I'm enjoying this expac for the most part. There are a lot of improvements, and the game play hasn't gotten stagnant. I'd like to see Blizz do away with gryphons, and incorporate portals everywhere, like they did in Argus. Who wants to spend 3 minutes twiddling their thumbs flying from Dalaran to Highmountain? Everyone loves the flight whistle, and we need one for Argus too. Those huge Class halls seem like their real purpose is just to waste your time, having to go all over the place to start/pickup troops, armaments, etc. Also, the game needs to play faster, be more engaging, and get rid of all the unproductive time sinks. Finally, I hope Blizz gives us an option to disable those annoying World Quest screen pop-ups. I've been playing since Vanilla, and I enjoy the game, but it could be so much better !!
TBH I cried for Vol'jin, and then quit a month later. Too much grind to be able to do what I want.
Vol'Jin's death was a lore travesty. He is...well, was...one of the oldest remaining characters from the original games and deserved better than he got.
Good article, summarizes many things that made me quit after no less than 12 years raiding at pretty much the near-top level. The RNG and the grind were just too much. I will never forget losing 1/4 of my roster during Emerald Nightmare because there was no way to target BiS legendaries that enabled their specs. My best mage, with top world logs, got Prydaz and Belovir first. He quit, with a job and family he didn't have the time to roll endless alts until the right stuff dropped.
And then in ToV/NH, another 1/4 quit due to having to grind AP, and for many, OTHER legendaries that were now BiS. Felt like a wild goose chase, all for nothing, just loss of time.
Been many months now, and I am so happy I got rid of WoW. Loved the game, but it is no longer the WoW that it used to be. Good riddance!
I really wonder at times who is the demographic is that is left playing this game? I logged onto my character the other day and my server Emerald Dream, which is one of the bigger servers, felt like a ghost town.
Strongly disagree with the 3rd. Also, I was surprisingly enjoying Artifacts
Open leveling zones are fine. Open leveling zones without the thread of a cohesive story line are not.
I guess?
I felt that things were fine, personally, and there were separate stories all leading towards one(well two) major goal of uniting the Broken Isles and finding the Pillars of Creation. Some stories were left open, or set up raids, dungeons, whatever, and some characters had their own motivations beyond the Legion, but I didn't find myself in any way confused as to what was going on. They were leaving many questions in the air for future storylines, and yada yada. Then we kept moving through the story to fight and defeat the Legion and we'll have to wait for more from the others in the next expansion.
That being said, I always read up on the lore, watch youtubers speculating on it and all that good stuff, so I'm probably a bit biased. With all the speculation going on as to what's going to come, and even connecting the dots to figure out how we truly got here; WoW is in a really fun place for lore.
TBH I cried for Vol'jin, and then quit a month later. Too much grind to be able to do what I want.
Vol'Jin's death was a lore travesty. He is...well, was...one of the oldest remaining characters from the original games and deserved better than he got.
Meh, killed by random trash mob is exact fate Failjin deserved.
I'm enjoying this expac for the most part. There are a lot of improvements, and the game play hasn't gotten stagnant. I'd like to see Blizz do away with gryphons, and incorporate portals everywhere, like they did in Argus. Who wants to spend 3 minutes twiddling their thumbs flying from Dalaran to Highmountain? Everyone loves the flight whistle, and we need one for Argus too. Those huge Class halls seem like their real purpose is just to waste your time, having to go all over the place to start/pickup troops, armaments, etc. Also, the game needs to play faster, be more engaging, and get rid of all the unproductive time sinks. Finally, I hope Blizz gives us an option to disable those annoying World Quest screen pop-ups. I've been playing since Vanilla, and I enjoy the game, but it could be so much better !!
You get an upgrade to your whistle by getting revered with argarssian reach or whatever they are called, which is kind stupid that its not an account wide unlock since its takes forever to do and you need to get it that high if you want it on every character.
Good article. I can't disagree with your points at all, but I don't think WoW can be "fixed" at this point. I can still have fun in small bursts playing it, of course, but I'm left wondering how much of that is just nostalgia and a love of the story. Blizzard lost me for good in WoD, and not for the reasons it did most players.
Honestly, WoW feels like a F2P game for which we pay a sub. That free to play philosophy seems to dominate their decisions these days. Take the mission board as a good example. This mission has 3 days, 16 hours, and 5 minutes left. All that's missing is the "Finish this mission now for 750 BlizzPoints." There is already a plethora of recolored mounts in the game, but many of the unique ones are in the store for 25 bucks. The artifact system in general would easily lend itself to a f2p system. 10 Billion AP token for 1000 BlizzPoints (this item applies to all specs). Just a few examples.
Then again, maybe it's me. Vanilla WoW consumed me when it came out 12 years ago, and 24 year old me was a very different person than 36 year old me, so maybe I desire the impossible. Still though, it's hard to deny that Blizzard's design philosophy concerning World of Warcraft has changed a lot, and it's that fundamental change in design approach that I just can't stomach about WoW anymore. I really hope they can bring it back to the feeling of old, but let's just say I'm not holding my breath.
Going back to a theory I had some time ago (since I mainly do this with WoW and FFXIV when sub to them randomly for a month or so every so often), but I believe large part only play the game for 2 reasons: 1) the population and 2) the potential. As long as both games have the highest populations in the mmorpg genre and both use PR words to get people hyped up to keep the population high, people will keep giving them money. Only way "true change" will happen is if something polar opposite comes through and sucks the population up. I mean the only reason FFXIV was able to revive itself and is because 75% of the game is cloned from wow just with better graphics, which is honestly what you hear a lot of people complain about wow ("I want to get into the game but the graphics are kind of kiddy and old now").
TBH I cried for Vol'jin, and then quit a month later. Too much grind to be able to do what I want.
Vol'Jin's death was a lore travesty. He is...well, was...one of the oldest remaining characters from the original games and deserved better than he got.
Meh, killed by random trash mob is exact fate Failjin deserved.
I stopped enjoying the game (and as a consequence stopped playing it) because or "crits" in gear drops. Grinding lower level content in hopes for a piece of gear to get higher level is a killjoy for me, specifically doing trivial content over and over and the fact that one feels compelled to do it in order to keep up. So I do agree fully on the RNG point, although for a different reason.
The "Legion" point though.... There has been so much bitching for almost a decade about how the players want more burning legion, and now one of the pivotal points for WoW's future is to stop catering to them? Jebus allmighty can players make up their flimsy minds about what they want with WOW?
The way they killed off Vol'jin was just plain wrong. I loved him from when I first saw him as a Troll. I decided not to follow their story any more. I actually read the old stories up and was invested in the lore. They just damaged everything I loved.
Are we really expecting anything different anymore? Wasnt it leaked that players were paving the way to Argus at the end of this expansion? If true there is going to be more Fel green crap everywhere next expansion.
Are we really expecting anything different anymore? Wasnt it leaked that players were paving the way to Argus at the end of this expansion? If true there is going to be more Fel green crap everywhere next expansion.
All I want is Blizzard to make vanilla WoW a spin-off product and license it/ operate it again because there is no way I'm getting back to this mess of a game that they have now...
I kind of echo the same as someone earlier in the thread in that, "People still play this game?"
The "stylized" graphics are just too cartoony and boring to me at this point. To me it evokes a laziness from the developers that is inexcusable with the billions that Blizz makes.
The lore in my opinion has been crapped on way to hard to even have a possibility of being turned around.
The difficulty has been dumbed down to simply being a matter of RNG, timesinks, and grinding. That is a moronic form of difficulty, if it can even be called that. I liked what someone else said that we should just wake up in Shattrath at level 70 and the lore should be that we fell asleep and had a really bad dream.
Then you have what someone earlier in the thread explained that he got his demon hunter to max level and 906 ilvl in 3 weeks and his friends who have played for months are pissed off. This is again inexcusable. No one should be able to accomplish months worth of work in 3 weeks time.
The idea of being able to catch up so quickly is simply an epidemic we are facing in the MMO genre. One that Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen seems to be aiming to remedy.
This game is just exhausted. It's a tired old race horse that needs to be put down, but the owner just won't let go. I honestly believe that WoW is actually stagnating, or at least helping to stagnate, the genre as a whole.
Once this game is put to rest it will disperse the MMO playing population to other games and present a void that will pull in companies to try to fill as quickly as possible, which in turn, will drive progress on next-gen MMOs.
Every time they come out with a new expansion it just lets other companies and even Blizz itself know, "not to even try". Why would a company try hard when they re guaranteed box sales.
The biggest problem with artifacts isn't the system they use to level the weapon up. I actually like that. The problem is that the reward for grinding becomes so cumbersome (especially since the crucible was introduced) that you don't even want to do it anymore. There is no "cap" put on leveling that thing, which means I have no time for alts and no time for achievement hunting. Really nothing other than my main spec artifact.
The other thing that boggles the mind is that I have gotten to a 928 ilvl by doing nothing but Broken Shore and Argus. That means that, at this point, I have to do Mythics and (dungeons and raids) to upgrade my gear...but in order to even come close to getting a decent chance at an upgrade (not counting RNG upgrades), I have to either do Mythic Tomb of Sargeras or Mythic 10+ dungeons (and the modifiers can be so hard depending on the FotW...bolstering/grievous are ridiculous). That's great, but now I am jumping into dungeons that I hardly know and people get upset if you don't know all the "right" packs to pull. Sounds like I'm complaining about difficulty, but really I'm complaining that you can get to iLvl 928 without ever touching a dungeon or raid (which would provide the needed experience) but then are expected to do dungeons and/or raids at the high level once you exhaust the open world resources.
This game is just exhausted. It's a tired old race horse that needs to be put down, but the owner just won't let go. I honestly believe that WoW is actually stagnating, or at least helping to stagnate, the genre as a whole.
Why would an owner put his race horse down when it's still making him millions and millions of dollars?
The next expansion can start with everyone waking up in Shattrath at level 70 again and just call it all one big bad dream.
I agree. That would get me back. I enjoyed WotLK for the most part, but once they removed all character customization and ability trees, and locked stats down per class, it was all down hill after that. The completely gave over to the console mentality and formulaic gameplay.
Comments
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
And then in ToV/NH, another 1/4 quit due to having to grind AP, and for many, OTHER legendaries that were now BiS. Felt like a wild goose chase, all for nothing, just loss of time.
Been many months now, and I am so happy I got rid of WoW. Loved the game, but it is no longer the WoW that it used to be. Good riddance!
I guess?
I felt that things were fine, personally, and there were separate stories all leading towards one(well two) major goal of uniting the Broken Isles and finding the Pillars of Creation. Some stories were left open, or set up raids, dungeons, whatever, and some characters had their own motivations beyond the Legion, but I didn't find myself in any way confused as to what was going on. They were leaving many questions in the air for future storylines, and yada yada. Then we kept moving through the story to fight and defeat the Legion and we'll have to wait for more from the others in the next expansion.
That being said, I always read up on the lore, watch youtubers speculating on it and all that good stuff, so I'm probably a bit biased. With all the speculation going on as to what's going to come, and even connecting the dots to figure out how we truly got here; WoW is in a really fun place for lore.
Honestly, WoW feels like a F2P game for which we pay a sub. That free to play philosophy seems to dominate their decisions these days. Take the mission board as a good example. This mission has 3 days, 16 hours, and 5 minutes left. All that's missing is the "Finish this mission now for 750 BlizzPoints." There is already a plethora of recolored mounts in the game, but many of the unique ones are in the store for 25 bucks. The artifact system in general would easily lend itself to a f2p system. 10 Billion AP token for 1000 BlizzPoints (this item applies to all specs). Just a few examples.
Then again, maybe it's me. Vanilla WoW consumed me when it came out 12 years ago, and 24 year old me was a very different person than 36 year old me, so maybe I desire the impossible. Still though, it's hard to deny that Blizzard's design philosophy concerning World of Warcraft has changed a lot, and it's that fundamental change in design approach that I just can't stomach about WoW anymore. I really hope they can bring it back to the feeling of old, but let's just say I'm not holding my breath.
Lemme guess..."For the Alliance" amiright?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The "Legion" point though.... There has been so much bitching for almost a decade about how the players want more burning legion, and now one of the pivotal points for WoW's future is to stop catering to them? Jebus allmighty can players make up their flimsy minds about what they want with WOW?
The "stylized" graphics are just too cartoony and boring to me at this point. To me it evokes a laziness from the developers that is inexcusable with the billions that Blizz makes.
The lore in my opinion has been crapped on way to hard to even have a possibility of being turned around.
The difficulty has been dumbed down to simply being a matter of RNG, timesinks, and grinding. That is a moronic form of difficulty, if it can even be called that. I liked what someone else said that we should just wake up in Shattrath at level 70 and the lore should be that we fell asleep and had a really bad dream.
Then you have what someone earlier in the thread explained that he got his demon hunter to max level and 906 ilvl in 3 weeks and his friends who have played for months are pissed off. This is again inexcusable. No one should be able to accomplish months worth of work in 3 weeks time.
The idea of being able to catch up so quickly is simply an epidemic we are facing in the MMO genre. One that Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen seems to be aiming to remedy.
This game is just exhausted. It's a tired old race horse that needs to be put down, but the owner just won't let go. I honestly believe that WoW is actually stagnating, or at least helping to stagnate, the genre as a whole.
Once this game is put to rest it will disperse the MMO playing population to other games and present a void that will pull in companies to try to fill as quickly as possible, which in turn, will drive progress on next-gen MMOs.
Every time they come out with a new expansion it just lets other companies and even Blizz itself know, "not to even try". Why would a company try hard when they re guaranteed box sales.
The other thing that boggles the mind is that I have gotten to a 928 ilvl by doing nothing but Broken Shore and Argus. That means that, at this point, I have to do Mythics and (dungeons and raids) to upgrade my gear...but in order to even come close to getting a decent chance at an upgrade (not counting RNG upgrades), I have to either do Mythic Tomb of Sargeras or Mythic 10+ dungeons (and the modifiers can be so hard depending on the FotW...bolstering/grievous are ridiculous). That's great, but now I am jumping into dungeons that I hardly know and people get upset if you don't know all the "right" packs to pull. Sounds like I'm complaining about difficulty, but really I'm complaining that you can get to iLvl 928 without ever touching a dungeon or raid (which would provide the needed experience) but then are expected to do dungeons and/or raids at the high level once you exhaust the open world resources.
I agree. That would get me back. I enjoyed WotLK for the most part, but once they removed all character customization and ability trees, and locked stats down per class, it was all down hill after that. The completely gave over to the console mentality and formulaic gameplay.