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Blizzard's Next WoW Expansion Looks to the Past

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I still don't understand why Blizzard wont make Ogres a playable race. They were the strongest unit in Warcraft 2 on the Horde side. Instead they make lame races like blood elves and pandas...

I quit WoW a few months before Cataclysm launched and have never regretted it. It's not a bad game but they catered to casual players too much and sacrificed game-play to add subscriptions. Thanks to WoW, I have completely written off the MMO genre.

The best part of the game for me was the story and IMO, Blizzard (more than likely under Kotick's supervision) actively ruined that.
 
What I wouldn't give for a WoW hard mode server, no targeting using the 'TAB' key, have to find flight points like the old days, loose experience when you die, text/names above enemies disabled, no auction house. Just one server with toons that WANT to play the game properly, please!
 
WoW became boring after the two main heroes/antagonists from Warcraft 3 died - Illidan and Lich King.
Bringing back content from WC2 won't save the MMO, neither will what they're trying to do here.
A Warcraft 4 is long overdue, imo, if only for the sake of story.
 
So help me, they say the expansion is going to be "tough" but the first thing I hear is that everyone gets a free level 90? I made up my mind long ago, WoW is out of the question until leveling stops being a joke.

Warcraft needs a break. Fast forward 20 or 30 or even more years in the fictional universe, make some real changes, get out a new strategy game, cultivate some characters of Arthas's caliber instead of these nondescript one-dimensional guys. Right now, the way they're treating the franchise both story- and gameplay-wise feels like unashamed milking.
 
The graphics look as simply rendered as they have been for years. Panderia was a marginal improvement, but this new planet looks like they're keeping the rendering at the same level as things were several years ago. And from the trailer, there's no clue that there's an interesting story line, much like the weird, largely lame new leveling island Blizz introduced a few weeks ago of the coast of Panderia.
 
People will not come back for this crap. The game is finished, the question is when will it end. Fanboys always cite the X million subscriptions, instead of the massive loss after loss of subscriptions.
 
It wont end anytime soon. There are mmorpgs a decade older then wow that are still alive and well today. So, id say its likely to be around at least 10 more years.

Ultima Online is still going, Everquest just had its 20th expansion, or we can go older....The Realm is still going and that was from the mid 90s.
 
Just keep milking the cash cow Activision...
Seriously though I want warcraft 4 and the continuation of the story in a new engine. How hard can that be???
 
You can have your hardcore mode that punishes its players. Make you take out your pen and pencile to do your spread sheet again- that's not gonna help. 10 million players, or even 13 at its highest point, were made out of mostly casual players. The really hardcore players are still playing EQ and AO. Sure, 20 years now. How many of them are there? I thought so.

WoW is the king of casual MMO's. They just need fresh ideas and better graphics to win back the casual players. Turning it into a hardcore mode will lose most of its players it still has and win back... Wait, you the hardcore player already left and haven't been back in years. You yourself said you would never go back. Now how the hell does it make any business sense for Blizzard to go hard mode?
 
Sorry Blizz but WoW is dead. I would amuse that you have figured that out when subscription went from 30 mill to 7 mill with in a year. But i guess not.
 
I have no idea why there are so many rants about WoW not being hard enough. My first MMO experience was with Korean MMO's. Where a full week exp grind would only get you 10% into a level. Leveling up one level in near end game content would literally take months, and with death you lose almost a full week if not weeks of exp. That was not fun.

The changes WoW has gone through is majorly quality of life improvements, such as the hassle of sorting material, walking endlessly for 30mins etc. Nothing to do with the actual challenges of game play, such as boss fights. Unless finding flight paths and leveling up is your idea of a good time. These things are time consuming not challenging.

I strongly doubt any of you even played any end game content in WoW.
 
I have no idea why there are so many rants about WoW not being hard enough. My first MMO experience was with Korean MMO's. Where a full week exp grind would only get you 10% into a level. Leveling up one level in near end game content would literally take months, and with death you lose almost a full week if not weeks of exp. That was not fun.

The changes WoW has gone through is majorly quality of life improvements, such as the hassle of sorting material, walking endlessly for 30mins etc. Nothing to do with the actual challenges of game play, such as boss fights. Unless finding flight paths and leveling up is your idea of a good time. These things are time consuming not challenging.

I strongly doubt any of you even played any end game content in WoW.
 
Well you should play it now. I left after cataclysm and went back when they made me an offer of seven days free. I paid for six months and bought the expansion, I think people play it because they have invested so much labour into levelling through the content. The culture of the game, now, is appalling. People can more or less solo individual mobs in instances and you group and nobody has any respect nor shows any care, if you don't go fast enough as a tank they whinge. One player even said "there should be a requirement in look for group for fast tanking". It's like entering a working environment where you're paid by the minute rather than a leisure practice. It's not relaxing at all to participate in the atmosphere. There is a culture of general contempt within the game and abuse is just part of playing. I left five consecutive parties a few days ago because of criticism and abuse and all I was doing was following the old rules of engagement. I like to set up combats to give people time to set themselves up before starting. They've had to design the game mechanics around all this, now tanking is more or less an automated function, you don't really need to generate threat on individual mobs, all tanks have aoe functions that you just spam to round up mobs and it has to be this way because of how players play, dps can't follow mob-order and won't, they want to just mash buttons and have a feeling of power. The whole game is designed to offer you an illusion of competence, I often feel that in the chaos I have no idea what I am doing but it looks as if I do because so long as you continue to spam your aoe-aggro-generators you can control the mobs. One example of the culture is that on rez people will not eat or drink because nobody will spend time. They rely on the healer to heal them all up and the game is played on-the-move now. I assume all the design is play-tested and I fear all future MMOs going this way. I used to play for the cooperation but that is all but gone. I've levelled a few characters to ninety, nine in all, and never grouped in open pve play, that part of the game has gone completely. It's just a culture of exploitation and hierarchy via conspicuous display, exactly what I started to play to escape. Too much like the real world, sad that people import the same dispositions on line! It's hard to see any future mmo being cooperative because of all this. I think they'll all design it this way because they have to get a return on their investment so I fear this culture is set since it appears endemic to on line gaming.
 

I agree completely.
 
I remember the days when in a 5-man you had to CC a couple of the mobs.....ON EVERY PULL!!!! (And you "had" do do all that, AND try to do it in less than 45 minutes for a quest!!!) And you had to do at least 10 quests, to get to level 2, not get to level 3 after the first quest. But I do understand why they want you to level fast(er) - to get the the expansions and new stuff.

The AoE tanking/dps for 5-mans would be OK if they waited until the first (or 2nd) patch after an x-pac to make it easy - then those of us that like things hard could take on the dungeons the way they used to - and all the casuals could do the dps-fest later.

But as with previous x-pacs, we'll see how much stays, because I remember then saying this and that won't be on gear anymore early, but by the time it came out - they couldn't go through with the change. This or that won't be a mechanic anymore - but was still left in. And while making the 15 level talents - they really have made each class cookie cutter - instead of having to pick one every level that made each character unique. (And screw that "balance" thing - certain specs should be good for certain things and horrible at other things - not this "every spec" should be good "for" everything.....)
 
All the casuals complaining that wow is to easy... Go kill an end boss this xpac on heroic and then say it's easy... go get 9/9 Gold Challenge modes at the start of the xpac and then say it's easy.

You can't come into an xpac on the final tier and complain that heroics are to easy... Go back to any xpac and run heroics geared in heroic raid gear from the final tier and it's GOING to be easy!
 
I don't think they ever can go back to how it was because they want a mass player base. The way the players play has to be accommodated to make a mass product. People will die rather than change how they play. Today I joined as a healer on a panderia boss that has a mechanic where it depletes everyone's health and you have to heal the party through it but at the end everyone's health and my mana was depleted. So I sat to drink and restore my mana, meanwhile the party, all at 60% health just run off and fight the trash. They will not stop and eat. Often now parties will not stop and let you resurrect players. Then you can't get time to restore your mana, and they play to expose weakness in the party then blame the individual. Their behaviour is the problem but it becomes manifest as an individual's problem. When I couldn't heal the party who entered combat at 60%, then lost more, then ran on again until they died it was "WTF healer" and this is the culture of the game now. No time, nobody will eat after rez, nobody allows time, it's played in perpetual motion, not just without down-time but without any civility. Today I was tanking and the healer started saying "WTF tank, just get mobs so we can aoe them". Blizzard face the same problem as a player, the players are forcing you to play a certain way. They have to accommodate that. My guess is that all future MMOs will have to be designed around these kinds of style of play or else be marginal small scale affairs. And can developers really afford to produce something that is anything less than a mass affair? The thing is, in the older days, those breaks allowed some civility and sociality, little bits of interaction and joking, all that's gone from the game. It's like being driven on a production line or something. You enter, race through the instance and leave. There is almost no spontaneous interaction in the game world either. Nobody invites you to group spontaneously, it's played in cliques and lineages of people who got to the same level around the same level and who are intent on using their network to sustain their difference relative to others, it's like a social structure!
 
WOW development team seems to be trying to chase off players. Every big patch or expansion you have to relearn how to play your toon again. And the short ball-headed pally hater is always finding ways to cripple the Paladin class more to where it's no longer fun to play palys at all. If you develop Horde and Alliance toons and level them equally you can see Blizzards favoritism toward the Horde side it's very obvious. Now they are taking away another item you can enchant and reducing the chance of gems be usable in the game to improve the game. That is the stupidest logic I've heard and every big patch and expansion they do something stupid like this. I find myself less and less interested with the game because of these patterns that the Blizzard developers continue to follow.
 
<quote>WOW development team seems to be trying to chase off players. Every big patch or expansion you have to relearn how to play your toon again.</quote>

this is one of the reasons I stopped playing.
 
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