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Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]


Lonami.2987

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@flog.3485 said:Well I am pretty sure they wanted to time the release of raids/fractal with each living story update from now on. It was actually the reason why they merged both team.

Yeah, Ill believe it when i see it.I still remember 6 wings per year.

Btw. is there a way to change what i voted for?

Yes, sadly there is no way to be sure it is in fact gonna happen. But there is a higher chance it is gonna happen if the teams are not seperate like before.Nah, having the teams not separated just makes it easier to use the formerly "raid devs" for other stuff instead of raids. It is also a clear sign that raids are no longer important enough to have their own dedicated team. It's probably good for fractals, though. We do see more of fractal stuff lately.

I understand your position but really I will just never be able to agree with you.

Honestly it is just not raids that had problems: it is the basic concept that they always had issues, since the beginning, to develop instanced group content (let’s remember the dungeon team and the lack of instanced content in open world ever since after core game content).

I don’t think it is a lack of importance, but rather a lack of resources; obviously they identified that, spreading their resources too thin between two teams working on a really slow pace to deliver content every 10 months, is not the best way to support the release of instanced group content.

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@flog.3485 said:

@flog.3485 said:Well I am pretty sure they wanted to time the release of raids/fractal with each living story update from now on. It was actually the reason why they merged both team.

Yeah, Ill believe it when i see it.I still remember 6 wings per year.

Btw. is there a way to change what i voted for?

Yes, sadly there is no way to be sure it is in fact gonna happen. But there is a higher chance it is gonna happen if the teams are not seperate like before.Nah, having the teams not separated just makes it easier to use the formerly "raid devs" for other stuff instead of raids. It is also a clear sign that raids are no longer important enough to have their own dedicated team. It's probably good for fractals, though. We do see more of fractal stuff lately.

I understand your position but really I will just never be able to agree with you.

Honestly it is just not raids that had problems: it is the basic concept that they always had issues, since the beginning, to develop instanced group content (let’s remember the dungeon team and the lack of instanced content in open world ever since after core game content).

I don’t think it is a lack of importance, but rather a lack of resources; obviously they identified that, spreading their resources too thin between two teams working on a really slow pace to deliver content every 10 months, is not the best way to support the release of instanced group content.

Its not only instanced content. Right now anet doesnt support a single game mode properly. Not even open world.One new map every 3 or 4 months isnt enough to cut it. After 1 or 2 weeks you are done with the achievements and will probably never go back to the new map again. Why would you? After you have done youre achievements theres nothing to do for you anyway.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@flog.3485 said:Well I am pretty sure they wanted to time the release of raids/fractal with each living story update from now on. It was actually the reason why they merged both team.

Yeah, Ill believe it when i see it.I still remember 6 wings per year.

Btw. is there a way to change what i voted for?

Yes, sadly there is no way to be sure it is in fact gonna happen. But there is a higher chance it is gonna happen if the teams are not seperate like before.Nah, having the teams not separated just makes it easier to use the formerly "raid devs" for other stuff instead of raids. It is also a clear sign that raids are no longer important enough to have their own dedicated team. It's probably good for fractals, though. We do see more of fractal stuff lately.

I understand your position but really I will just never be able to agree with you.

Honestly it is just not raids that had problems: it is the basic concept that they always had issues, since the beginning, to develop instanced group content (let’s remember the dungeon team and the lack of instanced content in open world ever since after core game content).

I don’t think it is a lack of importance, but rather a lack of resources; obviously they identified that, spreading their resources too thin between two teams working on a really slow pace to deliver content every 10 months, is not the best way to support the release of instanced group content.

Its not only instanced content. Right now anet doesnt support a single game mode properly. Not even open world.One new map every 3 or 4 months isnt enough to cut it. After 1 or 2 weeks you are done with the achievements and will probably never go back to the new map again. Why would you? After you have done youre achievements theres nothing to do for you anyway.

No offense, but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

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@flog.3485 said:No offense,

No offense taken, dont worry.

but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a >map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

Idk. I dont play that much anymore. Most of the time i only log in for raids with my static and even im done with the new map. I´ve probably spend 10 hours on the new map including the story. Im pretty sure that there are people not done with the achievements yet, but i assume that the majority of the people actually playing the content, is.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@flog.3485 said:No offense,

No offense taken, dont worry.

but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a >map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

Idk. I dont play that much anymore. Most of the time i only log in for raids with my static and even im done with the new map. I´ve probably spend 10 hours on the new map including the story. Im pretty sure that there are people not done with the achievements yet, but i assume that the majority of the people actually playing the content, is.

Yes, a fair point you bring up. I mean you could farm the resources of the maps efficiently with lots of alts but then again you already have quite a hardcore mentality behind it no matter how casual the content might be. And I don’t think the general casual player is into that if so much items in the game are account based anyway.

But anyway I digress. Let’s get back at topic.The best way to deliver content for Anet imo, would be to alternate raid/fractal for each major release to avoid burn out or make the player base freel like there is only quick content to get through living world.Given the thin resources allowed to fractal/raids, getting easy mode raids outside of the already implemented challenge motes is a bad idea.

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@flog.3485 said:

@flog.3485 said:No offense,

No offense taken, dont worry.

but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a >map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

Idk. I dont play that much anymore. Most of the time i only log in for raids with my static and even im done with the new map. I´ve probably spend 10 hours on the new map including the story. Im pretty sure that there are people not done with the achievements yet, but i assume that the majority of the people actually playing the content, is.

Yes, a fair point you bring up. I mean you could farm the resources of the maps efficiently with lots of alts but then again you already have quite a hardcore mentality behind it no matter how casual the content might be. And I don’t think the general casual player is into that if so much items in the game are account based anyway.

But anyway I digress. Let’s get back at topic.The best way to deliver content for Anet imo, would be to alternate raid/fractal for each major release to avoid burn out or make the player base freel like there is only quick content to get through living world.Given the thin resources allowed to fractal/raids, getting easy mode raids outside of the already implemented challenge motes is a bad idea.

It’s possible that they go the same route with LWS3 and attached a Legendary amulet or ring to it.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@flog.3485 said:Well I am pretty sure they wanted to time the release of raids/fractal with each living story update from now on. It was actually the reason why they merged both team.

Yeah, Ill believe it when i see it.I still remember 6 wings per year.

Btw. is there a way to change what i voted for?

Yes, sadly there is no way to be sure it is in fact gonna happen. But there is a higher chance it is gonna happen if the teams are not seperate like before.Nah, having the teams not separated just makes it easier to use the formerly "raid devs" for other stuff instead of raids. It is also a clear sign that raids are no longer important enough to have their own dedicated team. It's probably good for fractals, though. We do see more of fractal stuff lately.

I understand your position but really I will just never be able to agree with you.

Honestly it is just not raids that had problems: it is the basic concept that they always had issues, since the beginning, to develop instanced group content (let’s remember the dungeon team and the lack of instanced content in open world ever since after core game content).

I don’t think it is a lack of importance, but rather a lack of resources; obviously they identified that, spreading their resources too thin between two teams working on a really slow pace to deliver content every 10 months, is not the best way to support the release of instanced group content.

Its not only instanced content. Right now anet doesnt support a single game mode properly. Not even open world.One new map every 3 or 4 months isnt enough to cut it. After 1 or 2 weeks you are done with the achievements and will probably never go back to the new map again. Why would you? After you have done youre achievements theres nothing to do for you anyway.

I just think people get too spoiled and too impatient with the current design and don’t realize how much of a gift Living World actually is. Designing a map and a game takes time. If you want a huge influx of maps at one time, you will need to wait for an expansion. Even other MMOs aren’t pumping out new maps every month either.

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@Tyson.5160 said:

I just think people get too spoiled and too impatient with the current design and don’t realize how much of a gift Living World actually is. Designing a map and a game takes time. If you want a huge influx of maps at one time, you will need to wait for an expansion. Even other MMOs aren’t pumping out new maps every month either.

It takes a lot of time, but it's a wasted time since nobody bothers going back to older maps after new ones come. So far the only populated maps for the duration of 3+ months are bloodstone fen (because it was new experience and it had 2 map wide metas as well as decent farm), ember bay (looked cool, had big events, jumping puzzle, and again new experience) and istan (obviously because of loot). Then we have BfF and LD which are pretty much afk farms in 1/5 of the map.

It's not about amount of time it takes them to make map and amount of maps they are making. It's about doing something on those maps for longer than 1-2 weeks. I liked a lot of maps and events but I have no reason to ever go back to them since they are huge waste of time in 90% of the cases.

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It seems I've voted in the minority.I do not think "easy/medium/hard" modes need to exist.But at the same time I partially agree with your statement, TC (Topic Creator).Instead of easy/medium/hard modes, I think they should do what they did for Dungeons (do people remember those still? Been awhile). "Story Mode" where you can go in and solo, or group, kill the bosses which would be extremely watered down. The rewards aren't anything great or praise worthy. (This could be almost identical to your 'easy mode' idea. So in a sense TC, I agree with your easy mode/hard mode idea (where hard mode is normal raids). But honestly speaking.

Adding an easy/story mode will not solve the problem of raids. People play raids, in any MMO game, for the challenging content. Some play it for the rewards, while some do raids because they have nothing to do (in life I'm kidding of course). Going outside of Gw2 for a moment. I want to talk about my experience with Raiding in Destiny 2. And use that as an example through the remainder of this post.

Quick talk about other game(s) raiding experienceGetting the elephant out of the room for the moment, yes Destiny 2(D2) is in no way shape or form similar to Gw2. Mechanically speaking there are things Destiny can do in their raids because it is Destiny, same for GW2. But I recently started raiding in D2 there is a raid called "The Last Wish", and it has several parts to it. Four bosses, and I think two or three encounters. Of course my team went into this already watching videos and explaining the content as we went and was already over the gear check level, but we only spent maybe 3-4 hours a week attempting this raid with the six of us. Slowly we progressed, wipe after wipe, attempt after attempt, week after week. Just recently we finally beat the last boss "Riven of a Thousand Voices(Riven)". Mechanically speaking it was not a hard boss, the challenge came from (stress) communication skills and player skill in the form of memory and reaction speed. You mention, TC, people two-manning VG, well people can also two-man content in D2 as well. It isn't something uncommon in todays age of gaming. People did Solo videos of Dungeons back when those existed as valuable content. Back on point. After our several attempts to beat this raid we finally did it. Everyone Cheered and praised the Sun (RNGesus) And then we all got terrible loot from the raid. While my group cannot speak for everyone, I do believe that overcoming challenging content after many attempts IS the reward for raiding, not the loot drops.

Getting back on topic with that out of the way. My main thoughts on Gw2 Raids (I wish to clarify I have only beaten up to Xera in terms of Gw2 Raids, I stopped playing after that due to IRL problems) is that the content itself is not challenging enough. In my experience the main mechanic that got in the way was DPS checks. Without going into too much detail, I feel like mechanically speaking the raids do not require enough individual player skill. Yes there is the Tank, the Healer, and the DPSers. And using VG as an example. the tank tanks, the healer heals, the damage dealers dps. Then when the green circle appears three (?) people go to it. Which leaves everyone else to flail their weapons around at the boss. So at this stage of the game, it is possible to fail because three people didn't stand on the green circle causing a wipe via damage taken usually killing most the group, not a real raid wipe mechanic (If I recall correctly, it was possible to Distort the entire team during that, causing groups to just skip the green circle and DPS through it, that might have been nerfed). That isn't really challenging.

And back to other game(s) raidingI think another reason why the content isn't challenging is because the team of players isn't split up, and just left there to DPS the entire time. I will use D2 once again as an example, and relate it to Gw2. Going back to the Riven boss encounter. The team of six is split up into two groups of three. These two groups did the exact same thing as each other, but in reverse. One team did X while the other did Y, then you went up a floor and the team that did X is now doing Y and vise versa. Then the team is grouped back together for the boss mechanic itself, and then the DPS phase, and is once again split up to repeat the entire thing until the last 10% of the bosses HP, which the final DPS check is put in. This, while it could be better, in my opinion is a good way to split the team up, and keeping it simple enough.So going back into Gw2 with that fight (simplified) in mind, I want to talk about Sabetha. This in my experience with the few raids I've done. Best showcase the spliting up mechanic. The team is once again locked into the "battle field" but the bombardment mechanic requires 1 player to go "off on their own" and prevent a mechanic from happening. I think more mechanics like that, but more fleshed out, would be a much more valuable change to raids than "easy/hard mode". Perhaps during the bombardment phase, you needed to send three or four members up, and have them loop around killing all the enemies up there, and doing some other type of mechanic, then returning to the boss for a DPS phase. Maybe something to do with Sabetha's Henchmen, instead of making them just an annoying wait timer to go back to smacking Sabetha to death.

While I have much more to say, I don't want this post to be a mile in a half long, and it is almost midnight and I'd like to rest. So I'll leave it off with that and add a TL;DR.

In my opinion, Overcoming challenging content through trial and error, is the reward to raids. Not the loot, or the fashion, or the story completion etc.I am not saying loot shouldn't exist as a reward. Loot should compliment the reward as additional reasons to do the raid/content. And the problem with raiding in gw2, again in my opinion, is the challenging content isn't truly challenging players individual AND teamwork skills enough.

I look forward to thoughtful comments and replies. I'll try to check back when I can. For now; good night, and good luck out there, Commander.

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@Tyson.5160 said:I just think people get too spoiled and too impatient with the current design and don’t realize how much of a gift Living World actually is. Designing a map and a game takes time. If you want a huge influx of maps at one time, you will need to wait for an expansion. Even other MMOs aren’t pumping out new maps every month either.

Im not talking about more maos though. I would be happy with less if they get proper replayability.I mean in general, that a few hours of content every few months isnt going to cut it.All the time they spent on the new Living Story is pretty much wasted time since after a few weeks most people will never play it again.

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@Tyson.5160 said:

@flog.3485 said:No offense,

No offense taken, dont worry.

but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a >map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

Idk. I dont play that much anymore. Most of the time i only log in for raids with my static and even im done with the new map. I´ve probably spend 10 hours on the new map including the story. Im pretty sure that there are people not done with the achievements yet, but i assume that the majority of the people actually playing the content, is.

Yes, a fair point you bring up. I mean you could farm the resources of the maps efficiently with lots of alts but then again you already have quite a hardcore mentality behind it no matter how casual the content might be. And I don’t think the general casual player is into that if so much items in the game are account based anyway.

But anyway I digress. Let’s get back at topic.The best way to deliver content for Anet imo, would be to alternate raid/fractal for each major release to avoid burn out or make the player base freel like there is only quick content to get through living world.Given the thin resources allowed to fractal/raids, getting easy mode raids outside of the already implemented challenge motes is a bad idea.

It’s possible that they go the same route with LWS3 and attached a Legendary amulet or ring to it.

That's something they will most certainly do, but It will only make the maps relevant for a short amount of time, as players do the new achievements for the new legendary. Then the maps will be dead, again. That's the design of the LW but I don't think it's a very healthy system for the game. Either they need to add less content to new maps, or release less maps and instead focus on re-building older maps in new episodes.

And in the process allocate more resources to actual repeatable content.

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  • 2 weeks later...

No offense taken, dont worry.

but I think you overestimate far too much how fast a casual player might complete these achievements. And the general casual player might not see any value in playing a >map only to get the achievements and never return again.

I mean personally, I still have stuff to do in Jahai bluffs.

Idk. I dont play that much anymore. Most of the time i only log in for raids with my static and even im done with the new map. I´ve probably spend 10 hours on the new map including the story. Im pretty sure that there are people not done with the achievements yet, but i assume that the majority of the people actually playing the content, is.

Yes, a fair point you bring up. I mean you could farm the resources of the maps efficiently with lots of alts but then again you already have quite a hardcore mentality behind it no matter how casual the content might be. And I don’t think the general casual player is into that if so much items in the game are account based anyway.

But anyway I digress. Let’s get back at topic.The best way to deliver content for Anet imo, would be to alternate raid/fractal for each major release to avoid burn out or make the player base freel like there is only quick content to get through living world.Given the thin resources allowed to fractal/raids, getting easy mode raids outside of the already implemented challenge motes is a bad idea.

It’s possible that they go the same route with LWS3 and attached a Legendary amulet or ring to it.

That's something they will most certainly do, but It will only make the maps relevant for a short amount of time, as players do the new achievements for the new legendary. Then the maps will be dead, again. That's the design of the LW but I don't think it's a very healthy system for the game. Either they need to add less content to new maps, or release less maps and instead focus on re-building older maps in new episodes.

And in the process allocate more resources to actual repeatable content.

Well given the recent news, let’s hope there will even be future raids past Wing 7...or even Wing 7 itself.

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Meanwhile...

https://massivelyop.com/2019/02/25/ship-of-heroes-details-the-mechanics-of-its-mission-difficulty-slider/

"Ship of Heroes is continuing to pump out new updates for eager future players on its game forums. Heroic Games’ Casey McGeever most recently put up a post talking about something rather near and dear to the hearts of City of Heroes fans in particular: mission difficulty."

Poster comments...

"Mission difficulty slider. Yet another awesome CoH idea that the MMO genre completely failed to pick up on."

"I loved this in COH.Full team of eight with a max difficulty slider and it was a chaotic blast!I remember some folks would make missions in the Mission Creator and set the enemies so hard they couldn’t be beaten."

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Difficulty isn’t the issue. What it needs is an automised raid finder that people can drop in and drop out of without having to worry about being online and on time for a raid, fannying about in LFG for an age, or getting kicked due to the arbitrary standards the community has decided on (and let’s be honest, while you get this in every game, in the case of GW2 it’s just utterly pointless elitism. The raids are hardly WoW mythic after all, they’re barely even WoW raid finder difficulty. The toxic community has to shoulder the blame for the failure of raids in this game just as much as Anet does). Yeah sure, “GL killing anything with noobs in full soldier gear ololol”. Fair enough, give it a system where everyone’s gear gets standardised to zerk or what have you when they enter. They can do it I’m sure, it sort of works that way for PvP already.

Once that’s done, improve the drops so that one might (maybe...occasionally) get something actually useful. Boom, suddenly more people are raiding. Some of those people will move up to the more organised scene. Problems solved.

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@Senca.8356 said:Difficulty isn’t the issue. What it needs is an automised raid finder that people can drop in and drop out of without having to worry about being online and on time for a raid, fannying about in LFG for an age, or getting kicked due to the arbitrary standards the community has decided on (and let’s be honest, while you get this in every game, in the case of GW2 it’s just utterly pointless elitism. The raids are hardly WoW mythic after all, they’re barely even WoW raid finder difficulty. The toxic community has to shoulder the blame for the failure of raids in this game just as much as Anet does). Yeah sure, “GL killing anything with noobs in full soldier gear ololol”. Fair enough, give it a system where everyone’s gear gets standardised to zerk or what have you when they enter. They can do it I’m sure, it sort of works that way for PvP already.

Once that’s done, improve the drops so that one might (maybe...occasionally) get something actually useful. Boom, suddenly more people are raiding. Some of those people will move up to the more organised scene. Problems solved.

It won't work with the current difficulty outside of MO and Cairn. Many bosses like Deimos, Desmina or Dhuum that need specific equipped players to deal with certain mechanics will fail. Always.Did you ever play WoW LFR? Probably not if you say the difficulty here is lower than LFR. LFR is more like T1/T2 fractals. It doesn't get any lower as this. And if you played it you should know that they flat out delete mechanics that randoms can't beat.Yes the raids are not at mythic difficulty but they were never supposed to and are between normal and heroic. The community is way less toxic than WoW too.

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@Senca.8356 said:Difficulty isn’t the issue. What it needs is an automised raid finder that people can drop in and drop out of without having to worry about being online and on time for a raid, fannying about in LFG for an age, or getting kicked due to the arbitrary standards the community has decided on (and let’s be honest, while you get this in every game, in the case of GW2 it’s just utterly pointless elitism. The raids are hardly WoW mythic after all, they’re barely even WoW raid finder difficulty. The toxic community has to shoulder the blame for the failure of raids in this game just as much as Anet does). Yeah sure, “GL killing anything with noobs in full soldier gear ololol”. Fair enough, give it a system where everyone’s gear gets standardised to zerk or what have you when they enter. They can do it I’m sure, it sort of works that way for PvP already.

Once that’s done, improve the drops so that one might (maybe...occasionally) get something actually useful. Boom, suddenly more people are raiding. Some of those people will move up to the more organised scene. Problems solved.

Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder were some of the worst things to happen to World of Warcraft. Going back and playing the game for Legion you're just dumped into an instance, with no context, with random people. No one ever, ever talks. They never say anything. They just effortlessly roll through the content and vacuum up free loot. It destroyed any sense of community, and getting to know players, that actually manually gathering a group provided.

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I will say this LFR saved wow. You cant have millions of players and only 10% seeing the major end game content, that was a problem. Blizzard figured this out, why have all these great instances and encounters and no one but a few see them? These games are full of a diverse amount of people, of all levels of ability, cutting out a large percentage of the playerbase from content is a bad move. It didnt work in wildstar and it wasnt till the bitter end they realized it. For a game to hold the attention of a diverse group of players they have to feel like they are taking part in all the content, not shut out from it. Allowing for more people to be able to experience content they previously could not breaths new life into games. Suddenly a whole new part of the game is open to them. Blizzard actually manged to do this and opened up parts of the game to a whole new group of people.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Senca.8356 said:Difficulty isn’t the issue. What it needs is an automised raid finder that people can drop in and drop out of without having to worry about being online and on time for a raid, fannying about in LFG for an age, or getting kicked due to the arbitrary standards the community has decided on (and let’s be honest, while you get this in every game, in the case of GW2 it’s just utterly pointless elitism. The raids are hardly WoW mythic after all, they’re barely even WoW raid finder difficulty. The toxic community has to shoulder the blame for the failure of raids in this game just as much as Anet does). Yeah sure, “GL killing anything with noobs in full soldier gear ololol”. Fair enough, give it a system where everyone’s gear gets standardised to zerk or what have you when they enter. They can do it I’m sure, it sort of works that way for PvP already.

Once that’s done, improve the drops so that one might (maybe...occasionally) get something actually useful. Boom, suddenly more people are raiding. Some of those people will move up to the more organised scene. Problems solved.

Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder were some of the worst things to happen to World of Warcraft. Going back and playing the game for Legion you're just dumped into an instance, with no context, with random people. No one ever, ever talks. They never say anything. They just effortlessly roll through the content and vacuum up free loot. It destroyed any sense of community, and getting to know players, that actually manually gathering a group provided.

The community destroyed its self in wow, the game content didnt, all opening up raids to the masses did was allow people that never saw the inside of a raid to be able to go there and run it. WoW players are a spoiled fickle bunch that have no idea how good they actually had it, and i say that as one of those spoiled fickle players. On the subject of close knit communities in wow , well we had to be because if we didnt our server would blacklist us. When cross realm happened we were no longer forced to be nice. Dont get me wrong everyone didnt just go all jerky when that happened. Good people stayed nice and helpful , but the ones that were trouble showed their true colors since they didnt have to worry about server repercussions anymore. You will always have jerks in every game, even here. But not everyone is.

I played wow from February 2006 to November 2018, i played almost every night. I watched the game evolve over the years, and what you are saying is only true if you wanted it that way. Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time. And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR. You have your own guild raid team, i had my own team what people did in LFR didnt have any bearing on us. I ran LFR quite a bit to check out the boss fights before our regular raids, to get a basic impression of the fights. Most of the time the people were friendly, sometimes you had dbags and trolls, but LFR didnt make them that way, they always were like that.

Mythic/heroic raiders didnt care one wit if people did LFR or not, more power to them it gives people that are not hard core raiders content to play and makes them happy , and it dont effect our raid teams. WoW has within it the nobody left behind rule, you can be a terrible player bad at dps, cant pvp to save your life, but wow makes it so you have access to that kind of content so you can still have fun and not be cut off. Im sorry but WoW manages to have something available to everyone, and really is a good game as far as content is concerned, there is a lot of stuff you can do at all levels of skill in wow.

Personally i think having a lower difficulty raid content in GW2 would boost interest. You would still have the regular difficulties for the raiders, but also have something for the rest of the players. Like one of the leading wow developers said, whats the point of all these wonderful big raid instances if no one but a few get to see them?

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@"Tiviana.2650" said:I will say this LFR saved wow.You can be wrong. I'm okay with that.

I played WoW from Vanilla to Cataclsym. I'd occasionally dip my toes in the water back during Draenor and Legion but I left in a quick hurry each time because of how much of a hollow empty shadow the game is compared to what it used to be. Back when the push for Legacy servers were a thing and Nostalrius being shut down was making news I went back and played a classic WoW private server and played that for a while but the constant latency and anxiety of the server being shut down the way Nostalrius prevented me from committing to it as much as I would have liked.

The thing that people miss about what's bad about stuff like the breakneck speed of WoW's current leveling, as well as how braindead easy it is, alongside both effortlessly easy dungeons as well as autogroups is that is absolutely throttles the social aspects of the game. While a lot of stuff about Vanilla WoW are frustrating like stuff like Zefra Hooves having an abysmally low drop rate, is that the questing and dungeon experience is amazing for actually meeting people and making friends and snowballing into communities.

You start out with your easily soloable quests like kill quests on non elite mobs. But when you see competition for kills you can turn that competition into cooperation and invite them to join your party. And you taking that step to send them an invite is huge. Soon you find yourself doing quests in areas with Elites that can't be solo'd and now you need to get a party. And you have to make the effort to communicate with other people, say "Hey. Do you want to do this thing?" And then you go into dungeons. And dungeons aren't easy. You need crowd control as well as a viable group composition. And those aren't handed to you. And if you wipe you can completely lose your opportunity to get loot.

But when you do find a good party, players you want to play with more, you add them to your friendslist so you can group up with them quicker when you two want to do another dungeon. And since 1. dungeons are slower with bits of downtime to eat and drink 2. you had to actually speak with them to get that group, chances are good you had a nice chat while you were partying. Soon you're forming a guild. You're building a community. You're hitting level 60 and going into dungeons. Then into raid.

WoW had 12 Million players before Looking for Raid was added. It didn't need saving and it's only gone downhill since. Classic WoW being officially released has had more excitment and buzz about it since Battle For Azeroth dropped. Guild Wars 2 similarly struggles with the same problem that Retail WoW has of actively discouraging and disincentivizing socially grouping with other players. Raids are the only content that actually creates communities revolved around them.

Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time.

Yeah, the same way players get upset about things like whenever flying mounts are locked in new areas so they can't just effortlessly skip over everything. Or when their waterstriders get temporarily disabled. Games are exercises in adversity. And there's a point where you've made the game so convenient it's not a game anymore. Look at what happened with garrisons in Draenor. Warlord's of Draenor was so immensely convenient you could just sit in your base and just watch as raid quality look was mailed to you for no effort. The game was so convenient no one ever wanted to leave their garrisons anymore, which mean less and less people were playing together. Which mean communities were collapsing and no new communities were forming in their place. And when players don't have community they don't have anything keeping them in the game anymore and they leave for the next big thing. It was so dire Blizzard brought Illidan back to life and gave all the paladins in the game Ashbringer as an emegency situation.

And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR.

The endless drama and headache of WoW fussing around with end game's difficulty is literally why I quit that game. Blizzard adding 10 mans that are supposed to be easier than 25 man but frequently were way harder like 10 man Sartharion 3. Then they added 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic and none of them were ever properly balanced because QA testing all those various game modes is impossible to do properly and frequently something would be bugged or poorly tuned in 10 man and 25 man and because of the immense workloaded of having all those difficulty modes meant things would be unfixed for months and months on end. And then you had all the people playing 10 man angry that their loot wasn't as good as the 10man heroic, 25 man and 25 heroic gear.

WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

This.

I really don't feel like explaining this and it's fine if people enjoyed WoW past WotLK. I have friends who do and did (well did mostly since by now, WoW has finally imploded on it's approach).

There was a time in WoW where the MMO was a game, and not simply a loot generator which replaced all content with the next fix for gear and items. All people do today and every since mid WotLK in WoW is grind gear. Grind mounts. Grind reputation. Grind dailies. All with only 1 goal: better gear and loot.

LFR was not the only change made which lay at the end of this. Blizzard realized early on during BC that providing players with new gear, was way easier then with actual content. Content simply became a means to deliver gear a d the less barriers were in place, the better people could grind up gear. Over and over, creating an illusion of progress or character development.

LFR in WoW was one of the most damaging and community destroying additions in the history of MMOs.

Edit: and to people who believe the LFR saved WoW. The numbers do not add up. Wow had years of growth even before any type of LFR or LFG was added.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Tiviana.2650" said:I will say this LFR saved wow.You can be wrong. I'm okay with that.

I played WoW from Vanilla to Cataclsym. I'd occasionally dip my toes in the water back during Draenor and Legion but I left in a quick hurry each time because of how much of a hollow empty shadow the game is compared to what it used to be. Back when the push for Legacy servers were a thing and Nostalrius being shut down was making news I went back and played a classic WoW private server and played that for a while but the constant latency and anxiety of the server being shut down the way Nostalrius prevented me from committing to it as much as I would have liked.

The thing that people miss about what's bad about stuff like the breakneck speed of WoW's current leveling, as well as how braindead easy it is, alongside both effortlessly easy dungeons as well as autogroups is that is absolutely throttles the social aspects of the game. While a lot of stuff about Vanilla WoW are frustrating like stuff like Zefra Hooves having an abysmally low drop rate, is that the questing and dungeon experience is amazing for actually meeting people and making friends and snowballing into communities.

You start out with your easily soloable quests like kill quests on non elite mobs. But when you see competition for kills you can turn that competition into cooperation and invite them to join your party. And you taking that step to send them an invite is huge. Soon you find yourself doing quests in areas with Elites that can't be solo'd and now you need to get a party. And you have to make the effort to communicate with other people, say "Hey. Do you want to do this thing?" And then you go into dungeons. And dungeons aren't easy. You need crowd control as well as a viable group composition. And those aren't handed to you. And if you wipe you can completely lose your opportunity to get loot.

But when you do find a good party, players you want to play with more, you add them to your friendslist so you can group up with them quicker when you two want to do another dungeon. And since 1. dungeons are slower with bits of downtime to eat and drink 2. you had to actually speak with them to get that group, chances are good you had a nice chat while you were partying. Soon you're forming a guild. You're building a community. You're hitting level 60 and going into dungeons. Then into raid.

WoW had 12 Million players before Looking for Raid was added. It didn't need saving and it's only gone downhill since. Classic WoW being officially released has had more excitment and buzz about it since Battle For Azeroth dropped. Guild Wars 2 similarly struggles with the same problem that Retail WoW has of actively discouraging and disincentivizing socially grouping with other players. Raids are the only content that actually creates communities revolved around them.

Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time.

Yeah, the same way players get upset about things like whenever flying mounts are locked in new areas so they can't just effortlessly skip over everything. Or when their waterstriders get temporarily disabled. Games are exercises in adversity. And there's a point where you've made the game so convenient it's not a game anymore. Look at what happened with garrisons in Draenor. Warlord's of Draenor was so immensely convenient you could just sit in your base and just watch as raid quality look was mailed to you for no effort. The game was so convenient no one ever wanted to leave their garrisons anymore, which mean less and less people were playing together. Which mean communities were collapsing and no new communities were forming in their place. And when players don't have community they don't have anything keeping them in the game anymore and they leave for the next big thing. It was so dire Blizzard brought Illidan back to life and gave all the paladins in the game Ashbringer as an emegency situation.

And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR.

The endless drama and headache of WoW fussing around with end game's difficulty is literally why I quit that game. Blizzard adding 10 mans that are supposed to be easier than 25 man but frequently were way harder like 10 man Sartharion 3. Then they added 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic and none of them were ever properly balanced because QA testing all those various game modes is impossible to do properly and frequently something would be bugged or poorly tuned in 10 man and 25 man and because of the immense workloaded of having all those difficulty modes meant things would be unfixed for months and months on end. And then you had all the people playing 10 man angry that their loot wasn't as good as the 10man heroic, 25 man and 25 heroic gear.

WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

You also friend. WoW isnt dead far from it, it still has more players than GW2, and there are communities, just in wow you arent forced to join them to get anywhere. If you want to be a solo player in that game you can. If you want to step up and join a guild and take it up a level you can. Thats why its still popular, dont you get it? The old days are gone, and games that adhere to forcing people to always have to join a community to get anywhere are dying. Society has changed, evolve or get left behind. Ofc people here are going to say , then why play a mmorpg if you want to play solo? Maybe because its a game, not a life, and maybe they love running around doing their own thing and not interacting with people all the time. There are hundreds of thousands of solo players in wow, and there are even more that guild and socialize. And neither really stops the other thats the beauty of it. Too bad the old guard is always trying to take us back to the good ole bad days.

Vanilla WoW sucked it was a slog grindfest, nothing was balanced and doing anything took forever. I remember grinding reps that took months on end. Its all rose colored glasses and nostalgia that make you say it was the best. It was terrible.> @Cyninja.2954 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

This.

I really don't feel like explaining this and it's fine if people enjoyed WoW past WotLK. I have friends who do and did (well did mostly since by now, WoW has finally imploded on it's approach).

There was a time in WoW where the MMO was a game, and not simply a loot generator which replaced all content with the next fix for gear and items. All people do today and every since mid WotLK in WoW is grind gear. Grind mounts. Grind reputation. Grind dailies. All with only 1 goal: better gear and loot.

LFR was not the only change made which lay at the end of this. Blizzard realized early on during BC that providing players with new gear, was way easier then with actual content. Content simply became a means to deliver gear a d the less barriers were in place, the better people could grind up gear. Over and over, creating an illusion of progress or character development.

LFR in WoW was one of the most damaging and community destroying additions in the history of MMOs.

Edit: and to people who believe the LFR saved WoW. The numbers do not add up. Wow had years of growth even before any type of LFR or LFG was added.

That had nothing to do with wows decline in subs. LFR is very popular just go try to say something about it and watch the posters shut you down back when they had downvotes. They would bury you in downvotes for wanting LFR removed. And if it wasnt popular blizzard would have removed it. They arent going to waste time on something that no one is doing. Its been in the game since wrath and that was 6 expansions ago.

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@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:I will say this LFR saved wow.You can be wrong. I'm okay with that.

I played WoW from Vanilla to Cataclsym. I'd occasionally dip my toes in the water back during Draenor and Legion but I left in a quick hurry each time because of how much of a hollow empty shadow the game is compared to what it used to be. Back when the push for Legacy servers were a thing and Nostalrius being shut down was making news I went back and played a classic WoW private server and played that for a while but the constant latency and anxiety of the server being shut down the way Nostalrius prevented me from committing to it as much as I would have liked.

The thing that people miss about what's bad about stuff like the breakneck speed of WoW's current leveling, as well as how braindead easy it is, alongside both effortlessly easy dungeons as well as autogroups is that is absolutely throttles the social aspects of the game. While a lot of stuff about Vanilla WoW are frustrating like stuff like Zefra Hooves having an abysmally low drop rate, is that the questing and dungeon experience is amazing for actually meeting people and making friends and snowballing into communities.

You start out with your easily soloable quests like kill quests on non elite mobs. But when you see competition for kills you can turn that competition into cooperation and invite them to join your party. And you taking that step to send them an invite is huge. Soon you find yourself doing quests in areas with Elites that can't be solo'd and now you need to get a party. And you have to make the effort to communicate with other people, say "Hey. Do you want to do this thing?" And then you go into dungeons. And dungeons aren't easy. You need crowd control as well as a viable group composition. And those aren't handed to you. And if you wipe you can completely lose your opportunity to get loot.

But when you do find a good party, players you want to play with more, you add them to your friendslist so you can group up with them quicker when you two want to do another dungeon. And since 1. dungeons are slower with bits of downtime to eat and drink 2. you had to actually speak with them to get that group, chances are good you had a nice chat while you were partying. Soon you're forming a guild. You're building a community. You're hitting level 60 and going into dungeons. Then into raid.

WoW had 12 Million players before Looking for Raid was added. It didn't need saving and it's only gone downhill since. Classic WoW being officially released has had more excitment and buzz about it since Battle For Azeroth dropped. Guild Wars 2 similarly struggles with the same problem that Retail WoW has of actively discouraging and disincentivizing socially grouping with other players. Raids are the only content that actually creates communities revolved around them.

Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time.

Yeah, the same way players get upset about things like whenever flying mounts are locked in new areas so they can't just effortlessly skip over everything. Or when their waterstriders get temporarily disabled. Games are exercises in adversity. And there's a point where you've made the game so convenient it's not a game anymore. Look at what happened with garrisons in Draenor. Warlord's of Draenor was so immensely convenient you could just sit in your base and just watch as raid quality look was mailed to you for no effort. The game was so convenient no one ever wanted to leave their garrisons anymore, which mean less and less people were playing together. Which mean communities were collapsing and no new communities were forming in their place. And when players don't have community they don't have anything keeping them in the game anymore and they leave for the next big thing. It was so dire Blizzard brought Illidan back to life and gave all the paladins in the game Ashbringer as an emegency situation.

And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR.

The endless drama and headache of WoW fussing around with end game's difficulty is literally why I quit that game. Blizzard adding 10 mans that are supposed to be easier than 25 man but frequently were way harder like 10 man Sartharion 3. Then they added 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic and none of them were ever properly balanced because QA testing all those various game modes is impossible to do properly and frequently something would be bugged or poorly tuned in 10 man and 25 man and because of the immense workloaded of having all those difficulty modes meant things would be unfixed for months and months on end. And then you had all the people playing 10 man angry that their loot wasn't as good as the 10man heroic, 25 man and 25 heroic gear.

WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

You also friend. WoW isnt dead far from it, it still has more players than GW2, and there are communities, just in wow you arent forced to join them to get anywhere. If you want to be a solo player in that game you can.

Again, these games are MMOs. There is nothing wrong with giving players solo content, but when your entire game revolves around it and gets built around it, you are playing the wrong game.

No one is saying WoW is dead. You can't deny though, the game has lost a LOT of players and its luster, to be fair: due to a majority of reasons which are unrelated to some of the issues here too.

@Tiviana.2650 said:If you want to step up and join a guild and take it up a level you can. Thats why its still popular, dont you get it? The old days are gone, and games that adhere to forcing people to always have to join a community to get anywhere are dying. Society has changed, evolve or get left behind. Ofc people here are going to say , then why play a mmorpg if you want to play solo?

It doesn't have to be a life. But you also do not have to get all and every reward with minimal commitment or worse, on autopilot.

@Tiviana.2650 said:Vanilla WoW sucked it was a slog grindfest, nothing was balanced and doing anything took forever. I remember grinding reps that took months on end. Its all rose colored glasses and nostalgia that make you say it was the best. It was terrible.

Vanilla WoW was the most casual MMO of its time. Yes, it was grindy compared to todays standards, that's not the issue at heart though. The issue is: building a group and overcoming group content actually had an impact on a players experience.

Case in point:

  • remember one, any will do, significant moment which you experienced while running LFR or LFG. Besides maybe seeing content for the first time.
  • now remember any significant moment which you experienced while making your own group or overcoming some other type of challenge

I guarantee you, those experiences will be vastly different.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:I will say this LFR saved wow.You can be wrong. I'm okay with that.

I played WoW from Vanilla to Cataclsym. I'd occasionally dip my toes in the water back during Draenor and Legion but I left in a quick hurry each time because of how much of a hollow empty shadow the game is compared to what it used to be. Back when the push for Legacy servers were a thing and Nostalrius being shut down was making news I went back and played a classic WoW private server and played that for a while but the constant latency and anxiety of the server being shut down the way Nostalrius prevented me from committing to it as much as I would have liked.

The thing that people miss about what's bad about stuff like the breakneck speed of WoW's current leveling, as well as how braindead easy it is, alongside both effortlessly easy dungeons as well as autogroups is that is absolutely throttles the social aspects of the game. While a lot of stuff about Vanilla WoW are frustrating like stuff like Zefra Hooves having an abysmally low drop rate, is that the questing and dungeon experience is amazing for actually meeting people and making friends and snowballing into communities.

You start out with your easily soloable quests like kill quests on non elite mobs. But when you see competition for kills you can turn that competition into cooperation and invite them to join your party. And you taking that step to send them an invite is huge. Soon you find yourself doing quests in areas with Elites that can't be solo'd and now you need to get a party. And you have to make the effort to communicate with other people, say "Hey. Do you want to do this thing?" And then you go into dungeons. And dungeons aren't easy. You need crowd control as well as a viable group composition. And those aren't handed to you. And if you wipe you can completely lose your opportunity to get loot.

But when you do find a good party, players you want to play with more, you add them to your friendslist so you can group up with them quicker when you two want to do another dungeon. And since 1. dungeons are slower with bits of downtime to eat and drink 2. you had to actually speak with them to get that group, chances are good you had a nice chat while you were partying. Soon you're forming a guild. You're building a community. You're hitting level 60 and going into dungeons. Then into raid.

WoW had 12 Million players before Looking for Raid was added. It didn't need saving and it's only gone downhill since. Classic WoW being officially released has had more excitment and buzz about it since Battle For Azeroth dropped. Guild Wars 2 similarly struggles with the same problem that Retail WoW has of actively discouraging and disincentivizing socially grouping with other players. Raids are the only content that actually creates communities revolved around them.

Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time.

Yeah, the same way players get upset about things like whenever flying mounts are locked in new areas so they can't just effortlessly skip over everything. Or when their waterstriders get temporarily disabled. Games are exercises in adversity. And there's a point where you've made the game so convenient it's not a game anymore. Look at what happened with garrisons in Draenor. Warlord's of Draenor was so immensely convenient you could just sit in your base and just watch as raid quality look was mailed to you for no effort. The game was so convenient no one ever wanted to leave their garrisons anymore, which mean less and less people were playing together. Which mean communities were collapsing and no new communities were forming in their place. And when players don't have community they don't have anything keeping them in the game anymore and they leave for the next big thing. It was so dire Blizzard brought Illidan back to life and gave all the paladins in the game Ashbringer as an emegency situation.

And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR.

The endless drama and headache of WoW fussing around with end game's difficulty is literally why I quit that game. Blizzard adding 10 mans that are supposed to be easier than 25 man but frequently were way harder like 10 man Sartharion 3. Then they added 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic and none of them were ever properly balanced because QA testing all those various game modes is impossible to do properly and frequently something would be bugged or poorly tuned in 10 man and 25 man and because of the immense workloaded of having all those difficulty modes meant things would be unfixed for months and months on end. And then you had all the people playing 10 man angry that their loot wasn't as good as the 10man heroic, 25 man and 25 heroic gear.

WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

You also friend. WoW isnt dead far from it, it still has more players than GW2, and there are communities, just in wow you arent forced to join them to get anywhere. If you want to be a solo player in that game you can.

Again, these games are MMOs. There is nothing wrong with giving players solo content, but when your entire game revolves around it and gets built around it, you are playing the wrong game.

No one is saying WoW is dead. You can't deny though, the game has lost a LOT of players and its luster, to be fair: due to a majority of reasons which are unrelated to some of the issues here too.

@Tiviana.2650 said:If you want to step up and join a guild and take it up a level you can. Thats why its still popular, dont you get it? The old days are gone, and games that adhere to forcing people to always have to join a community to get anywhere are dying. Society has changed, evolve or get left behind. Ofc people here are going to say , then why play a mmorpg if you want to play solo?

It doesn't have to be a life. But you also do not have to get all and every reward with minimal commitment.

@Tiviana.2650 said:Vanilla WoW sucked it was a slog grindfest, nothing was balanced and doing anything took forever. I remember grinding reps that took months on end. Its all rose colored glasses and nostalgia that make you say it was the best. It was terrible.

Vanilla WoW was the most casual MMO of its time. Yes, it was grindy compared to todays standards, that's not the issue at heart though. The issue is: building a group and overcoming group content actually had an impact on a players experience.

Case in point:
  • remember one, any will do, significant moment which you experienced while running LFR or LFG. Besides maybe seeing content for the first time.
  • now remember any significant moment which you experienced while making your own group or overcoming some other type of challenge

I guarantee you, those experiences will be vastly different.

This is the delusion, in what world are you getting everything for nothing? That does not happen and never did. Listen just because you get some low ilvl purples dont mean you are getting the best. Man thats delusional, you work for it if you want the best gear and weapons, you work your butt off, time and skill. Those cheap epics are only there like exotics in this game to get you started. Oh hey ho about the gearing here man its sure rains loot easy..see how that goes? You can say the same here

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@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:I will say this LFR saved wow.You can be wrong. I'm okay with that.

I played WoW from Vanilla to Cataclsym. I'd occasionally dip my toes in the water back during Draenor and Legion but I left in a quick hurry each time because of how much of a hollow empty shadow the game is compared to what it used to be. Back when the push for Legacy servers were a thing and Nostalrius being shut down was making news I went back and played a classic WoW private server and played that for a while but the constant latency and anxiety of the server being shut down the way Nostalrius prevented me from committing to it as much as I would have liked.

The thing that people miss about what's bad about stuff like the breakneck speed of WoW's current leveling, as well as how braindead easy it is, alongside both effortlessly easy dungeons as well as autogroups is that is absolutely throttles the social aspects of the game. While a lot of stuff about Vanilla WoW are frustrating like stuff like Zefra Hooves having an abysmally low drop rate, is that the questing and dungeon experience is amazing for actually meeting people and making friends and snowballing into communities.

You start out with your easily soloable quests like kill quests on non elite mobs. But when you see competition for kills you can turn that competition into cooperation and invite them to join your party. And you taking that step to send them an invite is huge. Soon you find yourself doing quests in areas with Elites that can't be solo'd and now you need to get a party. And you have to make the effort to communicate with other people, say "Hey. Do you want to do this thing?" And then you go into dungeons. And dungeons aren't easy. You need crowd control as well as a viable group composition. And those aren't handed to you. And if you wipe you can completely lose your opportunity to get loot.

But when you do find a good party, players you want to play with more, you add them to your friendslist so you can group up with them quicker when you two want to do another dungeon. And since 1. dungeons are slower with bits of downtime to eat and drink 2. you had to actually speak with them to get that group, chances are good you had a nice chat while you were partying. Soon you're forming a guild. You're building a community. You're hitting level 60 and going into dungeons. Then into raid.

WoW had 12 Million players before Looking for Raid was added. It didn't need saving and it's only gone downhill since. Classic WoW being officially released has had more excitment and buzz about it since Battle For Azeroth dropped. Guild Wars 2 similarly struggles with the same problem that Retail WoW has of actively discouraging and disincentivizing socially grouping with other players. Raids are the only content that actually creates communities revolved around them.

Looking for raid and now group finder have a tremendous following in wow, because there are a lot of people that want to play it their way. Not play on a raid scheduled, or some dont want to be in a raid guild. LFR and GF open up the possibilities for them to play on their own time.

Yeah, the same way players get upset about things like whenever flying mounts are locked in new areas so they can't just effortlessly skip over everything. Or when their waterstriders get temporarily disabled. Games are exercises in adversity. And there's a point where you've made the game so convenient it's not a game anymore. Look at what happened with garrisons in Draenor. Warlord's of Draenor was so immensely convenient you could just sit in your base and just watch as raid quality look was mailed to you for no effort. The game was so convenient no one ever wanted to leave their garrisons anymore, which mean less and less people were playing together. Which mean communities were collapsing and no new communities were forming in their place. And when players don't have community they don't have anything keeping them in the game anymore and they leave for the next big thing. It was so dire Blizzard brought Illidan back to life and gave all the paladins in the game Ashbringer as an emegency situation.

And if you are a hard core raider it dont effect you one bit if people play LFR.

The endless drama and headache of WoW fussing around with end game's difficulty is literally why I quit that game. Blizzard adding 10 mans that are supposed to be easier than 25 man but frequently were way harder like 10 man Sartharion 3. Then they added 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic and none of them were ever properly balanced because QA testing all those various game modes is impossible to do properly and frequently something would be bugged or poorly tuned in 10 man and 25 man and because of the immense workloaded of having all those difficulty modes meant things would be unfixed for months and months on end. And then you had all the people playing 10 man angry that their loot wasn't as good as the 10man heroic, 25 man and 25 heroic gear.

WoW was healthier and a more enjoyable experience during Vanilla and Burning Crusade compared to when they started shoving a billion difficulty modes into their end game content and made grouping instant. There's a reason why Classic WoW is getting more attention and hype than Battle for Azeroth received.

You also friend. WoW isnt dead far from it, it still has more players than GW2, and there are communities, just in wow you arent forced to join them to get anywhere. If you want to be a solo player in that game you can.

Again, these games are MMOs. There is nothing wrong with giving players solo content, but when your entire game revolves around it and gets built around it, you are playing the wrong game.

No one is saying WoW is dead. You can't deny though, the game has lost a LOT of players and its luster, to be fair: due to a majority of reasons which are unrelated to some of the issues here too.

@Tiviana.2650 said:If you want to step up and join a guild and take it up a level you can. Thats why its still popular, dont you get it? The old days are gone, and games that adhere to forcing people to always have to join a community to get anywhere are dying. Society has changed, evolve or get left behind. Ofc people here are going to say , then why play a mmorpg if you want to play solo?

It doesn't have to be a life. But you also do not have to get all and every reward with minimal commitment.

@Tiviana.2650 said:Vanilla WoW sucked it was a slog grindfest, nothing was balanced and doing anything took forever. I remember grinding reps that took months on end. Its all rose colored glasses and nostalgia that make you say it was the best. It was terrible.

Vanilla WoW was the most casual MMO of its time. Yes, it was grindy compared to todays standards, that's not the issue at heart though. The issue is: building a group and overcoming group content actually had an impact on a players experience.

Case in point:
  • remember one, any will do, significant moment which you experienced while running LFR or LFG. Besides maybe seeing content for the first time.
  • now remember any significant moment which you experienced while making your own group or overcoming some other type of challenge

I guarantee you, those experiences will be vastly different.

This is the delusion, in what world are you getting everything for nothing? That does not happen and never did. Listen just because you get some low ilvl purples dont mean you are getting the best. Man thats delusional, you work for it if you want the best gear and weapons, you work your butt off, time and skill. Those cheap epics are only there like exotics in this game to get you started. Oh hey ho about the gearing here man its sure rains loot easy..see how that goes? You can say the same here

LFR literally has a buff which stacks up preventing successive failure. That is beside the removed mechanics, reduced damage.

When participation is all that is required for reward, and success is guaranteed, then my statement is not a delusion.

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