I don´t think the problem is the game is too old.. I think the problem is that it is just too predictable. You know exactly what is going to happen with gear... you know that encounters will be slightly difficult for a few weeks, then will become faceroll.Honestly, the problem is that the game is just too balanced, too micro-managed. They don´t allow anything to be out of parameters or interesting.Then there is my issue with GC. IMHO, he doesn´t have enough imagination to be in his position. The systems that have been added (archeology, guild leveling) are just so boring and predictable. Instead of microanalyzing everything to death.. they need to step back and realize they are making a game that is supposed to be fun. I think with guild leveling and archeology in particular, they spent all their time analyzing the rewards, and the speed we get those rewards.. that they never actually made the systems fun. Archeology was supposed to be a big part of this expansion.. but it ended up being about as much fun as fishing ingame.The predictability is what causes people to not have fun. It makes the ´grind´ way too obvious. I mean look at what they announced today.. the 5-man dungeons will basically be exactly the same thing as in Wotlk. Same with crafting.... they took wotlk stuff, added bigger numbers, and just cut-n-pasted it into Cata.
good point on the starcraft and counter strike front, they are free to play after you buy them, so of course the games arent going to die off completely I play toribash for crying out loud, why because its free. keeping people paying 15 dollars a month for this long is absurd blizzard has made sooo much money off of wow its insane, and hey they still got my 15 bucks a month, also I think cata is awesome and haters are just hating like they did about wrath and probably tbc as well, and also wow is old, its true. My thinking is that it will take another mmo to kill wow, however it would have to be awesome and like a previous poster said it would have to be more than just a "new wow" it would have to bring a completely original idea to the table even more so than wow did to everquest and honestly i have no idea what that could be. I am confident, however, that it will happen. ever seen Gamer maybe somthing like that
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I like a lot of the points I've read here, they've made me consider something’s that I hadn't even thought of, and helped me really pinpoint some of the things that disappointed me with cataclysm... also WotLK tbh.1. Well, first we have the LFG System that WotLK added (or rather, enhanced), which allowed the servers player base completely ignore one another. I never really saw the benefit in this, to be completely honest. I could choose to sit in a queue for 45 minutes, to group with people from servers I had never even heard of, or I could just type in trade chat, asking around for people to group with. I honestly found that looking in trade chat was far faster than grouping with people from different servers because of two simple facts; One, Cross-Server LFG DOES increase the amount of players in the queue itself, but it doesn't increase the ratio of Tanks and Healers to DPS. You might have a pool of 80,000 players, but still only 4,000 tanks and 4,000 healers, meaning that instead of just looking for more people in a 10,000 pool with 1,000 tanks and 1,000 healers, you're actually reducing your odds of finding people. 8,000:72,000<2,000: 8000. Secondly, we have the fact that people can get away with people complete and total %^&*s to one another! I can remember people being black listed by the SERVER ITSELF for ninjaing or being asses. Now a day’s people can take whatever they want and say whatever they want and get away with it. I can still remember a Prot paladin taking my Needle Encrusted Scorpion... the bastard >.>2. Not even having to raid for SOME Tier items. This is something that I will likely be flamed back into the Stone Age for, but I completely and absolutely disagree with allowing people to obtain Raid Quality items without ever raiding, let it be written I have no issue with PvP Items though, you have to work for those. I have always had a "Get out what you give in" mentality; meaning that if you don't raid, then you don't deserve raid gear. I don't care if you wait in the queue for 45 minutes 7 times a week to get your weekly valor points to buy T12, which is not the sort of effort I am talking about. In raiding you need to actually put up with 9 or 24 other people to achieve a goal that is actually marginally difficult, but 5-Mans are cake walks; No skill required, don't stand in the fire, gratz and here are your RAID Legs. I’m sorry if you’re a casual player who likes to have shiny gear, but can’t find 12 hours a week to take off from… from what exactly? I’m curious what you’re really missing out on. I attend School from 7 in the morning until 1 PM; I have a job 5 days a week where I work from 2 PM until 9 PM, I am in an active relationship where I spend time with my significant other every weekend, usually several hours Saturday and Sunday, yet I still have time to raid. Find time, or find a guild that fits your schedule, I believe in you.3. Class homogenization; my final and best point, in my option. Classes in World of Warcraft used to be unique! Paladins would give Healers Blessing of Wisdom, DPS would be kings or Might, and the tank would always get Kings, Druids would give us Mark of the Wild, Mages provided Arcane Intellect, Shaman gave mana totems, windfury, and bloodlust/heroism! Now Mages, Shamans, or Hunter pets can give a lust! Blizzard, I understand what you tried to do, but it didn’t work. You destroyed the uniqueness of classes by making use all the exact same. You took all 10 of your classes, forced them into an unbelievably massive, and powerful, blender, and turned them into a nice, bland, paste that you force fed us this expansion. I’m not going to say how the game can be improved, many good suggestions have already been given, and I trust you enough to make the changes, I am just going to provide a few of your short comings.-Livandria
One of the problems that all video games face is their audience. Most target a demographic of males ages 12 to 25 give or take a year or two. That's a demographic which, at its worst, seems deeply afflicted with ADHD and which, at it's best, is rather like to dog in the movie Up!. Any new, bright shiny object and they are off with a cry of, "Squirrel!" I meet far too many players who "power level". That may be efficient but most have never seen the outside of a dungeon or a city. Quests annoy them and lore is more effective than Ambien on them. Many of these folks join the game because a friend plays. When their friends lose interest or move on to the next shiny game (Squirrel!) those recruited players lose interest as well and fade away.I have mixed feelings about Cataclysm. The dungeons and raids have been interesting and challenging for the most part. The re-imagining of Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub was very well done and clever but the story lines and lore have gotten a bit disjunct. Deepholm, Uldum, Twilight Highlands and Vashj'ir are beautifully imagined zones but once one gets the questing achievements there's almost no reason to return, for Deepholm and Vashj'ir not even archeology.I did not play at the beginning of Classic WoW. I began playing this game in July, 2008 and quickly fell in love with the movie, music and literary references and puns. I know mythology and the works of H. P. Lovecraft well so I was already grounded in many of the sources for the game. Those things have kept me playing. When Cataclysm was announced I purposely got serious about the Loremaster achievement. Partly that move was defensive. With the promise of "thousands of new quests" I thought I should face the 1,300+ in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms first. What I found unexpectedly was a window into the structure of the game and the designers' minds. All those long quests chains like the Lost Hero of the Horde, the Sceptre of the Shifting Sands and the wrecked rowboat in Un'Goro Crater knit Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms together into a single whole. They were annoying given the flying from pillar to post to get quest items that, sometimes were totally pointless (the dagger for retrieving the pieces of the medallion in Lost Hero of the Horde when the salve was the real active agent needed comes to mind); however, they did bring continents and zones together as an integrated whole. That said, I'm mostly glad that those long travels are out of the game and entirely glad that I did them while I could.In Cataclysm a mindset of separation has replaced that integration. Deathwing's random appearances over zones are fun but seem unconnected to anything. Let's take Deepholm as a starting point. Where is the inverse of Blackrock Mountain: a series of instanced caves leading upward toward a re-imagined Molten Core. In those caves we might discover Deathwing's riven prison, the workshop in which his armor was forged and applied and, fighting, find our way upward into Ragnaros' original lair much as it has always been except for the final fight in which Raganros raises a circular wall of lava behind which he disappears into his ultimate home, the Firelands beneath Mt. Hyjal. Molten Core needen't have been "only a set back" at all. Similarly where is even the promise that Neptulon, saved in Throne of Tides, will join forces with us to combat Lady Vashj and her Naga armies in her underwater realm?Or turning to a completely different idea what about the Keepers of Time? Are they really all of one mind? Dragons have gone mad, been deceived into evil or forced to fight against the interests of their race before. Isn't there a Keeper who has thoughts of some small change in the time line for the betterment of the present world which has a "butterfly effect" bringing huge, unforeseen consequences to the current world from which some heroes must save us all?Keeping questing within zones for zone achievements is a good thing but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be meta-quests that knit the worlds together. I think someone at Blizzard has this in mind if the Deathwing encounter will start at Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. That's on the right track; all we need is more thinking in a similar vein. The Lich King/Plague/Scourge narrative integrated the game through the Wrath expansion. Deathwing/Cataclysm seems more tacked on than integral.None of this may bring in hordes of new players but some integration and a narrative that supports them will attract some and confirm the loyalty of others.Separating PvE and PvP or other aspects of the game into discreet niches seems to me a non-starter. A good part of the attraction of the game is the richness of the ways in which one can play it. To pull those multiple aspects apart would kill rather than revive the game. Ultimately Blizzard needs to decide who composes its audience. Once they know who their long-time, hard-core players are they should build on that audience with widening circles to bring in more casual players for the short term of their interest. Solid, integrated, consistent story lines will make that a lot easier and lead on into the future. I'm in for the long haul. I truly enjoy this game. Please wow me with more inventive takes on WoW.
I didn't start playing untill a couple months after BC came out and didn't make lvl 70 for the first time untill 3 days before Wrath came out. But, I will always enjoy playing this game. I don't see what everyone hates about Cataclysm, I like it. I will play WoW untill its' servers are taken offline permanentley.
I enjoyed vanilla because it was different, coming from Guild Wars. I enjoyed TBC because it was the first expansion and "different" than the original. I immensely enjoyed (my favorite expansion) WOTLK because from the start you were emmersed in an epic struggle against the LK. Even as I level other toons through Wrath, I still love it. I've never levelled quickly, due to the little time I have to play and due to the fact I like to enjoy the storylines, questing, and exploring. I don't power level. When Cata came out, I was stoked. After I got my first 85 I was like bleh. Uldum was fun because of questing with Harrison Jones. Other than that, I didn't feel that there was a point. So Deathwing came out and jacked up Azeroth. Big deal. I didn't feel a desire to make it through Cata though. I didn't feel I was doing anything meaningful or progressive in PvE. Now, I did enjoy the new lowbie stuff. I started some new toons to see how things were, and really liked the feeling of warring with the Alliance. I have no desire to level any of my 80's to 85 and when my 70's get to 80, I doubt they'll go much further. I'll probably take my 85 and do some BG's or do some archaeology but who knows.
For me, my main problem is with the 5 mans. Not that there are too few or too many, but that they are segregated.For time's sake, I tend to run the Zandalari's mostly, seeing as how they are much quicker and more efficient than the regular heroics. The problem being, since the Zandalaris have such a great reward, and are separate from the other heroics, I find myself never doing the other heroics.In Wrath, my interest was kept, at least for a while, because I had so many possible dungeons to enter between raids or whatever. Now in Cata, I find myself doing these "randoms," which aren't even really random, seeing as how there are only 2 possible outcomes.I need some variety!As for the state of WoW as a whole, I agree it is reaching a "stale" point. Been playing on/off since Vanilla, and things that used to be fun for me (questing, exploring, dungeons) are now a chore. Staleness just comes with the age, though.