Oh boy, I've been trying to put my finger on it. I haven't played WoW in a while and I might be out of the loop with what's the preferred server architecture here nowadays but with the current iteration this is not the experience I was looking for.
WoW forever in the beta does not feel like an mmorpg as I remember it. It feels more like a vanity ride or completing a check list disguised as classic wow and fiddling with layering is not going to fix the core issue. There's no server community, no economy and no competition. Everything gets mushed in an enormous population and behind layering. Maybe this feeling fades as we get on to the actual servers and people progress through the game but I’m not getting my hopes up.
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Layering and turbo spawns remove friction. There's no need for me to go do something else when a farming spot or a questing hub is overpopulated. That's why the game feels very linear atm. I don’t get sidetracked. I’m just going through the most optimal vertical route as the game keeps laying new layers and checklists for me. The monsters in this overpopulated area are spawning in 3 seconds anyway so it’s not worth for me to go do something else. The optimal route is to embrace layers, turbo-spawning and monster tagging instead of going somewhere else in the world to do something else.
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The game does not feel to be about the world as they market it, it's about the solo player experience. The world, other players in the world, mob spawns, quest objectives, group finder, everything in the game is made to adjust to the number of players in the world. This is backwards. The player should be exploring the world and adjusting to it instead and finding the optimal way to play or get resources from a fixed resource. Taking other players into account is a part of that experience. You have to compete for resources. You have to make your own groups for dungeons by finding like-minded people to play the game with and maybe even make friends with. You have to beat the opposing faction for resources and so on. By having layering and adjusting spawn rates Blizzard is giving us a ride where there will be no sense of accomplishment as there's no challenge, no satisfaction of reaching your goal or beating competition. Negative feelings are and should be a part of the experience as well.
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It feels like I’m playing a single player game marketed as something else. I haven’t had many social interactions inside the game outside of very negative ones from all the political talk and bigots early on. Those seem to be mostly gone now though. I’m not able to recognize players due to a humongous population and layering. There's different colored names every now and then but I don't remember who they are as there’s so many players everywhere. There's no social capital associated with your actions if you can’t recognize other people. Other people inside the game might as well be AI agents filling my group finder list and waiting for me on the next elite boss quest mob. I don’t have to adjust my gameplay to other people’s needs and they don’t have to adjust their gameplay for my needs.
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Everyone’s subjected to the same mega AH economy. It’s a botter’s and a gold seller’s wet dream to have the whole player base in the same server economy. Easy-to-bot materials are going to be so overabundant in the AH that there’s no agency for a player to go farm those themselves. You’re not encouraged to play in the world, get materials or even rare recipes yourself as they're in the AH.
The game I've played in the forever beta is not the classic as I remember it—It feels like a modern single-player game with aesthetic and nostalgia of classic wow in a modern server architecture. You're taking a single player ride through a world of unknown people. They are trying to market their megaserver and layering to us as an improvement over the old server architecture when the real goal is to save on server costs and not having to solve actual server balance issues and deaths. Maybe it does solve those issues but it's at a high cost.
This was more of a vent of my experience in beta than a discussion opener but feel to chime in if you have something to add.
Source: r/wowforever · by /u/apemopo