Sure, a valid point. Elitism is a problem when it isn’t helpful, essentially.
Well for instance I don’t think most people are experts in this playerbase. Just the theorycrafters and they hardly come to general discussion.
You dont have to be an expert, but having the experience of playing high m+ or raiding mythic puts you ahead of any solo player on certain topics.
A lot of people on this forums last experience with organized raiding is from Wrath and they think is relevant for modern WoW.
It really doesn’t take an expert to speak with some authority. Just being informed is typically enough, though as with many things this would be case by case.
That said, you still shouldn’t fall prey to appeals to authority, but that doesn’t really apply when the topic is what you’re an authority on.
This is definitely true. If in context you are talking about mechanics and mythic+ affixes and such. Certain things in detail, other people not playing that sort of content are not really gonna know what they are talking about.
You are assuming that the top players actually know more about MMO design. Being skillful at utilizing your toolkit and being knowledgeable about mechanics does mean that a player can make the right decisions about different types of content that doesn’t even affect them.
Millions of players have left WoW. They would know more about what is wrong with WoW than the players who are still here.
You can be an expert player without being an elitist.
You can also be an elitist without being an expert on MMO design.
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WoW design, at least. They interface with it more. That doesn’t mean they know more than a developer, just that they know more than someone that interfaces less often.
Also, this is a non-sequitur. Leaving WoW does not necessarily mean you know what’s wrong with it at any given moment.
I’m assuming that the high end players know more about how the game both currently and historically functions than most players.
Yet that doesn’t stop players like you from dismissing them as elitist either way.
And observing that players are leaving carries no indication of why the players left.
Is not like anyone in here came up with anything new or unique for Blizzard to implement. Blizzard knows they could do any of the ideas to reward casual players more and truth be told they have tried a lot of the one suggested on this thread in the past. The only reason they dont do them anymore is because they dont want to.
At the end of the day it is their game and they decide what to implement or not.
Some casuals play WoW for hours every day. They may even know more about casual or solo content than the hardcore elitists. But we still have hardcore elitists dictating how all content in the game should be designed now.
Gotta make the open world harder again because Mythic-geared raiders are claiming that you can go AFK and not die to mobs!
Players who left WoW would know more about why a player would leave, than the elitists who claim that rewarding casual gameplay is somehow killing the game.
There is more to “the game” than class design and higher end content. Higher end players got all their wishes granted with Shadowlands and sub counts still dropped to new lows, so it is obvious that higher end players don’t understand the MMO market and/or are only advocating for changes that would positively impact their own gameplay experiences.
I will dismiss no player for being an elitist simply because they are a higher end player or are giving feedback regarding the content that they do.
But when the top few percent are dictating how the entire game is run because they are only looking to preserve their own status—that is the very definition of elitism.
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And you wonder why we call your opinion uninformed.
This may be true, depending on how much they play that content over said ‘hardcore’ player. Many perspectives should be heard.
A player who leaves knows why they would leave. Leaving the game doesn’t make someone a reliable source of actionable feedback. The caveat here is that surveys can take large sample sizes, which can be useful.
What did higher end players not get in Shadowlands that they wanted, by the time 9.2 rolled around?
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So by “Shadowlands” you mean the last patch(nobody cares about season 4), 2/3 of the expansion was full of issues and a lot of them were pointed out in alpha.
I would genuine say Dragonflight is closer to ideal for raiders, we basically got everything we wanted(except maybe less reliance on m+ for gearing up), will see how things go.
Even in 9.2, there were an annoying amount of chores that you had to do to be competitive on a fresh toon. renown (in potentially 3 or 4 covenants), flux, conduits, legendries, all had to be done before you could be useful in harder content.
Dragonflight is looking to be a return to the more Wrath style, where what you needed to do to be ready to raid is
1: cap
2: gear
3: ready to raid.
which is the ideal.
We want to be able to cap a toon, get some gear, and do content. SL (even in 9.2 and S4), did not enable that without jumping through about 4 other hoops.
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What do you mean you don’t like to farm Korthia on every toon for 2 hours to level up your conduits?
You just hit max level? Go farm Torghast or level up your covenant, a lot of the catch up were not implemented until later in the expansion.
Saying Shadowlands was ideal for raiders in any way shape of form is beyond hilarious and out of touch, is probably the pinnacle of the “Legion model” with the systems on top of systems.
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With none of the pizazz.