Classic The Problem with the Question of Choice in WoW

WoW isn't an RPG anymore. When was the last time you booted up WoW so that you could feel like an elf hunting a bear in a forest? Or a Troll looking for their voodoo ingredients for a ritual? If you look at the amount of RP going on in WoW, there isn't much. I play on an RP realm, mostly for flavor, but even on RP realms there's a small amount of players who actually RP.WoW is an lobby based loot game. It is competitive. It can also be casual, but no doubt competitive. Most player experience revolves around getting loot so that your character is stronger. What is the point of strength if you can't test it? Warcraft logs, raider.io, arena leaderboards, these are the places that players compare their strength.Shadowlands is attempting to bring more player choice and differentiation into the mix. The goal seems to be to make you feel like you're unique and have made an impactful specialization decision. Something like a class choice, or a gearset choice. When Ion explains it, it almost seems fine. I mean there are so many choices you make in WoW. Characters aren't the same, right?You see it, the stark difference between Preach's answer and what Ion thought he might say. Should all characters be the same? In an RPG game, Ion is right, differentiation is what makes the game. But if we look at the history of WoW, it has almost always been the same story. Everyone working towards making their character the best it can be. No one is picking a talent because they think it looks cool when it deals 5% less damage. Every Rogue I've met says Killing Spree is one of the coolest abilities in the game. Guess who uses it? No one. You work towards the best stat priority, loot the best trinkets, use the best talents for the fight.Watch Asmongold get hyped about Ashes of Creation at the same time as being pissed off at how he can't use another covenant's ability. It's one ability. Ashes is full blown differentiation and specialization with you never ever even getting to be the best at two things at the same time. Yet, it's all happiness. Because he knows that Ashes is about you being another person in a world, and that WoW is not. Not anymore at least. WoW is about performance, optimization, and showing off how good you and your character is.I get it, WoW is about player power. Implementing RPG stuff without tying it to player power makes it feel like non-content. But forcing exponential choices onto players is just going to erode competitive players, and without high end players there is no one for casuals to look up to for gear advice, and without casuals the player base dwindles.It's getting increasingly difficult to compete with other players on even ground. I don't know if the devs are trying to phase out hyper-optimization, but it seems like that's their goal. To make your parse not matter and to just raid for fun. In theory, that's what it should be about right? But I don't see that panning out in a healthy way. Don't get me wrong. I don't think WoW should go full esport. But when RPG "choice" is hindering the ability to recognize if a player is more skilled than another, it's not going to be fun. via /r/wow https://ift.tt/2DfxpEc