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

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

It's because of that that WoW players are so much toxic and burned out. They expect everyone to be a Master on their first time and are cruel towards players that aren't. It's why so many are leaving WoW as they're tired of it.

WoW's story is complex. After WotLK, Blizzard went to great lengths to casualize the game and basically turned it into a queue simulator where gear was thrown at you for free. They genuinely believed they would gain more subs this way. Most classes were simplified/pruned in Cataclysm and onward. The core gameplay of pretty much every class is even today extremely boring as a result of that enormous pruning process. There is very little, if any, skill expression left in any of the classes - a chimp could smash buttons and play WoW well.

Blizzard has attempted to band-aid fix this recently by adding some of the old abilities back, but unfortunately this hasn't been enough to undo the damage they inflicted upon the game. Yes. It is true that in terms of end-game progress the WoW of today has gone in the opposite extreme and transformed itself from a casualfest to a hardcore Korean grind MMO simulator. However, the core gameplay still remains extremely easy, casual, convenient, without depth and mind-numbingly boring.

That's the issue.

WoW doesn't know who it's catering to anymore. They're trying to appease everyone and in the end are just angering everyone.

FF14 knows its audience and what its doing is working. FF14 also doesn't expect people to play the game like a second job and encourages cooperation. Meanwhile WoW is the opposite of that.

FF14 also encourages doing content from all expansions while everything before the current expansion doesn't matter to WoW. Heck, once the player hits a certain level the game forces the player into Shadowlands.

The immense grinding also lends towards the game being extremely anti-alt (when in Cataclysm they encouraged Alts), anti-casual, and takes up a ton of time every day. Its burning players out as they have to do all that grinding just to play the content they want.

[Imoye]

WoW doesn't know who it's catering to anymore. They're trying to appease everyone and in the end are just angering everyone.

FF14 knows its audience and what its doing is working. FF14 also doesn't expect people to play the game like a second job and encourages cooperation. Meanwhile WoW is the opposite of that.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I remember thinking the WotLK story was awesome lol, in hindsight it's a bit dumb.
I do think the Death Knight stuff was really cool tho and the Siege of Undercity scenario, but ultimately it mostly felt like nice set pieces.
Thinking back to it tho it was probably when I paid the most attention to the story in WoW but a lot of that was nostalgia too since I was a huge Warcraft 3 fan.

The lore up until and including WotLK was absolutely fantastic. The game itself, however, never presented the lore in a very good way, but it was enough to build a sense of almost unrivaled mystery and fascination.

[hagare]

The game itself, however, never presented the lore in a very good way, but it was enough to build a sense of almost unrivaled mystery and fascination.

That's an understatement. WoW players have been blindsided finding out that Sylvannas has a brother lmao.
Kind of the consequence of having the lore from outside materials.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

That's an understatement. WoW players have been blindsided finding out that Sylvannas has a brother lmao.
Kind of the consequence of having the lore from outside materials.

They're also blindsided that apparently everyone was under mind control by the Jailer at some point or another, the Jailer is responsible for every event, and that Sylvanas apparently had her soul split off-screen so they could give her a pass for every evil deed she did because "an evil man made her do it" and "she was crazy at the time".

And what's with all the Windrunner sisters having a Human white dude as their lover? Are the Devs just self-inserting themselves into romancing the Windrunners?

[hagare]

They're also blindsided that apparently everyone was under mind control by the Jailer at some point or another, the Jailer is responsible for every event, and that Sylvanas apparently had her soul split off-screen so they could give her a pass for every evil deed she did because "an evil man made her do it" and "she was crazy at the time".

And what's with all the Windrunner sisters having a Human white dude as their lover? Are the Devs just self-inserting themselves into romancing the Windrunners?

ah yes. the good old mind control trick so we don't have to replace NPCs