The point is, repetition can make easy tasks hard. Clicking the mouse when the screen flashes is an extremely easy task. You ask people to do it once, virtually everybody is going to succeed. You ask them to do it 5000 times, and about 100 attempts in, most people are going to start making mistakes. If the task is to click the mouse every time the screen flashes, it’s much easier to succeed at this task if there’s only one flash, than if there are 5000.
The thing is, I thought the same thing when these changes were introduced. No class trainers? Great! Dropping the weapon skill mechanic? Fantastic idea! And yet, the aggregate of all the QoL changes was that I stopped caring about the game, and eventually stopped playing. Going back to the Classic version was fun not just for the nostalgia - all those little friction points were helping me engage in the game as more than just a really fancy chat room.
I had some fun in some dungeons.
But what I really enjoyed were battlegrounds.
Had 3 other friends, and we would all be sitting in the same room together. Our coordination made us nearly unstoppable. My last character, I leveled all the way from 11 to 80? (I think, I don’t remember the cap at the time), with very little in world play.
I disagree. If there’s no punishment for failure, then you’re eventually going to get to 5000 clicks no matter what you do. And if you take pride in that 5000 clicks, and insist that anyone who wants to be done with the game after only 50 clicks is a weak casual, you’re trying to make it sound like persistence at doing something easy is somehow skillful and worthy of praise. Persistence is not the same thing as skill. If people don’t want to do the same easy task over and over again, that’s not because they lack the skill to do it, or because they only want something that’s not difficult/easy.
It seems like a significant amount of the gaming population wants to turn games into a job. They want to “grind” a game. It’s very weird to me. Play because it’s fun, not because you’re “grinding it”, by calling it a grind, you’re saying it’s unpleasant. Somehow game developers have managed to use conditioning to make people think that advancement/grinding/repetition is somehow desirable even if you’re not actually having fun doing it.
The culmination of this attitude absolutely drives me nuts, where people refuse to play games without some sort of progression/grinding by saying “but what am I playing for?”
You’re playing because the game is fun and you enjoy it, not because you’ve turned it into a job and it occasionally says CONGRATS YOU KILLED 10000 RATS, YOU ARE RATKILLER +2.
That’s why I never got into guilds.
Had friends that were in guilds, and they had a schedule of days and times when they had to be available to raid.
Unless I’m getting paid, I’m not willing to sign up for that sort of commitment.
I suspect you’re an outlier here which is totally cool of course. If that’s what you’re into then you do you. I think most players were quite happy to be rid of those. Remember when hunters had to purchase ammunition? Ugh!
I’m pretty sure if you’re engaged in any kind of group activity you’ve got to commit to a particular time to participate. I don’t think of signing up for raid night to be work any more than I think showing up to scheduled bowling games for the league is work. The work part comes in grinding to get materials for cauldrons, feasts, and enchanting materials.
Sure, but you’re not going to get 5000 clicks in 5000 flashes. The more flashes someone is expected to respond to, the more likely they’ll fail to respond to any given flash, particularly the further they get into the sequence. The task (“Click when the mouse flashes”) becomes harder the more you need to repeat it. Punishment’s got nothing to do with it - a task isn’t easy or harder because there’s a negative outcome. Clicking a mouse isn’t harder than solving a Rubik’s Cube, just because I’m threatening to beat the shit out of you if you click wrong.
I’m not arguing that it takes any particular skill to play through a grindy part of an MMO, and I’m certainly not calling anyone a “weak casual,” because I’m neither A) 12 years old, nor B) a gigantic raging cock. You seem to be projecting a lot about the attitudes of people who like a different style of play. I enjoyed the leveling content of WoW because it suited my tastes, not because the devs “tricked” me into liking it - I’m not even sure how that would work as a concept.
Outside of people working in Chinese gold farms, I’m pretty sure nobody is playing WoW for any reason other than, “they like it.” They might like different things about it than you do, but that’s not really any reason to have an attitude about it.
“Yeah, I remember that,” he said, smiling fondly.
I’m an outlier for sure - which is why vanilla WoW doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m also not exactly rare - there’s enough people like me to have justified bringing back Classic WoW.
Yeah, nobody ever paid me for D&D, but my Sundays are generally reserved.
Of course, D&D >>>> WoW.
Sure, one night a week, if I really enjoy it. I used to run and play in RPG’s.
But this was a 4-5 night a week job, for several hours each night.
That’s not entirely unfair. This past January, I was grinding to get ready for raiding with my guild when it dawned on my that I really wasn’t having all that much fun so I bid the game a fond farewell. Since 2009, I’ve had a pattern of playing, taking a break, and then coming back but this is the first time I’ve walked away so soon after a new expansion. I certainly hadn’t had time to go get bored with the new content I just realized it felt like work so I walked away.
And it’s weird. Every time I stop playing I don’t really miss WoW all that much. But when I’m actually playing it, I log in daily to to grind away or run some dungeons or something. I guess that’s just how skinner boxes work though.
Well, players quite often don’t know what they really want. It’s a dilemma for game designers. Yes, convenience and power are fun. For a while. Then it becomes boring.
I was in a mythic raiding guild. There is not much greater challenge and to some degree exhilaration in the game then learning and defeating bosses at the top tier. High end arena or PVP might come close.
The schedule aspect is a bit of a deterrent but I wouldn’t knock the total experience.
I definitely preferred the PVP, much less of the same thing over and over again.
Also, could mostly be done on my own schedule. There were PVP guilds, but you didn’t have to be in one to participate.
Remember when Hunters had to feed their pets?
I had quite the sideline going supplying various types of food (but mostly meat and fish) to Hunters both in my guild and otherwise.
PvP is a ton of fun. No doubt. I am beginning to miss WoW! My precious time.
I remember feeding my pet bear some bear meat. I was a monster! A MONSTER!
And yet I found WOW immensely fun before, and don’t now. You’re going to have to take my word for it; I WAS having fun.
And let’s be clear; the idea that it’s just faster is false. It’s EASIER. The mobs simply aren’t as threatening as they used to be; I am never in any danger of being killed, at any time.
Then that’s partly down to your competence as a player. It is still possible to be overwhelmed by a group of NPC’s, especially if you’re a cloth-wearer. Not as easy as it used to be, and death is not as routine as it once was.
And, honestly, it was already getting like that as early as Wrath of the Lich King, the last expansion that still included the original “old world” content. Most of the playerbase was up in Northrend, leaving noobs like me to mostly try to solo our way through content that was designed with the idea that there would always be a lot of people around to group with. It’s more or less what necessitated the Cataclysm revamp, to make leveling more solo-friendly.