WoW [General Discussion]

[Solmyr]

These days, I think you get to max level in like two days.

[Syt]

These days, I think you get to max level in like two days.

Yeah, I was mentioning that elsewhere the other day. At launch, WoW was very much a social experience where grouping and playing with others was a core features, and many people's social online life revolved around it. Of course, social media were in their infancy in those days. A guild was their online "home" for many players of the day, I suppose.

I feel MMOs in general have moved away from that concept and more to a "shared world" experience where you can enjoy most contents solo while running into other players during gameplay, and just temporarily group with people when you have to/want to, and guilds are far less integral to the core experience than they used to be.

[Sophie Scholl]

These days, I think you get to max level in like two days.

They changed up the leveling experience a lot during Legion and especially the end of Legion.  It isn't to Vanilla levels of difficulty, but it is a lot harder.  Heirlooms got some serious levels of nerfing a while ago and no longer make everything a cakewalk.  Dungeons require some skill again and not just a race to the finish.  Also, you can stay in one zone a lot longer and the quests/rewards level up in difficulty/reward as you do.  When you hit 60, you can now choose to go to Northrend or Outland for content and 80-90 is Pandaria or Cataclysm for content.  It makes it a lot better in my opinion.

[katmai]

These days, I think you get to max level in like two days.

or 4 hours if you really try.

[Eddie Teach]

Trying is for nerds. 

[crazy canuck]

So i have played enough to gain one level in the expansion, so not much.  And I already regret getting it.  It is so easy that it is very boring.  It is really just an exercise in waiting to push the next button to kill the mob/mobs in front of you and move on to the next group to fill whatever quest quota you are working on at the time.  No worrying about the pull because even if you pull the whole room it will just take a little longer to kill them all.  No need to group because even the quests that suggest grouping are easily done solo.  In fact on my last three person quest my health bar did not even move when I did it solo because of the automatic shielding I get as a class perk.

Why did they make the game so easy?

[katmai]

So people can solo play a mmo.

[crazy canuck]

I don't understand the attraction

[Zoupa]

I re-subbed last month, don't know for how long. I really do miss the old more social aspects of the game.

I think the main culprit is the "looking for dungeon" tool or whatever they call it. Before, you had to actually make friends to go dungeoning, or advertise in Ironforge for a few minutes to get a group together. Now you just queue up, do the run and that's it. Lots of times there is absolutely no communication within the group, and it disbands as soon as it's over without a word. Lame.

The crowd control options are now useless, as they nerfed the difficulty so hard that most dungeon runs are DPS fests with the whole thing taking 30 minutes tops. Remember when you had to mark targets in the old Scholomance runs? "Don't break the sheep!" "I'll sap this one" Fights were way more engaging than pressing the same 3 buttons repeatedly.

Anyways. We'll see what they do with WoW Classic.

[Valmy]

Yeah the looking for dungeon thing drove me away from the game eight years ago. Terrible addition.

I guess it would be alright if the mechanics of the game were super compelling that I didn't need the social aspect. But I felt like that vanilla WoW already was pretty easy outside of the raids and a few of the high level dungeons. Making it even easier just seems to make it barely a game at all.

[Zoupa]

They feed the addictive side by laying on a zillion things to collect like barely useful professions, mounts, pets, looks instead of improving gameplay.

I remember one of my best gaming memories, on an early Molten Core run back in vanilla. There were packs of big ass dogs to kill before the 1st boss, Lucifron I think. Each tank would concentrate on a dog until the DPS could all bring them down around the same time. One warrior screwed up and died 10 seconds in, I rushed in to tank 2 dogs, managed it and avoided a raid wipe. The game now can't really provide the same kind of challenge, since everything is nerfed into the ground.

When everything is EZ mode, nothing is rewarding 

[crazy canuck]

Exactly, it was a real sense of accomplishment to react to things that went wrong and to do something that prevented the raid from wiping.  Using the right CD at just the right time in just the right circumstance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.   

[Sophie Scholl]

So run heroic, mythic, or mythic with affixes for dungeons and raids.  That way you can go up hill both ways again, old timers.

[crazy canuck]

It seems those are really just about how fast you can make the run

[Zoupa]

Plus, pick-up groups were a mixed bag back in Vanilla. You could get an awful healer or an idiot hunter pulling everything, someone ninja-ing the loot (remember /roll 1-100?).

Adding the LFG tool means all groups are now pick up groups. WoW could have went the git gud route and kept the difficulty up. But since pick up groups suck half the time, they instead nerfed the difficulty to stop the bitching. There's even a LFRaid thing now 

I'm just saying. It's a MMORPG with a lot of the MM missing.