WoW is dead

Community General Discussion
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This isn’t your typical “WoW is dead” post. I did not come here to say that WoW is dead nor did I come here to say that WoW is dying.

I came here to say now I know why people started saying this. Now I know why people crept into the forums and in /2 chat to say that WoW is dead.

I’ve been playing Cata Classic and I’ve reopened my eyes to things from the past. The way that WoW used to play before Cata. That old school type of play died with Cataclysm.

Cataclysm brought in a new way to play the game. The first real attempt at an itteration of a new way to play WoW.

To a lot of players, this is the moment where WoW died for them. Because for so many years they spent sitting on their asses waiting to get mana back. They spent way too many hours simply running around collecting items and killing mobs just to simply level up. They wasted SO MUCH TIME it was atrocious. We needed something new to change things up.

This is where it gets interesting. Cause for me I’ve loved WoW since the moment I hopped into the game back in 2004. The way we play WoW now (Dragonflight) and expansions leading up to said expansion is just so different. Looking back into the past of playing the old expansions we wasted SO MUCH TIME doing literally nothing. Yet even in that nothingness there was gold. There was something that existed that not a lot of players realized is what made the game so damn good.

Every single thing you did in this game used to matter. Every single mob kill. Every single quest. Every single level. Every single talent. Every single zone you played through. Every single item you picked up. Every single dungeon you completed. Every single piece of gear you put on. Every single thing you did. Mattered.

This is what made WoW so good for so many years. Every single thing you did in the game used to matter. This is why people loved the game so much. Especially in those moments where you were doing literally nothing.

I’m currently leveling a mage and just finished running The Culling of Stratholme. At the beginning of the run, I could tell at least a couple of these guys were so anxious to get through the dungeon. At the gates of Stratholme Arthas, Uther and Jaina were having their dialogue and one of the other dps groans at how long it took. I replied “Arthas was just doing this cause he thought he was doing right by his people.” After saying this, it brought the rest of the group together. In that moment where we were doing nothing, there was something there. We connected. The whole rest of the dungeon we were making jokes, not even caring about what we were even doing. We were just having fun in that nothingness. We even had a moment where both of the druids were using /sit on the pig on the table in the upstairs room. it was hilarious. Yet again even in the midst of all this nothingness, I find myself having yet another WoW moment that I will cherish and remember for years to come.

For the guys at Blizzard and the people reading this, I hope you grasp onto the point I’m trying to make here.

For me, Cataclysm is when I started playing WoW more hardcore because I finally delved into all of these moments where every single thing you did in the game mattered.

Modern WoW, i.e. Dragonflight and the expansions following, we have iterations of WoW where the game is designed to push us to max level as fast as possible and only focus on end game content. What happened to WoW is all the moments that mattered on the front end all got pushed to the very back end of the game. It became lob sided.

Now all that matters in modern WoW is the slot machine feel at the end of the game. Nothing you do really matters anymore. It just feels like I’m at a casino all the time and none of it feels meaningful.

The reason why this game because the God that it is is because of what WoW was back during the classic expansions where every single thing you did mattered.

I would say that if you really want to grow this game to the potential it really could be, I’d say focus on making everything matter again.

Anyway. I couldn’t think of a clever way to end this. Just felt like sharing my thoughts. I hope it does some good. Cheers.

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That’s why Classic is popular to begin with, it’s the old design philosophy vs. the new design.

I was personally a fan of the older, slower design, why fix what wasn’t broken, etc.

But I admit, a lot of old WoW has just aged too poorly for me to stick around over there, I enjoy retail’s QoL and more casual stuff (pet battles, transmog), so I’m just gonna stick with it.

Retail WoW is definitely better for folks that have shorter gaming sessions, and I think everyone has less time these days. Old WoW consumed your time like it was oxygen lol, just making a single group could potentially take hours.

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Well it certainly sounds that way when you listen to what people say in the forums. But keep in mind, only a small percentage of players ever enter notes in forums, here and elsewhere. Of the seven million or so people playing this game we never hear from about seven million of them.

There are tons of us who don’t care about scratching out every single advantage to claw our way to the top of M+ and Raids. That’s one small part of the game but with questing, professions, gathering, gold mining, role play etc, there is plenty else to do.

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This is all very subjective. I can just as easily say none of it ever mattered to begin with.

A hard part of getting older is not letting your ironic cynicism turn into unironic jaded bitterness.

It’s all just a silly game. :wink:

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Debatable. The nature of vertical progression means nothing you do will “matter” at some point.

Sometimes I do miss grouping up and going to a dungeon like it was a journey, but I don’t miss all the various headaches like people not going to the stone to help you summon or having to put off dungeon quests because someone left mid dire maul or blackrock mountain.

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Old school MMO player here, also been playing since Jan 1st 2005 and have nearly 30k hours sank in this game.

I vastly prefer the newer version of WoW because everything is faster and more skill based (I love that more and more non tab target abilities keep getting added into to classes) and that general content is a bit more varied than that of the same in the past.

Before I played MMOs, I constantly pkayed fast paced Japanese shmups and action games in the 80/90s, so I will always prefer that playstyle versus how WoW used to play (less abilities and more waiting on actions).

I did enjoy enhance shaman in the latter half of WotLK and Cata though. It was fast paced and GCD locked while dpsing in raids. But, its even more varied and cooler nowadays.

/shrug

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Honestly, Cata feels closer to the first 3 versions of the game more than it feels like retail.

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I like the writing. I personally much prefer not having to wait for mana between mobs, but I love the leveling experience in wrath (and even cata, besides the fact that so many people are playing it I can’t tag anything lol).

Level scaling was a good idea to solve the problem of out-leveling zones, but it shouldn’t have been forced on players. With level scaling, you get weaker as you level up and people are just seeing this in MoP remix. It should come as an option, so people who enjoy unlocking new zones and gradually overpowering them can still enjoy a progressive leveling experience.

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If “wow is dead” is true to any of the games, that is classic.
Classic is dead on the water.

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Ha okay.

But how come I didn’t read anything new?

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Literally the title of the post, but ill bite.

Only trolls have ever said it.

you are playing one of the worst xpacs to ever release. theres yer problem.

Still does, even more so now.

Always been like that friend.

And again, just like the rest of em, you have no real ideas other than ‘do better’.

Sigh. I was hoping that someone was going to actually suggest things, but nope.

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TL;DR version?

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It boggles the mind that in a game that markets itself as an MMORPG…WoW has become increasingly over it’s 20 year run less and less of an RPG in general and after WoD not even really an MMO with the LFR/LFG system and cross realm. Customization and things like emotes have fallen to the wayside and with the aforementioned systems you don’t even really communicate or get to know anyone.

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I see WoW like that picture of Boromir with all the arrows in him. One arrow is Shadowlands. You can use your imagination for what all the rest are.

Poor Boromir. Still not dead though.

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Uhh, yeah it is. We get one of these every couple weeks.

Game ain’t dead, you’re just not playing anymore.

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Yeah, read this, read title. Stopped reading.

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straight up lie after reading the title lol

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And then everyone clapped and you were the hero of the dungeon.

That’s some rose tinted glasses kinda thing. “Back in my day we did nothing and we liked it” is what is sounds like.
Dead time is boring. I will walk afk if I see a 2 minute rp timer.

You know what makes wow good to me? Clearing things, beating bosses with my friends. I dearly miss a buddy of mine, he stopped playing wow some time ago and I reminisce on the times we beat M+ dungeons as high as we could go, topping charts in raids, helping eachother with gearing and analyzing how we can do better in raids.
I truly enjoyed that. I miss that guy. I hope to see him again.

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WoW has changed from being about the journey to being solely about having the end game done to brag as fast as possible.

Old WoW was enjoyable because of the love put into the world. The whimsical and oddly shaped housing, landscape, to the music and ambience. We didn’t mind the mundane tasks as much because we enjoyed the environment. For me it saved me, it was my life away from life. It felt like the place I wanted to be, if I had to waste time in real life I’d rather do it in a place I deemed beautiful and more enjoyable.

In the first few expansions to we were learning about our world, about Azeroth, about our origins. It was simple, fun, exciting. I miss having a real community and having a guild I called family. It’s all about min maxing now and trying to be big and tough. Everything is drastically more toxic from keys to pvp etc. I liked when professions were simple and not obnoxious to level and deal with like they are in DF and I miss when the auction houses were separate so that way your farming actually paid off. Now everything is heavily over saturated.

I won’t play Cata, as you said it was the turning point where the game really changed. If not actual classic and I have to deal with those differences I’ll just stick to retail. I wish I had more time to enjoy WOTLK classic but I still never got my Black Proto and unfortunately only got to enjoy season 1 because of work and how horrible server population was managed.

Edit: I want to point out too that back then everything felt like an accomplishment, even mount farming. A lot of it was difficult and there were rare mounts that were prizes to be won and although I understand not wanting to gate keep the fact that it’s so easy to do literally everything now removes the reward and satisfaction for me as well. I don’t actually ever feel like I accomplished anything because the game feels so easy to me atm.

I mean, look at the time lost proto drake. 12-24 hr respawn timer, 4 random spawn points, only 1 person can loot it. It was an absolute prize and I remember when it spawned on me in the Storm Peaks at 3am while omw to tame Gondria. I also biffed it and almost lost it. I remember shaking so much and being so scared because my volume was up all the way when I received the notification. But now all 5 people can loot it and you can just make a trial class to hop to a dead realm and it’s almost guaranteed to be up and on top of that it’s now a 2-8 hour respawn timer.

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How do you know that? Of the seven million people playing this game, we never hear from about seven milloin of them. How do you know no one is role playing?