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Have Blizzard Ruined WoW?
TheFarseer
Member Posts: 97
I've been a long-time WoW player (closed EU beta, in fact). Over the past few years, I've watched as Blizzard ground everything I enjoyed in the game into dust. It started with The Burning Crusade's "FILL UP EVERY SINGLE PART OF AN AREA WITH QUESTS QUESTS QUESTS" and then went to WotLK's "FILL IT UP MOOOOOOOORE" which just reduced a lot of exploration since you knew you'd visit pretty much every area as long as you played the game. They turned crafting into another "add a tiny bit of originality to your character" (which every other single person is using, too bad!) and basically made it required for every person to have a crafting skill.
At least we had the old world, hey? At least we had a place where exploration was (if only slightly) rewarded. Oh, wait. Blizzard turned that into an "on the rails" fun fest, didn't they? Which was my main worry about Cataclysm, and the one everyone in game was dismissive of.
It just feels like Blizzard have slowly stripped away everything that I felt made the game fun (a slight sandbox element in an otherwise themepark game, useful crafting, raiding that isn't "learn how to Tango in five easy steps" etc etc) to appeal to {Mod edit} who don't know how to read quest descriptions, don't know how to sell crafting things, don't know what their role in raiding is etc.
So, what do you all think? Have Blizzard ruined what was originally a good game?
Comments
They 'ruined' WoW so much that WoW subscriptions keeps on increasing! /Sarcasm
Whether the game changed to your taste is another matter, but from a game mechanics/QA point of view; Vanilla was awful.
Absolutely disgraceful in today's standards. Want an example? The PVP 24 hour BG honor grind!
Such a horrible mechanic that even Blizzard (when pressed) had to admit it was bad.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I really liked the game during Vanilla (though I started playing a little too close to BC to do any Vanilla raiding), and had tons of fun in BC as well, having raided all the way up to (and finishing) Sunwell.
I have some really fond memories of raiding TK and Black Temple, of being famous server-wide for being one of the first Hunters to ever get a Sonic Spear from normal-mode Shadow Labirynth (back when heroics were HARD and you needed full D3 to even stand a chance in them), and then for having a certain Leatherworking recipe from TK that nobody else had (I think it was some belt, but I can't remember). Heck, I even liked the attunements.
Maybe things were even better in Vanilla, but I had good times with my guild in BC, and all that turned to dust in WotLK and its numerous changes. And that was when I stopped playing. And now I won't get near WoW with a 20-foot pole. And that is my love-hate story with that game.
Your problem (and that of many others) is that the truth is found in your first sentence.
I'll quote it for you:
"I've been a long-time WoW player (closed EU beta, in fact). Over the past few years ..." / cut
How about you find a quite new other fresh game that is as far away from WOW as possible. You learned to Tango in five easy steps already 6 years ago.
TBC was were it got a little less fun for me personally. I guess the "newness" had worn off by then, plus wasn't a big fan of arenas. There were some nice changes to classes that came with TBC like the patch right before for my druid (boomkin ftw), and I did enjoy outlands to an extent, but the game just was not the same for me again.
I will say that I do not think WoW is ruined, just don't find it fun anymore.
For me I could pretty much overlook most things Blizzard did untill the cross server looking for a group system and being able to join a battleground from anywhere in the game world . I think its a fine idea for pve servers because people generally on those servers like raiding but on pvp servers it killed world pvp and also virtually finnished the need to quest . So the game world ended up seaming a bit dead outside the citys . People obviously like this though because they still play it in thier droves . Its just not for me I found it dull and boring given I love pvp . Thats why I'm finding Rift a lot of fun now . It reminds me a little of what WoW once was before it lost its soul . Just wish I had a pc that could handle it better .
Thats exactly it, the game itself really hasnt changed all that much only the focus has. Wrath was all about endgame accessibility and now with cata the focus has gone back to a more Burning Crusade mindset with a more challenging endgame that is less accessible to non-raiders.
I think a lot of the community has reached their time with this game to where they have played it way too long, that they are just tired of playing it, and the only solution they have now is to jump on the trolling bandwagon and just bash it like if it was a plague they got infected with "it was always terrible! and I never liked it even though I played for like...4 years lol".
if anything the game has returned to a focus that really got me into WoW in the first place, challenging endgame content and more reliance on the guild. If that kind of focus is not your thing, there are other games out there.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
Objectively, WoW is better today than it has ever been.
Subjectively, I disgrace it and have stopped playing it for the last time.
There is a considerable difference.
Frankly, I miss the "They ruined it for ME" option in the poll. I have a feeling it would be a popular option.
I couldn't have said it any better. I wish people stopped accusing Blizzard for what seems to be a problem of playing too long and too hardcore. (meaning hours/life)/.
I would vote for this option: "There, there OP, you are right /pat You happy now? Did you get rid of your suicidal tendencies?"
Plus I really want to thank you for this amazing thread!
OOoh, yeah I also loved my resto druid in vanilla! I had to innervate the priests who treated us like garbage! Ooh, the joy!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I don't know... I think WoW is a fine game, as long as it isn't considered an actual MMORPG. Just like Diablo shouldn't be considered actual RPG or Warcraft actual strategy game. Blizzard produces very accessible and fun games, which aren't very specialized genrewise. For those who are obsessed which certain genre, their games just aren't complex and interesting enough.
That said, I wouldn't touch WoW even with a stick anymore, but that's just because I played it too much. It was fun back then and probably would be if i started now, but I don't think no-one can deny, that the extreme balancing, attempts to meet everyone's desires, ignorance of professions, dungeon finder and some other things have made WoW a lot less colorful gaming experience. They did up the heroic and raid difficulty though, didn't they?
op!activison did that job not blizzard!putting one of their own on blizzard!lol!bad activision ! bad!
Well i liked WoW alot but just recently i started thinking why do i even spend my time in it? it isnt fun, it seems like a job where you have to log in and do a few tasks to get required items... witch you could only earn 1 a day off, then they started to mezz with my class removing skills and stuff and changing the stats so i had to replace my current gear, cause all of a sudden mastery is not as important as crit and stuff like that...
Now im thinking what have blizz actually spent 6 years on.... you still have to kill some boss, do some quests, explore some land with same monsters that ive seen earlier just changed a few colors here and there, theres nothing new in it no charater progression only gear progression and that got borring after t5.
So what can i conclude by this, well Blizz did enfact kill their game in my eyes, their developers is without imagination and they are biased towards alot of aspects of their game instead of being neutral.
/waiting on SWTOR and Dragon Age 2.
DAoC/GW/Lotro/WoW/WAR/Rift/SWTor
I voted after Burning Crusade. It's like they put the game into maintenance cruise control mode. A little more content, items, and fiddling with class balance. Nothing new or refreshing/groundbreaking.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
for me arenas and bg kind of killed it cause it took away the sense of im fighting for my king and country. best times in wow was the constant fighting over crossroads and tarren mill/southshore, then came battlegrounds, no more fighting in those places. second thing that finally drove me out was blizzard breaking their game every single patch, i couldnt stand patch tuesdays cause it meant i could play for tuesday, probably wednesday, and maybe thursday or that my game experience would be so horrible i might as well not play, couldnt stand it, had to leave, if rift gets that way ill leave it also, right now my favorite game anyway is world of tanks, most fun ive had in quite a long while playing a game.
I still play and enjoy wow, but if I was to wager who's to blame for "ruining" WoW, it would bet on the players, definitely. Blizzard is merely filling the demand for repetitive, mind-numbing gear treadmills that 95% of the playerbase enjoys. I get tired of that stuff pretty quick, but there is actually plenty of other stuff to do in the game. The challenge is to find unique and innovative ways to have fun beyond the gear grind.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Agree. Vanilla was a dull and frustrating grind. Played for 3 months, TRIED to like it, but had to quit.
Still can't say much about the 80-85 experience, but 1-60 is now a much better game in almost every aspect. It makes BC feel dull like vanilla, and even LK seems a bit dated.
As a whole, I don't consider it ruined, but parts of it are terrible.
Since the introduction of BGs back in Vanilla, PvP has gone down hill. World PvP is dead and even their recent attempts at world pvp zones turned out dreadful. WG was fun for a bit but they eventually instanced it and killed the fun for many of us.
The PvE has always been pretty good. It went downhill in WotLK, but was fun again with the launch of Cata. They are slowly, but surely nerfing dungeon encounters and buffing players in an effort to get back to WotLK easymode in 5 mans, but the raids are still quite fun.
Activision has nothing to do with what Blizzard does with WoW, they've said that in blue posts, in press releases, and in blog articles. Activision and Blizzard run their own houses, they just share resources now.
There's a difference between the objective analysis, "It Sucks" and the subjective opinion, "It Sucks". Since it's a game, every analysis of the game is going to be mostly subjective.
You can't say they've ruined the game and you can't say it's always been great. You can say they ruined it for you, or that you've always like it. Then there's the opinion that it's a great game, but you're tired of playing it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's really situational for WOW, since every expansion is such a huge change that its basically a new game with the same graphics and base structure. In Vanailla it was a World pvp raiding playground with little emphasis on brackets and structure, it had a free roaming UO feel to it and danger was in every corner. BC it was still a competive pvp game but it was hightly structured with BGs and arenas the raiding was still good enough and everyone was reasonalby happy except for a few specs and of course paladins. WOTLK over did it with the brackets, homoginized too many classes and made burst way too over the top not to mention the EZ mode on the raiding, Wrath was just a disaster of an expansion and no one was happy. Cataclysm is obviously more stable but the problem is it is a stable version of WOTLK which is a bit like cooling off a flaming pile of doggy poo with cow piss.
I applied a 60-day card to WoW right after Cataclysm went live because my sub was ending. I played through a few hours of World of Ghostcrawlercraft and finally hit the realization that the game that had me so attached to my characters at launch had disappeared. Now the game rushes you on rails toward endgame. The phasing is way overused and leaves the world with a lot of "dead zones". Exploration and crafting are dead. There were too many places where I found myself waiting for NPCs to do their thing so that I could actually do something again.
World of Warcraft launched as a world. Cataclysm turned it into just another game.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
You honestly wouldn't expect Blizzard, "the cool kids on the block", to say otherwise, would you? I look more at the direction they've taken since being grafted onto Activision instead of what their executives (yep, that's what they are!) have to say. Blizzard's trying to milk their rep as "gamers first" who don't release a game "until it's ready" for as long as people believe it. The truth is that they've become just another development company staffed with lazy corporate drones who are only in it for the paycheck. The Blizzard of old is dead. Activision-Blizzard is a souless doppelganger,
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I dont think people understand WOW is not just aiming at younger players, they are aiming at Asian younger players, it has been a long long time since North American and Europe were the largest sub base for WOW. It has been a slow decline into grindfest mindless homoginization since after BC got all those extra subs for them.Just look at any Asian grinder, they dont care if every character is exactly the same, hell they dont care if every character looks the same. As long as they can farm useless garbage and grind dungeons they are fine.
If you are upset about something chances are if you go to a Chinese forum or Brazilian BR forum for WOW they are happy about the changes you hate. I can almost guarantee it, but I have played mmorpgs with cross cultural servers, these guys just have a different outlook on mmorpgs. farm, gold, farm, gear, sell etc.
Hahaha months ago I was saying, Diablo3 will never release until WoW is dead... I almost bought Cataclysm to start playing again after 2 years but the forums of worldofwarcraft .com was so filled with complaints I totally got discouraged, anyway...
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THE TIME IS NEAR FOR DIABLOOOOOOOOOOOooo 3 !!!!! muhahaha
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They have to redirect their customers into another game dont they ? millions of user cannot be abandonned without a compensation or solution... but since starcraft was a nice shot, D3 ain't for tomorrow id'guess
Yes, because those tiny peaks in playerbase (you know, when Cataclysm came out *facepalm*) are indicative of the subscription base increasing. I think the lack of messages on the playerbase increasing (how many years did we not have even the tiniest HINT of more players playing? About 3?) shows that the playerbase is decreasing massively inbetween expansion launches.
Actually, ever since there's been an Activision executive standing over all the executives at Blizzard (which I suspect was a concession on the part of Morhaime to get more in-house creative resources, it wouldn't surprise me if Activision was trying to starve Blizzard out of the contract that Vivendi managed to get them), there's been a massive jump in the "annoying shit" Blizzard has been pulling. Activision has probably been pulling a lot of strings to get things done, to be honest.