Community Blog Topic Results: What's wrong with WoW

[SpiritBinder]

For me, there are a few things this expansion that have done it for me. I know this will be unpopular, but they are just my personal experience.

1st, Pandas.

Sure I have grown to love them, there animations and facial expressions are simply amazing, they can be serious, cute, stoic, all the virtues you would want in a versatile gaming race choice.... but.

When they 1st announced the Pandarian as a playable race I just blinked in disbelieve, I was over my guild masters house with her husband and kids watching blizzcon from the stream and we were all thinking
"Ummm What...The...F~~~! O_O"
Well appart from the kids that jumped up and down in sheer glee (Note they really LOVED Kung Fu panda)
It took the game from having a good balance of silly/fun and seriousness, to... "this is a joke...right?

Of course I don’t doubt blizzard not coming through on delivering amazing content and gaming experiences, but this choice left me just... "what the"

Over the following days may Japanese housemate (whom has no interest in video games but falls appart over all things cute) was all "WAH!!!! Kawaii!! Panda, so cute!!!" every time I had blizcon running on the TV and would sit down and watch"
My boyfriend (whom loves to read and all things sci-fi and fantasy and did not mind me playing wow) was all "Omg, seriously? You can play as a.... panda person? please tell me you’re not going to play as a panda... that’s just... /facepalm "

Now who are these people to question my almighty wow... I tell you who they are, they are the people who see the game without and rose tinted glasses, they are the people I love/respect and they were just being honest with what they saw.

This does not dissolve any of the amazing work that blizzard put into this expansion. I think as a whole, it quite possibly the most beautiful looking one to date in regards to design and atmosphere. But I'm not sure if I ever got over the... Pandas.

Yes people can say, but we have goat people, and walrus men, and yada yada. But for me they all had much more of a place.
Draenei looked more like Blue Demon like Aliens (at least pretty serious looking) the Tuskarr are a small side race that are fishing related, not an entire expansion worth and a playable race (and they are still more serious looking than Pandarian

Sure we know Pandarian can be ferocious honourable warriors, (Hell they can be feather footed smoke bombing ninjas!) because that’s the way the quests play out and blizzard shows us they are and can be, but that does not stop people saying...
"What on earth is that, is that a panda O_o? I thought you played worlds of craft or something?" (<---direct quote from my mother)

This change in demographics I think was just too strong for a player base of ageing gamers. The gen X gamers are the ones who keep the sub’s on a continuous debit of their credit cards, who have a LOT more customer loyalty. But the pandas brought to games demo down to the gen Y’s. Gen Y’s have a higher demand of their products and will drop anything that displeases them for a moment, and may or may not come back later if it pleases them. They are a hard mistress to please, if one can for any extended period of time. These are a precarious bunch to lean on for stable business. (hence the increase of “Oh look Shiny! Mounts on the Blizz store to capture their attention and cash”)

Those dam pandas, how much I love and hate you so.

2nd, LFR

Again, Sure it's easy for gearing, convenient, and you don’t have to give a rats ass about flasks or food.. or gems... or enchants, or even raiding. just smack the piñata and wait for the purple lollies to fall out.

Raiding used to be my great joy, my BEST memories of wow are raiding. I don’t have "rose tints" on for this either. Kara, SSC, most of BC, Wrath had some great times, stacking Arm Pen at the end and having Deathbringers will was just so awesome. Cata was ok, but still to kill DW HM, to best the game in its hardest mode when the content was relevant was so great, (but the last hurrah)

But now with LFR, it's made wow lazy, it's made the community, it's made my guild lazy, and… it's made ME lazy. Where is the incentive? Gear...? Nope get purple gear that looks like tier via LFR. Content...? Nope get to see all the bosses, they just roll over via LFR. Lore….? Nope I've finished the game now not new to really see that’s worth the effort via LFR.

Where I am at now in my wow journey makes LFR just fine for me, cause now I have no functioning raiding guild (that went from 2 25s raiding teams, to 1 25man and a 10's, to 2-3 10's, and now it's not even 1 10man, that spams trade to try and fill holes on a regular occasion) I have no ambition to work for my gear now and I've already "finished" the current content... what’s left for a raider... sadly not much so why bother. Sadly it’s a very infectious disease that has spread through our raid groups, guild and through the entire community.

I was thinking about it the other day, the only way to stop this is to stop the current version of LFR. Sure people would rage to start with, but it would fix this issue imo. Sure still have LFR, it's a great idea, but have it only become available when the next patch/tier of raiding becomes available. That right, if you wanted to raid, you still could, but you'd be a tad behind. But if you wanted to see the newest raid and content, you would have to suck it up and raid normally.... or you can experience it all when the next patch comes out.

I know this may seem a little harsh, but it would make people want to come together again, but yet those whom don’t want to raid don’t have to miss out on the content and experiences, they can still LFR while it's still fairly relevant. (Though for the last tier of raiding in an expansion there would have to be a time window for the LFR version, or a boss debuff/raid buff for the normal version, otherwise it would become available next expansion/patch which would be pretty naff)

As for gear, if the LFR became available after the next tier/patch became available, then you would not have to even have a LFR version of the loot, just have the normal version, it's last tier's gear anyways, so that’s fine. And then you can gear up appropriately for the next tier if you wish to start raiding.

Also As for the looks of gear, if they wish to add offset pieces as well to vendors that match current tier’s I-lvl, make them look like blue qual gear or last tiers models (kind of like what they did for the epic off pieces before the 1st tier of MOP raiding). That way the ONLY way to get a current tier look, is to be raiding current tier. I know we have moggin now and people will just say that gear looks mean nothing these days, but I call that BS, that wish to feel unique via raiding gear is still there. Sadly now if you saw someone running around in full tier now, it means very little, it could be offset, it could be RF gear, it's holds little to no prestige anymore. It was a big part of raiding, for a lot of people like to raid for the pimping looking gear and the time/skill/luck that comes with that.

Anyways, those are my 2 big, "what’s wrong with wow"" for me I think. (Oh there is now too much to do in wow, which I'm not going to get into, but it's a completionists nightmare) but I think I've typed enough for one day...

[Castile]

2nd, LFR

But now with LFR, it's made wow lazy, it's made the community, it's made my guild lazy, and… it's made ME lazy. Where is the incentive? Gear...? Nope get purple gear that looks like tier via LFR. Content...? Nope get to see all the bosses, they just roll over via LFR. Lore….? Nope I've finished the game now not new to really see that’s worth the effort via LFR.

I won't quote the whole thing but I basically agree with the LFR part of your post. I came to realise this when the next raid Throne of Thunder came out. My last raiding hurrah before my old guild/raid grp fell apart was heroic MSV/Elite Toes. I had some heroic gear, yay me! Stepped into LFR ToT....almost same lvl gear and made me think...what was the point? All those hours wiping to get top teir gear is replaced so quickley with the LFR purple pinyata. It felt...I dunno, like I wasted my time.

The whole point of normal mode raiding (for me anyway) was to see content. I wanted to do those fights, get those shinies and say "Omg I killed the last boss!". Now a 20 min queue will do the same thing...now I can't even be bothered to do that half the time!

I think the idea of gating the raids is a good idea. I'd actually do it like gated wings like in ICC. When normal mode opens, no lfr until the next wing. When the 2nd wing opens, LFR first does. And so on. They kinda do that now but it seems too quick. Or just open the whole raid to normal and slowly once enough guilds have finished the raid open the wings to lfr little by little. It would be hard, ppl would whine but might encourage raiding again.

And as for pandas...well..../disagree

<- Proud Panda Hunter

[Wain]

For me, there are a few things this expansion that have done it for me. I know this will be unpopular, but they are just my personal experience.

Wow, the things you hate most are the things I've really enjoyed about this expansion

I think what the poll really shows is that people vary a LOT in what they dislike. It's also hard to gauge how much these things affect average players, as the respondents are not a random sample of the player base. They are people who are into the game enough to read outside websites and also feel strongly enough about some issue to respond to a poll. That doesn't mean their concerns aren't valid, of course...

For me, the things that kill it most are:

1. the piling on of more and more things to do, too quickly. I know I don't have to do everything, and I choose to take my time, but that's not what I'm getting at. The fun of achievements and collecting in a game is the illusion that you're advancing towards a visible goal. Of course the goal posts are going to keep moving over time, or you'd run out of things to do and become bored. But I feel that in their endeavour to prevent that, they added too much at once, so making the goal posts too far away to see or imagine. Or to use a different metaphor, the endless staircase is now too obviously an endless staircase. That starts to feel dull.

2. enhancement shaman are no longer fun to play. I don't mean they suck or are horrible. They're just not... fun. I've played one as my main since the day I started WoW and never lost that fun... until MoP. It just feels like I don't have to pay much attention to what I'm doing anymore, rarely have more than 2 totems out and lots of lag time between spells. There's no longer a thrill of urgency to combat. Nothing very special I have to do in raids. I'd be curious if players of other classes are feeling the same thing.

[cowmuflage]

I have to say LFR is the only reason I have been able to see raid content in the expack it came out in. That's a first.

[Wain]

I have to say LFR is the only reason I have been able to see raid content in the expack it came out in. That's a first.

This for me, too. And for many others. I think it's wonderful for that reason.

[HunterFTW]

another thing i hated about this was the CRZ.its nothing but annoying.i would like an apt button.i chose the servers i am on for a reason.