…or raid, or run Mythic+, or RP, or farm gold, or pet battle, or whatever.
I’ve been doing menial tasks basically all day, which has left me with a lot of time to think about how the majority of WoW players just wholesale don’t participate in huge chunks of game content despite the game’s encouragements for you to do so. Lots of people I know can’t remember the last time they killed another player in PvP, or have literally never stepped into a current raid, or have never run a dungeon above Mythic 0 despite it being, for better or worse, an officially-backed esport.
I have my own answers as to why this is, but rather than just assuming that I’m right like I usually do, I thought it best to poll the electorate. Why don’t you do [thing that you don’t do]? What’s keeping you from enjoying it, and what would it take to get you to participate in the content?
Note that I’m looking for answers more substantial than “because it sucks,” but sufficiently spicy zingers will be tolerated.
2 Likes
I was going to leave this thread to others, as currently I do pretty much anything that the game allows me to do. However, your honest interest in why actually made me start thinking and I did come to realize that me even stepping foot in a dungeon was a relatively recent development in the grand scheme of things.
To put it simply, I don’t believe WoW is marketed for endgame content despite it being the bulk of the current material. Since creating, leveling, and capping Raseri, I’ve spent hundreds more hours in keys, raids, and battlegrounds despite NONE of those features being the marketing team’s catch to draw new people(people who’ve never played WoW or have no experience with MMOs) in.
The game is built and marketed to give you an adventure you can play with other people, and that’s what I used to think of it as, and what the vast majority of players likely think as well. The game WAS leveling to me. It was like any other RPG, create a character, go to new exciting zones, collect X of this and kill Y of that until you get stronger, then beat up the boss- but with the added benefit of the world being larger and other players being there!
When I got a character to max or close to max, I’d just stop playing. Game’s over, fun’s gone, we’ll level a new one next time we get the itch in 6-8 months or so. This is especially compounded by the need for a guild and other players to do most any serious content, which initially just caused me to ignore it. Forced socialization? Screw that, other people are SCARY.
In the end, I think people don’t quite realize that WoW is basically two completely different games: the experience of leveling, and the experience once leveled. A lot of people have fun in the first half but not the 2nd, which is why there’s a lot of freshly minted 120’s with no accomplishments to speak of.
12 Likes
because rated pvp is dead and im tired of getting bodied by the same multi-glad teams at 1500 mmr
5 Likes
I’m not terrible at PvP, but it gives me enormous anxiety.
From what I can tell on DPS meters, etc (which I only started using a few months ago), I’m actually pretty good at WoW. But finding people to do higher end content with also gives me tremendous anxiety.
9 Likes
There is kind of a lack of end-game group content with the appropriate difficulty/reward balance for me.
I can get up to like 420ish ilevel gear doing basically solo or queueable stuff. All my gear is benthic, or from warfronts, or from world quests.
All the “low pressure” group content–non rated BGs, Island Expeditions, LFR/Normal raiding, heroic/mythic0 dungeons–offers rewards of equal or lesser value to the solo rewards.
Then there is a huge pressure leap to harder, more rewarding content–timed mythic+ stuff and heroic/mythic raiding and rated battlegrounds and so forth. I don’t really have any friends who play WoW anymore so I’d have to group with strangers and open myself up to having somebody flip out on me for screwing something up, and I don’t really feel up to that.
I don’t think I’m terrible at WoW but the combination of “no friends with whom I could progress in a judgement-free setting” and “no meaningful rewards for easier group content” means I just play solo 
9 Likes
I simply don’t have the time anymore.
WoW, for better or worse, exists in a perpetual cycle of escalation. We grind out for rewards, so that we can be stronger, so that we can more effectively grind out for more rewards, so we can become even stronger, etc.
Even when I was younger and relatively carefree, I didn’t participate in everything simply because of the opportunity cost. If I set aside time for PVP, it takes time away from the PVE things that I was prioritizing, and I didn’t have enough interest in PVP to take the time away from running on the PVE treadmill.
Now, my time is even more limited, and I don’t even PVE aggressively anymore. I can’t take the time to grind out an iLevel that would be considered viable for “serious” endgame play. I’ve never done Mythic anything and haven’t raided since returning to the game post-Wrath.
I think I might do some LFR raiding someday just to see the content (or go back and solo it all when it is trivial), but I’m mostly just a filthy casual that is playing through all of the quests (even from old, obsolete expansions) just for the novelty of seeing them. And I can do it at my own pace, which is nice.
4 Likes
Originally I started and stopped playing PvP in Cata, mainly because I found the grind for gear to be painfully futile to me. I felt I was spending more time trying to get what I needed to compete and have fun than I was actually competing and having fun.
When Legion’s changes came around I returned for a while but didn’t stick around as I felt honor prestige levels, and rather ironically the effective abolition of dedicated pvp gear, contributed to a shade of the same problems that originally drove me away.
I’ve never been terribly interested in raiding on any level. There are aspects of it that I find attractive but I’ve never been so terribly interested as to want to actively pursue it. I believe I suffer some measure of anxiety in addition to that due to the higher demand of performance and the pressure inherent in that. I can’t quite explain why high level pvp doesn’t make me feel the same.
1 Like
Time and interest have both waned for me. Honestly, I’m mostly in the game for either RP or doing little daily things. The war campaign story kind of killed the deep investment I had in the game’s plot, and I’m tentatively waiting for ShL to pick up the pieces.
4 Likes
I do PvP. But beyond that in game most of my time is spent between two specific characters crafting two different engagIng D20 RP campaigns. One guild I’m a subofficer in and in KLG I am the Co-GM. On top of working full time, keeping an eye on my sick dad who is now living with us, and helping my girlfriend through her medical bills. I just don’t have time anymore to be competitive in arena or even continue a YouTube career.
Real life has a tendency to rear it’s head at you. Which is fine by me tbh as I get to focus on my writing and my RP above all else in game.
Well, honestly because I’m not very good at warrioring (though I do enjoy it)… or any other class really. On my best days, I am almost competent. I have very bad anxiety, and I frazzle pretty easily so PVP is something that rarely do anymore. I did at lower levels, I actually used to enjoy some battlegrounds back then. But I really just don’t need the abuse from random strangers for not living up to their expections. Goes for dungeons and raids too. I will only run with people I know, or a group of people I know. And since my guild is inactive and most of the people I know have spread to the 4 winds… I’m sort of at a loss. Although my husband and brother in law took mercy on me so I have actually touched some of the current stuff.
3 Likes
I stopped PVPing once flying became available.
I pretty much only exclusively did world PVP and got gear through warfronts and various dailies and whatever. I’ll always find world PVP to be more fun than stagnant battlegrounds and arenas because it’s always chaotic and stupid. Sometimes you get stomped by a murder mob, sometimes you are the murder mob and sometimes it’s just you and your pals paling around.
Since flying has been introduced it changes world PVP and being dive bombed by people with flying mounts doesn’t really sound that much fun. Yet what also doesn’t sound fun is doing mecha gnome and ocean goblin dailies to grind rep for a whole part of the game I have no interest in.
So I unsubbed and quit lol.
Otherwise,I like all the world PVP in BfA but I also don’t because I’m still bitter about Blizz axing WorldDefense which really hurt world PVP outside of BfA content.
Also like everyone else said, I have like a job and stuff and a bed I sleep in with my partner and I only have so many hours in the day to play video games and right now those hours are dedicated to minecraft. I JUST BUILT AN AQUARIUM IN MY WIZARD TOWER
3 Likes
Tried arenas with a friend in 8.1.
Friendly tip to all you warlocks out there, expect to get focused every. Single. Time.
It was an accumulating frustration that climaxed when a shaman I’d gotten down to 30% (his friend and my friend were dead) LoS’d me around a pillar while healing and waiting for their CDs and then brought me from 100% to zero in seconds. After constant losses that night, I actually threw my keyboard and quit arenas.
I don’t do raids or mythic dungeons because I don’t like the general game population enough to bother pugging and don’t have enough friends/guildies to do it with. Sad thing is, I think I’m actually fairly compitent at pve. I pay attention to mechanics and do my best to maximize dps, and I’m not an obnoxious know it all so bonus points there.
At this point I’m content collecting cosmetics and RPing.
4 Likes
PvP balance in this game is not very good, and it will ultimately come down to a few things;
- Gear difference
- The state your preferred class is in
- The best ‘comp’ for the season
PvP on a casual level is fun for me, but on any sort of competitive or high end level, I can’t commit to it because I don’t feel the game is made to accommodate it well. I tried hardcore arena once back in MoP, and it just felt like a drag, and every time I’ve attempted PvP ‘progression’ since then has been the same experience for me. Besides the templates, I actually liked that since it gave me a chance to try out other specs I may have not normally done much gearing on and not be a burden on my team because I had like no gear on them. Templates for casual PvP such as BGs and skirmishes should still be a thing, I feel, but apparently I’m in a minority on that matter.
I have always been under the impression that running content, at least on an RP server, isn’t the main drive of its community. We roleplay, we don’t chase item level, usually. We like to engross ourselves in the lore and work with the story to create interesting characters and fun scenarios with the tools we are given.
Personally, I love mythic +. It is one of my sole driving forces to play end game (it’s so much fun) but I get why people don’t want to do it. You join a roleplay server to roleplay, not challenge yourself and rush to see if you can edge out those last few seconds in a + run.
Edit: PvP is intense. It is, without a doubt, one of the hardest pieces of content in the game. People can disagree with that, but it is far easier to build up a rotation for a scripted encounter than go toe-to-toe with another player and calculate their every move and counter it. No one wants to deal with that stress for the terrible rewards Blizzard offers for it, and most certainly not to take away time from developing their character.
That’s my two cents anyway.
2 Likes
I’m first and foremost interested in RP. EVERYTHING is secondary to RP.
I don’t even really run PvE endgame content, except as needed to get certain mogs and other items to facilitate RP. It’s a long running joke in my guild that I am very bad at playing my classes and running endgame content.
Similarly I’m not doing PvP unless I’m gunning for something specific. Usually a transmog piece or speeding things up on an alt that’s a chore to level. In those instances, I don’t mind leveling in Warmode or doing random battlegrounds to make it go by faster.
Well, Marks is the only Hunter spec I like and outside of large (15 or 40 v 40), I have incredibly poor defensives. I would grit my teeth and play Beast Master which has insane survivability but I do not have a set of gear for it.
Also I have a bad tendency to turn into a salty jackass when beaten in PVP if I do it too much :\
Oceanic hours, most friends quit the game long ago. I’ve tried to escape the single/two player vibe — especially since starting a new job. Hasn’t worked too well.
Korak’s was amazing for casual PvP because of the scaling. I’m almost glad it’s over because I spent too much time in on alts.
I would like to do M+ but find the late night hours difficult to form the kind of long-term group for them. Like, to do a few keys with the same group each week.
I’ve been thinking to start another guild to do more, Horde side. Something that would be an OOC style guild tag, so people could go RP whatever.
I definitely don’t have the time, patience or desire for serious RP or campaigns in WoW.
For me, the cost-benefit is so out of whack that it doesn’t really warrant the effort.
Because it’s never just going into a dungeon, isn’t it? It’s finding a group that actually wants to play and isn’t a carry or out for something else, it’s fixing your spec to be the right one (and that’s even more of a pain thanks to Azerite), it’s going through and hoping to god that no one makes a mistake and one person gets frustrated and leaves and you aren’t going to get another member because who wants to get locked out halfway through and instead you just spend 30+ minutes waiting for someone to show up before you just quietly drop group and lament the hour of standing around doing nothing.
All that for a chance at gear that is probably ineffective, anyway.
2 Likes
i don’t wowcraft because i genuinely got bored and disappointed with the game and the progression system. i suppose i like more story based experiences with more tangible rewards, so doing something that’s focused hard on a never ending gear loop and not so much on the plot… it’s just not for me.
i dont do pvp too much anymore cause i tend to get toxic due to my experience with ranked league which has forever changed me
i dont wanna subject people to that