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Where did Blizzard go wrong?
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Post by
Monday
Heh, I saw that earlier but couldn't be bothered editing it. I don't know where he got the dungeon thing from lol.
Wasn't saying you failed, if that's what you were thinking >.>
Post by
lonewarrior
Using references outside the game like bowling, golf, chess leagues..etc..these are endeavors people play for years on end. They never get bored of it, it's an enjoyable pass time.
But here's the flaw in the analogy: Bowling, golf, chess, table tennis - those are not forms of entertainment that grow or change frequently. There's not a new version of chess being released every two months. Bowling doesn't have to compete with "Super Bowling 2", with a better lane and a ball that offers increased spin control.
So while WoW and those games are similar, in that they are both forms of entertainment, to overlook this difference in order to make an analogy renders the analogy's usefulness limited.
Within the same genre of entertainment, however, there are very,
very
few - I'll hazard a guess to say
none
, actually - games that keep even a majority of its original audience for such an extended period of time.
By genre, of course, I mean "video game". Are there people who still play Pac Man or Super Mario Brothers or Team Fortress 2 or Counterstrike? Yes - but that's not the point.
Do as many people now play those games as originally played them?
No, they don't. I may pull out Myst occasionally and replay it, or download Secret of Mana to my Wii so that I can toy around with it again, but the size of the audience that does that pales in comparison to the size of the audience the game had when it was new.
Decline of audience is a natural part of this particular medium of entertainment. Has Blizzard made choices that people don't like? Yes. Have people left because of them? Yes. Based on a careful review of the life span of entertainment within the genre, can I make an educated guess that more people have left due to the age of the game? I feel safe in doing so.
It was akin to introducing the game of chess into a pool hall.
Actually, in the early 1900s, having a chess table in the back of a pool hall was pretty common. A number of authors writing for that time period mention them. ;)
But that's my point in what you say. The games you mention all have one thing in common..they are solo games. Even WoW..strip to it's fundamental core, hasn't changed..you kill, you level, you move up, you kill again. From Vanilla through Cata, from Northshire to Firelands, it has never deviated from it's course. Some of the mechanic may have changed but not the core itself.
How many of you have played Super Mario Brothers or Zelda for 2-3-4 years? Those were great games.
Yet so many have played WoW for that length or more.
So what is that made WoW the success it is? Is it a great game..of course. But that's not enough to have kept it going this long in one's repertoire of games.
Let's go back to those other activities I mentioned and lets use one of them..Golf.
How many people will ever be playing at Augusta..yet players of all type enjoy the game at the level they play for years. Why? Because of the camaraderie..playing with buddies.
WoW is no different. That's is WoW secret to success. That players of common interest interacted and shared their fun.
Why do pugs fail in the long run...because after you win that roll and get the nice loot..who in that pug cares. But you get that same roll/loot with your guild and the gratz and accomplishment you feel and share with them is the true reward and makes you play for their sake as they do for yours. That's the secret to what made people play for so long and that is what Activision went and killed.
As for the chess/pool room..thanks for the info...I never knew that...but I would hazard to guess that endeavor eventually failed :P
Post by
444887
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Post by
881089
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Post by
MyTie
I have constantly defended all of Blizzard's choices, and have stayed a loyal fan since the beginning. Although as of late, I have begun to question the reasoning behind these actions.
I like your word choice here. I don't think many people actually questioned the reasoning behind their loyalty until recently.
Kids grew up with Blizzard as their mommy and daddy. Mommy and daddy can do no wrong. Then these kids grew up and started questioning mommy and daddy. Meanwhile, the new kid generation isn't latching onto World of Warcraft because the game has been geared to hold onto long time players, and isn't really geared for the younger generations.
I think World of Warcraft has been an excellent study in psychology. The OP put forward a well thought out critique of World of Warcraft, and look at the response! It has been one line jabs and negativity. This reflects the people still latched onto Daddy Blizzard. Insulting World of Warcraft on a World of Warcraft forum is just as bad as doing a mother directed insult.
Post by
106006
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Post by
Kinbuzz
I feel with you. What you wrote really got to me. I don't think i'm about to quit, but as a wow veteran, I can follow what you mean. I'm sorry to see you leave and I want to thank you for your time. Farewell and good luck in your travels!
Back to topic. I believe you just gotta embrace the fact that wow changes. Most of the players from Vanilla have either quit or is just not playing a lot anymore. The newer people from BC, Wotlk and now Cataclysm are the ones making the game now, and I really believe Blizzard heard us veterans during Wrath. They gave us some of Vanilla back in Cataclysm. I think it's unfair to demand anymore than what we've got. We got wipable heroics back, CC's were needed to begin with. They took the best from both worlds, and I, for one, believe it's great!
Post by
209609
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Post by
209609
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Post by
Sas148
Rose tinted spectacles get supplied with every long term account.
sums it up nicely. OP's just another forum troll who's whining because his or her pet feature doesn't get implemented (or gets changed because it's overpowered or noone else uses it).
Hoped these forums would be less full of such crap as compared to the Blizzard forums, guess I was wrong.
The only troll here is you.
Many players like the OP...and myself...have invested a huge amount of time, and maybe by default of that, a huge amount of emotion into this "game".
Sure, 99.99% of the players realize WoW "is just a game". We aren't going to jump off a bridge because we lost a loot roll, or flail around on our bed because Mom deleted our account. But looking back over what, for many of us, has been a 6 year journey can be kinda emotional. Especially if that journey is coming to an end.
Very nice response. I agree completely.
Post by
Sas148
The main point of this thread was to incite a creative discussion on what you dislike, and more importantly, like about the changes made to the game; and it seems to have worked.
I'm back to basics, my friends and myself haven't logged on in the past week, the guild we run is in chaos, and we don't mind. None of them even know our first names.
We actually picked up Diablo II again after a 5 year hiatus and we're having a blast. Just waiting for my D3 Beta invite now :)
Rather than jumping into a different game, you may find you like having spare time to live 'real life' outside of a computer to be refreshing. I hope you'll give it a try! I for one have not found the courage to do so in a few years now, lol.
Post by
Trishi
But that's my point in what you say. The games you mention all have one thing in common..they are solo games. Even WoW..strip to it's fundamental core, hasn't changed..you kill, you level, you move up, you kill again. From Vanilla through Cata, from Northshire to Firelands, it has never deviated from it's course. Some of the mechanic may have changed but not the core itself.
How many of you have played Super Mario Brothers or Zelda for 2-3-4 years? Those were great games.
I prefer to see it like this.
WoW evolves, and thus draws in a lot of people. It's the charm, and the fact that we often see new content pop up, that allows us to stay. To help with this, we also have a
ton
of misc. things to do. Level up professions, do quests, farm reputation, get mounts or pets... Very few people are even
close
to having done everything in this game.
But from this point of view, WoW isn't the only game that lasted this long. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that Warcraft itself is a great game. Not just World of Warcraft, but the entire series. And Super Mario? I have played pretty close to every game of his, and I still love that plumber. Even more so with Zelda. The whole series is just amazing, and have kept me for
far
longer than Warcraft have. Which is, based on simply logic, quite amazing, thanks to the vast difference between the two types of games. WoW let's you stick to your same character, see him or her through tons of quests, adventures, and the like. Their story progresses. Mario or Link... not so much. Link is pretty much a new incarnation in every game (emphasis on "pretty much", but that's irrelevant for the discussion), and Mario's universe seems disconnected, as if anything that happens is largely irrelevant to the seperate games.
So this explanation doesn't cut it. I can't just handwave it off, saying "I haven't played Zelda: Ocarina of Time for 5 years, so WoW must be better." Sure, I have played WoW for longer than that single game, but compared to the entire series of Zelda? Then Blizzard will need to do far better.
It's a personal opinion of course, but valuing WoW and all of the expansions as 1 game, but not the full Zelda series (For example) is a bit weak. That's setting up WoW to be the designated winner before even looking at the actual result.
Post by
mikejr
I agree with the OP on many points.
Having taken a few breaks over the past couple of expansions, I'll say that the game itself's as good as its ever been.
The community however, is full of folks acting like children.
The role of elitist jerk seems to have shifted somewhat from the mathy programmer dude in his basement to the college @#$%^&-bag trying to define his sense of authority. Neither are fun to deal with, but that element has always existed.
Statements such as "Sorry, OP, you fail." and such just further this observation. I can honestly say in no other group folks with whom I share a similar interest is there such a sense of hostility towards each other.
That, in short, it what's no longer there - the soul.
Post by
193475
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Post by
479137
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Post by
Azrile
The game hasn't changed *that* much. I mean it is a drastically different game from vanilla but the concepts are still the same- level up, gear up, do 5 mans, do raids. Mix in some pvp.
What's changed is the community, for better or for worse. That's why I hate these threads, blizzard didn't go wrong anywhere, the game just got huge and lots of people playing it gives it a new feel. Vanilla forced you to develop social relationships to accomplish anything. BC eased up on that a little, but it was still basically required. Wrath pretty much eliminated that need with 10 man dungeons that could be pugged, though it was still beneficial to know people on your server. Near the end though with the dungeon finder and points you trade for gear that benefit was practically moot. It made no difference if you raided regularly with the same 9 other people or did a bunch of 5 mans for gear and then joined a pup 10 man icc on the weekend.
Some people love the game for the game's sake, but I never quite did. My favorite wow moments all revolved around the social aspects of it, accomplishing something with players you knew well, or late night conversations while grinding rep or whatever. Once my old guilds broke up and my rl friends stopped playing I got bored, plain and simple. It's difficult now, imo, to maintain gaming relationships in a game this big, unless you play 24/7 and can seek out the other 24/7 players, or know people irl who play. If all my old friends from vanilla came back and we formed a tight knit guild we would probably enjoy the game much more now, but the probability of us all finding each other among hundreds of servers is nil.
Anyway, wow is still an awesome game, but I enjoy single player games more now.
I disagree. Remember, we are the minority here because only relatively hardcore players follow fansites. But the fact is that in Vanilla, the vast majority of players did NOT get to endgame, do 5 mans and then raid. For most players, they were lucky to get to lvl 60. Most players enjoyed questing and soloing. The vocal minority were the raiders. Instead of fixing the raid2play problem of Vanilla by adding more questing, they instead in BC and Wraith, made leveling much faster and made 5 mans and raids more accessible. The problem is, most players enjoyed questing and leveling. When Cata was released, even very casual players were at 85 in a few weeks.
Take a poll even on fansites (which are more hardcore than the average player) and I believe the 1-60 revamp would win as the best feature of Cata. Players did not want to get to lvl cap in 2 weeks and then spend a year grinding easy 5 mans. They wanted more and meaningful questing. Firelands was a nice idea lore-wise.. but in practice, it was simply too easy. When something is brain dead easy (fireland quests, heroic dungeons) THAT is when the game becomes a chore..
Cata failed because questing was too easy from 80-85 and way too fast. It left most players with nothing to do but run the same heroic 5 mans for a year. I believe the majority of players don´t want to group, they want fun and challenging quests that progress their characters.
Post by
Monday
I actually agree with the above post (by Azrile). I really, really enjoyed leveling during Wrath. The story was connected, well told, and above all, long. I got to 85 in about three days of leveling, whereas wrath took me weeks to get to 80. It felt like an accomplishment.
In Cata, dinging 85 felt like: "Woo, time for dungeons!" And I was right. It's also been that way for a long time, and it's gotten old. I wish they'd turn down the amount of XP needed to level after level 45 or so. Keep it relatively easy before that to have people realize how fun it is, then lower it to take more time.
Or, instead of an XP lock, add an XP debuff that reduces XP gains by 50% or something.
Post by
25556
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Post by
Zoneseek
My opinion:
Vanilla - game was fresh, new, exciting, guilds were forming, friendships were forming, people knew a lot of people in real life playing...everyone who gamed at least tried wow in vanilla
BC - HUGE new features. Flying mounts. A new continent. Battlegrounds. Pvp gear. The list goes on and on of wow firsts in this xpac
Flash forward to our latest expansion...in my opinion, the majority of the new content in cataclysm is rehashed or just more of the same. It gets boring fast.
What Blizzard should do is release D3, then release their new MMO. At that point turn wow onto the free to play with a "game store" and premium membership option so those of us who still enjoy this game can continue to dabble in it, but I crave something big and new from Blizzard as my main game. That's my opinion at least.
Post by
877949
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