That’s all I’ve done with WoW since 7.25. A long solo experience, but I know it’s a minority experience and I enjoy my fringe terribad tourist mode.
There’s tons of social interaction available, but I haven’t any time to make such regular encounters. Not since I have been working 60 hour weeks, family and life in general.
I basically show up to see what others have done. I highlight all the purple RIOs. The big guilds. It looks fun. And I miss those days 20 years ago when I could devote all day to games.
Seriously? Because it’s not about the difficulty levels explicitly, it’s about the style. The methodology. Titles and rewards based on M+ scores relative to others, Arena scores, different tiers for rankings, etc. Those aren’t about “difficulty” of the game, they are about relative accomplishment of the player base. It’s about competitiveness, not pure difficulty. Even using things like details to “optimize” dps outputs are in that direction. Because it became no longer about doing well, it became about doing better than others.
Mage Tower can be quite difficult, it’s not an e-sport. Lots of things can be “difficult” without being esport related. Your argument is honestly really strange.
Wow is whatever you want it to be. If you want to engage with a certain type of content in wow, then start a guild and recruit like-minded people to do whatever it is you want to do.
Well, I did point out that at one point I took an 8 year break in the middle, but it’s just gotten worse over time. Yes, things like immersion and questing, etc. are there but they sure don’t feel the priority.
As for leveling being the case since TBC, sure, I can see your point. Forcing the new content to only be for the last ten levels (or whatever the range is) tends to have that net result. But I think recently it’s gotten far worse, with the boosts, and the leveling exp cuts, etc. to make it all that much faster. To the lack of any real interest in changing the old world up (I still have hopes for this but they are faltering fast).
Competition (PvE) really started with Wrath, Ulduar, thanks to hard modes.
The moment you introduce a tiered difficulty system for the same content, it’s all the way down from there.
Accessibility increases, sure, but you lose the organic feeling of the RPG part.
It only got worse with M+ (PvE) and Arenas (PvP), which introduced timers, ladders, shifting endgame to dungeons over raiding.
Me and A LOT of players.
It’s a matter of pacing, but they would have to rethink alts in that scenario.
It’s definitely more action than RPG these days, but yeah, the RPG part got slowly gutted over time.
Extremely disagree here. Like you can’t be more wrong. Forced (keyword) scaling was a BIG mistake, and level crunch an even bigger one.
There are options to skip leveling and linearity without destroying it entirely.
Some people, developers included, just can’t handle numbers correctly.
The many RP servers are there just for show, right?
They could work with a 3 year cycle though, right now, and the game would be better for it, but not their bottomline, which is why we will likely never have something as big as vanilla again.
The lack of zone/dungeon/raid diversity is palpable.
Mythic dungeons were an attempt to reuse assets again (we already had heroic by then).
M+ just further helped them on that.
I’d rather have the dungeons/raids themselves be the difficulty selector, and have the M+ style gameplay be based on MoP’s challenge modes or something similar.
Accessibility could then be ensured with the new Story Mode and Follower Dungeons.
This could be reintroduced, as well as all the other RPG QoL changes (arrows, bullets, posions, spell reagents etc.), as an optional RPG element.
Most people wouldn’t even care about the RPG side of things if it did not affect their gameplay experience in terms of performance.
Just add different animations for them to please the RPers and call it done.
The focus on speedrunning (pve) and small scale competition (pvp) is the reason for the term.
Like Robu said, it’s about the style of gameplay, not how hard it is.
Most people know the WoW formula of progression now.
Every kid, adult, and grandparent makes How to XYZ for this game unlike yesterdecade when everyone was lost.
There are armies of people who obviously work from home or have “no lives” who can consume all content in 24 hours
People look for shortcuts
Not seeing the forest for the trees. Not all of us are doing competitive things. Hell, if you find me, I might be taking selfies on a mountain
Advertising focuses on select things that have tangible measure like AWC and MDI. Blizz cannot measure me RP in Goldshire with two Treants and a beach umbrella doing the Lambada.
Every game I’ve played since 1985 has been about getting the high score. Beating Mario to the point that the Goombas are going warp speed.
Speed runs. Iron mans. Etc. We’re past the new car…err… Warcraft smell ; we’re hanging out with people who have the art assets memorized. That cave over there has been a recolored cave since Vanilla. Tell me I’m wrong
I don’t worry about others. Most aren’t questing out there probably because they’re on Shards #1 to #47 and we can’t see each other. Plus all the Chromie times.
The only thing that WoW Devs despise more than casual players who dont do the cutting edge content is players who like flying and not gliding.
If you are not on the loot treadmill you arnt being pressured into buying runs, which means you arnt buying gold, and if you arnt buying gold multiple times a month then you are total scum.
Thats the entire point of the game now, sell boosts for the FOMO char of the season so you can even get into groups, after you have bought enough boosts to gear up to overgear the content by 40% so someone will join your group or invite you.
Not sure what you mean. WoW feels more casual friendly than ever. Massive amounts of stuff to collect, multiple game modes to experience, and upcoming story mode. Not sure if you remember the days of nothing but daily grinds and raid logging.
I think you should move to classic as your primary game. Retail doesn’t need the changes you want. Its my lobby competition game and Skinner box. Its fine as it is. If I want immersion or questing/leveling experience I have the option of classic.
WoW became competitive back in vanilla when pvp ranking systems were introduced with honor kill points, and for the pve side when guilds started racing to be the first to clear content. Especially when the opening of Ahn’Qiraj happened and there were actually rewards for being first to do something. People responded positively to the competition so it’s just been growing ever since. Effectively the competitive side of the game has always been there.
I only log in to putt around doing whatever oldworld stuff i feel like doing, i log in this game to relax and decompress, not trying to be stressed out in my time off I have a highly demanding career that handles enough of that.
I remember the race for WF LK kill. I think it was Premonition who used a bomb exploit to win and had the achievement removed. That’s not when it started though. People were excited about WF BT and SWP kills. It started in TBC and took off during WOTLK.
