Sorry, Mr. Gloomypants, but, no. WoW is not in maintenance mode. I’ve played games in maintenance mode (RIP WildStar) and this ain’t it.
I will agree though, that they aren’t doing much to make the game enticing to new players. Every time I level an alt I think, ‘Good lord, is this what a new player experiences?’ Who would want to play this game as a new player? It’s awful. So many levels with so few abilities. Outdated graphics. Garbage character customization compared to any other game out there. If Blizz wants the game to last they need to put in some effort at the beginning of the game again, not just the end.
Right none of that is in WoW but the systems are in the game you would normally see in a F2P grinder. That is my point. Something is broken in systems Blizzard has adopted but not understood what they were or why they were put in other games.
This is true. I get the impression that Blizzard has given up on the prospect of attracting new players. In recent years they seem to have focused their efforts on milking existing ones instead.
WoW has always had reputation gates, raid locks and a RNG loot system. In fact most online games do, because the whole point of a game is to place obstacles in some tangible form for people to overcome.
You mean like Lore? Whom not only joked with Ion about referring to players as Trolls at the beginning of the Q&A, (Ion referring to my post specifically from his couple of troll examples, which I invite you to go read my reply, post 40 in the thread below)
or the Lore that just’s nods in bovine agreement and reexplaining everything Ion said, throughout? Those people? Yikes
Or wait, any of the other CM’s that frequently engage with the community, here on the official game forums that provide honest feedback and have open discussions or acknowledges players, ideas, thoughts, concerns or even common issues we see threads on weekly or daily even. Sorry, cant be them because they don’t exist
Besides the fact I don’t believe they are accurately capturing and interrupting feedback from quiting players (assuming a player bothers going somewhere else to report) but I’m not convinced CMs represent the community at least appropriately. It’s hard to go back and tell the company that’s signing your paychecks, they are sucking
It’s no wonder when a Dev reads (personally) a wall of hard to swallow criticism they think your a troll, laugh and make jokes about it with other employees. I don’t doubt they are under the impression, all is fine, nothing to see here. CMs, at least from what I’ve seen are only around to represent and pass along messages from Blizzard, to the community and that’s it, all else is not taken serious
You’re wrong about A LOT, OP, but it is true that this game is strange for new players coming in just as a consequence of the expansion model WoW uses. The game doesn’t really start until at least level 110 level so you spend a decent amount of time doing content that feels sometimes incoherent if you don’t already know the history of the game (not even the Lore, just the game itself). The boost that comes with the game purchase and the xp acceleration help but I do think it’s targeted at returning players and the free trial system (that caps at 20) is extremely outdated and bad at conveying what the game is about.
They should revisit how to attract new players because I don’t believe playing for free till level 20 with all the other restrictions does a good job of growing the game to new audiences. Maybe something using the class trials but with extended use like a few days to experience the new content of the expansion and such?
If a new player wanted to play a Void Elf as an example because they think it looks cool Blizzard puts up a massive road block by telling someone they need to roll a character they do not intend to play to max to do prior expansion content to unlock a reputation.
The game is not designed for new people to enter and do what they want. Even the new races Kul Tirans and Zandalari are behind rep and quest chains.
It’s kinda funny in a way and pretty smart on Blizzard’s part if you look at it.
New races, as I’m sure you all probably know, were pretty much introduced with new expansions right out of the box. Buy the expansion, hit up the character selection screen and there was your new Belf, Draenei, Goblin, Pandaren, or whatever. More or less they were all fresh new races with new animations, dances, emotes, rigging, and everything else.
Nowadays, Blizzard wants players to buy the expansion then if that’s not enough they want you to complete a laundry list of time gated tasks but for the extra effort all players get out of it is reskins of existing races… they’ll just give them a new designation, “Allied Races,” to make it seem fresh and newer, but it’s all just mostly recycled stuff they reskinned.
LOL with respect to races they are actually making people do more for less! But hey, leaders in everything from games in the digital world to governments in the “real” world so often seem to be forever in search of ways to get the masses to do more for less so it’s pretty much par for the course for so much of life inside and outside WoW.
Oh, about Pathfinder and more of the “Give us more to break even or get less” theme going on here>> When Part II (lol) of Pathfinder comes out this time, expect there to be even more requirements than Legion’s iteration, probably in the form of tedious time gated stuff . Blizzard even said they wish they had added more “Light Requirements” to Legion’s Pathfinder Part II. Source right here:
Meh, I still like WoW and it is what it is, but some things they are doing I do not at all agree with. It’s all good though.
I’ve never played ff14. But is it where you have lots of abilities, but can only slot in 4 or 5 at a time? Because all of WoWs abilities can be used whenever, they aren’t gated by ability slots.
Lore is a CM, but only one of many. I don’t know Lore’s level of involvement in the forums, or any media. The only ones I have contact with are Yth and Bornakk.
One misunderstanding, well two actually, here is that CMs are supposed to be replying to the various topics, when they actually intentionally avoid it. The developers want it to be an unadulterated discussion amongst the players, and unfortunately, when the CMs do interject, it derails the discussion due to becoming completely focused on what a blue said.
By staying out, it lets the community hash it’s feelings, beliefs, opinions, etc out without being inadvertently steered by a perceived authority figure.
The second is that the CMs aren’t the keepers of the information. They literally are the middlemen. They indeed round up the feedback and send it on; however, they don’t always get anything back to pass on to us. That can contribute to their scarcity, but more as a result of the developers (which is why I used “perceived” above).
All in all, CMs can collect and send feedback on even without a public presence.
That I can’t say (don’t know the specifics of what’s involved). There’s going to be some loss of fidelity due to the summary process, but hopefully what remains is true to life.
It wasn’t designed for returning players who bought the expansion. It wasn’t designed for most of the existing players from legion and yeah, It’s not designed for new players either. It seems designed for the die hards who will accept whatever drivel they get till the servers go down… oh and the people who stay for their “friends”.
There are a lot of different things that were altered during BfA and they’ve made this game simply feel bad while you’re playing it. The changes aren’t coming fast enough either. I’d like them to hire a whole new “fun” department so they can gauge better what exactly that is. BfA should not have been released when it was and the quality of the players experience has suffered because of it.