WoW - did the same thing, over and over, expansion after expansion. The final nail in the coffin was when the lore started to get real random and many previously good characters took a really poor turn in character development (for no reason, really).
GW2 - my friends never stuck around. They did not really get hooked in the endgame content. The lore was pretty terrible too, getting worse with each expansion.
Aion - Never got any friends to play with.
BDO - Massive p2w, korean loot RNG and PvP monopoly.
(Edit) Forgout about Star Wars: The Old Republic - ... EA. EA just does that to games.
I've never fully quit WoW, but like many, I've played on and off over the years
No one ever truly quits WoW, they just take really long breaks 😂
I played WoW 10 days.
Then I took 13 years break.
I tried again until I reached the first big city where I noticed that somebody was annoying me with a motor trike. I realized is a goblin NPC and that I cannot find a horse to ride, only some chocobo looking bird. And I closed the game.
I think is too late for me now to get into WoW especially that AoC is coming in 3..6 months.
Oh yeah, Aion! Forgot about that one. I liked the flying, but my GF at the time got vertigo when we flew Combined with the P2W aspects, we didn't play for more than a couple of months.
I left EQ2 they day they added an unannounced somewhat pay-to-progress cash shop to the game.
I left Archeage when I realized the entire gameplay loop had no challenge component to it. You farm to get coin to buy better gear so that you can better protect yourself while you farm.
The loop needed something else in it. Something with a challenge to it.
" Bad Companies don't deserve your Forgiveness, James ... ... "
" Bad Companies deserve that You remember them ~ hold onto your rightful grudges ... ... ... ... ... that You DON'T tolerate and wave through the intentional Decisions to ruin what made a Game fun - and insert shitty Alterations and Changes to satisfy their Greed ... ... ... "
" At last we will support Ashes of Creation against these shitty Companies ... ...
... ... ... at last we will have Revenge ... ... "
I have way to much Fun creating Comments like this one. 😁 . 😂
So this is what Withdrawl from monthly Presentations do to you. =P Oh !! A new Presentation is out.
But honestly now,
i see so many relatable Comments and Statements in the last Days. I had such Experiences as well.
Ngl, that post made me laugh quite a bit, thankfully i already got a form of "revenge" against NCSoft even if somewhat indirectly, i still won't forgive NCSoft tho. 😂
Tried it during WotLK. Even though I liked Warcraft 3 and castom maps a lot, getting into WoW was painful.
I even started playing with friends but could not force myself to continue past the lvl cap. Combat was super stale, PvP was horrible (in all aspects) and midlvl dungeons were so easy I was falling asleep. Some people were repeating that I just need to reach lvl cap, but I'm sorry to say the game should be fun and interesting for all lvls.
- Aion
Was playing from the start to 2.0. was having a blast. Dungeons in midlvls were challenging (not too much) because everyone was geared in green and blue (if you are good) equipment. pvp in rifts and abyss was a blast (seiges were messy but fun because the server was luckily equally split).
I stopped playing because the game direction was rubbing me the wrong way in terms of repetitiveness, mindless grind. Plus, the server was getting infested with bots and gold sellers. (aaaand I got addicted to LoL)
- Lost Ark
Played from the start for about half a year+.
I liked the game a lot, but the ungodly monetization and daily quest slavery were too much. It was so bad regarding money that even if you played 24/7, you would not be able to catch up to donors (and I'm not talking about whales). I have no problem with monthly subscriptions or overpriced skins in shops, but korean companies greed has no limit.
- Blade and Soul
Started playing even before the game had an overseas launch. The best solo PvP in any MMORPG. By far. Late-game dungeons were truly a challenge. Not in a raid and coordination of a big crowd kind of way, but in a personal skill way. There are no supports or healers to fix your mistake.
I stopped playing because real life had me in a chokehold and the developers didn't know what to do with the game.
- Lineage
Lasted for a week or so. Not that the game was bad, but the quest system and story were abysmal.
- Archage
Played almost from day one. Loved all the new (for me) gameplay with farming, economy, housing, and naval. But the dungeon aspect of the game was not it.
Other games I tried all had one or more of the following problems, and it was hard to ignore them:
1) I tried the game too late when the hype was gone and patches killed everything that was good about it.
2) Inhuman monetisation.
3) Graphics. And I'm not talking about high standards. example: played BDO for one day and deleted because my eyes were hurting after like 30 min gameplay.
Tried it during WotLK. Even though I liked Warcraft 3 and castom maps a lot, getting into WoW was painful.
I even started playing with friends but could not force myself to continue past the lvl cap. Combat was super stale, PvP was horrible (in all aspects) and midlvl dungeons were so easy I was falling asleep. Some people were repeating that I just need to reach lvl cap, but I'm sorry to say the game should be fun and interesting for all lvls.
WOTLK was hands down the best expansion for WoW of all time, it was the best of both worlds PvE & PvP, so if only you stuck it out a bit longer haha considering it was also the most played, most active too
Before Blizzard sold off everything. There was definitely passion put into that expac and could easily feel that experiencing it live. From the Arena down to the heroic Lich King raid which was by far one of the most enjoyable ever
WOTLK was hands down the best expansion for WoW of all time, it was the best of both worlds PvE & PvP, so if only you stuck it out a bit longer haha considering it was also the most played, most active too
Before Blizzard sold off everything. There was definitely passion put into that expac and could easily feel that experiencing it live. From the Arena down to the heroic Lich King raid which was by far one of the most enjoyable ever
Well, I'm not saying everything was bad. There were many great aspects of the game, and I'm sure the endgame content was fun and engaging at that time. But I just couldn't force myself anymore because combat is too static for my taste, and by extension, pvp is bland. In early Aion, one dive into the rift into enemy territory on any lvl of progression gave me more thrill and enjoyment than all the time I spent in WoW.
BTW, I tried to start WoW three more times after the first attempt. No luck, sadly.
WOTLK was hands down the best expansion for WoW of all time, it was the best of both worlds PvE & PvP, so if only you stuck it out a bit longer haha considering it was also the most played, most active too
Before Blizzard sold off everything. There was definitely passion put into that expac and could easily feel that experiencing it live. From the Arena down to the heroic Lich King raid which was by far one of the most enjoyable ever
Well, I'm not saying everything was bad. There were many great aspects of the game, and I'm sure the endgame content was fun and engaging at that time. But I just couldn't force myself anymore because combat is too static for my taste, and by extension, pvp is bland. In early Aion, one dive into the rift into enemy territory on any lvl of progression gave me more thrill and enjoyment than all the time I spent in WoW.
BTW, I tried to start WoW three more times after the first attempt. No luck, sadly.
Happens man, people just find the games that fits their play style. I really hope AoC takes off, nothing else I want more right now than a good MMO with the graphics, the skill-shots (aiming and shooting people instead of all auto hits), the uniqueness feel of classes, the end game content and progression. So far from everything I have seen on Ashes it really looks like it’s going to tick those boxes ✅
Few things I’m looking forward to, is the open dungeons & raids, the ow & nodes, the arena, naval combat & sieges and just the damn scenery’s too
What would you say to those who are clinging to the current iteration of WoW?
I see this a bit similar like a certain Streamer from Texas.
Many of these People i think, have just invested such an incredible Amount of Time into the Game, that they have a hard Time of letting go.
MAYBE +20% of the Players have actually really that much Fun as when the Game was just the older Version they fell in Love with.
But already 6 Years ago, i noticed the Amount of " quiet and quieter Players " growing. So many People have no Time for anything anymore. They run from one Grind to the next.
In all Fairness - i doubt very much that most of the Community is still choosing WoW to have their best Time. I think many of them are just unable to let go for different Reasons.
Of Course -> this excludes relatively new Players who just hadn't had their fill of WoW just yet.
Do you think we will be able to adjust to the Ashes play style and get along with it?
This is a good Question, because many of us get just older and not younger. (heheheh^.^;")
I bet in the Beginning some or maybe even many of us will struggle a little bit - but i doubt this Game will be as hard as some Souls-Titles or God beware -> the "newer" Lords of the Fallen.
Right now - and i dare say this as a Person with chronical Concentration Disorder since my Birth -> i can't imagine someone having great Trouble to adapt to Playstyles in Ashes, who managed everything decently in World of WoW-Token Craft.
It is exciting actually. All things, Classes, Races, Mechanics - everything that has to do with your Character, down to Movement Controls itself, will be so refreshing and new.
Dare the Ascend, Koltovince. >;-]
Rise like a Phönix from the Ashes and attain your new Character. >:-]
For many MMO I quit playing because of one word... homogenization. This can be felt in many ways though.
- When all classes start getting access to all ways of play styles and no class feels different from the other.
- When gear for just about every build you want you need the same stats so there is no diversity really even though there is other stats in the game, there is no effective way to use them.
- When every quest you do is the same variation of 3 types of quests just in different areas with no meaning behind them and no impact.
- Even if everyone gears the same way and this causes them to look exactly the same it can be a turn off (I don't think this will be an issue in AOC but just another example)
- When class buffs all do the same sort of stat buffs instead of more intricate interactions setting them apart.
I took my leave of both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV for similar reasons.
Both games sacrificed a considerable amount of their established world building and began valuing immersion and consistent storytelling less and less. Despite supposedly being fantasy settings, they were also increasingly plagued by characters that spoke and acted like modern day real world teenagers rather than inhabitants of a fantasy game world with heavy medieval and classic fantasy influences.
I like it when peasants and bandits are a little rough around the edges and both holy knights and the nobility speak in a dignified manner.
There's so many different reasons that contributed to me falling out of love with both games, in all honesty - and it'd take way too long for me to list them all. So I think I'll focus on highlighting how a shift away from the original target audience towards something entirely different is perhaps the biggest reason.
In terms of actual content, I found that FFXIV was particularly guilty of making the majority of the game world lack any difficulty whatsoever. I find it very boring when there's minimal exploration and no secrets to uncover all whilst most enemies hit like wet noodles and never provide a meaningful threat.
I really hope this game doesn't lean too heavily into becoming a power fantasy at the expense of everything else - I want to team up with other players to face down powerful enemies, not stomp them effortlessly. It is important, in terms of narrative appeal, for threatening enemies to be intimidating. Too many games these days will build up a compelling antagonist or villain only to have them accomplish absolutely nothing of note which leads to stagnation - especially if the protagonists are bereft of any lasting consequences.
Combat Upgrade 2 for Star Wars Galaxies. The rest of the MMOs I quit at max level because they just haven't held me like Star Wars Galaxies. I hope Ashes will be different and similar to Star Wars Galaxies. It was SWG References that got me interested in Ashes in the first place.
I'd say, regardless of which game I quit, it was all for the same reason (except for when Sony or EA decided to ruin the game) - and that reason was because the people I played with quit. I'll suffer through any crappy game out there as long as I'm with my peeps. It's all about being with people, be that friends or family. I can't think of a single game I've stuck with once my friends/guild moved on.
i havent logged in to check on the forums in quite a while since i am trying to limit my ashes consumption until i can play it in its different forms. I can theorycraft my way into burnout on a game and just hope peoples feedback on updates helps without me partaking lol Saw this post and i liked reading peoples thoughts here
for me it was 3 bigger games in my life in the mmo vein
-Dofus
it has some issues with pacing/drops [imo] where it feels like how i want it to feel on its permadeath server that has x3 exp/loot drop rate which is part of my reasons to quit, nowin days its basically p2w which i dont like but its not like im going to get this kind of game somewhwere else, and when i did play solo leveling was significantly better than grouping for me which is kinda ehh
-Final Fantasy XIV
frankly class design/combat feel is a huge issue for me. I believe someone else mentioned it but it is suffering the homogenization issue along with i never liked it's gearing. Personal expression in gameplay or class play is important to me and it really lost what little it had to me. I think that they decided to dumb down classes to increase boss design difficulty for hard content and then also made non hard content so bland to try and meet the worst players at their level
-Warframe
not really mmo since just multiplayer live service, but it kinda falls into time commitment matching my other mmo times. I played it from its initial release on steam until like 2020 but stopped because i finally accepted they wanted a different game (power fantasy) vs release version being more difficult and not so heavy on the power fantasy that i was clinging to. There was just no reason to put any effort into playing the game i could use the most un-optimized garbage build on anything and sweep the floor of the mobs and their endless modes 'difficulty' was just add a 0 onto the hp&damage of the mobs
i think i heard some aspects of warframe changed since then but it is still power fantasy at its core philosophy so i havent really gone back
to add i also think with all my online gaming a lot of it turns into me slowly being forced into solo/pug play as i like to spend my time doing a lot of things but im not going to play min/max 18hrs a day do this one activity have 0 fun playing for the sake of efficiency and im also not super casual 1hr a day max kind of person either which are the two groups of people i know
-FF11, quit after item level was introduced, it completely ruined the game.
-WoW, quit after I got tired of watching Blizzard be completely lost, and sick of them wasting my time.
-FF14, quit after I completed the EndWalker storyline. (which was great btw) But at this point Yoshi-P had dumbed down the game to the point it was no longer challenging or fun, in order to draw in as big an audience as possible.
Their class redesigns ruined BRD/BLM/SMN, my 3 favorite Jobs. Yoshi mains Black Mage but still never managed to fix Firestarter, which has been broken for at least 8 years because he doesn't know how to play BLM and neither do their Devs...it's fucking sad.
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ILLPeonUMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Had I known games would only regress I would of never left Dark Age of Camelot, who knew they would be dogshit 20 years later.
TwitchTV Streamer: The Hidden Dagger Inn Saturday's 5:00 PM Cst
Had I known games would only regress I would of never left Dark Age of Camelot, who knew they would be dogshit 20 years later.
But the Reason " why " they became absolute Dogshit - at least a few of them - is and stays the same.
Greed.
Some Developers think it is okay to just punk and scam the Community later on by completely changing the Gameplay from what the Players were baited into buying the Game at first - and then taking the piss and "hopefully" so they think - going away with as much Money in the Pockets as possible.
Why i can claim such a thing ?
What makes me so confident it goes like this ?
-> The Rise AND FALL, of Planetside Two.
First +Three Months plus late Beta before - AWESOME.
Then, "Lattice" came into the Game - turned the Game into a stupid Meatgrinder - and Boom the Game slowly started to die.
Now they don't even have enough Players anymore to have all Regions on the Continents unlocked. So to say, forcing Players into EVEN MORE compressed Lanes than before.
These People should be sued and then dispossessed from their Wealth and Property to make a deterrend Example out of them.
This Crap would be over in One to Two Years. And the few remaining Companies who would STILL try this Crap with changing the Game after cashing in a huge Amount of Money from the Players, would follow in the Footsteps of those who would lose all they have.
It is always amazing how "Scam" is a worldwide acknowledged Crime. Yet in the Video Game Industry, People are acting like it is completely normal and acceptable.
-WoW, quit after I got tired of watching Blizzard be completely lost, and sick of them wasting my time.
They aWOKE to something that has no place in any kind of media I think and as always, it ruins the escapism aspect of said media, which results in a loss of immersion once again and it is only downhill from there on out.
This reminds me of another reason why I too cannot stand Blizzard anymore.
And that is that Blizzard... never really did what I wanted to see as an Alliance player.
I quit wow in the later half of BfA but I am still watching the game's course of course, since I cannot restrain my still persisting curiousity. In Dragonflight they brought in the Drakthyr's, which are pretty much a Dragonified Humanoid race.
They were created as a warrior tool race since they were easier to "massproduce" than Dragons apparently.
So far so good, okay.
I also remember than in good old WoW Vanilla somewhere in either 2004 or 2005, I stormed the giant balcony on the side of the Blackrock, where we would encounter the final boss of the Blackwinglair raid, an adult black Dragon, which back in the day was about the apex of big creature combat.
Later on Dragons got "nerfed" to kinda highlight the characters ever growing might.
But that is not important, no.
What is important is that in this bossfight at the end of this raid, the Blackdragon called for help from his own, Drakonoid troops which came to his aid. And we all loved it.
This was the time when we wanted to somehow play even more of the cool Warcraft species or races, that existed in the lore of the game.
Some of us even fantasized about a 3rd faction, made up of species with influence of the old gods.
Like
° Qiraji, Naga, the black Dragonflights Drakonoids... and one other which I currently forgot, to fill in the qouta of this faction also featuring 4 races like the Alliance & Horde did, back in the day.
We wanted HIGHELVES since Vanilla and when Blizzard started to introduce the concept of "Allied Races" from different humanoid species, in the Legion expansion, we were all hella excited.
We thought we would get Highelves finally. The "mostly clean energy using", original "magic Elves" who allied with the Alliance since long before the Alliance encountered the Nightelves.
And Blizzard never gave them to us, officially that is. They later on, lazily as usual and with what feels like SPITE, gave all races who used the Highelf/Bloodelf model, simply the options to make Elves with the Highelven hair- & skin coloration, so that we could technically... "make us a Highelf", even when Allianceplayers have to use a "Void Elf" as a base, to this day.
A subgroup of the Thalassian Elves, which ARE the Highelves & Bloodelves.
To "finally shut us up" about it. A lame skin- & hair coloration job so as to say they have actually no intention to make it an official recruitment scenario, so that "HIGHELVES" become a playable allied race, with their own racials and flavour.
NOPE... just threw the appropriate visuals in our face and thats it.
After having been pestered for 17 years or so, this is what they came up with.
It couldn't have been lazier, more demotivated, reluctant and spiteful.
+ They turned the Eredar from pure Demons into the demonic version an alien mortal race, that... still lives for about 20.000 years on average... which no one wanted, but everyone accepted cause, their theme was a bit cool to be honest.
+ Then they gave us Worgen. Something else that no one wanted and further started to destroy the faction identity theme the Alliance & Horde had. The Alliance was the beautiful, noble one faction and the Horde was the wild & ugly, but honorable faction from a barbarian's standpoint.
The Worgen were too bestial for the Alliance fit and had better fit into the Horde, but... oh well.
Of course Blizzard wrote the lore like this that they had much better reasons to join the Alliance.
+ Panda's for everyone and Pandaren joined both factions
From that point onwards I was barely caring anymore and I already came only back to WoW every 2 or 3 years or so... and most often only for a halfyear subscription.
And now this.
Now that I have quit, I have to look at this.
The "Drakonoids" that we always wanted, the tall beefy bois... ruined and turned into SOYBOYS because of the times we live in and due to some whiny losers in office positions, being afraid of masculinity and the original, bodybuilder esthetic that WARCRAFT always had.
The normal Human model to this day, is a damn bodybuilder if one looks closely.
How can THE AVERAGE HUMAN spawn more muscles than A DRAGON RACE CREATED FOR WAR?!
I can't man. I just can't.
Storywriting = cringe & feminized. Escapism compromised.
Some alliance citys were "diversified" in secrecy too. Escapism compromised.
Anti "toxic masculinity" design ingame = escapism compromised!!!!
I guess as long as the gameplay is good none of this would truly matter.
But it has become stale & generic over decades. Remained the same with barely any twists & improvements.
And you always run around in the hamsterwheel of endless grinds which some people cheer on, because they view it as a badge of honor to have their livetime wasted for something that they believe, has more value BECAUSE it has taken so long to acquire.
I just can't anymore man.
We got Highelves finally but they are not Highelves officially.
We have the Drakonoids finally but they look like Soyboys!
Arthas -> disrespected.
Nathanos -> thrown away too.
Sylvannas -> cringe "Wamen cannot do wrong" writing.
Dragons in Dragonflight = behaving like modernized, reigned in versions of themself with no bite.
And as usual... those "modernized" personalities the protagonists of the story show, mirror the emptyness, how hollow they actually are and also how lonely the writers themself must be, in their personal lifes.
No accountability, emotionally unstable, "craving family" but at the same time rejecting THE traditional gender roles which have resulted in a safe, stable family model that has worked for reallife millenia.
I do not know if Ashes will have such cinematic & cutscene like storytelling like WoW has.
But I sure hope it won't try to please this thing which does not exist and is called "the modern audience".
I played many MMO´s and all of them failed me in some way at the end.
Dark Age of Camelot:
I loved to play twohanded paladin. But every utility he had was taken away with the introduction of the alchemy profession and he had lower offesiv and defensive capability a other class the armsman(warrior) so i never was invited into goups again.
Guild Wars 1:
After i finished my PvE progression and got every skill i needed to farm gold i looked into PvP.
There where only very few Competetiv groups that didnt look for any Members and i lost interest while only playing with random Players.
World of Warcraft:
For me the PvE got kind of boring because you farm some gear only for it to be replaced a few month later.
The PvP is kind of ok but i think the arena style boring without objectives other then "kill the enemy" and people arent willing to "train" together to get better together. If you loose 2-3 games in a row you never see them again. And the time to kill is a bit to fast for my taste when someone uses all cooldowns and you are just 1/3 of a second of with your defensive.
Also i dont like that you kind of only play the UI. You can do nothing without the right addons.
Guild Wars 2:
The casual PvE is ok but also a bit to easy. I never looked into highend PvE.
The arena style PvP is great aspecialy because you can get in so easy (no grinding required) but what keeps me from playing is the unbelivable low time to kill.
Elder Scrolls Online:
The only thing that keeps me away is the build diversity. Every build need´s all of a number of buffs and you have to cycle the abilities that gives you this buffs to keep up them active.
With that you are forced to take 3-6 abilities and have only a few slots left to make your "build"
Black Desert Online:
Im not a fan of the "fighting game" style gameplay and for the few levels i played it seemd that i only use the same 2-3 combos to do dmg.
Albion Online:
Kind of fun but not enough buttons to press.
Mortal Online:
Dont like the first person perspective and that spells need ressources to be cast at the end its just left and rightklick you have to press.
Warhammer Online:
I only played PvP and it was a lot of fun until a friend showed me an addon that let you configurate a rotation and you only had to press the one button and you could never fail again. As long as i played with the addon it felt like cheating and was very boring and after i deinstalled the adddon i thought every lost fight "i would have won if i used the addon and my enemy propebly did use it"
Wildstar:
Was a fun game but i was full in on WoW at the time.
This is consistent for every game: once 90% of my time is spent toward <1% gain in stats, rep, etc aka the hamster wheel at end game.
In WoW it is not even the endgame it is just everywhere and it never stops!
Blizzard put some factions in the game in every expansion. And the amount of lifetime you have to put into the grinds for every faction NEVER decreases no matter how old the expansion or faction is.
And since the game ever grows, the grind too always grows.
No matter how little one cares for the completionist mentality, it just does not feel good to be a new player and stand in front of the Mt.Everest, and know that there are even +8 more Mt.Everests on top of it.
This is just crazy!
World of Warcraft:
For me the PvE got kind of boring because you farm some gear only for it to be replaced a few month later.
The PvP is kind of ok but i think the arena style boring without objectives other then "kill the enemy" and people arent willing to "train" together to get better together. If you loose 2-3 games in a row you never see them again. And the time to kill is a bit to fast for my taste when someone uses all cooldowns and you are just 1/3 of a second of with your defensive.
Also i dont like that you kind of only play the UI. You can do nothing without the right addons.
You put together all the problems that appeared when "The Burning Crusade" first released.
Arena came in the game and made PvP pretty much an Arena only game.
And this was the first time my epics from the 40 man raids of Classic became invalidated.
I never again managed to become someone with gear just worlds above the casual and every route I could go in an attempt to do so again, just looked bo~ring as hell.
And the addons! Oh the addons!
Horrible. World of Addoncraft we said even back then.
If only we knew how much more ways Blizzard would find to turn the game into a puppeteered corpse, far off the glory it once was.
You put together all the problems that appeared when "The Burning Crusade" first released.
Arena came in the game and made PvP pretty much an Arena only game.
And this was the first time my epics from the 40 man raids of Classic became invalidated.
I never again managed to become someone with gear just worlds above the casual and every route I could go in an attempt to do so again, just looked bo~ring as hell.
And the addons! Oh the addons!
Horrible. World of Addoncraft we said even back then.
If only we knew how much more ways Blizzard would find to turn the game into a puppeteered corpse, far off the glory it once was.
TBC was a great expansion, everything you have said couldn’t be more wrong mate, Battlegrounds were played to get the 75,000 honour to then buy the PvP gear (which was for PvP only due to resilience stats) so you can’t use PvP gear to do PvE with, you had to grind dungeons for PvE gear to then compete in PvE raiding
Equivalent of doing battlegrounds to then compete in an Arena team, you then required certain rating to get the next piece of Arena gear, it was a great progression system that rewarded your skills, instead of everyone just getting a handout.
There was no LFG, you had to be part of a team, you had to socialise and find people or make friends with people to then train and get better with, and if you left the team you would lose all Arena progression, for PvE was the same for being part of a guild and working your way to a starting roster
As someone who did both it was an awesome expansion of the game, the Arena created a fast paced, high skill cap competitive PvP scene and for PvE there heroic raids were filled with difficult challenges and mechanics, both requiring to be working as a team to succeed
Also, in regards to PvE Sunwell Plateu, the Kil’Jaeden fight and Black Temple were some of the coolest mechanics for its time, you could feel the amount of effort and passion that went into that expansion that you rarely see nowadays sadly
EDIT: Also forgot to mention the OW PvP that came with Isle of Queldanas, that expac and WOTLK really had it all
Easy format. Write the name of the MMO and explain why you cannot look at it anymore.
Which will hopefully lead to Ashes not adopting the same signs of what made you divorce your first great MMO love.
My first and only MMO that made me happy beyond compare was World of Warcraft.
Everything fell into place perfectly. Maybe because I did not had any reference before but everything just felt right.
Leveling was a bit too slow but I didn't care cause the gameworld was immersive and beautiful.
My character, a Paladin I leveled and played as Retributionpaladin, could stand his own in the openworld PvP and casuals were so many that no one bothered my lack of actual controllable dps in PvE instances.
During the 40 man raids during the end of Vanilla I had to specc holy of course since the DPS of a Retripala has always been an uncontrollable russianroullete and who has time for that when the healingcapacity of Palas in Vanilla was one of the most mana conserving in the entire game?
And with AQ40 gear, going to the Alteracvalley battleground was much more fun than going to Naxxramas.
Yes I crushed casuals and I do not regret it a tiny bit. I am a superior being and my character reflected that.
Why I quit playing WoW entirely.
Cause I just did everything I wanted and the game has become something that just cannot interest me anymore.
My last 7 months, 6 by halfyear subscription +1 with the WoW token, was during BfA. With the first 6 months starting and the other 1 month somewhere during the time this landscape had release where we went to Queen Ashzara's landscape.
I did not played Shadowlands.
I sure as hell do not plan to play Dragonflight.
And whatever comes afterwards.
Why?
Because I've unlocked every allied race I was still interested in and dripped them out quite nicely.
And because I can already see what I would do during all of the next expansions.
Grinding more "transmogs" (who cares about itemlevels really) for roleplay reasons... and never be done with it as usual. You are never done with anything anymore.
The grinds are never ending and this makes WoW feel like a job.
I was once enjoying to be a PvP menace. Then I became a PvE'ler and a RP'ler.
But I never wanted to become a hamster in a wheel and farm stuff forever due to their lifetime disrespectingly low dropates.
And this is coming from me, who has his fair share of 1% drop mounts.
There is only one thing that could make me come back to WoW at this point and that is if I get every single transmog for free now that is in the game and have all new one's automatically unlocked the moment they are added to the game.
Why? Cuz I am a f°°°ing god and I should be treated like a King.
Not even joking these are my genuine feelings.
But I know this will never happen due to the nature of WoW being a grinding & farming game. ^_^
Which is okay of course. But I am someone who takes his lifetime very seriously and I just cannot respect it anymore to not be treated like a demigod at the very least, for having invested so much lifetime into the game already and still not be done with just about everything.
... so that I can focus on the true activities I would like to pursue in the current WoW.
Which are... standing around in random locations in the game world, dripped out and doing ROLEPLAY with likeminded individuals and having a good time.
WoW PvP is dogshit boring since BurningCrusade released the first time.
PvE -> just watch Asmongold, regarding raiding.
And do not even get me started on the storywriting.
A~nd this is why I quit WoW and am happy with it. So whatever it is that Ashes of Creation will be doing and I hope it avoids.
+ Not too many 1% droprates that are also locked behind a +30 minute instance progression once every week
+ Timelimited stuff that makes people depressed forever for having missed out the timewindow in which it was available
+ Immortal healers in PvP due to damage for some reason laughably nerfed compared to general healing potential
This is all already.
If these three steps are followed I cannot see why I would become unhappy in the future AoC.
Thanks for reading.
I'll focus only on WoW as this was the only MMO that had me coming back for many, many years. Played a lot during TBC to Cata, and then less and sporadically during MoP, before quitting. I came back a month during WoD, and then again for a short while in Dragonflight, only to realize the game I loved had transformed into something hideous.
But to the point of constructive criticism as of why I (and I imagine many other) quit that'd benefit AoC.
1. The vibe changed from a feeling of being a nobody in a big world on an adventure which seemed to have no apparent end - into one being the sole gigachad superhero waiting in a queue to save the world.
This, I think, is a critical problem for an MMORPG as the idea is to spend many years within the same evolving world. The players must feel a balance in the world - both that they're getting stronger/knowledgeable, but also that they're still nothing in comparison to the ultimate dangers of said world. There should always be more than a few humbling opponents, and perhaps ones that only select few guilds can even get a grip on. These serve as mythical things, which most casual players will only hear about, and this serves the feeling of a dangerous world where not all things may be achievable for everyone playing - but become a goal for many.
2. Vertical progression instead of horizontal made the earlier expansions redundant and empty. They could had focused on adding achievable zones, skills, specs, gear, exploration, lore, and adding more content for PvP and PvE to the ongoing stage at least every other expansion.
3. The community got worse after making all content both easier (raid finder), harder (mythic), and making the social/travel aspect irrelevant (dungeon finder). It also makes the game feel ambivalent as to what it is - are the feared end-game bosses actually no-brainers that can be beaten by any group - while the narrative tells us the opposite. It took any coherence and feeling of adventure away. And today, I can't describe it as anything other than a small (as in, still relevant) open-world lobby game mainly focusing on dopamine farming instead of telling a compelling story (which is the basis for Roleplay).
4. They didn't listen to the community - and they also listened too much - but mostly on things that they perceived would increase accessibility (and therefore profits). There have always been great critics of both PvP and PvE for WoW, and likewise has there been even more ones without a clue. So the game developers need to identify the good ones, and balance their criticisms with strong core principles that outline the world lore and each specific class fantasy.
I think that's pretty much about it, without going into even more details.
Battlegrounds were played to get the 75,000 honour to then buy the PvP gear (which was for PvP only due to resilience stats) so you can’t use PvP gear to do PvE with, you had to grind dungeons for PvE gear to then compete in PvE raiding
Yeah and that was everything that turned PvP into shit. Resilience was the biggest garbage that Blizz ever did and as you can see, it has not survived. The unnecessary split between PvP & PvE just because in Classic the Tier sets that were locked behind pure PvE raid content, were worlds appart from pretty much most of the gear you could obtain through PvP.
This was when Healers became OP cause resilience only affected dmg & burst dmg and healers had a much easier time to pretty much leave damagedealers in the dust and "above the maxlevel", or itemlevel in that sense and then everybody became halfaway immortal compared to before.
Before PvP was dynamic and there was no guaranteed win-meta.
Even the biggest sweats could die in seconds if just neatly focussed by +2 or 3 casuals at the same time.
But then even PvP encounters became like instanced combat where you fight only "elite" portait mobs, that always survive a certain time...
... so that even the most reflexe dust covered Healer could react in time and start healing.
Healers were already the Kings of PvE back then, cause most raids could not work without them.
And then they were also made the Kings of PvP cause now it was a 90% win ratio for any group everywhere that had a healer when the others had not, or had TWO HEALERS when the other group only had ONE.
That was not impressive. And it never will be.
It was lame, it created lamer-class combo's and wannabe-exalted meta-playstyles that no one wanted but a few wannabe-elitists who NO ONE IS LOOKING AT ANYWAY in any hub city.
It pissed of the casual PvP playerbase, the elitist PvE playerbase which I belonged to back then and it still totally devalued the battlegrounds, cause the best gear was still gladiator gear.
That was absolute dogsh°° and Blizzard did good to reverse that.
My last PvP experience in WoW was the Southshore vs Hillsbrad brawl with an arcane mage. In BfA.
It felt like I was the only player who could actually efficiently KILL somebody.
I had to play the most manacosting skilltree and I think the fact that my main attack is an invisible shot that only "impacts" on a player without a clear line of fire, was the reason people often reacted way too late to it and could not flee anymore.
Apart from it that a mage does very reliable damage of course.
This is how PvP should be. Not a sweaty wannabe-e-sports like pro-match between some stupid sweat teams but something the casual playerbase enjoys.
And no damage reducing stats like resilience who turn a +4 to 8 second kill into a +22 to +32 second kill EACH AND EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Do not even try to say TBC was good.
It was horrible dogsh°° and made PvP from 10% toxic to 90% toxic in one fellow swoop.
No one cares about the best teamspeak teams that do not even rank +10 or +15 people and it all takes place in some kind of cagefight arena.
I am here to play a fantasygame with vast fields of valor & glory.
Not to be some kind of fantasy mortal combat streetfighter in a caged in dogfight.
The battle for Minas Tirith was cooler than the battle in Balin's tomb with one single cavetroll.
I guess that scenario was also interesting but not CONSTANTLY until I hopefully reach a certain ranking with my team to hope for the BEST AND ONLY CURRENCY IN THE GAME that could give us "PvP purples".
Horrible. Pui!
Just remembering that feels like stepping into sh°° on a sidewalk.
WoW - did the same thing, over and over, expansion after expansion. The final nail in the coffin was when the lore started to get real random and many previously good characters took a really poor turn in character development (for no reason, really).
The Reason for the Atrocity that is the whole Storyline of BfA and Shadowlands and EVEN Dragon-Flight,
is " Wokeness ", though.
Sylvanas gets superstrong suddenly and in her obnoxious Girlboss-Mentality commits a Genocide on all Nightelves on Darnassus.
Then, to fight a superpowerful, empowered Whamen, Tyrande becomes the Nightwarrior and becomes the next empowered, superpowerful Whamen. (lol)
Then Sylvanas just " flies off " - ( i am NOT SHITTING ANYONE HERE ) ( she ACTUALLY just "flew off" despite being surrounded by Alliance AND HORDE after calling the Horde a "Nothing". )
Then, Sylvanas RIPS (LOL!!) the Helm of Domination of Bolvar-Lichking apart, after she just "defeats" him with some Chains as if she is the Jailer. So jeah, Jailer gave her the weird Power-up,
that long Story short gets NEVER EXPLAINED during the whole Story of Shadowlands.
Because "superpowerful Whamen" she rips the Helmet to Shreds with her bare Hands.
Then Tyrande follows her into the Shadowlands - along with us, the Players - and a handful more important NPC's and/or Race-Leader NPC's, like Bane or Thrall and so on. Bolvar also joins the fray, only to get shot once again (lol) by Sylvanas in Torghast.
Tyrande MASSACRES herself through Torghast like a unstoppable force of Nature, because superpowerful Whamen and so on and Girlboss that needs no Man,
THEN - and i kid' you not - "CHOKES AN UNDEAD" with Sylvanas in the Ardenwald-Cinematic when she finally catches her and prevents Sylvanas from flying off again. (hahahahah)
But because " Whamen " can not do anything wrong - Sylvanas is suddenly not "BAD" anymore, (LOL?)
because she turns on that " ONE. GUY. " who is kinda immortal - and who can not just be killed, similar like all the other "Eternals", "Ancients", or whatever the Landscape Leaders of the Shadowlands-Countries are called.
Oh !! And because she got "the better/good Part of her Soul back" (lol?) which was apparently RIPPED AWAY from her when Arthas fatally stabbed her with Frostmourne in Warcraft III.
Then everyone gangs up on the Jailer - who had the worst Lines and Logic behind his Agenda since Thanos from Marvel. No, actually - he was written EVEN WORSE than Thanos.
Then, because " Whamen " can never do wrong
NO MATTER how many World Tree's they burn and no matter HOW MANY Innocents they roast alive or let them suffocate in endless Masses of Smoke because the damn WORLD.TREE. is burning all around them,
Sylvanas gets forgiven and we all roll our Eyes already in Annoyance about when she one Days returns.
Dragon-Flight ?
Also kinda a Wokeness Adventure.
So we come to these Islands,
who similar like Pandaria, were shut away from the World and the Entrance to there gets unsealed, re-opened, whatever, just in Time when a new Story is needed.
What is this ?
Where are the Dragons ? The Aspects ? Hey, cool. Sabellian from Burning Crusade is back !! (O_O)
But why do these Dragons feel weird ? EVEN Wrathion, despite him being in Character the most.
Why do they feel like emotionally unstable, sometimes a bit whiny Humans - who just happen to be able to transform into Dragons ?
Who is this Team Rocket Team ? Four Mega-Hyper-GIGA-Elemental-Protodrakes that seem so powerful OMG they could be the next great Threat right after Deathwi~
AAANNND they're dead.
Two of them.
Another One is away to Herald the Start of the next Expansion a.k.a. the War within,
and the only other "WHAMEN" (lol!) aside from Raszageth has OF COURSE turned over and joined the good Side, because Whamen can never do wrong or anything evil.
I swear if " The War within " is the FORTH EXPANSION in a Row now with a woke'ish Storyline, i will pay freakin' GAUNTER O'DIMM from the Witcher Series to stab a goddamn KNIFE into my Throat and let it sit there until he see's the Life leave my Eyes.
Yes, even if he is a fictional Character and i have no Idea actually how i could ever summon him.
Kidding.
But damn sometimes WoW makes me feel like Someone should just finally end me.
Comments
GW2 - my friends never stuck around.
Aion - Never got any friends to play with.
BDO - Massive p2w, korean loot RNG and PvP monopoly.
(Edit) Forgout about Star Wars: The Old Republic - ... EA. EA just does that to games.
I played WoW 10 days.
Then I took 13 years break.
I tried again until I reached the first big city where I noticed that somebody was annoying me with a motor trike. I realized is a goblin NPC and that I cannot find a horse to ride, only some chocobo looking bird. And I closed the game.
I think is too late for me now to get into WoW especially that AoC is coming in 3..6 months.
Oh yeah, Aion! Forgot about that one. I liked the flying, but my GF at the time got vertigo when we flew
I left Archeage when I realized the entire gameplay loop had no challenge component to it. You farm to get coin to buy better gear so that you can better protect yourself while you farm.
The loop needed something else in it. Something with a challenge to it.
Ngl, that post made me laugh quite a bit, thankfully i already got a form of "revenge" against NCSoft even if somewhat indirectly, i still won't forgive NCSoft tho. 😂
Aren't we all sinners?
Tried it during WotLK. Even though I liked Warcraft 3 and castom maps a lot, getting into WoW was painful.
I even started playing with friends but could not force myself to continue past the lvl cap. Combat was super stale, PvP was horrible (in all aspects) and midlvl dungeons were so easy I was falling asleep. Some people were repeating that I just need to reach lvl cap, but I'm sorry to say the game should be fun and interesting for all lvls.
- Aion
Was playing from the start to 2.0. was having a blast. Dungeons in midlvls were challenging (not too much) because everyone was geared in green and blue (if you are good) equipment. pvp in rifts and abyss was a blast (seiges were messy but fun because the server was luckily equally split).
I stopped playing because the game direction was rubbing me the wrong way in terms of repetitiveness, mindless grind. Plus, the server was getting infested with bots and gold sellers. (aaaand I got addicted to LoL)
- Lost Ark
Played from the start for about half a year+.
I liked the game a lot, but the ungodly monetization and daily quest slavery were too much. It was so bad regarding money that even if you played 24/7, you would not be able to catch up to donors (and I'm not talking about whales). I have no problem with monthly subscriptions or overpriced skins in shops, but korean companies greed has no limit.
- Blade and Soul
Started playing even before the game had an overseas launch. The best solo PvP in any MMORPG. By far. Late-game dungeons were truly a challenge. Not in a raid and coordination of a big crowd kind of way, but in a personal skill way. There are no supports or healers to fix your mistake.
I stopped playing because real life had me in a chokehold and the developers didn't know what to do with the game.
- Lineage
Lasted for a week or so. Not that the game was bad, but the quest system and story were abysmal.
- Archage
Played almost from day one. Loved all the new (for me) gameplay with farming, economy, housing, and naval. But the dungeon aspect of the game was not it.
Other games I tried all had one or more of the following problems, and it was hard to ignore them:
1) I tried the game too late when the hype was gone and patches killed everything that was good about it.
2) Inhuman monetisation.
3) Graphics. And I'm not talking about high standards. example: played BDO for one day and deleted because my eyes were hurting after like 30 min gameplay.
WOTLK was hands down the best expansion for WoW of all time, it was the best of both worlds PvE & PvP, so if only you stuck it out a bit longer haha considering it was also the most played, most active too
Before Blizzard sold off everything. There was definitely passion put into that expac and could easily feel that experiencing it live. From the Arena down to the heroic Lich King raid which was by far one of the most enjoyable ever
Well, I'm not saying everything was bad. There were many great aspects of the game, and I'm sure the endgame content was fun and engaging at that time. But I just couldn't force myself anymore because combat is too static for my taste, and by extension, pvp is bland. In early Aion, one dive into the rift into enemy territory on any lvl of progression gave me more thrill and enjoyment than all the time I spent in WoW.
BTW, I tried to start WoW three more times after the first attempt. No luck, sadly.
Happens man, people just find the games that fits their play style. I really hope AoC takes off, nothing else I want more right now than a good MMO with the graphics, the skill-shots (aiming and shooting people instead of all auto hits), the uniqueness feel of classes, the end game content and progression. So far from everything I have seen on Ashes it really looks like it’s going to tick those boxes ✅
Few things I’m looking forward to, is the open dungeons & raids, the ow & nodes, the arena, naval combat & sieges and just the damn scenery’s too
I see this a bit similar like a certain Streamer from Texas.
Many of these People i think, have just invested such an incredible Amount of Time into the Game, that they have a hard Time of letting go.
MAYBE +20% of the Players have actually really that much Fun as when the Game was just the older Version they fell in Love with.
But already 6 Years ago, i noticed the Amount of " quiet and quieter Players " growing. So many People have no Time for anything anymore. They run from one Grind to the next.
In all Fairness - i doubt very much that most of the Community is still choosing WoW to have their best Time. I think many of them are just unable to let go for different Reasons.
Of Course -> this excludes relatively new Players who just hadn't had their fill of WoW just yet.
This is a good Question, because many of us get just older and not younger. (heheheh^.^;")
I bet in the Beginning some or maybe even many of us will struggle a little bit - but i doubt this Game will be as hard as some Souls-Titles or God beware -> the "newer" Lords of the Fallen.
Right now - and i dare say this as a Person with chronical Concentration Disorder since my Birth -> i can't imagine someone having great Trouble to adapt to Playstyles in Ashes, who managed everything decently in World of WoW-Token Craft.
It is exciting actually. All things, Classes, Races, Mechanics - everything that has to do with your Character, down to Movement Controls itself, will be so refreshing and new.
Dare the Ascend, Koltovince. >;-]
Rise like a Phönix from the Ashes and attain your new Character. >:-]
- When all classes start getting access to all ways of play styles and no class feels different from the other.
- When gear for just about every build you want you need the same stats so there is no diversity really even though there is other stats in the game, there is no effective way to use them.
- When every quest you do is the same variation of 3 types of quests just in different areas with no meaning behind them and no impact.
- Even if everyone gears the same way and this causes them to look exactly the same it can be a turn off (I don't think this will be an issue in AOC but just another example)
- When class buffs all do the same sort of stat buffs instead of more intricate interactions setting them apart.
Both games sacrificed a considerable amount of their established world building and began valuing immersion and consistent storytelling less and less. Despite supposedly being fantasy settings, they were also increasingly plagued by characters that spoke and acted like modern day real world teenagers rather than inhabitants of a fantasy game world with heavy medieval and classic fantasy influences.
I like it when peasants and bandits are a little rough around the edges and both holy knights and the nobility speak in a dignified manner.
There's so many different reasons that contributed to me falling out of love with both games, in all honesty - and it'd take way too long for me to list them all. So I think I'll focus on highlighting how a shift away from the original target audience towards something entirely different is perhaps the biggest reason.
In terms of actual content, I found that FFXIV was particularly guilty of making the majority of the game world lack any difficulty whatsoever. I find it very boring when there's minimal exploration and no secrets to uncover all whilst most enemies hit like wet noodles and never provide a meaningful threat.
I really hope this game doesn't lean too heavily into becoming a power fantasy at the expense of everything else - I want to team up with other players to face down powerful enemies, not stomp them effortlessly. It is important, in terms of narrative appeal, for threatening enemies to be intimidating. Too many games these days will build up a compelling antagonist or villain only to have them accomplish absolutely nothing of note which leads to stagnation - especially if the protagonists are bereft of any lasting consequences.
I would love to open a Topic in this Forum only just for the Sake of asking.
" WHO do You think is the shittier Company ? Activison Blizzard - or "EA" ? "
But i think this would probably be to toxic a Topic, no matter how justified the Question is.
for me it was 3 bigger games in my life in the mmo vein
-Dofus
it has some issues with pacing/drops [imo] where it feels like how i want it to feel on its permadeath server that has x3 exp/loot drop rate which is part of my reasons to quit, nowin days its basically p2w which i dont like but its not like im going to get this kind of game somewhwere else, and when i did play solo leveling was significantly better than grouping for me which is kinda ehh
-Final Fantasy XIV
frankly class design/combat feel is a huge issue for me. I believe someone else mentioned it but it is suffering the homogenization issue along with i never liked it's gearing. Personal expression in gameplay or class play is important to me and it really lost what little it had to me. I think that they decided to dumb down classes to increase boss design difficulty for hard content and then also made non hard content so bland to try and meet the worst players at their level
-Warframe
not really mmo since just multiplayer live service, but it kinda falls into time commitment matching my other mmo times. I played it from its initial release on steam until like 2020 but stopped because i finally accepted they wanted a different game (power fantasy) vs release version being more difficult and not so heavy on the power fantasy that i was clinging to. There was just no reason to put any effort into playing the game i could use the most un-optimized garbage build on anything and sweep the floor of the mobs and their endless modes 'difficulty' was just add a 0 onto the hp&damage of the mobs
i think i heard some aspects of warframe changed since then but it is still power fantasy at its core philosophy so i havent really gone back
to add i also think with all my online gaming a lot of it turns into me slowly being forced into solo/pug play as i like to spend my time doing a lot of things but im not going to play min/max 18hrs a day do this one activity have 0 fun playing for the sake of efficiency and im also not super casual 1hr a day max kind of person either which are the two groups of people i know
-WoW, quit after I got tired of watching Blizzard be completely lost, and sick of them wasting my time.
-FF14, quit after I completed the EndWalker storyline. (which was great btw) But at this point Yoshi-P had dumbed down the game to the point it was no longer challenging or fun, in order to draw in as big an audience as possible.
Their class redesigns ruined BRD/BLM/SMN, my 3 favorite Jobs. Yoshi mains Black Mage but still never managed to fix Firestarter, which has been broken for at least 8 years because he doesn't know how to play BLM and neither do their Devs...it's fucking sad.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHiddenDaggerInn/featured
But the Reason " why " they became absolute Dogshit - at least a few of them - is and stays the same.
Greed.
Some Developers think it is okay to just punk and scam the Community later on by completely changing the Gameplay from what the Players were baited into buying the Game at first - and then taking the piss and "hopefully" so they think - going away with as much Money in the Pockets as possible.
Why i can claim such a thing ?
What makes me so confident it goes like this ?
-> The Rise AND FALL, of Planetside Two.
First +Three Months plus late Beta before - AWESOME.
Then, "Lattice" came into the Game - turned the Game into a stupid Meatgrinder - and Boom the Game slowly started to die.
Now they don't even have enough Players anymore to have all Regions on the Continents unlocked. So to say, forcing Players into EVEN MORE compressed Lanes than before.
These People should be sued and then dispossessed from their Wealth and Property to make a deterrend Example out of them.
This Crap would be over in One to Two Years. And the few remaining Companies who would STILL try this Crap with changing the Game after cashing in a huge Amount of Money from the Players, would follow in the Footsteps of those who would lose all they have.
It is always amazing how "Scam" is a worldwide acknowledged Crime. Yet in the Video Game Industry, People are acting like it is completely normal and acceptable.
This reminds me of another reason why I too cannot stand Blizzard anymore.
And that is that Blizzard... never really did what I wanted to see as an Alliance player.
I quit wow in the later half of BfA but I am still watching the game's course of course, since I cannot restrain my still persisting curiousity. In Dragonflight they brought in the Drakthyr's, which are pretty much a Dragonified Humanoid race.
They were created as a warrior tool race since they were easier to "massproduce" than Dragons apparently.
So far so good, okay.
I also remember than in good old WoW Vanilla somewhere in either 2004 or 2005, I stormed the giant balcony on the side of the Blackrock, where we would encounter the final boss of the Blackwinglair raid, an adult black Dragon, which back in the day was about the apex of big creature combat.
Later on Dragons got "nerfed" to kinda highlight the characters ever growing might.
But that is not important, no.
What is important is that in this bossfight at the end of this raid, the Blackdragon called for help from his own, Drakonoid troops which came to his aid. And we all loved it.
This was the time when we wanted to somehow play even more of the cool Warcraft species or races, that existed in the lore of the game.
Some of us even fantasized about a 3rd faction, made up of species with influence of the old gods.
Like
° Qiraji, Naga, the black Dragonflights Drakonoids... and one other which I currently forgot, to fill in the qouta of this faction also featuring 4 races like the Alliance & Horde did, back in the day.
We wanted HIGHELVES since Vanilla and when Blizzard started to introduce the concept of "Allied Races" from different humanoid species, in the Legion expansion, we were all hella excited.
We thought we would get Highelves finally. The "mostly clean energy using", original "magic Elves" who allied with the Alliance since long before the Alliance encountered the Nightelves.
And Blizzard never gave them to us, officially that is. They later on, lazily as usual and with what feels like SPITE, gave all races who used the Highelf/Bloodelf model, simply the options to make Elves with the Highelven hair- & skin coloration, so that we could technically... "make us a Highelf", even when Allianceplayers have to use a "Void Elf" as a base, to this day.
A subgroup of the Thalassian Elves, which ARE the Highelves & Bloodelves.
To "finally shut us up" about it. A lame skin- & hair coloration job so as to say they have actually no intention to make it an official recruitment scenario, so that "HIGHELVES" become a playable allied race, with their own racials and flavour.
NOPE... just threw the appropriate visuals in our face and thats it.
After having been pestered for 17 years or so, this is what they came up with.
It couldn't have been lazier, more demotivated, reluctant and spiteful.
+ They turned the Eredar from pure Demons into the demonic version an alien mortal race, that... still lives for about 20.000 years on average... which no one wanted, but everyone accepted cause, their theme was a bit cool to be honest.
+ Then they gave us Worgen. Something else that no one wanted and further started to destroy the faction identity theme the Alliance & Horde had. The Alliance was the beautiful, noble one faction and the Horde was the wild & ugly, but honorable faction from a barbarian's standpoint.
The Worgen were too bestial for the Alliance fit and had better fit into the Horde, but... oh well.
Of course Blizzard wrote the lore like this that they had much better reasons to join the Alliance.
+ Panda's for everyone
From that point onwards I was barely caring anymore and I already came only back to WoW every 2 or 3 years or so... and most often only for a halfyear subscription.
And now this.
Now that I have quit, I have to look at this.
The "Drakonoids" that we always wanted, the tall beefy bois... ruined and turned into SOYBOYS because of the times we live in and due to some whiny losers in office positions, being afraid of masculinity and the original, bodybuilder esthetic that WARCRAFT always had.
The normal Human model to this day, is a damn bodybuilder if one looks closely.
How can THE AVERAGE HUMAN spawn more muscles than A DRAGON RACE CREATED FOR WAR?!
I can't man. I just can't.
Storywriting = cringe & feminized. Escapism compromised.
Some alliance citys were "diversified" in secrecy too. Escapism compromised.
Anti "toxic masculinity" design ingame = escapism compromised!!!!
I guess as long as the gameplay is good none of this would truly matter.
But it has become stale & generic over decades. Remained the same with barely any twists & improvements.
And you always run around in the hamsterwheel of endless grinds which some people cheer on, because they view it as a badge of honor to have their livetime wasted for something that they believe, has more value BECAUSE it has taken so long to acquire.
I just can't anymore man.
We got Highelves finally but they are not Highelves officially.
We have the Drakonoids finally but they look like Soyboys!
Arthas -> disrespected.
Nathanos -> thrown away too.
Sylvannas -> cringe "Wamen cannot do wrong" writing.
Dragons in Dragonflight = behaving like modernized, reigned in versions of themself with no bite.
And as usual... those "modernized" personalities the protagonists of the story show, mirror the emptyness, how hollow they actually are and also how lonely the writers themself must be, in their personal lifes.
No accountability, emotionally unstable, "craving family"
I do not know if Ashes will have such cinematic & cutscene like storytelling like WoW has.
But I sure hope it won't try to please this thing which does not exist and is called "the modern audience".
Dark Age of Camelot:
I loved to play twohanded paladin. But every utility he had was taken away with the introduction of the alchemy profession and he had lower offesiv and defensive capability a other class the armsman(warrior) so i never was invited into goups again.
Guild Wars 1:
After i finished my PvE progression and got every skill i needed to farm gold i looked into PvP.
There where only very few Competetiv groups that didnt look for any Members and i lost interest while only playing with random Players.
World of Warcraft:
For me the PvE got kind of boring because you farm some gear only for it to be replaced a few month later.
The PvP is kind of ok but i think the arena style boring without objectives other then "kill the enemy" and people arent willing to "train" together to get better together. If you loose 2-3 games in a row you never see them again. And the time to kill is a bit to fast for my taste when someone uses all cooldowns and you are just 1/3 of a second of with your defensive.
Also i dont like that you kind of only play the UI. You can do nothing without the right addons.
Guild Wars 2:
The casual PvE is ok but also a bit to easy. I never looked into highend PvE.
The arena style PvP is great aspecialy because you can get in so easy (no grinding required) but what keeps me from playing is the unbelivable low time to kill.
Elder Scrolls Online:
The only thing that keeps me away is the build diversity. Every build need´s all of a number of buffs and you have to cycle the abilities that gives you this buffs to keep up them active.
With that you are forced to take 3-6 abilities and have only a few slots left to make your "build"
Black Desert Online:
Im not a fan of the "fighting game" style gameplay and for the few levels i played it seemd that i only use the same 2-3 combos to do dmg.
Albion Online:
Kind of fun but not enough buttons to press.
Mortal Online:
Dont like the first person perspective and that spells need ressources to be cast at the end its just left and rightklick you have to press.
Warhammer Online:
I only played PvP and it was a lot of fun until a friend showed me an addon that let you configurate a rotation and you only had to press the one button and you could never fail again. As long as i played with the addon it felt like cheating and was very boring and after i deinstalled the adddon i thought every lost fight "i would have won if i used the addon and my enemy propebly did use it"
Wildstar:
Was a fun game but i was full in on WoW at the time.
In WoW it is not even the endgame it is just everywhere and it never stops!
Blizzard put some factions in the game in every expansion. And the amount of lifetime you have to put into the grinds for every faction NEVER decreases no matter how old the expansion or faction is.
And since the game ever grows, the grind too always grows.
No matter how little one cares for the completionist mentality, it just does not feel good to be a new player and stand in front of the Mt.Everest, and know that there are even +8 more Mt.Everests on top of it.
This is just crazy!
You put together all the problems that appeared when "The Burning Crusade" first released.
Arena came in the game and made PvP pretty much an Arena only game.
And this was the first time my epics from the 40 man raids of Classic became invalidated.
I never again managed to become someone with gear just worlds above the casual and every route I could go in an attempt to do so again, just looked bo~ring as hell.
And the addons!
Horrible. World of Addoncraft we said even back then.
If only we knew how much more ways Blizzard would find to turn the game into a puppeteered corpse, far off the glory it once was.
TBC was a great expansion, everything you have said couldn’t be more wrong mate, Battlegrounds were played to get the 75,000 honour to then buy the PvP gear (which was for PvP only due to resilience stats) so you can’t use PvP gear to do PvE with, you had to grind dungeons for PvE gear to then compete in PvE raiding
Equivalent of doing battlegrounds to then compete in an Arena team, you then required certain rating to get the next piece of Arena gear, it was a great progression system that rewarded your skills, instead of everyone just getting a handout.
There was no LFG, you had to be part of a team, you had to socialise and find people or make friends with people to then train and get better with, and if you left the team you would lose all Arena progression, for PvE was the same for being part of a guild and working your way to a starting roster
As someone who did both it was an awesome expansion of the game, the Arena created a fast paced, high skill cap competitive PvP scene and for PvE there heroic raids were filled with difficult challenges and mechanics, both requiring to be working as a team to succeed
Also, in regards to PvE Sunwell Plateu, the Kil’Jaeden fight and Black Temple were some of the coolest mechanics for its time, you could feel the amount of effort and passion that went into that expansion that you rarely see nowadays sadly
EDIT: Also forgot to mention the OW PvP that came with Isle of Queldanas, that expac and WOTLK really had it all
I didn't...can never quit T_T
But to the point of constructive criticism as of why I (and I imagine many other) quit that'd benefit AoC.
1. The vibe changed from a feeling of being a nobody in a big world on an adventure which seemed to have no apparent end - into one being the sole gigachad superhero waiting in a queue to save the world.
This, I think, is a critical problem for an MMORPG as the idea is to spend many years within the same evolving world. The players must feel a balance in the world - both that they're getting stronger/knowledgeable, but also that they're still nothing in comparison to the ultimate dangers of said world. There should always be more than a few humbling opponents, and perhaps ones that only select few guilds can even get a grip on. These serve as mythical things, which most casual players will only hear about, and this serves the feeling of a dangerous world where not all things may be achievable for everyone playing - but become a goal for many.
2. Vertical progression instead of horizontal made the earlier expansions redundant and empty. They could had focused on adding achievable zones, skills, specs, gear, exploration, lore, and adding more content for PvP and PvE to the ongoing stage at least every other expansion.
3. The community got worse after making all content both easier (raid finder), harder (mythic), and making the social/travel aspect irrelevant (dungeon finder). It also makes the game feel ambivalent as to what it is - are the feared end-game bosses actually no-brainers that can be beaten by any group - while the narrative tells us the opposite. It took any coherence and feeling of adventure away. And today, I can't describe it as anything other than a small (as in, still relevant) open-world lobby game mainly focusing on dopamine farming instead of telling a compelling story (which is the basis for Roleplay).
4. They didn't listen to the community - and they also listened too much - but mostly on things that they perceived would increase accessibility (and therefore profits). There have always been great critics of both PvP and PvE for WoW, and likewise has there been even more ones without a clue. So the game developers need to identify the good ones, and balance their criticisms with strong core principles that outline the world lore and each specific class fantasy.
I think that's pretty much about it, without going into even more details.
Yeah and that was everything that turned PvP into shit. Resilience was the biggest garbage that Blizz ever did and as you can see, it has not survived. The unnecessary split between PvP & PvE just because in Classic the Tier sets that were locked behind pure PvE raid content, were worlds appart from pretty much most of the gear you could obtain through PvP.
This was when Healers became OP cause resilience only affected dmg & burst dmg and healers had a much easier time to pretty much leave damagedealers in the dust and "above the maxlevel", or itemlevel in that sense and then everybody became halfaway immortal compared to before.
Before PvP was dynamic and there was no guaranteed win-meta.
Even the biggest sweats could die in seconds if just neatly focussed by +2 or 3 casuals at the same time.
But then even PvP encounters became like instanced combat where you fight only "elite" portait mobs, that always survive a certain time...
... so that even the most reflexe dust covered Healer could react in time and start healing.
Healers were already the Kings of PvE back then, cause most raids could not work without them.
And then they were also made the Kings of PvP cause now it was a 90% win ratio for any group everywhere that had a healer when the others had not, or had TWO HEALERS when the other group only had ONE.
That was not impressive. And it never will be.
It was lame, it created lamer-class combo's and wannabe-exalted meta-playstyles that no one wanted but a few wannabe-elitists who NO ONE IS LOOKING AT ANYWAY in any hub city.
It pissed of the casual PvP playerbase, the elitist PvE playerbase which I belonged to back then and it still totally devalued the battlegrounds, cause the best gear was still gladiator gear.
That was absolute dogsh°° and Blizzard did good to reverse that.
My last PvP experience in WoW was the Southshore vs Hillsbrad brawl with an arcane mage. In BfA.
It felt like I was the only player who could actually efficiently KILL somebody.
I had to play the most manacosting skilltree and I think the fact that my main attack is an invisible shot that only "impacts" on a player without a clear line of fire, was the reason people often reacted way too late to it and could not flee anymore.
Apart from it that a mage does very reliable damage of course.
This is how PvP should be. Not a sweaty wannabe-e-sports like pro-match between some stupid sweat teams but something the casual playerbase enjoys.
And no damage reducing stats like resilience who turn a +4 to 8 second kill into a +22 to +32 second kill EACH AND EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Do not even try to say TBC was good.
It was horrible dogsh°° and made PvP from 10% toxic to 90% toxic in one fellow swoop.
No one cares about the best teamspeak teams that do not even rank +10 or +15 people and it all takes place in some kind of cagefight arena.
I am here to play a fantasygame with vast fields of valor & glory.
Not to be some kind of fantasy mortal combat streetfighter in a caged in dogfight.
The battle for Minas Tirith was cooler than the battle in Balin's tomb with one single cavetroll.
I guess that scenario was also interesting but not CONSTANTLY until I hopefully reach a certain ranking with my team to hope for the BEST AND ONLY CURRENCY IN THE GAME that could give us "PvP purples".
Horrible. Pui!
Just remembering that feels like stepping into sh°° on a sidewalk.
@Dezmerizing
The Reason for the Atrocity that is the whole Storyline of BfA and Shadowlands and EVEN Dragon-Flight,
is " Wokeness ", though.
Sylvanas gets superstrong suddenly and in her obnoxious Girlboss-Mentality commits a Genocide on all Nightelves on Darnassus.
Then, to fight a superpowerful, empowered Whamen, Tyrande becomes the Nightwarrior and becomes the next empowered, superpowerful Whamen. (lol)
Then Sylvanas just " flies off " - ( i am NOT SHITTING ANYONE HERE )
( she ACTUALLY just "flew off" despite being surrounded by Alliance AND HORDE after calling the Horde a "Nothing". )
Then, Sylvanas RIPS (LOL!!) the Helm of Domination of Bolvar-Lichking apart, after she just "defeats" him with some Chains as if she is the Jailer. So jeah, Jailer gave her the weird Power-up,
that long Story short gets NEVER EXPLAINED during the whole Story of Shadowlands.
Because "superpowerful Whamen" she rips the Helmet to Shreds with her bare Hands.
Then Tyrande follows her into the Shadowlands - along with us, the Players - and a handful more important NPC's and/or Race-Leader NPC's, like Bane or Thrall and so on. Bolvar also joins the fray, only to get shot once again (lol) by Sylvanas in Torghast.
Tyrande MASSACRES herself through Torghast like a unstoppable force of Nature, because superpowerful Whamen and so on and Girlboss that needs no Man,
THEN - and i kid' you not - "CHOKES AN UNDEAD" with Sylvanas in the Ardenwald-Cinematic when she finally catches her and prevents Sylvanas from flying off again. (hahahahah)
But because " Whamen " can not do anything wrong - Sylvanas is suddenly not "BAD" anymore, (LOL?)
because she turns on that " ONE. GUY. " who is kinda immortal - and who can not just be killed, similar like all the other "Eternals", "Ancients", or whatever the Landscape Leaders of the Shadowlands-Countries are called.
Oh !! And because she got "the better/good Part of her Soul back" (lol?) which was apparently RIPPED AWAY from her when Arthas fatally stabbed her with Frostmourne in Warcraft III.
Then everyone gangs up on the Jailer - who had the worst Lines and Logic behind his Agenda since Thanos from Marvel. No, actually - he was written EVEN WORSE than Thanos.
Then, because " Whamen " can never do wrong
NO MATTER how many World Tree's they burn and no matter HOW MANY Innocents they roast alive or let them suffocate in endless Masses of Smoke because the damn WORLD.TREE. is burning all around them,
Sylvanas gets forgiven and we all roll our Eyes already in Annoyance about when she one Days returns.
Dragon-Flight ?
Also kinda a Wokeness Adventure.
So we come to these Islands,
who similar like Pandaria, were shut away from the World and the Entrance to there gets unsealed, re-opened, whatever, just in Time when a new Story is needed.
What is this ?
Where are the Dragons ? The Aspects ? Hey, cool. Sabellian from Burning Crusade is back !! (O_O)
But why do these Dragons feel weird ? EVEN Wrathion, despite him being in Character the most.
Why do they feel like emotionally unstable, sometimes a bit whiny Humans - who just happen to be able to transform into Dragons ?
Who is this Team Rocket Team ? Four Mega-Hyper-GIGA-Elemental-Protodrakes that seem so powerful OMG they could be the next great Threat right after Deathwi~
AAANNND they're dead.
Two of them.
Another One is away to Herald the Start of the next Expansion a.k.a. the War within,
and the only other "WHAMEN" (lol!) aside from Raszageth has OF COURSE turned over and joined the good Side, because Whamen can never do wrong or anything evil.
I swear if " The War within " is the FORTH EXPANSION in a Row now with a woke'ish Storyline, i will pay freakin' GAUNTER O'DIMM from the Witcher Series to stab a goddamn KNIFE into my Throat and let it sit there until he see's the Life leave my Eyes.
Yes, even if he is a fictional Character and i have no Idea actually how i could ever summon him.
Kidding.
But damn sometimes WoW makes me feel like Someone should just finally end me.