For those of you who play world of warcraft, you might know that the new expansion is well under way. However, there has been a lot of delays in the 9.1 patch, said to be released later this year. Until then the state of the game has reached a bit of a repetitive cycle; either doing mythic + dungeons for the weekly chest, or trying to pug a raid group. Either way, things have gotten quite stale, and many people, myself included, have been eagerly awaiting the next patch.
The raid with Sylvanas as final boss is without a doubt, probably one of the most anticipated raid boss encounters in World of Warcraft history. There is so much history of the game tied up into this moment, that it is indeed a very good time for the Wow community, in theory. Despite this, there has been a lot of negative feedback from the community about Shadowlands, including increasingly obvious boosting services in game, some tuning imbalances between classes and specs in pvp, and a whole slew of issues relating to the mythic + dungeon system.
In my opinion, the m+ system is flawed. I have been playing the game on and off since it came out, and i always found it easy to play my own play style without any major disadvantages. However, in the WoW of today, it's impossible to not adhere to the meta without getting absolutely shat on by the community. It is not rare to see tanks, healers or even dps being unfairly criticised because they chose to opt for a 'non-meta' legendary, or an off meta talent build. Today, because of my play style which involves playing on multiple different characters, my progress for any one char isn't particularly high as i have spread out my play over different characters. So despite having a lot of experience with the game, i still find it very hard to find a group in M+, making the game less attractive to play. That being said, I do think many other players are experiencing trouble when finding groups. Not only this, but there is an increasing 'rage-quit' culture, where some people may suddenly leave in the middle of a dungeon for no apparent reason, thus cutting short the remaining 4 players run, as well.
In any case blizzard has said that they will be redesigning the mythic + system in the next patch. I am looking forward to see how things play out, and if they are able to balance the game in a way that is friendly for all levels. For those of you that haven't played Wow before, however, I highly recommend it. It is a highly fun game to play, consisting of a long lore-filled journey that is particularly fun when you play with a friend. You get to pick your faction (horde/alliance), race, and class, and then battle your way through 60 levels (currently it's easier then ever to level up). End-game content isn't nearly as exciting as the leveling process, because it consists of very repetitive tasks like weeklies.
Thanks for reading this weeks review of my State of the Game series. More coming soon!
I like to play video games, particularly Blizzard games. Namely I play Hearthstone, WoW, and Hots in my free time. Look out for reviews regarding all of these games in the future!
Peace out,
Dizzybee
i might be one of the few people out there that is, or I should say was, a fan of MMO's that never played WoW. I had nothing against it other than at the time it was released i was in "mmo rehab" after basically devoting many many years to DAOC and Anarchy Online previous to it.
No offense to you personally of course but I feel like MMO's are actually quite damaging to someone's social life or at least that was the case with me. I do sometimes feel the pull of an MMO from time to time, but I haven't booted one up in years.
Does WoW still have a massive userbase?
Thats really interesting! I've never heard of DAOC and Anarchy Online, those must have been pre 2000s? Wow's user base is pretty large, despite the ongoing fees that must be paid in order to play beyond buying the game. However, I do think there is a very dedicated player base, regarding class identity, lore and and the game itself. I do agree with you about the social aspect, it can be quite damaging. On the other hand, you can also make some really good friends in the game! If you've never played but would like to give it a try you can play for free up to lvl 20, beyond that you have to be paying for the subscription. It's nice because you can try out the different classes to see what you prefer to play.
Both DAOC and Anarchy Online were late 90's MMO's. They had a lot of issues back then but most of it was because of the internet infrastructure not being anything like it is today. Anarchy Online was particularly notorious for lag and members of your group simply going LD (link dead) mid-battle and as you know, when you have a party of carefully selected members, every person has a special role in the fight or you get wiped. We did a lot of running away in those days because all of a sudden our tank or healer would just stop responding.
Haha! that sounds about right. I remember in the first World of Warcraft running the same dungeons over and over again because the tank would leave mid fight. Sometimes having to 4 man it or search the /who function to whisper random people to join us. Fun times!
in Anarchy Online and DAOC there was no /who or LFG system, you had to literally stand outside of dungeons and shout what your qualifications were. This is why I started playing healer classes because they could ALWAYS find groups. DPS guys were a dime a dozen and normally had to wait a while.