How can WoW still justify a subcription model?

[CaptQuakers]

It's pretty simple really. If people are still paying for it they can continue to justify it.

 

[AuronFtw]

It might still be snowball effect, but how about skills? You know, the core gaming mechanic, what makes your character, how you experience raids and pvp?

Mage in other MMORPGs - stand, cast, blink, root. Where's fun skills like Alter Time? Varied skills that can be used both defensively and offensively like Ice Block?

Warlock - a lesser mage with a pet. You cannot summon a second one to assist, you cannot sacrifice it for added power. DoTs still do not scale with haste in SWTOR. Really? 2008 game design lol. Or going into demon form - it's not a cooldown with 20 sec duration (like in Rift - Lich Form, boring skill is boring), it actually drains your secondary resource, so you can stay in it for defensive bonuses and cast nothing for lasting longer or just drain all resources and go all out - variety, again. It also changes your skills. You no longer casting same skills, but with 20% increased damage, like in Rift...

Talents - WoW has primitive talent system, and yet you have no idea whether this warlock is going to insta fear you, or coil you, or stun you... Because people just don't use cookie cutter builds...

I dont know. In SWTOR i see all kinds of crazy ass builds. But then again, in both WoW and in some other MMOS that use the skill tree function, there are elitests, even in guilds that NEED you, DEMAND you choose a certain path so your EXACTLY what they need. The WoW skill tree honestly isn't so Unique anymore.

I see this argument brought up all the time, and never miss an opportunity to show how wrong it is.

The talent trees in WoW that were introduced in Pandaland expac are choices - you can choose between various forms of cc, or various movement bonuses, or different types of stuns, as needed by the encounter or as preferred by the player. A few of the talent tiers are purely for damage, and in those cases there is always 1 right answer - the one that gives you the most damage.

This leads right into my main point - the old WoW talent trees that were copied wholesale by rift and tor offer only the illusion of choice. At least for the PvE content, there will always be a single "best" option - this spec heals the most, this spec mitigates the most damage, this spec deals the most damage. When that is all that matters in the endgame content, 51-point talent trees offer no actual choice, merely a problem to solve mathematically. People mistake this for choice all the time - but they're wrong. You can play efficiently, or you can "choose" a shittier path with less damage, or less healing, etc. The only choice that exists is how far below efficient you care to be - and in a MMO with raiding/pvp content, trying to enter it with subpar builds only hampers your ability to perform.

This is largely the reason Blizzard condensed all the required talents for each spec (you know, the ones that everyone always chose because ignoring them simply led to under-performance) and made them baseline - removing the illusion of choice, and replacing them with groups of talents, each tier of which attempts to accomplish the same task, but leaving the actual choice up to the players.

Like I mentioned above, some of those tiers are still simply math problems. The top bracket for hunters has Glaive Toss, Powershot (awful), and Barrage (awful), with anyone who didn't bring glaive toss losing a considerable amount of potential damage. But the rest of the hunter tiers? Dire beast, fervor and thrill of the hunt? Those are all viable options for focus management. If you check the armory page of top tier hunters, you will see their choices vary wildly. Every single one brings Glaive Toss, but when they get an actual choice between equally viable options, instead of the illusion of choice that is simply a math problem, it enriches the gameplay and makes talent picks actually matter.

The current talent system is less unique than the old systems only in that it prevents bad players from fucking up their talent choices by missing crucial talents. In every other aspect, it's far more unique - and it even features the once-spec-specific utility skills (like silencing shot only being marksmanship) as talent choices for all specs.

Honestly? A+ job from Blizzard. The rest of those MMOs have a lot of catching up to do.

 

[Darmy647]

It might still be snowball effect, but how about skills? You know, the core gaming mechanic, what makes your character, how you experience raids and pvp?

Mage in other MMORPGs - stand, cast, blink, root. Where's fun skills like Alter Time? Varied skills that can be used both defensively and offensively like Ice Block?

Warlock - a lesser mage with a pet. You cannot summon a second one to assist, you cannot sacrifice it for added power. DoTs still do not scale with haste in SWTOR. Really? 2008 game design lol. Or going into demon form - it's not a cooldown with 20 sec duration (like in Rift - Lich Form, boring skill is boring), it actually drains your secondary resource, so you can stay in it for defensive bonuses and cast nothing for lasting longer or just drain all resources and go all out - variety, again. It also changes your skills. You no longer casting same skills, but with 20% increased damage, like in Rift...

Talents - WoW has primitive talent system, and yet you have no idea whether this warlock is going to insta fear you, or coil you, or stun you... Because people just don't use cookie cutter builds...

I dont know. In SWTOR i see all kinds of crazy ass builds. But then again, in both WoW and in some other MMOS that use the skill tree function, there are elitests, even in guilds that NEED you, DEMAND you choose a certain path so your EXACTLY what they need. The WoW skill tree honestly isn't so Unique anymore.

I see this argument brought up all the time, and never miss an opportunity to show how wrong it is.

The talent trees in WoW that were introduced in Pandaland expac are choices - you can choose between various forms of cc, or various movement bonuses, or different types of stuns, as needed by the encounter or as preferred by the player. A few of the talent tiers are purely for damage, and in those cases there is always 1 right answer - the one that gives you the most damage.

This leads right into my main point - the old WoW talent trees that were copied wholesale by rift and tor offer only the illusion of choice. At least for the PvE content, there will always be a single "best" option - this spec heals the most, this spec mitigates the most damage, this spec deals the most damage. When that is all that matters in the endgame content, 51-point talent trees offer no actual choice, merely a problem to solve mathematically. People mistake this for choice all the time - but they're wrong. You can play efficiently, or you can "choose" a shittier path with less damage, or less healing, etc. The only choice that exists is how far below efficient you care to be - and in a MMO with raiding/pvp content, trying to enter it with subpar builds only hampers your ability to perform.

This is largely the reason Blizzard condensed all the required talents for each spec (you know, the ones that everyone always chose because ignoring them simply led to under-performance) and made them baseline - removing the illusion of choice, and replacing them with groups of talents, each tier of which attempts to accomplish the same task, but leaving the actual choice up to the players.

Like I mentioned above, some of those tiers are still simply math problems. The top bracket for hunters has Glaive Toss, Powershot (awful), and Barrage (awful), with anyone who didn't bring glaive toss losing a considerable amount of potential damage. But the rest of the hunter tiers? Dire beast, fervor and thrill of the hunt? Those are all viable options for focus management. If you check the armory page of top tier hunters, you will see their choices vary wildly. Every single one brings Glaive Toss, but when they get an actual choice between equally viable options, instead of the illusion of choice that is simply a math problem, it enriches the gameplay and makes talent picks actually matter.

The current talent system is less unique than the old systems only in that it prevents bad players from fucking up their talent choices by missing crucial talents. In every other aspect, it's far more unique - and it even features the once-spec-specific utility skills (like silencing shot only being marksmanship) as talent choices for all specs.
Honestly? A+ job from Blizzard. The rest of those MMOs have a lot of catching up to do.

I have not touched WoW since the burning crusade, so i actually had no idea about any of that.