The Outcast Warrior

[VanQ]

So I just found a thread over on the WoW forums that really hit me hard. It's about a warrior player on the all too hardcore Korean WoW servers and... well just read it, it's not too long and it's a really good story.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7864486403

One sentence hit me super hard.

But one day, because of random LFG dungeons and LFR raids, we didn't have to hang out with people in the server any more. And the game got old.

This one sentence speaks entirely of the reason I quit WoW. The community was killed in two hits. First they removed the LFG channel, where you got to know good leaders by name. Leaders that actively searched and assembled parties by hand and lead with pride. And sometimes you'd see a Chuck Norris joke or two in there.

Then they added the LFR function. Killing off the last thing that required player input to build. All groups were built by an algorithm and not by people. Often you would wait an hour to get a group and be kicked because there was one too many Warlocks in the party or your iLevel was 3 points below what was expected of you. And right back to the end of the queue with you.

This meant that only those with the most luck or time could get anywhere in the game. And it also caused the once lively community to fizzle. The only people you spoke to was your guild if you raided with them.

Obviously these problems are exacerbated in this story considering it took place in Korea but the same issues are all present in the NA version. I was a die hard raider and PUG leader in Vanilla and BC and for all the problems the game had back then, it felt so much more alive.

There were many other reasons I left the game but these were the main driving force behind it.

For discussion value so that this doesn't just become a WoW bashing thread, what was the reason you left your favorite MMO? That one MMO you spent more time and love than you would like to admit on?

 

[shrekfan246]

To be perfectly honest, given the average state of the community in WoW over the last two years, I don't really mind that they've all but killed PUGing.

I've been playing the game for five years, I know the ins and outs of Warlocks and Death Knights like the best of them, and you know how frustrating it was trying to get a decent raid back in Wrath? If the group I found wasn't outright terrible themselves, I'd get kicked because someone held a grudge against me for being better than them and the raid leader happened to be their friend. And now being in a guild, whenever we need to PUG someone to fill out a last slot, it's always a crapshoot as to whether they'll actually know what the hell they're doing or not.

Besides, LFR is still an "easy-mode" for the raids. You pop into it if you want to see the neutered versions of the normal fights, and you're grouped with 24 idiots (I don't say that lightly, either, I've stopped doing LFR because the amount of ridiculous impatience, arrogance, and utter ignorance is just something I couldn't put up with) the entire time. It's no replacement for normal raiding, and it's not required to do normal raids if you know what you're doing. But then, I'm on a high-population realm, where any given day you can typically find people in Trade chat setting up PUGs still.

Though dungeons, I'll have to agree with. As much as the expedience is appreciated (flying to dungeon entrances after spending two hours setting up a group, only to find out someone didn't know what they were doing and so you're committing the next two hours of your life to either carrying this guy or replacing him wasn't fun), it's really brought up the level of impatience in the average player. When I'm tanking, I generally try to pull quickly if I think the healer can keep up with me. But if a DPS pulls for me, I let them tank whatever they pulled. And if the healer is a friend of mine, I tell them to let the person die. I've actually been kicked from groups for telling DPS to be patient and let me pull.

Dunno, I never really talked to people outside of my guild even before the random dungeon finder was implemented. Sifting through the mountains of trolls, jerks, and spambots never seemed worth it to find the one or two people who were actually interesting to converse with.

 

[VanQ]

-snip-

5 years ago, so you started to play around 07~08ish? I'm sorry to say that the WoW I'm getting all nostalgic about was already dying if not dead by that time.

To be honest and not to sound like an elitist jerk, finding a raid in Wrath was easy mode compared to what it took in BC. And PUGing a raid in Vanilla was nigh impossible. Even as a tank geared enough to run and main tank Naxxramas, the only successful PUG I saw - and by successful I simply mean we had 40 players inside MC - only managed to clear to the first boss in MC. And even then the off tank couldn't grasp the idea of keep the add away from the boss.

As much as I miss the old 40 mans, Blizzard's decision to reduce raid size down to 25 man was definitely one of their better ideas. That much I will give them credit for, if you think coordinating 25 WoW players is a challenge, 40 was right out there. Though to be fair, the overall quality of players was generally higher in Vanilla.

The ridiculous impatience, arrogance, and utter ignorance as you so accurately put it, I only started to notice in WotLK and it was in Cataclysm where I could no longer bear it. By then I was playing a Shaman healer and people would rage hard if they died while out of my range while I was healing the tank in a Heroic.

WoW is still the game I loved the most and I miss the days when I could draw a crowd just by sitting on my Nether Drake in the middle of Shattrath in BC and I admit that my ego misses being one of the well known and even highly regarded party leaders of the server back in Vanilla. I hope I can find that type of MMO again some day in the future but it's looking grim at this point.

 

[Rastien]

I guess i got bored in all honesty, i loved the days where it was tight knit little community and server politics were fun as you had known douche's you never grouped with etc. etc.

But before all this LFR etc. came in, i just got bored had been playing since vanilla days and just had enough x)

I truly believe no one 'quits' wow the classic omg wow ruins my life i must quit, you don't quit you just get bored and play something else

 

[shrekfan246]

-snip-

5 years ago, so you started to play around 07~08ish? I'm sorry to say that the WoW I'm getting all nostalgic about was already dying if not dead by that time.

To be honest and not to sound like an elitist jerk, finding a raid in Wrath was easy mode compared to what it took in BC.

Yeah, I know, I raided in Burning Crusade. And it was a lot easier to not be booted from a group because you were making someone else feel inadequate.

And PUGing a raid in Vanilla was nigh impossible. Even as a tank geared enough to run and main tank Naxxramas, the only successful PUG I saw - and by successful I simply mean we had 40 players inside MC - only managed to clear to the first boss in MC. And even then the off tank couldn't grasp the idea of keep the add away from the boss.

As much as I miss the old 40 mans, Blizzard's decision to reduce raid size down to 25 man was definitely one of their better ideas. That much I will give them credit for, if you think coordinating 25 WoW players is a challenge, 40 was right out there.

To be perfectly frank, I don't even much care for 25-mans. Part of it may be a holdover from my days of raiding with 3 FPS (and still being the top DPS), part of it may just be that I'm not really that social a being. And I suppose that's why I've not really experienced the same distancing as you, because I've never really gotten to know anybody outside of the guilds I've been in on realms I have characters.

Though to be fair, the overall quality of players was generally higher in Vanilla.

I feel like you're looking through nostalgia goggles here, though. Or at least succumbing to confirmation bias. WoW is a pretty large game. It's always been a pretty large game. I can't imagine that your trial sample is much more than a few thousand people, depending on the realm/realms you were on. When compared to the millions of people who have played the game over the years, you can't really definitively state anything like that.

Especially when back in Vanilla, certain classes lived or died on one role.

The ridiculous impatience, arrogance, and utter ignorance as you so accurately put it, I only started to notice in WotLK and it was in Cataclysm where I could no longer bear it. By then I was playing a Shaman healer and people would rage hard if they died while out of my range while I was healing the tank in a Heroic.

Yeah, as much as I like healing, I dread playing it because you're the first thing anybody blames when they die after standing in fire for ten seconds.