Why continue to go out of their way to make the game less enjoyable?

Community General Discussion
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Hi y’all, long time player, first time forum poster.

Today’s update needlessly made one of the quests in the Maw (the one with the ingots) needlessly more difficult in a zone that the devs KNOW their players already hate, and it finally made me ask the question.

Why do the devs keep making decisions focused entirely on making the game less enjoyable?

I understand that it’s their business practice. Time played > player engagement and enjoyment, but that’s so counterproductive to their overall goal. They want us to play the game more, so the most logical choice is to make the game more appealing to us, right? It makes no sense that after nearly two decades of WoW being around, they continue to make the game less and less enjoyable.

Players hate it. I personally know at least 20 people who have quit the game because of how tedious Shadowlands is. And it’s not even because they hate grinding, they just hate grinding with rewards being so far out of reach.

I’ve been playing this game since I was 11 and I’m 27 now (old accounts under family names), and with every step forward, the devs take two back. BfA was such a poor expansion coming off the tail end of Legion. They nailed so much about the game in Legion - especially class/spec gameplay, they’ve never felt better - and then they just dropped the ball so hard coming into BfA. Even still, I know more people who enjoyed BfA despite all of its flaws than they have Shadowlands, which is disheartening because all of them were so hyped up for the expansion.

I dunno. I guess I came here to vent frustration. WoW has been a big part of my life for most of my life and it just keeps seeming to be less and less enjoyable to me and many others. We love this game and want it to succeed, but the ones in control seem determined to make us hate it and not want to log in.

What do y’all think? Do the devs and their bosses just absolutely hate us at this point?

Moderator: Edited title. Use of words like “Devs,” “Blues,” or “Blizzard” to call attention to your post is a violation of forum rules.

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That time played metric needs to beat out the sub loss bar graph.

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This feels related.

“Hey, everyone can use those hearthstones except the Necrolord ones, which they have to work to unlock on someone regardless.”
“So we’re gonna open it up for Necrolords too?”
“No. Close the other three.”

Guess I won’t be using the Kyrian hearthstone as my non-Kyrian characters anymore.

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You’d think they’d understand that

Game more fun and loved ----> more players, less unsubbed, more time played

Game more tedious and boring ----> everyone hates it and leaves the game.

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I believe the logic is that it would fiscal malfeasance, the investors would sue, to just shut down so they are forced to keep an ever downward spiral of garbage content and lost subscribers to justify closing it down.

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I also feel like they are taking things and sticking them behind longer grinds without much reason. Designing so much yet we are limited to what we can see and do on our main character makes the expansion less enjoyable and feel like less to do overall. Making things harder to acquire for no reason and for no better reward. Our time is important to them yet they don’t want to treat our time well spent in the game.

That said Shadowlands is a better experience for me. Also the classes never felt more the same and boring since the patch before legion came out. Shadowlands fixed that for me to a degree, sorry it isn’t the same to you. Mists had best class design imo.

So yeah I think shadowlands is a step up but I can still agree with what your saying.

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The fact that they made an entire zone (the maw) that activly tires to get you to leave it by simply being awful and annoying may point to their true subconscious feelings about the game and/or the players.

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They tried to get rid of flying. The players fought back and they had to backtrack. Everything since that is revenge.

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All quests in this game are tedious. No matter what they make us do, all will be boring.
Why?
The combat is outdated. Without difficult contents, this game has only mind-numbing dull story and quests.

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Just wait over the next few days we are probably going to learn that all of the quests in shadowlands that require you to pick stuff up off the ground are no longer shared.

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You guys remember when they removed a bunch of portals from the game right?

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Gotta agree for the most part, MoP was a bit better than Legion in terms of actual class design, a lot of which had to do with class customization like: pet spec choice, glyphs, weapon choices etc…Legion was still bounds better than BFA/SL right now…but then MoP is nearly that much better than Legion too. Transmog system quality has degraded too, not in terms of armor quality, but in terms of what we could DO with it…the cosmetics coming in 9.1 are nice and all, but I’d still like more choices outside of mail which for 98% of it’s mog life has been mostly garbage.

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Anyone that says “everyone” always means themselves.

If you aren’t happy with the game than just stop playing. I quit playing the game for 10 years because I got bored of it ages ago (during the height of 10million player count WOTLK) and if I get bored of it again I’ll move back on. I’m not going to pout like a child on the forum looking for attention.

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Real talk, for as much as I have enjoyed Shadowlands, this genuinely feels like something they’re doing. They (as a collective department, even if it wasn’t everyone in that department) were very resentful of players wanting to keep flying. And while I like Pathfinder in concept, the length of time it takes is ridiculous and feels petty and spiteful. And other things, like this, like the Maw in general, feels like spite towards players for the whole flying debacle.

I don’t know, ever since Ion became game director, it has felt like a lot of decisions being made are to upset players. To what end, I don’t know. But I really am getting tired of being dragged over hot coals by the development team.

The anima cones in Ardenweald were hit by this change as well. So there could be others.

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I agree.

The continued corporatization of gaming is akin to the industrialization of farming (meat sources).

Everyone loses, even if they go through the motions of winning.

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Smells of a staff desperate to meet their bosses engagement numbers for quarterly executive bonuses.

It’s how you climb the corporate ladder.

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I said this in another thread too on the subject, but there’s really no excuse for quest items not being shared. Not making them shared only has the effect of creating hostility between players, which is an utterly bizarre thing to invite into an MMO.

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They don’t. Stop associated every change you dislike with some contempt for the playerbase.
There are a LOT of moving parts to this game, and many things will happen that are not favorable to a player without any intention or even recognition that it might play out that way from development.

The bigger picture here though is that what the players want is not what can work for the game.
You can not just let the players make every decision, because many of them do not have consistent direction of their thoughts in the first place, and many others only have selfish wants in mind.

One small change to this game creates a ripple effect elsewhere, and one change you like another might dislike.
Who do you listen to at that point?

The answer is, you trust your gut and make the game the best way you know how and learn from what is and isn’t working.

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Ironically they’d meet their “engagement” numbers much faster and easier if they heeded some advice given and reverted back to what works…what originally put the RPG in WoW’s MMORPG and made WoW a hit to begin with.

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I was going to make this same post (regarding the ingots), thanks.

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