WoW's Issues and How I Would Solve Them

Community General Discussion
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I want to talk about something that I put a some thought into recently before I get into this, and I think it makes perfect sense.

First, we all know WoW has been in a state of decline for the past few years. And you think you know who’s to blame for that. There’s only one group of people to blame.

It’s us, the playerbase.

Yeah, I said it. We’re the real reason why WoW “sucks.” I can already tell I rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I get it and I already see the comments saying “Dra, you’re just kissing Blizzard’s a**”. And you might be right, because I love this game and want to see it succeed again. But hear me out for a second.

We’re just NOW getting Blizzard to listen and act on our feedback quicker than ever before because we’re starting to hit them where it hurts. Their wallets. Whether it’s because of WoW’s content quality decline or the Acti-Blizz controversies leading to the mass exodus, we’re hitting them. But think about it, had we been this harsh 5/6 years ago, how different would the landscape of WoW would be today? We might have gotten the corruption vendor and not on a rotation on day 1 of 8.3 for example. We might have gotten that Legion-dary vendor on day 1 of Legion.

Okay, now to the topic I wanted to talk about and the title of this thread. The issues in the game itself.

Full disclaimer that these are issues that I, MYSELF, see in the game. Some of you may agree with these. Some of you may not and that’s completely fine. And I’m going to list these out 1 by 1 so it’s a bit easier to read.

  1. Too much RNG, not enough BLP
  • What do I mean by that? Let’s take a look at a recent system that Morgan Day has come out and said that they feel like they failed at. Shards of Domination. The number one complaint I see about this system is the acquisition. Getting your shards was completely based on RNG, whether one dropped and if you got the right shard. On top of that you also had the gear that had a chance to drop. If you don’t have your 3 set bonus shards and the 3 pieces of gear needed for the bonus, you missed out on hundreds, if not, thousands of DPS. Now what would I have done to help with getting your shards faster? I would have added a “Bundle of Domination” to Bonesmith Heirmir’s vendor table for 15 Stygian Embers that instantly grant you all of the rank 1 Shards that you are missing. Can never say no to a little bit of BLP. Also, I would bring back the old Justice and Valor points. I was a system that worked in Cata and MoP, and I never understood why it was taken out. Justice would be used to upgrade gear and buy previous season gear for catchup purposes. Valor would be used to buy current season pieces and be obtained from nearly all PVE endgame content.
  1. Progression Systems and Campaigns
  • Let’s be real here, I love progression systems. THE FIRST TIME I do them. For example, after I complete an upgrade to my covenant sanctum, I want to reap the benefits of it on the rest of my characters in the same covenant. How so? Account-wide progression, on MOST THINGS. I want to be very clear with that. Not every little thing needs to be account-wide. Reputations back then I felt were good as a character specific thing. But now, I feel like it’s time to adopt the “Any friend of ____ is a friend of mine” behavior with reputations on your account. Now I do feel like Paragon reputation should stay character specific to keep that original feeling. As for campaigns, I feel the same way. I want to experience the story ONCE. Any major campaign should have a legitimate skip option on alts like skipping the Korthia intro and the new Zereth Mortis intro.
  1. The Great Vault
  • Personally, I think this was a huge improvement compared to Legion’s and BfA’s weekly chests. But I believe that there’s still much more to be done to make this as perfect as possible, and this also kind of ties into the first point of too much RNG and not enough BLP. Currently, there is nothing stopping the vault from giving you an option of an item you already have. I would add a duplicate protection mechanic. Another thing about the vault is that you might be so close to that 10th Mythic+ dungeon or that 9th raid boss for your vault so you’re stuck with 2 options for them with progress left over. What if that left over progress what carried over to the next week? So instead of starting the week with 0/9 bosses and 0/10 dungeons, you start the new week off with 2/9 bosses and 3/10 dungeons. Another thing I saw, and this was something that Morgan Day has talked about on The Starting Zone, was the idea of being able to reroll your vault if you didn’t like your choices. I think this is a great idea and would be the perfect opportunity to bring back bonus rolls. Yes I liked the idea of having another chance at boss loot, it made gear progression slightly faster and it felt good. I think the new bonus rolls should be limited to 3 a week and 3 total. Spending on on your vault would reroll your vault and you have all different choices. And using them on a boss will only consume one if you get loot from it. That’s my reasoning for limiting the amount of rolls even more than how it was in BfA before everyone gets upset.

I really appreciate that took your time to read this thread. This is definitely something that I will try to keep updated with more thoughts and and suggestions.

2 Likes
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Umm… No? We aren’t the company releasing half baked expansions with ridiculous throw away progression systems and tedious chores.

All while crappin on established lore and turning one of the last decent stories (Lich King) into retconned garbage.

So I didn’t really read the rest of your post. I don’t blame myself for the direction this game went. I blame the greedy company running the game and not the nerds and developers that built it.

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I blame pumpkin spice everything.

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I make some pumpkin spice sandwich cookies with butter cream filling.

I can change most people’s tone on the heavenly pumpkin spice.

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Cookies, pie, and other dessert items are fine. The other nonsense has to stop, though.

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Class Imbalance.

Hunters being at the bottom for the entire tier of 9.1 resulting in massive amount of once hardcore fans stopping to play wow which led to domino effect in the game. Hunters unable to get spots in Raids and RBG having to resort to paying for carry further exacerbates the situation of pay too win that WOw has become , instead of being a MMO focussed on skill and dedication

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You’re being satire right?

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I love how you blame the players and then go on to list all the things Blizz should do to fix the loot system - like that is in anyway the players fault.

Your problem is with the game design - loot systems specifically- if I’m reading your post right. Why not just say that instead of shifting blame?

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Well that’s a shame because I mentioned at the end that had if we been this harsh on them dev team years ago, we would not have those “half baked expansions with ridiculous throw away progression systems and tedious chores.”

Whether you like it or not, it is our job as players to provide feedback on stuff. CONSTRUCTIVE feedback by the way. And this kind of feedback isn’t saying “Blizz sucks” or “fix this” or “I’m quitting because game bad.” Constructive feedback is the stuff Blizzard is ACTUALLY looking for, and it’s the stuff I mentioned in the second part of this thread. The problem, examples of that problem, and ways to solve it. If we as players don’t provide enough feedback and just keep playing, we failed and Blizzard will just think that they’ve done a great job and keep doing what they’re doing.

I mentioned earlier that we’re just now getting some change and that if we had been this harsh years ago, the game would be entirely different.

So yeah, I’m blaming myself and everyone else who plays this game for not being harsh enough SOONER.

I kinda have to agree/disagree. Like they’re not entirely at the bottom of the barrel, because they provide some really good damage. But I as a hunter main myself, I get where you’re coming from. For example things like MM Hunter’s Trick Shots, even though it’s been capped since its inception, the fact that it wasn’t included in 9.1.5’s AoE changes I think upset a lot of hunters. I do think they should soft cap Trick Shots as that is our main source of our AoE damage. Another thing that I believe could be added to the Hunter toolkit is Aspect of the Pack as basically a cooldown like a Druid’s Stampeding Roar or a Shaman’s Windrush Totem. Giving hunters some raid utility, I think that would be nice.

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Damn right!

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Yeah, because Shadowlands is :poop: there’s no ifs ands or buts about it. Blizzard ignored feedback on their own Alpha / Beta’s AGAIN and this time it bit back.

So you want to tell me again, how it’s the players, the paying customers fault that Blizzard decided to ignore feedback during Alpha / Beta? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Cause that doesn’t make sense to me.

Unfortunately, until Blizzard gets a new formula in some manor. RNG will continue to be a plague on this game. Solely due to it slowing the progression of players, one thing you mentioned was Justice and Valor points that did make a comeback but def not in the same way.

Well the reason that was ditched, was due to Blizzard wanting to slow the progression. I mean if I remember correctly you only got a handful of points daily and even then players farmed them like nothing and got their gear fairly quickly.

Blizzard and or the company side of them, doesn’t like that because it has players get what they want, maybe do a bit of extra content, a raid or two or whatever and log off. And as we’ve seen from Shadowlands Play Time stats means EVERYTHING.

I agree on the idea of the progression, unless it’s class specific, should be account wide at this point. But again, time gating, slowing the progression. :roll_eyes:

However I will say, that after 3 iterations and them progressively getting worse since Legion… I’m tired of the systems, and even Shadowlands the Covenant system had amazing potential. Completely ruined due to them tying what should’ve been a cosmetic choice to player power.

To please absolutely no one who matters. It’s “fixed” now… but again, why couldn’t of that been a change back in Alpha / Beta and not post launch. 9.0 nearly killed the game for FFS. It happened with BFA and Legion and they still didn’t listen.

I can’t give much opinion on #3 because of my lack of playing Shadowlands, cause I’m tired of Blizzard’s :poop:.

Nice post. :slightly_smiling_face:

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you have got to be kidding

almost put you on the ignore list for this one but I think you are honestly trying to give genuine feedback, as grossly misguided as it is

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It didn’t make sense to me either at first, trust me. The idea that it’s the playerbase’s fault is not my idea. I’ll just go ahead and say that. And when I first heard that I was totally confused. But the more I thought about it and listened to the reasoning why it is our fault, the more I realized that it’s actually true.

The reason why it’s our fault is quite simple. We keep playing and paying. How exactly is a multi-million dollar corporation like Blizzard supposed to know we’re unhappy if we keep paying them? Corporations love data, right? But there’s one thing they can’t track. Fun.

There’s this statistic called the 90/10 statistic, and it’s something that applies to everything. 90% of the profits come from 10% of the playerbase. 90% of the feedback comes from 10% of the playerbase. The devs believe they are making the game for the “silent majority.” So it’s hard to listen to feedback when majority of it comes from the minority.

But like I mentioned earlier, we’re just now getting them to listen and act in a timely manner because a massive amount of people finally realized they had enough and quit, which means Blizzard gets less money. Now that we’ve hit their wallet and players are quitting in mass, they’re listening. And it’s not surprising one bit. And because they’re losing players, they introduce more store items to make up for the lost revenue. That’s why they still have record profits. It’s what any company would do. If you’re starting to lose money and you’re desperate, you’re gonna find a way to make more. And it’s been working like a charm because people were quick to run and grab that new cat mount, for example.

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Let me stop you right there. Cause that’s far simpler then you might think…

It’s called listening to your player base.

They have this forum, the WoW subreddit, the private and public Alpha & Betas prior to every new expansion. Not to mention the PTR prior to every patch. All dedicated to gathering feedback on new features, systems and what not.

It’s not the problem of Blizzard isn’t hearing us, it’s the problem of what they are choosing to hear because quite frankly their ignoring the majorly vital bits of feedback because of… reasons, ego, stubbornness idfk at this point.

You might ask why didn’t players stop paying them sooner? Well, because until Shadowlands we gave them the benefit of the doubt. 1 mess up, 2 mess up, 3 mess ups in a row and players like me are quite frankly done with their :poop: selective hearing.

And now I’m not saying your wrong, it’s been said for years by dozens of players on this forum alone. That if your not happy with the state of the game, to speak with your wallet and stop paying. But that does not excuse Blizzard of simply not listening to their player base because they don’t want or need to.

The player base can be partly blamed, sure if you really must see it that way. But the majority of blame is on Blizzard. You know why a lot indie games are massive hits compared to games with giant cooperation’s behind them? Cause indie Devs are 1000x more likely to actively listen to players feedback during development of the game.

Where as Blizzard, for whatever reason… just stopped listening after WoD seemingly. Some will blame Activision, others will say it’s for this and or that. I’m leaning more towards Dev Ego at this point and a serious lack of any actual management within the WoW dev team.