5 ms·

So true about WoW. Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. They also took the sense of en

by idrios 5y ago

So true about WoW. Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. They also took the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly. I do think the best thing they've done in WoW recently though, for bringing some of that discovery back, is adding secret events and global puzzles. Going into Gnomeregan, seeing a small hidden button, pressing it and having a lvl ?? boss show up and obliterate my max level character was just awesome. And I had a ton of fun doing the Uuna quest-but-not-really. But so much of the game has just stopped being fun.

kcb 5y ago
> Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. I used to feel this way more but in the past couple of times I picked the game up Raid Finder and Dungeon Finder were completely irrelevant to myself and every player I interacted with. I did 0 Raid Finder and like 2 queued dungeons on my raid geared characters. Having a guild is more important than ever in my opinion as relying on getting invited to pug groups is very frustrating. Especially if trying to gear up a character later in the expansion.
- nottorp 5y ago
  ... and how do you find a guild? Apply out-of-game? Play only with r/l friends?
  - 411111111111111 5y ago
    Either through the ingame recruitment tool, whispering guilds from wowprogess that are recruiting Or even city chat. Blaming lfg/lfr for the current wow community is misguided at best. The rewards from it are just too low for it to have such a large impact. I mean the game has become pay to win at this point as you can pay real money for ingame gold... Which you can use to get carried through mythic raid/pvp/m+, giving you a gigantic ingame advantage. This isn't even a niche thing anymore. There are spammers constantly offering carrys for all ingame content.
    - nottorp 5y ago
      Funny, back when I was playing we recruited people after meeting them in PuG instance groups. If they were fun to play with we tried. We specifically did PuGs with 4 people from the guild and one random for recruiting ;)
      - idrios 5y ago
        This whole thread has brought back so much nostolgia. I remember joining a guild this way. It really was such an organic way to meet people and make friends.
nottorp 5y ago
> They also took the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly. I don't know... i think they originally wanted to sell WoW by the hour (I think it actually was sold like that in Asia somewhere) so time wasting travel was more linked to that. Don't forget how long it takes to craft multiple items too. A lot of other WoW clones allowed some teleportation. Or non WoW clones. Being able to teleport basically anywhere (that you've walked to at least once) in Guild Wars never hindered socializing for me.
- qudat 5y ago
  Being able to teleport in GW2 ruined any sense of where I was in the game. In WoW classic the flight system was incredible. You had to actually fly to the different flight points. Like OP it created a sense of the world you were and grounded you to the zones. Not only that, it was an incredibly unique system that to this day hasn’t been rivaled. No other MMO that I know of has a similar travel system. I remember going on flight paths through Ashenvale with the full moon and was struck by how beautiful the game was.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The travel system in original WoW is beyond compare; the boats, the blimps and griffins, walking everywhere, finally getting a mount - it worked so well. After that long trek through the mountains to find a flight pint - so worth it. Even with a mount you’d still use the taxis (and the update letting you “travel through” was a good one) because it’d auto steer. Once the hub cities in expansions appeared it all was reduced to “hearthstone to Dalaran and hit the portal”.
    - nottorp 5y ago
      You mean, the first 200 times you took a flight path? It gets old after a while you know. I remember flying from Darkshore to Gadgetzan took 40 real time minutes where you did absolutely nothing. Do you really have infinite time to play?
spicybbq 5y ago
The game became anonymous and lost the sense of having a server community and getting to know the regulars. Cross-realm everything and the phasing systems were fundamental changes. Being able to do things alone was always part of the design, but they made it where even the group things could be done "alone." It's nice to remove friction and pain points, but if you make the entire game frictionless there is no game left, just mindless queuing and loot collecting.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  If the developers of the game ever actually played the game, and experienced /2 or /guild, what we wanted was 4chan/reddit with the pretty visuals of Dal in the background and an occasional puzzle/challenge. Instead the developers thought we wanted more to do (anyone wanna do dailies? lol), more pretty colored loot, and dungeon clears (without really "earning it"). My favorite moments (and most hours spent) in that game were being so under-geared I'd drool in blues while I /inspect people in IF, desperate to find the next party/guild good enough to get some myself. Trying to figure out the perfect combination of saps and traps to kill a 3 pack. The occasional fear into a second pack, but the even more rare "teamwork" to actually survive (...thank god I threw up that soul stone, I almost never do...). What we got was item levels, rng oranges, and more rng loot boxes.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I think that’s the thing they missed - WoW in the end is a glorified IRC client and removing every excuse to actually chat beyond your normal group stagnates those groups and the community dies. A game like WoW shouldn’t be made so “everyone can do everything” either - sure it’s nice to see a raid but I never really felt the need - I had enough fun plugging along at my own pace.
    - nottorp 5y ago
      Remember when they accidentally enabled a server wide chat channel and put everyone by default in it? Those were the best times of WoW if you ask me. Of course, they removed it after a while, too much interaction between players is bad mmmkay?

by idrios 5y ago

kcb 5y ago

> Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to find people or be in a guild to do these things. I used to feel this way more but in the past couple of times I picked the game up Raid Finder and Dungeon Finder were completely irrelevant to myself and every player I interacted with. I did 0 Raid Finder and like 2 queued dungeons on my raid geared characters. Having a guild is more important than ever in my opinion as relying on getting invited to pug groups is very frustrating. Especially if trying to gear up a character later in the expansion.

nottorp 5y ago
... and how do you find a guild? Apply out-of-game? Play only with r/l friends?
- 411111111111111 5y ago
  Either through the ingame recruitment tool, whispering guilds from wowprogess that are recruiting Or even city chat. Blaming lfg/lfr for the current wow community is misguided at best. The rewards from it are just too low for it to have such a large impact. I mean the game has become pay to win at this point as you can pay real money for ingame gold... Which you can use to get carried through mythic raid/pvp/m+, giving you a gigantic ingame advantage. This isn't even a niche thing anymore. There are spammers constantly offering carrys for all ingame content.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    Funny, back when I was playing we recruited people after meeting them in PuG instance groups. If they were fun to play with we tried. We specifically did PuGs with 4 people from the guild and one random for recruiting ;)
    - idrios 5y ago
      This whole thread has brought back so much nostolgia. I remember joining a guild this way. It really was such an organic way to meet people and make friends.

nottorp 5y ago

> They also took the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly. I don't know... i think they originally wanted to sell WoW by the hour (I think it actually was sold like that in Asia somewhere) so time wasting travel was more linked to that. Don't forget how long it takes to craft multiple items too. A lot of other WoW clones allowed some teleportation. Or non WoW clones. Being able to teleport basically anywhere (that you've walked to at least once) in Guild Wars never hindered socializing for me.

qudat 5y ago
Being able to teleport in GW2 ruined any sense of where I was in the game. In WoW classic the flight system was incredible. You had to actually fly to the different flight points. Like OP it created a sense of the world you were and grounded you to the zones. Not only that, it was an incredibly unique system that to this day hasn’t been rivaled. No other MMO that I know of has a similar travel system. I remember going on flight paths through Ashenvale with the full moon and was struck by how beautiful the game was.
- bombcar 5y ago
  The travel system in original WoW is beyond compare; the boats, the blimps and griffins, walking everywhere, finally getting a mount - it worked so well. After that long trek through the mountains to find a flight pint - so worth it. Even with a mount you’d still use the taxis (and the update letting you “travel through” was a good one) because it’d auto steer. Once the hub cities in expansions appeared it all was reduced to “hearthstone to Dalaran and hit the portal”.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    You mean, the first 200 times you took a flight path? It gets old after a while you know. I remember flying from Darkshore to Gadgetzan took 40 real time minutes where you did absolutely nothing. Do you really have infinite time to play?

spicybbq 5y ago

The game became anonymous and lost the sense of having a server community and getting to know the regulars. Cross-realm everything and the phasing systems were fundamental changes. Being able to do things alone was always part of the design, but they made it where even the group things could be done "alone." It's nice to remove friction and pain points, but if you make the entire game frictionless there is no game left, just mindless queuing and loot collecting.

yazaddaruvala 5y ago
If the developers of the game ever actually played the game, and experienced /2 or /guild, what we wanted was 4chan/reddit with the pretty visuals of Dal in the background and an occasional puzzle/challenge. Instead the developers thought we wanted more to do (anyone wanna do dailies? lol), more pretty colored loot, and dungeon clears (without really "earning it"). My favorite moments (and most hours spent) in that game were being so under-geared I'd drool in blues while I /inspect people in IF, desperate to find the next party/guild good enough to get some myself. Trying to figure out the perfect combination of saps and traps to kill a 3 pack. The occasional fear into a second pack, but the even more rare "teamwork" to actually survive (...thank god I threw up that soul stone, I almost never do...). What we got was item levels, rng oranges, and more rng loot boxes.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I think that’s the thing they missed - WoW in the end is a glorified IRC client and removing every excuse to actually chat beyond your normal group stagnates those groups and the community dies. A game like WoW shouldn’t be made so “everyone can do everything” either - sure it’s nice to see a raid but I never really felt the need - I had enough fun plugging along at my own pace.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    Remember when they accidentally enabled a server wide chat channel and put everyone by default in it? Those were the best times of WoW if you ask me. Of course, they removed it after a while, too much interaction between players is bad mmmkay?