What went wrong with World of Warcraft? An article I made.

[writtengamer]

Link to the article.

I think you guys can relate to my article. I would appreciate any feedback.

[PeaceHammer]

I don't know that anything went wrong with WoW. I mean, they went in a direction that totally ruined the game for me personally, and many others. But the people playing retail today, I guess it went in the right direction for them.

One man's quality-of-life improvement, is another man's game-breaking feature.

[Kinetixx]

I don't know that anything went wrong with WoW. I mean, they went in a direction that totally ruined the game for me personally, and many others. But the people playing retail today, I guess it went in the right direction for them.

One man's quality-of-life improvement, is another man's game-breaking feature.

Most people playing retail now never played Vanilla-TBC, they don't know better.

They come from an age where most video games just hand hold you through everything so they're fine with WoW as it is.

[Docholy]

The game indeed went wrong. Though people - rightfully - blame; LFR, Flying Mounts, Constant Expac model, and Dungeon Queues. I do part blame to all the above but something is over looked by many. The game has expanded its playable classes and homogenized them to MAJOR fault. On top of homogenizing classes, the games raiding scene has gotten smaller and the game has taken the stance of giving fast rewards.

Smaller raids + more classes = Devs have to create classes that are very similar to each other to make raiding possible.

[PeaceHammer]

The game has expanded its playable classes and homogenized them to MAJOR fault.

There is definitely a massive difference in class design from Vanilla to retail. They sacrificed fun and uniqueness among the classes, to achieve better balance. The pursuit of balance ruins games IMO.

[Norjak]

Nice article, touches on some good points.

[Ayumi]

The game has expanded its playable classes and homogenized them to MAJOR fault.

There is definitely a massive difference in class design from Vanilla to retail. They sacrificed fun and uniqueness among the classes, to achieve better balance. The pursuit of balance ruins games IMO.

So much this.
People crying out for balance and fairness lead to every class and spec having basically everything any other class has.
Some sort of mobility, a strong defensive cooldown, selfheal, same damage as everyone else. Every healer being able to dispel magic (Every Boss debuff is now magic as well)
Also removing the array of different debuffs and buffs a spec could bring to the table was removed as well.

Current WoW even has NO buffs and debuffs AT ALL. Just so it wouldn't feel "mandatory" to bring a certain spec.



The only thing they did well is the current boss-design. But that's about it. Differences among classes are extremely minute or not there at all.

[Windowlícker]

Great article that describes my thoughts exactly, with the exception of one part:

"I think Blizzard is right. They are right when they say players don’t want the old WoW back, with all its flaws. Nostalgia, as it tends to do, has distorted people’s memories, leaving them only with the good ones, while forgetting the bad. The pure chaos of 40 man raids,the horrible itemization, the imbalanced classes, the abominable PvP, just to name a few. They know players wouldn’t stand for all those thing returning."

I can't comment on the 40 mans because I was a slow leveler during retail and never had enough time as a kid for vanilla / BC raids (which were exceptionally time consuming).
A comment on your article counters your other gripes rather nicely though:

"There were indeed some classes imbalances, but that’s what made the game fun. The warrior who would take 30% of a rogue hp with an Overpower, the rogue who would take 30% of a mage HP with an Ambush, the shadow priest who would take down 1 warrior very fast, everything evolved in a huge food chain that was balanced via itself, not in 1 class vs another."
"You say PvP was abominable, I don’t think it was. PvP was brutal, was cruel, was dangerous and was sexy. There were no rules at all, none, it was like Octagon really, a game where only the strong survived."

After playing Nost for a couple months I can safely say that these were simply better mechanics and overall gave the game a lot of flavour, regardless of the "rose-tinted goggles" argument (that I always found kinda patronising). You already lay out a case for the polar opposite - ie the excessive pursuit of balancing at the sake of all else - being a detriment to the game in your anaylsis though so this almost goes without saying.

[writtengamer]

Thanks for all the replies and feedback!

[Vaulken]

I don't know that anything went wrong with WoW. I mean, they went in a direction that totally ruined the game for me personally, and many others. But the people playing retail today, I guess it went in the right direction for them.

One man's quality-of-life improvement, is another man's game-breaking feature.

This made me laugh so hard, but it is true. Despite there being objectively flawed game design there, especially in leveling, the skinner box philosophy has taken hold so far that it's irrelevant for most people who don't know when they're looking for efficiency over satisfaction.