Battlemasters are another good example of compromise… but people don’t even want to do that. Just want to push a button on a menu and teleport anywhere you want to go.
Well, they don’t get it in Classic.
However, the people saying that Battlemasters should be removed because they weren’t in 1.4 are dragging “no convenience” to a different level.
I’d be happy with them being added at a later patch than BGs, (along with CRBGs being pushed back) to encourage the TM/SS battles, but that’s more of a personal preference than a “for the good of the game”.
People don’t want to waste time, while they’re wasting time playing an online game.
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Wait, what?! When was this a thing?
( I started toward end of Vanilla and this may be why I never experienced it. )
It was pretty early on. The boats could be pretty buggy in general and at some point just flat out broke so bad they replaced them with NPCs that would teleport you.
Each boat had a NPC at each end, but Captain Placeholder is the one that gained popularity that we all remember.
According to the wiki, it was fixed by 1.4
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Was that the actual name of the NPC? “Captain Placeholder”?
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Yep.
I think he later came back in the Cataclysm beta as “Cap’n Placeholder”.
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Yeah, the Menethil Auberdine boat was bugged out heavily.
That’s partly where I learnt to stand on the prow of the boat, because it would dump you close enough to the edge of the fatigue zone that you could swim in with only a Rejuv.
I remember when boats broke, and you fell into the water. If your hearth was up, you could get out of it, or if you were close enough to land, you could swim.
But, often, you were past the fatigue point. And you died. Those were glorious days!
RPGs are more fun when there is a big investment in the character.
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smdh that people don’t know about Captain Placeholder.
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Good news! That placeholder NPC is back in retail! Not the same name, but the same flavor text of, “Boat’s busted- here’s a port,” and whatnot.
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Because of these two contradictions…
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It feels very rewarding to overcome difficult obstacles. No pain, no gain.
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But at the same time we are wired to seek the most efficient path to reach our goals, so it’s natural to want to remove obstacles.
But in a video game setting, the latter just ends up removing the feeling of reward we get, so we typically get bored quickly.
And most of us also lack the discipline to hold the latter inclination in check, which is why it’s up to the video game developers to force us to overcome obstacles (and not give in to the players’ whining demands), so that we can get that feeling of reward and keep playing to get that feeling again.
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you would understand why its necessary if you played it for 15 years
wow is ancient for a video game, they did this because the players wanted it. people have leveled 50 + alts, and done the end game in 7 expansions.
the short answer is they sped things up because the game is incredibly big now, and they dont want it to take months to reach the current expansion. they want to actually sell the expansion
Wanting to get people into the latest expansion doesn’t mean they need to remove the need to travel to dungeons or to have a large game world that you have to move around in.
One can also make the argument that you could have used horizontal expansions to combat this rather than expansions that reset everything and rendered all previous content irrelevant.
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I will answer your question with a question:
Will all this boring stuff make the fun stuff funner?
While some people may consider the little things to be immersive, others will consider them to be time wasters that get in the way of the fun parts.
Totally agree. A big part of what made Vanilla feel so good was how “unrewarding” it was. I’m not being sarcastic, either. Upgrades came so infrequently that it felt like an “event”. In retail, I feel like the game hands me “upgrades” all the time, but they are just a minor ilvl increase that results in barely noticeable gains. In BfA I don’t remember ever equipping a piece of gear and really noticing a difference in power. Unlock a new azerite trait passive and … nothing really changes. I play a warrior tank, so maybe it’s different for other classes/specs.
I think the root of the problem though, is that retail is tuned to be too easy. I don’t ever feel like I need an upgrade, because nothing ever feels challenging.
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It can. That’s the general idea behind pacing, which is important to any form of media.
The highs don’t feel as high without the lows. With all action all the time, you get used to the action and it becomes mundane. It’s no longer something cool, and you need to chase bigger and more epic action to make it feel cool and fun again.
Everybody’s perfect balance of pacing is different, but the “not fun” stuff does actually make the fun stuff seem a lot better by keeping it from becoming mundane.
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personally i like the dungeon finder, it got to a point where traveling to them took a lot of time and the journey wasnt really fun after i had been there 10 times before.
Think of trash mobs in dungeons and raids. They serve a purpose when there is the right amount. They create both anticipation for and downtime between boss fights. Ebb and flow.
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