Is this guy responsible for voidform?Can i slap him?
I agree with his point about allowing the storytelling to be more on the player- hear me out here. For the last few expansions, there was a ton of lip service about how we are 'the big champions'.. but (other than the cinematic at the end of Nyalotha), most of the time we're just walking along while the NPCs get to live their special lives. I am so sick of having to watch the WoW soap opera unfold. I don't care about Tyrande or Baine, I care about my character. The 'WoW story' is ok at best and frankly, its gotten so bad over the last expansion, I don't even want to watch it anymore.Like someone else said, its WORLD of Warcraft. This game was best when it was a sandbox collection of many stories and places to adventure that let YOU fill in how YOU view the world. Not the NPC shouting that 'YOU ARE A CHAMPION'. No, there was a time when you got to decide in your own head if you were or weren't a champion and that worked because it was still a sandbox. BC and WoTLK were like this (I didn't play Vanilla, assuming it was, too) and that was what got me hooked (I will add, too, that I felt that MoP was also kind of like this!). Again- just because the NPC is telling you 'GO FOR IT CHAMP' does not equal what (I think!) this dev is saying. Older versions of WoW were much more open and let the player decide.I know not everyone agrees with that and that other people like games that are essentially movies that you play through. So, I just kind of try to ignore the story and still play like I used to. Much harder to do in BfA, though, gonna be honest.
I will miss his stick figure diagrams. /f
What I think is that the game only provides an option for ppl to play solo and ppl can chose to progress with a guild or progress alone. EVERYONE who plays the game knows that its much easier to play in a guild if you want progress. So what some ppl expect is to force everyone to be in a guild and obey the guild masters? Come on it wouldn't work. Why LFG is such a big deal ? Only casuals crying about lfg. Q.Q everyone can farm any transmog with randoms so what? If you want to progress you HAVE to find a guild to make it happen noone can progress with pugs. Woah you can do a 15 key and a hc raid full clear with pugs. Nice but good job with 20+ keys and mythic raid runs. So its not blizzards fault that players doesnt want to be in a guild its the players decision. If blizzard would tie some content to guilds trust me every community would become a booster guild "500k gold joining fee" get your guild gear today". There are a bunch of "social guild" and everyone joining only for guild perks but look at guild chats its empty. Once again its not blizzard who killing social in wow but players. If you want a change change the player base good luck with that.
It's such a pita to find a guild, it's goddamn impossible and you end up just taking whatever. Why is the Guild Finder so incredible bad? wow-progress looks like a website built 20 years ago. Why can't the in-game guild finder have more filters, like schedule of raids? I want a 1 day mythic raiding guild, but almost impossible to find it and just gave up. So this Chris Kaleiki sure put some insights into why the guild finder is so bad
It amazes me how many mistake "the player(s)" for "a player" when he's commenting about, "big concepts like, the world is the main character, the player is the story, and the community is the content."I joked in Legion when we ALL became leaders/champions of our entire class, "so what ridiculous $#iit comes next xpac, we become Warchief/King?"A couple comments on here said it pretty well, something along the lines that it really broke the story immersion when YOU become Highlord it's becuase YOU are the best, YOU are so special, etc. etc. etc.; then you go out and see thousands of other Highlords just like you. This type of storytelling isn't making "the players" in the story it's more like trying to put "A player" (i.e. each single individual person) at some false pinnacle of achievement which is at worst an outright lie and piss poor story design, at best it's pandering or ePeen stroking. Hell even the title hints towards this being the "WORLD of Warcraft" not "Heroes of Warcraft" or other such drivel.We the players should be the cogs in a huge machine, when working together (it's an MMO after all) the machine functions. We're supposed to be "adventurers" after all, sure we can sometimes be heroes and/or champions but we're still one of many. For a mage to finish their class hall in Legion and be granted Archmage status, I mean pffft... we stand even in skill and power with those like Khadgar, Nielas Aran, Antonidas, Rhonin, JAINA...? No, we never have and now that Legion is over and that minor story arc has come and gone, we go back to lowly adventurers again who get told "hey, gather this crap that I'm too lazy to move 20 feet to gather myself" which just shines a light on how storytelling of that "you are the super awesome-o best in the world" type becomes an even larger failure; why would someone who worked all the way up to become CEO go back to scrubbing the toilets?Let's face it, in the post-cataclysm world, story and player immersion has been more akin to a children's pop-up book compared to more of a "choose your own adventure" style from before. I know there were many loathed quests in vanilla that took you back and forth across the continents and sometimes to a seemingly dead end, but (in my opinion) sometimes that's what's needed. Time to scratch your head and be like WTF am I supposed to do now? Times like this gave players an opportunity, a small decision tree... do I wander around here and find stuff to do or go back where I started this quest chain and pick up where I derailed?
hasn't been the same in a long time, Seeing a dev say this doesn't surprise me veteran players know its lacking Could it improve.. who knows. Still wish him the best such a shame though =/
Only if you're hardcore.
I wish Blizzard would flush out the devs that make the game worse, not those that make the game better. I don't agree with everything he says, but what is happening now is absurd.
He will be missed. If he is the dude responsible for War Mode, Shadow Priest re-design, etc. then he's one solid dude and Blizzard lost yet another good person that would have added value to their IP.I agree with a lot of what he said about the game: how it feels more like an adventure game that happens to have a lot of other players being in the game at the same time. I do wish there was more player interaction, a more social aspect...... but I disagree with him about gate-keeping a lot of the content, especially end-game content, behind membership in a guild. I want guilds to be important, don't get me wrong—but not essential. I like the current system that only raiding guilds can attempt mythic+, but the rest of us who cannot invest the time are happy with LFR. I don't want a world where only 1% of the gaming populace have even entered the last raid of the expansion.I also disagree with him regarding "drama". I remember fondly the battles over Hellfire Peninsula, Halaa, the original Wintergrasp, and other world PvP (and, before that, server-only battlegrounds) that forged a lot of friendships, or at least name remembrance—I still remember, for instance, the names of those who called in strategy on General Chat during Halaa, what times they were available... and, of course, the blood feuds and respect to names we recognize of the opposing faction: those who fought fiercely, skillfully, but with honor (and those without—they were slaughtered without mercy).But "drama" for drama's sake (like his trolling with the world buff)? Just so it feels like their characters were "affecting" the world? That's one of those things I'm glad is gone. Guild drama? No, thank you.I also disagree with his apparent view on virtual worlds—that it had to be like how it was in Classic that you had to "live" in it (to the exclusion of the "real" world) in order to progress. I was not a fan of having to PvP non-stop. That WoW used to be a "virtual world" in that sense was the reason behind so much addiction to WoW in the past. I'm glad that the game isn't like that anymore, especially that since I started playing I have a kid who now plays with me, and I don't want her getting addicted.He wants that, fine. He's disappointed that WoW is no longer like that, also fine—he's entitled to his own personal tastes regarding escapism—escapism gets a bum rap but it is actually essential to the mental well-being of people. I also accept that he has left because he wants WoW to be something that it currently isn't—I get it.What I suspect is he doesn't see is that the reason why WoW is still king of the hill—it's because it has evolved to the point where it's not an actual virtual world anymore. A lot of developers who have tried to dethrone WoW have tried to build more engaging, virtual worlds that you wouldn't want to leave... and they fail precisely because that was the goal. Because nobody actually wants the tyranny of having to log in and spend time in that world as if actually living in that world. In escapist literature where people go to other worlds (isekai), there is always a time dilation aspect to it: a century in Narnia may have been just a minute in our real world, for instance.Or, you are trapped in the other world and are trying to leave it (SAO, Shield Hero, etc.) so you have no choice.Nobody wanted WoW to be a job... unless you were paid to play WoW (which, obviously, he eventually was). Those who did spent all that time in the game in the past are, naturally, very protective of the perks they earned. They are naturally angry if people, who did not play as much as them, get rewarded the same way.But the reason why there were so many gold sellers and illegal levelling services back in Vanilla (not Classic, Vanilla) was because people wanted the perks of end-game without being obligated to spend the amount of time needed to get those perks.And the reason why WoW has a 16th anniversary while other "WoW Killers" can't even be played now on modern systems is because Blizzard finally got the memo and made the game more "casual friendly". Even in the case of EVE Online, it obviously does not have the same numbers as WoW even at its lowest... and certainly has not affected the real world as much as WoW has.If WoW has to be like that (a game you have to live in) again, no thank you.The current game (retail) is not perfect—I wish, for instance, I was in a guild that still did things together instead of just staying together because of the guild perks already won. I wish they bring attunement back—it was an adventure and a rite of passage to be able to enter an instance. I want it to be as easy as it was to make friends in-game back in Vanilla and BC without having to require those very friendships to get anywhere in the game—we've lost a lot of "friends" who were only in the friendship so long as we were useful to their raiding goals. As soon as LFR happened, they were gone... or the guild dissolves.The only ones that remained are those who were actual friends and extended that friendship beyond the game... and I know this because a lot of them have stopped playing.To cut a long story short: I prefer a virtual world where you don't have to have connections just to accomplish your goals—it makes all friendships opportunistic. I disagree with Chris about how it's just about people not wanting a guild leader "barking orders". I was a cadet: I have no issues with people barking orders. I have issues, though, with favoritism (only "real" friends getting gear upgrades or recipe drops, the rest of the drops being sold to "fund the guild"). This is another issue that has disappeared since the game became more "casual" and more "social"—and those who used to love the game to bits have since disappeared and stopped playing because they stopped having that power over other people.If WoW has to become like that again—where the guild gets to decide how a player progresses—well, no thank you.
I think the game kinda lost its soul in the latest expansions. Most likely though the issue is not really in WoW, its more like the gaming community in general has (d)evolved in the last few years. To me most of what made the classic/tbc era was the fact that there was a huge lack of widespread informations, so people where just playing discovering and enjoying the game as they pleased. Nowadays the expansion is not released yet and the internet is already filled with tier lists telling you what spec to play and covenant to choose. Its the player mindset that is changed, the game development followed suit.
While I agree modern retail WoW has its issues and irritants (and Blizzard has gotten more and more shady) I’m NOT playing the game to make friends or be forced to be social with strangers just to get one dungeon done. Since I have limited playtime as an adult with a life/job, the social aspects are, frankly, exhausting. I’m forced to be plenty social at my actual job and a lot of us play WoW to unwind and get away from the real world. Guilds & social interactions may be his personal vision or whatever but it’s definitely not mine (nor many people’s I know irl who play the game). Also, I like the lore and it incorporates the character (us, the “champion”) just fine. I’m an important part of the world surrounded by strong important lore characters and I help them save Azeroth (over and over). Sounds great to me!