Not talking about the leveling speed. I mean actually making it fun and enjoyable enough to not feel like its just a vehicle to get to the current expansion content.
Then again i spam vanilla/cata dungeons + vanilla quests for alt leveling usually so my perspective on this might be bs
Time gating for items I didn’t earn sucks, and is bad for the game. Time gating for items, I did get is good for the game, for maintaining the prestige of what I’ve earned.
I do in fact enjoy shutting the door behind me. While a druid, I wasn’t raised in a barn.
With all that said though, I personally believe it likely has nothing to do with WoW’s new player retention on a large scale.
I find the leveling enjoyable via the story and gaining points to the tree
Removing borrowed power so new players don’t have to grind a million things once they get cap, and actually moderating toxic players would be the best ways to keep a new player playing.
and people wonder why the devs don’t view the forums as a source for legitimate feedback
They do. That’s why it’s even for us frustrating to tell them “no, you don’t get that anymore”.
lol with the new talent tree I’d disagree.
You can’t not have something “anymore” if you never had access to it in the first place. And it’s it’s only frustrating insofar as we haven’t had proper limited run challenge rewards since Legion. But on the flipside, MT 2.0 is evergreen, so anybody can take a shot at those mogs once maintenance is over.
You have no idea how frustrated people get about FOMO items. I had a Orc player come to me and praising me for the WoD Gul’dan staff and that he will start farming as well for his warlock. I had to tell him that it’s a FOMO item and you know what his reaction was?
“Good, then I won’t play warlock…” and went offline.
Other example. I was on an event somewhere around Dalaran WotLK, when I was approached by a Vulpera player who told me how awesome I look with my Orc Huntress. Long story short, I had to tell the player that they can’t get the armor this easily (warfront), that the mount is FOMO, that the cape is FOMO and the pet (squire child) requires a bit of work. The person was upset about why everything is locked away and only long-term players are rewarded.
There are always two sides of the coin and no matter how Hazzikostas wants to spin it, new players are the losers in his believe that they don’t care.
always has been
There are a few new players, obviously don’t care about the game but some of them just use something new but terrible that Blizzard had made to bully old men like me sob
People are very toxic towards new players, not all but those that are, always leave their mark.
When you play LFR, there is always that one guy raging over nothing. We did Jailer yesterday, its not a hard boss at all, but new folks were around and jumped too early so we had to go a second time.
They were kicked after try 1 and threats were sent towards everyone in group that mistakes are punished like that.
Now imagine you are a new player and are removed, have a 30 min deserter because some rude guy and his gang had a go at you.
The entire kick and reward system is toxic and Blizzard does not understand this at all. Sure we have a new report interface, but what are the chances that those that initiated the kick are punished?
They will just keep doing it and no matter what we friendly folks do, the kick can not be prevented by us.
Now that we roll against each other, the toxic level raises even further, as people are acting up, if a low performing player wins the roll.
Another issue is, the speed running through. Some want to watch cut scenes, read quest text or just play more relaxed. Quite often this is enough to trigger a raging nerd.
I just dont get it, why folks act like that over a video game. In a few years, none of what we do today, will matter. WOW wont last forever and it is quite likely that we end up like many other MMO´s before.
So why the hate over nothing?
This is a big problem and why everyone wants WoW to be a Solo game. The community did this to themselves.
I remember when running a heroic dungeon was fun. Now a lot of people have the mentality that it’s a timed mythic+ and want to zoom through it and get aggressive if you’re not going the speed they want.
Wow is kind of between a rock and a hard place when it comes to players. Many left, or are playing other characters and still saying they left. PvP is an issue that made many leave. No open world PvP unless you opt in, so everyone gets to safely quest with none of the old challenges of dedicated PvP servers. So all those that like to gank and camp corpses are gone. It would be nice if they had just one hardcore PvP server for those that want the ultimate challenge. I was never a ganker, definitely the ganked, but it was so rewarding to finally make it to max level, get some gear, and finally be able to hold my own.
On the other hand, if WoW hosted dedicated PvP servers like in the past, new players would constantly report people or whine about being ganked and then they leave. So Wow invested in PvE and story progression with an option to turn on world PvP in the outside chance you meet someone with it turned on somewhere.
Wow simply can’t have it both ways or they lose tons of folks. But now even PvE is to hard for some and GDKP was created to rip off desperate players to scared to join a premade raid. Or maybe you are good for your gear level, but the number isn’t high enough or you have the “wrong” legendary, or the “wrong” spec, or the “wrong” talents, enchants, gems, whatever that disqualifies a toon from raiding. So you have gatekeepers that had their backsides handed to them over and over again, but ground out the raid gear enough to look down their noses at anyone with the audacity to be a new player without AOTC. This is what makes new players move on now.
To be devil’s advocate, timegating does prevent those who suck up all the content, complain that there’s nothing to do, then just unsubscribe until the next patch. That unsub looks bad on the metrics…
But if they timegate it, means they keep you in the game for longer.
Most content is group only these days, at least if we talk content that gives a char progression. Thorgast was actually a nice try, but over time still behind in Ilvl and reward system.
I am personally not the biggest fan of solo content as I enjoy group content and why single player games never last long for me. That being said, throughout the years my interest in group content at WOW has tanked.
I do LFR and wish it had a better progression, world bosses and stuff, but M+ not with strangers and LFD rarely.
I used to pvp a lot more, but its just no fun anymore. You always have those in group, that feel some other tactic would be better or that losing quickly is the key. If they dont get their will, they sit afk in base.
Now I have achieved a lot in this game and will surely keep playing it, as I find the transmog system decent. But as a new player and this is what made me quit Lost Ark, this game is brutal, as the community does not give you much breathing space.
You can not change the menthality of people playing games these days, its a different philosophy than 20 years ago.
But you can design your game in such a way, that the exploitation of weaker players, the exposure to hate and abuse, is harder to achieve.
And here we are talking kick system, loot rules, tracking addons and the ability to get gear outside of group content, so that the entry into group content becomes easier and lesser geared / skilled folks, are not as easily targeted by the mob.
Because if someone joins LFR or LFD, he should not expect perfection, so that all the measurement tools should be disabled.
Maybe this could also help new players to get some thicker skin to survive the pug environment better.
Ofc. that does not mean, insulting others should be tolerated, its a terrible attitude of our society in so many aspects.
Lmao 10/10
Nah OP is onto something a lil bit.
One of my boys won’t play because of stuff like this
Speaking on behalf of massive groups of people like you have some kind of hivemind is silly at best.