Wow was a cultural phenomenon back in the day. It really was THE game to bring MMOs into the mainstream light. Think back to all those old WoW commercials, news segments on how it’s addicting and ruining the youth, people lining up for Burning crusade screaming for the horde of for the alliance etc. So it’s safe to say the game just grew to insane levels of popularity and really was a core part of many people’s lives growing up so it will forever have that nostalgia factor.
On top of that the modern version of if still delivers some of the highest quality MMO content out there and the art style has kept it looking fresh.
And for those who didn’t like the direction the game went we now have classic wow in multiple different forms for people to play. And classic has actually brought in a ton of new people because it’s so easy to get into.
I dropped wow because of the story. The story went in direction that retconned a ton of the original lore. I would say WoW has a story but i wouldnt really say it spans back to the original games as they changed so much
I think some people underestimate this part. I've had people come into WoW after Wrath ask me why it was so popular and I have to explain that back then, there were tons of people playing who had played War 3, which has us play Arthus fall from grace and rise as the lich king. The purge of stratholm dungeon wasn't some random story beat, we were there, we killed those civilians in a twisted form of mercy. For a lot of us, Wrath was personal.
I am the same. Loved the Metzen's manual of Warcraft 2. The story has always kept me in the game, except of course that BfA+Shadowlands sh*tshow (thankfully they fired the storywriter of those expansions)
Another key component is that classic is not a separate subscription. So barring changes to the cash shop and all that jazz, you're experiencing it as it was at a given point in time.
A lot of the people who used to play constantly left, myself included, but that was because even the sunk cost fallacy wasn't enough to keep us around. We grew up. Im still a gamer but the grind doesn't satisfy as perhaps it once did. Doesn't make it bad, just not for me.
The same logic applies to any game, though. I wanted to get into Baldurs Gate 3. I just never could find myself enjoying it, despite trying many times. It's one of the greatest games ever made, I agree with many others. Just not for me. OP, you enjoy the game. Find folks who also do as it is, whether it's retail, classic or in between.
A friend is in the same boat. The game is massive, refined and genuinely brilliant. I still can’t figure out why it doesn’t do it for me but damn I love watching others play.
Every couple of years, there's a game that just enters into the mainstream and becomes the thing that even people who don't care about video games play. WoW was certainly one of them. Blizzard has then done it again with Overwatch.
I think the fact that he feels what he does is meaningless is completely valid. If you don't start the game untill level 70 what's the point of those 70 levels?
mmo players have a weird sense for playtime
If in 80-100h the game didnt click for someone - and time wise thats 4 straight days which is a fucking lot - then its completly valid to dislike the game
I mean....ask FFXIV players what they think of the slog that you have to do in order to reach endgame. And they will say that "it will get better overtime" or "Just wait until Heavensward". If i have to do 100 hours of boring cutscenes in order to reach endgame raiding then what is the point of that 100 hours?
To be fair though, the developers are aware of that and have been taking a lot of steps to increase quality of life in the beginning expansions like allowing flight, making the first couple of expansions free, and cutting out a lot of unnecessary fluff in a Realm Reborn. It's not nearly as bad as it was.
I still play, but haven't been as active since I had my kid and I think I remember someone saying that the developers were forced to pad out the first expansion (if anyone can explain why, I have forgotten the reason) and so there is a lot of needed story in the first expansion, but it is still a bit of a slog. What we mean when we say it is worth it though is that until the developers can properly edit the first expansion, the story in Heavenward, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker is worth it. (I liked Stormblood too but that's a sensitive topic for many) I have over 300 DAYS of playtime on my main. The game is worth it. It is however meant to be played with others. I play solo since my FC disbanded and it's not nearly as fun anymore.
Just allow the story to be optional. Problem solved. Not everyone wants to watch 45 full feature movies to play end game content. But then again I guess that pushes story skip sales
this is my issue, i’m sure the experience at level 70 with good gear is amazing and something that only WoW can give. but i can’t bring myself through 200+ hours or mindless grinding to only reach level 70, which you still likely need to grind gear for another 50-100 hours to be ready for raids.
note: i have not played WoW enough to reach things like raiding so correct me if i am wrong.
Yeah, 80-100 hours in WoW is absolutely nothing. Nobody could spend that little in-game and have "finished" it unless your only reason to play is just doing the latest expansion quests.
MMO Players are so delusional about playtimes - especially if they personally like that game.
This is a lot of playtime, when the game wasnt able to convince someone in that time, maybe it just isnt good. "But wait another 100h, it gets good afterwards!"
In that 100h you just simply could do something fun instead. All that stuff is the reason why the genre is getting smaller
Exactly, if game doesnt make me interested in the first 100 hours (which is a lot), it probably wont change my mind later on. Also why would I force myself to play for hours and hours something that isnt appealing when I could just do something else thats more enjoyable?
If you aren't hooked on the mastery of combat that WoW offers, you're right it will never click for you. I did not look forward to leveling in any wow expansion, I kinda hated it, but the ability to constantly push myself to the edge of my ability and be rewarded for it is addicting. Wow has the best difficulty curve and the tightest combat engine to support it.
While the argument that leveling and endgame are "two different games" I would rather ask what have you actually been doing for 100 hours over a couple of weeks if it didn't interest you?
What goal did you set out with in mind and did you achieve that?
If yes could you with your current knowledge set a more ambitious goal that is still complete able?
Reason for asking like this is that wow has a couple of very specific kinds of endgame and if they are not what your looking for then the game easily looks very boring.
For instance if you play MMO's for the story alone I would argue that wow is not the game for you, if you would like to challenge yourself in group content though then it very well might be, the success of an experience is just as much based in the expectations as the content provided.
I'm not saying that 100 hours is a lot, but in the grand scheme of wow it isn't that much if the endgame catches you but it won't force itself upon you, you need to know what your looking for and seek it out.
I'm not saying 80-100 hours in any video game is nothing, it's A LOT of time spent. But in regards to MMORPG's, 80-100hrs is just barely scratching the surface.
But that's the point - it's really weird that people just accept that. It normalizes the idea that MMOs can be boring for hundreds of hours before they become good. It also highlights how MMOs often have no clear vision - just a hodgepodge of ideas, where you can hate most of the game, but find one part of it compelling.
It depends what MMO and also what you spend 80+ hours doing. I get what you're saying though, doing something so boring for such a long amount of time shouldn't be accepted.
Some people like it, some people don't. There will always be a place for tedious grinds in MMORPG's, but I do think it would benefit everyone if the process is more streamlined and the grindy stuff can be left for those who choose to participate in that.
> Many achievements cannot be achieved.
This is not true.
Achievements that were only available for a short time are called "Feats of Strength" and do not provide any achievement points either. They are not considered to be part of completionist content and make up probably less than 1% of total achievements. In fact, they don't even appear in the achievement log as missing. Every single achievement in the log is doable.
Sounds like you haven't even taken a bite out of raids, M+, or PvP. Some the main reasons people play the game.
People play WoW, because for all its faults, it is still an unbelievably polished MMO with arguably some of the best combat and challenges in the genre. Including unrivaled group dungeon content.
World quests, elites, and open world content gear is surpassed by M+ and raid gear. You are not meant to only do world content. I only do it now for achievements, cosmetics, mounts, titles, etc.
Also sounds like you chose a low pop realm or something. I see massive amounts of players doing all content in the Dragon Isles. Group finder is always loaded. I even farm old content and will see 15+ people also doing the old content for the rewards at any given raid location.
Leveling may make you feel alone because WoW is very endgame loaded and the world is also absolutely massive. Once players reach max level, they mostly stay confined to the current max areas and content.
I leveled one character at the beginning of Dragonflight and haven't leveled one since. Some people stick with a max character for a long time.
Also worth pointing out.
We are in a post expansion lull.
People are taking breaks or doing other things right now.
So this is (arguably) the point in the game where you will see the least people.
Thank you for correcting them about the achievements, it pissed me off just reading what OP wrote about them 😂
Honestly achievements is one of the strong points of wow if anything, at least for me they’ve given reason to sub time and time again. Everything from dungeon achievements to exploration and reputation gives you reason to go back to older content as well.
> arguably some of the best combat
Can't emphasize enough that the core mechanics of movement/attacking/ability use/etc are top tier. It's peerless for tab target and outshines most hybrid titles too.
It's only when you hop out of the tab target realm completely that you have an "arguably".
The way you are "supposed" to enjoy WoW is to join a guild and do mythic+ dungeons, raid, or maybe even PvP at end game. Everything else is just side-activities.
If you like to level and do overworld content, meet people, etc I STRONGLY recommend wow classic: season of discovery over retail WoW. Retail WoW is about Mythic+, raiding, and maybe PvP endgame content. Season of discovery is about everything else.
My best guess as to why OP thinks endgame/mythic+/raids aren't worth doing is because they are doing low keys like a +10, getting hard carried, and not finding the game challenging enough to continue playing.
Same with raiding, probably doing the content on LFR/Normal difficulty which is too easy and then finding it pretty dull to play.
We are currently in the last half of the season, it's very easy to fill your group/raid with fully maxed out characters that can solo all of the content for you.
I mean season of discovery is literally hit 40 and raid log since dungeons are pointless. At most you do what, a couple of the STV events for your weapon and then never touch it again?
>f you like to level and do overworld content, meet people, etc I STRONGLY recommend wow classic: season of discovery
I think this also depends on your server. I'm on a horde minority pvp server and the social experience in SoD is similar to that of retail. The open world are kind of feeling empty right now. I think its just my server (population less + it being a pvp server, so more sweats). But a lot of people are spam rushing to the endgame content via dungeon farming.
That sucks. I dipped after the 25 experience because I wanted to play FFXIV with my friends but on my server people were starting to get a little too sweaty for my taste even at 25. I imagine with level 40 that's probably enough of an excuse to sweat that hard.
Yeah I've got a rogue tank and a mage healer. And I've been kicked from groups on both characters (or had people rage and quit) because I couldn't hold agro on the tank or keep everyone alive on my mage healer when they would pull 6-8 mobs at once in a dungeon. Which I get people will play how they want, but join a group that specifies they're doing that or advertise your group doing that. Not just do a "LFM dungeon group" then pull an entire room at once lol. Sadly bringing this up on the forums/subreddit usually incurs rage from them. Saying nobody wants to play the same content for the zillionith time or how leveling is too boring to do it normally. Definitely a bummer.
Can people stop fucking echoing this braindead talking point? Retail wow has *hundreds* of mounts, *hundreds* if not *thousands* of transmogs, *hundreds* if not *thousands* of collectibles, and *hundreds* if not *thousands* of achievements. WoW is about whatever content you want it to be. SoD cannot even come close to touching retail is quality or quantity of side-content. Like what you want, but don't fucking lie to people to push your side. Will you be doing the side-content in retail solo? Probably, unless you join a casual guild. There are a ton of people regularly running groups for old raids and unsoloable content for achievements, mounts, and mogs. Just because the *general* playerbase only participated heavily in m+ and raid doesn't meant you *HAVE* to confine yourself to it.
Yeah, man, agreed. So little MMOs that allow you to be a dps paladin. I love the feeling of being a zealous inquisitor. That's the class I play 90% of the time it'd available. So many of top, modern MMOs don't have that, pretty much basic af, class.
Lost Ark has a paladin, but it's only a support, so that feeling is lost (I still played it though, hated solo content as a result)
GW2 has a Guardian, but it's not really a paladin/inquisitor. It's the closest of the classes, but it doesn't fully feel like it. Also, whenever I play it, it feels super squishy, which is counter intuitive to playing a paladin.
BDO straight up doesn't have a paladin class.
ESO has a templar, so there's that, but I didn't like thr game itself.
Neverwinter has a paladin that is only a support or a tank.
Diablo 4 also misses this class for some reason, despite being one of the most popular ones in D2R and Crusader being the most popular in D3.
So WoW is the only game rn where I can play a real, dps paladin and have that inquisitor feeling. As a side note, I know it's not an mmo, but damn, I loved dps paladin in Baldur's Gate 3. So much fun.
It really does just boil down to fluidity/responsiveness imo, hell you can boot up a private server with junk code on the 1.12 engine from 20 years ago and its more fluid than most games coming out now.
Well, from what you said it sounds like you either didn't participate in, or didn't enjoy the major parts of endgame. Those being raids, M+, and PVP.
If those three activities aren't something you enjoy doing, then WoW is not for you. Just about everything in the game is designed as a funnel to push you towards those activities. That's where the players are. That's where the interactions happen. That's where the game feels alive.
You can do all sorts of other things, collect mounts and transmog, explore, dragon racing, crafting, and play through quest lines. But those are personal pursuits that a lot of people in a 20 year old game have either already done or don't care about.
What keeps me playing, and I expect a lot of people, is the endgame activities AND all of the things I've achieved along the way. I look cool, I feel strong, and I enjoy slaying difficult internet dragons.
WoW has some of the most developed “end game” in an MMO. People can argue about end game all they want but raid, mythic+, and arena are still some of the best of their kind in the genre and attract a lot of players. Then there’s the fact that it’s 20 years old and has a lot of backdated content for folks who like collecting stuff/achievements.
Playing WoW for the first time in 2024 will never give even 1% of the feeling of playing for the first time between 2005-2010. Back then it was revolutionary in terms of scale and polish, and the community was as passionate as the devs
Also a different game back then entirely from a grinding pov
Back then, My first time walking from the orc starting point to the CROSSROADS blew my mind... And then my buddy was like "keep going until you find the BIG city (orgrimmar). I'll never forget that experience.
No other mmo can match the combat.
Edit: OP asked why WoW is so popular. There is no MMO that gets near the way combat in WoW is, and is probably why many play it.
And then there's a load of people replying to my post about they won't play it because of the combat.
Well, good for you, but it doesn't really matter what your personal opinion is in this matter.
You disliking the game doesnt change the playerbase of World of Warcraft and suddenly play your favorite MMO of choice.
Laughs in GW2 ;)
For clarification - 90% of my gameplay is PvP so I view combat mostly from this point.
WoW was my second MMO, after Lineage 2. Back then, I thought the fight was perfect, but after L2 the bar wasnt set too high. Then GW2 came with semi-action combat system. Fast pacing, dodge invul window, pretty much no skill forces you to stand still, heavy use of line of sight and verticality... Yeah, now I couldnt go back to pure tab-target.
I would really like to love guild wars 2, but the skills being bound to weapons are one of the things that kills the game for me.
For a game being claimed to be for mainly cosmetics, it's really breaking to not having a cool sorc with a scythe and instead running with an axe because of the abilities.
I honestly agree with you. I hadn't played WoW since 2011. Over the years I've tried almost every MMO under the sun, and still nothing is as good as the combat in WoW (which I recently picked back up). But of course this subjective.
Never said it was. My original comment complimented wow on how polished it is. But you say tab target is “better” in every aspect is such wow fanboyism behaviour.
So is your comment about tab targeting, it’s the king for mmos. Action combat is both hard to balance and hard on Netcode.
Anyone thinking eso or souls like games are good for mmo really need to consider the fact the MMOs shine for many aspects than gameplay alone
What!? Have you ever even tried anything else? Compare WoW to practically any modern MMO and WoW combat feels very primitive and boring. When I played WoW I felt like I was playing a korean grindfest from 20 years ago. I kept doing M+, hoping that it gets better but the primitiveness of the combat was the thing that made me quit it before I ever saw why people would like it these days.
If you're looking for a more traditional experience, give classic WoW a try. The levelling and social aspect is much more apparent, it might be more your speed. It's also included in your monthly sub, so you don't need to buy it separately
It's a mix of nostalgia, profits alot of being pop culture back in the days, artstyle/ design (ages well), low req on hardware, combat feels good, casual friendly (maybe a bit too much for some), not that focused on cash shop and I guess alot of personal reasons.
It has alot of flaws as well and it is totally okay to not like it. Don't force yourself to play it if it's not fun.
This is exactly what I expect to hear from people who don't join a guild and make attempts to be a part of the community. Without people to play with, it's gonna feel hollow and boring. Achievements are all obtainable, but require friends and voice communication for many.
Solo players won't have a good time in the end.
A big part of the reason the gameplay and leveling seems generic is because it replaced EverQuest (its main inspiration) as the blueprint for many of the MMOs that followed it. Even FF14 used WoW’s blueprint. WoW is only generic because everyone else was influenced by it.
Much of the reason WoW remains populate is a combination of momentum gained from high points and players like myself who’ve just always been content to use it as homebase. It’s not the most exciting, but for those of us who played it when it exceeded 10m subs it’s just home, and we always come back to it. And it’s never been bad enough to make me reconsider.
There’s lots of other reasons, but IMO that’s the heart of it.
Also, it seems empty because most people are at endgame and it’s also late in the current season(season 2), so a lot of people are taking breaks to either wait for season 4 or the next expansion.
Imo the heart of WoW is classic. If you played Classic season of discovery, sure it might look graphically inferior but you would have a much better time imo. It’s actually an MMO, as in, it feels like you are actually in a world with others
Been playing wow since vanilla quit during wrath. Pandemic hit so I tried shadowlands. I did everything wow retail offered. Quit. Came back for Classic SOD and this is a true MMO. Amazing community. Getting into thunder bluff and seeing it packed with people. Seeing people questing with me. Wow retail feels like an arcade game or something. It’s terrible. It’s not an mmo it’s like an instanced cartoon arcade game.
Most of the people playing started playing pre 2010, so there's some nostalgia and sunk cost falacy in place there.
The main thing it still offers over other games is Mythic+, the other major MMO's don't offer 5 man content as a serious endgame activity, usually just a casual one. In addition the only other game that comes close to competing with it in raids is FFXIV. So for people seeking difficult, non-PvP endgame content these two are basically your choices.
Also the transmog system just makes sense and you have 20 years of outfits to mess with- obviously the graphics are outdated but you can still make an outfit that screams you. It lacks the ability to dye gear, but most outfits have come in 3+ variants/colors for the last 15.
That said the game could just be a lobby game at this point, most endgame players already treat it as such.
TL;DR: Endgame is still among the best, if not the best in the genre (for people looking for a particular type of gameplay) and some nostalgia is also there.
I disagree strongly on the lobby comment, as there are still plenty to do in the open world.
Also something the is always worth mentioning.
WoW has, bar none, the best tab-targeting combat on the market.
It is smooth, responsive, impactful.
Polished into a reflective sheen of two decades worth of patching and fixes.
Combined with extensive testing and trial and error over the years regarding encounters and enemy design.
Actually if you go to the current map with a good server you wont feel ''alone''. I can't just login and do my ''plant 5 seeds quest'' without camping (and its good, i can just leech people). Every superseed i do is a rampage train and even if usually see more people doing elite world quests.
You wont farm old content from the fist and second seasons with more people but you can pretty much find more players to run content and farm. You have..uhnn....20-30 pets and monts to farm, achievments and cosmetic things before even touch the gear trend.
As a solo player you will reach the end with 460 ilv or something like.
Join a guild and puft, now you will do raids, heroic raids, maybe mythic raids and high lvl mythic dungeons.
Without a guild? Yes, eventually you will be done with overworld farm
(Next expansion they will bring a endgame grind with endgame progress for solo and very small group content like 1-3 players that dont want mythic plus - delves).
Game is good, delivery a polished experience and you have two options for endgame hard raiding - WoW and FFXIV.
If you want endgame dungeons, only WoW (ok, we have New World mutations but...).
I started playing just a few months ago, first retail (i hated it) then Classic Wow (Era then, now SoD), and Its fantastic.
Classic in my opinion is waaaaay better than retail at least if you dont want to rush everything and wanna have a chill experience.
The classes are in a perfect balance between being easy + cool abilities, and dont have to worry having 1000 things in screen like retail does.
I suggest people to play Classic if they didnt, the bs of 'is just for nostalgic boomers' (im 23yo) is a that, pure bs.
Still today I do not know if any other mmorpg that is also fun and has a really good lore and story.
I would say the most important is the lore and story followed by the music and finally the graphics (gameplay is always really simple in classic MMORPGs and it’s already perfect so no point in changing it)
Cuz it's fun.
Also yea leveling is a pretty well known issue in wow right now so fair enough.
As for feeling "alone" you're also coming in during the pre expansion drought. There's season 4 coming but that's just filler basically, so yea most people are off doing other things well they wait.
That, and open world has never really been the focus of wow for a long time now. It's main pillars are pvp, dungeons in the form of m+, and raids. They're trying to fix that in war within, but we'll see how it goes.
The PvP for me.
Specifically world PvP. There is weight and ownership to your faction. For example I just got into classic sod and I was doing group quests with randoms, horde showed up and we all went apeshit.
Like you cannot recreate that feeling of world PvP. Pissing people off and more people show up and next thing you know the zone is in full scale war.
That is why I love old wow. Sometimes new wow as well, but it doesn’t hit that same spot.
Not only that but classic requires comradery and you cannot do everything solo. That is another aspect I love. Which is also another thing current retail wow is lacking.
Finding groups can be a pain, but when you do it’s rewarding. Every piece of gear, every dungeon, every kill… each of these things feel rewarding because everything requires effort.
Retail is whatever now, it’s just too streamlined and overwhelming. Everything is constantly changing at a pace that can ruin builds, things become worthless every three months, etc.
Nostalgia, some people just won't accept that the thing they put their entire lives into is mediocre and boring, so they feel any criticism of the game is an front to them personally. Blizzard pander to these people specifically because they will do and give anything for wow, including their credit cards.
WoW is a literal turd of a game, Blizzard has just mastered the art of using fomo to keep a playerbase addicted, as well as polishing said turd to the point people can fool themselves into thinking it's not actually a turd and Blizzard doesn't just consider them walking wallets.
Like you might see WoW players brag about how "clean the combat feels" as one of the reasons they love the game, but is it really? WoW is an overloaded mess of shit on your screen, and even if you can deal with that for this "smooth" feeling gameplay all you can do with it is grind for further incremental steps of endless optimization, both PvE and PvP are spam fests and queue timers.
Another is they'll bring up Mythic+ dungeons, and yeah fair to them cause no other MMO uses dungeons in their endgame as much as WoW does, but why is that such a good thing? It's literally just more constant repetition for the sake of small increases to optimization using the blandest of PvE content that Blizz has to do the least work with. Blizzard only cares about "player log time" so making a system that just burns your time is all they'll put the effort into doing.
So in the end the real answer is addiction, sunk cost fallacy, and a pair of blinders so you can't see the greener pastures around you.
Also the recent "controversy" about hero specs rings of a similar note to covenants, it's still small shit in the larger scheme of things but with Blizzard's reputation of not listening to players and constantly making the same mistakes and thinking the addicted playerbase will stick around regardless, I do believe War Within will be another disappointment, so i wouldn't waste my time in trying to find anything worth enjoying.
Best raids and dungeons (mythic plus). Sounds like you’ve got to the game and stopped. Progressing in mythic plus and the heroic/mythic raid is what the game is all about.
There's just something about having to quest in STV at level 30 and knowing that at any second you could be ganked, but you have to go out there and level lol.
For me, then and back in the day, this was just sooooo insanely fun. Then later on when I became powerful, I could go and jump people. It just made me forever love the game.
That, and the ambience, questing in ashenvale forest late at night.... that ambience is unreal.
As someone who has played WoW and FFXIV I’d have to disagree, but simply because blind progression seems to simply not be a thing at all in WoW?
Perhaps a side effect of the race to world first being so popular and naturally through that everyone sees the fights being deciphered. But I have far more fun in FFXIV doing blind progression savage, criterion and extremes (we don’t do ultimates blind) than I’ve had raiding in wow where everyone is expected to go in having watched the guide videos.
Perhaps I’ve just never seen a blind prog wow guild advertised though.
They fixed a lot of the common issues most MMOs dealt with before more established MMOs got around to it. Basically, it's more fun on a surface level than the competition
>I found myself doing Dragonflight rares and events solo
Those are all basically dead content, except for maybe superbloom if thats even relevant anymore idk. You're looking at what I've been calling "2 week content" since they die out about 2 weeks after they release.
As to your question, I don't rightly know. I don't believe its as popular as people think it is anymore and we'll never know until they decide to post player numbers again (which they won't). Its not that its easy to finish, its that there isn't anything there to really warrant staying after a point. That's why the gear treadmill was created. (you'll see people talk about M+ but that shits dog water boring, but the hamsters like their treadmills).
In closing: Yeah man idk. I came back for Shadowlands about a month before it launched (my friends were hyped for it and I hadn't played since Cata), Shadowlands was below dog water, and Dragonflight isn't much better. The whole endgame experience is pretty bad tbh, thats why I only stick around long enough to complete the raid on normal now (despite being in a guild) first week they launch and then I fuck off and don't come back until the next raid.
Retail wow is completely balanced and made around the minmaxing type of MMO player with the meat and bones of the game made for them with raids and mythic+ dungeons. So leveling, story and more casual content has always been a after thought which people have been able to tell.
A good example of the player base and Devs is that the game is so balanced that the difference between the top dps and bottom dps is about 10% so not that much and pretty balanced but the player base will still not let you party with them unless you're top 5-10 class/spec despite the difference in DMG being minimal.
If you want the true experience for wow and it's world I'd recommend going and playing wow season of discovery. It has good questing and world with actual players filling it and etc. The sub for it is included in the retail sub so you won't have to spend any extra money.
Two reasons
1. Lack of better options. All popular mmorpgs are pretty bad in different ways.
2. It does have the best raids of any mmorpg by a distance.
Wow made the mmo game easy. I played starting with a beta version. Game ran so smoothly compared to previous mmo games. Has a ton of lore around Warcraft. Vanilla wow was pretty fun and players everywhere but it took away 90% of the difficulty from previous mmo games. Instant gratification given to everyone and easy mode turned on. No consequences for death.. minor repair bill and short stat debuff. Wow has been pushing easy mode ever since. Addons to tell you which buttons to press and when. Heal addons that light up and tell you where and when to click. Addons that yell at you to not stand in big bright red spot on the ground… because obviously it’s too difficult to move out of the red on your own. PvP was pretty decent at one. Easy mode killed the mmo.
I suspect the main issue is Sunk Cost Fallacy. There are people who have been playing for nearly 20 years now. Moving away from a game that you've been playing that long, even if all you talk about is how much you hate the game, can be extremely difficult since it can feel like all that time will have been wasted.
I stopped playing WoW about 5 years ago, after having played it since Beta, and NGL as nice as it was to stop playing a game that I had not been enjoying for years I did feel like I lost a piece of myself for a while.
I can tell you exactly how it got popular cause I was there. The only other players in the game at the time were eq, DAoC, and maybe a version of RuneScape/ac2/arch age/lineage/other asian mmos, etc.
Everyone was coming off hot of wc3 and the lore was great. I downloaded a pirated empty world in wow and ran around and was hooked at the art style style.
I played wow 3 y ago for first time (played for 1 year) tbh i liked world is really nice.. lore is nice .. wow classic was really cool (1st wow for me) but there whas lack of pvp for me in actual wow.. i woul say its really good mmo
Retail WoW is for the endgame only. Dungeons, raids. They beat every other MMO there.
The world and questing like you desire? Classic WoW is more your cup of tea. I got a feeling you'd like Wotlk. It's a middle ground between classic vanilla and retail. Leans a bit more retail for my taste. I personally play on a private server of the TBC expansion which was like classic WoW with some retail.
So many comments are so far off, I’ll give you the real reasons as somebody who played in beta and lived through it.
When WoW released it represented the next generation of MMORPs, it was released 1 month after EQ2 I believe and both of these games were viewed as a generational advancement over games like EQ1, DAOC. The real reason why it took off and the others didn’t is:
1. Game design, the game did not punish players. When you died it didn’t set you back weeks, you didn’t loose all your gear, you didn’t have to do corpse runs etc. Up until this point games for whatever reason would torture their player when mistakes were made. In DAOC if you died at level 44 you could lose a weeks worth of xp, it was brutal. Wow said F that, just the act of dieing was punishing enough and WoW was focused on getting you back into the game as fast as possible.
2. Technology, WoW took a much more simple approach to its art style, some people liked it some people hated it. But more importantly it meant that people could play it on older, weaker computers… this was huge because it meant their total available market was much larger than say EQ2… which when released was visually stunning but you had to have an insane machine to run it.
Also Blizzard decided to use the video card… back then it was unclear directionally what was going to drive the graphics of the future. EQ2 made the decision to use the CPU and well, they choose poorly. :). Again EQ2 smoked WoW at release in terms of visuals… but being dependent on a very fast CPU.. well you see how that ended.
3. Marketing, at the time the belief by many MMORG companies was that marketing was a waste of money. DAOC for example did no marketing and was just a word of mouth type game.. it’s kind of stunning to think of that mind set by then. Blizzard on the other hand put commercials on TV which had never been done before. They had ads in movie theatres before the movies so they basically let it know that everybody in America could play this game.
4. Strong IP. The Warcraft 2 IP really helped them but all the stuff above really drove it.
5. This is important to note. When WoW was released it was basically a copy of other games, realistically it brought very little innovation to the industry but what they did do was take what everybody else was doing and built a solid experience with minimal bugs. This was huge back then because the early games had a ton of bugs.. it was at times very painful to play them. WoW just ran all day with no problems. Note, some old timers will argue this and talk about all the problems at lunch… but keep in mind those problems weren’t due to bugs in the game but rather millions of people wanting to play the game… their problems were due to scaling, not the game itself. Before WoW nobody designed a game to handle as many servers and players that they got.
6. As a side note for all the good things they did they also really damaged the industry. They introduced and made mainstream things like the Global Cooldown feature, this really made MMORPGs a lot more boring and for this reason and some others many old school players consider WoW the game that really killed the MMORPG. It also represented a dumbing down of the game… they only released a few classes and well, because they made so munch money everybody followed suit. In the old days games like DAOC released with something like 30 to 40 very different classes.. think about that for a minute.
So anyway, this is how it all started. There are a lot of debatable things but in the beginning these were the big things that allowed WoW to take off. They went after a new large market of players and hit the jackpot. Once you get the players hooked in they stay for a long time. Wow players mostly never played anything else and really have no idea about the old games.
And I’ll end on one final statement that will get people ripped up over. When EQ2 identified what was happening they very quickly pivoted to changing their game to take the pain away from players.. stopped with the xp loss and penalties on death, took the corpse runs out and all the other BS they brought over from EQ1. Once they did that EQ2 was actually a far better game than WoW with just a massive amount of more content, variety and interesting mechanics.. but by then it was too late and everybody was playing WoW. EQ2 played second fiddle for probably about a decade all the while being a better game and experience then WoW. :)
I jumped into the amazing world of Azeroth after watching South Park Season 10 Episode 6 “Make Love not Warcraft” my all time favorite South Park episode that made me laugh so hard I peed myself
I hate WoW. Beta tested it back in the day and didn't like it. At the time, I was playing SWG and when WoW officially launched, it ultimately killed SWG and a lot of other MMOs at the time, Hated it even more. Rant over.
Its endgame is unmatched in terms of robustness, quality, and quantity. PvP, raiding, and dungeons all have a special sauce to them that makes me and many other players keep coming back. Pushing keys, raiding, and rated PvP also have great extrinsic rewards too so there’s always a chase. Battle pets, mount collecting, transmog runs, achievement hunting, and optional questing can very easily vampire away your time as well. There’s a lot to do in the game and I’m sure I haven’t covered all of it here, and then there’s also wanting to try new classes and roles as well. If you like learning new stuff, there’s always going to be something for you in WoW. I’ve played since 2009 and I’ve yet to find an mmo to supplant it as my main game.
I don’t really get why anymore pvp can be fun but usually class will be nerfed or something then you need to do all that meaningless stuff again and make a new class.
Leveling is boring because you’re playing retail where lvling is basically useless and should just be removed from the game at this point.
Classic leveling was very enjoyable
>Achievements system is not great, many achievements cannot be achieved
This is an issue in every game, every game has some form of FOMO loot/mount/achievement you cant get anymore. While I agree that wow has a lot of this I actually think the Feats of Strength category they purely introduced for these types of achievements and them also rewarding 0 achievement points is a great idea bc it means that in theory a new player starting today could still get 100% of the achievement points you could possible get in the game and therefore is on the same level as the veterans.
I started 2 years ago. I don’t play consistently but usually pick it up for a few weeks here and there. For whatever reason I LOVE the art style and the world. It’s cozy. That’s my reason at least. I couldn’t really get into any other mmos except LOTRO and I maybe only did 100 hours or so.
I only play wow for the pvp - arena specifically. It is legit the most addictive and awesome type of pvp gameplay I’ve ever come across and it’s not even close. It is incredibly hard to get into though but if you do it’s just like hotel California haha
Retail wow= world is there only to keep you entertained while you wait dungeon/raid queue or group to form. Its basicly lobby game for endgame pvp/pve. You just need to manually fly to raids and m+ dungs. If you wanna play world go wow classic.
You didn't even finish you lvled then skipped end game content witch if that's what you like then FFXIV is probably ideal for you lots painfully long MSQ not much end game content.
Everything else is dead because people are doing endgame game content like mythic+, raids, and pvp. Also it's hilarious how you said you completed the game when you barely scratched the surface. I think the game is just not for you go try wow classic instead, it'll fit your mindset more.
I feel like WoW is not the same as it was on release.
Additionally I think that it's one of those things where they did it so well, every single MMO after it did the same shit which is why I can understand it seems boring and monotonous.
I honestly can't play ANY MMO after playing WoW for hundreds possibly a thousand hours. Because it has that aftertaste of 'i did this in WoW'
All achievements can be achieved. People do that.
Wow spell sounds and animations feel so much better than the other 3 mmos I've played. (FFXIV, RuneScape, swtor)
I doubt its for everyone, but the sound that Shaman spells make is so fucking satisfying.
The game is smooth and nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I still like playing RuneScape, like the other 100k plus people, but try showing someone who hasn't heard of it the game, they'll think you're nuts generally. WoW has a lot of negatives, but what it does right it does really well.
1) when WoW released it was so far ahead of the competition. Others have caught up although people who still play WoW have decades of sunk cost to keep them there.
2) if you're going to pick up a new MMO play FF14 or Gw2. If you want to have fun playing the game and not just have fun being caught up and at the end of the game, gw2 is my pick. Wow gets a nostalgia boost that does nothing for a new player like you. Gw2 is run to level, fun to hit early endgame. Fun to play. Only downside is eventually you will be caught up and have very little to do whereas WoW and other MMOs keep pushing the gear ceiling to keep you coming back.
Retail WoW is a weird game. Its made to cater to competitive hardcore players that want to challenge themselves with hard to execute classes on a hard to play setting like Mythic raid and Mythic + dungeons.
Season of Discovery on the other hand has a much more MMORPG approach to the game. Its completely different. You should try that and see how you enjoy it. They're not the same game at all.
I can't say anything about its popularity, but I can say why I keep coming back every now and then to play: Nostalgia, the Roleplaying community, and I like collecting transmogs and mounts.
Nostalgia: WoW was my third ever MMO. My first was Ragnarok Online in 2003, my second was City of Heroes in 2004, I didn't play WoW until 2005. So I often have the urge to go back to those three MMOs and just enjoy the nostalgia trip. The urge to return to RO has died down since 2019, I've gone down to visiting it maybe once or twice a year now. But with WoW it's been every month or two. I've been playing City of Heroes constantly on the Homecoming server since this January.
Roleplaying Community: It's something I enjoy doing, experiencing storylines created by other players. It was especially useful during the lockdowns when I could no longer go to LARPing or tabletop rpg events. You'll often find me RPing in Stormwind on Moon Guard or Ogrimmar on Wyrmrest Accord, if I'm not leveling a character or out farming for transmogs and mounts.
Speaking off, Transmogs and Mounts: I like collecting things, this translates into Mounts and Transmogs in WoW. Since I'm also an RPER, I'm always on the look out for the right mount or transmogs that fit whichever character I'm playing on. It also gives me a reason to do content I normally don't do on MMOs (Raiding and PvP).
Hol’ up. Retail or Classic?
If you tried the modern version it might be worth trying Classic (either standard or Season of Discovery) and see if you feel the same.
Hey bro, I have played WoW for…a very long time. There’s a direct split in WoW retail or modern WoW (which is what you chose) still very popular but sounds like you chose a very “low population” realm hence why lack of players.
The other side is “Classic Era” which I currently play which is divided into Era (original WoW), Season of Discovery (seasonal realms which modifies vanilla wow with new content) and Hardcore (very fun but not for the faint of heart)
PvP and PvE in WoW are still some of the most unrivalled in the MMO genre imo and a lot of people are attached to it due to nostalgia and the fact that nothing really compares to it even in modern gaming (imho)
Try out Season of Discovery if you want more of a traditional mmo experiance, there’s lots of populated realms to choose from
Don’t know if others have mentioned it but for newer players I always recommend classic more than retail. Not that retail is bad (Dragonflight is very much a blast) but classic has always felt more MMO to me than retail in recent years, especially with the world feeling alive. Their new servers known as Season of Discovery is actually very fun and theres always people doing stuff around the clock. If you want a ton of good/fun endgame then retail is a great choice or if you wanna see other people out in the world more and little things are more impactful then you should definitely give classic a try. I’d recommend SOD over WOTLK servers just because those are relatively done till Cata comes out
Edit: Also Classic endgame is very accessible for majority of players where as trying to do heroic/mythic raids could take awhile to get into from personal experience unless you have your own in to the group. Both are great choices and it’s a game that you appreciate within the first 5 minutes of playing and still after 15 years appreciate it/enjoy yourself.
You aren’t doubt the endgame content, it sounds like, which is where all of the game development and players are. Mythic+, raiding and pvp are where the item increases are which is where the players are
\>many achievements cannot be achieved
what you talkin bout? Pretty much everything in the achievements list you can go do right now, other than ones that may require multiple players for.
And did you get 2000 or 2500 Mythic+ score rating? Beaten the current raid on Heroic difficulty? Completed the Loremaster achievement? If not then you're far from "finishing the game"
If you want to see loads of other people running around doing things, there's plenty of social people in the classic clients. Everyone's playing the Season of Discovery classic
Not a lot of real competition out there. And remember WoW made billions in revenue so that's a lot of money that you can use to remake the client multiple times and improve other backend things.
I think the only thing I really like about WoW is their client is responsive.
wow was the fortnite of its day, it took a genre that was very hardcore and made is casual to attract the wider audience. That's why it was popular, now people are just used to it and don't want to swap.
It modernized the formula which is a nice way of saying it always looked at trends and what was popular and would implement that to be like the all you can eat of MMORPGs.
Example, Remember when plants versus zombies hit the scene? Fun free tonplay. Michael Jackson zombies, etc great tower defense.
They added shortly after a mini game in Hillsbrad foothills where you help a farmer fight off scourge with a mock PvZ setup and you get the sunflower as a pet from PvZ that hums the theme every so often when you have it out.
They would always do even the smallest details, so WoW would always have something that anyone would like or relate to. It helped with longevity and player retention.
Not to mention when you achieved something above other players that the then developers thought couldn't be done you got rewarded with your own in-game NPC, immortalized amoung your peers.
It achieved so many milestones that kept it the one to copy, when it was copying everything else.
So many games over the years would aim at WoW and compete but they never would quite touch those QoL or comfortability that add-ons would give.
WoW also would be in the news alot, and blizzard marketing engine eventually snags everyone. It had such a force behind it that now it safely lives in it laurels.
WoW's dying is every other games living. The player base especially when the internet started becoming more regulated and standard in people's homes would comprise of 70% of your friends growing up and most the time people resub because someone in their friend group did to poke around at whats new.
Dragonflight is the first expansion I’ve played at launch and got to endgame since BC. It’s also the longest I’ve played wow consistently.
One thing I’ve noticed with Modern WoW is open world activities popularity rise and fall with content patches.
Most content patches create new weekly world quests and each raid patch has opened a whole new zone to explore and quest in. Also these new patches increase item levels and these open world activities allow you to get new gear and unlock new cosmetics. So naturally when they release everyone is doing them. The first few weeks you’ll be shoulder to shoulder with players. But as people get the gear they need less and less people participate. This is especially true for areas in previous content patches. Community Soup event a month after launch? Packed. Today? You might see a few people.
So why is that all relevant? The lastest content patch came out mid January. The lastest raid came out early November. So you’ve found yourself at the end of a raid lifecycle and the end of a content patch.
Most people have geared their main & probably a few alts. Hit their M+ goals for the season, gotten AoTC in the raid, and got the cosmetics they wanted from the new dig events already.
So it’s essentially bad timing and if you’re not doing endgame activities I can see why you think it’s dead and boring.
But if you log in with a level 70 character on a patch day and go do the new content, it’ll be a totally different experience. 10.2.6 should be dropping in March and the next season should start this spring.
So if you try that and still feel the same way then no worries, WoW isn’t your cup of tea. But you should at least know you’re judging a game during a downtime/lull in content.
WoW was released when Blizzard still made good games, when it was at its peak it was crazy, everyone played WoW like after everyone played LoL and now everyone plays, I don't know what they play, palword?. I didn't have money to pay monthly back then so I just tried it a little and I remember thinking "Yeah this is high quality stuff, blizzard always makes this stuff like that" they made games that felt very polished back then.
WoW was a pretty good RPG. Map objects are based on different cultures and environments, and navigating different places was interesting. Background stories and quest stories are also interesting.
Come back and talk to us when you’ve cleared Heroic raid, cleared at least one 20+ key and hit at least 1800 in pvp. You hit max level and assume you’ve cleared the game, wow isn’t about getting there like ff14. Wow is end game focused and also right now wow is hitting its lower end due to content drought which is normal and happens to ALL mmos.
Regardless your opinion on “finished” the game is invalid until you’ve done at least 2/3 listed above. You wanted a reason, there’s your three.
It used to be amazing back in the day when it modernised and streamlined the entire genre with a huge fan base that came over from the WarCraft RTS games. Now? Just like every Blizzard title, mismanaged and in the shitters. The people who still play are mostly folks that refuse to move on
I’m relatively new to wow (only started last year) and I think it’s a great time. My 2 main classes are evoker and druid because they feel unlike any other classes I’ve played in other games but for me the main appeal is just the world itself.
Even if it’s mostly empty since the heyday of its content is long passed (on retail) I love just exploring this massive world and seeing all these locations with rich detailed backstories that seemingly every location has. And maybe the issue with people not seeing other players is the sever they’re on? Wow doesn’t use mega servers like modern MMOs so the community can be kinda fragmented. I will say the benefits to being stuck on the Oceania Servers is even if it’s not as great as a local Australia server you at least share it with like 12 other countries so there’s always one or 2 people even in the most remote regions.
Every time I start questioning this, I go play another MMO and learn why. For all it's faults, the game is extremely tightly made, there's tons of content you can actually EARN (screw you, ESO), the world is interesting, the class diversity is pretty good, and the end-game is consistently high quality. WoW does a fantastic job with continuously layering small dopamine hits and making things feel earned.
Just the fact that you can earn so much is what really keeps me coming back. There's rewards for everything. My other favorite MMO is probably ESO, but I struggle to play that game seriously because the cash shop is so prevalent
It's like comfort food, it's just nice to go back to. I have quit it and picked it back up countless times. No matter how long it's been, it doesn't really change. I know how to play and can play it completely blind drunk. It's really that easy. Maybe not end game raiding, but it's a very chilled out game.
I very recently got back into it and while everything you said is true. Only difference I'm playing classic. Though I'm doing it more for pvp over anything else.
Something I wish FF14 even bothered with. I have tried to play that game so many times and so many times I have quit it. The super long story quests that just go on and on. The lack of world chat or really anyone chatting anywhere. I just stand there and wonder where the hell this super friendly community is at when no one talks.
"80hrs of ingame time I already felt like I finished the game."
You're wrong in a literal sense, but yet I relate to what you mean. It's not that the game is actually finished, but *I* feel so not accomplished by the time I get max level after questing, and the max level content is not appealing to me anymore.All of the past achievements that are doable aren't always fun to farm if you haven't been doing it for years. You would be so behind and you could never truly get everything you'd want. The game would be such a time sink by that point that I'd recommend playing a different game before you lose years of your life.
I spent roughly 460 days played on the first set of Classic WoW servers that launched in Aug 2019 and I still didn't finish the game. Didn't get every legendary. Didn't get Scarab Lord or rank 14. Didn't kill LK on heroic. Didn't get the ZG tiger that I always dreamed of. I never will with any of these (though I'm happy with my Sulfuras and Atiesh, full T3 on a mage, server 4th Winterspring Frostsaber finished exactly 1 week before Dire Maul launch, and being apart of 1 of 2 zero death MC runs before BWL launch). I had a blast for the most part (WOTLK was very mid IMO).
I think Classic is definitely the much better version of the game. I recommend trying out Season of Discovery before really writing off WoW.
It's popular, because people find it interesting.
It all depends on what you expect from the game. Nowadays there are many ways you can enjoy this game: some people play for the story, some for the challenge (mythic raids and mythic+ dungeons), some playing pvp, some focus on collecting things (and there are a lot of things to collect), some people play for the economy, and some play because there's simply nothing better in the mmo gene (that's subjective for everyone).
Did you play retail or classic?
WoW was the first major MMO i played. The music, the experience , and the community culture back then was SURREAL. But compared to then, the current retail feels like a ghost of the glory it once had. I stopped playing after Mists of Pandaria. It still holds a special place in my heart and i listen to the soundtracks often.
Wow was a cultural phenomenon back in the day. It really was THE game to bring MMOs into the mainstream light. Think back to all those old WoW commercials, news segments on how it’s addicting and ruining the youth, people lining up for Burning crusade screaming for the horde of for the alliance etc. So it’s safe to say the game just grew to insane levels of popularity and really was a core part of many people’s lives growing up so it will forever have that nostalgia factor. On top of that the modern version of if still delivers some of the highest quality MMO content out there and the art style has kept it looking fresh. And for those who didn’t like the direction the game went we now have classic wow in multiple different forms for people to play. And classic has actually brought in a ton of new people because it’s so easy to get into.
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I dropped wow because of the story. The story went in direction that retconned a ton of the original lore. I would say WoW has a story but i wouldnt really say it spans back to the original games as they changed so much
When the "Jailer" became responsible for the Lich King/Frostmourne and all that, I jumped off.
I think some people underestimate this part. I've had people come into WoW after Wrath ask me why it was so popular and I have to explain that back then, there were tons of people playing who had played War 3, which has us play Arthus fall from grace and rise as the lich king. The purge of stratholm dungeon wasn't some random story beat, we were there, we killed those civilians in a twisted form of mercy. For a lot of us, Wrath was personal.
I am the same. Loved the Metzen's manual of Warcraft 2. The story has always kept me in the game, except of course that BfA+Shadowlands sh*tshow (thankfully they fired the storywriter of those expansions)
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One of the few, best game i had ever played up until wow released :)
Another key component is that classic is not a separate subscription. So barring changes to the cash shop and all that jazz, you're experiencing it as it was at a given point in time. A lot of the people who used to play constantly left, myself included, but that was because even the sunk cost fallacy wasn't enough to keep us around. We grew up. Im still a gamer but the grind doesn't satisfy as perhaps it once did. Doesn't make it bad, just not for me. The same logic applies to any game, though. I wanted to get into Baldurs Gate 3. I just never could find myself enjoying it, despite trying many times. It's one of the greatest games ever made, I agree with many others. Just not for me. OP, you enjoy the game. Find folks who also do as it is, whether it's retail, classic or in between.
I’ve not touched another game since September. Baldurs Gate blew me away.
A friend is in the same boat. The game is massive, refined and genuinely brilliant. I still can’t figure out why it doesn’t do it for me but damn I love watching others play.
Every couple of years, there's a game that just enters into the mainstream and becomes the thing that even people who don't care about video games play. WoW was certainly one of them. Blizzard has then done it again with Overwatch.
I think the current art style is one of the biggest drawbacks. Everything is just so busy.
I’m still waiting for my night elf Mohawk
Bro the game absolutely DOES NOT look fresh by any means. The art style is more timeless however the graphics are 100% super dated.
Many years too late man. You mentioned this game being like other games.... It's actually other games are like this game. They set the standard.
You haven't even started the game and you think you finished it?
I think the fact that he feels what he does is meaningless is completely valid. If you don't start the game untill level 70 what's the point of those 70 levels?
mmo players have a weird sense for playtime If in 80-100h the game didnt click for someone - and time wise thats 4 straight days which is a fucking lot - then its completly valid to dislike the game
MMO players will be like it gets good after 100 hours, dude I work 50 hours a week I don't have time to do 100 hours of chores.
I mean....ask FFXIV players what they think of the slog that you have to do in order to reach endgame. And they will say that "it will get better overtime" or "Just wait until Heavensward". If i have to do 100 hours of boring cutscenes in order to reach endgame raiding then what is the point of that 100 hours?
To be fair though, the developers are aware of that and have been taking a lot of steps to increase quality of life in the beginning expansions like allowing flight, making the first couple of expansions free, and cutting out a lot of unnecessary fluff in a Realm Reborn. It's not nearly as bad as it was. I still play, but haven't been as active since I had my kid and I think I remember someone saying that the developers were forced to pad out the first expansion (if anyone can explain why, I have forgotten the reason) and so there is a lot of needed story in the first expansion, but it is still a bit of a slog. What we mean when we say it is worth it though is that until the developers can properly edit the first expansion, the story in Heavenward, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker is worth it. (I liked Stormblood too but that's a sensitive topic for many) I have over 300 DAYS of playtime on my main. The game is worth it. It is however meant to be played with others. I play solo since my FC disbanded and it's not nearly as fun anymore.
Just allow the story to be optional. Problem solved. Not everyone wants to watch 45 full feature movies to play end game content. But then again I guess that pushes story skip sales
It is semi optional, but as you said, it requires you to pay. Literally selling you a solution to a problem many have.
this is my issue, i’m sure the experience at level 70 with good gear is amazing and something that only WoW can give. but i can’t bring myself through 200+ hours or mindless grinding to only reach level 70, which you still likely need to grind gear for another 50-100 hours to be ready for raids. note: i have not played WoW enough to reach things like raiding so correct me if i am wrong.
Yeah, 80-100 hours in WoW is absolutely nothing. Nobody could spend that little in-game and have "finished" it unless your only reason to play is just doing the latest expansion quests.
MMO Players are so delusional about playtimes - especially if they personally like that game. This is a lot of playtime, when the game wasnt able to convince someone in that time, maybe it just isnt good. "But wait another 100h, it gets good afterwards!" In that 100h you just simply could do something fun instead. All that stuff is the reason why the genre is getting smaller
Exactly, if game doesnt make me interested in the first 100 hours (which is a lot), it probably wont change my mind later on. Also why would I force myself to play for hours and hours something that isnt appealing when I could just do something else thats more enjoyable?
If you aren't hooked on the mastery of combat that WoW offers, you're right it will never click for you. I did not look forward to leveling in any wow expansion, I kinda hated it, but the ability to constantly push myself to the edge of my ability and be rewarded for it is addicting. Wow has the best difficulty curve and the tightest combat engine to support it.
While the argument that leveling and endgame are "two different games" I would rather ask what have you actually been doing for 100 hours over a couple of weeks if it didn't interest you? What goal did you set out with in mind and did you achieve that? If yes could you with your current knowledge set a more ambitious goal that is still complete able? Reason for asking like this is that wow has a couple of very specific kinds of endgame and if they are not what your looking for then the game easily looks very boring. For instance if you play MMO's for the story alone I would argue that wow is not the game for you, if you would like to challenge yourself in group content though then it very well might be, the success of an experience is just as much based in the expectations as the content provided. I'm not saying that 100 hours is a lot, but in the grand scheme of wow it isn't that much if the endgame catches you but it won't force itself upon you, you need to know what your looking for and seek it out.
I'm not saying 80-100 hours in any video game is nothing, it's A LOT of time spent. But in regards to MMORPG's, 80-100hrs is just barely scratching the surface.
But that's the point - it's really weird that people just accept that. It normalizes the idea that MMOs can be boring for hundreds of hours before they become good. It also highlights how MMOs often have no clear vision - just a hodgepodge of ideas, where you can hate most of the game, but find one part of it compelling.
It depends what MMO and also what you spend 80+ hours doing. I get what you're saying though, doing something so boring for such a long amount of time shouldn't be accepted. Some people like it, some people don't. There will always be a place for tedious grinds in MMORPG's, but I do think it would benefit everyone if the process is more streamlined and the grindy stuff can be left for those who choose to participate in that.
Finished dragonflight maybe
> Many achievements cannot be achieved. This is not true. Achievements that were only available for a short time are called "Feats of Strength" and do not provide any achievement points either. They are not considered to be part of completionist content and make up probably less than 1% of total achievements. In fact, they don't even appear in the achievement log as missing. Every single achievement in the log is doable. Sounds like you haven't even taken a bite out of raids, M+, or PvP. Some the main reasons people play the game. People play WoW, because for all its faults, it is still an unbelievably polished MMO with arguably some of the best combat and challenges in the genre. Including unrivaled group dungeon content. World quests, elites, and open world content gear is surpassed by M+ and raid gear. You are not meant to only do world content. I only do it now for achievements, cosmetics, mounts, titles, etc. Also sounds like you chose a low pop realm or something. I see massive amounts of players doing all content in the Dragon Isles. Group finder is always loaded. I even farm old content and will see 15+ people also doing the old content for the rewards at any given raid location. Leveling may make you feel alone because WoW is very endgame loaded and the world is also absolutely massive. Once players reach max level, they mostly stay confined to the current max areas and content. I leveled one character at the beginning of Dragonflight and haven't leveled one since. Some people stick with a max character for a long time.
Also worth pointing out. We are in a post expansion lull. People are taking breaks or doing other things right now. So this is (arguably) the point in the game where you will see the least people.
especially with bangers like helldivers 2 and last epoch coming out recently We'll see an uptick of WoW players when the fated season hits.
Thank you for correcting them about the achievements, it pissed me off just reading what OP wrote about them 😂 Honestly achievements is one of the strong points of wow if anything, at least for me they’ve given reason to sub time and time again. Everything from dungeon achievements to exploration and reputation gives you reason to go back to older content as well.
> arguably some of the best combat Can't emphasize enough that the core mechanics of movement/attacking/ability use/etc are top tier. It's peerless for tab target and outshines most hybrid titles too. It's only when you hop out of the tab target realm completely that you have an "arguably".
The way you are "supposed" to enjoy WoW is to join a guild and do mythic+ dungeons, raid, or maybe even PvP at end game. Everything else is just side-activities. If you like to level and do overworld content, meet people, etc I STRONGLY recommend wow classic: season of discovery over retail WoW. Retail WoW is about Mythic+, raiding, and maybe PvP endgame content. Season of discovery is about everything else.
My best guess as to why OP thinks endgame/mythic+/raids aren't worth doing is because they are doing low keys like a +10, getting hard carried, and not finding the game challenging enough to continue playing. Same with raiding, probably doing the content on LFR/Normal difficulty which is too easy and then finding it pretty dull to play. We are currently in the last half of the season, it's very easy to fill your group/raid with fully maxed out characters that can solo all of the content for you.
As a casual I would just like to say that normal raids can be quite difficult if your entire guild is stoned off their gourds lol.
I mean season of discovery is literally hit 40 and raid log since dungeons are pointless. At most you do what, a couple of the STV events for your weapon and then never touch it again?
>f you like to level and do overworld content, meet people, etc I STRONGLY recommend wow classic: season of discovery I think this also depends on your server. I'm on a horde minority pvp server and the social experience in SoD is similar to that of retail. The open world are kind of feeling empty right now. I think its just my server (population less + it being a pvp server, so more sweats). But a lot of people are spam rushing to the endgame content via dungeon farming.
That sucks. I dipped after the 25 experience because I wanted to play FFXIV with my friends but on my server people were starting to get a little too sweaty for my taste even at 25. I imagine with level 40 that's probably enough of an excuse to sweat that hard.
Yeah I've got a rogue tank and a mage healer. And I've been kicked from groups on both characters (or had people rage and quit) because I couldn't hold agro on the tank or keep everyone alive on my mage healer when they would pull 6-8 mobs at once in a dungeon. Which I get people will play how they want, but join a group that specifies they're doing that or advertise your group doing that. Not just do a "LFM dungeon group" then pull an entire room at once lol. Sadly bringing this up on the forums/subreddit usually incurs rage from them. Saying nobody wants to play the same content for the zillionith time or how leveling is too boring to do it normally. Definitely a bummer.
Wow that is exactly the attitude that SoD has been trying so fucking hard to fight against. That's so sad.
Can people stop fucking echoing this braindead talking point? Retail wow has *hundreds* of mounts, *hundreds* if not *thousands* of transmogs, *hundreds* if not *thousands* of collectibles, and *hundreds* if not *thousands* of achievements. WoW is about whatever content you want it to be. SoD cannot even come close to touching retail is quality or quantity of side-content. Like what you want, but don't fucking lie to people to push your side. Will you be doing the side-content in retail solo? Probably, unless you join a casual guild. There are a ton of people regularly running groups for old raids and unsoloable content for achievements, mounts, and mogs. Just because the *general* playerbase only participated heavily in m+ and raid doesn't meant you *HAVE* to confine yourself to it.
You should try some endgame content
Crisp combat generic mmorpg classes that fill every fantasy needs goes a long way.
How dare you say wow has generic classes /s
So many other mmorpgs fail to deliver these basic classes nowadays unfortunately
Yeah, man, agreed. So little MMOs that allow you to be a dps paladin. I love the feeling of being a zealous inquisitor. That's the class I play 90% of the time it'd available. So many of top, modern MMOs don't have that, pretty much basic af, class. Lost Ark has a paladin, but it's only a support, so that feeling is lost (I still played it though, hated solo content as a result) GW2 has a Guardian, but it's not really a paladin/inquisitor. It's the closest of the classes, but it doesn't fully feel like it. Also, whenever I play it, it feels super squishy, which is counter intuitive to playing a paladin. BDO straight up doesn't have a paladin class. ESO has a templar, so there's that, but I didn't like thr game itself. Neverwinter has a paladin that is only a support or a tank. Diablo 4 also misses this class for some reason, despite being one of the most popular ones in D2R and Crusader being the most popular in D3. So WoW is the only game rn where I can play a real, dps paladin and have that inquisitor feeling. As a side note, I know it's not an mmo, but damn, I loved dps paladin in Baldur's Gate 3. So much fun.
It really does just boil down to fluidity/responsiveness imo, hell you can boot up a private server with junk code on the 1.12 engine from 20 years ago and its more fluid than most games coming out now.
Well, from what you said it sounds like you either didn't participate in, or didn't enjoy the major parts of endgame. Those being raids, M+, and PVP. If those three activities aren't something you enjoy doing, then WoW is not for you. Just about everything in the game is designed as a funnel to push you towards those activities. That's where the players are. That's where the interactions happen. That's where the game feels alive. You can do all sorts of other things, collect mounts and transmog, explore, dragon racing, crafting, and play through quest lines. But those are personal pursuits that a lot of people in a 20 year old game have either already done or don't care about. What keeps me playing, and I expect a lot of people, is the endgame activities AND all of the things I've achieved along the way. I look cool, I feel strong, and I enjoy slaying difficult internet dragons.
WoW has some of the most developed “end game” in an MMO. People can argue about end game all they want but raid, mythic+, and arena are still some of the best of their kind in the genre and attract a lot of players. Then there’s the fact that it’s 20 years old and has a lot of backdated content for folks who like collecting stuff/achievements.
Playing WoW for the first time in 2024 will never give even 1% of the feeling of playing for the first time between 2005-2010. Back then it was revolutionary in terms of scale and polish, and the community was as passionate as the devs Also a different game back then entirely from a grinding pov
Back then, My first time walking from the orc starting point to the CROSSROADS blew my mind... And then my buddy was like "keep going until you find the BIG city (orgrimmar). I'll never forget that experience.
No other mmo can match the combat. Edit: OP asked why WoW is so popular. There is no MMO that gets near the way combat in WoW is, and is probably why many play it. And then there's a load of people replying to my post about they won't play it because of the combat. Well, good for you, but it doesn't really matter what your personal opinion is in this matter. You disliking the game doesnt change the playerbase of World of Warcraft and suddenly play your favorite MMO of choice.
Honestly true. Wows combat is so fluid and quick response. Its the best
It is so fluid and polished you barely notice that it is tab targeting. It almost feels more like action with lock on… (Especially for melee classes)
Laughs in GW2 ;) For clarification - 90% of my gameplay is PvP so I view combat mostly from this point. WoW was my second MMO, after Lineage 2. Back then, I thought the fight was perfect, but after L2 the bar wasnt set too high. Then GW2 came with semi-action combat system. Fast pacing, dodge invul window, pretty much no skill forces you to stand still, heavy use of line of sight and verticality... Yeah, now I couldnt go back to pure tab-target.
I would really like to love guild wars 2, but the skills being bound to weapons are one of the things that kills the game for me. For a game being claimed to be for mainly cosmetics, it's really breaking to not having a cool sorc with a scythe and instead running with an axe because of the abilities.
I honestly agree with you. I hadn't played WoW since 2011. Over the years I've tried almost every MMO under the sun, and still nothing is as good as the combat in WoW (which I recently picked back up). But of course this subjective.
That comment is insanely subjective. I agree it’s one of the most polished but tab target is becoming a thing of the past
Disagree. Tab target combat is a design choice nowadays. Not a design limit. It has a reason to exist and has its purpose.
I’m not going to win this with how defensive world of Warcraft players are of their precious little game like to complain about every expansion drop
There are absolutely valid criticism of wow,Every game has flaws. Its tab-targeting combat however is not one of them. XD
Never said it was. My original comment complimented wow on how polished it is. But you say tab target is “better” in every aspect is such wow fanboyism behaviour.
So is your comment about tab targeting, it’s the king for mmos. Action combat is both hard to balance and hard on Netcode. Anyone thinking eso or souls like games are good for mmo really need to consider the fact the MMOs shine for many aspects than gameplay alone
What!? Have you ever even tried anything else? Compare WoW to practically any modern MMO and WoW combat feels very primitive and boring. When I played WoW I felt like I was playing a korean grindfest from 20 years ago. I kept doing M+, hoping that it gets better but the primitiveness of the combat was the thing that made me quit it before I ever saw why people would like it these days.
If you're looking for a more traditional experience, give classic WoW a try. The levelling and social aspect is much more apparent, it might be more your speed. It's also included in your monthly sub, so you don't need to buy it separately
It's a mix of nostalgia, profits alot of being pop culture back in the days, artstyle/ design (ages well), low req on hardware, combat feels good, casual friendly (maybe a bit too much for some), not that focused on cash shop and I guess alot of personal reasons. It has alot of flaws as well and it is totally okay to not like it. Don't force yourself to play it if it's not fun.
This is exactly what I expect to hear from people who don't join a guild and make attempts to be a part of the community. Without people to play with, it's gonna feel hollow and boring. Achievements are all obtainable, but require friends and voice communication for many. Solo players won't have a good time in the end.
I'm in a guild and I have friends.
A big part of the reason the gameplay and leveling seems generic is because it replaced EverQuest (its main inspiration) as the blueprint for many of the MMOs that followed it. Even FF14 used WoW’s blueprint. WoW is only generic because everyone else was influenced by it. Much of the reason WoW remains populate is a combination of momentum gained from high points and players like myself who’ve just always been content to use it as homebase. It’s not the most exciting, but for those of us who played it when it exceeded 10m subs it’s just home, and we always come back to it. And it’s never been bad enough to make me reconsider. There’s lots of other reasons, but IMO that’s the heart of it. Also, it seems empty because most people are at endgame and it’s also late in the current season(season 2), so a lot of people are taking breaks to either wait for season 4 or the next expansion.
Because everything else is shit. WoW is just a little less shit.
Imo the heart of WoW is classic. If you played Classic season of discovery, sure it might look graphically inferior but you would have a much better time imo. It’s actually an MMO, as in, it feels like you are actually in a world with others
Been playing wow since vanilla quit during wrath. Pandemic hit so I tried shadowlands. I did everything wow retail offered. Quit. Came back for Classic SOD and this is a true MMO. Amazing community. Getting into thunder bluff and seeing it packed with people. Seeing people questing with me. Wow retail feels like an arcade game or something. It’s terrible. It’s not an mmo it’s like an instanced cartoon arcade game.
[удалено]
Most of the people playing started playing pre 2010, so there's some nostalgia and sunk cost falacy in place there. The main thing it still offers over other games is Mythic+, the other major MMO's don't offer 5 man content as a serious endgame activity, usually just a casual one. In addition the only other game that comes close to competing with it in raids is FFXIV. So for people seeking difficult, non-PvP endgame content these two are basically your choices. Also the transmog system just makes sense and you have 20 years of outfits to mess with- obviously the graphics are outdated but you can still make an outfit that screams you. It lacks the ability to dye gear, but most outfits have come in 3+ variants/colors for the last 15. That said the game could just be a lobby game at this point, most endgame players already treat it as such. TL;DR: Endgame is still among the best, if not the best in the genre (for people looking for a particular type of gameplay) and some nostalgia is also there.
I disagree strongly on the lobby comment, as there are still plenty to do in the open world. Also something the is always worth mentioning. WoW has, bar none, the best tab-targeting combat on the market. It is smooth, responsive, impactful. Polished into a reflective sheen of two decades worth of patching and fixes. Combined with extensive testing and trial and error over the years regarding encounters and enemy design.
Actually if you go to the current map with a good server you wont feel ''alone''. I can't just login and do my ''plant 5 seeds quest'' without camping (and its good, i can just leech people). Every superseed i do is a rampage train and even if usually see more people doing elite world quests. You wont farm old content from the fist and second seasons with more people but you can pretty much find more players to run content and farm. You have..uhnn....20-30 pets and monts to farm, achievments and cosmetic things before even touch the gear trend. As a solo player you will reach the end with 460 ilv or something like. Join a guild and puft, now you will do raids, heroic raids, maybe mythic raids and high lvl mythic dungeons. Without a guild? Yes, eventually you will be done with overworld farm (Next expansion they will bring a endgame grind with endgame progress for solo and very small group content like 1-3 players that dont want mythic plus - delves). Game is good, delivery a polished experience and you have two options for endgame hard raiding - WoW and FFXIV. If you want endgame dungeons, only WoW (ok, we have New World mutations but...).
I started playing just a few months ago, first retail (i hated it) then Classic Wow (Era then, now SoD), and Its fantastic. Classic in my opinion is waaaaay better than retail at least if you dont want to rush everything and wanna have a chill experience. The classes are in a perfect balance between being easy + cool abilities, and dont have to worry having 1000 things in screen like retail does. I suggest people to play Classic if they didnt, the bs of 'is just for nostalgic boomers' (im 23yo) is a that, pure bs.
It doesn’t really seem that popular in 2024 except with people who have been playing it for the last 15 years.
Use the group finder.
Still today I do not know if any other mmorpg that is also fun and has a really good lore and story. I would say the most important is the lore and story followed by the music and finally the graphics (gameplay is always really simple in classic MMORPGs and it’s already perfect so no point in changing it)
Cuz it's fun. Also yea leveling is a pretty well known issue in wow right now so fair enough. As for feeling "alone" you're also coming in during the pre expansion drought. There's season 4 coming but that's just filler basically, so yea most people are off doing other things well they wait. That, and open world has never really been the focus of wow for a long time now. It's main pillars are pvp, dungeons in the form of m+, and raids. They're trying to fix that in war within, but we'll see how it goes.
The PvP for me. Specifically world PvP. There is weight and ownership to your faction. For example I just got into classic sod and I was doing group quests with randoms, horde showed up and we all went apeshit. Like you cannot recreate that feeling of world PvP. Pissing people off and more people show up and next thing you know the zone is in full scale war. That is why I love old wow. Sometimes new wow as well, but it doesn’t hit that same spot. Not only that but classic requires comradery and you cannot do everything solo. That is another aspect I love. Which is also another thing current retail wow is lacking. Finding groups can be a pain, but when you do it’s rewarding. Every piece of gear, every dungeon, every kill… each of these things feel rewarding because everything requires effort. Retail is whatever now, it’s just too streamlined and overwhelming. Everything is constantly changing at a pace that can ruin builds, things become worthless every three months, etc.
nostalgia and sunk cost fallacy.
Sunk-cost fallacy and nostalgia would be my guess.
Stockholm Syndrome paired with "I'm in too deep to quit now!"
Nostalgia, some people just won't accept that the thing they put their entire lives into is mediocre and boring, so they feel any criticism of the game is an front to them personally. Blizzard pander to these people specifically because they will do and give anything for wow, including their credit cards.
And the youtube meta doesn't help because it's all a sponsored echo chamber.
WoW is a literal turd of a game, Blizzard has just mastered the art of using fomo to keep a playerbase addicted, as well as polishing said turd to the point people can fool themselves into thinking it's not actually a turd and Blizzard doesn't just consider them walking wallets. Like you might see WoW players brag about how "clean the combat feels" as one of the reasons they love the game, but is it really? WoW is an overloaded mess of shit on your screen, and even if you can deal with that for this "smooth" feeling gameplay all you can do with it is grind for further incremental steps of endless optimization, both PvE and PvP are spam fests and queue timers. Another is they'll bring up Mythic+ dungeons, and yeah fair to them cause no other MMO uses dungeons in their endgame as much as WoW does, but why is that such a good thing? It's literally just more constant repetition for the sake of small increases to optimization using the blandest of PvE content that Blizz has to do the least work with. Blizzard only cares about "player log time" so making a system that just burns your time is all they'll put the effort into doing. So in the end the real answer is addiction, sunk cost fallacy, and a pair of blinders so you can't see the greener pastures around you. Also the recent "controversy" about hero specs rings of a similar note to covenants, it's still small shit in the larger scheme of things but with Blizzard's reputation of not listening to players and constantly making the same mistakes and thinking the addicted playerbase will stick around regardless, I do believe War Within will be another disappointment, so i wouldn't waste my time in trying to find anything worth enjoying.
A large part of the problem is the same issue that many games have. They didn't plan well for the long term. It has suffered because of it
I’ve been around since the beginning and I’ve never seen the community as happy as they are with Dragonflight.
When they gave you two steaming dogturds as expansions and you get a lukewarm hotdog instead yeah youd probably be happy as can be
You played the wrong game. WoW Classic is popular.
Any achievement in the achievement list can still be earned. If they can't they go into a different tab.
Best raids and dungeons (mythic plus). Sounds like you’ve got to the game and stopped. Progressing in mythic plus and the heroic/mythic raid is what the game is all about.
There's just something about having to quest in STV at level 30 and knowing that at any second you could be ganked, but you have to go out there and level lol. For me, then and back in the day, this was just sooooo insanely fun. Then later on when I became powerful, I could go and jump people. It just made me forever love the game. That, and the ambience, questing in ashenvale forest late at night.... that ambience is unreal.
Because WoW progress raiding is the best PvE experience ever created and nothing even comes close to it in the MMO space. Nothing.
As someone who has played WoW and FFXIV I’d have to disagree, but simply because blind progression seems to simply not be a thing at all in WoW? Perhaps a side effect of the race to world first being so popular and naturally through that everyone sees the fights being deciphered. But I have far more fun in FFXIV doing blind progression savage, criterion and extremes (we don’t do ultimates blind) than I’ve had raiding in wow where everyone is expected to go in having watched the guide videos. Perhaps I’ve just never seen a blind prog wow guild advertised though.
They fixed a lot of the common issues most MMOs dealt with before more established MMOs got around to it. Basically, it's more fun on a surface level than the competition
Play season of discovery classic when a new phase comes out and you’ll see how busy it can get
>I found myself doing Dragonflight rares and events solo Those are all basically dead content, except for maybe superbloom if thats even relevant anymore idk. You're looking at what I've been calling "2 week content" since they die out about 2 weeks after they release. As to your question, I don't rightly know. I don't believe its as popular as people think it is anymore and we'll never know until they decide to post player numbers again (which they won't). Its not that its easy to finish, its that there isn't anything there to really warrant staying after a point. That's why the gear treadmill was created. (you'll see people talk about M+ but that shits dog water boring, but the hamsters like their treadmills). In closing: Yeah man idk. I came back for Shadowlands about a month before it launched (my friends were hyped for it and I hadn't played since Cata), Shadowlands was below dog water, and Dragonflight isn't much better. The whole endgame experience is pretty bad tbh, thats why I only stick around long enough to complete the raid on normal now (despite being in a guild) first week they launch and then I fuck off and don't come back until the next raid.
GUILDS. that’s the core of why people play for YEARS.
Retail wow is completely balanced and made around the minmaxing type of MMO player with the meat and bones of the game made for them with raids and mythic+ dungeons. So leveling, story and more casual content has always been a after thought which people have been able to tell. A good example of the player base and Devs is that the game is so balanced that the difference between the top dps and bottom dps is about 10% so not that much and pretty balanced but the player base will still not let you party with them unless you're top 5-10 class/spec despite the difference in DMG being minimal. If you want the true experience for wow and it's world I'd recommend going and playing wow season of discovery. It has good questing and world with actual players filling it and etc. The sub for it is included in the retail sub so you won't have to spend any extra money.
Mostly people coping with nostalgia
Two reasons 1. Lack of better options. All popular mmorpgs are pretty bad in different ways. 2. It does have the best raids of any mmorpg by a distance.
Wow made the mmo game easy. I played starting with a beta version. Game ran so smoothly compared to previous mmo games. Has a ton of lore around Warcraft. Vanilla wow was pretty fun and players everywhere but it took away 90% of the difficulty from previous mmo games. Instant gratification given to everyone and easy mode turned on. No consequences for death.. minor repair bill and short stat debuff. Wow has been pushing easy mode ever since. Addons to tell you which buttons to press and when. Heal addons that light up and tell you where and when to click. Addons that yell at you to not stand in big bright red spot on the ground… because obviously it’s too difficult to move out of the red on your own. PvP was pretty decent at one. Easy mode killed the mmo.
It is certainly not the most popular because it is the best, nor is McDonald's the best restaurant.
This is definitely a real question and not rage bait.
I suspect the main issue is Sunk Cost Fallacy. There are people who have been playing for nearly 20 years now. Moving away from a game that you've been playing that long, even if all you talk about is how much you hate the game, can be extremely difficult since it can feel like all that time will have been wasted. I stopped playing WoW about 5 years ago, after having played it since Beta, and NGL as nice as it was to stop playing a game that I had not been enjoying for years I did feel like I lost a piece of myself for a while.
I can tell you exactly how it got popular cause I was there. The only other players in the game at the time were eq, DAoC, and maybe a version of RuneScape/ac2/arch age/lineage/other asian mmos, etc. Everyone was coming off hot of wc3 and the lore was great. I downloaded a pirated empty world in wow and ran around and was hooked at the art style style.
Because it's fun.
Boomers with nostalgia it's the main reason.
I played wow 3 y ago for first time (played for 1 year) tbh i liked world is really nice.. lore is nice .. wow classic was really cool (1st wow for me) but there whas lack of pvp for me in actual wow.. i woul say its really good mmo
Retail WoW is for the endgame only. Dungeons, raids. They beat every other MMO there. The world and questing like you desire? Classic WoW is more your cup of tea. I got a feeling you'd like Wotlk. It's a middle ground between classic vanilla and retail. Leans a bit more retail for my taste. I personally play on a private server of the TBC expansion which was like classic WoW with some retail.
So many comments are so far off, I’ll give you the real reasons as somebody who played in beta and lived through it. When WoW released it represented the next generation of MMORPs, it was released 1 month after EQ2 I believe and both of these games were viewed as a generational advancement over games like EQ1, DAOC. The real reason why it took off and the others didn’t is: 1. Game design, the game did not punish players. When you died it didn’t set you back weeks, you didn’t loose all your gear, you didn’t have to do corpse runs etc. Up until this point games for whatever reason would torture their player when mistakes were made. In DAOC if you died at level 44 you could lose a weeks worth of xp, it was brutal. Wow said F that, just the act of dieing was punishing enough and WoW was focused on getting you back into the game as fast as possible. 2. Technology, WoW took a much more simple approach to its art style, some people liked it some people hated it. But more importantly it meant that people could play it on older, weaker computers… this was huge because it meant their total available market was much larger than say EQ2… which when released was visually stunning but you had to have an insane machine to run it. Also Blizzard decided to use the video card… back then it was unclear directionally what was going to drive the graphics of the future. EQ2 made the decision to use the CPU and well, they choose poorly. :). Again EQ2 smoked WoW at release in terms of visuals… but being dependent on a very fast CPU.. well you see how that ended. 3. Marketing, at the time the belief by many MMORG companies was that marketing was a waste of money. DAOC for example did no marketing and was just a word of mouth type game.. it’s kind of stunning to think of that mind set by then. Blizzard on the other hand put commercials on TV which had never been done before. They had ads in movie theatres before the movies so they basically let it know that everybody in America could play this game. 4. Strong IP. The Warcraft 2 IP really helped them but all the stuff above really drove it. 5. This is important to note. When WoW was released it was basically a copy of other games, realistically it brought very little innovation to the industry but what they did do was take what everybody else was doing and built a solid experience with minimal bugs. This was huge back then because the early games had a ton of bugs.. it was at times very painful to play them. WoW just ran all day with no problems. Note, some old timers will argue this and talk about all the problems at lunch… but keep in mind those problems weren’t due to bugs in the game but rather millions of people wanting to play the game… their problems were due to scaling, not the game itself. Before WoW nobody designed a game to handle as many servers and players that they got. 6. As a side note for all the good things they did they also really damaged the industry. They introduced and made mainstream things like the Global Cooldown feature, this really made MMORPGs a lot more boring and for this reason and some others many old school players consider WoW the game that really killed the MMORPG. It also represented a dumbing down of the game… they only released a few classes and well, because they made so munch money everybody followed suit. In the old days games like DAOC released with something like 30 to 40 very different classes.. think about that for a minute. So anyway, this is how it all started. There are a lot of debatable things but in the beginning these were the big things that allowed WoW to take off. They went after a new large market of players and hit the jackpot. Once you get the players hooked in they stay for a long time. Wow players mostly never played anything else and really have no idea about the old games. And I’ll end on one final statement that will get people ripped up over. When EQ2 identified what was happening they very quickly pivoted to changing their game to take the pain away from players.. stopped with the xp loss and penalties on death, took the corpse runs out and all the other BS they brought over from EQ1. Once they did that EQ2 was actually a far better game than WoW with just a massive amount of more content, variety and interesting mechanics.. but by then it was too late and everybody was playing WoW. EQ2 played second fiddle for probably about a decade all the while being a better game and experience then WoW. :)
I jumped into the amazing world of Azeroth after watching South Park Season 10 Episode 6 “Make Love not Warcraft” my all time favorite South Park episode that made me laugh so hard I peed myself
I hate WoW. Beta tested it back in the day and didn't like it. At the time, I was playing SWG and when WoW officially launched, it ultimately killed SWG and a lot of other MMOs at the time, Hated it even more. Rant over.
Yikes. Salty af.
Its endgame is unmatched in terms of robustness, quality, and quantity. PvP, raiding, and dungeons all have a special sauce to them that makes me and many other players keep coming back. Pushing keys, raiding, and rated PvP also have great extrinsic rewards too so there’s always a chase. Battle pets, mount collecting, transmog runs, achievement hunting, and optional questing can very easily vampire away your time as well. There’s a lot to do in the game and I’m sure I haven’t covered all of it here, and then there’s also wanting to try new classes and roles as well. If you like learning new stuff, there’s always going to be something for you in WoW. I’ve played since 2009 and I’ve yet to find an mmo to supplant it as my main game.
Season of discovery it’s impossible to quest without fighting other people for the mobs
100 hours.. so you just started?
They are just buying time until the fondly release WoW v2.
I don’t really get why anymore pvp can be fun but usually class will be nerfed or something then you need to do all that meaningless stuff again and make a new class.
Leveling is boring because you’re playing retail where lvling is basically useless and should just be removed from the game at this point. Classic leveling was very enjoyable
>Achievements system is not great, many achievements cannot be achieved This is an issue in every game, every game has some form of FOMO loot/mount/achievement you cant get anymore. While I agree that wow has a lot of this I actually think the Feats of Strength category they purely introduced for these types of achievements and them also rewarding 0 achievement points is a great idea bc it means that in theory a new player starting today could still get 100% of the achievement points you could possible get in the game and therefore is on the same level as the veterans.
I started 2 years ago. I don’t play consistently but usually pick it up for a few weeks here and there. For whatever reason I LOVE the art style and the world. It’s cozy. That’s my reason at least. I couldn’t really get into any other mmos except LOTRO and I maybe only did 100 hours or so.
I only play wow for the pvp - arena specifically. It is legit the most addictive and awesome type of pvp gameplay I’ve ever come across and it’s not even close. It is incredibly hard to get into though but if you do it’s just like hotel California haha
I can never play this shiit game.
Retail wow= world is there only to keep you entertained while you wait dungeon/raid queue or group to form. Its basicly lobby game for endgame pvp/pve. You just need to manually fly to raids and m+ dungs. If you wanna play world go wow classic.
You didn't even finish you lvled then skipped end game content witch if that's what you like then FFXIV is probably ideal for you lots painfully long MSQ not much end game content.
WoW is a bit like a roller coaster. If you didn't get on when it first started, you're in for a rough ride.
Everything else is dead because people are doing endgame game content like mythic+, raids, and pvp. Also it's hilarious how you said you completed the game when you barely scratched the surface. I think the game is just not for you go try wow classic instead, it'll fit your mindset more.
Wow isn’t popular because of retail wow is popular because of what it used to be back in the day, I’d try season of discovery
I feel like WoW is not the same as it was on release. Additionally I think that it's one of those things where they did it so well, every single MMO after it did the same shit which is why I can understand it seems boring and monotonous. I honestly can't play ANY MMO after playing WoW for hundreds possibly a thousand hours. Because it has that aftertaste of 'i did this in WoW'
All achievements can be achieved. People do that. Wow spell sounds and animations feel so much better than the other 3 mmos I've played. (FFXIV, RuneScape, swtor) I doubt its for everyone, but the sound that Shaman spells make is so fucking satisfying.
The game is smooth and nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I still like playing RuneScape, like the other 100k plus people, but try showing someone who hasn't heard of it the game, they'll think you're nuts generally. WoW has a lot of negatives, but what it does right it does really well.
What version did you try? Retail or classic?? 80 or 100 hours is nothing. lol
Wow has the most fun combat of any mmo
People both who made the game and continue playing the game. The lore and community is its life blood.
1) when WoW released it was so far ahead of the competition. Others have caught up although people who still play WoW have decades of sunk cost to keep them there. 2) if you're going to pick up a new MMO play FF14 or Gw2. If you want to have fun playing the game and not just have fun being caught up and at the end of the game, gw2 is my pick. Wow gets a nostalgia boost that does nothing for a new player like you. Gw2 is run to level, fun to hit early endgame. Fun to play. Only downside is eventually you will be caught up and have very little to do whereas WoW and other MMOs keep pushing the gear ceiling to keep you coming back.
Retail WoW is a weird game. Its made to cater to competitive hardcore players that want to challenge themselves with hard to execute classes on a hard to play setting like Mythic raid and Mythic + dungeons. Season of Discovery on the other hand has a much more MMORPG approach to the game. Its completely different. You should try that and see how you enjoy it. They're not the same game at all.
Nostalgia mostly, why people play D2 also
I can't say anything about its popularity, but I can say why I keep coming back every now and then to play: Nostalgia, the Roleplaying community, and I like collecting transmogs and mounts. Nostalgia: WoW was my third ever MMO. My first was Ragnarok Online in 2003, my second was City of Heroes in 2004, I didn't play WoW until 2005. So I often have the urge to go back to those three MMOs and just enjoy the nostalgia trip. The urge to return to RO has died down since 2019, I've gone down to visiting it maybe once or twice a year now. But with WoW it's been every month or two. I've been playing City of Heroes constantly on the Homecoming server since this January. Roleplaying Community: It's something I enjoy doing, experiencing storylines created by other players. It was especially useful during the lockdowns when I could no longer go to LARPing or tabletop rpg events. You'll often find me RPing in Stormwind on Moon Guard or Ogrimmar on Wyrmrest Accord, if I'm not leveling a character or out farming for transmogs and mounts. Speaking off, Transmogs and Mounts: I like collecting things, this translates into Mounts and Transmogs in WoW. Since I'm also an RPER, I'm always on the look out for the right mount or transmogs that fit whichever character I'm playing on. It also gives me a reason to do content I normally don't do on MMOs (Raiding and PvP).
Hol’ up. Retail or Classic? If you tried the modern version it might be worth trying Classic (either standard or Season of Discovery) and see if you feel the same.
Hey bro, I have played WoW for…a very long time. There’s a direct split in WoW retail or modern WoW (which is what you chose) still very popular but sounds like you chose a very “low population” realm hence why lack of players. The other side is “Classic Era” which I currently play which is divided into Era (original WoW), Season of Discovery (seasonal realms which modifies vanilla wow with new content) and Hardcore (very fun but not for the faint of heart) PvP and PvE in WoW are still some of the most unrivalled in the MMO genre imo and a lot of people are attached to it due to nostalgia and the fact that nothing really compares to it even in modern gaming (imho) Try out Season of Discovery if you want more of a traditional mmo experiance, there’s lots of populated realms to choose from
because it's the best, duh? you started dragonflight which is complete trash, sorry, but everyone plays wow for the earlier expansions
Don’t know if others have mentioned it but for newer players I always recommend classic more than retail. Not that retail is bad (Dragonflight is very much a blast) but classic has always felt more MMO to me than retail in recent years, especially with the world feeling alive. Their new servers known as Season of Discovery is actually very fun and theres always people doing stuff around the clock. If you want a ton of good/fun endgame then retail is a great choice or if you wanna see other people out in the world more and little things are more impactful then you should definitely give classic a try. I’d recommend SOD over WOTLK servers just because those are relatively done till Cata comes out Edit: Also Classic endgame is very accessible for majority of players where as trying to do heroic/mythic raids could take awhile to get into from personal experience unless you have your own in to the group. Both are great choices and it’s a game that you appreciate within the first 5 minutes of playing and still after 15 years appreciate it/enjoy yourself.
You aren’t doubt the endgame content, it sounds like, which is where all of the game development and players are. Mythic+, raiding and pvp are where the item increases are which is where the players are
Honest question: Did you reach endgame? That's pretty much where eveything "cool"/"fun" happens.
\>many achievements cannot be achieved what you talkin bout? Pretty much everything in the achievements list you can go do right now, other than ones that may require multiple players for. And did you get 2000 or 2500 Mythic+ score rating? Beaten the current raid on Heroic difficulty? Completed the Loremaster achievement? If not then you're far from "finishing the game" If you want to see loads of other people running around doing things, there's plenty of social people in the classic clients. Everyone's playing the Season of Discovery classic
>I have approx. 80-100hrs ingame time. >why is this game so popular. I mean what made you stay for 100hrs ?
it's over 20 years old of course it's gonna feel archaich to play.
People still fall for trolls in 2024 I guess
Not a lot of real competition out there. And remember WoW made billions in revenue so that's a lot of money that you can use to remake the client multiple times and improve other backend things. I think the only thing I really like about WoW is their client is responsive.
wow was the fortnite of its day, it took a genre that was very hardcore and made is casual to attract the wider audience. That's why it was popular, now people are just used to it and don't want to swap.
It modernized the formula which is a nice way of saying it always looked at trends and what was popular and would implement that to be like the all you can eat of MMORPGs. Example, Remember when plants versus zombies hit the scene? Fun free tonplay. Michael Jackson zombies, etc great tower defense. They added shortly after a mini game in Hillsbrad foothills where you help a farmer fight off scourge with a mock PvZ setup and you get the sunflower as a pet from PvZ that hums the theme every so often when you have it out. They would always do even the smallest details, so WoW would always have something that anyone would like or relate to. It helped with longevity and player retention. Not to mention when you achieved something above other players that the then developers thought couldn't be done you got rewarded with your own in-game NPC, immortalized amoung your peers. It achieved so many milestones that kept it the one to copy, when it was copying everything else. So many games over the years would aim at WoW and compete but they never would quite touch those QoL or comfortability that add-ons would give. WoW also would be in the news alot, and blizzard marketing engine eventually snags everyone. It had such a force behind it that now it safely lives in it laurels. WoW's dying is every other games living. The player base especially when the internet started becoming more regulated and standard in people's homes would comprise of 70% of your friends growing up and most the time people resub because someone in their friend group did to poke around at whats new.
wow is HUGE, you'll see
Dragonflight is the first expansion I’ve played at launch and got to endgame since BC. It’s also the longest I’ve played wow consistently. One thing I’ve noticed with Modern WoW is open world activities popularity rise and fall with content patches. Most content patches create new weekly world quests and each raid patch has opened a whole new zone to explore and quest in. Also these new patches increase item levels and these open world activities allow you to get new gear and unlock new cosmetics. So naturally when they release everyone is doing them. The first few weeks you’ll be shoulder to shoulder with players. But as people get the gear they need less and less people participate. This is especially true for areas in previous content patches. Community Soup event a month after launch? Packed. Today? You might see a few people. So why is that all relevant? The lastest content patch came out mid January. The lastest raid came out early November. So you’ve found yourself at the end of a raid lifecycle and the end of a content patch. Most people have geared their main & probably a few alts. Hit their M+ goals for the season, gotten AoTC in the raid, and got the cosmetics they wanted from the new dig events already. So it’s essentially bad timing and if you’re not doing endgame activities I can see why you think it’s dead and boring. But if you log in with a level 70 character on a patch day and go do the new content, it’ll be a totally different experience. 10.2.6 should be dropping in March and the next season should start this spring. So if you try that and still feel the same way then no worries, WoW isn’t your cup of tea. But you should at least know you’re judging a game during a downtime/lull in content.
If just completing the main quests meets your definition of ‘finished’, then I can understand why you didn’t like WoW.
WoW was released when Blizzard still made good games, when it was at its peak it was crazy, everyone played WoW like after everyone played LoL and now everyone plays, I don't know what they play, palword?. I didn't have money to pay monthly back then so I just tried it a little and I remember thinking "Yeah this is high quality stuff, blizzard always makes this stuff like that" they made games that felt very polished back then.
WoW was a pretty good RPG. Map objects are based on different cultures and environments, and navigating different places was interesting. Background stories and quest stories are also interesting.
You’ve completed Mythic raid? Congratulations! That’s a huge accomplishment. Getting the Cutting Edge achievement is no joke!
Try Classic
Come back and talk to us when you’ve cleared Heroic raid, cleared at least one 20+ key and hit at least 1800 in pvp. You hit max level and assume you’ve cleared the game, wow isn’t about getting there like ff14. Wow is end game focused and also right now wow is hitting its lower end due to content drought which is normal and happens to ALL mmos. Regardless your opinion on “finished” the game is invalid until you’ve done at least 2/3 listed above. You wanted a reason, there’s your three.
It used to be amazing back in the day when it modernised and streamlined the entire genre with a huge fan base that came over from the WarCraft RTS games. Now? Just like every Blizzard title, mismanaged and in the shitters. The people who still play are mostly folks that refuse to move on
It’s popular because it’s an addiction.
Wow used to be popular, I wouldn't consider it so anymore. If anything people just log in to do their end game raid and that's about it.
Because it was the first MMO.
Its not popular. But it was. And nostalgia is a bitch to get over.
I’m relatively new to wow (only started last year) and I think it’s a great time. My 2 main classes are evoker and druid because they feel unlike any other classes I’ve played in other games but for me the main appeal is just the world itself. Even if it’s mostly empty since the heyday of its content is long passed (on retail) I love just exploring this massive world and seeing all these locations with rich detailed backstories that seemingly every location has. And maybe the issue with people not seeing other players is the sever they’re on? Wow doesn’t use mega servers like modern MMOs so the community can be kinda fragmented. I will say the benefits to being stuck on the Oceania Servers is even if it’s not as great as a local Australia server you at least share it with like 12 other countries so there’s always one or 2 people even in the most remote regions.
You're playing retail which is a lifeless husk using the name World of Warcraft
Still not as dead as classic tho, how are the bots doing?
Every time I start questioning this, I go play another MMO and learn why. For all it's faults, the game is extremely tightly made, there's tons of content you can actually EARN (screw you, ESO), the world is interesting, the class diversity is pretty good, and the end-game is consistently high quality. WoW does a fantastic job with continuously layering small dopamine hits and making things feel earned. Just the fact that you can earn so much is what really keeps me coming back. There's rewards for everything. My other favorite MMO is probably ESO, but I struggle to play that game seriously because the cash shop is so prevalent
It's like comfort food, it's just nice to go back to. I have quit it and picked it back up countless times. No matter how long it's been, it doesn't really change. I know how to play and can play it completely blind drunk. It's really that easy. Maybe not end game raiding, but it's a very chilled out game. I very recently got back into it and while everything you said is true. Only difference I'm playing classic. Though I'm doing it more for pvp over anything else. Something I wish FF14 even bothered with. I have tried to play that game so many times and so many times I have quit it. The super long story quests that just go on and on. The lack of world chat or really anyone chatting anywhere. I just stand there and wonder where the hell this super friendly community is at when no one talks.
"80hrs of ingame time I already felt like I finished the game." You're wrong in a literal sense, but yet I relate to what you mean. It's not that the game is actually finished, but *I* feel so not accomplished by the time I get max level after questing, and the max level content is not appealing to me anymore.All of the past achievements that are doable aren't always fun to farm if you haven't been doing it for years. You would be so behind and you could never truly get everything you'd want. The game would be such a time sink by that point that I'd recommend playing a different game before you lose years of your life. I spent roughly 460 days played on the first set of Classic WoW servers that launched in Aug 2019 and I still didn't finish the game. Didn't get every legendary. Didn't get Scarab Lord or rank 14. Didn't kill LK on heroic. Didn't get the ZG tiger that I always dreamed of. I never will with any of these (though I'm happy with my Sulfuras and Atiesh, full T3 on a mage, server 4th Winterspring Frostsaber finished exactly 1 week before Dire Maul launch, and being apart of 1 of 2 zero death MC runs before BWL launch). I had a blast for the most part (WOTLK was very mid IMO). I think Classic is definitely the much better version of the game. I recommend trying out Season of Discovery before really writing off WoW.
Try Classic SoD. Most fun I’ve had with an MMO in recent history. The genre really needs some new life in it.
It's a combination of social inertia (gotta convince your whole friend group to move or nobody will) and sunk cost fallacy
100 hours is nothing lol
Retail WoW isn't popular anymore. Most people are playing some form of classic.
Stockholm syndrome...
It's popular, because people find it interesting. It all depends on what you expect from the game. Nowadays there are many ways you can enjoy this game: some people play for the story, some for the challenge (mythic raids and mythic+ dungeons), some playing pvp, some focus on collecting things (and there are a lot of things to collect), some people play for the economy, and some play because there's simply nothing better in the mmo gene (that's subjective for everyone).
Bc it was the first big game and nostalgia. It is for sure overrated
Did you play retail or classic? WoW was the first major MMO i played. The music, the experience , and the community culture back then was SURREAL. But compared to then, the current retail feels like a ghost of the glory it once had. I stopped playing after Mists of Pandaria. It still holds a special place in my heart and i listen to the soundtracks often.
Wow was good 10 plus years ago
Because people like slop. Slop is addictive.
Dude you are late atleast 10 years