World of Warcraft

[ZMOT]

While I can't comment on the first two expansions - Path of Fire and Heart of Thorns, I haven't exactly been able to go through them in quite a while - the story for the Icebrood Saga and especially End of Dragons is so thoroughly crammed full of troon shit that the game becomes practically impossible to enjoy. To break it down a bit:

the lore was always hit or miss, shitting all over GW1 (which depending who you ask got already ruined in EOTN). harley quinn wannabe scarlett briar was living season 1, which happened before any expansion, season 2 gave us diversity's edge after felicia day wanted more money and got kicked out.

and that's before you get into all the mechanical retardation (why lvl80? because WoW has it of course!), their devs being as incompetent as their writers and thinking all those retards would be able to create not one but TWO other games which went nowhere. right from the start there was this thorough feeling of "soullessness" permeating the game from top to bottom worse than your average kmmo.

arenanet are like the walmart-version of blizzard, but whereas blizzard has a way longer history, way more goodwill and retained talent for longer, anet only ever had GW1 and GW2 was so shit from the start you can't really call it "ruined". it's so pozzed and abused it just generates sadness how pathetic it all is... I can't even bring myself to hate it or react with anger because that would require attachment (the mentally ill freaks confuses that with sunken cost for pixie wings and other gay shit) as apparently most people do these days since no one really talks about it and people just shake their head in disgust.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

the lore was always hit or miss, shitting all over GW1 (which depending who you ask got already ruined in EOTN). harley quinn wannabe scarlett briar was living season 1, which happened before any expansion, season 2 gave us diversity's edge after felicia day wanted more money and got kicked out.

I admit; I actually enjoy GW2 back when I first got it. Admittedly, I hadn't actually played or looked up the lore for the first game until much later, so the fact that the game took so many potshots didn't actually affect me as much, but... looking at it now? Yeah, GW2 took a few too many potshots at a superior story; seriously, there's an entire questline dedicated to mocking the fate of Ascalon and downplaying the effects of The Searing from the original game.

I mean; do the devs really hate the fans of the original game that much? I mean, so much of GW2's plot is so... nonsensical compared to the first, like having the fucking Flame Legion join up with the other races, or having characters from the first game either pull a heel turn or be perfectly okay with the modern wokeshit. Looking at GW2 now, it almost feels like the game was specifically designed to piss off fans of the original for no apparent reason.

That's not getting into the fans, either; GW2's fans are some of the most braindead fucking retards I've seen, doing very little else other than praising Anet's shit almost blindly.

 

[Agarathium1066]

the lore was always hit or miss, shitting all over GW1 (which depending who you ask got already ruined in EOTN). harley quinn wannabe scarlett briar was living season 1, which happened before any expansion, season 2 gave us diversity's edge after felicia day wanted more money and got kicked out.

and that's before you get into all the mechanical retardation (why lvl80? because WoW has it of course!), their devs being as incompetent as their writers and thinking all those retards would be able to create not one but TWO other games which went nowhere. right from the start there was this thorough feeling of "soullessness" permeating the game from top to bottom worse than your average kmmo.

arenanet are like the walmart-version of blizzard, but whereas blizzard has a way longer history, way more goodwill and retained talent for longer, anet only ever had GW1 and GW2 was so shit from the start you can't really call it "ruined". it's so pozzed and abused it just generates sadness how pathetic it all is... I can't even bring myself to hate it or react with anger because that would require attachment (the mentally ill freaks confuses that with sunken cost for pixie wings and other gay shit) as apparently most people do these days since no one really talks about it and people just shake their head in disgust.

Anet was already pretty blatant with their lefty ideals and views. Had a tranny in their game long before it was as widespread as it is now. Immediately replaced characters with a gay couple. Shit like that. Hearing they've gone this far is really, really funny in that Goddamn what a shame sort've way.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I remember, wasn't there some drama of the devs making the pre-release Pandaren "too Japanese"? I remember reading that the Pandaren were originally more Japanese-themed initially, before some people found out and demanded that Blizzard change them.

I can actually answer that.

Yeah, one of the devs gave an interview. I can't remember if it was a GDC talk or press junket leading up to MoP, but there were concerns about how the Pandas were depicted in WC3 and how it could affect the potential market there.

Then, for MoP, there were other, more specific changes, like having Chen's eyes changed from green, because green eyes = demonic possession in China.

 

[Übertroon]

How did we get to the point where western MMOs make no sense and seem completely alien and foreign, while japanese and korean MMOs are perfectly understandable?

 

[StacticShock]

How did we get to the point where western MMOs make no sense and seem completely alien and foreign, while japanese and korean MMOs are perfectly understandable?

koreans were always gambling addicts and that is pretty much consistent be it woman, troon, furry or man and it predates on any other gambling addicts, cue in a bit of coombait because of the extremely anti-sexyness laws that they have and boom, loyal suckers, i mean customers.
western MMO's were a way to socialize but that was taken over by social media and they don't really try to stick to anything else.
when they do it's niche people, like EVE.

 

[Well Intentioned]

How did we get to the point where western MMOs make no sense and seem completely alien and foreign, while japanese and korean MMOs are perfectly understandable?

It's a problem that's part of basically any long running series or media. You see it with comic books, any TV show that has an ongoing narrative and, yeah, media properties like video games.

That's one of the reasons FF has had such longevity--all of the mainline stories are self-contained, and the ones that aren't (any of the FF7 extended stuff, a lot/all of the FF13 stuff, etc.) becomes a convoluted mess.

Warcraft was really nothing more than Good Guys vs Bad Guys/Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off. Then it became Dragonlance with the serial numbers filed off.

And now you've got a universe where you've basically ran the gamut--traditional fantasy, 'grimdark' fantasy, pseudo-sci fi fantasy, Lovecraftian-inspired fantasy, etc, etc.

There aren't a lot of directions for them to go into because they've run out of ways to up the stakes. So you get things that are more and more abstract and it's hard to form an attachment to it.

Human fighting orcs because they've invaded their homelands: easy to understand/grasp.
Fighting against abstract concepts and a villain whose schemes are so byzantine even the writers don't know what's going on, all so a blue troon can earn their pronouns: harder to grasp.

It's not exclusive to the 'woke brigades', either....TSR kinda ran that gauntlet and got increasingly weirder/esoteric with their materials, which ended up killing the company and letting D&D get scooped up by Wizards of the Coast.

 

[Tanner Glass]

How did we get to the point where western MMOs make no sense and seem completely alien and foreign, while japanese and korean MMOs are perfectly understandable?

Western MMOs (specifically World of Warcraft) have a pretty alien story just because they don't know how to write and are afraid to explore a topic that's even partially controversial, is written by a marketing/diversity team, and constantly escalates stakes in an attempt to be "better". The result is this jumbled mess or a product that doesn't really appeal to anyone.

It's also an issue of "we do not know our audience" - which is a writing issue but not a "woke" issue. It's literally a logistical issue - as the audience is extremely diverse. Some WoW players have been playing since 2004, some came in just for <RECENT EXPANSION>, some players skipped some expansions - so you have to write for every one of those players, meaning that every expansion is going to be basically starting from scratch because you have no consistency of what a player has "done".

In WoW you can level just via dungeons which you don't even have to unlock - meaning you can skip every single story zone in the game. Even if you were "story focused" - XP gain has been messed with so often that even if you just grind out quests you'll out level an entire expansion before you're 1/2 way though it. A lot of areas are "post game" areas (aka raiding hubs in patch content) that you'll never reasonably go through so all of that story may as well not exist (Firelands, Isle of QD).

Other games have approached the problem differently. FFXIV forces you through the story - meaning they know exactly where a player is at any given time and they can write the latest expansion as a direct follow up to the previous one without leaving anyone behind. SWTOR follows a similar approach as well IIRC. Other games are less story focused (New World, Lost Ark) as a result and a lot of older games are a bit more "sandboxy" (SWG, Ultima).

WoW should really turn the new player experience into a super condensed, streamlined, fun and exciting trip through all of the expansions - with an extreme focus on important story and fun dungeon/raid fights.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

WoW should really turn the new player experience into a super condensed, streamlined, fun and exciting trip through all of the expansions - with an extreme focus on important story and fun dungeon/raid fights.

Honestly? They should just cut out all the leveling. Fuck it. Just start with beginner dungeons and only progress up in ilvl.

 

[ZMOT]

Honestly? They should just cut out all the leveling. Fuck it. Just start with beginner dungeons and only progress up in ilvl.

this. linear progression can work - for 2, maybe 3 expansions. after that it becomes a clusterfuck (how many "stat crunches" did WoW have by now?). FF14 can get away with it via story, but I have firsthand experience of several people just burning out on the way before ever reaching cap (back when it still 70, second expansion, so not even that long). the better option is simply to decouple progression for the world, which would allow people to do story or whatever when they want in any way they want. FF14 does that at least in the sense you only ever have 1 character that can play every "class".
you'll also get people who'll whine about MUH IMMERSION and other dumb shit when keeping up with the level curve is the exact same thing just with numbers getting higher (fighting lvl10 mobs at lvl10 is more or less the same as fighting lvl20 mobs at lvl20).

you'll also better hope the company doesn't fuck it up through sheer ineptitude. for example: imagine a game that has a levelcap of 20, which you can reach pretty fast and afterwards 90% of the game is "on level" and endgame (with still plenty of shit to grind for and collect) - or a game that does the exact same fucking thing, but has a level cap of 80 for no reason at all, and suddenly "end game" is 3 fucking zones, with much less to grind. it's makes zero sense and is the best proof GW2 devs have no fucking clue about their own game.

I admit; I actually enjoy GW2 back when I first got it. Admittedly, I hadn't actually played or looked up the lore for the first game until much later, so the fact that the game took so many potshots didn't actually affect me as much, but... looking at it now? Yeah, GW2 took a few too many potshots at a superior story; seriously, there's an entire questline dedicated to mocking the fate of Ascalon and downplaying the effects of The Searing from the original game.

also depends if you played GW1. GW2 came at a time MMOs were more mainstream, so you had a lot of "new" people who simply didn't know better.

there was still an enjoyable game in there where I even got the 2 expansions at some point (on sale at least), and HOT always felt it was finally the game it was supposed to be from the start - which they promptly walked back on in POF, gg retards.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

It isn't like GW1's stories were particularly engaging - prophecies is a complete and utter clusterfuck and Factions has some of the best bad voice acting you can find around. But they were pioneering in that space and so many others - GW1 even having story campaigns was unusual and innovative for the time. Yet they also let you just go to max level if you just wanted to PvP, and unlock shit purely through just playing PvP.

The skill system was fucking ace even if it was unbalanced, because they had a fucking idea and they did what they could to realize it. Hard mode and vanquishes were a brilliant way to offer ludicrously grindy endgame options to turbo-autists that didn't quite get in the way for normal people, and funneling your playerbase into casual PvP or aesthetic rewards-tracks was genius. To top it off, the first three iterations drew lots and lots of influence from fantasy and mythos from around the globe, and the atmosphere in some of the areas is just gotyay. Kaineng City always blows me away anytime I revisit the game for a quick little jaunt. GW1 is rough around the edges but it has so much passion and tried so many weird, unusual things, it's impossible not to like.

I played a surprising amount of GW2, to the point of I think 100%-ing the initial map. I couldn't tell you why I did, though. The story and writing are bad, the unique systems were completely dismantled in favor of a shallow pool, and the rewards tracks felt more overtly like they were wasting my time than that they were an entertaining little stint to chase after something cosmetic. The PvP was fucking godawful from launch and never improved while I played, and there were just so many downright bad ideas thrown in because...? Like, the original GW had a lot of useless skills and non-choices, but there were so many more of them that it really didn't matter. I'm still salty that the era of 'trying new things' is effectively gone from online RPGs, and it seems like every company tries as hard as they can to exclusively steal someone else's idea and never dip their toes into anything new - unless it's a stupid, unnecessarily complicated system vis a vis WoW.

 

[spacko]

The skill system was fucking ace even if it was unbalanced, because they had a fucking idea and they did what they could to realize it. Hard mode and vanquishes were a brilliant way to offer ludicrously grindy endgame options to turbo-autists that didn't quite get in the way for normal people, and funneling your playerbase into casual PvP or aesthetic rewards-tracks was genius. To top it off, the first three iterations drew lots and lots of influence from fantasy and mythos from around the globe, and the atmosphere in some of the areas is just gotyay. Kaineng City always blows me away anytime I revisit the game for a quick little jaunt. GW1 is rough around the edges but it has so much passion and tried so many weird, unusual things, it's impossible not to like.

reminder that GW1 had no subscription model. you bought the game or the expansions once and that was it. fuck, you didn't even need to own the Prophecies core game to play the expansions. and this was back when a lot of people still had only dial-up connections

i'm also pretty sure you could pay real money to unlock skills and gear (strictly for PvP) which was purely a timesaver since you unlocked most of the PvP content by doing PvE. it was a couple years in though (i think) before they started adding things like bag space and cosmetics. But yeah GW1 even had a microtransaction system which actually reminds me heavily of PoE now that I think about it

How did we get to the point where western MMOs make no sense and seem completely alien and foreign, while japanese and korean MMOs are perfectly understandable?

japs dont give a fuck about the western market, don't need it and couldn't care less about tailoring their games for it. So not every game that comes out is the same cosmetic/pvp whale style monetization model that has been carefully crafted to extract as much money as possible while delivering as little video game as possible. sometimes they actually make a game that video gamers actually want to play instead of refining the money milking method, spending more on psychologist and behavioural experts than they do on production

Diablo Immortal is the logical conclusion for western video game development. its the pinnacle, the greatest video game ever made in their eyes

EDIT: Is there a board where we could discuss the shit that ANet has done with GW2 these days? Because some of the crap that the devs pulled deserves its own board, I think.

i want to know this too because really i just wanted an excuse to post this

i'm still super mad at blizzard for fucking up WoW so badly. Classic could have been so, so fucking good if they actually cared

i really do feel sorry for zoomers. they have no idea how good being a gamer used to be

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

i really do feel sorry for zoomers. they have no idea how good being a gamer used to be

Let's be honest, they do it to themselves,. They sit on youtube/twitch/ whatever and just watch streamers play shit, then just copy whatever streamers do. WoW "classic" was never gonna happen because the game has already been played, and zoomers are just going to copy streamers and memes.

 

[Shidoen]

Let's be honest, they do it to themselves,. They sit on youtube/twitch/ whatever and just watch streamers play shit, then just copy whatever streamers do. WoW "classic" was never gonna happen because the game has already been played, and zoomers are just going to copy streamers and memes.

I honest to god just wanted the vanilla experience when I played but I didn’t receive. Other than Chromie or Turtle is there any other private server that can come close?

 

[ZMOT]

I honest to god just wanted the vanilla experience when I played but I didn’t receive. Other than Chromie or Turtle is there any other private server that can come close?

major part what made vanilla great was the "community", as much as I loathe that word. the playerbase in 2022 is completely different to 2004, just like the internet at large.

if you can correctly analyze what made the "vanilla experience" for you, you can either try to find it somewhere else or have to come to grips with the fact that time is gone.

 

[Übertroon]

major part what made vanilla great was the "community", as much as I loathe that word. the playerbase in 2022 is completely different to 2004, just like the internet at large.

if you can correctly analyze what made the "vanilla experience" for you, you can either try to find it somewhere else or have to come to grips with the fact that time is gone.

I would say it was the right combination of gameplay and world that emphasized community experiences, and a rich story and lore which piqued interests of players and was heading in a sensible direction.
After about a decade the gameplay had evolved into being 90% just grinding the same daily areas, dungeons, and raids. The story meanwhile sort of lost the plot once you defeated all the big bads from already established lore.

 

[Radola Gajda]

They've shit on Nelves since WoW started and haven't shown any interest in stopping. Their home city got burnt, their zones all got overran in events, and all of their heroes get dick-kicked or made a fool of in one way or another. Even when Tyrande gets an alleged empowerment she still fails to kill anyone of note save for a single Valkyr.

When it comes to the Belves the only thing I can think of that's vaguely in the Void Elves favor is their people already had a history of playing with fire in order to save themselves or gain more power. So its mildly hypocritical but not enough to make their argument invalid. The Void Elves are a genuine threat and its reasonable for them to be restricted.

They're a stupid ass 'Sub race' and I think they came to exist purely as an idea to dab on people who wanted High Elves. Everything they are is the exact opposite of the Helves. They even had their most important character making a swipe in an annoyed quote. Blizzard sure loves being spiteful to their fans.

Yeah I wanted to write same . So I will just add few points. Whole night Warrior scenario was hyped as revenge for nelves. But it ended up being story how much Nathanos (Danusers self insert) is cool . Thing is when it came out on ptr it was so ridiculous that they got shit even from shills . So they toned it down bit.

 

[74164978231]

I did enjoy the fact all the void elves are banned from silvermoon. Their proximity corrupts the sunwell.

Should be queued to her corrupting it.

The fact Alleria and her husband coming back to Azeroth after the events of Legion lead to absolutely nothing and those characters had zero presence in "battle for azeroth" aside from a few throw away pieces of dialogue underscores how insanely retarded the writing team at Blizzard is.

Alleria returning should have been a layup for giving Alliance High Elves which would have very much pleased the fanbase and also make sense lore wise(omg our old leader returned? Lets unite!). Instead they came up with this ungodly retarded void elf storyline and gave The Alliance emo elves which was not at all what players wanted. Furthermore those characters could have been a logical focal point for starting conflict(oh hey my homelands are occupied by undead? fuck that gtfo) instead nope, never used in the entirety of BFA.

Fucking retards of the highest order. Instead the people who run Blizzard have zero problems letting some 40 year old balding waifu simp lead their writing team and it shows.

 

[GenociderSyo]

The scene she became a void elf always made me laugh since they forced you to see it at the end of EVERY seat of the triumvarite. Her face completely says SUPRISE VOID ELF BUTT SEX.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Honestly? They should just cut out all the leveling. Fuck it. Just start with beginner dungeons and only progress up in ilvl.

While that's interesting conceptually, they don't have the dungeons for it and they've already heavily invested in the overworld leveling (twice in fact).

They would need to steal from FFXIV to do that - in that the earlier dungeons are laid out in order of relative difficulty and represent a progression of learning.

WoW would have to retool a bunch of dungeons - and then abandon a whole lot more to facilitate it. They have a bad habit of earlier dungeons (Wailing Caverns, Deadmines) being substantially more complicated than ones that appear later (Stockades) and have no real interesting mechanics that differentiates them from one another. I know they tried to revamp some of them via Cataclysm but they're mostly gimmicks instead (Cookie's food eating, controllable cannons, etc) of real mechanics.

Leveling is conceptually fine in WoW - it just needs another pass. Primarily - they don't know what kind of content to put into it, they've got like 10 expansions worth of leveling content but a character only needs like 5% of it to hit max level. They want it to be a vehicle for the story but 90% of leveling quests are entirely disconnected from the story and could be called filler, and they have a lot of story in post-leveling content that never got recycled.

My ideal WOTLK newbie leveling experience would just be Icecrown and a mix of the leveling and post-game dungoens and raids, ending with the ICC raid. You could do a similar thing across each expansion in order that takes up 5-10 levels each.