World of Warcraft

[Interest]

Depends on the quest type. You'd think Blizzard would learn after numerous expansions of generic kill/gather quests.

While I understand that this will always be a bit of a staple, the fact the concentration (as in quest types per daily quests available) was so high in terms of the generic kill/gather quest classification in MoP (Bombing run/vehicle quests, especially when related to a reputation you'd want to raise for gear are pretty darn rare D:) really isn't helping. Multiply this by several characters (even the Hyjal dailies in 4.2 don't compare to how much time you have to consume here) and you've really got a shitstorm. Also pretty much every rep in early MoP essentially required dailies and there was literally no other option whatsoever to raise the reps until about patch 5.2 or 5.3(no championing, etc - even in BC there was "championing" so to speak).

Timeless Isle is a little different because it's pretty much a free-farm. YOU get to control what to farm. YOU can choose to go rare hunting, elite hunting, treasure hunting, the "Timeless Coin lottery". No matter what you do, you will eventually get gear. Best part is the rep is pretty optional (but the grind absolutely sucks lol). Overall it's definitely a step up, especially since you can mail the gear to your alts due to the fact it's all BoA.

[LunaSaint]

Timeless isle is a lot of fun. There's a lot of ways to grind - with different paces, and Shaohao is completely skippable. It's also been great for actually bringing back some community - I actually get to interact with other players, and learn who the trolls are.

The 5.0 reputations actually didn't need to be done much if you just wanted to spend valor - I think I did one faction four times a week, and that was it. Of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't terrible design. Dailies in general are disgusting.

I'd agree most of my grief with WoW has been the community going to hell. I think it's hard to track why and when it really struck, though. Server transfers, LFD systems, flying mounts and lack of straight up grinds are all big factors.

Either way, I still play it a lot. I enjoy playing with friends, I enjoy learning, exploring and adapting to classes and their changes. I enjoy raging about balance screw-ups. That said, PvP balance in MoP has been dire. It was the one thing that was really strong in late Cata, too.

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What were peoples' favourite patches? Mine was unmistakably 5.0, as it satisfied my thirst for self-improvement. There were a lot of problems with early Cata, but for me it gave me all I really wanted.

[Interest]

I'd agree most of my grief with WoW has been the community going to hell. I think it's hard to track why and when it really struck, though. Server transfers, LFD systems, flying mounts and lack of straight up grinds are all big factors.

Okay so I was going to make a long post then I backspaced out of it and it didn't get cached so...

1. I feel the community really started going to hell after Wrath ended. At this point the game had its peak playerbase.
2. Because of this, the density of parts of the playerbase, such as the vocal minority, were also larger and because of this, when complaints were made, there were a larger density of them.
3. Cataclysm was a breeding grounds for these complaints. Whether it was because Heroics were too hard or because of the nerf that resulted from the complaints to please the "casual" complainers or god knows what else resulted from Cataclysm being released (it happens with large content additions, so yeah...), stuff really went to hell.
4. As a result, people read these complaints and they snowballed into a mob mentality sort of deal. It also caused a lot of community infighting as various "factions" of players tried to push for one change or another. For instance, the "hardcore vs casual" war was running rampant in Cataclysm, especially coming out of the very puggable content in Wrath.
5. The group matchmaking systems, LFD (which was used through all of Cataclysm and the content was arguably "harder" so there's a better sample size) and LFR (added by the end of Cataclysm) were essentially breeding grounds for trolls or abuse. People could ninja loot anonymously, verbally abuse players for their mistakes, and so on. This also made new players less likely to retain their interest in World of Warcraft since leveling through LFD became a bit more standard and the game, quite frankly, doesn't do too well to prepare people for level cap (even with the quest improvements in Cataclysm). As a result, if a new player is stuck in a group with someone's alt, which is highly likely, then they may end up getting abused for doing something stupid, which is totally normal. It's sort of like trying to play League of Legends in the sense of things, which is why I compare the two communities.
6. The game is aging. Because the game is aging, players get a sense of belief that other players should also know what they know, thus they refuse to share information or behave like jerks in response to a completely innocent question. World of Warcraft is not the kind of game that someone can immediately pick back up in terms of knowledge. You probably will have questions if you start to play or come back after a break. The fact database sites exist, like Wowhead, which I use, are a bit of a double-edged sword because players will essentially tell you to use that instead of just providing information kindly (which I almost always do to counterbalance the elitist jerks). I understand players learn a bit more by using database sites or by DIY (well that and database sites are indeed quite helpful and informative), so I usually also refer players to database sites like these for future inquiries they may have. I feel this is the strongest compromise but many others do not agree, which is why the game is currently in this predicament. In short, players make false assumptions about other players and completely forget about the concept of courtesy. This happens out of game too to a lesser degree with all sorts of various subject matter (you'd be surprised how many people don't know how to properly research using a search engine like Google).
7. Laziness began to breed due to the various queues that opened up. There also wasn't much content available to make players go out into the world because Cataclysm's Old Azeroth remake meant there was probably less level cap content to do. The fact players could champion reputations very early on and dailies were REALLY unattractive to do because of atrocious design (really glaring at the Dragonmaw dailies here) or because dailies weren't even available, etc, further exacerbated this. Also Have Group, Will Travel further worsened the situation. Fortunately MoP has done a reasonably good job of making players go back out into the world.

Now to go over what I think didn't cause this issue:

1. Server transfers, if anything, are just pricey when they shouldn't really be, making them more of a deterrent to use. The process is so simple I bet you could probably make a script with a score or two of lines that could get the job done. Also they've been around for quite awhile and are getting deprecated as we speak...
2. Flying mounts and the level requirement reduction to use mounts didn't really break the game down. All it did was reduce travel time and make the game more accessible. However, the fact it becomes an arguing point is arguably a good reason for stating the community's issues since they do fight about this. The implementations themselves, however, are not that much of a problem.
3. Lack of straight-up grinds aren't really harming the community or even the game's health. It's more the repeat usage of the same type of content that probably has people down and makes the game stale quicker (i.e. 5.0 Golden Lotus dailies, etc). This also falls under the game aging because as the game tries to innovate, it has less and less content that it can innovate. Also straight-up grinding is a bit...boring and was pretty overused early on. If they are optional it's fine, but there's already plenty of grinding in the game, whether it's straight-up or dressed up with the same bells and whistles as usual, which loops back to the previous point I made about the game and innovating issues.

But hey, that's just my thoughts on it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel my reason is sound here.

What were peoples' favourite patches? Mine was unmistakably 5.0, as it satisfied my thirst for self-improvement. There were a lot of problems with early Cata, but for me it gave me all I really wanted.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I wanna say 3.0, 3.06 (the great BM nerf luls), or 3.1 because:

• I actually got to be able to raid regularly*. In fact, my general PvE and PvP performance in Wrath of the Lich King exploded dramatically as I began to figure out how to play (and I had plenty of practice on PTR due to parental controls locking me out of the actual game).
• Around this time I met many friends and new faces. Most were around in Burning Crusade to some degree but the amount of social connections I had expanded massively, especially as my talent with Hunter grew.
• I met a couple of my best friends around this time (or after, really). I'm not going to say more than that - the story behind that is very private.
• I feel Blizzard really innovated in terms of content in both major patches here. Ulduar is considered to be one of the best raids of all time for good reason - it was a staggeringly huge raid with amazing backstory, a secret boss, hard modes that brought hardcore guilds to their knees, and plenty of variance from fight to fight. It was also puggable, but exceedingly challenging for pugs right to the end of the expanson. The entry tier of content also had a lot of innovation too. The content (such as Naxxramas) may have indeed been watered down, but it was enjoyable. I especially liked the other two raids (EoE and OS).

What else can I say, really?

Edited September 28, 2013 by Interest

[LunaSaint]

Hmm, interesting. I've come to a lot of similar conclusions in points 1-7 (the aging one is especially important). Mine include some grumbling about how the Valor Cap (and its roots with the badge system) has conditioned players to stop playing as soon as they hit it, but that is a whole topic in itself.

I think Server transfers are definitely involved. Whether it's the actual service or just players migrating in other ways is a good question, though. Either way, I've watched multiple thriving servers deteriorate and die entirely during mid-late Wrath onwards, and more recently experienced the explosion of players arriving at high pop servers.

The flying mounts/grind thing is a lot pettier and not too relevant, admittedly. But if you compare the 5.0 MoP grind content with 5.2/5.4, you can see a stark difference. The latter examples have players in smaller spaces for extended periods of time, hunting limited resources (Timeless Isle especially). The former are 15 minute jobs, flying to specific points and zipping off again.

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3.0 and 3.1 were very fun patches. I was really casual back then, and T7 was a perfect entry level for raiding, and that also made it a great social hub. I feel that's been another thing missing from WoW since Cataclysm; I'd hope Flex could do something about that, but I have to wonder it can with all the (understandably) jaded pug leaders and high standards.

[Interest]

Flexraid is actually doing a reasonably decent job from my experience. I mean I'm pretty decent at Hunter too which helps, but the environment is much more casual and relaxed.

Besides, I'm rich enough to not give a damn about repair bills, so who cares if I get some inexperienced players?

I think Server transfers are definitely involved. Whether it's the actual service or just players migrating in other ways is a good question, though. Either way, I've watched multiple thriving servers deteriorate and die entirely during mid-late Wrath onwards, and more recently experienced the explosion of players arriving at high pop servers.

Pretty good point, though honestly people just quitting out of frustration (see all the previous points above) is what caused that to happen to begin with in the case of many servers (particularly medium-low/medium populace servers).

Edited September 30, 2013 by Interest

[Mew]

Hey guys!

I hope this isn't considered necroposting but this is a fairly slow-moving section of SF. I thought I'd post in honor of the (somewhat) recent announcement of Warlords of Draenor! I've been an off/on player for a long time and I'm interested enough in the lore/new ideas that they're spouting for this expansion to pick it up and see how levelling to 100 feels. Is anyone in the same boat as me? A lot of what appears to have been said is going back on decisions made before, essentially trying to fix some of the more arbitrary parts of the game that have become commonplace.

I also think Hilter Garrosh is pretty crazy so we'll see how that pans out. The only thing I'm a bit unsure about is how the Horde VS. the Alliance will be working out now that Garrosh is no longer affiliated with the playerbase Horde. It seems that the Alliance may have had (or may not have) had some affiliation with Garrosh's escape??

http://www.mmo-champion.com/ <good source of information on the new expansion if you're curious

So yeah just wondering if anyone else thinks this could be worth trying

[Interest]

I would've posted it myself but double posting rules. Thanks for doing that.

[Raven]

I don't think anyone would have enforced the double posting rule since such a long time has passed since your last post.

[Garland Chaos]

I hate how you can play for free, but only up to level 20. It's stupid and pointless.

[Interest]

I hate how you can play for free, but only up to level 20. It's stupid and pointless.

This is actually something that has bothered me for an age and a half, mostly since Cataclysm began.

I really do wish they'd make like...everything up to level 60 or 70 free. Lots more content that way, yes (also lift some restrictions)?

I don't think anyone would have enforced the double posting rule since such a long time has passed since your last post.

I take some rules a little too seriously.

Edited November 10, 2013 by Interest