That said, I find myself vacillating between loving it and hating it. I write this after having abruptly stopped at around 8PM this evening to finish up some things during which time I couldn't help myself from mulling over my experiences during the course of the past three days or so. Everything written in here is subject to change. I'm certainly trying to give it a fair shake, but I find that it has a surprising number of warts that are almost inexcusable. I absolutely loved my first day or two of the game. The bloom, however, is starting to come off the rose.
Be aware that I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who heavily played Wrath, mostly skipped Cataclysm (except for a month's play time during which I leveled to 85 on my shaman), completely skipped MoP, and a good chunk of WoD. What I lack in following the gradual evolution of WoW during this time are more than made up for by my memories of Wrath. These memories are probably much better than most everyone else's simply by merit of 1) my experiences with running/playing a private WotLK server fairly recently and for my own amusement; and 2) the research I've done to correct some deficiencies in TrinityCore that will not be fixed upstream. To this end, I think I'm better equipped to make comparisons between WoD and Wrath. (I realize there may be some disagreement on this point, but I've found even myself surprised at times when I stumbled upon a WotLK quest that seemed broken only to learn that the behavior in Trinity is pretty close to retail at that time.)
So, I'll cover the things I like about it first:
- Nostalgia. You can't beat the feeling of WoW--real WoW, that is. I've yet to play on hosted private servers and can't make a comparison here. I'd imagine it's similar, but the integration with Battle.net (and the Battle.net client) is fantastic. Having an IM-like client that meshes well with a game is a wonderful improvement. Bonus points for the fact that your Battle.net messages also show up in-game.
- The opening story was pretty good. While I felt distracted during most of it, the push through the alternate storyline/timeline in Draenor was quite fun, particularly with the reappearance of famous friend and foe alike. It was definitely a good lead-in to the garrison nonsense.
- The garrison stuff is pretty neat. I can see why people appreciate the addition of a per-player home "instance." (To say nothing of the benefits as they're unlocked. I've yet to fully reap 90% of the rewards.)
- Gated, phased quests. I wasn't sure how much I'd like this at first, but it's definitely a new--enjoyable--experience to play through WoW where you're limited on quest progression. It feels less like "gather everything in sight," ordering everything as efficiently as possible so you can level, and more like guided progression. The mental overhead is a bit lower since there's not nearly so many quests active at once, if you play through as intended. At least at this point. It's less like a free-for-all questing binge and more like a guided do-it-yourself project.
- The visuals are nice. Although cartoonish, I've always love the consistency of the artwork in WoW. WoD continues this tradition beautifully. Updated, higher resolution textures, better texture filtering, and engine improvements make it a much better experience. The eyestrain-related headaches I got from the texture filtering done in Cataclysm are mostly gone.
- Many of the game mechanics improved from Cataclysm onward are a welcome change.
- Speaking of which, the collections system is a nice addition. If they'd continue borrowing a bit more from GW2 (or similar), I think they'd be on to something here. It's nice having mounts shared across characters. (I still think the pseudo-Pokémon pet battles are ridiculous, though.)
- Although the quest grind is still there, something has changed such that it's actually fun. It doesn't feel like as much of a grind.
But, there are some warts, many inexcusable changes I don't like, and a surprising number of bugs. Here's what I don't like:
- I liked the "ability crunch" at first, and the simplification/streamlining of player abilities. But the more I play through my shaman, a class that has reputedly gone through a bit of flux and had a large number of core features outright removed or retooled, I find I don't like it. It has essentially transformed WoW from a game that required a certain amount of strategic thought and planning into a button-mashing arcade. Sure, there's likely to be some disagreement with this assertion ("it was always that way"), and it might not be completely true given some of the abilities that have been shunted into all shaman specs, but it feels like a let-down. It actually feels more like simplification for the sake of simplification, and I feel it really drains the spirit of WoW. The game that is labeled "World of Warcraft" is most certainly not the same game I played before. It just happens to have the same name as a similar game I enjoyed, and has somehow provided pre-saved progress I can make use of.
- To illustrate the "arcadization" of WoW: Totems are no longer a primary trait of the shaman class; they feel like a bolted-on afterthought. Gone are the days where totems actually did something useful, like providing passive buffs to groups. I guess passive buffs are mostly gone in their entirety, so I can't really complain, but it's not a welcome change. Yes, I realize that totems have been buffed a bit, some have been made more useful (healing stream totem), but the days of totem stomping are gone.
- The removal of water breathing is absurd. It's absurd enough that there's a running joke on the WoW forums that Ghostcrawler's mage was killed by a shaman underwater, so he decided to nerf the class by removing their ability to breathe underwater. Let's hope he doesn't get killed by a warlock next.
- The garrison has further transformed WoW into an anti-social, optional-MMO-but-mostly-single-player game. But I think we all saw that coming with the dungeon finder. This isn't specifically a shortcoming of WoD. Neither is it specifically an issue with World of Warcraft (I'm looking at you, GW2). Oh, and before calling me out for decrying a game for being anti-social, consider how many of us met each other through WoW.
- I feel the opening story's "temporary locking" of abilities fell startlingly short of whatever goal Blizzard had in mind. One, it violated the principle of least surprise (I didn't expect it to happen). Two, it almost felt insulting. I understand the intent was to gently guide players into the new, simplified ability system (see above), but I feel that the only way to really learn new, "improved" abilities is to use them. Limiting me to a small subset when I'm already L90 just pisses me off. (Workarounds suggested on the forums like swapping builds no longer appear to work. I did not try the 2v2 match workaround.)
- The new talent system seemed like a fantastic idea at first. In retrospect, I'm not so sure (consider this undecided). I can see the benefit of having a set of predictable talents to pick from for all builds, but it's almost like GW2's system with the exception that it has been reimplemented poorly (something about the old adage "doomed to reimplement Common Lisp--poorly"). If you thought GW2's redesign was a gross oversimplification, WoW will be sure to disappoint.
And finally, the inexcusable bugs or other deficiencies:
- On private servers, I'd expect to run into line-of-sight issues on certain types of terrain, particularly stairs. While this was, on rare occasion, a problem with the retail client, LOS issues on stairs and other regular non-obstructive structures were almost a non-issue by WotLK. First battle out the door, we ran into LOS issues on the stairs just inside the dark portal such that you almost had to stand on top of mobs just to attack. (And sometimes standing on top of them didn't work.) For a retail client, this is just inexcusable. For a retail client in an expansion that's approaching two years old, it's almost comically terrible.
- Rachael ran into the stuck-in-self-cast bug within the first new zone we entered after the opening sequence (once you say "hi" to Guldan and then go into the jungle area). Pounding her alt key until the self-cast unstuck was the only solution, and the forums first indicated this bug as reported (and known) in 2013(!). Nearly three years this bug has been known, and it hasn't been fixed. To be fair, most of the people with the bug had addons active that were causing problems--but a sizable percentage of people were running no addons.
- Apparently phased quests can fail if you let the NPC get too far ahead of you, and the distance isn't quite as far as you might expect. I didn't get nailed by this but Rachael did. This isn't really a bug, but you would've expected some improvement on this front in the last 6 years given all the other work they've done to polish the game. (Unless you're talking about screen doors, then it would be Pōlish--in which case it'd be completely expected.)
- The targeting system has been changed, and I don't like it. This could be chalked up to a configuration setting, but it feels inadequate. We're talking GW2-level targeting system inadequacy. I have a usable WotLK installation to empirically prove that it's different, too, and completely inferior. (This may not be entirely fair as WotLK illustrated, IMO, the most highly polished version of WoW yet.)
- Looting in its default state has a strange delay that feels tied to the loot animation. Again, probably configuration-related (I haven't taken the time to look yet), but it's jarring.
- Since most game objects are now static if they're quest-related (improvement!), you'd expect them to have some persistence and be unaffected by other players' interactions. That's not the case. There's still a race condition that appears when you try to interact with a game object at the same time as other players. Whomever the loser is will get a notice along the lines of "that item is already being used." This happens with corpses containing quest items, too. I realize this is probably expected behavior, but in my opinion, this isn't working as it's clearly intended--therefore a bug. If you expect it every time you do something, it's not so bad. Just be sure to double-check those corpses you killed with a friend. They may still have that last quest item or two you need.
As it stands, I'm being cautiously optimistic as I continue playing through. Tonight, I'm a bit on the downturn, and I've been disappointed with WoW on more than one occasion with some of these outstanding quirks. Given the age of WoD, I would've expected some of them to finally be fixed, but after some of my reading earlier I can't help but think that Blizzard's overall product quality has diminished as a direct (or indirect) consequence of ongoing corporate changes that have been progressing over the years. It's not really the fault of the World of Warcraft dev team per se, but it affects them whether they want it to or not.
Whether I continue with my subscription will depend on a number of factors, including how my perception of the ability crunch changes. Right now, the game feels dumbed down as if to appeal to the lowest common denominator (what doesn't these days?). I suspect I'll be letting my subscription lapse again until Legion, unless some substantial changes are made.
I do miss WoW, but private servers are starting to look much more appealing.
I have no idea why I wrote all this, either, except for my own personal satisfaction and/or amusement. Or maybe as a warning to others to just set me in a corner and nod and smile until I shut up and go to sleep.
