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What killed WOW
Railgunner
Member Posts: 31
I started playing WOW shortly after it came out and played up until a few weeks before the first x-pac was released.
I was a "hardcore" player... a MT in a large guild... I raided 4 nights a week, 4-5 hours a night... I was one of the 1st on my realm to get full T2 back when it actually meant something...
When the x-pac was announced I knew it was the end of the game... Sure it would take it a while to die, but the glory days were over... and I was right...
Here's what went wrong...
#1. Serious MMO players devote lots of time to character development... grinding, leveling, and acquiring gear... Its a status symbol... It's like having a BMW or Mercedes in the real world... You see someone with leet raid gear and you know they've "paid their dues"... Lots of nights raiding 4-5 hours a night...
When the x-pac was announced, Blizzard decided to allow existing players to obtain vastly better gear without 1st finishing the existing content. That was a MAJOR slap in the face to raiders and proved that Blizzard had absolutely no respect for the time and effort that dedicated players had invested in character development.
It would have been really easy to have required existing players to finish Naxx to get a "key" that allowed them access to x-pac areas where they could then "unlock" level 61 and starting leveling again.
They could have prevented level 60 players from grouping with level 61+ level players to prevent higher level players from "rushing" lower level players thru existing content.
If Blizzard has done this, then you would still have players running Molten Core, Oxynia, BWL, etc and serious players wouldn't have been raped of 2 years of character development.
#2. 40 man raids were epic. Changing 40 man instances to 20 man was incredibly stupid. For starters, it destroyed untold thousands of raid guilds... Bench 1/2 your 40 man raid guild you've been playing with for 2 years... Yeah, right...
It was also bad because it destroyed the continuity of the game... Another slap in the face to serious players... If a player wants to get where I am in the game, I want them to have to do what I had to do to get there... Otherwise, there is no character development... No standard by which players are judged...
#3. Battlegrounds suck... Anyone remember Southshore? So what if it got a little laggy at times... It was real... and it was fun...
So there you have it... Now I'm sure some would say... But casual players would have never bought the x-pac if they had to finish 40 man Naxx to unlock level 61 and new areas... Yeah they would have... Sure, you might have to slightly "nerf" the difficulty but that had been going on all along. IF Blizzard had added some goodies that everyone wanted like better crafting, player housing (done right), player stores with NPC traders to sell your goods... (take crafted items off the AH), guild forts, ships, etc in the x-pac areas, then the game would have become even more popular instead of slowing dying like it is now.
WOW could have been the start of something incredible... Instead, they tried to implement virtual Socialism... Let's make everyone equal... In the end, they just ruined the game...
I remember the night I logged off forever shortly before the 1st x-pac came out... I was been so into the game for so long... The guild has literally become a band of brothers. The xpac is going to rule they said... No it won't... it will ruin the game I said... You'll be back they said! No I won't I said... It was good while it lasted... and I still miss it to this day, but I don't miss what it became... As the years went by my old guildmates quit the game... In the end, most admited I had been right.
So that's the bad news... Wow was ruined...
The good news is, another company could easily "get it right"... The original WOW model works... Change the plot, update the graphics, state up front that you will respect the time that serious players invest in character development, and you would have a winner.
Comments
WoW has never been anything special. Not a single unique feature in the entire game.
#2. 40 man raids were epic. Changing 40 man instances to 20 man was incredibly stupid. For starters, it destroyed untold thousands of raid guilds... Bench 1/2 your 40 man raid guild you've been playing with for 2 years... Yeah, right...
It was also bad because it destroyed the continuity of the game... Another slap in the face to serious players... If a player wants to get where I am in the game, I want them to have to do what I had to do to get there... Otherwise, there is no character development... No standard by which players are judged...
I remember going to bed on Sat / Sun mornings when the sun was coming up... those were great times!
i agree completely. Grinding to 80 as fast as possible as become wow's number one priority.
I just hope that in 5 years we can look to WoW the same way we look to EQ today
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
Sorry you are upset about the turn of events with WoW as it sounds like you were a dedicated player. Unfortunately you were a victim of the dynamic, ever changing business and production model that all MMOs go through over time. No game will ever be "the way it was at launch". I don't care too much for WoW at all. I only got a couple characters into their 30s. There are a lot of other games out there and many more on the horizon. Don't lose hope brother!
You won't be able to. EQ was an innovative game that changed the face of online gaming forever. It focused heavily on the social aspect of gameplay, it's world was massive, immersive, detailed, and dangerous. Raids could be anything from 12-100 people. There was NOTHING like it in the 3D space before.
WoW was just a copy of EverQuest for people with ADD. It has half the features, and most of them are just the bad grindy features, none of the redeeming social ones.
Considering the fact that WoW has more subscribers now than before its first expansion, I do not believe that WoW is dead. I am an ex-WoW player that started in beta and quit after The Burning Crusade myself. I pretty much hate the game and will never go back, but I am not blind enough to state that "WoW is dead." WoW is not dead and is far from dying.
I don't play WoW anymore. I played for 4 years + and burned out.
But to say its dead is rediculous... it just makes you sound bitter that you are no longer getting what you want out of the game. The features added to WoW over time have come at the behest of players and testers. The majority gets their way most of the time, and WoW is no different.
I am not going to sit here and tout how great the game is, or how ground breaking it was or how fun it is, because there are enough people out there doing it already. But at 11.5 million subs and counting (bet they will push 15 with cataclysm) the game is anything but dead.
It may no longer represent what you want in an MMO but there are millions of subscribers out there very much enjoying their game experience.
i loved Vanilla .I played bc. I suffered wotlk. Prob is that if there are 2 million ppl agreeing with that statement there are 9 more disagreeing . And blizard is always obliging to the mass .They dont care if the mass are 12-16y old kids that want something fast ,easy ,synthetic and COMPLETELY INSTANCED to play. Cause yes everything in wow is completely instanced. 5 men Dungeons,raids,bg's ,arenas .Wow doesnt deserve any more the Massive multiplayer title since its all instanced. None 80 lvl player ever goes to visit outdoors areas. Will this change in cataclysm? Yes till u go 85 lvl. bb
I guess I should have said titled the thread "what ruined wow"...
Yeah, i'm sure people still play it... and if all you are going to do is get a couple lvl 30 characters then it's pretty much the same game it was when it was released... And I guess there's a lot of people that that is the extent of their experience... I'm talking about serious players... The hundreds of thousands of players who used to raid 3-4 nights a week...
People say "Oh, all the old time raiders all burned out"...
Yeah, they burned out allright... They got tired of having the time they invested in character development wiped out every x-pac.
I mean, if you are going to have to constantly start over, why even play an MMO? Just play a FPS and be done with it.
^^ this is why I stopped raiding when BC launched... and haven't raided since.
I understand what you mean about the how the expansion ruined the epic feeling of putting lengths of time into your character development, but you have to realize that the game has to advance somehow. They allow people to jump right into the new content because that is why they choose to play. Most people don't have the time to spend on putting that much devotion in character development.
As for the kill of 40 man raids, it was necessary because of how extremely difficult it is to make a schedule for 40 players to be on at marked time, and show up. Stuff happens. 15 don't show up for a 40 man raid? Well I don't know about you but I wouldn't find 15 random people to fill in those spots and expect them to know what to do or not screw up.
Blizzard still rewards its players for the their time invested and I am sorry for anyone who feels that WoW has been ruined. I have been playing since Zul'Gurub went live and at times I have taken several months to get away from WoW, but always find my way back and have enjoyed it since.
depends on the individual.
if is i must have da phat lwtz nao nao nao type of person, they will blow thru the game as quickly as possible and find a mindless grind of instances to get the toys they want.
there are alot who raid and take it easy.
there are alot of people who enjoy doing the quests and taking their time enjoying the lore.
dont think wows dead at all nothing killed it. the only thing is everyone has been seperated.
the greedy get togehter with the greedy.
those who appriciate raids hang out with others who do the same.
those who quest do the same with others who quest.
those who pvp... bah you get the point.
its a one game to please all crowd instead of having them fighting against eachother.
less people pushing others thru quests ect.
hate to admit it but wow does its job and still has it.
The notion that the developers have to cater to casual players who "don't have time" to play has been the ruin of more than one MMO...
So what if it takes a player who only plays couple hours on Friday nights 2 years to get to lvl 60?
Dumbing down the game is kind of like the military saying "hmmmm... let's just give ALL the soliders a Medal of Honor just for getting our of their bunks in the morning!!! That will motivate them!
Not really... it just dimishes the value...
People playing Wow today may as well being playing a FPS... Nothing they are doing amounts to anything... Any character development they achieve will be wiped out in the next x-pac... As an MMO, it's pointless... Maybe there's 11 million people who enjoy paying to play a glorified FPS??? Good for them.
But when it comes to character development and raiding, WOW is dead...
And that's sad, because there is a real market for serious players... Give me a game like WOW with 40 man raids that respects the time serious raiders invest in character development and I would gladly pay $30 a month to play and I bet there's about 500K others that would too...
WoW still has 11.5 million subscribers. Its far from dead. I can understand your anger that Blizzard pretty much took away all of the hardcore's hard work but the audience of WoW has changed and they needed to cater to the masses. In today's WoW, everyone has the same gear but there are still some things that can show off your hard work and that is achievement titles and unique mounts that requres killing the hardest boss in the game.
I havent talked to anyone lately that is still excited to play WoW. Most ppl i talk to play it because theyve already spent so much time on their toon and theres nothing else out there thats pulling them away. you know what happens when you make your game instantly accessible to everyone? everyone gets bored, real quick. it will be a long, slow death, but subs are only gonna go down from here.
Everyone's a critic, Blizzard can't please everyone, but Blizzard is doing something right. Close to 12 million subscribers with another expansion about to launch. No other MMO is close to beating this juggernaut.
They seem to be going in the right direction, ~15 bucks a month for 12 million subscribers is no small fry.
With the coming expansion, pepl are actually going to come back to WOW, so those numbers are just going to up. WoW ain't dieing anytime soon.
Um if they just only added new content kept the level cap the same and added no new gear upgrades this game would have zero subs. Yup guess wows dead since it still has over 11.5 mil subs and new xpac that the vast majority are eagerly awaiting.
Nothing killed WoW but in my opinion Blizzard dumbed down the game way to much by making everything soloable and Dungeon finder is just an excuse to not have to merge servers.
In some ways yes. But mostly they expanded on everything. Classes are far more complex then they were in vanilla. Raids are also far more scripted. Heroic 25mans are in most cases, Uld ToC and ICC, harder than vanilla raids. Where i do agree is that they shouldn't have to have heroics but everything should be hard right off the bat. Im all for casual raiders but seriously if the guild I was in while i played could do most heroic while being laid back and still progress at a good rate then everyone should. What really got me to quit myself are the newer generation of WoW players who know nothing about Vanilla and BC. Back before the dawn of heroic raids.
Also there are no dead servers so please don't use that excuse I saw the server list a few days ago at a friends there were a total of 5 low pop servers out of the ungodly amount blizzard has.
I used to love WoW, raiding, playing probably too much...then just got tired of it. I walked, after three years of sometimes casual, sometimes hardcore play, as real life and family allowed.
Now I am back again, but this time--and I say this to agree with the OP--to play with my teenage kids. Its as casual a game as you could hope for. Me, my wife and two kids do all the same stuff I used to when the game first came out, and we play very casually...no more than three or four hours a week total.
In short, the hardcore days are gone. I don't and won't raid. WoW has become as diluted as Allods. I have fun, but that is because of who I play with. More worrisome than WoW being ruined, I really think the entire genre is ruined in the same way.
No dead servers ? Ok I guess if yuou call a handful of people just goofing off by Goldshire and the Auction House in tows then yeah, all servers are fully packed like they were 5 -6 years ago. Not to mention you only see a small handful questing in certain areas of the game.
They got rid of the time it takes to formulate a raid and Provided two different raiding experiences with normal and heroic raid version. The game isn't diluted its more complex then it was on release. Also what made games hard back in the day was the lack of decent travel and death penalties that were put in place to help increase the game play due to lack of content. Seriously when 40 man raids were the thing it took hours to form up a raid and even longer to get things done. The content wasn't harder you just have 15 more idiots to deal and who could and on most cases would fail to comprehend the fairly easy boss fights. Games that came after WoW attempted to repeat WoW success but in the end all they did was put out horrible half finished clones of not only WoW but in some cases EQ as well. What makes WoW great is that they perfected known methods that were pioneered by EQ and so on. Now those game mechanics are overplayed. Someone needs to step up and push the genre forward. So far its stuck in neutral.
Who is saying they should have kept the cap at 60 and not introduced new stuff? No one. What was said is they should have made it necessary to finish lvl 60 stuff before you could advance to lvl 70 stuff. In other words, in order to get to Outland, you needed to beat Naxx. Tweak with the difficulty levels on the existing lvl 60 dungeons so it's easier to make it through if needed.
Instead they let anyone and everyone through at lvl 58, so all the hard work that the players (and devs) put into the lvl 60 dungeons was made pointless. Hard-earned gear was quickly made useless. They effectively killed off a lot of great content in one fell swoop.
The expansion could've been done so much better. I agree with the OP on that. I don't agree WoW is dead though.
Current: None
Played: WoW, CoX, SWG, LotRO, EVE, AoC, VG, CO, Ryzom, DF, WAR
Tried: Lineage2, Dofus, EQ2, CoS, FE, UO, Wurm, Wakfu
Future: The Repopulation, ArcheAge, Black Desert, EQN
OP you're like a betamax player or walkman.. Redundant and of the old school.. you move with the genre or you stay behind and become bitter with a pair of rose tinted glasses permanently welded to your head. Guess which one you have become.