Okay so WoW isn’t technically dead but I think we can all agree that it isn’t close to what it once was. Sure there are subscribers but Cataclysm virtually sucked the life out of the game. Gevlon says it was the dance that caused this mess and I think that I agree with him.
We can call it “the dance”, twitch style gaming or whatever you want to call it. In the end it was over done and it turned off a lot of people. I was so disenchanted with the game that I walked away well before attempting to master the new dance it offered. It was nothing but more of the same and I had my fill.
The epic rush of downing baddies was gone. All that filled its place was Azeroths version of a brightly colored rendition of the electric slide. Think about it, was it really anything more than that? Hell the Lich King battle was the same thing – move in unison or fail. The frustration of watching raid members unable to learn the dance was exhausting. I just didn’t have the heart to do it throughout Cataclysm.
I know the electric slide is a corny comparison but have you ever seen someone who doesn’t know the dance? It is painful to watch. Sure they will eventually get it BUT unlike WOW the rest of the dance floor isn’t forced to start over until they do. So for me at least the dance really did kill WoW.
The real kicker in all of this is I do not mind the occasional dance. But what killed my spirit was being punished for those that will never pull it off. It seemed as if it didn’t matter how well I did, I was still hampered by someone else’s lack of twitch reflexes. I have two words for you – NOT FUN.
I think I should also let you in on a little secret – Rift is suffering the same fate. In my personal opinion, Rift is superior to WoW in many ways and by all rights it should be. WoW was the perfect model. All Trion had to do was build on Blizzards success. But Trion has made one fatal flaw, they are mimicking WoW’s end game theory. This is not a good idea.
If the folks over at Rift want longevity they really have to change one thing – go back to Karazhan style raiding. Go back to a raiding theory that is accessible and it rewards those who excel. I think that Gevlon is onto something with his latest MMO model.
I don’t pretend to be a master of MMO theory but from a consumer perspective I can pinpoint exactly where I stopped having fun in WOW. Sindragosa – I hated that fight because it was nothing more than a dance.
It was a dance that I struggled with, while I eventually got the dance down, I dreaded it every time we fought her. You see it didn’t matter how much I excelled as a boomkin, it didn’t matter if my rotation was perfect, it didn’t if I could out DPS pure DPS classes, or throw a clutch heal that saved the raid. Nope none of that mattered. If I didn’t make it to the left or the right, or move to the steps or move behind my frozen team mates I caused major problems for the other 24 players. Remember those two words? NOT FUN!
I’m not sure if maybe nostalgia is clouding your memory a little, but there was plenty of dancing in Karazhan. Remember Shade of Aran? It was like a kid’s party game – run around, dodge the blizzards, and then – Flame Wreath!! Nobody move!! Remember the Big Bad Wolf? RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL! Many’s the time we wiped there because every single player he pursued failed to run away. Remember Netherspite’s beams? And worst of all, remember the slow motion dance of Malchezaar and his infernals?
I certainly don’t disagree that Cataclysm raiding (I only did the 4.0 raids, account has been inactive since before Firelands) took “stack up! spread out! stack up! now spread out again!” to an excessive degree. But frankly this has been a part of WoW raiding since I guess Blackwing Lair (don’t recall much dancing in Molten Core), so I’m a bit bemused by the bloggers I see who are unhappy that the game is NOW about “learning the moves” rather than just “playing your class”.
Of course there was dancing then BUT it wasn’t to the extreme that it is now. Remember I said that I don’t mind a occasional dance, but today’s version of WoW is too far gone.
The “dance” killed my guild. The “dance” killed my interest in raiding as a direct result of it killing my guild.
Thus, the “dance” killed my interest in WoW as I have no real interest in PvP.
The dance probably would not have hurt anything if they allowed for one or two people to miss a move and the others not be sidelined, As it is now if the whole crew is not perfect then everyone falls. Back in the day you could lose one or two people and overcome it with a little hard work now if you lose 1 person in a 10 man in Rift you might as well think about starting over.