Quote:
Originally Posted by Rygar
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I played Classic EQ from day 1 release and then on and off until partway through Planes of Power. I also played WoW from Burning Crusade to Lich King (almost to cataclysm).
So at first, WoW was like the most amazing thing since sliced bread. Easy quests that give great exp, ability for any class to solo to max level by repeating these quests, no exp loss from death, lucrative tradeskills, skill trees to diversify your class, awesome raid encounters that force you to pay attention to succeed, etc etc etc.
However, what ultimately drew me away from WoW was the systematic watering down of content.
-Oh you needed a reagent to use this cooldown ability? Patch that out, need to make things easier.
-Oh, you don't want to grind heroics for epic gear? Let's just create a mini-instance in Lich King that gives like 9 epics out in a 5min instance that is basically tank and spank.
-Shaman magma totem drawing too much agro? Hmm... lets make it zero agro, stupid mobs taking 10k damage from the thing and they don't think to hit it anymore.
-People don't want to progress up and run to Ogrimmar anymore cause it takes too long? Let's add a blimp path.
-Mages frustrated that their mez (sheep) are getting broke by players not paying attention? Remove the 1 damage break mez restriction
It would just keep getting easier, and easier, and easier... It became apparent that they were catering to the 13 year old demographic who couldn't bare to be inconvenienced by the slightest else risk cancelling their subscription.
That is what drew me back to EQ and finding P99. Not any skill or competition, just a more punishing MMORPG world where there are consequences. Delayed gratification is what keeps a lot of people playing IMO
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This is hilariously ironic--how exactly could 13 year olds wave their wallet around? Did they all join up together during study hall and write their local Blizzard rep, "We want things easier!"? The demo with no responsibility, no disposable income, highest capacity for investing time due to point 1, highest capacity to learn new things? They're the ones that dumbed the game down?
It couldn't possibly be the wave of moms and dads who could only play 1-2 hours a day and were pissed a bunch of 16 year olds were dominating servers and were grinding mats all day during the summer while they were at their shitty 9-5?
This is like the biggest lie old people tell themselves in the gaming community, and I get it, blaming little kids who have no capacity to actually encourage this change themselves is really easy and maybe intuitive to you, but you should recognize that these changes purely benefit casual moms and dads who can't play that often. Every single change caters to them. It's harder for them to handle intricate rotations so lets dumb those down, they don't have a lot of friends so LFR is the only way to experience that content, they don't have time to gather mats so get rid of those, walking takes too long so eliminate travel time...the list goes on. Every single change was directed at working class adults.
Older people that actually enjoy this kind of game (EQ) are the gross, gross minority compared to the millions that enjoy being able to login to WoW in their very short time frame to play the game. Their target demo isn't teenagers who can't actually buy shit, it's adults who will keep paying for those 60$ max level characters just to avoid having to spend the time to level them.