World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

[Kes13a]

I understand there's been a lot of troll threads in these forums but I don't think skiros is a troll? He makes a lot of reasonable points and even when the titles are a little weird they are not on the same level as other posts I've seen that are straight up just "lgbt bad"...

uh.. focus on casual killed wow isnt a dead troll giveaway?

WoW catered to raiders and high end players.. thats what killed it, aside from sucking every ounce of fun out of any expansion... little to do with casuals except they left...

[Roflcopter]

uh.. focus on casual killed wow isnt a dead troll giveaway?

WoW catered to raiders and high end players.. thats what killed it, aside from sucking every ounce of fun out of any expansion... little to do with casuals except they left...

Pretty much. Every expansion that focused on the top end failed hard after Wrath. TBC still did fine despite being top heavy because it was still the most casual game on the market. Didn’t mean that 90% of the endgame was only ever seen by 1% of the players though. Every time they tried to cater to top players after Wrath failed. Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands… No one wanted to go back to overtuned heroic dungeons. I quit Cata after the first couple weeks of those idiotic heroic dungeons. I didn’t want to slog through Burning Crusade nonsense again. Didn’t have the time or patience for that crap. As for BFA forward? Yeah, not gonna do a Mythic+ 15 with some toxic windbag yelling at everyone just to get the gear I need. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Roflcopter]

Everquest was far harder and more unforgiving than WoW, but it never had that toxic angle to it. We all struggled together. Even early WoW felt that way. Eventually, it became an ordeal of dealing with the ego of other players and they felt entitled to abuse everyone else. Blizzard just fed into it and encouraged the behavior.

[SieyaM]

Everquest was far harder and more unforgiving than WoW, but it never had that toxic angle to it. We all struggled together. Even early WoW felt that way. Eventually, it became an ordeal of dealing with the ego of other players and they felt entitled to abuse everyone else. Blizzard just fed into it and encouraged the behavior.

I was playing EverQuest when WoW launched and I remember most everyone that played thinking WoW was just EQ for people the couldn't hack it in game. I mean WoW had already drawn maps and quest markers, talk about handing it to the players. Also who remembers having to travel by boat, not loading in fast enough and getting dropped into the ocean when it crossed a zone line? The atmosphere of EQ though was more of a group effort and led more to helping others get up to speed and knowledgeable rather than the environment WoW seems to have leaned into where it is all about proving yourself better than others.

[Roflcopter]

I was playing EverQuest when WoW launched and I remember most everyone that played thinking WoW was just EQ for people the couldn't hack it in game. I mean WoW had already drawn maps and quest markers, talk about handing it to the players. Also who remembers having to travel by boat, not loading in fast enough and getting dropped into the ocean when it crossed a zone line? The atmosphere of EQ though was more of a group effort and led more to helping others get up to speed and knowledgeable rather than the environment WoW seems to have leaned into where it is all about proving yourself better than others.

Wow has morphed to the expectation that everyone has mastered the content even before it is released. I mean they made a meme of expecting the heroic achievement for an invite to a day 1 normal raid, but that isn’t far from the truth.

[Shougun]

I was playing EverQuest when WoW launched and I remember most everyone that played thinking WoW was just EQ for people the couldn't hack it in game. I mean WoW had already drawn maps and quest markers, talk about handing it to the players. Also who remembers having to travel by boat, not loading in fast enough and getting dropped into the ocean when it crossed a zone line? The atmosphere of EQ though was more of a group effort and led more to helping others get up to speed and knowledgeable rather than the environment WoW seems to have leaned into where it is all about proving yourself better than others.

Not EQ but I remember missing a boat in FFXI and arriving to the party location like 30 minutes late because of it. . . . . Part of my brain is like "what good times" and the other part is trying to beat it up "YOU FOOL!". lol. I personally like the idea of trying to bridge the ease with the old-school-cool discovery and role play concepts. Like I think traveling is an important aspect of gameplay, but at no point would I be wanting people having to constantly do double digit marches on repeat. There has to be systems on systems to ensure an active cadence, and I do appreciate the drop in and drop out nature too (which I can understand is a preference and not a be all end all opinion).

Where you might say you're constantly putting up large problems but then also offering QoL / solutions to them not too long afterwards to quell them before they go from novel to absolutely irritating. Just since it's a recent example, say in Elden Ring they have loads of teleports but the mount is so fast and so fun that honestly you don't really need to use it all that often unless the journey is a huge distance. One thing I feel FFXIV could have done better is making 'movement' itself more fun, but that's time for another post lol.

Never had it happen to me at level 75, but there was a time in that dang jungle where I deleveled a few times..... I couldn't let my party wipe when someone linked but benediction was always pull the entire zone on you button lol.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Everquest was far harder and more unforgiving than WoW, but it never had that toxic angle to it. We all struggled together. Even early WoW felt that way. Eventually, it became an ordeal of dealing with the ego of other players and they felt entitled to abuse everyone else. Blizzard just fed into it and encouraged the behavior.

EverQuest did have some toxicity - like people who would train camps to kill everyone as in EverQuest all of your items would remain on your corpse and you could lose hours and hours of XP. People sometimes also fought / KS'd exceptionally rare spawns - things that could take hours or even a week to spawn.

EQ was special back in the day though as more often than not it was cooperative and your reputation in a small community where you can do very little solo mattered. That said, I was a teenager when I played that so I'd never go back to that design philosphy given how time consuming everything was.

[Roflcopter]

EverQuest did have some toxicity - like people who would train camps to kill everyone as in EverQuest all of your items would remain on your corpse and you could lose hours and hours of XP. People sometimes also fought / KS'd exceptionally rare spawns - things that could take hours or even a week to spawn.

EQ was special back in the day though as more often than not it was cooperative and your reputation in a small community where you can do very little solo mattered. That said, I was a teenager when I played that so I'd never go back to that design philosphy given how time consuming everything was.

That was more random rogue players being toxic though. Guilds and raids usually didn’t have that atmosphere.