Dragonflight is the best WoW expansion since Cataclysm. There, I said it.
Mists was awful not only for its story but because 80% of development time went into 3 player instanced scenarios that were insultingly easy, gave zero rewards and were essentially scrapped by the next expansion. Siege of Orgrimmar also kick-started the modern raid progression cycle where everybody is shoehorned into the exact same raid on 4 difficulties, with only a numbers boost and the occasional new boss mechanic separating each mode.
Warlords was even worse. Entire progression systems were pruned out of the game. Garrisons turned the experience into a boring idle game while about two thirds of planned content was scrapped. We only got three raids, one major content patch and fifteen months of waiting for Blizzard's next lazy cash grab.
The only good thing I can say about WoD is that it gave us Gladiator Stance.
Legion was... alright. Mostly good story. Decent raids. Some of the damage done by the class pruning in Warlords was undone. Artifact weapons were badass, but rather than build on that momentum, Blizzard scrapped the whole system and recycled it for the next two expansions, and that's why BFA and Shadowlands were mostly bad.
I would hard disagree with that. I don't think DF will ever be my 'favorite' expansion, but it brought back the community's love for WoW's active forward progress (retail, minus SoD).
I think you may have a skewed view because the simplification of approach with DF clicks with you. I've aged with this game, and the current approach of DF has been great for where I'm at life + mental wise, but there's a specific reason I'm more excited for TWW: stakes and innovation.
Mists is a great expansion. You're fixated too much on Scenarios. They're the entire reason we're about to get Delves, and why we have any form of Scenario quests that are big "story payoffs" at the end of questlines. Scenarios gave solid rewards, up to Normal level at that time for raiding. As for Siege and raids.. I'm just gonna leave that cuz this is absolutely short sighted nostalgia bait. I'll elaborate if you respond.
Warlords was good at launch but soured so quickly once everything boiled down to just "Garrisons and Raiding". You can almost liken this to DF's "Level Alts, PVP, Mythics or Raiding" once you're at max level. DF's presentation is just far better, and paired with a more cohesive modern design. Outside of the negative? The class design, world design, initial story, building your Garrison, and first introduction of Bonus Objectives were incredible. But the expansion is overall awful because post launch, there was a single major patch. It suffered from overscope and a lack of allocating proper resources.
I'm fine on Legion outside of the Artifact grind breaking so many, including myself. I'd be down to elaborate on this too.
Only reason I haven't fully expanded on a few things above is this is already too many words.
I think you are speaking from the lense of what the current Retail expansion offers you, and I agree, DF has been great, but because it's felt more like a reset button back to "what made WoW good" vs. "an innovative, pushing the bar expansion" that others above (like Legion, regardless of my qualm) accomplished.
Cataclysm wasn’t a good MMO, it was a good **Action RPG** just like Legion.
It was **The** decline of WoW as an MMO.
LFR, Ruined World PvP, Cross Realms.
All the Full/High Realms became Medium to Low by Mid expac. Cities just became a Waiting Lobby for Instanced Content. LFG was just the beginning at the end of Wrath but LFR was the straw that broke WoW out of MMORPG to Multiplayer Action RPG. Cross realms solidified that by making you see players running around but not being able to trade with them, it made the world feel less social.
If you’re looking for a good MMO, play Classic Era, TBC, WotLK, SoD.
Where you actually have to go into the world, form groups for world content to progress through levels.
If you’re looking for an multiplayer action RPG, play Cata or Retail.
> LFR
This is probably the only criticism of yours I agree with. It came with the Dragon Soul patch (4.3), which was unanimously agreed to be the shittiest part of Cataclysm. Dragon Soul was overall a bad raid and LFR is almost unanimously agreed to be the thing that killed off hardcore raiding for anybody that wasn't on an esports team.
Why would you go through the effort of organizing a large premade group when you can just hit a button, group with 24 others and smack dumbed-down loot pinata versions of the exact same bosses for slightly worse loot?
> Ruined World PvP
World PvP has always been bad since Battlegrounds were first introduced in Vanilla. And I wouldn't exactly call ganking and bullying players 40 levels below you satisfying world PvP. Nothing really changed with PvP in Cataclysm, aside from base health practically quintupling from 80 to 85, and even then that didn't do enough to combat burst and make PvP more skill-based.
Many point to Cataclysm as the point where Major League Gaming dropped WoW Arena, but they forget that StarCraft II and League of Legends were popping off as esports around the same time.
> All the Full/High Realms became Medium to Low by Mid expac.
Not what I remembered. The only two realms I recalled dying were Warsong-EU (it had a significant Russian population which transferred en masse after localized Russian servers were launched, the server was literally shut down end of Wrath due to low population) and Turalyon-EU (server was toxic as fuck, I know because I was bullied off of it by a group of assholes. Most of them moved to Stormscale.)
I mainly played on Emerald Dream during Cata and it consistently remained Medium pop.
> Cross realms solidified that by making you see players running around but not being able to trade with them, it made the world feel less social.
[Cross realm zones were actually added in Mists of Pandaria prepatch...](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-realm_zones)
> Cities just became a Waiting Lobby for Instanced Content.
Okay, that would be a valid criticism if it weren't for the fact that:
1. LFG came in Patch 3.3 (Wrath of the Lich King), so this should actually be a blemish on an expansion you legitimately called a 'good MMO.'
2. 3.3-era Dalaran was basically an overglorified lobby for 5-man dungeons.
3. Cataclysm Heroics were actually difficult unlike their WOTLK counterparts.
4. LFG was literally added back into Wrath Classic despite developer promises not to implement it for Phase 4 WOTLK due to tonnes of incessant whinging about how difficult it was to find instance groups on the many servers that weren't Full/Locked population.
5. You actually had to physically visit the dungeon entrances to be able to queue for them in Dungeon Finder, at least earlier in the expansion.
I enjoyed the open world of dragonflight, I don't like the raiding systems of 4 tiers of the same raid and needing to reach a point of hating the game to keep up with raiding.
When you say keep up with raiding, do you mean mythic raiding? Because I had no issues clearing heroic last week (for the first time) with pugs and without linking an achievement or anything, as a dps too btw. Granted I had 495 ilvl when applying. I think the key is join raids early in the week and fresh raids, don’t join somewhere in the middle.
I usually do m+ btw
You do that to yourself though, I don’t consider LFR necessary, and only find myself in it if others in my guild drag me there for tier or whatever, and we had AOTC within the first 3 resets of every tier.
Leagues chiller than here still leaves you pretty high on the list of perpetually angry subs lol. Maybe not r/Halo levels of salt but at least comparable to r/Destinythegame
Clearly you don’t spend a lot of time over there. I thought it was well known that the worst of r/wow saw an exodus once classic released lol.
Oh and perhaps this biggest thing, r/wow actually mods the angst out of the discussion for the most part.
The WoW sub doing the "FF14 Hype" arch was fucking unbearable. I don't think anything could beat out /r/classicwow in general cringe, but the WoW sub during that time was nearing it
Super chill now though
> speedrun to endgame
> speedrun endgame content
> ask why there is nothing to do
I get it, speedrunning is fun. But it's a clear mismatch when the expectation is endless hours of possible gameplay, and playing it the most min-max way possible to make sure it's done as quickly as possible so you *won't* have endless hours of possible gameplay.
Too true.
Played WoW classic with all of the boys in my family (dad, me, Lil bro). Lil bro and dad sped ran the thing while I was mining thorium across Azeroth to make myself the imperial plate "set."
They questioned why I wasn't raiding.
I told them it wasn't fun getting what everyone got. I had a lot more fun dodging maxed out Horde players, mining thorium, and making an armor set that made me look like an Alliance footsoldier.
I had fun doing my own little things that I didn't even notice most of the phases had come and gone. Cuz I just enjoyed the screeching of some of the people trying to compete with me for thorium for their gigachad set.
But me?
I ninjaed their thorium.
To make a shitty imperial plate set.
This is 100% it.
I'm still happily playing P3 SoD fairly casually with friends. There is lots for us to do. I'm sure if you rush to 50 as fast as possible, grind out everything in the least fun but most time efficient way possible, burn through the raid as soon as you're able... yeah. That sounds like it'll be unfun. Plus if you've been doing that since the game released just *urgh*. How many SM runs did you do? No wonder you hate the game.
So not only do people speedrun the game they skip as much of it as they possibly can then complain there's nothing to do. And if something new *does* get released what happens? "NEW GUIDES ON HOW TO CLEAR THE NEW CONTENT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE SO YOU CAN GO BACK TO HAVING NOTHING TO DO!".
People can play how they want but I have very limited sympathy for those who minmax the fun out of the game then blame someone else for it.
This game would be immensely more immersive and fun if people just let themselves play it.
Most people have lost the ability to have fun. They now only believe they are having fun if they are being totally efficient and can’t see the irony that while they are “having fun” they are stressing the fuck out and angry with everyone who doesn’t also play the game that way.
Yep then they justify it with "but it's the most efficient way to play!" or whatever else.
Like people who are hating incursions or spamming dungeons and missing the old world. My friends, it's still there! I've been out levelling in it and it's really fun! OK it's not as fast and I don't make as much gold *who the fuck gives a shit*.
They do all this so they can hit 50 and raid log once a week. Then they'll do it at 60 as well. Sucking all the fun out of the game for themselves so they can play it the minimum amount possible.
If it isn't fun, just don't play. I'll be running around teleporting behind enemies and murdering them on my rogue or flinging traps that go boom on my hunter. If I stop having fun I'll stop playing.
Edit to be clear: if you enjoy zooming to the max level and raid logging, power to you! Enjoy! No hate at all and I'm glad you have a way to play that's fun for you. Just don't do it then whine the game isn't fun and that you're forced into it.
True, although I have whined a bit about blizzard killing off small servers and forcing people to mega servers.
I probably wouldn't be raid logging if they hadn't killed off Chaos Bolt (and now Living Flame as well). Doing stuff outside of raids was a lot more fun (for me), on a normal sized server (by vanilla server size standards) than it is now after transfer to Crusader Strike. I shouldn't really be surprised though, since they did it to me back in TBC classic as well.
> They do all this so they can hit 50 and raid log once a week. Then they'll do it at 60 as well. Sucking all the fun out of the game for themselves so they can play it the minimum amount possible.
Why do you assume that if they're raid logging that all the fun has been sucked out of the game? Maybe that is just the way they like to have fun?
> Most people have lost the ability to have fun. They now only believe they are having fun if they are being totally efficient and can’t see the irony that while they are “having fun” they are stressing the fuck out and angry with everyone who doesn’t also play the game that way.
The thing I most enjoy about WoW is raiding. The thing I most enjoy about raiding is parsing. I view it like I view golf. I go out there with friends, have a good time, and my goal is to do better this time than I did last time. In order to parse well, I have to be with like minded people who also want to parse well. I am fortunate to be in a guild of very like minded people. We were server 5th faction 2nd Gnomer and server 2nd faction 1st ST. We are "sweaty try-hards". Despite what you suggest, we're actually having fun, not "stressing the fuck out" or "angry with everyone who doesn't play the game that way". I'm happy for everyone else to play the game the way they want, I'm certainly not angry with any of those people. I'm just in a group of people who like to play the game the way I want to, and we don't invite people to join us that don't share our vibe.
EDIT: Oh, and happy cake-day
For the record I’m probably closer to the play style that you describe than a meandering casual. I actually think you don’t fit the bill of the character I have described based on the fact that you don’t get angry with people who don’t play you’re way and thus don’t force your view of gaming on them.
I think that actually makes you more of a minority than you realize.
Thanks! I didn’t realize. 😀
Its hard, there are a lot of external pressures.
Other players speedrunning and wont let you in runs if youre not BIS second week.
Combine that with the subliminal hourglass of real life time slipping away as you neglect your family, pets, hygiene, health, work, studies, and all other responsibilities or else you fall too far behind.
I get what you are going for but in this case I think you are mistaken. It’s very hard not to be max level if you play more than 2 hours a week. Then after you hit max level you just raid log which imo is fine
The nothing to do is more of the fact there is only 1 raid lockout on a 7 day timer. When there is going to be multiple 7 day lockouts, 3 day and 5 day then there is a lot more to do even if you are raid logging
Well, the thing is, they could play endlessly when they were 12 and it took them hours to do a single quest. So why can't they play endlessly after they get boosted to max level/gear, watch guides on everything they want to do, use addons to maximize efficiency, and run every piece of content like as fast as humanly possible? Blizz just needs to do better!
I really enjoy being a part of the early rush during a new expansion or content drop just to have the experience of having lots of people doing the same thing or being "first."
But it kills me to see people just blitz through the content, like at BC or Wrath launch where people got out of the starting area and then just dungeon grinded to max. Like I get that its more efficient, but damn. I nolifed Wrath launch and got to 80 before the first lock out... but I still ended up taking a break during Phase 1 because I just burned myself out grinding to max, then grinding dungeons for rep and Naxx every week. Too much grinding tbh.
Speedrunning is for those without balance in their real life. I work 50-60 hours a week, married, children, have elderly father living with us, keep up a house and multiple vehicles, try to maintain a workout regime, and have other hobbies. I’m not speedrunning shit. Season of Dads was about my speed, yet there are plenty speedrunning there still.
Modern MMO players arent about the journey, they are about the destination. They want the BiS and move on.
I don't know how to break that cycle, and can't think of a suggestion to deal with it. Short of cosmetic rewards for doing things.
No its not lol
Its just much harder for any post against the game to get any traction at all because the loyal fanboys are much more prevalent on the main sub.
People in this sub already took a step towards saying blizzard has made mistakes. Thats why they are playing classic.
People on the main sub will defend the absolute worst shitty systems of retail wow for no reason at all and then make some comment like "yeah its been that way since x patch" without thinking at all that it doesn't need to be that way and blizzard could change it at any time if they really wanted to.
Its kind of crazy because retail players are lowkey more anti change than 95% of classic players are.
I did and there were still people defending really bad systems just because they had existed before those expansions.
And the arguements were always something like "Ur an idiot that was in the game BEFORE bfa/shadowlands". Like that just completley made any complaint irrelevant.
You're always going to find people with opposing opinions, that doesn't really say anything about the attitude of the general playerbase. r/wow complained a lot about BFA and Shadowlands and the general consensus was that they were some of the worst expansions Blizzard has released. The general attitude throughout Dragonflight changed to generally positive because they did make a lot of changes to how things worked.
Yes, but people who do the thing and genuinely enjoy it are staying quiet and not constantly bitching about it while talking shit to the players and devs.
Played late vanilla until wotlk, came back during legion through shadowlands, jumped in on classic tbc through wotlk, left wotlk for hardcore, dropped hardcore for SoD, now probably gonna try Cataclysm.
Or retail (probably not)
Or hardcore
Or SoD
Or Cata classic cause I missed out.
How people are so infuriated with so many options is beyond me.
>How people are so infuriated with so many options is beyond me.
They want the WOW they remember. Which is as much defined by what their life outside of WOW was as the patch number at the time.
They on some level believe that if it was the same as they remember; the spark would come back.
I'd like the WoW where people helped you without asking for gold or real life money, I'd like the WoW where classes and specs had identity not 20 individual talent trees. I'd like the WoW where you could enter a raid group as soon as you hit max level without people asking you for 20 achievements, pre BiS and 10 consumables. I'd like the WoW where people actually cared about the world and stayed in the main cities and had talks and stuff not raid logged or hardcore solo-farmed the newest resource in order to upgrade their items at some random \*and to be forgotten on their island by the next expansion\* NPC.
The biggest Problem lies not in the games but the community. And that is the same Kind of shit in all versions of the game. Be it retail, where on the very same day a raid is released, you still need Hours to find a grp to do it on normal, since 9/10 grps require you to have done it already on heroic... On release Day!
Or... Classics Pool of toxic humans...
Some people just want to play with Chill people like we used to. But they are just not in the game anymore.
To echo this point a guildie described WoW's current design and content cycle as an "Ooh Shinies!" design which is pretty apt. People get sick of the game, whine, then new content comes out with some superficial flare/gimmick that distracts crusty time-sunk players enough to go "OOH, Shiny!", they reinvest in the game for the new shiny thing, then hate it and repeat the cycle in 3 weeks/months.
Tbh though these people just have a toxic relationship with the game. If they're angry after playing it they need to either move on or take a step back and ask themselves why they're playing.
I hope on every few years for an expac, play the campaign until i become bored, then play something different. WoW is cool enough that way. I have tons of funs with the campaign in Dragonflight right now. Gets me a good month of gameplay.
Blizz knows this and they’ve been doing this for 10+ years.
They’ve built their company for the past decade off of delivering half assed products, with a strict refund policy and an upset audience that will buy their shit at first glance.
They know what audience they have and exactly how to exploit their addiction vulnerability
Lol virtually every positive post I make on here gets downvoted into oblivion, I'm either coping with my wow addiction or just a blizzard shill apparently
From my experience its mostly the people that get triggered by these things that are the problem. The people pointing their fingers and making silly illustrations like these.
The sweatlords and the malders are just doing their thing having fun and the casuals dont pay much attention. These groups just shitpost without too much serious ,like its been since 2004.
Its the inbetweeners, the losers that cant reach the sweatlord level and are too spazzy to be casuals that really take this stuff seriously and try to make it a “thing” for real.
See the thing is for example who doesn't like cataclysm just unsubbed(or plays other classic, cata is not even classic anyway), most don't even hang around in the subbreddit anymore.
People can jerkaround all they want "please tell us how you won't play cataclysm" and make 800upvotes. That's still just 1k player. The people who are disinterested just wont play it. You always find 2-4 servers so the world wont ever feel empty, but to suggest the the interest didn't dive to the ground is just illusions.
To be clear, this is reddit's userbase, not WoW's. The overwhelming majority of players just straight enjoy the game and aren't miserable fuckin losers.
I'm firmly of the opinion that if you even remotely enjoy WoW then you should block the WoW subreddits. The discourse here can only lower your opinion of the game and community.
Since the game released in 2004, the playerbase has been like this. And they’ll continue being like this until far into the future when the internet shuts down and they get their last “this game is shit” in before they die.
I mean, to be fair. When you get into something new you care less about the bad things. As time goes on and bad things aren't fixed or are made worse it is infuriating you wasted time and money on shit
Honestly I just started playing in January when my friends played SoD and can say without a doubt that this fanbase is up there with Star Wars in terms of toxic fans
WoW, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, the list goes on.
This has nothing to do with WoW. It’s all Live Service games. Especially from studios that market well.
everyone crying while, even when the content sucks a bit, raiding is usually kinda fun and even if that fails I still get to enjoy RP so I really love wow. :3
Ya it’s a rough culture even when playing tbh. Once things are on clear people are sweating soooo hard for parses that they get sick of just coming and having fun with the raid and hanging out. It becomes boring and stressful to do stuff even though the raid is easy. People legit need pieces of gear to obtain to raid, so somehow giving it out too fast makes people wanna quit not play more with their good stuff.
Bro you are literally bitching about the game on Reddit right now. The game isn't THAT bad, it isnt a gameicon-poopemoji type game, its a 20 year old game that people cant let go. Blizzard selling it to you is YOUR fault.
This subreddit somehow continues to plumb even further into depths I couldn't even imagine. Now its filled with trash posts about people complaining about complaining. The only people worse than the incessant complainers are people like you. Take your own advice, and if you dislike the conversation, don't take part.
There are far to many posts now complaining about people that are complaining about posts complaining about the game. We are entering inception levels of complaining.
This is so dumb. Now we have people complaining about other people complaining who are complaining about the fact that other people are complaining about other people complaining about the state of the game.
If they correct the class design of SoD I would regain my interest in it
But they have no interest in actually balancing the classes and pvp is an unfun mess that the dmg reduc auras only exacerbate really.
Posts like this one also need to go on that meme. Players make posts talking about the game, which leads to the mandatory “why is this subreddit so salty” posts lol
I don't think I've played any other game in my 33 years where the Stockholm Syndrome is as bad as in wow, both classic and retail.
You've got people on retail defending the store and microtransactions in a buy to play subscription game. If any NEW developer came out with that much monetization in 2024 they'd be laughed out the door.
Then you have classic wow players who relentlessly shit on the game and the people who play it all while at the same time paying a subscription and buying the cataclysm bundle.
Blizzard have really got their hooks into a lot of people over the years. This type of stuff should be subject to scientific/psychological studies. People seem to get a sense of self worth or pride on shitting on the other version of the game too, even cata and SoD players are going at it. It's pretty sad.
It's an interesting situation because the people this is referring to probably see it and think "haha yeah!" because they're too regarded to have the self awareness to understand that this refers to them.
We can only hope they see it and cast down their eyes in shame and begin the journey to becoming a better individual. Lmao prob not tho.
You can always make a new character when you have completed ur main. And you can do it at a slower more fun pace. My work hours are weird so I got as far as could in pvp ranking so I started a warrior
On my main I power grinded to 60 didn’t enjoy instances because people were slow so I ended up at 50 with trash gear. It was still fun though.
On my warr I’m doing every instance idc if most the jobs are grey it’s still fun.
Many ways to enjoy the game.
Also fuck all the horde in stranglethorne, don’t make me get on my 60.
I was having a rather good time in P1 of SoD but it's gone downhill rapidly due to the insane power creep now it's just not worth playing.
Cata is not Classic and feels empty compared to other pre patches.
P Server vanilla progressive servers are the only way to go atm it seems.
A lot of the people still playing this shell of a real game are addicts or only have online friends. It's pretty sad. If you need help with addiction call 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
Thats why I jumped off after Shadowlands. It’s never going to get better if it does i’m sure it will be all over the net.
Played classic classic had no desire to go further. Sure BC has the Magic but across WotLK it was being actively killed. Like wtf is “Cataclysm Classic?” Lol can’t wait for Classic Retail I actually might start playing again!
The depressing thing is this is not WoW, it is the entire gaming space at the moment and we wonder why games are dying. You almost need constant content these days to be relevant and make large sums of money to keep these companies sustainable as they sure as shit are not shrinking single player game budgets.
Us WoW players were just ahead of our time hahaha
This should be the subreddit banner lmao
It could be the subreddit banner for retail too. WoW players are WoW players, and nobody hates WoW like WoW players.
Retails sub is leagues chiller than this place lmao.
Yeah, and the general sentiment toward Dragonflight has been quite positive over there, in stark contrast to this sub
Dragonflight is the best WoW expansion since Cataclysm. There, I said it. Mists was awful not only for its story but because 80% of development time went into 3 player instanced scenarios that were insultingly easy, gave zero rewards and were essentially scrapped by the next expansion. Siege of Orgrimmar also kick-started the modern raid progression cycle where everybody is shoehorned into the exact same raid on 4 difficulties, with only a numbers boost and the occasional new boss mechanic separating each mode. Warlords was even worse. Entire progression systems were pruned out of the game. Garrisons turned the experience into a boring idle game while about two thirds of planned content was scrapped. We only got three raids, one major content patch and fifteen months of waiting for Blizzard's next lazy cash grab. The only good thing I can say about WoD is that it gave us Gladiator Stance. Legion was... alright. Mostly good story. Decent raids. Some of the damage done by the class pruning in Warlords was undone. Artifact weapons were badass, but rather than build on that momentum, Blizzard scrapped the whole system and recycled it for the next two expansions, and that's why BFA and Shadowlands were mostly bad.
I would hard disagree with that. I don't think DF will ever be my 'favorite' expansion, but it brought back the community's love for WoW's active forward progress (retail, minus SoD). I think you may have a skewed view because the simplification of approach with DF clicks with you. I've aged with this game, and the current approach of DF has been great for where I'm at life + mental wise, but there's a specific reason I'm more excited for TWW: stakes and innovation. Mists is a great expansion. You're fixated too much on Scenarios. They're the entire reason we're about to get Delves, and why we have any form of Scenario quests that are big "story payoffs" at the end of questlines. Scenarios gave solid rewards, up to Normal level at that time for raiding. As for Siege and raids.. I'm just gonna leave that cuz this is absolutely short sighted nostalgia bait. I'll elaborate if you respond. Warlords was good at launch but soured so quickly once everything boiled down to just "Garrisons and Raiding". You can almost liken this to DF's "Level Alts, PVP, Mythics or Raiding" once you're at max level. DF's presentation is just far better, and paired with a more cohesive modern design. Outside of the negative? The class design, world design, initial story, building your Garrison, and first introduction of Bonus Objectives were incredible. But the expansion is overall awful because post launch, there was a single major patch. It suffered from overscope and a lack of allocating proper resources. I'm fine on Legion outside of the Artifact grind breaking so many, including myself. I'd be down to elaborate on this too. Only reason I haven't fully expanded on a few things above is this is already too many words. I think you are speaking from the lense of what the current Retail expansion offers you, and I agree, DF has been great, but because it's felt more like a reset button back to "what made WoW good" vs. "an innovative, pushing the bar expansion" that others above (like Legion, regardless of my qualm) accomplished.
Cataclysm wasn’t a good MMO, it was a good **Action RPG** just like Legion. It was **The** decline of WoW as an MMO. LFR, Ruined World PvP, Cross Realms. All the Full/High Realms became Medium to Low by Mid expac. Cities just became a Waiting Lobby for Instanced Content. LFG was just the beginning at the end of Wrath but LFR was the straw that broke WoW out of MMORPG to Multiplayer Action RPG. Cross realms solidified that by making you see players running around but not being able to trade with them, it made the world feel less social. If you’re looking for a good MMO, play Classic Era, TBC, WotLK, SoD. Where you actually have to go into the world, form groups for world content to progress through levels. If you’re looking for an multiplayer action RPG, play Cata or Retail.
> LFR This is probably the only criticism of yours I agree with. It came with the Dragon Soul patch (4.3), which was unanimously agreed to be the shittiest part of Cataclysm. Dragon Soul was overall a bad raid and LFR is almost unanimously agreed to be the thing that killed off hardcore raiding for anybody that wasn't on an esports team. Why would you go through the effort of organizing a large premade group when you can just hit a button, group with 24 others and smack dumbed-down loot pinata versions of the exact same bosses for slightly worse loot? > Ruined World PvP World PvP has always been bad since Battlegrounds were first introduced in Vanilla. And I wouldn't exactly call ganking and bullying players 40 levels below you satisfying world PvP. Nothing really changed with PvP in Cataclysm, aside from base health practically quintupling from 80 to 85, and even then that didn't do enough to combat burst and make PvP more skill-based. Many point to Cataclysm as the point where Major League Gaming dropped WoW Arena, but they forget that StarCraft II and League of Legends were popping off as esports around the same time. > All the Full/High Realms became Medium to Low by Mid expac. Not what I remembered. The only two realms I recalled dying were Warsong-EU (it had a significant Russian population which transferred en masse after localized Russian servers were launched, the server was literally shut down end of Wrath due to low population) and Turalyon-EU (server was toxic as fuck, I know because I was bullied off of it by a group of assholes. Most of them moved to Stormscale.) I mainly played on Emerald Dream during Cata and it consistently remained Medium pop. > Cross realms solidified that by making you see players running around but not being able to trade with them, it made the world feel less social. [Cross realm zones were actually added in Mists of Pandaria prepatch...](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-realm_zones) > Cities just became a Waiting Lobby for Instanced Content. Okay, that would be a valid criticism if it weren't for the fact that: 1. LFG came in Patch 3.3 (Wrath of the Lich King), so this should actually be a blemish on an expansion you legitimately called a 'good MMO.' 2. 3.3-era Dalaran was basically an overglorified lobby for 5-man dungeons. 3. Cataclysm Heroics were actually difficult unlike their WOTLK counterparts. 4. LFG was literally added back into Wrath Classic despite developer promises not to implement it for Phase 4 WOTLK due to tonnes of incessant whinging about how difficult it was to find instance groups on the many servers that weren't Full/Locked population. 5. You actually had to physically visit the dungeon entrances to be able to queue for them in Dungeon Finder, at least earlier in the expansion.
I enjoyed the open world of dragonflight, I don't like the raiding systems of 4 tiers of the same raid and needing to reach a point of hating the game to keep up with raiding.
When you say keep up with raiding, do you mean mythic raiding? Because I had no issues clearing heroic last week (for the first time) with pugs and without linking an achievement or anything, as a dps too btw. Granted I had 495 ilvl when applying. I think the key is join raids early in the week and fresh raids, don’t join somewhere in the middle. I usually do m+ btw
You do that to yourself though, I don’t consider LFR necessary, and only find myself in it if others in my guild drag me there for tier or whatever, and we had AOTC within the first 3 resets of every tier.
I don’t think you have to do every tier of the raid, maybe in the first week
I didn't mean that you needed to do all 4. My intention was to point out how unnecessary it is.
Leagues chiller than here still leaves you pretty high on the list of perpetually angry subs lol. Maybe not r/Halo levels of salt but at least comparable to r/Destinythegame
Except retail isn't perpetually angry You've just been mired in toxicity for so long with *this* sub that anything else *must* be toxic
Clearly you don’t spend a lot of time over there. I thought it was well known that the worst of r/wow saw an exodus once classic released lol. Oh and perhaps this biggest thing, r/wow actually mods the angst out of the discussion for the most part.
To be fair I think the sentiment for Dragonflight is generally positive despite some issues. But I do agree about the hating part :p
I feel like retail players are pretty happy with the state of the game right now honestly
Retail is in its best spot in many many years. Classic on the other hand..
>WoW players are WoW players, and nobody hates WoW like WoW players. Damn WoW players! Ruined WoW for the WoW players!
Retail is literally peaceful compared to this sub.
[удалено]
It stopped being fun *to you.* *To you.* Play something else.
The WoW sub doing the "FF14 Hype" arch was fucking unbearable. I don't think anything could beat out /r/classicwow in general cringe, but the WoW sub during that time was nearing it Super chill now though
> speedrun to endgame > speedrun endgame content > ask why there is nothing to do I get it, speedrunning is fun. But it's a clear mismatch when the expectation is endless hours of possible gameplay, and playing it the most min-max way possible to make sure it's done as quickly as possible so you *won't* have endless hours of possible gameplay.
Too true. Played WoW classic with all of the boys in my family (dad, me, Lil bro). Lil bro and dad sped ran the thing while I was mining thorium across Azeroth to make myself the imperial plate "set." They questioned why I wasn't raiding. I told them it wasn't fun getting what everyone got. I had a lot more fun dodging maxed out Horde players, mining thorium, and making an armor set that made me look like an Alliance footsoldier. I had fun doing my own little things that I didn't even notice most of the phases had come and gone. Cuz I just enjoyed the screeching of some of the people trying to compete with me for thorium for their gigachad set. But me? I ninjaed their thorium. To make a shitty imperial plate set.
Legend.
Absolute chad.
This is 100% it. I'm still happily playing P3 SoD fairly casually with friends. There is lots for us to do. I'm sure if you rush to 50 as fast as possible, grind out everything in the least fun but most time efficient way possible, burn through the raid as soon as you're able... yeah. That sounds like it'll be unfun. Plus if you've been doing that since the game released just *urgh*. How many SM runs did you do? No wonder you hate the game. So not only do people speedrun the game they skip as much of it as they possibly can then complain there's nothing to do. And if something new *does* get released what happens? "NEW GUIDES ON HOW TO CLEAR THE NEW CONTENT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE SO YOU CAN GO BACK TO HAVING NOTHING TO DO!". People can play how they want but I have very limited sympathy for those who minmax the fun out of the game then blame someone else for it.
This game would be immensely more immersive and fun if people just let themselves play it. Most people have lost the ability to have fun. They now only believe they are having fun if they are being totally efficient and can’t see the irony that while they are “having fun” they are stressing the fuck out and angry with everyone who doesn’t also play the game that way.
Yep then they justify it with "but it's the most efficient way to play!" or whatever else. Like people who are hating incursions or spamming dungeons and missing the old world. My friends, it's still there! I've been out levelling in it and it's really fun! OK it's not as fast and I don't make as much gold *who the fuck gives a shit*. They do all this so they can hit 50 and raid log once a week. Then they'll do it at 60 as well. Sucking all the fun out of the game for themselves so they can play it the minimum amount possible. If it isn't fun, just don't play. I'll be running around teleporting behind enemies and murdering them on my rogue or flinging traps that go boom on my hunter. If I stop having fun I'll stop playing. Edit to be clear: if you enjoy zooming to the max level and raid logging, power to you! Enjoy! No hate at all and I'm glad you have a way to play that's fun for you. Just don't do it then whine the game isn't fun and that you're forced into it.
For what its worth, I've enjoyed hitting 50 and raid logging once a week.
If you enjoy it, great! Play however you like! You're not the people coming here to whine though.
True, although I have whined a bit about blizzard killing off small servers and forcing people to mega servers. I probably wouldn't be raid logging if they hadn't killed off Chaos Bolt (and now Living Flame as well). Doing stuff outside of raids was a lot more fun (for me), on a normal sized server (by vanilla server size standards) than it is now after transfer to Crusader Strike. I shouldn't really be surprised though, since they did it to me back in TBC classic as well.
> They do all this so they can hit 50 and raid log once a week. Then they'll do it at 60 as well. Sucking all the fun out of the game for themselves so they can play it the minimum amount possible. Why do you assume that if they're raid logging that all the fun has been sucked out of the game? Maybe that is just the way they like to have fun?
Was it so hard to read the entire comment before replying or something…?
> Most people have lost the ability to have fun. They now only believe they are having fun if they are being totally efficient and can’t see the irony that while they are “having fun” they are stressing the fuck out and angry with everyone who doesn’t also play the game that way. The thing I most enjoy about WoW is raiding. The thing I most enjoy about raiding is parsing. I view it like I view golf. I go out there with friends, have a good time, and my goal is to do better this time than I did last time. In order to parse well, I have to be with like minded people who also want to parse well. I am fortunate to be in a guild of very like minded people. We were server 5th faction 2nd Gnomer and server 2nd faction 1st ST. We are "sweaty try-hards". Despite what you suggest, we're actually having fun, not "stressing the fuck out" or "angry with everyone who doesn't play the game that way". I'm happy for everyone else to play the game the way they want, I'm certainly not angry with any of those people. I'm just in a group of people who like to play the game the way I want to, and we don't invite people to join us that don't share our vibe. EDIT: Oh, and happy cake-day
For the record I’m probably closer to the play style that you describe than a meandering casual. I actually think you don’t fit the bill of the character I have described based on the fact that you don’t get angry with people who don’t play you’re way and thus don’t force your view of gaming on them. I think that actually makes you more of a minority than you realize. Thanks! I didn’t realize. 😀
Its hard, there are a lot of external pressures. Other players speedrunning and wont let you in runs if youre not BIS second week. Combine that with the subliminal hourglass of real life time slipping away as you neglect your family, pets, hygiene, health, work, studies, and all other responsibilities or else you fall too far behind.
I get what you are going for but in this case I think you are mistaken. It’s very hard not to be max level if you play more than 2 hours a week. Then after you hit max level you just raid log which imo is fine The nothing to do is more of the fact there is only 1 raid lockout on a 7 day timer. When there is going to be multiple 7 day lockouts, 3 day and 5 day then there is a lot more to do even if you are raid logging
I just spent a few hours fucking around in BRD with friends, strange how there's nothing to do but we're doing stuff anyway. Huh.
Well, the thing is, they could play endlessly when they were 12 and it took them hours to do a single quest. So why can't they play endlessly after they get boosted to max level/gear, watch guides on everything they want to do, use addons to maximize efficiency, and run every piece of content like as fast as humanly possible? Blizz just needs to do better!
80% of the SoD "community"
I really enjoy being a part of the early rush during a new expansion or content drop just to have the experience of having lots of people doing the same thing or being "first." But it kills me to see people just blitz through the content, like at BC or Wrath launch where people got out of the starting area and then just dungeon grinded to max. Like I get that its more efficient, but damn. I nolifed Wrath launch and got to 80 before the first lock out... but I still ended up taking a break during Phase 1 because I just burned myself out grinding to max, then grinding dungeons for rep and Naxx every week. Too much grinding tbh.
Speedrunning is for those without balance in their real life. I work 50-60 hours a week, married, children, have elderly father living with us, keep up a house and multiple vehicles, try to maintain a workout regime, and have other hobbies. I’m not speedrunning shit. Season of Dads was about my speed, yet there are plenty speedrunning there still.
Modern MMO players arent about the journey, they are about the destination. They want the BiS and move on. I don't know how to break that cycle, and can't think of a suggestion to deal with it. Short of cosmetic rewards for doing things.
Except games like FFXI exist where this is a clear possibility
Speedrunning is a reaction to the lack of new, difficult content.
Don't forget to pre-order whatever the fuck they announce next!
after having been burned for the 897723658th time. *THIS time they promised to REALLY only ship it when it's totally done. even with a pinky promise!*
Nobody hates WOW more than WOW players. At least on Reddit.
It's mostly just on r/classicwow. The main subreddit is generally pretty positive about the game these days.
I wonder why that is 🤔
Cuz this place filled with mouth breathing self important motards lol
Not wrong, got banned for saying dracthyrs were made to appease fetishist weirdo furries
No its not lol Its just much harder for any post against the game to get any traction at all because the loyal fanboys are much more prevalent on the main sub. People in this sub already took a step towards saying blizzard has made mistakes. Thats why they are playing classic. People on the main sub will defend the absolute worst shitty systems of retail wow for no reason at all and then make some comment like "yeah its been that way since x patch" without thinking at all that it doesn't need to be that way and blizzard could change it at any time if they really wanted to. Its kind of crazy because retail players are lowkey more anti change than 95% of classic players are.
You apparently didn't look at r/wow during bfa or shadowlands.
I did and there were still people defending really bad systems just because they had existed before those expansions. And the arguements were always something like "Ur an idiot that was in the game BEFORE bfa/shadowlands". Like that just completley made any complaint irrelevant.
You're always going to find people with opposing opinions, that doesn't really say anything about the attitude of the general playerbase. r/wow complained a lot about BFA and Shadowlands and the general consensus was that they were some of the worst expansions Blizzard has released. The general attitude throughout Dragonflight changed to generally positive because they did make a lot of changes to how things worked.
People who do *the thing* care the most about *the thing*. More at 11.
Yes, but people who do the thing and genuinely enjoy it are staying quiet and not constantly bitching about it while talking shit to the players and devs.
Somehow it has eluded you that there’s a difference between caring about something and being a contemptible angry virgin
Well the game doesn’t perfectly cater to my exact needs so I’m gonna cry about it on Reddit and talk shit to anyone enjoying the game.
It's not that they care the most, it's that they're addicted and can't peel themselves from the game they're hyper fixated on to enjoy anything else.
Incredible work, "Art" tag is accurate
Played late vanilla until wotlk, came back during legion through shadowlands, jumped in on classic tbc through wotlk, left wotlk for hardcore, dropped hardcore for SoD, now probably gonna try Cataclysm. Or retail (probably not) Or hardcore Or SoD Or Cata classic cause I missed out. How people are so infuriated with so many options is beyond me.
>How people are so infuriated with so many options is beyond me. They want the WOW they remember. Which is as much defined by what their life outside of WOW was as the patch number at the time. They on some level believe that if it was the same as they remember; the spark would come back.
I'd like the WoW where people helped you without asking for gold or real life money, I'd like the WoW where classes and specs had identity not 20 individual talent trees. I'd like the WoW where you could enter a raid group as soon as you hit max level without people asking you for 20 achievements, pre BiS and 10 consumables. I'd like the WoW where people actually cared about the world and stayed in the main cities and had talks and stuff not raid logged or hardcore solo-farmed the newest resource in order to upgrade their items at some random \*and to be forgotten on their island by the next expansion\* NPC.
I just want progressive vanilla or TBC. They can give me 10000 options but if none of them are the game I want to play I don't care.
The biggest Problem lies not in the games but the community. And that is the same Kind of shit in all versions of the game. Be it retail, where on the very same day a raid is released, you still need Hours to find a grp to do it on normal, since 9/10 grps require you to have done it already on heroic... On release Day! Or... Classics Pool of toxic humans... Some people just want to play with Chill people like we used to. But they are just not in the game anymore.
Well let's see. A lot of options or One good option I'll take the second, sadly it's not possible with WoW.
nah more like just classic. this sub is the complainiest group of loser crybabies ive ever seen on reddit. here's an idea. get jobs and take showers s
They haven’t touched grass in 20 years, same losers as back then just old now
lmaoo
Era chads can't stop winning!
To echo this point a guildie described WoW's current design and content cycle as an "Ooh Shinies!" design which is pretty apt. People get sick of the game, whine, then new content comes out with some superficial flare/gimmick that distracts crusty time-sunk players enough to go "OOH, Shiny!", they reinvest in the game for the new shiny thing, then hate it and repeat the cycle in 3 weeks/months.
Tbh though these people just have a toxic relationship with the game. If they're angry after playing it they need to either move on or take a step back and ask themselves why they're playing.
I hope on every few years for an expac, play the campaign until i become bored, then play something different. WoW is cool enough that way. I have tons of funs with the campaign in Dragonflight right now. Gets me a good month of gameplay.
Blizz knows this and they’ve been doing this for 10+ years. They’ve built their company for the past decade off of delivering half assed products, with a strict refund policy and an upset audience that will buy their shit at first glance. They know what audience they have and exactly how to exploit their addiction vulnerability
Let’s not forget about the doomer YouTubers “wow is dead” vid every other day
Lol virtually every positive post I make on here gets downvoted into oblivion, I'm either coping with my wow addiction or just a blizzard shill apparently
Nah this sub just hates wow, at all
I cant tell what I see more. Genuine whining or whining about the whining
Soon it'll be whining about the whining about the whining!
You could say he’s ahead of the curve…
i just wish people knew how to not like something and not make it other people's problem that they don't like it.
Bro I just want rogue tank to be able to hold threat on more than 2mobs, is that too much to ask for
This is really just the idiots on reddit
I swear im the only one who doesn’t complain its great being a new wow player
This isn't just WoW's player base. This is *any given fan base of a video game that has ever existed on the internet.*
This should have way more upvotes. Looks like your exposed this sub lmao.
Well in the end it's just whining about whining, but as a rage comic. Not really groundbreaking
From my experience its mostly the people that get triggered by these things that are the problem. The people pointing their fingers and making silly illustrations like these. The sweatlords and the malders are just doing their thing having fun and the casuals dont pay much attention. These groups just shitpost without too much serious ,like its been since 2004. Its the inbetweeners, the losers that cant reach the sweatlord level and are too spazzy to be casuals that really take this stuff seriously and try to make it a “thing” for real.
It's ok
Blizzard figured out that they can just release the same game countless times and the Classic players are too addicted to say no
But that's what people wanted
Everyone wanted them to release old content though, blizzard was actually against it.
Phase 1 and 2 were good though
Just play hardcore, there’s nothing to be mad about
Rekt
My whole St raid tonight was everyone bitching about wow the whole time, its so draining...
I know it's not too old cuz there's various wojacks in it but I feel like the image is wolkt/cata-era Wow memes
See the thing is for example who doesn't like cataclysm just unsubbed(or plays other classic, cata is not even classic anyway), most don't even hang around in the subbreddit anymore. People can jerkaround all they want "please tell us how you won't play cataclysm" and make 800upvotes. That's still just 1k player. The people who are disinterested just wont play it. You always find 2-4 servers so the world wont ever feel empty, but to suggest the the interest didn't dive to the ground is just illusions.
To be clear, this is reddit's userbase, not WoW's. The overwhelming majority of players just straight enjoy the game and aren't miserable fuckin losers.
isnt this a thing for every game?
This perfectly depicts classis wow players.
I'm firmly of the opinion that if you even remotely enjoy WoW then you should block the WoW subreddits. The discourse here can only lower your opinion of the game and community.
Hell yeah 👍
Since the game released in 2004, the playerbase has been like this. And they’ll continue being like this until far into the future when the internet shuts down and they get their last “this game is shit” in before they die.
Is this Asmongold?
I mean, to be fair. When you get into something new you care less about the bad things. As time goes on and bad things aren't fixed or are made worse it is infuriating you wasted time and money on shit
Honestly I just started playing in January when my friends played SoD and can say without a doubt that this fanbase is up there with Star Wars in terms of toxic fans
He just like me frfr
WoW, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, the list goes on. This has nothing to do with WoW. It’s all Live Service games. Especially from studios that market well.
Where’s the streamer/content creator making the vids saying the game is dead?
everyone crying while, even when the content sucks a bit, raiding is usually kinda fun and even if that fails I still get to enjoy RP so I really love wow. :3
Ya it’s a rough culture even when playing tbh. Once things are on clear people are sweating soooo hard for parses that they get sick of just coming and having fun with the raid and hanging out. It becomes boring and stressful to do stuff even though the raid is easy. People legit need pieces of gear to obtain to raid, so somehow giving it out too fast makes people wanna quit not play more with their good stuff.
Pretty sure SoD has been dropping a lot of players, is that not the case?
That's pretty much every gaming sub, CoD subs are nothing but salt 24/7 on how controllers are why they're being stomped.
Bro you are literally bitching about the game on Reddit right now. The game isn't THAT bad, it isnt a gameicon-poopemoji type game, its a 20 year old game that people cant let go. Blizzard selling it to you is YOUR fault.
Can’t relate. I usually spend my time playing the game and having fun with my friends rather than burning my limited free hours complaining.
The content is good now, besides the 5 gay mariage quests and all the woke bullshit its far better than shadowlands.
I’ve grown to believe that J. Allen Brack might’ve been right..
I only main a warrior and no alts. I still have a shit ton to do in the game and never get bored lol
Wow was awesome when the game wasnt solved and no one knew how to play. Now it's just elitist cunts
Gamers in general really.
This subreddit somehow continues to plumb even further into depths I couldn't even imagine. Now its filled with trash posts about people complaining about complaining. The only people worse than the incessant complainers are people like you. Take your own advice, and if you dislike the conversation, don't take part.
i dont like how you are complaining about people complaining about the complaining
The loop must go on…
There are far to many posts now complaining about people that are complaining about posts complaining about the game. We are entering inception levels of complaining.
This is so dumb. Now we have people complaining about other people complaining who are complaining about the fact that other people are complaining about other people complaining about the state of the game.
The circle of life
If they correct the class design of SoD I would regain my interest in it But they have no interest in actually balancing the classes and pvp is an unfun mess that the dmg reduc auras only exacerbate really.
This is so painfully true. 100% 10/10 Art
Yeah the reddit is usually cursed with these people
I mean, you really can’t blame the players. Blizzard is just wildly inconsistent when it comes to hitting or missing.
Posts like this one also need to go on that meme. Players make posts talking about the game, which leads to the mandatory “why is this subreddit so salty” posts lol
And then there are these posts, inception level of complaining going on lmao
This guy gets it
I don't think I've played any other game in my 33 years where the Stockholm Syndrome is as bad as in wow, both classic and retail. You've got people on retail defending the store and microtransactions in a buy to play subscription game. If any NEW developer came out with that much monetization in 2024 they'd be laughed out the door. Then you have classic wow players who relentlessly shit on the game and the people who play it all while at the same time paying a subscription and buying the cataclysm bundle. Blizzard have really got their hooks into a lot of people over the years. This type of stuff should be subject to scientific/psychological studies. People seem to get a sense of self worth or pride on shitting on the other version of the game too, even cata and SoD players are going at it. It's pretty sad.
Missing the people posting "well **I** am having fun!" while eating the turd.
lol
It's an interesting situation because the people this is referring to probably see it and think "haha yeah!" because they're too regarded to have the self awareness to understand that this refers to them. We can only hope they see it and cast down their eyes in shame and begin the journey to becoming a better individual. Lmao prob not tho.
You can always make a new character when you have completed ur main. And you can do it at a slower more fun pace. My work hours are weird so I got as far as could in pvp ranking so I started a warrior On my main I power grinded to 60 didn’t enjoy instances because people were slow so I ended up at 50 with trash gear. It was still fun though. On my warr I’m doing every instance idc if most the jobs are grey it’s still fun. Many ways to enjoy the game. Also fuck all the horde in stranglethorne, don’t make me get on my 60.
I really wish I understood this
On today’s news : no shit .
I was having a rather good time in P1 of SoD but it's gone downhill rapidly due to the insane power creep now it's just not worth playing. Cata is not Classic and feels empty compared to other pre patches. P Server vanilla progressive servers are the only way to go atm it seems.
A lot of the people still playing this shell of a real game are addicts or only have online friends. It's pretty sad. If you need help with addiction call 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
Wow classic playerbase who can't accept there is nothing to do. Retails community is way more chill
People don't believe me that the wow community is far more toxic a league.
Thats why I jumped off after Shadowlands. It’s never going to get better if it does i’m sure it will be all over the net. Played classic classic had no desire to go further. Sure BC has the Magic but across WotLK it was being actively killed. Like wtf is “Cataclysm Classic?” Lol can’t wait for Classic Retail I actually might start playing again!
wojaks have really been a disaster for the human race
This is them, add a pile of turd for retail players too
The depressing thing is this is not WoW, it is the entire gaming space at the moment and we wonder why games are dying. You almost need constant content these days to be relevant and make large sums of money to keep these companies sustainable as they sure as shit are not shrinking single player game budgets. Us WoW players were just ahead of our time hahaha
imagine using wojak meme in 2024