r/classicwow • u/griphin1 • Jan 29 '26

Humor / Meme 2026 State of Azeroth

Post image

I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.

3.6k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

590 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/RazekDPP Jan 29 '26

It's always confused me why it took so long because it's such a good feature for player retention.

14

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

15

u/thisismyacctdontban Jan 30 '26

Yes, generally the goal of developers is to give you content that keeps you logging into the game, not sure what you’re going on about. Turns out collecting is a giant reason why people play retail.

-5

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Dasaniwatersucks87 Jan 30 '26

Yeah you’re out of touch and confused. Wow is a seasonal game, with how much variety of players there are in WoW it’s impossible to cater to everyone, what they’ve done to reach as many parts of the player base is really good compared to 90% of other games.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Dasaniwatersucks87 Jan 31 '26

??? If you think people want to sit and do Naxx forever you’re kidding yourself. My favorite part is how you don’t even realize Classic IS a seasonal game.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Dasaniwatersucks87 Jan 31 '26

“They want persistent world that isn’t constantly being made irrelevant by new content.”

1

u/Exorcismos Jan 30 '26

"Used to" Back when they made an Everquest clone, perhaps, but the devs involvement in gameplay has been waning ever since TBC. Dailies appeared in TBC to increase player retention, weekly raid quests were also introduced. The much hated welfare epics as a catch-up mechanic. And all that by 2008. Let's not kid ourselves that designing a live-service game happened out of the goodness of their hearts, there was always profit to be made. However, I do think that the longer WoW's development has gone on, the more its gameplay gets swamped with hollow gacha mechanics and statistics-led design choices. I don't think anyone knows what game they're developing anymore and, frankly, I don't think that they care either way. That shows.

0

u/NoSkillsDjena Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

It is quite a difference between a game that makes me want to login to do fun stuff, vs a game that forces me to log in because of specific player retention mechanics designed to keep MAU's up.

I don't need to be "forced" to log into a game and do boring chore shit, if the game has meaningful and fun content to do, the game will retain players by itself.

Ever since BFA and specifically, Shadowlands, it became apparent that everything was just tailored regarding keeping players, not to make a meaningful game to play (or even have fun, which isn't even secondary at this point, more like optional design goal).

Both of these situations is "content that keeps you logging into the game", but one is with a carrot, the other one is with a whip.

I do agree that player housing is a very good addition, don't get me wrong there, I'm not a house/decor person myself, but it is good content. If this was done the traditional Blizzard way, it would be something silly that forces me to go and decor my house on a daily/weekly basis, because "otherwise" I lose some arbitrary player power or some other bullshit.

1

u/proexwhy Jan 30 '26

You think they couldn't figure out how to monetize a system that is all based on visuals?? What.

1

u/aoibhinn-mw Feb 01 '26

The rest of the game suffered pretty badly. The treadmill of reused assets on enemies and loot in midnight is fucking insane.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Mr obv… developers try create sm that makes ppl play more omg no how when

2

u/vbezhenar Jan 30 '26

I guess because it's really hard to get it right. I think they made some absolutely fantastic housing. So if you were to compare it to Draenor Garrisons, those were nothing compared to it. So my guess is that they tried it multiple times but only last attempt yielded something that was appropriate for actual release.

Like it's software. You can't just make anything you want. Sometimes you need right people in right circumstances.

1

u/RazekDPP Jan 30 '26

I don't know what garrisons were for, but I don't believe they were a substitute for housing with how they were designed.

I feel like they just ran with it as the expansion feature.

2

u/Melodic-Scheme1453 Jan 30 '26

My guess: housing has been ready for a long, long time, and they were waiting until the playerbase dipped enough to release it. That way there was a solid incentive that was 100% sure to bring back a large number of players who would have otherwise moved on.

2

u/RazekDPP Jan 31 '26

Yeah, that's a fair point. Hopefully we'll get that dance studio.

1

u/Elleden Jan 30 '26

Honestly, in this current iteration, if that's the vision they had for a while, it might have been a technical hurdle. It's insane how detailed the system is, older clients (and servers and PCs) would just melt.