Insanely Reconsidering WoW

[MacAlien]

Yes it will.

Seeing as they canceled Titan after seven years of work on it, and since they are seemingly more focused on their other games atm, the likelihood Wow2 will exist in the next 5 or 10 years is slimmer than jim. Unless you have some magical crystal ball that can predict the future, then not much to back anything up, my comment as well. =P

Also, they've come out and said the most they've done regarding players wanting WoW2 is thought about it, over the last 10 years.

 

[Huntn]

Seeing as they canceled Titan after seven years of work on it, and since they are seemingly more focused on their other games atm, the likelihood Wow2 will exist in the next 5 or 10 years is slimmer than jim. Unless you have some magical crystal ball that can predict the future, then not much to back anything up, my comment as well. =P

Also, they've come out and said the most they've done regarding players wanting WoW2 is thought about it, over the last 10 years.

WoW2 would have to innovate. I don't see "escort, kill and collect" in a new setting as the sole basis for something really new and original. It's possible as-is, this fantasy MMORPG genre has run its course.

 

[Plutonius]

Anything that Blizzard did probably would't have worked because people got burned out. That being said, WoD is the worst expansion they have released to date .

 

[MacAlien]

WoW2 would have to innovate. I don't see "escort, kill and collect" in a new setting as the sole basis for something really new and original. It's possible as-is, this fantasy MMORPG genre has run its course.

Maybe, maybe not. There's some things that can be done by Blizzard for a new MMORPG that other games have innovated upon but, as much as players really want a WoW2, I'd stake a lot of money it wouldn't be as popular as regular WoW is. Nobody wants another spinoff like EQ2 to happen. WoW2 would have to thread very very carefully as not to upset WoWs playerbase, and they're an extremely finicky group by any games standards. Change models? Uproar. (a big reason WoW2 couldn't be successful). Change the way game plays. Uproar. Change nearly anything and there's an uproar.

What they could do is update how questing works, how pvp is handled vs. pve. Revisit popular design models used successfully in the past for raids, outside content and go back to a normal story line. There's a reason why TBC and WotLK and to some extent Cata, least until DS happened, were the pinnacle of the game (far as subscriptions). The lore was actually interesting and straightforward, the raids were innovative and fun, pvp wasn't as lopsided and they'll never get pvp to work until they have two separate ways spells and abilities work so one doesn't affect the other. There was actual content for both hardcores and casuals as well as pvp oriented.

They need to stop listening to players when it comes to designing future xpacs as well except for bugs and general feedback. It's because of the players we got WoD. People can argue against this, but I blame the players for the state of the game along with the current crop of developers who're extremely disconnected from reality half the time. Blizz tried doing exactly what players requested i.e. less dailies, less grinds, go back to how it was in Vanilla, another this, do that. In the end we got a gutted expansion nobody enjoys with a phased zone for individual players to stay in all day, every day and a group of devs who thinks they don't need to do anything. Even 6.2 has nothing except a pretty looking zone from what a group of friends told me. Do a couple dailies, get a tiny bit of rep (which was added last minute) and you're done. Silly.

 

[Huntn]

Maybe, maybe not. There's some things that can be done by Blizzard for a new MMORPG that other games have innovated upon but, as much as players really want a WoW2, I'd stake a lot of money it wouldn't be as popular as regular WoW is. Nobody wants another spinoff like EQ2 to happen. WoW2 would have to thread very very carefully as not to upset WoWs playerbase, and they're an extremely finicky group by any games standards. Change models? Uproar. (a big reason WoW2 couldn't be successful). Change the way game plays. Uproar. Change nearly anything and there's an uproar.

What they could do is update how questing works, how pvp is handled vs. pve. Revisit popular design models used successfully in the past for raids, outside content and go back to a normal story line. There's a reason why TBC and WotLK and to some extent Cata, least until DS happened, were the pinnacle of the game (far as subscriptions). The lore was actually interesting and straightforward, the raids were innovative and fun, pvp wasn't as lopsided and they'll never get pvp to work until they have two separate ways spells and abilities work so one doesn't affect the other. There was actual content for both hardcores and casuals as well as pvp oriented.

They need to stop listening to players when it comes to designing future xpacs as well except for bugs and general feedback. It's because of the players we got WoD. People can argue against this, but I blame the players for the state of the game along with the current crop of developers who're extremely disconnected from reality half the time. Blizz tried doing exactly what players requested i.e. less dailies, less grinds, go back to how it was in Vanilla, another this, do that. In the end we got a gutted expansion nobody enjoys with a phased zone for individual players to stay in all day, every day and a group of devs who thinks they don't need to do anything. Even 6.2 has nothing except a pretty looking zone from what a group of friends told me. Do a couple dailies, get a tiny bit of rep (which was added last minute) and you're done. Silly.

Last time for me, it was pretty, but I was not vested. I could solo 100% of the regular content, 5 player dungeons were ok, nothing hard. This might also be me just tired of that routine. All gaming is repetitive. It's just a matter of how long before you reach your personal threshold.

 

[kupkakez]

I love WoW.. My bf and I have played it for years and he even worked for Blizzard for 7 years! Our home bedroom closet is loaded with Blizz stuff! Whenever I see it I want to play! but I when I log in to try to play it's just meh I'll run around maybe kill a few things and log back out. At this point I think it's just a great memory, nostalgia. I'm not sure what they could do to draw me back in, I feel like it's just ran it's course.

 

[Dark Void]

Last time for me, it was pretty, but I was not vested. I could solo 100% of the regular content, 5 player dungeons were ok, nothing hard. This might also be me just tired of that routine. All gaming is repetitive. It's just a matter of how long before you reach your personal threshold.

You can try out Dark Souls if you want a hard game that is in a similar genre (fantasy RPG, although it's co-op based as opposed to MMO). You'll probably reconsider life after playing Souls games for a few hours lol.

Souls (or Bloodborne if you have a PS4) games were arguably put on the market to generate more console/PC sales after you break yours. It's repetitive only in the sense of losing, falling to your death, general death, failing, questioning life, never wanting to leave the house, exposing your flaws as a human being, and more.

Great soul embraced.

 

[antonis]

I don't think blizzard could design something that would be really innovative with this momentum. The best they could do would be to adopt the best ideas of other MMOs and implement them in WoW, but even this would require more invest in the game than they seem to be willing to do. They'd need to create a different, more story driven, quest system, to make the leveling rewarding (instead of a walk-in-the-park boring procedure with only purpose to reach the max level), to disengage the end-gaming from the gear-greed fest it is now, to bring back real character customization (it was supposed to be an RPG) etc. etc.

WoD was a perfect example of poor design and low quality. Garrisons isolated players in a personal instance, video cinematics quality was noticeably below their usual standards, and the been-there-done-that feeling stronger than ever.

You can try out Dark Souls if you want a hard game that is in a similar genre (fantasy RPG, although it's co-op based as opposed to MMO). You'll probably reconsider life after playing Souls games for a few hours lol.

Souls (or Bloodborne if you have a PS4) games were arguably put on the market to generate more console/PC sales after you break yours. It's repetitive only in the sense of losing, falling to your death, general death, failing, questioning life, never wanting to leave the house, exposing your flaws as a human being, and more.

Great soul embraced.

Indeed. I've played through Dark Souls 2 and finished it on higher difficulty levels as well. This is one game that allows you to master it, or die if you don't. I missed this difficulty in games for many years. And the satisfaction it offers, once you've built a personal combat style and get through the difficulties. And these boss fights...that's something to remember.

 

[koyoot]

Sci-Fi first person MMO, with crafting system that all your gear comes from scraps obtained on raids, BG's etc and forged into new gear, that modifies your abilities. You have free will with the shapes of your gear. You can sculpture it the way you want to. 3 types of talent builds and skills and you decide what to invest you want to. 3 active skills, and one passive. From one talent tree.

And the world would be epic too. Just think about the maps of Overwatch, and imagine a World of Overwatch. Maybe Overwatch disbanded. But nobody says that they cannot assemble again because of gigantic Earth threat . Locations: Earth, Mars, Moon, Venus.


I think I've already fell in love with this idea...

Edit. Also, as for gear. From raids we could obtain a "artifacts". A gear that is not supposed to be crafted. And more powerful than the rest of this type of gear.

Raid groups? 12 people. Dungeon groups? 3 people. Much faster gameplay, and whole dynamic of game.

 

[antonis]

Sci-Fi first person MMO, with crafting system that all your gear comes from scraps obtained on raids, BG's etc and forged into new gear, that modifies your abilities. You have free will with the shapes of your gear. You can sculpture it the way you want to. 3 types of talent builds and skills and you decide what to invest you want to. 3 active skills, and one passive. From one talent tree.

And the world would be epic too. Just think about the maps of Overwatch, and imagine a World of Overwatch. Maybe Overwatch disbanded. But nobody says that they cannot assemble again because of gigantic Earth threat . Locations: Earth, Mars, Moon, Venus.


I think I've already fell in love with this idea...

Edit. Also, as for gear. From raids we could obtain a "artifacts". A gear that is not supposed to be crafted. And more powerful than the rest of this type of gear.

Raid groups? 12 people. Dungeon groups? 3 people. Much faster gameplay, and whole dynamic of game.

Yes, sci-fi could be a breath of fresh air in the genre. Of course there are other sci-fi MMOs as well, but I think there is much more space for innovations under that theme, compared to medieval fantasy that has dried out.

The most challenging part would be to design dungeons that will not need specific roles, rather than specific levels and skill, where every build/equipment would be viable and useful and no more "LF2M healer and tank for [put your dungeon name here]" in chat.

 

[Dark Void]

In the frame of mind of reconsidering gaming/WoW/etc - Newegg has some pretty nice buys on mid-ranged laptops that can handle WoW pretty well.

I just saw an Acer on there with a 5th Gen 2.2 GHz i5-U, 8 GB RAM, a GeForce 940M 2GB dedicated chip, and a 1 TB Hybrid drive for $469. That's a ridiculous price. The battery life is rated somewhat low and the screen res is only regular HD, but my goodness that price. The build quality looks decent too from the outside - nice looking keyboard and a fair sized minimal trackpad. I was just getting there too - about to sell my gaming peripherals like my old 2012 Naga after tearing down my desktop.

I'm usually not one to pay attention to specs in relation to price that much but that is very cheap for the hardware alone - I almost wouldn't care if it is held together with chewed bubblegum and bent paperclips. The GeForce 940M isn't a fantastic chip but it is more than capable for WoW - I know that much as I played Warlords for a while on a 700 series chip when not on my old desktop.

Where's my wallet. Take my money.

 

[koyoot]

I have just watched presentation of Fallout 4:

My god. Imagine this as a MMO, and crafting system. Imagine this in Overwatch world. I wish Blizzard could do such a game. Absolutely phenomenal that would be.

 

[Huntn]

I have just watched presentation of Fallout 4:

My god. Imagine this as a MMO, and crafting system. Imagine this in Overwatch world. I wish Blizzard could do such a game. Absolutely phenomenal that would be.

Impressive! Maybe that was their Titan-kinda.

 

[Khalanad75]

I bit the bullet and headed back into Azeroth once more. It's much the same, but I have never found a game that can keep my interest as long as WoW has. Been playing off and on since vanilla closed beta.

Just got into the docks. I like that there is another section to my garrison. Don't like the fact that there is a separate mission table for the docks though.

 

[Oudinot]

Played WOW from very first after beta. Played through 2011 but got burned out on guilds and jerky teenagers in pick up games from other servers. Went back in 2012 and dropped out in 2013. Rejoined in 2014 and dropped out in April this year. Got tired of having to change everything all the time and relearning how to play your character. Also leveling 4 or 5 characters each time became a royal pain. Like the current version because you don't need a guild or jerks to get great gear but stil had to respec all characters. Now I'm saving $14 a month and getting along just fine. LOL

 

[Khalanad75]

I had a lot of fun this past weekend with their "time warp" event. Basically it's running old xpac dungeons, but they convert your gear to be at level. The loot that the bosses drop though are at the new expansion level. So you get to run old content for new upgrades.

This weekend was wrath heroics. Had a couple of wipes from tanks and healers thinking you can just grab everything and burn them down. Not so easy when you are at level for the dungeon.

 

[Plutonius]

I'm currently working on the achievements needed to get flying in Draenor.

http://www.wowhead.com/guides/achievements/draenor-pathfinder-how-to-unlock-flying-in-draenor

 

[Jovian9]

Unfortunately the game is in a sad state nowadays. I'm subbed but only b/c I have tons of gold (been playing since vanilla) and bought 6 months worth of game tokens when they came out.

WoW is one of my favorite games of all time. I've been gaming since the Atari/C64 days too. I've liked games more but no game has ever had so much of my time used on it (not even the entirety of the Civilization franchise). However, it's gone downhill fast.

The vocal community is bad and the developers listen to them too much. The developers have no middle-ground either. Have a class that's OP. Decimate their key spell/ability instead of bringing it down a little. Now they are terrible. Too many dailies in MoP. No problem, how about none in WoD.... and that is with everything they do it seems.

Classes are always changing. If I go a month without playing one of my max level toons I have to get online and read about all the changes made during that month. Are my secondary stats still aligned with what works best now? Or do I need other gear? At least with reforging I could fix that easily. Armor pen, mastery, versatility. How many different secondary stats do we need. Pick some and stick with it for more than an expansion or two.

Cash shop is great and terrible. So many cool mounts and pets to be had for MORE money than you already give them. In game ones often don't stack up.

They want to make the world more immersive so they don't commit to flying in this expansion, but never say it won't happen. They want the players to enjoy the work by being grounded. But they completely go against that by tethering this expansion to a zone where you spend most of your time, not out in the world, and not with other players......garrisons.

4 different levels of difficulty for raiding. FOUR ffs. Once upon a time they stated they didn't want people to have to do 10 regular, 10 heroic, 25 regular, and 25 heroic each week. That was too many possible raids for each reset. Two expansions later and we have LFR, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic.

Long droughts without content. increased expansion prices for less content. Taking away features that players have been accustomed to. etc etc etc



IMO Blizzard has one chance to redeem WoW. And that is the next expansion. One of their excuses for the amazing long content drought during MoP and this lesser expansion was they hired a bunch of new people to the WoW team and didn't have them ready. Well, the next expansion is coming off of all of that so they had better get it out soon and it should have lots and lots of content or they are going to see a lot more than 3 million drop after the first quarter of it's release.

Part of me feels that they do want WoW to fail though. They can make money off of Hearthstone and other games and not have the commitment to them that they have for WoW. They can't pull the plug, but if it fails then hey...move on. After all these years and all of the so called WoW killers that have been proclaimed, it's going to be Blizzard themselves that do it.

 

[Huntn]

Unfortunately the game is in a sad state nowadays. I'm subbed but only b/c I have tons of gold (been playing since vanilla) and bought 6 months worth of game tokens when they came out.

WoW is one of my favorite games of all time. I've been gaming since the Atari/C64 days too. I've liked games more but no game has ever had so much of my time used on it (not even the entirety of the Civilization franchise). However, it's gone downhill fast.

The vocal community is bad and the developers listen to them too much. The developers have no middle-ground either. Have a class that's OP. Decimate their key spell/ability instead of bringing it down a little. Now they are terrible. Too many dailies in MoP. No problem, how about none in WoD.... and that is with everything they do it seems.

Classes are always changing. If I go a month without playing one of my max level toons I have to get online and read about all the changes made during that month. Are my secondary stats still aligned with what works best now? Or do I need other gear? At least with reforging I could fix that easily. Armor pen, mastery, versatility. How many different secondary stats do we need. Pick some and stick with it for more than an expansion or two.

Cash shop is great and terrible. So many cool mounts and pets to be had for MORE money than you already give them. In game ones often don't stack up.

They want to make the world more immersive so they don't commit to flying in this expansion, but never say it won't happen. They want the players to enjoy the work by being grounded. But they completely go against that by tethering this expansion to a zone where you spend most of your time, not out in the world, and not with other players......garrisons.

4 different levels of difficulty for raiding. FOUR ffs. Once upon a time they stated they didn't want people to have to do 10 regular, 10 heroic, 25 regular, and 25 heroic each week. That was too many possible raids for each reset. Two expansions later and we have LFR, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic.

Long droughts without content. increased expansion prices for less content. Taking away features that players have been accustomed to. etc etc etc



IMO Blizzard has one chance to redeem WoW. And that is the next expansion. One of their excuses for the amazing long content drought during MoP and this lesser expansion was they hired a bunch of new people to the WoW team and didn't have them ready. Well, the next expansion is coming off of all of that so they had better get it out soon and it should have lots and lots of content or they are going to see a lot more than 3 million drop after the first quarter of it's release.

Part of me feels that they do want WoW to fail though. They can make money off of Hearthstone and other games and not have the commitment to them that they have for WoW. They can't pull the plug, but if it fails then hey...move on. After all these years and all of the so called WoW killers that have been proclaimed, it's going to be Blizzard themselves that do it.

My impression is that WoW continues to be a hugh money maker for Blizzard. I predict it will continue as long as they keep raking in the dough!

 

[antonis]

The fact that the older content is brought up for revisit more and more as time passes, says a lot by itself. First it was the achievements, then the transmogrify gear, now the remakes of the old raids. Even some encounters from older raids are modified to be able to complete solo. Yes, the game is still a money maker and I guess it will be for some time more, but it is also dying slowly.

 

[Huntn]

The fact that the older content is brought up for revisit more and more as time passes, says a lot by itself. First it was the achievements, then the transmogrify gear, now the remakes of the old raids. Even some encounters from older raids are modified to be able to complete solo. Yes, the game is still a money maker and I guess it will be for some time more, but it is also dying slowly.

Give them a reason to abandon WoW and they will.

 

[antonis]

Give them a reason to abandon WoW and they will.

If only it worked like that. Unfortunately, the biggest part of the pie goes to the first successful title and then the inertia law takes on.

 

[Huntn]

If only it worked like that. Unfortunately, the biggest part of the pie goes to the first successful title and then the inertia law takes on.

I don't suffer from that when it comes to gaming. I'm constantly trying new things. In fact I'm currently trying out ESO while not perfect, has an outstanding Elder Scrolls feel to it and basically quests without grind, none of this "collect/kill 10 of this", but I'm not yet committed to it and it can be played without a subscription.

Check out an ESO graphic comparison HERE.

 

[MacAlien]

People have been proclaiming WoW is dying since day 1. They gained 3mil subs for WoD and then promptly lost those. It's not that WoW isn't a good MMO, it's more that the dev refuse to take any feedback into account. Something this group has been doing since the start of the WoD Alpha. Even bug fixes were never addressed until well after the game went Live. I blame the devs the most for the fiasco that is WoD. I blame Celest, Ion and the whole group. When your team takes this approach they know better than the paying clients, then nothing will go over well. But, in the end WoW still controls the MMO market and will for years and years. Even FFXIV, as much as people think of how great it is still only has the same population numbers as Vanilla WoW. Also, SE f'd up their Mac client and pulled sales of that, so there's an even less chance it'll ever get to WoW popularity.

And they're lazy. Plain and simple. One "major" patch was made over the course of a weekend by two developers. And they called it a major patch, which is...laughable. Most of these patches are things which have already been in game but they dragged out the content over the course of things. It's a bit stupid. I'd still be subscribed had it not been for this xpac after 10 continuous years not including all the F&F Alphas and Betas since, starting with the original Alpha of the game.

But, it's not 100% of the devs fault for the state of the game. The players, all of them who kept wanting to "return" to a Vanilla-esque time period. I'm not lost in the fact that in the end, players cannot control the game but they [developers] never took all these requests and turned them into an entire expansion.

Some examples include; people wanted to veer away from needing theorycraft for their classes, blizz pruned everything back to an extreme so most are 1-2 button rotations. People wanted player housing, so they were given Garrisons to tied them over. Players wanted less dailies, so they were given 1-2 dailies per day. Players loathed Valor/Justic points, so they got rid of those. Players didn't want to feel obligated to run 5mans more than necessary, so they took out any point of those. Players complained LFR/casuals should never get them same gear as regular raiders because ya know, they're less than... Gone. Players wanted easier reps or none at all as they were tired of the grind. The current reps were put in very last minute and made to be worse than how earned in the past, minus Vanilla where you had to grind thousands of mobs to get to exalted. For years, players complained how "casuals" were ruining the game, so they made content aimed towards raiders. This doesn't include the mess they made to their pvp content this expansion, either.

The list goes on but there used to be a time when the most feedback devs would take were bug fixes, game changing issues. Now that they designed an entire expansion around player content requests. Maybe they'll have learned their lesson and won't repeat this sham of an expansion in the future, but I doubt it. =P

 

[Dark Void]

Is crafting still ruined? That's one of the main reasons that I left the game.

I understand that there are much more pressing matters or larger reasons why people would not continue to subscribe, but that was it for me. I was generally unsatisfied with how linear and lazy the game as a whole became but all of the limitations that were placed on the game while you had to pay for it in the background were ridiculous, including things like crafting materials just as one example. The idea of daily/weekly restrictions, lockouts or allowances is so that people who just play all day long won't "get ahead" and so that it is a more fair environment for all of the players but the people who truly want to get ahead still do through multiple accounts and characters with separate lockouts.