I agree with you, but this does not happen in WoW because of LFR being a difficulty choice.
Those are certainly all words. Almost.
They need to heavily reduce the instancing of the game. Classic first week proves this as the game was enormously popular before players started disappearing into instances. Sure, you could argue that the first week is popular for a lot of reasons but it’s plainly evident watching the streamers such as Asmongold and Quin69. The latter I watch regularly and could see the difference in his opinion the moment he started doing dungeon grinds.
When the goals are in the open world the play is dynamic. You deal with PvE and PvP, P2P funny guys and nemesis crews stealing your targets. It is the most competitive and dynamic play the game can give you without costing you your friendships and family connections in the game.
Instancing these goals changes all of that. It breeds exclusivity because the number of participants is hard capped. It drives a higher requirement on the PvE challenge which makes the exclusivity even more important. Worst is that it grooms you into a very repetitive playstyle that wears people out. Typically this was on the raid scene but with M+ getting more and more demanding and exclusive, it’s also happening there.
The end result isn’t pretty for the game. With many more things now instanced like open world questing and habitats (garrison / class halls / etc). People are tired of the game. It feels like a chore because there’s nothing dynamic in what they are doing. World Quests had a goal to get people out of instances but WQs themselves are still very repetitive and highly scripted.
The game needs danger in the open world. Elites that you don’t fight you tip toe around. Massive open world dungeon crawls where you enter and never know what will happen next. You share a world with other players at all times and those other players may define your gameplay for that period of time. Through that experience community will grow again. The gameplay will be less exclusive and more welcoming. The mystery will return to the world through Peer2Peer interactions. Because our goals are now in the world again.
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WOW Classic/Vanilla: Made for gamers. Made for people who want a rich, fulfilling, rewarding experience. You have to work for every scrap and each one feels like a meal. Your first gold. your first 8 slot bag. your first upgrade drop that isnt even a green/uncommon item. mounts, abilities…you had to think about your quests, pay attention to the npcs and rely on your map reading and cognitive thinking skills to even get to the right location to do the quests. You WORKED hard, and every tiny little reward felt huge.
WoW retail: Made for the lowest common denominator. People who dont have the time to invest into long term grinding sessions, who want to see endgame but dont have the commitment to raiding like the old days demanded. WoW retail is streamlined to give everyone the “experience” of levelling up, but you dont start feeling like you earn anything until mythic dungeons and heroics. Everything before that is just loot pinatas and participation prizes. It’s all laid out for you on your map, with glowing highlighted quest givers and objects so you dont miss a small detail and waste time.
There are merits to both models, but from a shareholder standpoint, monetizing as much as possible and attracting less dedicated players in greater numbers will be better for the profit margin.
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I understand where you are coming from, “Something given has no meaning”. However creating content that only a small % of your player base will see, is a waste of resources. Which is why they introduced levels of difficulty for raids. Players who want to see the raid can and players who want to be challenged by the raid can.
I am genuinely curious when I ask this. Where can I go to see who spoke this design philosophy into existence?
Did Ion say this recently? Ghostcrawler way back in the day?
Who at Blizzard made the decision that raids were only for the select few?
Not with LFR, no. But with things like pruning, stat homogenization, etc it does.
Again my opinion but I find the multiple difficulties a poor solution. Currently I feel like mythic raiders’ time is not respected as the amount of extra time and effort is not proportional to the rewards. Small ilvl increases, no unique gear, etc.
How are the highest level raiders not respected by receiving the highest rewards? They receive those rewards guaranteed, every time they beat the content.
What would you suggest, without removing LFR?
Edit
Actually I have an idea that can remove LFR. A quest that allows you to remote view a NPC raid group go through a raid.
There are a LOT of QOL changes that I don’t want them to revert… No matter how bad you think you can relive your childhood… Maybe try swaddling therapy.
I can assure most raiders didn’t ask for AP grinding, excessive loot RNG, and pruning every expansion.
The time investment isn’t proportional to the power increase of the rewards. Benthic gear and titan forging has to some degree lessened the value of mythic raiders time.
I like your idea of npc LFR. LFR was always meant to be tourist mode from its inception. Including any rewards in DragonSoul only gave those players a taste of free rewards for little to no effort or investment; from there it’s become a overarching mentality that a lot of LFR heroes share; many believe LFR should be an avenue of power progression when it was always meant to be a tourist mode to see the story of an expansion, nothing more.
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To OP,
I sure hope they do. I’ve grown less and less interested in WoW as it has moved further and further away from it’s roots.
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Technically, if you are playing the game to experience everything your chosen character is able to, then it IS a multi-player game, as you need to group with others to experience a fair portion of content.
Can you play without a group? Of course. Will you be able to get the full experience? Nope.
A lot of people do that. They focus on one small area of the game and then repeat it over and over. So if that content is soloable, then you play the mmorpg as a single-player game. But, its not a single player game. I hope this clarifies things for most.
However you play, just enjoy it. It doesn’t matter one bit what anyone says, nor what I say here. Its about YOUR EXPERIENCE from what you bring to the game and what parts of the game you interact with. Its all about CHOICE.
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They didn’t. Neither did the casuals.
AP grinding and excessive RNG are time-padding tricks. They don’t benefit any players. They are less effective against us filthy solo casuals because we can put the brakes on anything we don’t feel like fiddling with. We don’t like it, we simply don’t do it. Many raiders feel they can’t ignore it or they will fall behind their peers. The developers who happen to be raiders - Ion, Afrasiabi, and others - know exactly what kind of pressure this applies to the community.
Pruning is not the fault of active players. It is the fault of developers chasing new chunks of audience that they think will intimidated by having too much WoW - too much choice, too many levels, too many buttons to press, too many big numbers, etc. (Some players agree with this line of thinking.) So Blizzard watches what we do. There are players who are very good at figuring out optimum builds for everything. When 85% of Fury spec warriors end up being built the exact same way because it ends up making very good sense performance-wise, Blizzard is going to take that and make it the basis for the new normal. The new normal will encompass what active players focused on but sImplify things so there will be less to scare off potential customers. This design philosophy would appear to be well into the realm of diminishing returns now.