This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
You can't go home again. :-) Even if you could, I wonder how many players still want to spend two or three months trying to reach and defeat the final boss in a dungeon (akin to the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj in 2006, flaws or no).Also, it is hard to compare the experience of a new WoW player today to one five years ago. Joining WoW today plops you into a realm full of thousands of level-capped players. The new under-geared player can join with those older highly-geared players to defeat encounters which a group of under-geared players could not. Five years ago, everyone was under-geared (relatively speaking) so of course everything was harder.What has surprised me is the gradual removal of attunements. The keying and attuning process was a major technique that the WoW designers had to slow down progression. I guess they don't want that now, perhaps largely because new content is made available faster than before -- which is a good thing!
Overall in my opinion. They have made the game just too easy. You are able to be over geared for most content after a few days of easy heroic farming. I remember back in vanilla you had to farm for all of your tier 0 pieces and then spend an arm and a leg getting those upgraded to tier .5 gear so that you could help out in MC and in ZG better than others. If blizzard slowed down progression a bit and extended the time it took for the #1 guild to clear through ICC or whatever newest content is, everyone might be happier. Make it so people have to really WORK to get everything they want or need in the game. Rather then handing everyone everything they need to clear through 80% of the content.
I started playing ever since right before BC came out. After BC was released, i explored its content and then thought of many other ways Blizzard would implement for future patches/expansions.Vanilla seemed a fun content, the beginning of gaming, but there is always room for the new and different, not everyone wants to be stuck playing the same content over again, and this is what Blizzard is doing which is great, as it has always been.All in all, New and Different is always good.
I have mixed feelings about the way the game is heading.I have discovered WoW not so long ago, only May last year. I was never interested in group-play, the MMORPG character of the game is appealing to me mostly for social reasons. I never intended to raid (or even to do dungeons, initially), because of the amount of dedicated time it requires (I never wanted the game to became an obligation, like in case of raid guilds, where in most cases you are obliged to be present for raids several times a week, for several hours).Therefore, the game appealed to me, because I was able to play mostly solo, and interact socially with people I know and those I have met in-game. I focused on questing (and did Loremaster as my first major achievement, almost at the same time I dinged 80, unlike most who do it only after leveling to 80). Then I focused on grinding various reputations, and finally on leveling alts (currently I have 10 chars on my realm, all of them level 50 or above, two of them at 80).So to sum it all up, the casual-player approach does appeal to me, and I am looking forward to more game content, which is focused on a casual, solo player. And I see that Blizzard is introducing some (although I would definitely to prefer seeing more of it).The downside of the approach is the fact, that Blizzard is not enforcing their own policies (especially in case of RP realms, where there are no simple mechanisms to report non-RP behavior, not even names, and non-RP behavior is common and not even regarded as "noob"), and the fact, that more and more immature players (and I am not referring to the age) are joining in.I have heard opinions (unfortunately I never experienced it personally), that in the times of the classic content, most players were mature (and again, I am not referring to the age, but to the approach and behavior). The ease of the game now no longer drives "kids" away from the game, as it did earlier. And one thing I would like to see changing is this, but I have no hopes, since it's clear, that Blizzard makes money on numbers, so they're making the game appealing to the largest possible crowds (the RP realms could however be treated differently at least, as a kind of an option for more mature players, unlike now, where RP stands for absolutely nothing, since the playstyle on a RP realm does not differ at all from the playstyle on a normal realm).To sum it all up, I'm for the casual-player content, but also against the lack of control and rule enforcement.
Do you do hardmodes? Link your TOC Hardmode achieves, and link your Icecrown full clears.Otherwise, you really aren't as hardcore as you think you are.Let everyone experience the game they pay for.
I have been playing since the beginning, and personally I love where the game is headed. I hated raiding MC with 39 people, rolling for loot against 18 other people, IF it even dropped. The game is being refined, streamlined and made better. It is so awesome that everyone can see content now, not just the people who can spend 30 hours a week playing, a good chunk of that raiding. My poor boyfriend never got to down ragnaros with me because he had to work. He never got to see AQ in any form other than some trash on the 20 man. Now we can raid ICC once a week, we saw chunks of ulduar and all that good stuff.It feels good man. Even those of us who like to do things other than WoW in all of our free time can get some gear with badges. This also helps cut down on the seriously awful elitism that was rampant for so much of vanilla. Now I can go into AV and work on getting pvp gear without being STOMPED by a raiding guild's main tank. Speaking of AV, it is now possible to get into one without waiting hours and hours, and to even finish the one you join! What novelty! So yes, while we all have some golden memories of the olden days, I would not want WoW to bring them back in any form.
Blizz has definitely moved in the right direction. The game is now accessible to all players, not just hard-core raiders who can devote every evening of the week to progressing. Hard-core folks still have goals they can work toward - it's called achievements.
Interesting editorial!I personally like the way the game is now. It's actually better than how it used to be. Sure, I do miss Elwynn Forest feeling huge and the fun I had collecting grapes for Milly (questing was the main thing in Vanilla WoW for me), but I'm not letting nostalgia dictate how I should feel about the state of the game today.They're not dumbing down the game for casuals, they're only making it possible for more people to enjoy the content. Remember when people were complaining they couldn't set foot in the Black Temple? This is Blizzard's response. There are Heroic modes if you're up for something "less casual".Before one is able to kill the Lich King on Heroic 25 mode, they can't really complain the game caters to casuals. And even then, it's not like a significant % of the player base was able to do the same.
I never got to see Vanilla Naxx. Never got to see Vanilla AQ 40. We did not have a 25 man team, so we never got to see anything other than a PuG Maggy and Gruul in BC. I am now a raid leader for a 10 man progression guild that is working on ICC. We have killed Yogg, Kel, Nub'rick. We would never have had that opportunity before now.Keep the game going the way it is so that people can see the content you so lovingly design. *thumbs up*