Can we save World of Warcraft?

[VoidWanderer]

I have not played this game in months. My personal gripe with the game is the eye-melting grind of getting gear to get into raiding. I had run one of the Cata 5-man Heroics more than 30 times to get the one item I needed from that particular dungeon.

I loved healing on my Shaman, it was a fun experience. However, I wanted to move onto the big boys club and actually do something epic. I did not want to have to run the same freaking dungeons over and over again. I feel this is the biggest turn-off for most people in this game.

But... I have an idea that would get me back into this game, and I think it might work for the people who have same problem as me.

What if... there was an intro raid that any end game toon can do, and at the end you are guaranteed at least one piece of raid-worthy gear? Would you rather grind heroics, praying to the god of luck (after my experience with pen-and-paper RPGS, I name him Murphy and he calls me his ***ch!) that you get the one item you wanted and that someone else doesn't roll Need too.

Would you get back into this game? Would removing the most agonizing grind aspect bring you back to this game?

Do you have any ideas that might work?

Or do you no longer care?

[Seriously, guys, captcha is scaring me! "trick or treat"? Isn't that what it kinds feels like? 'Give me a treat or I quit your game?']

I am going to hide under my blanket until captcha stops watching me now.

 

[Thoric485]

No. I just want it to plummet to under a million subs so other developers would stop copying it.

But who am I kidding, as soon as that happens the geniuses who brought us WAR, AoC and SWTOR will think "Perfect, if we make a rebranded WoW clone now, it'll have no competition! $500 million budget! Fuck innovation in the ass!".

 

[Baldr]

A lot of people complain that getting gear is to easy. I know running dungeons over and over are not exactly fun for me either. There were other ways of getting gear. I like to PvP and trade Honor for Justice points.

 

[Zeckt]

The game was fantastic at the start, but to me its just too old and stale and I have plenty of alternatives. I had zero back then, now I have SWTOR, Tera and Guild Wars 2. Warcraft is not even included anymore. Also, the community on WoW is TERRIBLE!!!

 

[electric method]

This has always been one of the problems with WoW. At the end-game phase it's always been a loot chase grind. In earlier years that grind was hidden a bit better, now it's right out in the open and in the player's face. For e.g. the firelands dailies. In that set of dailies one can see what they can spend marks of the world tree on. Then, once they've gotten the required marks, get their epics.

Personally, I'd like to see any MMO change up the MMO formula. The end-game centric gear chase is as obnoxious as it is boring. This is what ultimately drove me away from WoW each time I stopped playing between expansions. I just got so insanely tired grinding out the same heroic dungeons repeatedly, knowing full well when the next expansion hit everything I had done would be worthless and I would have to do it all over again.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

I strongly believe that the biggest reason WoW has been losing subscribers is how ridiculously easy they've made all of the questing and solo content. A vast majority of the WoW playerbase spend most of their time doing solo stuff, with maybe an occasional dungeon or battleground thrown in (I have no numbers to back this up, just what I observed from playing WoW for three years or so). With Cataclysm, they made all the quests piss-easy, to the point that you pretty much have to try to die. This, combined with the excessive linearity, eliminates all sense of thought or effort in the quests, and diminished a lot of what people liked in WoW in the first place.

Now, I have absolutely no issue with WoW losing subscribers, and I think it's a very good thing for the industry as a whole. Without one dominant superpower, maybe we'll see more innovation in the MMO genre. Hell, maybe publishers will stop throwing so much money into marketing and developing a game to become the next WoW, an unattainable goal that only sets the game up for a surefire failure (just look at TOR).

 

[WoW Killer]

I haven't played Cata since early on. Is it really still that much of a grind to get gear? I remember in WotLK they kept putting in ways to speed up the pre-raid gearing. At one point you could only get gear tokens from daily heroics. Then it was something like normal ICC5 daily and repeatable from heroics. Then you got slightly better tokens from daily ICC5 heroic. Near to release they made the better token gains repeatable and it was really quick to gear up. Honestly I like it more when it's nice and fast. I know everybody said it was too easy, but I just found it more enjoyable. Blizzard responded with claims that Cata would be much harder, like "epics would feel epic again" and all that jazz, but I didn't like it much. Not on release anyway; it might be better now.

I think that there needs to be some sort of accessible and significant progression that takes place after cap and before endgame. Reaching cap should be a big moment for the player, but in fact once they get to this point the progression often slows down and the game feels less rewarding than it ever did. You want a sudden burst of progression to happen when you reach cap to give you that initial honeymoon period. In the latter stages of WotLK I must have levelled about four different characters, and each time reaching cap you got to watch your toons power skyrocket, sometimes over the course of mere hours. That's good. That's fun. But this doesn't even need to make the game any easier, as you can balance the next tier around having this completed first.

 

[skywolfblue]

I did not want to have to run the same freaking dungeons over and over again. I feel this is the biggest turn-off for most people in this game.

If you found dungeons repetitive you probably would have found raiding to be even more so.

What if... there was an intro raid that any end game toon can do, and at the end you are guaranteed at least one piece of raid-worthy gear?

That sounds like the Looking For Raid system that was implemented when dragon soul came out. Minus the "guaranteed" part. No raid in the game "guarantees" every member will get loot. If raid's handed out 25 pieces of loot every boss there'd be virtually no need to run those instances again which would make everyone bored of the instance after the first week.

 

[Karoshi]

Why does a 10 million subsciber MMO need any saving..?

Honestly, there is no feature that is going to bring back to WoW except for nostalgia and a couple passed years. It's still good, but gotten stale for me personally.

 

[The Madman]

Honestly I don't think the majority of people working at Blizzard care about World of Warcraft anymore. They're as sick of it as the rest of us are, but in their case its their obligation to keep working on it because that game alone represents some ridiculous amount of profit the likes of which most over developers can only ever dream of seeing, nevermind enjoying themselves.

So they keep working and turning out new content, rotating in fresh staff every now and then to try and desperately capture some of the adventurous excitement and love of the project which once filled their offices only for those new staff in turn to quickly fall prey to the same grind as the rest of the developers. Which isn't to say the new content is 'bad', the tools are more well defined and the developers steadily more and more experienced towards creating this stuff.

The game lost its soul. It's sense of wonder. They're not making stuff because they want to, they're making it because they have to.

At least those are my thoughts on it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

You do understand they keep people grinding so they pay more rent right?
No they have no intention of alleviating their suffering because this system is what has been filling their pools of money and hookers for more then a decade.

Now just buy the new expansion and do it some more

 

[jbm1986]

If Blizz made another MMO like WoW but worse. People would say "eww, this is worse than WoW. Let's go back and play that."

 

[Realitycrash]

Save? It still has 9 million users, it isn't in any danger as of yet.

Diablo III, however..

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Getting gear has never been easier in an MMO than it is right now in Cataclysm. If even this is too much grind for you, then the MMO genre simply isn't for you.

To put it into perspective, I leveled my priest to the cap on Saturday (3 days ago). My priest is now pretty much fully geared as of last night.

 

[Zenn3k]

A lot of people complain that getting gear is to easy. I know running dungeons over and over are not exactly fun for me either. There were other ways of getting gear. I like to PvP and trade Honor for Justice points.

Holy god man, I'm sorry.

How long does THAT take?! I took me something like 3-4 months to get a full blue set of PvP Honor Gear, mostly because Pug PvP is probably the more horrible thing ever created.

 

[Baldr]

A lot of people complain that getting gear is to easy. I know running dungeons over and over are not exactly fun for me either. There were other ways of getting gear. I like to PvP and trade Honor for Justice points.

Holy god man, I'm sorry.

How long does THAT take?! I took me something like 3-4 months to get a full blue set of PvP Honor Gear, mostly because Pug PvP is probably the more horrible thing ever created.

Really depends on how dominate your side is. A couple randoms or call to battles, and Tol Borrad and you can get enough honor for either 2-3 pieces a day or 1-2 justice pieces. If your side sucks, then it is a long time to get gear. Also you get a bit more Honor if your actually good in PvP.

As to what is happening in MoP, they are adding other ways to get gear. I think scenarios and possibly challenge mode rewards. On top of quest/dungeon reward gear and reputation gear.

 

[Loop Stricken]

I have not played this game in months.

And so why are your opinions meant to be taken seriously?

Make a high-ilvl pvp blue item. Buy one from the AH. If it's just the one item it's not going to ruin your effectiveness in LFR.
Not that LFR is particularly difficult.

Edit: Read the rest of your post now.
Yeah, you're basically describing LFR.

 

[Roofstone]

Personally I don't think it needs saving. I like the model of loot and dungeon/raiding that you are describing. Each to their own I suppose? =)

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Can we save World of Warcraft?


I think the real question is do we really want to?

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Warcraft 4 anyone? You can keep the space goats and werewolves as long as the plot goes back to being more than "players slaughter everything"