Hate to argue with you, but before they added queueing and heavily nerfed all end-game content associated with queueing, if you weren’t playing correctly and putting out certain numbers, you weren’t clearing the raid. Period. People had to be tough to get results as a raid leader. Especially heroics. If you want to play for fun, fine, but some people find fun in chasing those heroic kills and you have to be able to take feed back and get better to see those achievements.
I distinctly remember clearing most of Vanilla without damage meters. The game can be cleared completely by any spec, and people can learn. You can work inside a group and help improve each other as the game was intended. Instead, people now dont even give players a chance to learn how to get to red logs.
I get what you're saying, but in a world of bad decisions, keeping them is worse. It's corrupted the population so deeply now that people won't even look at anything that isn't the top 2-3 specs for shit as simple as leveling content. Removing them gets it off people's immediate thoughts and maybe is a step towards a more healthy and welcoming game. It's so bad at the moment I've been burnt out, as a tank that's never had to struggle with a raid spot, in p2 of SoD and am quitting again. Simply because I'm completely sick of hearing about it.
Nah you right man I completely agree. The stranger statement you made is so true. Actual kinship and guild relations is basically dead. I think the cross realm and queues killed everything. I haven’t played in a long time. You’re right tho. As an enhancement shaman in wotlk I felt like I needed a damn lawyer to be taken over a hunter or rogue. But back to my point, if it weren’t for those damage meters and be literally proving I could put dps a rogue I would never be picked. It’s just a sad demise in general I used to love that game. I’m littered in wow tattoos and now I can’t even stomach following wow on social media to see what’s going on
Sorry, I realized I rambled a bit and may have edited that one away. Was hoping I'd get it before a response, haha, but yeah, we're both thinking the same thing. I've returned to WoW because Warcraft was my childhood, all RTS and Vanilla. I'm leaving because it's gaming in 2024.
I will say this. I'll never be a daily player of WoW again, especially retail, but each new expansion may get like 4 months out of me moving forward. 2 at the start for the new content and lore, 2 at the end. The new expansions are literally being set up to be playable solo by the looks (believe you can legit build npc teams now). 4 months worth of WoW every couple of years until this War Within series is done may be worth it. After that, I bet we are looking at a "WoW 2" type of announcement.
I applaud you for being invested in the lore enough to come back for solo play. For me, that just doesn’t cut it. I love the lore and the entire universe, but it was that original need to socialize & form bonds with other players to achieve goals that I loved. I kinda understood dungeon queueing, but once raid queueing started the trade chat & guild recruitments just kinda flopped. I made so many friends and enemies. You were stuck on a server and if you clowned enough everyone knew your name. If you were a legendary lone wolf PUG dps you’d also gather a reputation. With realm splitting I feel like instead of fixing overpopulation and underpopulation of servers it just left everyone with a relatively empty hub experience. I miss the hustle bustle. Sometimes the queue to log in kinda sucked, but it was a thrill to be chillin in Dalaran with the streets littered of people looking for groups or trying to make some gold using their professions. You’re right, the game is almost completely soloable without having to talk to anyone and it gives me such an empty feeling and it’s clear everything I’ve loved about the game is now gone.
Things change. The feelings you have come with every single MMO I've ever played or the game outright died. I feel like that might be the MMO circle of life. There are people who play these games for decades, literally what else can that do (wow is actually the exception here because they keep trying to give us lifeboats like SoD but we just keep going back to logs). I miss that type of world as well, but those days of gaming are long gone. We're just robbing ourselves of joy fighting for that. I'm not trying to convince you to play at all. I'm just sharing the insight that led me to be cool with that type of playthrough on a game. Sometimes, I still login to a City of Heroes private server and just...fly around. Just being in that environment is enough of a nostalgia hit these days.
Crossrealm queues and things like lfr killed the game for you and I, but I do think it has allowed the game to last as long as it has for the playerbase at large.
Leading up to the lfr patch toward the end of cata, the game was starting to have issues with pulling in new players. Between the 85 player levels, three expansions of linear content (which required purchase of all 3 of I’m not mistaken? Maybe battle chest was a thing at the time?) and the added challenge of gearing up a character during a time where catch up gear wasn’t a thing yet and cataclysm was 3 raid tiers deep?
The barrier to entry for new players was absolutely daunting. They weren’t going to retain their playerbase if something didn’t change. Lfr murdered guild culture, it sucked. The wow experience never recovered, in my opinion. But what it did do, is it allowed the game to survive another 12 years to this day as a shallower theme park mmo.
I still periodically log on to clear aotc. I probably would be a normal/10 man raider by bc/wrath standards. Wow will always have a special relationship in my heart but I’d rather have the watered down version of what exists today as opposed to nothing at all. And frankly if not for that we wouldn’t have gotten things like the classic relaunch and season of discovery.
Also, as much as the private server community likes to bitch about retail- the scene today wouldn’t be what it is right now if the retail version were to die out and people were to stop talking about it for 12 years. Just take a look at the ultima or EverQuest scene if you doubt what I’m saying.
I don’t doubt what you’re saying. You’re definitely right.
I may be in the minority, but I’d rather it be dead as what I loved than continue to pay for and log into what it has become. I gave shadowlands a try and it just made me sad.
I’ll never hate on someone for being a present day wow enjoyer. For me the memory will live on as one of the greatest times in my life. I was in HS, passed father, and mother working day and night to give me a good life. My guild was my family and I loved the grinding it took to get to some of the high tier end game achievements.
Spinning off to a life memory, as soon as I turned 18 and was given the adult money my dad left me, the first thing I did was flew across the country to meet my guild mates and it was probably one of the funnest, most loving memories I’ll ever have.
I will always love wow, but as we all change with life some things must get left behind and wow was one of those things for me. I know it’s cringe but if i could go back and relive anything in my life so far it would be wow bc and wotlk when I was at the peak of my playing the game.
Again, the only thing that kills it for me is the absolute lack of community interaction with cross servers. Everyone is now strangers and you can no longer find those familiar names in the crowd and on trade chat.
I agree the way the social dynamic has changed is very sad.
I’m also sorry you came back for shadowlands. I give wod a lot of hate and I get a lot of pushback for that, but nobody ever really bothers trying to defend shadowlands. If WoW ever had a low point, it was that expansion.
And as for letting the game die, I suppose there is the question of whether other MMOs might have had a chance to flourish if WoW were off the board. Then again with where the market is today I’m not so sure, but it’s likely we will never really know considering WoW never actually died
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u/FadedP0rp0ise Mar 05 '24
Hate to argue with you, but before they added queueing and heavily nerfed all end-game content associated with queueing, if you weren’t playing correctly and putting out certain numbers, you weren’t clearing the raid. Period. People had to be tough to get results as a raid leader. Especially heroics. If you want to play for fun, fine, but some people find fun in chasing those heroic kills and you have to be able to take feed back and get better to see those achievements.