JDis25 said:
Problem is they took away the world from WoW. I remember having to actually travel Azeroth, no portals, long flight paths and ship rides. I remember feeling like I was a part of something big. I remember Hillsbrad PvP. I remember Guilds whose roster didn't change every second and served a purpose. I remember running to dungeons, I remember less instancing.
MMOs have become too dependent on endgame, too rushed, too easy, very basic. Go here, go there, kill this guy and move on to the next zone. I had a high hopes for ESO to change this paradigm, I had hopes for many MMOs to change this paradigm, but they never did. Wildstar, ESO, SWTOR, they all added their own uniqueness, but in the end they FEEL the same. Grind for this and that, predictable leveling processes, etc.
^^^^ This.
The entire reason I left WoW ultimately revolved around that fact that the living world of the game is now dead. The need to travel the world and actually use your mount to do anything other than farm herbs and skin creatures is gone. The only thing that even kept anyone in the world in Warlords of Draenor was the treasures that they had to collect. I don't mind so much people being able to fly even in the new zones, but make it so that they have reasons to be on the ground anytime that they're not just flying over to get to another zone. We need more areas like Halaa and Hillsbrad that attracted people to the area for PvP reasons or for other things that they HAD to go to that area for instead of just sitting in the main city and waiting on Dungeon/BG/Arena/Raid Queue's.
Make it so that people can only use the Dungeon Finder tool a maximum of 3 times daily or something so that they either have to get summoned or travel to the Dungeon/Raid themselves using the travel mechanics put in game for that specific reason. Repopulate the zones by adding things that need to be done like back in the day when people were constantly battling in Hellfire and Zangarmarsh to keep control of the Spires or Towers and gain bonuses for their faction while farming currency that they could use to by little useful items from the NPC's.
These things would not be so hard to do, it's just a matter of the Blizzard dev's reopening their imaginations and not just adding in Quests/Dungeons and Items then thinking that will be enough to satisfy the majority of players. Give people more than what you think will satisfy them, give them what you think will not only make them want to play NOW, but what will make them want to play for months and years to come. These were the very things that attracted me to the game and made me change from older MMO's that I previously played to playing WoW in the first place.
lack of content comes from the insta-gratification crowd. That everyone that plays is entitled to see all content and the removal of harder content due to this. So that guilds and players finnish up the raids in like 1 month instead of having to actually work and learn strategies to kill the mobs.
Gone are the days when people tried and tried again with different tactics and things to beat the hardest encounters the games had to offer and actually knew how to play the game and advanced the genre.
If its harder than a faceroll, people will whine. When they beat the, nowadays, nerfed encounters players whine due to too little content. Its a downward spiral.
Is it wow mythic the point of harder content for guilds to be the best? After blizzard puting in some harder content didn't help there number still. Even trying kill off flying mount abit ago didn't go to well with mass amount people they may end up leaving after not trusting blizzard.
But yeah instant gratification is not bad as long it's played right and making it a long road not having any gratification for doing so people drop off still.
lack of content comes from the insta-gratification crowd. That everyone that plays is entitled to see all content and the removal of harder content due to this. So that guilds and players finnish up the raids in like 1 month instead of having to actually work and learn strategies to kill the mobs.
Gone are the days when people tried and tried again with different tactics and things to beat the hardest encounters the games had to offer and actually knew how to play the game and advanced the genre.
If its harder than a faceroll, people will whine. When they beat the, nowadays, nerfed encounters players whine due to too little content. Its a downward spiral.
The majority of players don't want to raid anymore. They don't have a time for the second job.
They don't want forced grouping mechanics nor content. For any modern MMO to be successful it needs a lot of solo content + solo endgame. Not just group endgame. No difference in gear between the Solo and Group endgame either.
Blizz went into WoD with the best Raids WoW's ever had, yet they lost half the players in 6 months, why? Because not enough solo content. Better options for that elsewhere.
If they remade WoW with 'realistic' graphics, revamped content, and didnt charge nearly full price for old expansions, and shut down the current version they would have 20 million subs.
Ehm... Charge nearly full price for old expansions? Wth?
Only last month the base game + every expansion up to (and including) Mists of Pandaria was just 5 bucks. Normally it's only 10-15 or so... so yeah...
Paul Nadin said:
Not one of us will wish we spent more time raiding as the light fades in our twilight years, but for better or worse there was a moment when it became part of me.
Speak for yourself dirty casual! I still regret taking a break from raiding for cata....
If they remade WoW with 'realistic' graphics, revamped content, and didnt charge nearly full price for old expansions, and shut down the current version they would have 20 million subs.
There is no market research to back this up, otherwise Blizzard would have done this already.
Sorry DM, but aren't you the one always plugging Trove? The graphics in that are not very "realistic" in that either.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
People should play singleplayer games then. Solo ruined mmos for me. Solo players should not be able to get raid equivavelent gear in the same way as people who do raid, in my opinion. But I agree on the part of what the masses want nowadays-> instant gratification. People do not want to work for rewards these days. Shines through pretty well in the real world aswell
And they do. More and more every year.
Solo Endgame can be equally challenging as the Group Endgame. The only difference is that the real challenge when it comes to Group Endgame, is from actually finding the right people and motivating them to log in a couple of times per week to Raid for hours. In Solo Endgame it all comes down to how skilled you are, nobody carrying you around.
40-man Raids are practically non-existant anymore. 25-man Raids goodbye as well. 20-man Raids seem to be on a decline too, only the most hardcore guilds can maintain that many people today. So it seems that 10-man Raids are easily the most popular, yet they are still nowhere as popular as the 5-man Dungeons.
The less people are required for an activity the more people will want to do it. Not trying to fool ourselves, it was the same in the old days. Raids were never more popular than Dungeons. Dungeons were never more popular than grinding/questing for the levels etc.
As it seems players always wanted co-op games. Destiny got right the co-op part which is why it's one of the most popular game today, probably even the most profitable one, even though it's far from being a good game.
Besides How come Hack'n'Slash games are never declining? You can either play them solo or co-op. It doesn't require 10-20 players to form a group. Nor does any dungeon there require hours of playtime to get through.
I recently canceled my sub, and I will not be going back. However, I would go back, if they would add a vanilla server, and I don't mean just a 1-60 server I mean a true vanilla server. There was so much more to leveling and raiding back then. Now, with every xpansion it has just become more and more "faceroll" for the win, no thought goes in to it and the only strategy is stay out of the fire and spam your attack and that is it.
I recently canceled my sub, and I will not be going back. However, I would go back, if they would add a vanilla server, and I don't mean just a 1-60 server I mean a true vanilla server. There was so much more to leveling and raiding back then. Now, with every xpansion it has just become more and more "faceroll" for the win, no thought goes in to it and the only strategy is stay out of the fire and spam your attack and that is it.
To me this was a clever way to stretch one of the most popular games in the last decade. Honestly how long would the elitist group of Dungeon/Raid players stuck doing the same thing over and over again? By gradually simplifying gameplay throughout the years they have gathered new players on the way. I love the game, and you are right in that it would be awesome to have vanilla WoW back. I surely do miss those good days.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Vanilla was good BC/WotLK was better Cata sucked MoP was meh, quit halfway through but it did have some good bits WoD never played, knew garrisons would be a bad idea as a focus instead of a optional side game Legion won't play because garrisons 2.0 a.k.a class guilds
OK, So. When WoD released, I think I got to 92 before deciding I'd had enough. Logged off, caneled my sub and never looked back.
Legion isn't particularly on my radar or on my "gotta have" list. But as with all WoW expansions, I do retain an element of curiosity. Without kidding myself, and knowing what I felt last time I played. Has there been any improvement in this game since WoD released? Or is it still exactly the same and if I didn't really like it then, Probably still won't?
I am at a point where I will probably cancel my FFXIV Sub so the options are This game, SWTOR or possibly buy HoT.
Firstly WoW getting to 12mil Subs was just luck (no real competition around at a time), and it was carried over by the huge success of Warcraft 3. Ever since GW2, ESO, SWTOR and FFXIV got released, WoW lost more than half of their Subs. Now yes the last report was at 5.5mil (should be down to 4mil now), however I doubt more than 2mil were from the West. All those MMOs mentioned above have multiple millions of players today, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have already surpassed WoW's West player numbers.
Now that we've cleared that, let's go on. I've played WoW for 7+ years. I was addicted to it, playing 10h a day the first few months. I was mainly impressed by how huge the world is, and the fact that there are other players running around. It was just that sense of belonging to a growing community, belonging to something bigger. However even back then I've often compared WoW to other SP RPGs, and what I found out is, that those SP RPGs are of a much higher quality than WoW. My main complains with WoW were that it's graphics are horrible, combat is terrible, story and quests garbage, and there was never any "freedom" at all. It's what I was trying to explain to my friends as well, yet they never listened. Which brings me to the point of what kind of players are there really in WoW? Mostly players that never bothered trying anything else apart from WoW or other Blizzard games, which is why they are still stuck there.
I was really starting to lose hope on the genre, when in 2013 I heard from a friend that Elder Scrolls Online is coming. I've quickly searched for the gameplay trailer, and I was amazed at what I'm seeing. When I tried Beta I was like "this is really great" (if you could get past the bugs). 2 years later from that Beta, and I can honestly admit that ESO is a way way better MMORPG than WoW ever was. Everything I've wished for was a superb RPG game and ESO is precisely that, quite the opposite from WoW. I just wish it did a better job at creating the social environment.
ESO is indeed a decent solo RPG up to level 50 (the veteran ranks idea and implementation is garbage) but there are much better single player RPGs still. The MMO part is mediocre at best.
I agree in part with the sentiments behind the article. Basically talking about the evolution people go through in life. I like the idea that you wouldn't want to recreate the feeling again. It would take away somehow from the original feeling perhaps.
Here we are many years down the road and still interested in the genre. Still in anticipation of certain titles and breakthroughs. Just an example of this. I have been hoping for a halfway decent mmo to come to tablet/phablet/pc ever since quadcore tablets were launched. Now finally Albion Online is playable and has paved the way for what can be done in future releases. The graphics may not be realistic and the gameplay mechanics may not have incredible depth, but it's got almost all the goodies one would expect from an MMO and is still growing.
On the flipside we have Ark, offers innovation in a different way. You can play it single player, host your own server, join other people's servers, or join an official server. All these different servers are customizable. They have made a really great game here and once again...future games will hopefully develope with similar functionality.
Point is that just because our fond "newb" days of wonderment are behind us, doesn't mean we can't hope for new ways for gaming and MMO's to push the boundaries and give us new "newb" enjoyment.
It will undoubtedly be newb for many of us the first time we step into an MMO powered by Occulus Rift or other VR gear. In 6 years from now we may have Holodecks, but for now I am happy with my tablet, pc, and xbox one for good entertainment.
As far as WOW goes. Everquest was my first 1st person MMO and that was quite a ride. WOW will definately hold a place for me as well. The worlds, stories, players, and moments are etched in my memories.
I always return back to wow.When i get bored i go to tera,gw2,nwo to name a few with the amazing graphics and when i play 1-2 months and reallise that they offer nothing more than amazing graphics i go to buy the next game time card to log in to wow.
I've gone back to Wow several times over the years (although dead to me for 3 years now). Even when returning I wasn't back to the game I once loved. That game does not exist anymore.
Vanilla was good BC/WotLK was better Cata sucked MoP was meh, quit halfway through but it did have some good bits WoD never played, knew garrisons would be a bad idea as a focus instead of a optional side game Legion won't play because garrisons 2.0 a.k.a class guilds
I don't know...
For me:
When they gave the Alliance shamans... the Horde paladins... threw everyone together into Shattrath and put resilience into the PvP gear, it marked the beginning for me, of a long downward spiral.
And that's not to say that BC/Wotlk weren't any good.
Maybe the experience cannot be duplicated, but vanilla wow is alive and...semi-healthy. Its still an experience I prefer overall, in comparison to any mmo made since or before.
I've retired from linear quest hub themeparking. I tried to go back but the open world solo experience is really poor if you want tactical challenging combat and hate quests.
I had already played EQ for a couple years before wow came out, so I have no sentimental connection. I do think that someone whom started with WoW would have more tolerance for being ordered around by an npc (quests) than I do.
Im glad i only play WoW for the lore, so i can go back to it whenever i want and still have fun. I ignore the grind, and the accessibility they added just helps get through my story with less hassle.
If WoW stayed vanilla it wouldnt have survived 10 years with the highest number of paying customers in mmo history.
I believe it could have done some things better, but its way better than vanilla (i started wow on vanilla/tbc private servers before buying the official game on cata). Glad i didnt pay for that grind.
I went back to Vanilla WoW again, and I love it. Current WoW, not so much.
So this means you play on a private server. It actually has proper content? I have yet to see one that does nor have devs I can trust. This isn't an option for the vast majority of players.
Also for the person asking for a new graphics engine: The game is being graphically overhauled even more for the next expansion and has already been updated since panda-time and beyond (for characters). New graphics means diddly though. It will only slow down and raise costs for development. Wow will still be the vastly different mmo than what it one was which is why most left from vanilla days.
I have only found one private wow server that is good, as in no or very very few bugs. and I have tried about five of them. It's name is like Chronotrigger, but with K and a bit shorter. You'll have to search for it yourself.
Comments
Problem is they took away the world from WoW. I remember having to actually travel Azeroth, no portals, long flight paths and ship rides. I remember feeling like I was a part of something big. I remember Hillsbrad PvP. I remember Guilds whose roster didn't change every second and served a purpose. I remember running to dungeons, I remember less instancing.
MMOs have become too dependent on endgame, too rushed, too easy, very basic. Go here, go there, kill this guy and move on to the next zone. I had a high hopes for ESO to change this paradigm, I had hopes for many MMOs to change this paradigm, but they never did. Wildstar, ESO, SWTOR, they all added their own uniqueness, but in the end they FEEL the same. Grind for this and that, predictable leveling processes, etc.
^^^^ This.
The entire reason I left WoW ultimately revolved around that fact that the living world of the game is now dead. The need to travel the world and actually use your mount to do anything other than farm herbs and skin creatures is gone. The only thing that even kept anyone in the world in Warlords of Draenor was the treasures that they had to collect. I don't mind so much people being able to fly even in the new zones, but make it so that they have reasons to be on the ground anytime that they're not just flying over to get to another zone. We need more areas like Halaa and Hillsbrad that attracted people to the area for PvP reasons or for other things that they HAD to go to that area for instead of just sitting in the main city and waiting on Dungeon/BG/Arena/Raid Queue's.
Make it so that people can only use the Dungeon Finder tool a maximum of 3 times daily or something so that they either have to get summoned or travel to the Dungeon/Raid themselves using the travel mechanics put in game for that specific reason. Repopulate the zones by adding things that need to be done like back in the day when people were constantly battling in Hellfire and Zangarmarsh to keep control of the Spires or Towers and gain bonuses for their faction while farming currency that they could use to by little useful items from the NPC's.
These things would not be so hard to do, it's just a matter of the Blizzard dev's reopening their imaginations and not just adding in Quests/Dungeons and Items then thinking that will be enough to satisfy the majority of players. Give people more than what you think will satisfy them, give them what you think will not only make them want to play NOW, but what will make them want to play for months and years to come. These were the very things that attracted me to the game and made me change from older MMO's that I previously played to playing WoW in the first place.
But yeah instant gratification is not bad as long it's played right and making it a long road not having any gratification for doing so people drop off still.
They don't want forced grouping mechanics nor content. For any modern MMO to be successful it needs a lot of solo content + solo endgame. Not just group endgame. No difference in gear between the Solo and Group endgame either.
Blizz went into WoD with the best Raids WoW's ever had, yet they lost half the players in 6 months, why? Because not enough solo content. Better options for that elsewhere.
Ehm... Charge nearly full price for old expansions? Wth?
Only last month the base game + every expansion up to (and including) Mists of Pandaria was just 5 bucks. Normally it's only 10-15 or so... so yeah...
Not one of us will wish we spent more time raiding as the light fades in our twilight years, but for better or worse there was a moment when it became part of me.
Speak for yourself dirty casual! I still regret taking a break from raiding for cata....
Playing: Secret World: Legends
Waiting for: Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
rodarin said:
If they remade WoW with 'realistic' graphics, revamped content, and didnt charge nearly full price for old expansions, and shut down the current version they would have 20 million subs.
There is no market research to back this up, otherwise Blizzard would have done this already.
Sorry DM, but aren't you the one always plugging Trove? The graphics in that are not very "realistic" in that either.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Solo Endgame can be equally challenging as the Group Endgame. The only difference is that the real challenge when it comes to Group Endgame, is from actually finding the right people and motivating them to log in a couple of times per week to Raid for hours. In Solo Endgame it all comes down to how skilled you are, nobody carrying you around.
40-man Raids are practically non-existant anymore. 25-man Raids goodbye as well. 20-man Raids seem to be on a decline too, only the most hardcore guilds can maintain that many people today. So it seems that 10-man Raids are easily the most popular, yet they are still nowhere as popular as the 5-man Dungeons.
The less people are required for an activity the more people will want to do it. Not trying to fool ourselves, it was the same in the old days. Raids were never more popular than Dungeons. Dungeons were never more popular than grinding/questing for the levels etc.
As it seems players always wanted co-op games. Destiny got right the co-op part which is why it's one of the most popular game today, probably even the most profitable one, even though it's far from being a good game.
Besides How come Hack'n'Slash games are never declining? You can either play them solo or co-op. It doesn't require 10-20 players to form a group. Nor does any dungeon there require hours of playtime to get through.
I love the game, and you are right in that it would be awesome to have vanilla WoW back. I surely do miss those good days.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I'd love to re play that.
Aside from that, I do enjoy Vanilla 1.12
BC/WotLK was better
Cata sucked
MoP was meh, quit halfway through but it did have some good bits
WoD never played, knew garrisons would be a bad idea as a focus instead of a optional side game
Legion won't play because garrisons 2.0 a.k.a class guilds
So.
When WoD released, I think I got to 92 before deciding I'd had enough. Logged off, caneled my sub and never looked back.
Legion isn't particularly on my radar or on my "gotta have" list. But as with all WoW expansions, I do retain an element of curiosity. Without kidding myself, and knowing what I felt last time I played. Has there been any improvement in this game since WoD released? Or is it still exactly the same and if I didn't really like it then, Probably still won't?
I am at a point where I will probably cancel my FFXIV Sub so the options are This game, SWTOR or possibly buy HoT.
Although, I'm going to wait for HoT for a sale.
Here we are many years down the road and still interested in the genre. Still in anticipation of certain titles and breakthroughs. Just an example of this. I have been hoping for a halfway decent mmo to come to tablet/phablet/pc ever since quadcore tablets were launched. Now finally Albion Online is playable and has paved the way for what can be done in future releases. The graphics may not be realistic and the gameplay mechanics may not have incredible depth, but it's got almost all the goodies one would expect from an MMO and is still growing.
On the flipside we have Ark, offers innovation in a different way. You can play it single player, host your own server, join other people's servers, or join an official server. All these different servers are customizable. They have made a really great game here and once again...future games will hopefully develope with similar functionality.
Point is that just because our fond "newb" days of wonderment are behind us, doesn't mean we can't hope for new ways for gaming and MMO's to push the boundaries and give us new "newb" enjoyment.
It will undoubtedly be newb for many of us the first time we step into an MMO powered by Occulus Rift or other VR gear. In 6 years from now we may have Holodecks, but for now I am happy with my tablet, pc, and xbox one for good entertainment.
As far as WOW goes. Everquest was my first 1st person MMO and that was quite a ride. WOW will definately hold a place for me as well. The worlds, stories, players, and moments are etched in my memories.
You stay sassy!
For me:
When they gave the Alliance shamans... the Horde paladins... threw everyone together into Shattrath and put resilience into the PvP gear, it marked the beginning for me, of a long downward spiral.
And that's not to say that BC/Wotlk weren't any good.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I had already played EQ for a couple years before wow came out, so I have no sentimental connection. I do think that someone whom started with WoW would have more tolerance for being ordered around by an npc (quests) than I do.
If WoW stayed vanilla it wouldnt have survived 10 years with the highest number of paying customers in mmo history. I believe it could have done some things better, but its way better than vanilla (i started wow on vanilla/tbc private servers before buying the official game on cata). Glad i didnt pay for that grind.
WhySoSerious said:
I went back to Vanilla WoW again, and I love it. Current WoW, not so much.
So this means you play on a private server. It actually has proper content? I have yet to see one that does nor have devs I can trust. This isn't an option for the vast majority of players.
Also for the person asking for a new graphics engine: The game is being graphically overhauled even more for the next expansion and has already been updated since panda-time and beyond (for characters). New graphics means diddly though. It will only slow down and raise costs for development. Wow will still be the vastly different mmo than what it one was which is why most left from vanilla days.
I have only found one private wow server that is good, as in no or very very few bugs. and I have tried about five of them. It's name is like Chronotrigger, but with K and a bit shorter. You'll have to search for it yourself.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
You can't eat it every day, but when you have that certain craving............It sure as hell hits the spot.