The aging an kids thing might be part of it. The economic circumstances are not. Entertainment tends to be countercyclical, because the opportunity cost of the time spent on entertainment plummets during a recession.
I understand. I’m just saying that it was very easy to be a fresh 80 even after ICC was already open and get yourself into tier 9 gear and be ready to jump into ICC
Well of course it should be easy. The thing is, in Wrath, catch-up got you to the starting levels of the current tier, it didn’t replace it.
These days, “catch-up-gear” is on par with the current tier, which is just stupid.
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Wrath is great but it had 12 million because there was an insane amount of promotion and many started wow for the first time.
Funny thing is at this moment, there are millions of potential players who dont know what an mmo is or that WOW even exists! If they promote we can have more than 12 mil, even with fake wow vanilla already out.
Also, anyone can enjoy wrath right now if they level lock at 70-75-80. Except for vanilla, all xpac content is available.
Let’s help get 20 million in shafowlands!
Love wow then play wow.
Have a complaint? Maybe dont.
Also, playing way too much will ruin your fun. Read novels they help get you into wow
What’s your basis for this? There are plenty of games that are still going strong years after they come out. Magic: the Gathering has been out for, what, almost 30 years now? And still has tons of players.
The mistake that Blizzard made was removing the social aspect. People are social creatures. Magic is a social game. WoW used to be a social game, and still is for many long-time players, but when Blizzard started emphasizing anti-social play so much, they really stripped the game of its most enduring retention tool: the people.
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ok I’m confused by your original statement then. You said if you had taken a break during wrath and came back that you’d be hopelessly undergeared and unable to easily get into ICC.
MMO was new back then. It’s new to most people. It was exciting for people to explore a huge world they havent seen before.
Now, MMO is a bit old. People realize the grinds. Most people now wont fall on the traps of such addictive game.
People who played Wrath in the Past wont be able to play another Wrath game right now becoz people would have no time for it anymore. But people who played Wrath and now Casuals can enjoy BFA for its Casual-friendly mechanics.
I love Wrath when I was hardcore. Now as a Casual, I know I cant play Wrath or Classic. But I can enjoy Legion or BFA for its Casual friendly mechanics.
One major thing I loved with Wrath was the use of Master Loot system for Gold DKP… where people form raids and use gold to auction Bosses’ loots. The gold accumulated by the raid group at the end were divided equally to each raid member. Master loot doesnt exist anymore on modern WoW.
Wrath has a buffer content. Blizz realized only 2% of vanilla population have seen Naxx40. So they brought back Naxxramas (equivalent to LFR difficulty) as buffer content on WoTLK.
That was unfair. New people skip content, brought and carried to the raid and get phat loots. After the carry, they became equal to the ones who carried them… which is unfair. It encourages skipping content. Oh, I will skip the first 3 patches and pop out on the last patch… pay gold to my friend to carry me to ICC-25. And soon, I get Lich King kill on my own.
Now, even if you pay for carry, you wont be able to become equal to the ones who carried you as your Essences and HoA would always be weaker… which is FAIR. It discourage skipping content. Now, a disappearing guy who just popped out on 8,3 skipping 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2; if he pays for a carry, he would still have a weak HoA and Essences forbidding him to kill Heroic/Mythic Nzoth easily…
You needed to do Tier 9 (or equivalents) first. As it should be.
Blood Death Knight with high armor penetration is what wrath did right, nothing sweeter than carving people in half…or killing party members with hysteria.
I think it just was momentum and warcraft nostalgia
Isn’t wrath just where subs started to plateau?
This is most likely the second most major factor in why games these days are pretty terrible all around, the first being alienating massive swaths of the potential playerbase for the sake of ticking that forced narrative box. Having all of the nitty-gritty of the game available from the get-go, or systems so complicated and unintuitive that they have to be explained from the get-go, strips the game of all mystery. The fact that Wowhead is the unofficial official place to break Blizzard news is a pretty sad state of affairs.
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you didn’t need to do tier 9. the badges for tier 9 were given out like candy once the game went to tier 10.
Please read my posts.
Ok. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point. It seemed yoiur point was that in wrath if you had taken time off you were hopelessly behind by the time ICC dropped. When in reality it took very little time to become ready for ICC
It had Arthas.
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Yes, yes it was the pinnacle and never grew higher beyond that point now it’s on an up and down cycle based on patches and expacs.
I think the opposite. I think it is what has kept the game going strong for so long when so many others faltered or failed. Even games like EQ which was notorious for forced group game play has relented and become much more solo friendly over the years. People have a bad experience in a group and are more reluctant to join groups in the future. Blizzard didn’t force players into more single player content, the players forced blizzard into making more single player content.
After long inner debate, I think I have decided that as epic as Wrath is, MoP was my favorite expansion. Everything was good in it. Everything.
As much as I love Wrath, class design wasn’t that great for all of the specs.
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BC or Cata were my favorites.