The Changing Face of World of Warcraft

Back in March Blizzard released patch 2.4 and significantly altered a good portion of the overall gameplay and provided a much more casual experience. Since then Blizzard has continued to make the game more approachable through new dungeons and removing attunements and other restrictions throughout the game. While this may open up a lot of new content to the masses and help the game's overall appeal, does this continuing trend promise to alienate the high-end players who thrive on new challenges? Should Blizzard care?

Comments

hmm

[nomadic]

does this continuing trend promise to alienate the high-end players who thrive on new challenges?

The high-end players got to be high-end players through thousands of hours of grinding. They don't thrive on new challenges, they thrive on the same old ones.

How does this alienate the high-end?

[EvolutionsPeak]

They released the Sunwell at the same time, a 25-man highest end raiding dungeon. I'd hardly call that something for any but the most hardcore pve players.

Re:How does this alienate the high-end?

[archen]

MeanderingMind has it mostly right. D&T was a high end raiding guild, but had gotten to the point where they were having issues filling slots. So of course recruitment for such a guild is easy... to acquire leeches.

In the end this is the fate of nearly all raiding guilds. The focus is on pushing content, and getting loot. There is basically no loyalty, and the second the grass looks greener on the other side people jump ship. When everything is going good, it looks fine on the outside but basically rots from within. It's sort of strange that people think of MMORPGs as being unique in this way. Crime organizations often go the same way - ala drug cartels, the mob, etc. Didn't anyone learn anything from scarface? :p

Good changes

[rune.w]

The latest patch has been great for me. I'm more of a casual player and now I'm able to level up with just a couple hours of gameplay. Before it would take me a good couple days to increase just one level, which got increasingly frustrating and became the main reason why I canceled my subscription last year. I'm also a big fan of soloing and now I'm able to do that in more areas of the game (I usually do the party quests and dungeons during the weekends when all my friends are able to connect at the same time).

Overall I think it was a good move for players like me. I don't know what the "old-timers" would think about it, though...

Morons

[geekboy642]

Full disclosure: I play Warcraft in a raiding guild.

Anybody who cites the removal of attunement from a high-level raid instance as a reason to give up raiding is a complete and total idiot. The fact that you can set foot into a raid does not in any way mean you can beat it. The only thing attunement gives is a way for raiding guilds to weed out the complete and total idiots. Honestly.

For those of you that don't grasp this, here's how it was before the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot, and complete a quest while you're doing that. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.

And here's how it is after the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.

Guess what. It doesn't matter if there's no attunement. Everybody still had to spend the identical amount of time and effort getting better loot to even survive stepping in the front door of Illidan's house.

Re:Killing Raiding

[murdocj]

Removal of attunments and Badge rewards that are equal to or better than Tier-6 level gear, theres 2 *huge* changes that undermine all the effort the hardcore raiders have put in over the past year.

WoW isn't a job where you are "putting in effort", it's a game. I'm not hardcore about playing, but I have had fun raiding. That's the point. If I'm raiding and enjoying myself and learning the fights and feeling some accomplishment, what difference does it make if someone else gets loot in a different way? I still have the accomplishment. I've run a couple of marathons... the fact that many thousands of other people have run faster than me doesn't invalidate what I did.

Relax and enjoy the game. At the end of the day, unless you are a serious pvp'er, it doesn't matter what gear someone else has, it's whether you had fun playing.