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WoW players saying good bye
noxiel
Member Posts: 48
Yesterday some good friends were discussing how WoW started to say bye bye to it's original fan base, and these were the main conclussions.
1) It wasn't fun to have the T1 and T1.5 as difficult as it was to get it and then at the expansion easy drop greens were better. An expansion should make a game more appealing bringing new content but not make it a new game or transform an old one into an easier game. BTW is know BC brought WoW a lot of good new players, but still the fan core base began to play a new game with their old character in an easier setting.
2) By promoting elitist groups, Blizzard made a horrible comunity. At the beguining of the game the people were the best bunch there were at any MMO. Now WoW is a place where kids(I have nothing against them) and ____________(Insert an insult there, I know how I call them and we all know them) began to shine not by skill but by how many hours they play and how they spearate themselves from other groups. This is the truth WoW is currently played by kids who will grow out of the game eventually and by a bunch of ____________________ that make the game an unpleasnt experience. This ________________ are the persons that make the world a horrible place, they know nothing about life and don't understand that WoW is just a game to have a great time.
3) WoW became easier by the patch. Don't get me wrong a difficcult grinding game as Aion (best eye candy ever) isn't what wow needed but still a PvP oriented game (Horde vs Alliance) at the classic level went down when BC expansion came and subsequent patching and expansions made it easier. Lets see last patch, where the ultimate boss of Cat exp Deadwing came, was dead the same day the patch came out.
4) Same monsters different size and colors or a horn more or an antena there is just the same thing. Cat exp idea of a world turned upside down was a good one but please VC Again, Onixia again? What is that. Same mosnters every were in each of the other expansions. There are Murlocs the color of the raimbow and all sizes. They are becoming laizy.
5) PvP changed in the game in a form that as we play WoW we play 2 different games one that is PvE and one that is PvP. That's not the original mix and its not great, it maybe good for those who ennjoy different activities but this is not how the game began and I know more people, if guiven the experience would enjoy what I'm expressing. It wasn't necesary to separate the PvP and the PvE to the point it is today.
6) Old age. 7 years is a lot of time. WoW is and will be a pillar in MMO history and development but is an old. WoW will eventually diminish and it was at its peak a long time ago. I humbly think that after the isladnd of Q patch before Lich King was the peak of WoW, there could be a debate there but this would not change the fact that WoW is suffering from old age.
7) And Last. Chuck Noris? MR. T? actually this is good for WoW it guive some life to it. Not a reason to say for its demise but its so funny it needs to be mentioned.
Comments
Wow is the smoothest/polished game made to date. You can pick it up and play a couple hours without wierd clunkyness. So many new games out and coming out that just cant get that right. Thats the appeal. Really.
But you did hit it on the head with alot of your statements. The game doesn't cater to those looking for a challenge. If that was the case the 4 million kids that play after 3pm would have gave up and would be xboxingitliveftw .
It is and will always be the fall back game for the serious gamer and be the go to game for the person wanting a couple hours of brain release.
P.S. It wasnt a post about Star Wars !!!! Way to be!!
I enjoyed the game din't wanted to sound that it was WoW diying thread more of a what is bringing the game to rest, maybe. Still a strong game. I'm not a hater.
As another WoW Vanilla player of 6.5 years, I understand these sentiments all too well.
If you look at a chart of WoW subs, such as MMOData, you can see the skyrocketing popularity of the game from the beginning through BC, and a plateau over the life of Wrath, and a marked decline a few weeks after Cataclysm.
The way I characterize the reason is: How much can you change a thing that people love, until it stops being what they fell in love with?
The e-sports mentality that drove arena and pvp and all the class balance nightmares, which changed the complextion of world pvp in the game.
So many said Cata was easier, that's complete BS. Would GC say at blizzcon, people don't want to wipe 100 times on a boss, we get that; if they made pve easier? No, they made it harder to cater to an elite group of pro pve guilds.
Now you get a change that just sets people's teeth on edge because it's abandonment of the fantasy genre. Tauren were a mistake in my opinion, they should have made dark elves or goblins first when they were trying to come up with enough 'evil' races to match the 'good' races in the game. Spacegoats, stupid, but antother mis-step that could be forgiven. Worgen, already prevelant in the game, though the lore was exposed only through a brief questline in duskwood, bearable.
But an entire expansion on a single cultural style, especially one that is so out of place in a fantasy genre. Imagine plopping MoP into middle earth, you would say WTF is going on here? Because Warcraft was basically modelled on Tolkein Fantasy. I see Illidan as a Balrog, demonic, winged, horned, fire using. Arthas, originally good, turned evil, as a version of Sauron, deathwing a proxy for Smaug. Gnomes, that lived underground, a standin for hobbits. If you removed the tauren, spacegoats, and worgan, it would be perfect fantasy of the style of Tolkein.
But this expansion removes any possibility of maintaining that illusion in my mind, combined with all the other changes in mechanics, playstyle etc...
This IS NOT the same game I fell in love with, and I don't love it anymore because of that.
I dont know what it would be called but if anyone remembers the movie Wargames when the computer is learning it finally gets to the point where it stops and says , "Interesting game Dr Falken, the only winning move is not to play"
Thats how I feel about wow. I could go into a billion , yes a billion, reasons why I think this or that or blah blah but in the end it is that feeling above that made me walk away from about 6 years of wow raiding. Tomorrow I can raid and get xx gear piece and then the day after i can raid and get xx gear piece and then guess what for the new xpansion!!!!! I can level up and then raid and ......you guessed it ...get xx gear piece. PASS. Pandas? Who cares the fukn pandas will have to get xx gear piece just like any other character.
lol
Very good point. (Leading paragraph - I understand the opinion stated in the 2nd part)
Truth is I don't think WoW was ever meant to be a game you could 'Win'. Like any Themepark (IRL or on computer) you don't use it to get anywhere or accomplish anything other than just have fun. The crowds, the 'rides'/features and overall convience & atmosphere of the park play into that purpose as well as the price of admission/accessibility. Challenge is a matter of preferance, extreme challenge is a barrier to what many [why its considered 'extreme'] would consider entertaining and also subjective as there are numerous forms/types of challenge.
Some previous MMO games could be won (had no endgame) and that was probably seen as a flaw. Honestly, endgame is basically a whole other game and like any game will be of subjective value to the player/buyer {the main downside being you can't actually see endgame til you get to it to judge it}.
@OP - yeah I recall hearing a lot of those points.
Basically the game started moving away from what a lot of the initial players liked and were comfortable with towards things they didn't like or were comfortable with. Consequently, pulling in player crowds (with different views/expectations/behaviour) that enhanced that feeling of discomfort or forced them to deal with things they weren't interested in dealing with. Not unusual in any sense of the word, in fact it seems to be hard to avoid without the game stagnating or breaking.
Excellent good way to express the feeling.
WoW is old simple as that. It cannot continue forever but Blizzard has done enough right to keep it going and growing for the majority of it's life span, no other MMO has acheived that.
I don't agree with everything Blizz has done, flyimg mounts, move away from world PvP etc but the changes they have made are for the majority not the minority and it's worked.
I'm probably done with WoW untill the expac but I'll be back as will millions more, if only for a few months.
Defnatly not the same game it was 7 years ago . I always knew it would have to evolve to remain popular but I think what killed it for me was the cross server looking for a group system because world pvp died . I left as a regular player about 3 years ago but I returned now and then for a couple of months or so a year . This year however I've been playing Rift most of the time and am now playing StarWars TOR . Given I am totally turned of by MOP I cant ever see myself subscribing again now . I've got two other mmos I'm enjoying more not to mention a ton of f2play mmos I would like to try out . I probably will return for old times sake and play the free welcome back offers and play a few bgs . After all i ve played a total of 44 days for free this year with such offers .
Bye WoW, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, and take Chuck Norris with you.
These threads about WoW dying are way too premature, especially if its in the light of TOR.
TOR is having a good launch, however people are too eager to jump to conclusions. An example of this would be a thread on the first day of early access here at mmorpg.com where a thread was made saying TOR has epic failed already because the severs were all low population, and then the heavy ques came and the full to bursting servers.
Concerning WoW and its age, Everquest is still going. Everquest, not Everquest 2 is over 12 years old, has 18 expansion packs and has landed itself a place in the Game Developers Hall of Fame.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/10/13/everquest-joins-ultima-online-in-gdcoas-hall-of-fame/
Not only that but SOE has stated that they still plan to keep Everquest going for a long time. If anybody is questioning who actually plays Everquest, would SOE release constant expansion packs if they didn't? Its not like Vanguard which recieves next to no updates. Also, if Everquest 2 cannot kill its predecessor what makes people think SWTOR will kill WoW? 10 million subs is a lot to shave off an already well established game with a lot of content to get through, especially when its just launched, and with nowhere near the volume of content as a fully fleshed out MMO thats been on the market a few years.
If people are still playing Everquest and even Ultima Online and actually paying subscription for it then people will still be paying for WoW whether its sub based or cash shop based for a few years yet. WoW will evolve and upgrade its graphics modestly ever now and then and i don't even think the unknown Titan will fully kill WoW. When you get a nice new game a chunk of players will leave, and another chunk and another until you are left with a core fan base who truly love the game. Everquest, Ultima and WoW has its hardcore fans and those are the ones that are in it for the long haul, no matter what new shiny product enters the market.
You guys are really overdoing it with this threads...
WoW and it's doom began with WOTLK. Core players mostly left with WOTLK and if not, then they sure did when Cata hit the stores (I know about 50% of ppl I knew who were playing since vanilla left almost right after WOTLK, and another 30% of them left with Cata [as I did too]).. So there still is some small number of core players but it's dieing pretty quickly because the game is getting boring and dull... The same thing over and over, it's been way too long.
WOW will stay the most known game in the history of MMORPGs probably for a very long period of time. And it sure deserves it, 7 years is A LOT! seriously, A LOT!... But you must understand this: Blizz will keep making content for wow as long as they have ppl who wants to play them. So as soon as the market is fed up with wow, they'll drop the game and that's pretty much their logic.
Well, the point is - wow will not die as long as it has ppl who are willing to pay for the content and really want to keep playing the game. They will make the game content for them. Yes it might loose a bit more players over time because it's simply just old, but hey it's still doing fine (around 10 mill subs, don't know how many in asia there is subs but you get the picture). As much as we want it to die so we can get our hands on some new mmorpg from blizzard, sadly it wont happen that soon
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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I always wonder, were these people playing the same game I was?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You are right I left right before Cata, because I knew it would be horrendous. But I don't think people left out of boredom, I don't think static gameplay is why people left. It's because they changed what the core player group liked about the game in the first place. This has been proved time and time and time and time again, you do not alienate your Core player group. And the core players for WOW from Vanilla to BC were mostly casual PVE and Casual PVPers, with a small group of people who wanted hardcore raids and competitve pvp. It was stress free but it could bend or get harded depending on your playstyle if you wanted to do the one percent or raid content no one else could, you could do that, or be an Arena champion and what not. No one wanted premade classes or prefabs, if they had wanted that, thats what the game would have been from the beginning. Now GC cant decide which group of players to make the angriest. He either ruins the core dynamics of the stats, talents and skill trees to the point of it being a 2D asian grinder. I mean as of the next expansion, WOW will have less options on skills than MU online, thats pretty sad. They also keep trying really hard to make casual pvper very very angry, and casual pvpers are the Reason WOW crushed EQ2 in the first place, because lets face it, on release WOW didn't have all that much end game content. He has also managed to aggrevate the Hard core PVEers, who make up a small yet stable and elite core of the game, same with hard core pvpers, something for the new players to strive for.
So lets go over GCs many mistakes.
Dont mess with casual pvp
Dont ruin pvp mechanics to make scaling PVE easier so you can relax.
Dont Ruin PVE raids to scale to Arenas, actually leave the system the way it was, hey it worked right before didn't it, at least sort of.
Dont use your expansion to ruin the core areas of the game that kept attracting new players, like you did with CATA. If it had needed fixing they would have let you design it.
Homonginize much? You have different classes for a reason, because people want to play an mmorpg for other reasons than sitting in a dungeion doing dps readouts. Also some people actually liked crowd control, for other reasons than raiding.
Pandas are stupid, and so are Alliance Werewolves.
Dont make new classes and then to justify their existence steal the skills from other classes and give it to them, genious.
Don't dumb down the game so no one other than the most devoted followers and young children will play it.
WOW never needed stat and total overhauls on how the game is played, what wow needed was content updates, maybe a few new talents per expansion, and I dont think they ever should have capped over level 70. They were pushing the envelope on BC on stats in the first place, which they could have balanced at that poing but GC chose to break the system and rebuild it rather than use what had always worked. The game is no longer a casual funfest of town ganking, world pvp, competive pvp, battlegrounds without dumb timers, summonong elite demons on top of towns, all the fun intangibles were removed in place of dull overbalanceing, which is not evne possible in holy trinity anyway. Just breaking the same egg over and over again. I really question the presense of mind to do a major expansion so soon after BC with the issues that were budding at the time. I guess it was greed but WOTLK was just a mistake, and DKs were another one.
I know thats a rant but it really just is not the same game anymore, not even close, I don't know why they let GC run out of control for so long, he is vindictive, hates pvp, and even dislikes certain classes, that guy has no business running things.
This is a good post. If EQ1 is being kept running and developed for, and seeing the longetivity of Blizzard's other games, I don't see why people think WoW is going to die anytime soon, whether it is Rift or ToR that is supposedly going to do it. I think that WoW will continue to be played for a long time.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.