I think one of the biggest problems Blizzard has with the game is they (long ago) stopped thinking of leveling as a huge part of the game and started thinking of it as something that you do before the game actually starts. A product of their rapidly expanding level cap, which meant they had to speed leveling up to not deter new players, which meant culling and streamlining a lot of things yadda yadda yadda
So you end up with a situation where Blizzard just looks at 1-50 as "pre game" which, in fairness, it kinda is. Leveling is an inconvenience. Players and the designers want to rush you to end game. But look at classics release. Barring the weirdos who like speed running content, much of the joy of the game was for how rich and full the world felt back then. Because 1-60 was treated like an important (perhaps the most important) part of the game.
But now, Blizzard just slaps together classes at low levels like "sure, yea, this class has 30 end game abilities? 60 levels? give them a new spell every two levels, who cares what it is" because you level so quickly it doesnt matter. Thats how you end up with specs that have mastery at 10 that relies on abilities they dont get until 12, 14, 16 etc...
So why worry about hunters in the 20s bracket? You're leveling through it in an afternoon and then the toolkits even out. Its a gnarly bump in the road for the handful of people who catch a BG to give themselves a mental rest between dungeon ques on their way to 60. Most of the solutions to early and mid level problems is "well, theyll level through it". Most people dont even notice the problems we notice because the time spent between 20 and 30 is... a couple hours.
Blizzard (and also most of the player base) have really just lost the thread. So it leads to poor game design decisions because hey... 1-50 isnt the game. 60 is.
I agree to an extent, as i agree with most of the assessments here. I just think Blizzard also has a lot of the blame:
Bizzard itself settled the trends for MMOs for the better part of WoW lifespan. Even MMOs that tried to run away from the recipe, like GW2, had 80 levels, and similar HP pools and combat to WoW, only with more things added to it ( dodge, weaponswap, etc ). It's clear that a lot of these MMOs wanted the WoW pie and had to ease the transition to from WoW, which is why a lot of them had some design decisions translated from Wrath.
What most of these games didn't count, is that WoW player largely became, by Blizzard's own fault, content-locusts. Blizzard itself made their leveling irrelevant, the gamers only followed suit. Blizzard themselves made their games lack laterality, the gamers followed suit. The reason why FF14 is such a success right now and it "out-WoWs" WoW, is because the game has enough laterality at endgame, to placate the hunger for content that most players that came from WoW have, by offering them perpetual systems like housing and a good transmog system. What does a casual in WoW do? He raids, he Arena/PvP, or he levels alts. That's all. WoW lacks absolute laterality to make it's endgame more than what it is. And since things are too quick to get there, you can't even really smell the roses anymore. And getting there is frustrating because the dev team is so detached from casual experience that they think these humongous grinds for borrowed power systems are fun, which they aren't. So, when WoW players go play anything else, they are extremely jaded and have terrible habits and they must detox from them little by little.
Honestly, i largely blame Ion and Blizzard's philosophy of putting raiding devs as lead devs for EVERYTHING. Ion is a great raiding dev, but anyone who heard the guy speak can sense the loathing he has for anything else. He hates balancing talks, he hates talking about open world, he clearly doesn't care how classes perform outside raids, he clearly has no problems with class being designed by how they raid, etc etc. I don't agree with Asmon on much but when he said "LFR is not content" he was right. When Blizzard realized only 10% of their players raided, they had a choice: Either expand endgame to accomodate casuals more, or make everyone a raider. Guess what they've chosen?
Blizzard lacking perpetual systems is financially baffling and honestly disturbing as how they perceive their own game. ESO literally makes buckets of cash just by selling overpriced houses. People are able to derivate YEARS of fun from older games like Fallout New Vegas or 4, or Neverwinter Nights, by modding and replayability, having stuff to do. Yet, when it comes to the biggest MMO to date, their design decisions ammounted to making the game a "10-to-25 instanced enviromental simulator", which is what WoW is on it's best, and then there's nothing else except farming bad transmogs because the game still glues your armor to your body.
FF14 took the world by storm by doing everything Blizzard did but better. I personally hate the game, but i can admit that besides the artstyle and the awful color pallete, the game is a better WoW. It pleases casuals because it doesn't force them to raid, and gives them enough shit to do at endgame that isn't competitive crap. It pleases raidcores because it has great raiding too, which is something Blizzard doesn't have a monopoly of, even if they pretend they still are top dog and can just ignore everyone else. It pleases weeb FF fans and non weeb players altogether. GW2 End of Dragons was delayed but if they are looking around they will implement lateral systems and put GW2 back on the MMO map. New World, even with AGS' awful trackrecord, will be a solid enough MMO and since AGS will want to be successful, they will probably implement a lot of features for all kinds of players. I think the game already has Housing. I can't remember a fashion system. ESO a while ago had commemorated it's 15 million players, to which, remember: ESO is B2P. There are no F2Players. WoW can count it's F2P accounts, ESO can't. As much as people hate ESO quirks ( i love ESO but dear god those combat and animations are dogshit ), the game itself is going strong.
Blizzard's age of ignoring everyone because they were too far up the heavens has ended a while ago. And it was of their own detachment and making because they are fucking idiots. Sure, a lot of it has to do with us growing up and accelerating, but it also has to do with them making us becoming content-locusts. MMOs should focus on improving the world, not in shoving players in instances and that's that. They absolutely COULD look at low level content and leveling and make things pleasant for everyone. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. They could look at the crap that are borrowed power systems. They don't do it because they are fucking lazy idiots. And the fact they lost almost 30% of their playerbase from 2/3 years ago to now is living proof that they are fucking lazy idiots.
But anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.
/rant off
PS: When i say Blizz are fucking lazy idiots i mean the lead devs and the decision-makers. I don't mean the rank and file that bust their ass off without all the glory to make a good game and are underpaid. For these people i only wish the best.
