Stropp’s World

Slapping Dragons for Fun and Profit

Has Blizzard Ruined WoW?

Posted by Stropp on June 12, 2009

I asked the question a little while back, Blizzards New MMORPG – Will It Be Hardcore?

One of the commentors on that post, Dylan, made the statement that he believed that Blizzard has ruined World of Warcraft by taking what, upon release, were a blend of complex game mechanics implemented in a simple manner, excellent content, and a good PvP game, and have dumbed it down into a far too casual game that has effectively eliminated all need for grouping (except for raid content.) — Paraphrased.

So what do you think, has WoW been nerfed into oblivion?

If that’s the case, why is World of Warcraft still the king of the MMORPG hill?

Let’s discuss.

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  1. Pitrelli Said,

    hey stropp sorry I havent popped across for a while, been a busy lad at work.

    Anyway more to the point lets talk about WoW. I do think blizzard have dumbed WoW down and made it more ‘casual’ friendly. But the way I see it is it kind of works, they have added 10 man raids for less accomplished players to see content, they have changed a good bit of actual talents and gear needed, the only thing I really moan about is leveling speed. In my opinion leveling should be slowed right down, I missed out on more than half of the old content, the old world is still populated but not with people running your dire mauls or scholomance – they are just questing to level up quicker it makes me sad :(

    Anyway to sum up my thought I want to play a game for a couple of hours and actually achieve something in old vanilla Wow this wasnt always easy to do and in some instances felt like a second job. I do hope they add content for more ‘hardcore’ players but for me its ideal atm

  2. the truth Said,

    idd, blizzard have made wow to a game for players with no experience or real skills at all. All that’s req is lucky rolls and be able to press 3 buttoms.. it makes me sick..
    And i’ve heard about the patch 3.2.. gogo blizz make wow even easier :D (fuck tards)
    Wow have become more like a private server to me.

    HATE IT!

  3. Stropp Said,

    @Pitrelli – no worries. I know how busy being busy can get.

    I think this is one of the poor design decisions of WoW. Any real acheivement in the game requires leveling, or combat. There’s nothing else to really do that provides satisfaction. So in order to keep players feeling like they are progressing, the only option is to add more dings. To do that, leveling has to be fast.

    I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong in casual friendly, players need to feel like they’re getting somewhere despite how many hours they spend in the game, but I do think there needs to be more than just questing and leveling.

    @the truth – why don’t you look outside of WoW? There are a lot of Wowified games now, but there are some with different models of play. Hey. If you are after a challenge, why not give something like the original Everquest a go? You’ll find plenty there.

  4. hpt Said,

    instances and battlegrounds ruin mmos. there is no sense of server community in wow because there is no competition. everyone can have their own little instance for everything they do with all the time in the world to try again. battlegrounds are the same exact thing every single time, and you get a positive reward even if you lose. in addition, you dont even play against people on your own server so you never get to know your server community.

    anyone that played original trilogy EQ (eq, kunark, velious) knew the top 10 guilds on the server, who was the best at each class on the server, who the core members were of competing guilds, what their gear was, who their main tank was, how many clerics that guild had, how good their competition was at mobilizing (which actually mattered in eq) and everyone that raided knew exactly what mobs their competing guilds were doing and when the mobs they wanted respawned each week.

    imagine having the top 3 guilds on the server each bringing 30 people to the same zone to fight a giant battle, with the last guild standing getting a shot at a dragon that drops the best gear in the game. one shot, thats it because by the time your first attempt is over, the other guilds have ported back from their bind spots, retrieved their gear and are AoE’ing your clerics and dispelling buffs off your main tank. that was so fun. to know that something like that environment used to exist, and then to look at wow and see 100 million people sitting in a queue for 20 minutes to go slam themselves against each other with no strategy, and no risk because theres a 5 second respawn makes me wonder why wow is popular and original eq style mmo no longer exists.

    someone make a game where there is competition between guilds. wow feels like a single player game. think of how fun wow could be if instead of every guild getting all week to go to molten core and fail fail fail fail until they eventually get it right, and no one on the server cares because they get their own private molten core to suck on, if instead ragnaros spawned once a day and every guild on the server, horde and alliance were fighting over it, how sick would that be? at first the horde and alliance would join together to make sure their side got an attempt, but then there would be a struggle to see who got to take a shot first. since you cant fight your own side i imagine it would be whoever got there first, or some kind of bluebie random for it or something, but still. how rad would it be. one guild gets to take a shot at ragnarok while 2 other alliance guilds sit at the zone line and kill any horde that try to zone in. if the horde make it in they sprint through the zone and start rooting people in place of his aoe so the tanks all die then the casters get molested one by one. this goes on all night until one side establishes itself for long enough to complete the pve event. awesome. cant wait for someone to make this type of situation a reality in a game, oh wait verant did in 1999-2002, then sony ruined eq and it now is terrible.

  5. annie nomous Said,

    WoW has been ruined by blizzard. Remember how much of a joke Naxx was when it first came out? Then came Ulduar, which is probalby the only good instance to have come out of Wotlk thus far. All the side boss raids like OS VoA, are all jokes. The difficulty of advancing in raid content has become so easy that you can pretty much pug anything. The gear is extremely easy to get. ToC was the biggest pile of @%$* that has ever come out. Most of the raids have become repetitive. Where one boss is implemented, they use almost the same strategy on another boss in a different instance. Its like eating a sh*@ sandwich. No matter how many condiments you put on it it still tastes like shi@%.
    Gear is so easily obtainable now its a joke. You could skip all of wotlk and start playing at the last dungeon and get all your badge gear to go in there and say you beat the last dungeon. PvP is a whole different story too. Skill factor has been taken out of it to some degree. The maps are ultra repetitive, and they do not build upon pre-existing ones. I hear they are going to have another WG type in Cataclysm. Who in the hell wants that? They can’t think of anything new, and they were so lazy they decided to just take the maps they already had an just change the foliage and look in Cataclysm. This game is cash cow at its finest. The game is too simple, too easy, and only about purples. End game content has ruined the full experience of WoW, and Blizzard is definitely to blame for this. I sure hope the heroin addicted gamers go in to rehab to see what this game has really become. Garbage. I enjoyed the 1st 2 expansions and it seemed more like a team oriented environement, and there were still plenty of people leveling characters up so you could make alts. Each expansion has gotten worse and i expect that trend to continue. Now You are pressed to get a group at all at low levels. You are stuck soloing pretty much 1-78. So much fun, right?
    All in all the PvP system is broken, the endgame is seriously lacking worthwhile content, the game is all about pruples, all the bosses are repetitive, and Blizzard is really lacking fresh ideas. That is why I cancelled my account 5 months ago. I don’t forsee me ever going back, even with cataclysm. I can find other things to play that are just as fun and don’t waste 4-8 hrs a day of raids and farming heroics.

  6. Alex Said,

    I came back to world of warcraft to rollplay a bit and have a few adventures.. But I found a bunch of characters dressed in the most over the top stupid gear ive ever seen riding motorcycle mounts, exc exc. World of warcraft seems more like some kind of meme now rather then an experience. I hate the fact that the entire game leads up to being level 80, Which inevitably means, Clogging your screen with addons, raiding, and looking like a colorful fairy. Id really enjoy finding random deep cave in the wilds and joining with a band of adventurers to explore the depths to eventually fight some kind of meaningful monster spawn. that would be nice :)

    With the group finding tool and fast teleport to instances its so easy to get a group and be at the doors to a dungeon the entire sense of companionship with your group is tainted. It really makes me sad that so much potential is so muddied. I think Its almost as much the players fault as it is blizzard. Maybe we should hope for a new game to come, or maybe we should just go into the real world : /

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