" Blizzard is heavily invested in pruning the skills of every class to both make them simpler, or at least least less micromanagement-oriented...."
I was on the fence about this xpac, but with that statement...they have helped me make up my mind. Simpler? Right now, you can basically have a 3-4 ability rotation and that is it. Soon, it's going to be an "attack" button (just keep hitting this one button...no, really...that's all you need to hit..)
Well, saves me the cash. Thanks Blizz
There are still plenty of buttons to push. No class in the game can use 3-4 abilities and be worth a raid spot.
Less desire for grouping I believe comes much more from the increasing caustic and selfish nature of the current MMO gamers. Developers can invent all of the interesting and enjoyable grouping mechanics they want but as soon as you get grouped with a bunch of hate filled trolls all that desire to group goes down the toilet. I play MMOs to group and only to group. It is what I have loved about the genre since the first time I entered a dungeon in UO. But in the last few years I find myself not playing MMOs and returning to single player games because the general populace makes gaming just absolutely miserable. I know everyone just runs the pre-recorded message, get a guild, and I actually run one, have for over 15 years, but that does not mean you will not be exposed to the random PUGs ever or the general toxic environment. It is truly a sad statement of game development and society as a whole. If one was to believe in aliens I am not surprised that have not been contacted. If you drove by our planet would you want to meet us either?
I am 100% with you Warzod. I play MMOs to group and since the invention of LFD from WOW grouping has become completely terrible. Yes Pre-LFD I had some very bad groups however I can only think of a few vs I can think of so many from LFD. This is what makes me not want to play MMOS because these Automated tools throw people who would other wises NEVER run in the same group together into the same group and the experience turns out to be a terrible experience. WHY does this happen? Simple we chosen to have accessibility tools to have everyone experiences all the content so no one is left out and everyone is happy. Yet we made no one happy because we made grouping and playing with others an absolute nightmare of a situation to make a group that is the most Anti Social group of all happy with grouping. Yet MMOs were built on the social aspect and completely ignored the rule of everyone is responsible for their own happiness. Now we only made a small group of people happy, yes the people who still play wow and an ever shrinking group because we killed the social aspect and grouping aspect of MMO RPGs.
To all you people who think about O WELL FORCE GROUPING IS BAD AND DIDNT WORK or FORCING PEOPLE TO WORK TOGETHER SUCKS. Well I will tell you something. Why is it that All these Triple A MMOs are stopping development and Developers who have worked on Projects like UO, EQ, SWG and Hell even Vanilla WOW are working on New MMOs that Force you to group or work with other players? YEP thats right because thats what MMOs are and will be built on. Not streamlining everyone into the same content and making them all happy. It just does not work. It sounds like Blizzard is finally getting some of this, the problem is they do not or will not go far enough. Like Ripping out LFD/LFR (Yes keep the new LFG tool where players can browse for groups and people to group with), cutting down on the number of raid difficulties, and continue trying make each class feel different, Plus add CC requirements in instances. I know I would come back as well as 20+ other people and all but me ever really use forums for our voice, they all just quit playing the game and left. So yes the Vocal Minority like this people who dont want to change WOW and want LFR dont understand they are really the minority of MMOs not the majority. Just the Majority stopped paying.
If this was not true how is it that during the time WOW was the most Group Focused and no streamlining of grouping people together was there 11.5 Million and growing population vs peaking at 12 Million with LFD and then falling. I tell you no its not because WOW got old. Its because WOW killed Socialization and Grouping the core of MMOs, for a vocal minority who wanted what they have today. With an ever decreasing population
Prior to LFD, you had to build a PUG with your server. You quickly learned who was good, and who was bad. You then only joined those people you wanted to group with. You also had to travel to the dungeons ( or have a lock in the group).
LFD blew it away.... it gave you no ability to filter out idiots, not to mention you now pulled from a larger pool from more servers.
Then to "fix" this... Blizzard nerfed the dynamic to be about mass pulling and AE DPS. Out went CC, out went social... it became PULL, PULL, PULL ....faceroll... roll loot... k bye thx
The genre needs to get back to the trinity being Tank,Heal,CC....
I wish they would take a turn toward vanilla, rather than toward simplification. The game was at its best when there were ongoing lively conversations on boards and guild chats where best to spend those talent points, which Stat to prioritize.
Eq has seen this (meaning, the idea that the game was at its best in its early stages ) with the insane success of the progression servers, it remains to be seen whether they take the lessons to any new content they make. Will wow learn too?
Blizzard has pretty much said that this isn't going to happen.
Funny as it is, I've known of some folks who've played on private Vanilla servers and come back 2-3 months later saying, "Now I remember those days..." and they don't mean it in a flattering way either. Thing is that those with a nostalgic bent to Vanilla WoW don't really want the gameplay that it embodied, but that sense of the "first time" and the camaraderie that those early days in the MMO genre fostered. They say "you can't go back" for a reason, I think.
SBFord,
While you have a point there I think you are missing the core of what people are missing with Vanilla. Take me for example, my first MMO was UO in 1998, this is before T2A and all that. Yet I will not say O WOW I want to be on a Pre T2A server and all that. Nope I think some of the changes from UO was best after T2A for a lot of reasons. However I did start hating UO when they brought Pub 16 in when they changed resistances and had gear with different resistances and all that junk. Why? Because if broke the core parts of the game and for a lot of people because over the course of 1 year UO lost 2/3rds of its population. For example when I was a bard around 85% Provok I was able to solo the Shadow Wyrm room, AFTER the change I was back barely Provoking Dragons and sometimes had to go to Provoking Earth, Air and Water Elemental. This was done to change core game play. People hated it.
Now when I talk about WOW I am not talking with rose tinted glasses on because WOW is not my first MMO. I am not longing for all the greatness of my first MMO. When I talk about Vanilla WOW and TBC WOW I talk about you needing to step up and take responsibility for your game advancement and enjoyment. I also talk about requiring you to work well within a group. I also bring up requiring CC, and having a focus on your class\spec\build. I also talk about not having things handed to you. I know I am 100% correct when I say that when all of these factors changed starting in WOTLK that MMOs started to turn down a path that would lead to what we have today. I am correct you only have to look at what is going on with new kickstarter MMOs many of which have developers that created some of the first MMOs. Why are these new MMOs going back to old school designs? Because the current design and path of MMOs DO NOT work.
So what are some of the things people want from vanilla WOW? Well when you have a group you have 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS and the 3 DPS you split between Long CC, Short CC and maybe an Off Tank like a Feral Druid, or a Ret Pally. The need to socialize and meet people because you would rarely get in a group other wise. Players who played in Raids and in 5 Man groups have specific roles, for example My long time friend use to play a Mage, his role was always revolved around CC and he knew that was his first priority not maximizing numbers and rotations. Other things were running to a Dungeon. Yes I know this seems silly but it did make the world feel full, the summoning stones even being added was a good thing, or other summoning methods could be added to help reduce down time. The queuing in really pushes the game to a lobby based game.
Now what are some of the things today that could help out get rid of the old school WOW grinds. Having 7 to 10 allotted dungeon quest that give a ton of Experience which would reduce the leveling time in Vanilla WOW down to a few months vs 6+ months? Having guild weekly challenges that revolve around leveling that give double XP of achieved but done by toons of the same level. Also if done with a new player the doubled XP becomes Tripled and if done by a guild smaller than 50 Accounts you get 4 times the XP.
Again these are things that we could do to FIX some of the harshness of vanilla WOW yet not all of the grind should be taken out of an MMO. Like Fishing in WOW. Sometimes should be a pain but are not required. We can learn a lot from Vanilla WOW and TBC yet we choose not to because when its brought up we talk about people and their tinted glasses yet today's answer is obviously failing and other mechanics of WOW are emerging for new MMOs. So we need to stop being stupid about Vanilla and TBC WOW and learn our lessons and move into the next Phase of MMOs, but we are not going to do that at least not until more time goes by.
Prior to LFD, you had to build a PUG with your server. You quickly learned who was good, and who was bad. You then only joined those people you wanted to group with.
BINGO! This is why today's MMOs are in the shitter. LFD\LFR, vs getting people to group naturally which happened before LFD\LFR. You know how I know, I did countless groups before these tools ever hit MMOS. O and I can remember times when I use to have training dungeon runs for a Lock who was new to MMOs. I can also go on and talk about a Hunter who was new to MMOs in TBC when TBC hit and by the end he was in Sunwell, I helped him learn how to play with the little time I had.
All these events are more enjoyable than any time I had after LFD. Why? Because I remember countless bad groups not that players were bad more that there were more trolls and ass holes. I remember one group where we just zoned in the Healer said AFK 1 minute door, then the DPS switched to Feral and started tanking. I was called a bad tank because he raced ahead of me and his friend started to heal. After that started the healer and other DPS started bitching that these 2 for being ass holes we then left the run, shortly after that Druid jumped on my server and started talking shit to me I ignored them quickly. I remember a bad Violet hold run where a person queued as a tank came in and switched to Ret and said someone else has to tank he only queued as a tank because a fast queue. Yet there was not another person who could tank. Then he started to pull said I got this Ret then and we wiped.
Why do I hate LFD because the trash LFD started. Yes there were bad groups in before LFD however for me they were fewer and farther between because you learned more about the people you were playing with and didnt have convenience tools so people didnt just tell you to queue for it. OR they didnt die once and quit. LFD started bad habits.
One thing WoW can't do is stop people for going to a new type MMO, Blizzard just going lose player base on that part any how. Other then that Blizzard need to stick with formula that work, then going on system that don't work just makes things worst. Like working formula that is still working now then to some old formula that use to work, but never been tested with this days of age.
I didn't see any mention of crafting. Warlords of Draenor completely ruined crafting. Just ruined it. And at this point I think it's probably beyond fixing. Regardless of whatever else Blizzard does with Legion, I don't think they're ever getting those players back; the ones that enjoy crafting.
So far the only crafting element is gathering. Blizzard's keeping that one under wraps so far.
While this is what I wanted in my MMO, to many MMOs have turned into a solo game. They forget the fact that for the past 5 years they have trained their subscribers to live off solo play and group finders. I'm not sure this will making their current subscribers happy.
While this is what I wanted in my MMO, to many MMOs have turned into a solo game. They forget the fact that for the past 5 years they have trained their subscribers to live off solo play and group finders. I'm not sure this will making their current subscribers happy.
I remember them days, trying find a tank or healer 2 hours later spamming in world/zone chat. Thats problem with MMO with out a dungeon finder.
I wish they would take a turn toward vanilla, rather than toward simplification. The game was at its best when there were ongoing lively conversations on boards and guild chats where best to spend those talent points, which Stat to prioritize.
Eq has seen this (meaning, the idea that the game was at its best in its early stages ) with the insane success of the progression servers, it remains to be seen whether they take the lessons to any new content they make. Will wow learn too?
Blizzard has pretty much said that this isn't going to happen.
Funny as it is, I've known of some folks who've played on private Vanilla servers and come back 2-3 months later saying, "Now I remember those days..." and they don't mean it in a flattering way either. Thing is that those with a nostalgic bent to Vanilla WoW don't really want the gameplay that it embodied, but that sense of the "first time" and the camaraderie that those early days in the MMO genre fostered. They say "you can't go back" for a reason, I think.
" Blizzard is heavily invested in pruning the skills of every class to both make them simpler, or at least least less micromanagement-oriented...."
I was on the fence about this xpac, but with that statement...they have helped me make up my mind. Simpler? Right now, you can basically have a 3-4 ability rotation and that is it. Soon, it's going to be an "attack" button (just keep hitting this one button...no, really...that's all you need to hit..)
Well, saves me the cash. Thanks Blizz
Hyperbole much? You really don't know unless you are in the current alpha (even then things will likely change before release). Skill bloat and redundant abilities are not fun. The current specs rotations are usually 8-12 active abilities with a handful of special situation only abilities. From what i've read about the alpha, there are no classes using only 3-4 skills.
While this is what I wanted in my MMO, to many MMOs have turned into a solo game. They forget the fact that for the past 5 years they have trained their subscribers to live off solo play and group finders. I'm not sure this will making their current subscribers happy.
I remember them days, trying find a tank or healer 2 hours later spamming in world/zone chat. Thats problem with MMO with out a dungeon finder.
While you have a small point Zaberfangx, LFD ruined MMOs period. LFD single handedly killed the social aspect of MMOs and making people learn how to make friends. Sorry but its too bad if you couldnt get a group. The ONLY time I had problems getting groups were at odd hours like 2am. I ran guilds and maintained a friends list and could always find friends wanting to do things. That is the main pillar MMOs are built on and once you take that away MMOS become a pile of crap.
Now Yes Yelling in open chat for a full group was a pain. The ONLY fix that needed to happen was added a much better group finder tool. Take the new LFG tool in WOW, or FFXIV's Party Finder. These tools back before LFD if built like they are today could have fixed grouping for the better without throwing the social aspect out of MMOs. You didnt need LFD ever. If you say you did then you dont belong playing MMOS because you were never meant for the genera because the social side is the key to MMOs. You see what MMOS become today a pile of crap.
Its obvious that Blizzard has learned little or nothing from the failures of other MMO's. The old formula is LONG past its best by date, and that, more than anything else is why MMO's are in decline.
Forcing people to group has been tried... It failed, and in some cases failed BADLY. There are various reasons that more and more people dislike interacting with other players. Add in simplistic design, and forced grouping, and I'm betting that Legion will see worse drop off numbers than WoD did.
I completely disagree, it was from the time BLizzard gave the opportunity to people to solo all the content by dumping down the dfifficulty on everything game started becoming worse.
Blizzard untill mid WOTlk forced u in a way to group up for specific activities or quests. ANd this is how it should be, to enhance communication through players and create friendships. the system u describe with solo content is what destroyed games, having to party for some specific goals outside raiding its paramount for any MMORPG
WoD broke the community?? Uhmm Cata broke the community and it has been broken since. If it really took them this long to figure it out, that doesn't bode well for any changes they will make to address it.
It seems like post Cata they have been in panic mode, and just throwing stuff at the wall and praying that something sticks. Desperation doesn't breed good game design.
I really hope they aren't planning on going back to the days of bring the class, screw the player. Having class identity is great, but don't design shit around groups having certain abilities and then not give those abilities to some classes. If you can't guarantee a group will have an ability then don't severely handicap groups that are missing the "correct" class.
ANd this guy above is why WoW sucks nowdays
SO whats the freaking point of 10 druids doing 10 man raids.This is an MMORPG class diversion is the most important thing.Each groups can compensate in different way, enh shamans were sort of useless in PVE back tov anilla but we always picked 1 or due to their enhanced totems talent and we put em in the melee group, it wasnt just ''whos the most op class''. This diversion was the beauty of the game, no 10 freaking classes having the same buffs as it is now, which is beyond pathetic
EVeryone was feeling sort of special because it had some unique abilities. ''bring the player''? THere is no such thing as hard mechanics, its all about raid coordination and synergy between a raid, mechanics/reflexes is the CSGO
While this is what I wanted in my MMO, to many MMOs have turned into a solo game. They forget the fact that for the past 5 years they have trained their subscribers to live off solo play and group finders. I'm not sure this will making their current subscribers happy.
I remember them days, trying find a tank or healer 2 hours later spamming in world/zone chat. Thats problem with MMO with out a dungeon finder.
While you have a small point Zaberfangx, LFD ruined MMOs period. LFD single handedly killed the social aspect of MMOs and making people learn how to make friends. Sorry but its too bad if you couldnt get a group. The ONLY time I had problems getting groups were at odd hours like 2am. I ran guilds and maintained a friends list and could always find friends wanting to do things. That is the main pillar MMOs are built on and once you take that away MMOS become a pile of crap.
Now Yes Yelling in open chat for a full group was a pain. The ONLY fix that needed to happen was added a much better group finder tool. Take the new LFG tool in WOW, or FFXIV's Party Finder. These tools back before LFD if built like they are today could have fixed grouping for the better without throwing the social aspect out of MMOs. You didnt need LFD ever. If you say you did then you dont belong playing MMOS because you were never meant for the genera because the social side is the key to MMOs. You see what MMOS become today a pile of crap.
WoW is a big game, Social aspect is more on the community side of things people are toxic all around, and people like to avoid it. Just blaming only on LFD will not save any problem just add to it. If blizzard trying get more people back in the game, they need people playing not standing around for 2 hours thinking that makes things social. Just add more less needed spam.
They are still missing the mark which I guess isn't surprising when you invite the same people to alpha over and over.
Every expansion runs into the same problem, no endgame. Legion should focus 90% on loading up the endgame content. None of this single small raid BS every expansion has been launching with. Stamping a heroic and mythic sticker on everything is NOT a replacement for content. Yes garrisons were a bad MMO idea. Sure classes are too self sufficient. Yes the world pvp was garbage yet again. None of that would have mattered if it was packed with content but it never is. Hell you couldn't even explore the entire tiny map until a year post launch.
They drive away from many many of the old timers, that love micro management...
Its a huge mistake to make all the classes fit the same format.
People are different and desire different things from classes..
Including the way they play..
As an old timer i have allways loved games with atleast 3 bars of abbilities and finding way of utillizing all of them in my gameplay..
The way blizzard is going is like giving people 3 abbiltiies....
there is abutton to heal
there is a button to dps
there is a button to grab agro
choose your button of favor..
for me MMO´s used to be about character building and being different from others.. if anyone knows an MMO that still allows this in combination with a few dozen skills please tell me...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
for me MMO´s used to be about character building and being different from others.. if anyone knows an MMO that still allows this in combination with a few dozen skills please tell me...
ArcheAge! Lots of character building that allows you to make your own skillset.
What they are trying to do is give every spec 4-6 unique abilities so that each spec feels like class on their own. In current version playing a disc priest and holy priest doesn't really feel like different other than adding/removing 2 abilities in core rotation, playing a shadow priest feels a little different but then again access of core absorb and healing skills makes it all too similar. With change from legion such won't be the case, even if it is 4 or 5 abilities, they are unique from spec to spec.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
Its obvious that Blizzard has learned little or nothing from the failures of other MMO's. The old formula is LONG past its best by date, and that, more than anything else is why MMO's are in decline.
Forcing people to group has been tried... It failed, and in some cases failed BADLY. There are various reasons that more and more people dislike interacting with other players. Add in simplistic design, and forced grouping, and I'm betting that Legion will see worse drop off numbers than WoD did.
If you took all the other MMO's in existence and scraped all the players for those games together, you'd sill have far less players than WoW has left.
So with numbers that still make other games jealous, what are they supposed to do? Abandon their age old formula and run off the last few million who like it, or change the game completely and never hear the end of NGE! NGE! claims for the rest of gaming eternity?
No, I think they're doing what's right for WoW, if we don't like grouping, then we have pleeeenty of games that don't force it or need it.
If they start again FORCED grouping, well there will be at least 1 lesss to sub and pay. For long now Wow has been SOLOABLE and I LOVE that. If somebody want to group, nobody prevent him and for that we have a lot of dungeons. It is win-win situation.
I enjoyed WOD, well that little content it had. I have spent 7-8 months to level all my alliance alts, with WOD something around 2 as I remember. Good indicator how much they have just increased XP gain. For me Wotlk is still best expansion but very closely followed by MOP.
I'm perplexed by forced grouping while leveling. That one thing pushed me away from the GW2 expansion more than anything else. Group hero point unlocks was hard after starting a month late and by the time i found out there were some sort of group finders to help do them i had already uninstalled the game. It didn't help that the final boss fight of the story glitched and they didn't have checkpoints after the two long fights preceding it.
Some changes i would like to see in Legion:
1. no housing. it sucks and prevents socializing
2. no flying with some exceptions but not near capital cities else they feel emtpy
3. make tier gear,a player's goal and distinguishable when you look at a player.No Transmogrify when you wear tier gear.Dont award tier gear in LFR
4. Make dungeons relevant again, harder and likely to require some cc. That means that you have to revisit them for badge currency, better gear and to activate some gear imbuement (like wildstar)
5. Create epic elf tall ceiling raids like TBC :P i loved those! I remember feeling awe when I was inside!
6. Create an very long epic class storyline to have something to do when not raiding/grouping
7. incetivise some factions wars, like those when we had to kill factions bosses to get the war mount!
that was cool!
Comments
I am 100% with you Warzod. I play MMOs to group and since the invention of LFD from WOW grouping has become completely terrible. Yes Pre-LFD I had some very bad groups however I can only think of a few vs I can think of so many from LFD. This is what makes me not want to play MMOS because these Automated tools throw people who would other wises NEVER run in the same group together into the same group and the experience turns out to be a terrible experience. WHY does this happen? Simple we chosen to have accessibility tools to have everyone experiences all the content so no one is left out and everyone is happy. Yet we made no one happy because we made grouping and playing with others an absolute nightmare of a situation to make a group that is the most Anti Social group of all happy with grouping. Yet MMOs were built on the social aspect and completely ignored the rule of everyone is responsible for their own happiness. Now we only made a small group of people happy, yes the people who still play wow and an ever shrinking group because we killed the social aspect and grouping aspect of MMO RPGs.
To all you people who think about O WELL FORCE GROUPING IS BAD AND DIDNT WORK or FORCING PEOPLE TO WORK TOGETHER SUCKS. Well I will tell you something. Why is it that All these Triple A MMOs are stopping development and Developers who have worked on Projects like UO, EQ, SWG and Hell even Vanilla WOW are working on New MMOs that Force you to group or work with other players? YEP thats right because thats what MMOs are and will be built on. Not streamlining everyone into the same content and making them all happy. It just does not work. It sounds like Blizzard is finally getting some of this, the problem is they do not or will not go far enough. Like Ripping out LFD/LFR (Yes keep the new LFG tool where players can browse for groups and people to group with), cutting down on the number of raid difficulties, and continue trying make each class feel different, Plus add CC requirements in instances. I know I would come back as well as 20+ other people and all but me ever really use forums for our voice, they all just quit playing the game and left. So yes the Vocal Minority like this people who dont want to change WOW and want LFR dont understand they are really the minority of MMOs not the majority. Just the Majority stopped paying.
If this was not true how is it that during the time WOW was the most Group Focused and no streamlining of grouping people together was there 11.5 Million and growing population vs peaking at 12 Million with LFD and then falling. I tell you no its not because WOW got old. Its because WOW killed Socialization and Grouping the core of MMOs, for a vocal minority who wanted what they have today. With an ever decreasing population
Prior to LFD, you had to build a PUG with your server. You quickly learned who was good, and who was bad. You then only joined those people you wanted to group with. You also had to travel to the dungeons ( or have a lock in the group).
LFD blew it away.... it gave you no ability to filter out idiots, not to mention you now pulled from a larger pool from more servers.
Then to "fix" this... Blizzard nerfed the dynamic to be about mass pulling and AE DPS. Out went CC, out went social... it became PULL, PULL, PULL ....faceroll... roll loot... k bye thx
The genre needs to get back to the trinity being Tank,Heal,CC....
SBFord,
While you have a point there I think you are missing the core of what people are missing with Vanilla. Take me for example, my first MMO was UO in 1998, this is before T2A and all that. Yet I will not say O WOW I want to be on a Pre T2A server and all that. Nope I think some of the changes from UO was best after T2A for a lot of reasons. However I did start hating UO when they brought Pub 16 in when they changed resistances and had gear with different resistances and all that junk. Why? Because if broke the core parts of the game and for a lot of people because over the course of 1 year UO lost 2/3rds of its population. For example when I was a bard around 85% Provok I was able to solo the Shadow Wyrm room, AFTER the change I was back barely Provoking Dragons and sometimes had to go to Provoking Earth, Air and Water Elemental. This was done to change core game play. People hated it.
Now when I talk about WOW I am not talking with rose tinted glasses on because WOW is not my first MMO. I am not longing for all the greatness of my first MMO. When I talk about Vanilla WOW and TBC WOW I talk about you needing to step up and take responsibility for your game advancement and enjoyment. I also talk about requiring you to work well within a group. I also bring up requiring CC, and having a focus on your class\spec\build. I also talk about not having things handed to you. I know I am 100% correct when I say that when all of these factors changed starting in WOTLK that MMOs started to turn down a path that would lead to what we have today. I am correct you only have to look at what is going on with new kickstarter MMOs many of which have developers that created some of the first MMOs. Why are these new MMOs going back to old school designs? Because the current design and path of MMOs DO NOT work.
So what are some of the things people want from vanilla WOW? Well when you have a group you have 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS and the 3 DPS you split between Long CC, Short CC and maybe an Off Tank like a Feral Druid, or a Ret Pally. The need to socialize and meet people because you would rarely get in a group other wise. Players who played in Raids and in 5 Man groups have specific roles, for example My long time friend use to play a Mage, his role was always revolved around CC and he knew that was his first priority not maximizing numbers and rotations. Other things were running to a Dungeon. Yes I know this seems silly but it did make the world feel full, the summoning stones even being added was a good thing, or other summoning methods could be added to help reduce down time. The queuing in really pushes the game to a lobby based game.
Now what are some of the things today that could help out get rid of the old school WOW grinds. Having 7 to 10 allotted dungeon quest that give a ton of Experience which would reduce the leveling time in Vanilla WOW down to a few months vs 6+ months? Having guild weekly challenges that revolve around leveling that give double XP of achieved but done by toons of the same level. Also if done with a new player the doubled XP becomes Tripled and if done by a guild smaller than 50 Accounts you get 4 times the XP.
Again these are things that we could do to FIX some of the harshness of vanilla WOW yet not all of the grind should be taken out of an MMO. Like Fishing in WOW. Sometimes should be a pain but are not required. We can learn a lot from Vanilla WOW and TBC yet we choose not to because when its brought up we talk about people and their tinted glasses yet today's answer is obviously failing and other mechanics of WOW are emerging for new MMOs. So we need to stop being stupid about Vanilla and TBC WOW and learn our lessons and move into the next Phase of MMOs, but we are not going to do that at least not until more time goes by.
BINGO! This is why today's MMOs are in the shitter. LFD\LFR, vs getting people to group naturally which happened before LFD\LFR. You know how I know, I did countless groups before these tools ever hit MMOS. O and I can remember times when I use to have training dungeon runs for a Lock who was new to MMOs. I can also go on and talk about a Hunter who was new to MMOs in TBC when TBC hit and by the end he was in Sunwell, I helped him learn how to play with the little time I had.
All these events are more enjoyable than any time I had after LFD. Why? Because I remember countless bad groups not that players were bad more that there were more trolls and ass holes. I remember one group where we just zoned in the Healer said AFK 1 minute door, then the DPS switched to Feral and started tanking. I was called a bad tank because he raced ahead of me and his friend started to heal. After that started the healer and other DPS started bitching that these 2 for being ass holes we then left the run, shortly after that Druid jumped on my server and started talking shit to me I ignored them quickly. I remember a bad Violet hold run where a person queued as a tank came in and switched to Ret and said someone else has to tank he only queued as a tank because a fast queue. Yet there was not another person who could tank. Then he started to pull said I got this Ret then and we wiped.
Why do I hate LFD because the trash LFD started. Yes there were bad groups in before LFD however for me they were fewer and farther between because you learned more about the people you were playing with and didnt have convenience tools so people didnt just tell you to queue for it. OR they didnt die once and quit. LFD started bad habits.
Why? So you could use the same cookie cutter build ~100% people used?
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
So far the only crafting element is gathering. Blizzard's keeping that one under wraps so far.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember them days, trying find a tank or healer 2 hours later spamming in world/zone chat. Thats problem with MMO with out a dungeon finder.
Hyperbole much? You really don't know unless you are in the current alpha (even then things will likely change before release). Skill bloat and redundant abilities are not fun. The current specs rotations are usually 8-12 active abilities with a handful of special situation only abilities. From what i've read about the alpha, there are no classes using only 3-4 skills.
While you have a small point Zaberfangx, LFD ruined MMOs period. LFD single handedly killed the social aspect of MMOs and making people learn how to make friends. Sorry but its too bad if you couldnt get a group. The ONLY time I had problems getting groups were at odd hours like 2am. I ran guilds and maintained a friends list and could always find friends wanting to do things. That is the main pillar MMOs are built on and once you take that away MMOS become a pile of crap.
Now Yes Yelling in open chat for a full group was a pain. The ONLY fix that needed to happen was added a much better group finder tool. Take the new LFG tool in WOW, or FFXIV's Party Finder. These tools back before LFD if built like they are today could have fixed grouping for the better without throwing the social aspect out of MMOs. You didnt need LFD ever. If you say you did then you dont belong playing MMOS because you were never meant for the genera because the social side is the key to MMOs. You see what MMOS become today a pile of crap.
I completely disagree, it was from the time BLizzard gave the opportunity to people to solo all the content by dumping down the dfifficulty on everything game started becoming worse.
Blizzard untill mid WOTlk forced u in a way to group up for specific activities or quests. ANd this is how it should be, to enhance communication through players and create friendships. the system u describe with solo content is what destroyed games, having to party for some specific goals outside raiding its paramount for any MMORPG
ANd this guy above is why WoW sucks nowdays
SO whats the freaking point of 10 druids doing 10 man raids.This is an MMORPG class diversion is the most important thing.Each groups can compensate in different way, enh shamans were sort of useless in PVE back tov anilla but we always picked 1 or due to their enhanced totems talent and we put em in the melee group, it wasnt just ''whos the most op class''. This diversion was the beauty of the game, no 10 freaking classes having the same buffs as it is now, which is beyond pathetic
EVeryone was feeling sort of special because it had some unique abilities. ''bring the player''? THere is no such thing as hard mechanics, its all about raid coordination and synergy between a raid, mechanics/reflexes is the CSGO
WoW is a big game, Social aspect is more on the community side of things people are toxic all around, and people like to avoid it. Just blaming only on LFD will not save any problem just add to it. If blizzard trying get more people back in the game, they need people playing not standing around for 2 hours thinking that makes things social. Just add more less needed spam.
Every expansion runs into the same problem, no endgame. Legion should focus 90% on loading up the endgame content. None of this single small raid BS every expansion has been launching with. Stamping a heroic and mythic sticker on everything is NOT a replacement for content. Yes garrisons were a bad MMO idea. Sure classes are too self sufficient. Yes the world pvp was garbage yet again. None of that would have mattered if it was packed with content but it never is. Hell you couldn't even explore the entire tiny map until a year post launch.
Its a huge mistake to make all the classes fit the same format.
People are different and desire different things from classes..
Including the way they play..
As an old timer i have allways loved games with atleast 3 bars of abbilities and finding way of utillizing all of them in my gameplay..
The way blizzard is going is like giving people 3 abbiltiies....
there is abutton to heal
there is a button to dps
there is a button to grab agro
choose your button of favor..
for me MMO´s used to be about character building and being different from others.. if anyone knows an MMO that still allows this in combination with a few dozen skills please tell me...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
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If they start again FORCED grouping, well there will be at least 1 lesss to sub and pay. For long now Wow has been SOLOABLE and I LOVE that. If somebody want to group, nobody prevent him and for that we have a lot of dungeons. It is win-win situation.
I enjoyed WOD, well that little content it had. I have spent 7-8 months to level all my alliance alts, with WOD something around 2 as I remember. Good indicator how much they have just increased XP gain. For me Wotlk is still best expansion but very closely followed by MOP.
1. no housing. it sucks and prevents socializing
2. no flying with some exceptions but not near capital cities else they feel emtpy
3. make tier gear,a player's goal and distinguishable when you look at a player.No Transmogrify when you wear tier gear.Dont award tier gear in LFR
4. Make dungeons relevant again, harder and likely to require some cc. That means that you have to revisit them for badge currency, better gear and to activate some gear imbuement (like wildstar)
5. Create epic elf tall ceiling raids like TBC :P i loved those! I remember feeling awe when I was inside!
6. Create an very long epic class storyline to have something to do when not raiding/grouping
7. incetivise some factions wars, like those when we had to kill factions bosses to get the war mount!
that was cool!