So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

[CosmicKirby]

I've been playing wow for years, and not once have they failed to make things different from expansion to expansion. The things they've done haven't always made some people happy, but they were different nonetheless, and not treading the well worn path they always had been.

(Anyone who actually played WoW during WOD, knows EXACTLY what this means.)


How many times in EITHER MMORPG here, did you:

- Run a dungeon you had already completed?
- Run a dungeon you had already completed to obtain a token currency for loot?
- Run a dungeon you had already completed to obtain an item with a very low drop rate?
- 'Farmed' for an item by killing a mob repeatedly, or 'gathering' the same thing repeatedly.
- Decided to idle or hang around the same spot in game.
- Ever done a 'DAILY' question, more than once. (The very idea of a DAILY quest belies repetition.)
- Rose a reputation in EITHER game to its highest level. In both cases requiring some or multiple of the above.
- Tried to build an Anima weapon or level your Artifact weapon in WoW

The very bread and butter of the MMORPG is repetition. In some sort of bizarre way. Most MMORPG players want something that is 'difficult' to obtain that we can use as a marker of our success. A very accepted, (though criticized) way of doing this is to require devotion or a large grind to get something, the other less popular way is through sheer difficulty. Everyone in an MMORPG wants something that feels 'special' or 'unique' to them or their character. And the only way you can do that is to either lie to the player and treat them as unique when they're not, or to make something so difficult to obtain they really are relatively unique in earning it.


Repetition isn't bad. It's just a slightly lazy and potentially manipulative way to design something. But if you enjoy it for what it is there's nothing wrong with it. I am utterly baffled how you don't see repetition is a very core mechanic of design in MMOs. Any 'addictive' game is 'guilty' of the same thing.


Beyond ALL this. Anything WoW has added since Cataclysm, has basically been directly uplifted from their competition having an idea that played well and potentially drove their playerbase towards it. You can see this with their heavy focus on Story they borrowed from FF14, you can see this with World events they borrowed from GW2 and FF14, and you can see this with Artifact Weapons being a singular evolving big pretty weapon you develop over time like FF14 Animas. 'Different' also implies originality, which is worth pointing out that WoW isn't really that beast anymore.