Classic WoW was designed by Blizzard devs. As stated by Chris Metzen, in Classic WoW the World is the main character. It was the "World" of Warcraft.

Battle for Azeroth on the other hand was designed by the WoW playerbase. That is the MMORPG this community ended up designing. All the complaints and demands by members of forums like MMOChampion are what created Battle for Azeroth.

Now how did we get here? Why is Retail WoW no longer an MMO or an RPG? Why is the World gone? Why has Retail became a singleplayer lobby based game? Because the playerbase demanded it to be this way.

When did this shift begin? It actually began midway through Vanilla. Players began complaining about Battlegrounds. They didn't want to have to run to the instance portals in Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains, or Ashenvale. They wanted to queue for every battleground at once. They wanted to teleport to the instances and not have to wait. Blizzard caved in. They added Battlemasters which allowed players to teleport into instances across the world. Instead of running across the world zones, you could now teleport past them. You now had players standing in the same spot in Ironforge and Orgrimmar queueing over and over again without leaving the room. This was only the beginning.

The Burning Crusade brought flying mounts. The community thought it would be an "awesome" idea. Land mounts were too slow and clumsy. This not only shrunk the world, but also lessened player interaction in the zones. Compare your experience riding your mount through Kalimdor in Classic to using a flightmaster to fly across it. Flying literally allowed players to bypass the World. Imagine flying at 280% speed compared to running at 60% on land. There are literally members on this forum arguing that flying mounts increased player interaction and World PvP. How delusional can you be? Blizzard capitulated to players like this.


Players complained. Wrath of the King gave us crossrealm dungeon finder.

Players complained. Cataclysm gave us crossrealm raidfinder.

Players complained. WoD gave us sharded crossrealm zones.

Great timing. This is exactly what's on everyone's mind nearly 3 months into the release of Classic.

What is this like a jaded retail dev mad at people for liking classic or something? The argument is weak anyway, every community is full of retards asking for stupid changes to everything, the job of the devs is to ignore them and make decisions that will improve the game. I'm sure this is what they were trying to do as WoW evolved, but they failed a huge portion of the playerbase, as evidenced by the rise and growth of private servers, and by the success of classic.

Make WoW 2 and try again if you are that mad about it.

Well if Blizz didn’t listen to their fans then they’d get just as much lashback. They listened and implemented changes that were asked for, and I reckon at the time these were probably seen as a good idea. It’s only in hindsight that we realise that there were negatives too.

It’s listening to the community, and the rise of pservers as evidence of demand for a vanilla iteration, that lead to Classic as well so we have that to be thankful for.

I sure bet the answer to this all is air dropped world PvP bonus chests and rotating world PvP bonus zones.

Pippina wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I sure bet the answer to this all is air dropped world PvP bonus chests and rotating world PvP bonus zones.

Airdrops, boat battles and PvP zones!!! We need player housing and bonus honor for the silithus PvP quests!

This is redridgegnoll boys.

Creating new accounts to rehash the same bad ideas isnt going to help your case. Your ideas arent very good... Put effort into building new ideas or challenging your existing ideas instead of creating multiple accounts. We dont dismiss your ideas because you are attached to them, we dismiss them because they are bad. Reposting the same trash with a different username wont help you gain traction.

teebling wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Well if Blizz didn’t listen to their fans then they’d get just as much lashback.

Right here. This is it. It's like democracy. It's a million different people all wanting something specifically tailored for their own personal needs. No matter what, everyone cannot and will not be 100% happy.

Steerclear wrote: ↑

4 years ago

teebling wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Well if Blizz didn’t listen to their fans then they’d get just as much lashback.

Right here. This is it. It's like democracy. It's a million different people all wanting something specifically tailored for their own personal needs. No matter what, everyone cannot and will not be 100% happy.

I understand all that, but my argument is that those in leadership positions need to make the hard choice, the unpopular choice, and do what's right instead of what pleases the crowd. If Blizzard would release the numbers of players in retail and classic we could actually have some concrete evidence of whether or not they made they right choices, but we all know that will never happen.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Pippina wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I sure bet the answer to this all is air dropped world PvP bonus chests and rotating world PvP bonus zones.

Airdrops, boat battles and PvP zones!!! We need player housing and bonus honor for the silithus PvP quests!

This is redridgegnoll boys.

Creating new accounts to rehash the same bad ideas isnt going to help your case. Your ideas arent very good... Put effort into building new ideas or challenging your existing ideas instead of creating multiple accounts. We dont dismiss your ideas because you are attached to them, we dismiss them because they are bad. Reposting the same trash with a different username wont help you gain traction.

you know thats obvious sarcasm right?

A good game company listens to their audience and does give them what they want. Within reason. It's not the community's fault that Blizzard gave them things.

Some of these ideas really didn't work. I mean, I loved having a flying mount, but hated what it did to World PvP. That's part of why I switched to a PvE-RP server in Wrath. What ruined the game for me was that the company did not implement community content.

It left the community trying to create a community without any Blizzard assistance. RP events were my favourite things in WoW but those were run by the players and not by Blizzard. There were no tools added to the game to help players connect on their server. In fact, tools were added to disconnect us from other players on the server. Blizzard created a game, shoved people into instances, and then just worked on creating expansions.

The monthly holiday content was not enough to keep me wanting to play. The raids and instances which required other people (but how to meet those people when everyone was instanced?) meant that I missed out on content or was forced to group with random strangers I would never see again. Never connect with.

I mean, everyone's talking about this over and over, but it doesn't matter if you ninja something in Retail because you may never play with the people ever again. Even cross-realm battlegrounds -- good luck running into someone more than once without grouping with them.

d3aths wrote: ↑

4 years ago

you know thats obvious sarcasm right?

Yes, hes referring to redridge. Which I also commented on in my next post. Because this is another redridgegnoll account barraging the forum with gnoll ideas. Its fun!

Games are meant to be consumed. And like every other consumer good, you cant except the customer to figure out what he wants. The only reliable feedback any customer can provide is whether or not they liked an experience. Some people are able to actually point out why they (dis)liked something, but most folks lack the analytical ability to accurately understand the problem and even fewer have the expertise to come up with a good solution.
Whether bad decisions were made based on community feedback/suggestions is irrelevant. A game designers job is to filter feedback for relevant information, identify problems and find solutions. It doesnt matter which of these steps is not working properly (at least for me, for Blizzard its crucial to figure that out), the result will be bad game design.

All that being said, I think people are way too harsh on Blizzard when it comes to gameplay changes. They made way more good choices than they did bad ones and the game is still alive 15 years later.

Samaraner wrote: ↑

4 years ago

but most folks lack the analytical ability to accurately understand the problem and even fewer have the expertise to come up with a good solution.

I'll have you know we have many resident developers who were involved in the creation of Vanilla WoW that have fantastically fool proof solutions to allll the imaginary problems!!!

/s

In my opinion it's not the community per se, but the communication or the lack thereof: blizz <--> community who caused that.

Instead of looking at the data they gather from their players and deep diving into the mechanics before they changed them, I often had the feeling they changed things too hastily.

Instead of going into a dialoge with the community and think together of something blizz takes half assed in two minutes written suggestions by an angry shitstorm/hivemind and implements it behind closed doors without reporting back what and how they plan to do it.

So community-wise: instead of the voices from a handfull of theorycraft people that actually look into matters more deeply and would help finding flaws while things get developed in a dialogue, the screams from lots of angry people get heard and blizz then implements the suggestions to calm the mob. Cue to after the new mechanic got implemented and a few people recognize the flaw, point it out but blizz won't change it back because the angry mob from before defends the dumb additions as they are just happy/and feel like they got heard... One/two add-ons later the before "satisfied-mob" comes to realize that all changed for the bad and shifts into an angry mob again who then causes more not thought through changes... it all basically is a downward spiral that only gratifies players that don't see the whole picture.

I would also never see the whole picture, but I think if blizz would go into an open dialoge and report back continuously and also actually have the guts to shut down bad ideas while a shit suggestion storm is raging with reason "hey we looked into that, in that phase I does simply not look like a good idea to change the system since XX% of the playerbase actually is far away to experience the part of the game they are concerned by now. we look into it further tough and probably will add a variant of your suggestions into a future testrealm, but just as a test itself without implementing it into live after that, even if it's bug-free. We will gather more date, go back to the drawing boards and report back about our findings" things would change for the better.

And yet people are constantly posting things they want in Classic that they had in retail and bashing #nochanges. There is a reason for no changes.

I have been playing WoW since 2004. I've reached all levels. Currently, the best editions are add-ons on private servers, which Blizzard uses in new editions. I am waiting for the edition when the publisher will use what is already created, but probably it is impossible. In my humble opinion, there are several servers that have a huge impact on new editions. At WoW, everything was invented, Blizzard only uses existing ideas from private servers. The impact is and was enormous. There are private servers that have been operating since 2004 and there developers and game merkers are looking for inspiration or just copying.

Players are also what brought back classic wow. No need to paint pictures in such broad strokes!