him again

Devastating consequences for Azeroth
Entire old world gets overhauled (maybe even larger)
Player Housing (updated version of Sunsong Ranch)
Guild Halls (reimagined garrisons)

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Actual player/guild buildings - I don’t know how many times we have to ask for decoratable player housing and guild halls. With real decorations that can be earned in-game or even bought through the store. How many expacs?! We’ve been asking since before WOD - pretty much ever since there was an instance portal in SW. TBH, we should be able to choose a zone as well as a housing or hall type (AND PLEASE NOT JUST ALL SPIKES FOR HORDE - THERE ARE OTHER RACES!). If Blizz really wants to show off, just give us instanced plots of land, building pieces and accessories and let us go! Some people will build boxes and others will create entire cities. Imagine creating your own district within Gilneas? Or Boralus? Or Andorhal?

Better character creation screens. After 15+ years, I’d like to make Kirsy short. She’s supposed to be short.

Better transmog options - My second favorite game, Conan Exiles, has modders make entire add ons of additional armor, jewelry, weapon skins, and accessories like hoods, cloaks, pouches, quivers, etc. And they’re dye-able. Imagine if we had that here in an add on. If Blizz doesn’t have time or the inclination to do it, maybe give it to a modder to work on. Heck, give the character creation screens and player housing to modders as well. It’d be win-win here.

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Funny you should mention Conan Exiles because the thing that would restore my confidence in Blizzard is full frontal male nudity in-game

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I completely agree. This contribution to the conversation really cements the OPs original points.

My only addendum to the conversation, for the time being, is the continuity of their storytelling in-game.

I appreciate the novels, the comics, and other mediums Blizzard publish to enhance the stories of the World of Warcraft universe; but I’m paying to play through these stories as well. The omission of pivotal story developments in-game, and/or the resolution of stories in-game is deeply unappealing to me as a MMORPG gamer.

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Totally agree on these points.

I remember for all of vanilla and TBC the big ol mystery of whatever happened to the King of Stormwind was such a huge part of the Alliance faction. Then one day pre-patch for Wrath hits and it’s like, oh hey the King is back, oh want to find out how? Go read this comic and novel series or something about how he actually has some wolf soul and was a gladiator and some dragons I think.

They did have some efforts with the Onyxia attunement questline but the fact that it just kinda gets shoved into novels and comics outside the game is disappointing. I would sympathize but Blizzard by this time clearly had the ability to do in game cinematics like we saw with Wrathgate. So there was definitely a way for them to work this into the game.

Anyway, this will always be my biggest let down with side material. Varian’s return should have been more integrated into the game instead of let loose in side material only a small portion of dedicated people would go out of their way to read.

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I’m going to omit non-gameplay corporate stuff cause let’s face it, companies are not our friends. This is a barter. I exchange my money for a virtual playground of entertainment to run around in, nothing more and nothing less. Now as to what I want to see in said virtual playground:

Ditch the ‘Borrowed Power’ gimmick. Contraty to what people think this didn’t start in Legion, this started in WoD. The Garrisons had a baked in shelf life and they were always going to become obsolete when the expansion ended. Everything else has just been more egregious than the last. Artifact power, Azerite, now Renown/Soul Ash/Covenants. Replacing your gear is work and incentive enough, these extra convoluted systems that just slow down how fast the community ‘solves’ how to get powerful (spoiler they’re always going to solve it in PTR no matter what you do) don’t benefit anyone, not the devs who spend their precious time on them when they could be putting in something more permanent, not the players that have the looming feeling of your progress and accomplishments being short lived.

It’s the little things that matter. Look. Interdimensional space operas with high stakes and beloved characters looks good on paper. And it can be fun if done well and done in proper bursts. But players want to feel like they’re doing their part in the overarching story. Even on non rp servers, there should always be an element of roleplay in that you are a denizen of this world. Not some cookie cutter champion going through the motions so you can see what cool things the “real” main characters are up to this week. Put the rp back into mmorpg.

Let me learn the Karazhan dance. It’s already in the game why can’t I change my crummy human dance animation Blizzard why won’t you let me do this-

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Just improving their general customer support would be nice. It’s really deteriorated over the past few years. It’s really difficult to get a GM to help you with anything anymore.

I don’t need to submit a ticket often, but the when I do and I wait 3 to 4 days for a response that is a copy/paste reply and they don’t understand why i contacted them and fail to assist, I often wonder why I continue to support this game.

ps; if any devs are reading this - we’re still trying to unlock the bugged ragnaros guild run achievement 7 months later :’)

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What brings a Kel’Thuzadite to Wyrmrest Accord?

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Actual moderation of communities

We have some pretty notorious missing steps. Let’s use Varsity Snax for example: what if we didn’t have to write callout posts for him every time he resurfaces? What if he just got banned for a history of scamming? And at this point he is the missing step that we all know to avoid, but new people to the community don’t know, which is why he keeps resurfacing.

In addition, maybe handling the issue of harassment in pugs? It’s to the point where playing League of Legends is less toxic than playing WoW and that’s saying something.

In addition, making it so the ignore feature is account wide would be very helpful in cutting back on ingame toxicity.

Reworking of Tanking and Healing. Removing the concept of dps only classes

I’m not sure how to fix the issue of tanking, but between actual community moderation and some changes to how tanking works, perhaps we’d actually see a drop in DPS.

Built in DBM Functionality and Better Beginner Raider Experiences

Everyone uses DBM and dps meters, why not just… build it into the game? It would make raiding as a new player much easier, especially if there were some ingame tutorials to explain how the inbuilt DBM functions work. Similar to how Final Fantasy XIV trains you to do endgame content with its story.

Likewise, I feel like this would 1) make LFR a lot smoother and 2) encourage more people to get into raiding.

Another cool idea is to work with the community to make resources more available from the game UI. Let’s say I wanted to know the best routes for the new dungeons, but I’m a new tank. I could dig around on youtube, but what if there’s a hub page in the client updated by some of the top IO and MDI tanks? I like DOTA2’s ingame player tutorial feature is a good example of what I’d like! At the moment our best resources are discords and I hate discord’s organizational features. This isn’t necessary, but personally I think it’d be cool.

Dissolving factions for endgame PVE

The Horde is seeing a severe tank shortage. So uh, imagine how bad it is on Alliance side. There is a severe issue with how this game is played at endgame and at this point you have to already know which servers and factions to play on. The faction bleed for Alliance has already meant a few adjustments to PVP have been made, so I think we should apply that to PVE.

Getting rid of borrowed power systems, instead offering a system of getting more crafting materials or cosmetics for endgame stuff

Crafting materials are a maybe but it could lower the average timecost of maintaining a raiding guild so I personally like this idea. Cosmetics are more fun. People are willing to do a LOT for cosmetics, and if they put a lot of effort into high quality cosmetic models, esp for things people have wanted for years, we’ll see more people being interested in the endgame content.

Player Housing

Add this to an endgame grind and suddenly you have a game that sustains itself. We have seen this work in the fact that FFXIV is maintained almost entirely off transmog, cosmetics, and mounts. Give people stuff to collect, and they will do it. It also feels less immediate and damning than borrowed power systems, as well, since you don’t feel like you’re “behind” if you have a busy week and don’t do all your mythic+.

Basically the game needs to stop taking only the surface-level ideas from XIV and take the real meat that makes XIV better, and then I’ll probably come back.

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I agree with this and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Oh I remember he used to be in the basement in Alcaz Isle but it was really hard to get to due to all the elite mobs. https://youtu.be/kSL4lsMsdHs

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A baby step would be to make Torghast better with a lot of rewards rather than make it worse by adding a “talent tree” and putting run speed into the equation, which benefits some specs and screws others over.

Yet that’s exactly what they are doing, making it more like horrific visions, yay.

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What are your thoughts on Borrowed Power?

  • It’s something they talk about a lot, but as they keep adding more abilities, there’s some bloat when systems continue to stack.

  • If you add more levels or more talents, eventually it becomes hard to think of cool new things and there’s some bloat and it’s unsustainable.

  • They want to figure out a way to leave the RPG-in WoW where you conquer the threat and keep the things that you’ve learned.

  • They need to find a middle ground between borrowed power and systems that you keep.

  • They’re happy with Shadowlands, but there’s more information to share after Shadowlands. They want to try to find a way to continue systems forward.

Interesting that they at least claim to be thinking of middle ground systems.

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Well, a few ideas come to mind that may help give this game the oomph it needs.

  1. Character Customization Expanded:
  • There are many races lacking in unique and fun creative choices that would overhaul it all. We saw with Orcs and humans the lengths we can go with making our characters unique. Markings, faces, makeup, facial hair, styles, skin tones, eye colors etc. We need a greater expansion on all of this. Especially the face types and unfinished races (Gnomes, Undead, Draenei, and Allied Races)
  1. Emote expansion and RPG Elements expanded:
  • World of Warcraft has very little in terms for animation usage. We’re seeing CONSTANT new additions added to the game with animations, items, spell effects, environment details. The whole sha-bang. There needs to be an increase of Emote choices and expansion on existing ones. Such as the unique guard stances, or the sweeping / brushing. Item carrying. Toys shouldn’t be the only way to access these unique animations for every race.
  1. RETURNING COMMUNITY INTERACTIONS
  • I cannot stress the impact that the firing of all community devs and moderaters has done to this game, and the company as a whole. Losing engagement with the playerbase leaves us to feel unheard or outright ignored no matter what we say, suggest, or recommend.
  • Remove OR make sharding / server merges a toggable choice. This game is struggling and the merging of servers does somewhat mend the various empty servers. But there’s a dying community and interactions. By making it possible to toggle what servers or server types we wish to engage with; or ceasing sharding all together will make this game far more functional.
  1. Consider making “small patch” content.
  • Stuff that isn’t mechanically complex or can be added through a hotfix or minor fix should be encouraged. While this doesn’t need to be regular; adding pieces like additional outfits to Trial of Style, or a new animation emote from the existing animations list can definitely be on the front.
  • This also can apply to all other games they have currently development going for. To keep players engaged in OVerwatch, Warcraft, Diablo,etc.
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Anduin better kiss Wrathion or I riot.

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Another one no one has mentioned

  • Bring back PVPpower/Resilence. PVPers shouldn’t have to raid to enjoy pvp.
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As an unsubbed player who still haunts the forums to see if anything’s changed for the better and I can consider coming back to the game:

I want to see genuine communication.
Yes, the forums are full of vicious naysayers who will dogpile any Blue who dares show their face there… but a) that is a problem for players as well and should be dealt with anyway, and b) continuing to remain aloof is not helping and probably making things worse.

People have complaints. Blizzard doesn’t have to fix every one of them, and couldn’t do so anyway because different players complain about different things, but they should at least acknowledge them.

I have my own personal list of desires for the story direction, customization, etc, but none of that feels meaningful unless the company seems to actually care about their game and their players. Because right now, they seem to actively disdain their players, and that’s no way to build or keep a community.

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This. So much this. I can’t tell you how angry it makes me that we suffer content droughts in the game while if we want to get the full story, we have to buy books, etc.

Also, as others have mentioned, please for the love of the loas stop introducing systems that won’t last more than an expansion. I don’t like falling in love with an ability, be it for pew pew or just for fun, that I know I’m going to have to give up when it’s all said and done.

This can also be said for the overall game story as well. Why should I be invested in what’s going on in the story if at the end of an expansion, it’s all going to be for nothing? Why should I love a character if they’re going to end up being killed off for no reason, or suddenly go from 0 to villain with little to no build up?

And don’t even get me started on customization, because I could write a novel on that.

At the end of the day, I still love World of Warcraft. I’ll probably be here until they kick me offline and close down the servers. But I do wish this could be the game I know it could be.

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They could start by realizing that Legion’s artifact system was popular IN SPITE of artifact power and the gating of abilities behind it, not because of it. Artifacts gave players a crapton of motivation to keep logging in to play through all the different class stories, plus the individual spec stories for weapons, and then unlock all the cool skins.

Artifacts are still relevant two expansions later because we can still reap the rewards of that effort via transmog. I wish like hell there was some way to get through to them that it’s madness to get rid of the rewarding part but keep the annoying grind.

Yeah this is my biggest gripe. I know a lot of people just accept the toxicity as background noise, but Blizz needs to hire a moderation team to ACTIVELY monitor in-game communication instead of solely waiting for reports to pile up. Bring back the days of game masters being an actual presence in the game.

I know they can do much better, because whenever I’ve reported someone advertising those sketchy websites that let you pay for carries with real money, they’ve been dealt with almost immediately.

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