For the content to be challenging it will at some point require some sorta cut off from the outside world.
I think Delves will be great for this.
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Challenge modes were introduced in MoP, which were a precursor to Mythic+
Arena’s were introduced as a Primary design function in TBC.
Also, to that extent, those pieces of content were why some people did primarily play the game.
At this point we are just debating about what some people considered a larger or smaller part of the game.
Come to classic era vanilla. It’s getting weird and wild. I’m still discovering stuff.
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I’m ok with this trend in Retail but I hate how much in bled into all the Classic experiences.
They may have pushed for and tuned around competitive gameplay earlier, but for me it wasn’t until BFA that I felt like a second-class player for not wanting to do Heroic raiding or M+ anymore. Up until BFA I was fulfilled doing PVP, world content, LFR and dabbling in M+ and Normal once in a while.
That’s not how it really works though.
Every individual player decides what the game is primarily about to them, and that is what it is primarily about.
There are people who primarily level alts and quest.
There are people who primarily do solo endgame content.
There are people who primarily collect pets, mogs or mounts.
There are people who primarily do open world pvp.
There are people who primarily do unrated pvp.
There are people who primarily do rated pvp.
There are people who primarily M+.
There are people who primarily raid.
Saying “wow is primarily about competitive content”, like the OP, is setting a thread about a false premise.
If the premise was instead “when did wow become primarily about competitive content for most people” it would probably still be wrong because I’d bet my last mana biscuit that the casuals vastly out number the competitive folk.
If the premise was “for the people for who wow is primarily about competitive content, when did it happen”, then fine, but implying that something is wrong there is wild.
The game never primarily became about competitive content. For the people who primarily pursue that content, who cares if they do so, it doesn’t really effect anyone else.
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This isn’t accurate though, because the game is designed for certain types of content as the priority. Yeah, if folks wanted to pretend they were doing exercise in WoW, they could run around in a big circle in one of the more open zones, and call it “virtual exercise”. Heck, they could probably even set up some sort of interface between a treadmill and a gamepad controller and quite literally turn it into an exercise game.
That’s not what the game “primarily” is, though, based on development priorities and focus. If you go into the Beta forums right now, there aren’t any “questing feedback” threads created by the devs. There aren’t any “lore and immersion feedback” threads. There’s several M+ feedback threads, tho, and for each of the classes, there’s tons of feedback about the talents and hero talents, and “balancing”. Which only applies to dungeons and raids and PVP. There’s healing feedback, tanking feedback, there are HEAPS of focus on the competitive portions of the game.
So yes, the game is quite literally about the competitive content. IMO at this point the only reason quests and lore exist are because the competitive gamers need someone else to pay the bills.
Again, not true.
Not sure how many times I have to repeat myself, but this isn’t about the existence of competitive content nor it is about the existence of people who pursued content competitively. This is about Blizzard designing content with a competitive characteristic; it’s about Blizzard making that content the only thing that really matters in this game and the only thing worth participating in.
I don’t think it’s arguable that this game has been the same as it always has. There has been an undeniable shift in the design philosophy underpinning this game, and I think everyone here knows that, but continues to ignore it anyways.
Fair, but again: Unless they were a cornerstone of MoP (they weren’t), it kind of falls flat on its face because the point is about when the game primarily become about that mode of content.
Which, again, happened in Legion.
I already said PvP isn’t a factor I’m contesting in this matter, so I don’t know why you keep bringing it up lol
Okay lol
What does that have to do with anything about OP’s complaints?
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Obviously the competitive stuff requires a larger volume of feedback to facilitate.
That doesn’t invalidate the massive amount of development that follower dungeons, delves, warbands or new story content are getting for those players.
WoW’s developers are primarily of the competitive mindset, and it bleeds through into ALL the content they make, including the stuff that’s ostensibly “for casuals”.
It really does show, especially when the game appears to be intentionally funneling players towards some form of power progression systems and repeated content. Hard to say if this is entirely intentional either, but WoW’s developers don’t seem to be able to design their game to be anything other than power-progression hamster wheel.
So, by hook or by crook, the game rewards a similarly competitive mindset as the developers while creating issues and pain points for players who don’t share that mindset.
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Because not a lot of players wanna play 20 years of content, on each of their characters, just to play the new stuff where the majority of players are.
But in this context you are arbitrarily deciding for everyone that competitive content is the only thing that matters and the only thing you think is worth participating in.
There are millions of players who don’t do any competitive content and they don’t care about it at all. Do you really think the 200 hunters that get rolled up in Teldrassil everyday really GAF about whether you think their 16th character is worth it?
Does the pet collector or the mount collector or the achievement hunter care if you think their playstyle is valid? Does the last open world pvp’r care about RFW or TGP?
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When zero attention span zoomers started playing.
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- Warbands look promising, but honestly at this point are so buggy that it’s still TBD
- New Story Content - This is a bit of a wait and see. Hope it’s great, but DF was a bit meh. SL before that was very meh.
- Delves - Again, TBD. Looks good, but hard to tell until it’s actually implemented in the real world.
- Follower Dungeons - Actually like this, but let’s be honest, the developer time is more about designing the character-play, the dungeons are already done for the other content.
If the storyline takes 3 days to punch through, I mean, we’ll have our answer, right? And after the first couple of times for story, follower dungeons are just a solo version of the competitive gameplay loop, and Delves already are that. But hopefully there’s more than just “beat your last time”.
Not sure why “solo” is being misconstrued as “not competitive gameplay design”. It’s about philosophy of design. That’s like arguing dungeons vs raids. Not the point here. Simply pointing me towards my own private squirrel cage isn’t the solution.
That’s because there are feedback threads on things they can actually change in a timely manner on the beta.
What exactly would a feedback thread about lore/immersion accomplish when the xpac has a few months of beta left?
Conveniently ignoring the questing feedback I suggested too, but that’s okay. In terms of let’s call it ‘storyline’ it’s fair because they try to deliver that with the game, knowing it’s a one-and-done in their eyes, but in terms of questing, there’s lots of busted quests. My guess is they don’t want debate about those because it looks bad.
I “conveniently ignored” questing because it should be pretty obvious they also can’t just completely redo questing flow since it also has to follow the flow of writing.
If quests are bugged, that’s an issue of bug reporting.
WoW is not oriented towards competitive gameplay. In WoW, there are only two competitive activities all other activities, of which there are hundreds, are non-competitive.
since WoW was driven by a team that mostly cares about metrics and spreadsheets
this team cares more about manipulating the playerbase to increase metrics (using f2p style analytics) rather than entertaining players as their first priority
Perhaps, although it wasn’t REALLY noticeable in terms of a lack of “box sales” until Dragonflight. And I’d argue that was because of a combination of not putting a recognizable character on all the marketing, and doing away with the Horde/Alliance dynamic.
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