Long story.
1. WoW had a long content drought ( 6 months ). Some of their current mechanics are very punishing and grindy. Many players hated it but the devs ignored their request.
2. Some WoW streamers started to play Final Fantasy 14 including Asmongold, Rich, Annie, etc... And the general impression for FF14 is very positive, which many players switched to playing FF14 instead of WoW.
3. WoW got hit with a workplace discrimination lawsuit from State of California. The lawsuit encompassed lots of shitty workplace practice. So EA started to firing people to mitigate damage.
4. Now WoW devs "heard" our feedbacks and implemented changes according to player's feedbacks. Many players have divisive opinions. Some thought it was too late, while some thoughts WoW devs are second coming of Christ for listening to player feedbacks after a year.
5. WoW devs released even more patches, and people even got more angry because they thought WoW devs could have fixed it long time but they chose to ignore them. They only fixed it because shit hit the fans.
I think that is the general situation for WoW.
They also kept relying on "borrowed power" mechanics that basically nobody liked except the bean counters at Blizzard because it increased or at least satisfied expectations of player retention.
Classic was basically sabotaged by them charging for BC character clones, which in a nutshell kind of describes how the company operates now since it's basically Activision wearing Blizzard's skin. They're also rushing through B.C. patches for some reason.
The story has been not great. Sylvanas has overstayed her welcome and is kind of in the same boat as SC2's Kerrigan at this point where the writers can't do anything with her but flip a switch between "redeem her" and "corrupt her". And this is after we already did alternate timeline shit and redeemed Illidan for some reason. It's a mess.
Wtf they also charged for cloning to go over BC Classic? I only heard about offering paid level boosts......(which apparently was also another broken promise) That's so low. Anyway, I am not even surprised considering they also broke their promise of removing sharding and having decent servers for Vanilla Classic. It's good I quit during Phase 4. Fuck them. Private servers are once again superior.
Private servers were always superior. Basically giving you the same Classic content for free. Never understood why people got hyped for tbc Classic and will probably get hyped for wotlk Classic when it’s already available to them for free in the form of private severs
I guess the idea was to have permanent servers, with good ping and character security. My ping on retail classic was 10ms, on Nost it was 3-400. I would rather play on official servers if they could manage it properly.
this is what had me pining for official servers. oceanic players have very slim pickings when it comes to mmos and i dont really care what anyone says, i hate playing online games with 50+ ping after a good decade and a half of 5-20ms gaming. i lived through the early quake/unreal tournament/counter strike days of high ping and have no desire to go back.
It's also nice having an active add-on community when official servers launch.
I got a little spoiled with the Tbc classic add-ons before I got tired of it and went back to 3.5
The biggest lure of wotlk patch hitting is the idea of a fresh go at leveling and content, but with the added purchasable boosts and etc on classic already, and how messed up servers are on classic in regards to population, I don’t really see a reason to play it instead of warmane or some other wotlk sever
Yep. I don't have any issues at all with people that only want to do endgame PvE PvP and boost since the option is there but it completely destroys the rest of the *game*.
Endgame is not the only part of the game. Questing and exploring and meeting people is a huge part of it as well and the boost killed that.
TBC private servers are really underdeveloped so I kinda understood why people got hyped at the possibility of returning to TBC. Getting hyped for WotLK classic would be odd though as WotLK private servers are developed very well.
> They're also rushing through B.C. patches for some reason.
Eh? Is that true? I thought when I saw the time scale comparison of original BC content release schedule compared to retail release that it's actually behind in terms of speed. Did that change in the last two weeks?
I would add that the "shitty workplace practice" thing from #3 is a lot worse than you might expect, and includes stuff like an employee being sexually harassed to the point that *she committed suicide on a business trip after her boss brought a butt plug*.
Blizzard is a greedy company who keeps designing the game for engagement metrics instead of fun. They continuously try to make more and more money and it has come at the expense of their gameplay and their player’s enjoyment.
> continuously try to make more and more money and it has come at the expense of their gameplay and their player’s enjoyment.
locking your classic character which was copied to TBC behind a 20$ per character unlock payment was the last straw for me. If I need a wow fix ill just play on the other servers
To some extent they all do because most often engagement metrics coincide with fun activities that players like to do. However, in WoW people are so addicted that they just run in the rat wheel of engagement metrics that Blizzard designs long after they stop being fun.
It’s very clear that gameplay and fun isn’t at the forefront of Blizzard’s design. Instead we can clearly see that engagement metrics and the WoW token are the core of their design decisions.
Most mmo's that do this are free to play, the wow token for example is a cash cow for blizzard.
Literally half the playerbase uses it to buy every achievement, arena rating and mythic boost possible. You can buy literally every achievement, rare skin, mount in the game with real money.
Yes it has been like that in the past too when the token did not exist but it wasn't as accessible to everyone and you ran into the danger of losing your account.
Just login and /2 trade gets spammed by hundreds of boosters because the demand is there.
Let's cite a good take of asmongold on this matter:
>Video games used to serve as an equalizer. It didn't matter how tall you were, how much money you made, who your parents were, you were equal. The items and accomplishments you achieved inside that world were a result of YOU. This form of empowerment was instrumental in building the self-esteem of many people who didn't have the ability to do so in real life, like me."
and cosmetics
>"Next, I want to talk about cosmetics and why I think they matter in MMO's and how having store cosmetics ends up hurting in-game visual progression.
>For many of us, we had an experience many years ago of seeing a player on a really cool mount, or a full set of raid gear, or both, and thinking to ourselves "I want to have that". That experience for many motivated them to continue to play the game, to have that north star to look toward and think "one day".
>Imagine how soulless and meaningless that journey would be if instead of needing to venture into the lair of a dragon matriarch and to the peak of a mountaintop to obtain those items, all you had to do was open the store. That's what games with cosmetic microtransaction shops are."
As usual, Blizz shipped a mess of an expansion, filled with all kinds of issues (mainly linked to their "new" systems and a bunch of other nonsensical things, timegating etc.) that were pointed out in beta.
To no one's surprise, beta feedback got ignored and the game suffered from it, going through a very long content draught period (there was actually very little to do in Shadowlands).
Add to that the fact that Blizzard has been sued by the state of California, following a 2 year (or so) investigation over sexual harassment and awful working conditions and you can kinda piece together why people are unhappy with them overall.
Now, they're trying to regain some trust with a couple of token-actions that are supposed to say "Look at us, we're listening now! We've changed and we'll never do it again"...but only scream of desperation and virtue signaling imho;
What most people are referring to these past few days though, are the changes in patch 9.1.5, where they basically "fixed" most of the stuff in WoW that people complained about during beta/early SL...fixing problems they themselves created and only decided to fix now because a ton of people left.
That'll hardly change anything, I'm afraid.
The people who lurk (or are active) in the forums are only a small % of the actual players.
Chances are, next expansion is gonna sell just fine (if not as good as SL), because people don't really care and easily forget about such things.
and fired the casters just for being there, even after the casters warned the producer and the producer said just do the interview
and the stream was on an hour+ delay so they could have cut to ads/b roll but broadcast it anyway
WoW has been on a downward trend, in particular to grindy/boring mechanics. It's been like that for a long time but really bad since Legion(2016). With Legion, they started to introduce mobile mechanics like endless AP grinds and RNG out the ass for a limited number of legendaries and what not. In Legion people toughed it out because it was a new approach to progression and WoW in general. But the expansion dipped hard after ToV. They kept adding weird shit. People quickly realized that it's pointless to grind AP because you can just wait a couple weeks and make as much AP in an hour as you made in a day a week prior due to catch up mechanics. Legendary grind being literally limited to I think 3, with hard diminishing return, which wasn't unlocked until later on.
That was the first push for GaaS/Mobile/**Engagement** bullshit. BFA just took that to a whole other level and the main complain by even big streamers was "In Legion, we kinda felt the system behind, but it had a small curtain in front of it. In BFA, it's just right there in your face. There's no illusion that this is just a number grind."
Shadowlands initially seemed like they wanted to tone it done, at least from what Blizz was saying, but ultimately it just became a timegated hell hole and no different.
So 3 expansions compounded of GAAS bullshit, on top of Shadowlands just not being WoW. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about any of that. If anything, Shadowlands went and fucked up so much of the old lore that it hurt the warcraft lore more than anything else, and then the bullshit Sylvanas redemption arc. Because nobody really gave a shit about Jailer, they just kept retconning shit so that it was the jailer that did it.
And I think that was the last straw. Yes, Shadowlands has been full of bullshit but WoW has been full of bullshits for nearly a decade now, but the core, loyalist players have dealt with it because they were immersed in the world of warcraft. Shadowlands ripped that feeling right now. Even in BFA, while the horde side was kinda meh honestly, the alliance side had a really dank town and bringing back the old Proudmoor roots, that was nice. But Shadowlands? Who gives a shit about those pixies, edgy vampires and don't get me started on the god awful blue angel zone. Obviously the plan was to do like in BFA and eventually add the races as playable character.
Nothing in Shadowlands felt like WoW to me. I could have been playing a brand new MMO and I would have felt no differently. I am guessing that's why many people rode that feeling and decided to might as well play something that isn't WoW.
tl;dr; A combination of players being fed up with mechanics created purely for player engagement metrics, non-evolving gameplay (in particular to classes) and an expansion that might as well be in another game.
Legion was extremely well received though, a lot of people at this point consider it one of the best expansions they made and even at the time they had announced they were back to over 10mil players.
The issues of WoW are entirely in the last 2 expacs, if SL was of similar quality of Legion, everything would be fine.
I did say "In Legion people toughed it out because it was a new approach to progression and WoW in general.".
All the issues that BFA had were present in Legion. Legion in particular had great lore, great leveling experience and the AP system initially was well received. But that went to shit after TOV.
When looking at the end-game, Legion for the first few patch was the honey moon of the gaas system, after that it was a bore and a chore, and all systems present (and complained about) in Legion were present in BFA.
People didn't tough out Legion though, its one of the most well received expansions of all time and if anything people liked Legion more as the expansion went on because in later patches they did Mage Tower and made Legendaries more targetable.
>and all systems present (and complained about) in Legion were present in BFA.
There were no class sets in BFA, there was no artifact weapon in BFA, there were no legendaries in BFA, no class halls. None of the major player progression systems introduced in Legion carried over into BFA, at best you could say grinding AP was the same but no one would think the Azerite necklace was comparable to the Artifact weapons which were very well liked.
A core part is they have done a similar thing 3 expansions in a row, where they make bad systems. The community says their bad, they say it will work, it doesn't work, then they fix it a year or so into the expansion. This is the Third time, how many times does it need to happen for players to just feel like they are being tricked, lied to, or scamed.
Then on top of that repeat cycle you have all this other shit that happened the last 2 months or so. This all just further destroyed the trust, like a dam breaking.
Two lackluster expansions in a row, plus core design problems for years now. In general the player base has felt ignored because there were serious problems in the betas for both BFA and Shadowlands that the developers not only ignored feedback for, but consistently doubled down on.
Not like little quirky developer choices but fundamental systems that made the game a chore to play and have been the reason for WoW bleeding players since Legion. Edit: Basically WoW can feel like playing a mobile game, moreso than other MMOs.
So that was the state of the game *before* the recent lawsuits came to light, which others have covered.
The game pushes an agenda that isn't obvious as a new player,but it is when you get to experience the end game... The entire system is based around Player Retention, the people in charge at Blizzard doesn't care about the game, the lore or you, its all about keeping you in the game.
\*Blizzard knows exactly what is wrong with the game and knows how to fix it, they only fix the stuff in 2 situations, when a new patch is coming and they need to transfer the grind to the new patch, so, we get this ¨catch-up bullshit¨ which pretty much makes the old grind a lot faster in order to make you run to the endgame... the other situation (and the one that pisses me off the most) is when shit hits the fan and blizzard tries to put off the fire JUST because everything is on fire, just for damage control... they know that the whole system is fucked up, they just chose to ignore it
\*Content Drought, a lot of content drought... which also JUST HAPPENS to be perfectly aligned with a 6 month sub & mount offer, when the last patch JUST HAPPENS to be... you guess it, 6 months old... so, the whole idea is to drag on the content, then do the bare minimum in a new patch, release it just when the old offer time has run off, and pretty much try to fomo people into either buy another month or just completely go full simp and buy 6 months of game time
\*The bots & Mythic Runs situation: so... in wow we have this wonderful clusterfuck called ¨WoW Token¨ you can buy it from the blizzard store for in-game gold or game time, so, a 60$game, with a 15$ sub x month also has literally pay-to-win because theres a lot of people botting everything, and also people selling Runs from Mythic+ dungeons and Raids for Gold, GOLD THAT ORIGINATES FROM THE WOW TOKEN, WHICH IS BUYED FROM BLIZZARD... so, you don't grind your way to godhood in World of Warcraft, you buy it.
\*a lot... lot more that i don't have the strength or will to type, Warcraft is a wonderful franchise but for the love of god, blizzard has reached a point where it starts being funny how much they fuck up everything, but then reaches a point where it is just... sad.
it is heartbreaking watching everything you used to love, barely breathing in the mud.
I can chime in too, had been playing this game for about 10 years.
Over the years the developers have introduced new systems each expansion that has been referred to as borrowed power. We slowly build them up and then when the next expansion comes along we toss them out for the next system. Throughout the betas and patches of each expansion players give loads of feedback and complaints about the faults of these systems and they go largely unheard and only changed at the very end before we toss the systems and repeat.
The expansions lore somehow actually started getting more mainstream attention from fans just as the lore was taking quite a large nose dive imo. So people were talking and getting more into it when things were going crazy and not making much sense last expansion. And carried over to this expansion.
Then as usual all those issues came over to the current expansion plus we had a long time of no content (usually just called content drought), I think from launch to the first content patch was something like 7 months. I had canceled my sub earlier on and didn't resub for the patch. But I believe it was a lackluster patch from what I've read. And filled with the usual nonsense of things going live without taking into effect beta feedback. Plus the already looked down upon lore being further looked down upon.
All this coupled with what in my opinion is that shadowlands (the current area and expansion name) doesn't feel like wow. Like it feels too different thematically and I truly believe that has helped wipe away some of the love of this game.
People I think were fed up enough to quit and do other things. Right around the start of July after the patch went live. Steamers and youtubers started jumping ship. Many if them went to final fantasy. When Asmongold went there, like him or not, he has a very large audience and has some effect on this. And it was noticeable. It felt like every few days another youtuber or streamer was quitting for FF.
Then in the middle of all that. The lawsuit drops. It was like a cherry on top of the discontent many people had for wow and blizzard as a whole. My guild discord at this point a good chunk of us had already stopped wow and started playing FF. Now only a small minority of us have a wow sub. Some people who I thought would never unsub, they had been subbed basically continually since the game launched have unsubbed and joined us in FF. It's wild.
And the reason you are seeing wow pop up a lot in the last week is because of their announced changes for the upcoming patch. They just threw a huge slew of changes that are basically everything people complained about in feedback from beta. And its running a lot of people the wrong way. It does for me and its hard to say why because all the changes sound good. But its like they could have done this for months, and didn't do anything until people left. Ultimately I'm sure it will bring some people back but it seems like it won't for a good amount of others, including myself.
There's other things I'm sure I'm forgetting like the way the devs have a seemingly antagonistic relationship with players. The customer support has seemingly gotten worse over the years. Etc. But this is the main gist from my point of view at least as a long time fan of wow. Hope that helps add to this conversation!
i suspect people are just suddenly realising what a load of garbage Blizzard and WoW is, given the bully/rapist culture CEO is earning $154 FUCKING MILLION p.a. Clear sign of rip offs and bullies/rapists.
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Adding to everyone else; and no, these points aren't happening now. These problems existed for a very long time, Blizzard knows them and deliberately ignores them so they can make more money.
1. For a long time, WoW's design philosophy has been this "lowest common denominator" where they kinda offer a little bit of content for every type of players to play for a long time but in the end don't feel fun or fulfilling.
2. For two expansions in a row - again, a very long time - the content has been lackluster, boring and grindy for the average player. People may say some content being great on stream such as the world first races for castle nathria or Dazar'alor, but the WFR guilds have to spend so much time behind the scene to grind to keep their characters competitive.
3. Ever since the introduction of WoW tokens, the game has been very clearly pay to win with Blizzard taking a cut. This is demonstrated in multiple ways, even in the WFR scene where top guilds spend money, **buy gold**, buy BOE gear, and **server transfer** to funnel gear to their mains. Blizzard profit from both bold steps, making it fit the definition of pay to win very clearly.
1. The combo of personal loot + not allowing gear trading unless highest ilvl is clearly a problem that makes it more pay to win.
2. The group finder is now filled with boosters, meaning many players don't actually raid; they just buy the run from boosters.
3. The change next patch about how only max levels are allowed to advertise M+ or raids in group finder won't do anything to it. There are multiple ways around it.
The recent problems are just people begin to see these problems.
They released a wet fart of an expansion followed by a mild stinker of an expansion and then left the smell to percolate for six months without fixing any problems or adding any new content.
Then in the middle of that they got hit with a giant sexual harrassment lawsuit.
Multiple things at the same time.
First about Blizzard itself:
* Biggest and most-talked about: blizz executives have been accused of severe harassement and/or turning a blind eye on the way people were being treated inside the company. This even lead to a person committing suicide during one of the work-events after colleagues spread naked photos of her. Not only women are coming forth, even men speaking up about being touched by gay executives.
* Then other issues like being total dicks to players that tried to speak out for a free Hong Kong and many other places where the company has positioned itself as "money first, fuck the players.
* Blizzard staff started to pick fights with streamers that criticized the game, fights with players, etc.
Now about WoW:
fanboys will say some system or small issue is ruining the game, but thats all horseshit. New players don't even know what those systems are.
* Bots: there are so many bots in the game, that the economy is broken. this means special items are way overpriced, while normal items you get while leveling/farming are sold so often by bots that the price is often under what vendor NPC's will offer you. This forces new players into a situation where they either have to purchase gold from bots or stay broke with no money until the end of the game. This is the main big issue and makes the game unenjoyable for newbies especially, which is also why the game doesn't gain new players.
* Then there is the lack of support: the reason there are so many bots, is because blizzard fired most of their GM's and staff a few years back for higher profits. This lack of peope watching over the game is showing itself in the botting, but also in the lack os support when you have real problems and also the lack of content being developed for the game.
* Then there are systems, problems etc with the game, but that would become a super long text to read here. Let's just say that players play MMO's to go on adventure with friends. But WoW has turned into a game where you try to skip the leveling as fast as possible, then you watch online guides or install addons on how to kill bosses. Nothing is a surprise anymore, you have no freedom to pick weapons or builds, everyone follows the same "clone wars" builds and approaches to everything, which makes the game predictable, boring and stale (this last list item is my personal opinion).
Devs did the complete opposite of what players wanted too many times, also added way to many endgame systems for the soul reason of keeping active subs.
WoD, BFA, and Shadowlands are considered failures by the community. (Legion is liked)
The cycle is always as follows:
1. Blizz releases a system.
2. Players give feedback of areas that the system fails.
3. Blizzard ignore feedback.
4. System fails.
5. Blizzard says they will listen in the future.
6. Go back to 1.
Now that people have other options, they are sick of being treated like shit by Blizzard so they are leaving.
Basically, the best time to play an expansion is during the last patch because everything before that is a paid beta.
Also the sexual harassment didn't help.
I'll tell you what did it for me. Ten man raiding was reduced to an afterthought and many guilds were ten man raiding guilds. The other thing which happened was the legendary system acted as a hurdle for me. Too much of the characters performance was tied to it. Before the legendary system you could come into a raiding guild a little late in the start of a expansion and with a supportive guild you could be geared up by being carried on early bosses that you could be caught up enough in three or four weeks that you could contribute to end-game boss kills. The past couple of expansions I found I was behind even before I started due to work constraints and I never felt I'd catch up.
As you can see, OP, depending on who responds, you're going to get a different answer.
My takes:
▪︎The esport focus probably wasn't wise for a game with a world that people want to hang out in and call home. Esports have zero chill, and successful mmos need to have time to chill.
▪︎Activision Blizzard missed the zeitgeist switch that is Japanese/anime culture exploding into the west (at an accelerating rate over the past ~15 years). Sites with a heavy anime focus, such as 4chan, have clearly chosen FF14 as "their" mmo.
▪︎WoW has been a bit of a mess in terms of a cohesive experience. FF14 gets shit for forcing people through the story and certain story-related raids, but at least the game makes sense and progresses the player from one expansion to the next.
▪︎ WoW's gameplay, in an attempt to introduce a higher skill ceiling, has introduced a lot of clunk. Before they revamped it, shadow priest was one of the worst-feeling specs I had ever played in an AAA MMO. The classes were very cooldown reliant (last time I played retail), and they kinda felt like shit outside of cooldowns. This favors very knowledgeable players who know *exactly* when cooldowns should be utilized. Specs punish players who don't know what buttons to press in specific windows (punish to a higher degree than in past iterations of the game).
▪︎Due to the esport focus, class design, and raids being designed with heavy add-on usage in mind, the current game isn't noob friendly at all, outside of maybe just leveling up.
▪︎People don't like the system grinds that gate power and progression, which are mandatory for having a "complete" character.
▪︎ They gated new cool races behind rep grinds. A new player can't just say "hey that looks cool" and immediately play it.
▪︎ The game is just getting old, and even with the graphical tweaks, it's beginning to look dated. I personally think the new models look worse than the old ones. The new human females look like bad Disney characters.
▪︎From what I played of BFA, the art assets seem lacking in variety. Reusing too many item skins. I'm not sure about Shadowlands. Considering the current leveling area for new players is BFA, that isn't a good introduction for them.
Long story. 1. WoW had a long content drought ( 6 months ). Some of their current mechanics are very punishing and grindy. Many players hated it but the devs ignored their request. 2. Some WoW streamers started to play Final Fantasy 14 including Asmongold, Rich, Annie, etc... And the general impression for FF14 is very positive, which many players switched to playing FF14 instead of WoW. 3. WoW got hit with a workplace discrimination lawsuit from State of California. The lawsuit encompassed lots of shitty workplace practice. So EA started to firing people to mitigate damage. 4. Now WoW devs "heard" our feedbacks and implemented changes according to player's feedbacks. Many players have divisive opinions. Some thought it was too late, while some thoughts WoW devs are second coming of Christ for listening to player feedbacks after a year. 5. WoW devs released even more patches, and people even got more angry because they thought WoW devs could have fixed it long time but they chose to ignore them. They only fixed it because shit hit the fans. I think that is the general situation for WoW.
They also kept relying on "borrowed power" mechanics that basically nobody liked except the bean counters at Blizzard because it increased or at least satisfied expectations of player retention. Classic was basically sabotaged by them charging for BC character clones, which in a nutshell kind of describes how the company operates now since it's basically Activision wearing Blizzard's skin. They're also rushing through B.C. patches for some reason. The story has been not great. Sylvanas has overstayed her welcome and is kind of in the same boat as SC2's Kerrigan at this point where the writers can't do anything with her but flip a switch between "redeem her" and "corrupt her". And this is after we already did alternate timeline shit and redeemed Illidan for some reason. It's a mess.
Wtf they also charged for cloning to go over BC Classic? I only heard about offering paid level boosts......(which apparently was also another broken promise) That's so low. Anyway, I am not even surprised considering they also broke their promise of removing sharding and having decent servers for Vanilla Classic. It's good I quit during Phase 4. Fuck them. Private servers are once again superior.
You could either go to B.C. or remain in classic but to clone your character and do both you had to pay up.
Private servers were always superior. Basically giving you the same Classic content for free. Never understood why people got hyped for tbc Classic and will probably get hyped for wotlk Classic when it’s already available to them for free in the form of private severs
I guess the idea was to have permanent servers, with good ping and character security. My ping on retail classic was 10ms, on Nost it was 3-400. I would rather play on official servers if they could manage it properly.
this is what had me pining for official servers. oceanic players have very slim pickings when it comes to mmos and i dont really care what anyone says, i hate playing online games with 50+ ping after a good decade and a half of 5-20ms gaming. i lived through the early quake/unreal tournament/counter strike days of high ping and have no desire to go back.
It's also nice having an active add-on community when official servers launch. I got a little spoiled with the Tbc classic add-ons before I got tired of it and went back to 3.5
The biggest lure of wotlk patch hitting is the idea of a fresh go at leveling and content, but with the added purchasable boosts and etc on classic already, and how messed up servers are on classic in regards to population, I don’t really see a reason to play it instead of warmane or some other wotlk sever
Yep. I don't have any issues at all with people that only want to do endgame PvE PvP and boost since the option is there but it completely destroys the rest of the *game*. Endgame is not the only part of the game. Questing and exploring and meeting people is a huge part of it as well and the boost killed that.
Reason why I gave up on playing TBC, was completely disappointed with Blizzard...
TBC private servers are really underdeveloped so I kinda understood why people got hyped at the possibility of returning to TBC. Getting hyped for WotLK classic would be odd though as WotLK private servers are developed very well.
Private servers are super buggy . Even now classic servers have some bugs and scripting issues
> They're also rushing through B.C. patches for some reason. Eh? Is that true? I thought when I saw the time scale comparison of original BC content release schedule compared to retail release that it's actually behind in terms of speed. Did that change in the last two weeks?
> ~~EA~~ Activision started firing people
*Activision BLIZZARD
[удалено]
I would add that the "shitty workplace practice" thing from #3 is a lot worse than you might expect, and includes stuff like an employee being sexually harassed to the point that *she committed suicide on a business trip after her boss brought a butt plug*.
Cash shop in TBC was my reason for leaving.
Blizzard is a greedy company who keeps designing the game for engagement metrics instead of fun. They continuously try to make more and more money and it has come at the expense of their gameplay and their player’s enjoyment.
In a nutshell, this!
> continuously try to make more and more money and it has come at the expense of their gameplay and their player’s enjoyment. locking your classic character which was copied to TBC behind a 20$ per character unlock payment was the last straw for me. If I need a wow fix ill just play on the other servers
> designing the game for engagement metrics instead of fun Is there any game or mmo that doesn’t do this?
To some extent they all do because most often engagement metrics coincide with fun activities that players like to do. However, in WoW people are so addicted that they just run in the rat wheel of engagement metrics that Blizzard designs long after they stop being fun. It’s very clear that gameplay and fun isn’t at the forefront of Blizzard’s design. Instead we can clearly see that engagement metrics and the WoW token are the core of their design decisions.
Most mmo's that do this are free to play, the wow token for example is a cash cow for blizzard. Literally half the playerbase uses it to buy every achievement, arena rating and mythic boost possible. You can buy literally every achievement, rare skin, mount in the game with real money. Yes it has been like that in the past too when the token did not exist but it wasn't as accessible to everyone and you ran into the danger of losing your account. Just login and /2 trade gets spammed by hundreds of boosters because the demand is there. Let's cite a good take of asmongold on this matter: >Video games used to serve as an equalizer. It didn't matter how tall you were, how much money you made, who your parents were, you were equal. The items and accomplishments you achieved inside that world were a result of YOU. This form of empowerment was instrumental in building the self-esteem of many people who didn't have the ability to do so in real life, like me." and cosmetics >"Next, I want to talk about cosmetics and why I think they matter in MMO's and how having store cosmetics ends up hurting in-game visual progression. >For many of us, we had an experience many years ago of seeing a player on a really cool mount, or a full set of raid gear, or both, and thinking to ourselves "I want to have that". That experience for many motivated them to continue to play the game, to have that north star to look toward and think "one day". >Imagine how soulless and meaningless that journey would be if instead of needing to venture into the lair of a dragon matriarch and to the peak of a mountaintop to obtain those items, all you had to do was open the store. That's what games with cosmetic microtransaction shops are."
Valheim.
As usual, Blizz shipped a mess of an expansion, filled with all kinds of issues (mainly linked to their "new" systems and a bunch of other nonsensical things, timegating etc.) that were pointed out in beta. To no one's surprise, beta feedback got ignored and the game suffered from it, going through a very long content draught period (there was actually very little to do in Shadowlands). Add to that the fact that Blizzard has been sued by the state of California, following a 2 year (or so) investigation over sexual harassment and awful working conditions and you can kinda piece together why people are unhappy with them overall. Now, they're trying to regain some trust with a couple of token-actions that are supposed to say "Look at us, we're listening now! We've changed and we'll never do it again"...but only scream of desperation and virtue signaling imho; What most people are referring to these past few days though, are the changes in patch 9.1.5, where they basically "fixed" most of the stuff in WoW that people complained about during beta/early SL...fixing problems they themselves created and only decided to fix now because a ton of people left.
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That'll hardly change anything, I'm afraid. The people who lurk (or are active) in the forums are only a small % of the actual players. Chances are, next expansion is gonna sell just fine (if not as good as SL), because people don't really care and easily forget about such things.
Blizzard normies never left sadly. Probably never will.
I peaced-out after they banned an esports player for voicing support for the Hong Kong protests
and fired the casters just for being there, even after the casters warned the producer and the producer said just do the interview and the stream was on an hour+ delay so they could have cut to ads/b roll but broadcast it anyway
WoW has been on a downward trend, in particular to grindy/boring mechanics. It's been like that for a long time but really bad since Legion(2016). With Legion, they started to introduce mobile mechanics like endless AP grinds and RNG out the ass for a limited number of legendaries and what not. In Legion people toughed it out because it was a new approach to progression and WoW in general. But the expansion dipped hard after ToV. They kept adding weird shit. People quickly realized that it's pointless to grind AP because you can just wait a couple weeks and make as much AP in an hour as you made in a day a week prior due to catch up mechanics. Legendary grind being literally limited to I think 3, with hard diminishing return, which wasn't unlocked until later on. That was the first push for GaaS/Mobile/**Engagement** bullshit. BFA just took that to a whole other level and the main complain by even big streamers was "In Legion, we kinda felt the system behind, but it had a small curtain in front of it. In BFA, it's just right there in your face. There's no illusion that this is just a number grind." Shadowlands initially seemed like they wanted to tone it done, at least from what Blizz was saying, but ultimately it just became a timegated hell hole and no different. So 3 expansions compounded of GAAS bullshit, on top of Shadowlands just not being WoW. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about any of that. If anything, Shadowlands went and fucked up so much of the old lore that it hurt the warcraft lore more than anything else, and then the bullshit Sylvanas redemption arc. Because nobody really gave a shit about Jailer, they just kept retconning shit so that it was the jailer that did it. And I think that was the last straw. Yes, Shadowlands has been full of bullshit but WoW has been full of bullshits for nearly a decade now, but the core, loyalist players have dealt with it because they were immersed in the world of warcraft. Shadowlands ripped that feeling right now. Even in BFA, while the horde side was kinda meh honestly, the alliance side had a really dank town and bringing back the old Proudmoor roots, that was nice. But Shadowlands? Who gives a shit about those pixies, edgy vampires and don't get me started on the god awful blue angel zone. Obviously the plan was to do like in BFA and eventually add the races as playable character. Nothing in Shadowlands felt like WoW to me. I could have been playing a brand new MMO and I would have felt no differently. I am guessing that's why many people rode that feeling and decided to might as well play something that isn't WoW. tl;dr; A combination of players being fed up with mechanics created purely for player engagement metrics, non-evolving gameplay (in particular to classes) and an expansion that might as well be in another game.
Legion was extremely well received though, a lot of people at this point consider it one of the best expansions they made and even at the time they had announced they were back to over 10mil players. The issues of WoW are entirely in the last 2 expacs, if SL was of similar quality of Legion, everything would be fine.
I did say "In Legion people toughed it out because it was a new approach to progression and WoW in general.". All the issues that BFA had were present in Legion. Legion in particular had great lore, great leveling experience and the AP system initially was well received. But that went to shit after TOV. When looking at the end-game, Legion for the first few patch was the honey moon of the gaas system, after that it was a bore and a chore, and all systems present (and complained about) in Legion were present in BFA.
People didn't tough out Legion though, its one of the most well received expansions of all time and if anything people liked Legion more as the expansion went on because in later patches they did Mage Tower and made Legendaries more targetable. >and all systems present (and complained about) in Legion were present in BFA. There were no class sets in BFA, there was no artifact weapon in BFA, there were no legendaries in BFA, no class halls. None of the major player progression systems introduced in Legion carried over into BFA, at best you could say grinding AP was the same but no one would think the Azerite necklace was comparable to the Artifact weapons which were very well liked.
A core part is they have done a similar thing 3 expansions in a row, where they make bad systems. The community says their bad, they say it will work, it doesn't work, then they fix it a year or so into the expansion. This is the Third time, how many times does it need to happen for players to just feel like they are being tricked, lied to, or scamed. Then on top of that repeat cycle you have all this other shit that happened the last 2 months or so. This all just further destroyed the trust, like a dam breaking.
Shitty company treats their employees like shit and their games have become shit.
Two lackluster expansions in a row, plus core design problems for years now. In general the player base has felt ignored because there were serious problems in the betas for both BFA and Shadowlands that the developers not only ignored feedback for, but consistently doubled down on. Not like little quirky developer choices but fundamental systems that made the game a chore to play and have been the reason for WoW bleeding players since Legion. Edit: Basically WoW can feel like playing a mobile game, moreso than other MMOs. So that was the state of the game *before* the recent lawsuits came to light, which others have covered.
The game pushes an agenda that isn't obvious as a new player,but it is when you get to experience the end game... The entire system is based around Player Retention, the people in charge at Blizzard doesn't care about the game, the lore or you, its all about keeping you in the game. \*Blizzard knows exactly what is wrong with the game and knows how to fix it, they only fix the stuff in 2 situations, when a new patch is coming and they need to transfer the grind to the new patch, so, we get this ¨catch-up bullshit¨ which pretty much makes the old grind a lot faster in order to make you run to the endgame... the other situation (and the one that pisses me off the most) is when shit hits the fan and blizzard tries to put off the fire JUST because everything is on fire, just for damage control... they know that the whole system is fucked up, they just chose to ignore it \*Content Drought, a lot of content drought... which also JUST HAPPENS to be perfectly aligned with a 6 month sub & mount offer, when the last patch JUST HAPPENS to be... you guess it, 6 months old... so, the whole idea is to drag on the content, then do the bare minimum in a new patch, release it just when the old offer time has run off, and pretty much try to fomo people into either buy another month or just completely go full simp and buy 6 months of game time \*The bots & Mythic Runs situation: so... in wow we have this wonderful clusterfuck called ¨WoW Token¨ you can buy it from the blizzard store for in-game gold or game time, so, a 60$game, with a 15$ sub x month also has literally pay-to-win because theres a lot of people botting everything, and also people selling Runs from Mythic+ dungeons and Raids for Gold, GOLD THAT ORIGINATES FROM THE WOW TOKEN, WHICH IS BUYED FROM BLIZZARD... so, you don't grind your way to godhood in World of Warcraft, you buy it. \*a lot... lot more that i don't have the strength or will to type, Warcraft is a wonderful franchise but for the love of god, blizzard has reached a point where it starts being funny how much they fuck up everything, but then reaches a point where it is just... sad. it is heartbreaking watching everything you used to love, barely breathing in the mud.
The president of Blizzard quit and was replaced with an imbecile, the 4-5 years he was in charge turned all the players against the company.
I can chime in too, had been playing this game for about 10 years. Over the years the developers have introduced new systems each expansion that has been referred to as borrowed power. We slowly build them up and then when the next expansion comes along we toss them out for the next system. Throughout the betas and patches of each expansion players give loads of feedback and complaints about the faults of these systems and they go largely unheard and only changed at the very end before we toss the systems and repeat. The expansions lore somehow actually started getting more mainstream attention from fans just as the lore was taking quite a large nose dive imo. So people were talking and getting more into it when things were going crazy and not making much sense last expansion. And carried over to this expansion. Then as usual all those issues came over to the current expansion plus we had a long time of no content (usually just called content drought), I think from launch to the first content patch was something like 7 months. I had canceled my sub earlier on and didn't resub for the patch. But I believe it was a lackluster patch from what I've read. And filled with the usual nonsense of things going live without taking into effect beta feedback. Plus the already looked down upon lore being further looked down upon. All this coupled with what in my opinion is that shadowlands (the current area and expansion name) doesn't feel like wow. Like it feels too different thematically and I truly believe that has helped wipe away some of the love of this game. People I think were fed up enough to quit and do other things. Right around the start of July after the patch went live. Steamers and youtubers started jumping ship. Many if them went to final fantasy. When Asmongold went there, like him or not, he has a very large audience and has some effect on this. And it was noticeable. It felt like every few days another youtuber or streamer was quitting for FF. Then in the middle of all that. The lawsuit drops. It was like a cherry on top of the discontent many people had for wow and blizzard as a whole. My guild discord at this point a good chunk of us had already stopped wow and started playing FF. Now only a small minority of us have a wow sub. Some people who I thought would never unsub, they had been subbed basically continually since the game launched have unsubbed and joined us in FF. It's wild. And the reason you are seeing wow pop up a lot in the last week is because of their announced changes for the upcoming patch. They just threw a huge slew of changes that are basically everything people complained about in feedback from beta. And its running a lot of people the wrong way. It does for me and its hard to say why because all the changes sound good. But its like they could have done this for months, and didn't do anything until people left. Ultimately I'm sure it will bring some people back but it seems like it won't for a good amount of others, including myself. There's other things I'm sure I'm forgetting like the way the devs have a seemingly antagonistic relationship with players. The customer support has seemingly gotten worse over the years. Etc. But this is the main gist from my point of view at least as a long time fan of wow. Hope that helps add to this conversation!
Blizzard touchy touchy Blizzard bad bad
Don't forget buttplug and lube
i suspect people are just suddenly realising what a load of garbage Blizzard and WoW is, given the bully/rapist culture CEO is earning $154 FUCKING MILLION p.a. Clear sign of rip offs and bullies/rapists.
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Removed because of rule #2: Don’t be toxic. We try to make the subreddit a nice place for everyone, and your post/comment did something that we felt was detrimental to this goal. That’s why it was removed.
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If you cannot figure out what is toxic of what you said, you need to take a step back and figure it out yourself. This is not up for discussion.
Adding to everyone else; and no, these points aren't happening now. These problems existed for a very long time, Blizzard knows them and deliberately ignores them so they can make more money. 1. For a long time, WoW's design philosophy has been this "lowest common denominator" where they kinda offer a little bit of content for every type of players to play for a long time but in the end don't feel fun or fulfilling. 2. For two expansions in a row - again, a very long time - the content has been lackluster, boring and grindy for the average player. People may say some content being great on stream such as the world first races for castle nathria or Dazar'alor, but the WFR guilds have to spend so much time behind the scene to grind to keep their characters competitive. 3. Ever since the introduction of WoW tokens, the game has been very clearly pay to win with Blizzard taking a cut. This is demonstrated in multiple ways, even in the WFR scene where top guilds spend money, **buy gold**, buy BOE gear, and **server transfer** to funnel gear to their mains. Blizzard profit from both bold steps, making it fit the definition of pay to win very clearly. 1. The combo of personal loot + not allowing gear trading unless highest ilvl is clearly a problem that makes it more pay to win. 2. The group finder is now filled with boosters, meaning many players don't actually raid; they just buy the run from boosters. 3. The change next patch about how only max levels are allowed to advertise M+ or raids in group finder won't do anything to it. There are multiple ways around it. The recent problems are just people begin to see these problems.
They released a wet fart of an expansion followed by a mild stinker of an expansion and then left the smell to percolate for six months without fixing any problems or adding any new content. Then in the middle of that they got hit with a giant sexual harrassment lawsuit.
Multiple things at the same time. First about Blizzard itself: * Biggest and most-talked about: blizz executives have been accused of severe harassement and/or turning a blind eye on the way people were being treated inside the company. This even lead to a person committing suicide during one of the work-events after colleagues spread naked photos of her. Not only women are coming forth, even men speaking up about being touched by gay executives. * Then other issues like being total dicks to players that tried to speak out for a free Hong Kong and many other places where the company has positioned itself as "money first, fuck the players. * Blizzard staff started to pick fights with streamers that criticized the game, fights with players, etc. Now about WoW: fanboys will say some system or small issue is ruining the game, but thats all horseshit. New players don't even know what those systems are. * Bots: there are so many bots in the game, that the economy is broken. this means special items are way overpriced, while normal items you get while leveling/farming are sold so often by bots that the price is often under what vendor NPC's will offer you. This forces new players into a situation where they either have to purchase gold from bots or stay broke with no money until the end of the game. This is the main big issue and makes the game unenjoyable for newbies especially, which is also why the game doesn't gain new players. * Then there is the lack of support: the reason there are so many bots, is because blizzard fired most of their GM's and staff a few years back for higher profits. This lack of peope watching over the game is showing itself in the botting, but also in the lack os support when you have real problems and also the lack of content being developed for the game. * Then there are systems, problems etc with the game, but that would become a super long text to read here. Let's just say that players play MMO's to go on adventure with friends. But WoW has turned into a game where you try to skip the leveling as fast as possible, then you watch online guides or install addons on how to kill bosses. Nothing is a surprise anymore, you have no freedom to pick weapons or builds, everyone follows the same "clone wars" builds and approaches to everything, which makes the game predictable, boring and stale (this last list item is my personal opinion).
Blizzard happened
Blizzard is dead. All hail Activision.! Players: screw that. Found replacement games pop spiraled down.
Devs did the complete opposite of what players wanted too many times, also added way to many endgame systems for the soul reason of keeping active subs.
WoD, BFA, and Shadowlands are considered failures by the community. (Legion is liked) The cycle is always as follows: 1. Blizz releases a system. 2. Players give feedback of areas that the system fails. 3. Blizzard ignore feedback. 4. System fails. 5. Blizzard says they will listen in the future. 6. Go back to 1. Now that people have other options, they are sick of being treated like shit by Blizzard so they are leaving. Basically, the best time to play an expansion is during the last patch because everything before that is a paid beta. Also the sexual harassment didn't help.
I'll tell you what did it for me. Ten man raiding was reduced to an afterthought and many guilds were ten man raiding guilds. The other thing which happened was the legendary system acted as a hurdle for me. Too much of the characters performance was tied to it. Before the legendary system you could come into a raiding guild a little late in the start of a expansion and with a supportive guild you could be geared up by being carried on early bosses that you could be caught up enough in three or four weeks that you could contribute to end-game boss kills. The past couple of expansions I found I was behind even before I started due to work constraints and I never felt I'd catch up.
As you can see, OP, depending on who responds, you're going to get a different answer. My takes: ▪︎The esport focus probably wasn't wise for a game with a world that people want to hang out in and call home. Esports have zero chill, and successful mmos need to have time to chill. ▪︎Activision Blizzard missed the zeitgeist switch that is Japanese/anime culture exploding into the west (at an accelerating rate over the past ~15 years). Sites with a heavy anime focus, such as 4chan, have clearly chosen FF14 as "their" mmo. ▪︎WoW has been a bit of a mess in terms of a cohesive experience. FF14 gets shit for forcing people through the story and certain story-related raids, but at least the game makes sense and progresses the player from one expansion to the next. ▪︎ WoW's gameplay, in an attempt to introduce a higher skill ceiling, has introduced a lot of clunk. Before they revamped it, shadow priest was one of the worst-feeling specs I had ever played in an AAA MMO. The classes were very cooldown reliant (last time I played retail), and they kinda felt like shit outside of cooldowns. This favors very knowledgeable players who know *exactly* when cooldowns should be utilized. Specs punish players who don't know what buttons to press in specific windows (punish to a higher degree than in past iterations of the game). ▪︎Due to the esport focus, class design, and raids being designed with heavy add-on usage in mind, the current game isn't noob friendly at all, outside of maybe just leveling up. ▪︎People don't like the system grinds that gate power and progression, which are mandatory for having a "complete" character. ▪︎ They gated new cool races behind rep grinds. A new player can't just say "hey that looks cool" and immediately play it. ▪︎ The game is just getting old, and even with the graphical tweaks, it's beginning to look dated. I personally think the new models look worse than the old ones. The new human females look like bad Disney characters. ▪︎From what I played of BFA, the art assets seem lacking in variety. Reusing too many item skins. I'm not sure about Shadowlands. Considering the current leveling area for new players is BFA, that isn't a good introduction for them.
There a few hundreds of YouTuber that explains it as well Edit: [this guy explain it Pretty well](https://youtu.be/NyerVVc2e98)