When did it become too much?

[Landcruiser-runetotem (Landcruiser)]

For me, it was when Blizzard decided to make damage too complicated and the play styles changed. Back in Vanilla there was no complicated stacking and buffing of spells if applied a certain way. It was one spell meant a set damage amount/range. Nono of this if you cast this, this,this,a nd then if you are fast enough, cast this to get this bonus resulted damage boost. No, it was you casted said spell/s and you got the according damage output. The whole procs thing ruined it for me. No longer was there a standard cookie cutter spell rotations, but a spell priority. This is fine for some classes, but they should have left a few classes simple to play for people like myself whom cant multitask let alone dread having to use a add on to help determine when to cast spells. I miss when affliction warlocks were the class people played when they were unable to play the more complex classes like johnny on the spot mages.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

Then we can rephrase, it was not accessible to the vast majority of the game player base

Except if it was accessible to any of the players (which it was) then it was accessible to all since every account has equal access to the servers. There wasn’t some sort of free-to-play game with raid access buy in nonsense going on. The stuff was there, any player who put in the time, had the skill, and found/created a group that was sufficiently motivated and skilled could access the content.

The nature of the content made it not accessible to vast chunks of the population.

So regardless of whether you want to nitpick words, very few people accessed high end raids. And blizzard wasn’t happy with that situation.

Like I said I would have loved if they had released just as much new 5 man content as they did raids in vanilla but they didn’t go that route.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

It really doesn’t matter why, it matters that it wasn’t accessed, hence it was not accessible.

Thats like saying choosing to go left instead of right isn’t a choice of accesibility.Because you choose to go left doesn’t mean the option to go right doesn’t exist.

You choose to not raid in a raiding guild therefore you chose not to have access to anything.

When going right involves jumping off a cliff and going left involves taking an elevator down and only a tiny percent of people in that situation have a parachute yeah it’s a little more than a simple choice especially for the people who don’t have the parachute.

[Mcnibbles-turalyon]

It really doesn’t matter why, it matters that it wasn’t accessed, hence it was not accessible.

It was accessed, just not by a huge percentage of the population. If it was accessed (returns as true) then it was accessible. At AQ40 release Ouro was not accessible because the access condition of beating C’thun was literally not achievable. Sunwell was accessible even if only 1% or so of the population completed it some number of people did so and thus accessed it…

This was the issue here. Time and money went into resources for this stuff and it becomes a waste if such a small % of your player base is even getting to see or encounter it. Had blizzard maybe switch their pay model they could have continued to do this, however being a monthly sub game what happens is people stop paying if they can enjoy something in its entirety. They could have kept raiding in the way it was back in vanilla and TBC but then they would have to spend more resources creating things for the other 90% to enjoy to retain player base. People like to think if blizzard rewind and went back to the days of old school that sub would be so much higher when in reality that would have most likely not been the case. I am willing to bet a kidney had they continued to cater to more of the hardcore masses the sub count would probably be only in the hundreds thousands of players.

[Thundathys-amanthul (Thundathys)]

When going right involves jumping off a cliff and going left involves taking an elevator down and only a tiny percent of people in that situation have a parachute yeah it’s a little more than a simple choice especially for the people who don’t have the parachute.

And what stopped the people grabbing the parachute from the pile 3 meters to the left of them?
Hint: it’s not accessibility.

If Classic had gone on another 3+ months I would have raided. Within 4weeks of hitting cap I’d gotten attuned to EVERYTHING,Gotten my mount and had a somewhat respectable set of gear. Hell I would have raided anyways if I wasn’t waiting for my guild to hit cap.

I was motivated enough to get all that done, You can’t be blaming accessibility when it’s player choice not to do something.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

And what stopped the people grabbing the parachute from the pile 3 meters to the left of them?
Hint: it’s not accessibility.

Hint: there was no pile.

[Thundathys-amanthul (Thundathys)]

Hint: there was no pile.

There was, All you have to do is expend some effort to reach out to it.

[Studmuffyn-veknilash (Studmuffyn)]

There was, All you have to do is expend some effort to reach out to it.

So who gets to decide what ‘effort’ is worthy? The ones who want everything to be special, so that only they get to see/complete even a version of that content?

This was the issue here. Time and money went into resources for this stuff and it becomes a waste if such a small % of your player base is even getting to see or encounter it.

This, a billion times this, so Blizzard solves this by giving more people the chance to see/complete at least a version of the raid content, all while still having the difficult raid content for those who want that.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

Hint: there was no pile.

There was, All you have to do is expend some effort to reach out to it.

At the end of the day I would have preferred blizzard continue adding other forms of content besides raids but they didn’t.

And regardless the accessibility of raiding was so low very few people got far in it. So given the choice between increasing accessibility or not getting new content increasing accessibility is a better option for almost everyone.

[Darjuul-wyrmrest-accord]

I miss when affliction warlocks were the class people played when they were unable to play the more complex classes like johnny on the spot mages.

What? Mages were complicated? More complicated than keeping track of dots (especially without a timer mod)?

This, a billion times this, so Blizzard solves this by giving more people the chance to see/complete at least a version of the raid content, all while still having the difficult raid content for those who want that.

The problem is that you have to dumb it down/remove all restrictions to access so, so far to get all, or even most, players to see it that it kills it. Maybe 5% of your player base seeing it isn’t enough, but maybe 25% is ok? 40%? Trying to get 90%+ to see it is just going to gut the systems in place entirely, and that’s what’s happened over the years. I don’t blame Blizzard for trying to get more people to see the end game content, but I do blame them for flattening the curve so much that it just doesn’t exist anymore.

[Panzeroo-stormrage]

I agree with you that we disproportionally say that the generation below is all about instant gratification.

BUT…here is the rub for me. I think that in the past 5 years or so game devs have bought into the illusion that the majority of their playerbase do in fact fit that immediate gratification, entitled model.

It’s not necessarily an illusion. Wildstar’s core mechanics concept was the old attunement system. That wasn’t enough to keep players.

Players don’t always admit it, but what they want to do and what they can do change over time. The two concepts don’t always go hand-in-hand, either.

That was an interesting article. I can’t speak for Wildstar, but I just feel that vanilla WoW has so much more going for it to keep people playing that may not be able to commit several hours to the game daily. I don’t believe that WoW Classic will suffer from population loss for years to come

[Tankshow-whisperwind (Tankshow)]

Legion was a dumpster fire, and BFA added gas to said fire

I went ahead and fixed that for you.

[Oriendaria-medivh (Oriendaria)]

People crying at how hard the game was, people crying for wanting more loot options, that’s when the line should have been drawn.

When I say to hard, this includes changes, pruning, of classes to be streamlined. Hopefully Blizzard will turn back retail to be more…challenging again. This also includes gold sinks.

[Grimtoke-runetotem]

wow problems from the desk of hyperspace:

• talent trees : i want my goofy talent trees options. i could make some pretty interesting builds, mixin’ and matchin’ all three schools of magic on a mage.

• gutted professions: the professions didnt survive heirlooms, wod and removal of flight accessibility till later in expacs where people have already earned gear from content and dont need your tailored, inscribed or smitheed gear,etc.

• random lfgs ruined community: it’s quiet. too quiet.

• no coordination in dungeon runs remember when the mobs had to be cc’d? participation no longer even necessary. some tanks can do the whole run, heal themselves, while literally no one else does a thing.

I can agree with this 110%.

In particular the talent trees and the gutted professions. Talent trees felt like choice, even if 89.732% of people ran the same spec. Every level felt like you were getting stronger when you applied that talent point. Getting that fifth talent point and seeing 10% extra stamina or whatever the talent you just maxed out was, felt like a real achievement, and these feel good moments came during leveling. It was fun, it was a good design. Being able to experiment and not be locked into one spec was fun, things felt individualized.

Professions went sideways when they started gating recipes behind PvE content. Professions were always for the solo casuals like me, leave them to us and let us make stuff for the hardcore to consume/buy. That leads me to my second point; permanence. The only profession that’s worth anything anymore in a meta sense is Alchemy. Pots and flasks are one time use, and needed for end game buffs. There is a steady demand designed into the game. All other professions need to have some kind of consumables tied to upper levels so that there is a viable economic reason to pursue it. Demand is what’s missing from WoW’s economy right now. Heirlooms should have been tied to professions so that you need several different profs to kit out your alts. Instead, you just buy them with gold and you’re done. HUGE missed opportunity.

I would add vendors to his list as well. I want to have control over my gear progression, whether that is through PvP or PvE. Work a bit every day, get a little closer to that weapon upgrade.

Dailies are no different and should still be around and tied to stories. WQ feel random; “help the turtles get to the water, solve this puzzle…” Why not have dailies that revolve around helping patrol a contested zone? Drive out the baddies, etc? I want dailies that feel like part of the world, not a FB mobile game.

In Vanilla I felt a need to log in every day. I would check my deals on the AH, appraise the herb and ore markets, etc. Then I would grind some honor and gather/farm for gold. Do some PvE stuff to progress gear, get closer to an attunement, etc. Now in retail I can do my follower quests from my phone. Not the same immersion.

At. All.

Lastly, level scaling. I like level scaling when it comes to being able to not out-level a zone, but I wanted the world to feel more real, as in “those frost giants in Winterspring are always dangerous, even if you are a geared 60”. That vibe is gone in Retail. Now the world shifts in relation to you. I don’t want to feel like the center of the WoW universe, it’s absurd. I want to feel like a small cog in a very big machine. I want to feel like a soldier in a huge army. I want the world to feel big and dangerous.

I have a goblin rogue who I love but I cannot get to end game. Why? Because he’s a gobbo. And a rogue who uses stealth and poisons to fight because he’s small and weak. He rides a giant rat. Yet everywhere he goes in BFA he’s treated as the savior of the world, like he’s Neo from the Matrix. Nope, he’s a nasty little gobbo just trying to get a bit of gold and survive in the big bad world. But I can’t play him that way because of Retail design.

Frustrating.

[Xanthak-durotan (Xanthak)]

Regarding LFR, I think it was actually a good idea. Want to see the story? Experience the raids without putting any effort? Great! I just don’t think any of value should drop from there.

[Hailiaxx-stormrage]

Back in the day exclusivity was the main carrot on the stick not just for WOW, but many other games. You see someone with a cool title, awesome gear, that BIS weapon, a rank way higher than yours, etc and you’re like “Man that guy must have done some awesome stuff. I want to be like him someday.”

This was never the case, except in the minds of the people who AFKed on the Ironforge bridge and thought everybody must be looking at them in awe, when in reality nobody cared, or maybe just thought “What a self-absorbed d-bag,” as they ran past.

I definitely looked in awe back then lol…

[Lindow-skullcrusher (Lindow)]

This is an interesting conversation to have because there are really two sides to the coin.

-On one hand it’s like, “Can we justify spending this much time/money/manpower designing and developing these raids and gear when less than 10% of our player base is participating in them?”
-On the other hand it’s like, the model is working. “Despite raid content being very exclusive, our product is doing well” Kind of a, if it’s not broke don’t fix it mentality.

So to that end I think a sort of middle ground approach would have been best. In my mind I would have:

1. Kept actual raiding to just 10 & 25 man, with no LFG tool
2. Incorporated LFR, but gear would be heroic 5 man equivalent, or maybe between that and 10 man ilvl, but definitely not raid tier.

So this way you can have spectator mode raids, but it doesn’t impact the homeostasis between raiders and non-raiders. And you effectively have three clearly outlined tiers ranging from fully accessible (LFR) to very exclusive (25 man), so without those interceding levels of raiding or M+ rng boxes you don’t muddy the waters between types of players. You’re not forcing everyone to play in the same sandbox whether you want to or not.

[Hailiaxx-stormrage]

So I want to bring up a topic that is super hot right now, which is accessibility vs exclusivity.

Back in the day exclusivity was the main carrot on the stick not just for WOW, but many other games. You see someone with a cool title, awesome gear, that BIS weapon, a rank way higher than yours, etc and you’re like “Man that guy must have done some awesome stuff. I want to be like him someday.” And then you do tons of content, increase your skill over time, learn more about the game, make friends to help you out, etc. And then one day kaboom you are a very competent player and other newbs are drooling over you.

So at what point did WOW (and some other very competitive online games) start asking too much of their players? WHEN DID WE START ASKING TOO MUCH OF PLAYERS? When did the carrot of exclusivity stop being good enough? Is it a change in the attitude of today’s average gamer?

I know a lot of what is making it to market has to do with business decisions and the investment to revenue ratio, I get that. But on the forums for every post I see talking about how old systems are better…I also see one complaining that leveling STILL takes too long and that they shouldn’t have to group up to do top content and that they shouldn’t have to do really time consuming and difficult stuff to get high end gear. So what caused this paradigm shift? Was it primarily initiated by the audience or the game producer?

It comes down to this…

The hardcore community was only ever like 10% of the WoW community. They may be the most loyal customers who consume the product most, but over time, the 90% voice is bigger… and the game slowly catered more and more to satisfy the 90% directly… instead of indirectly.

I remember a lot of people back then complaining about raid content was something only 1% of the population could enjoy, while everyone else missed out.

I personally like the old model better… even though I was never a hardcore player. I only ever did 2 bosses in MC… ZG once(And not final boss)… and AQ20 once. That was my raid experience in vanilla wow xD and I played every day for hours.

[Bizzel-nazjatar (Bizzel)]

the old model didnt actually work for blizzard. they spent too many resources on raids that people were not running

[Cyberten-aegwynn]

While I still disagree with its existence. I believe that drops should be of a Rare quality a bit lower then what mythic dungeon baseline would be.

On second week of LFR launch in legion for emerald nightmare the mail shoulders off the FIRST boss rolled into a 395 or 295. W/e the highest was at that time. Excited about it, but at the same time confused that I queued for a raid, never said a word, and magically a item that was the best possible raiding option at that time basically. The haste on them sucked for survival tho.