History AntiFrustrationFeatures / WorldOfWarcraft

** Multiple bosses since ''Classic'' have had a "Deep Breath" attack. In just about every incarnation, in part due to a mixture of poorly telegraphed zones and requiring players to look ''up'' (Something a lot of players have trouble doing in ''any'' game). Fyrakk does have a Deep Breath attack, but the danger zone is telegraphed on the ''ground'', so players don't have to adjust their camera.

** In the original game, going to a dungeon involved finding five people on your server. Then, every one of you would have to make your way to the dungeon, for the first forty levels by foot. This dungeon could be located on a different continent. If someone dropped out after you'd arrived, all that time was wasted. Many of the dungeons were also surrounded by labyrinthine tunnels, often full of elite units. Eventually, meeting stones were introduced, which were stones located near to dungeons that allowed two players to summon the rest. On top of that, looking for group chats were separated by zone. While this makes sense so players looking for help with a level 20ish quest wouldn't be shouted over by people asking for help for endgame content, it was unfortunate for players who needed to look for dungeon groups. Because most players clustered in cities, most people would hang out there - and if it was on the other side of the world or behind a long flight path, this meant players had to run ''all'' the way back, since most players wouldn't "Happen" to be nearby. This was especially bad for instances in areas that were extremely out of the way for their faction (Scarlet Monastery, Shadowfang Keep, or any Razorfen dungeons for Alliance players; Gnomeregan for Horde players.)

* Changing talents used to require paying a class trainer to reset all of a player's talents and the cost to do so kept increasing ad infinitum with every use. ''Mists of Pandaria'' did away with talent trees and instead introduced tiers where every 15 levels players would choose one of three talents independent of what they chose in other tiers. Not only can said talents be changed at any time in a rest area, but ''Legion'' introduced tomes that can be bought cheaply which allow players to change their talents so long as they're out of combat, and players can change their talents for free at the start of a dungeon, in case they use different ones for open world content and group content.

* One of the reasons that quest items cannot be sold to vendors is that they often look identical to VendorTrash items. No one wants to try to complete a quest, only to learn that they accidentally sold their "[[TwentyBearAsses Pristine Bear Tooth]]" when they were trying to hand in an ordinary animal tooth.

** The fact that you could level up to 60 (max a the time) by yourself. Even ''VideoGame/EverQuest'' and ''VideoGame/DarkAgeOfCamelot'' often made it ''significantly'' easier when you had a group.

** Updating [=PvP=] Gear so newly -ade [=PvP=] Characters can purchase up-to-date [=PvP=] Gear.

* ''Battle for Azeroth'' introduced the Scrapper which breaks down items of uncommon quality or higher into their base materials. While it only gives back a fraction of the materials used to make crafted items, it eases player's needs to farm for crafting materials, especially since they can scrap old or unwanted gear as well.

** In the original game, going to a dungeon involved finding five people on your server. Then, every one of you would have to make your way to the dungeon, for the first forty levels by foot. This dungeon could be located on a different continent. If someone dropped out after you'd arrived, all that time was wasted. Many of the dungeons were also surrounded by labyrinthine tunnels, often full of elite units. Eventually, meeting stones were introduced, which were stones located near to dungeons that allowed two players to summon the rest.
*** On top of that, looking for group chats were separated by zone. While this makes sense so players looking for help with a level 20ish quest wouldn't be shouted over by people asking for help for endgame content, it was unfortunate for players who needed to look for dungeon groups. Because most players clustered in cities, most people would hang out there - and if it was on the other side of the world or behind a long flight path, this meant players had to run ''aaaallll'' the way back, since most players wouldn't "Happen" to be nearby. This was especially bad for instances in areas that were extremely out of the way for their faction (Scarlet Monastery, Shadowfang Keep, or any Razorfen dungeons for Alliance players; Gnomeregan for Horde players.)

*** The "Dungeon Finder" also gave players the ability to experience dungeons they normally wouldn't - for example, Alliance players would get to visit Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, or Razorfen Kraul despite having no quests (Unless one [[GuideDangIt knew where to look in Thousand Needles]]), and horde players could visit Deadmines or Gnomeregan without having to use the convoluted method to teleport there that [[GuideDangIt some players didn't know was there until 2019]].

*** On top of that, looking for group chats were separated by zone. While this makes sense so players looking for help with a level 20ish quest wouldn't be shouted over by people asking for help for endgame content, it was unfortunate for players who needed to look for dungeon groups. Because most players clustered in cities, most people would hang out there - and if it was on the other side of the world or behind a long flight path, this meant players had to run ''aaaallll'' the way back, since most players wouldn't "Happen" to be nearby. This was especially bad for instances in areas that were extremely out of the way for their faction (Scarlet Monastery or any Razorfen dungeons for Alliance players; Gnomeregan for Horde players.)

* Archaeology has received several anti-frustration measures over time. Individual artifacts now give you between five and nine fragments instead of three to five, allowing you to complete projects quicker. Each dig site lets you dig up six artifacts at a time instead of three, meaning that you spend more time actually at the dig sites instead of flying between them. Completed Mists of Pandaria projects can be traded in for fragments for another race of your choosing. Most importantly, the chance of getting a dig site for a faction once you have already completed all of their projects is significantly reduced. However, since the chance of ''receiving'' a rare project is still low you can easily be stuck collecting Night Elf fragments from all over Kalimdor because it never gives you to last project that you need...
* In the Looking for Raid feature, starting with Patch 5.2, there's a "Determination" buff that gives you a stack that increases your damage dealt, healing and maximum health by five percent every time you die against a boss after fighting for at least two minutes, a feature intentionally designed to encourage players to persist. This can help in raids in which some players are undergeared, although many will quit in frustration before getting more than a few stacks.
* Increasing the amount of money dropped as expansions went on. This made things like getting the maximum level of riding for your mount much ''much'' easier.

** For that matter, player-caused deaths did not cause durability loss.
** The concept of soulbound gear and resources was another one itself. Most other [=MMORPGs=] at the time allowed virtually any item to be traded and thus sold to players, and sometimes they didn't even have a minimum requirement to equip the item. Thus, players would save their suits of gear and give it to a lower level player and cause them to receive a massive competitive advantage. Most items could only be used by one player, even the high quality items you ''could'' transfer. (Which, at endgame, were often inferior to what you could get from a dungeon)

* One of the reasons that quest items cannot be sold to vendors is that they often look identical to VendorTrash items, and no one wants to try to complete a quest only to learn that they accidentally sold their "[[TwentyBearAsses Pristine Bear Tooth]]" and are trying to hand in an ordinary animal tooth.
* Dungeons. In the original game going to a dungeon involved finding five people on your server willing to go. Then every one of you would have to make your way to the dungeon, for the first forty levels by foot. This dungeon could be located on a different continent. If someone dropped out after you'd arrived, a lot of time was wasted. ''If'' you had a warlock only three people had to come themselves, and the others could be summoned. Many of the dungeons were also surrounded by labyrinthine tunnels, often full of elite units. Eventually meeting stones were introduced, located near to dungeons, and allowed two players to summon the rest. The newer dungeons also tended to be located in less inconvenient places, and the final boss was located near an alternate route to the exit so players didn't have to go all the way back through the often very large dungeons to leave. All of this pales beside the changes worked during the ''Wrath of the Lich King'' expansion. It introduced the "dungeon finder" system. A player puts their name on it as their character type, and the game automatically searches through everyone in the system on all servers in the same geographical area, enabling players to sign up and then carry on with other tasks until a group is found. Once that's done, it gives party members the temporary ability to ''teleport'' between the dungeon and wherever they were.
* Originally healing characters were completely worthless when not in a group, having no damage to speak of and taking signficiantly longer to destroy anything solo. Part of this was because their gear only boosted healing power, not damage, and even if they tried to get a set of damage boosting gear it would never be as powerful. This was fixed by merging +healing into +spell power stat, allowing healing gear to double as damage gear. Healers were still not able to dish out nearly the damage of DPS, but at least they weren't completely worthless!
** This was particularly brutal since there were a number of solo class missions in early [=WoW=] which were required to get special skills or abilities. These solo missions were usually designed to be somewhat challenging to make one 'earn' the ability, however, they didn't always consider specialization when being designed. What was a 'slightly challenging' fight for a more solo-friendly spec could be brutal for a healer of equal gear. These solo missions were phased out after 'burning crusade'.
** The Dual spec ability further addressed this issue. With the ability to switch between specialties healers could now have a separate damage spec that was used for solo content. Some may choose to still not have a solo spec, for instance having a tank and healing spec, but at least they have more flexibility to run solo-capable specs if they choose.
** Dual Spec has been done away, now it's possible to change specs any time with the action bar layouts saving. Likewise talents can be changed at will in rest areas.
* Several of these were implemented to cut down on the FakeDifficulty present in "Vanilla" and Burning Crusade, [[NostalgiaFilter Not that people who played during those times are willing to admit it]]:
** Allowing people to purchase gear that can get them ready for the current raid everybody wants to run. Because we learned [[CantCatchUp the hard way the playerbase has a tendency to declare themselves "Done" with content regardless of whether or not their friends still needed something]], a lot of people would be stuck asking around to do the raids they needed when the people who were more than geared to do it wouldn't lift a finger to help because they were sick of it or didn't need the gear and having to get lucky and hope a group forms. Vanilla and Burning Crusade had a problem with this, when players would be accused of being TheLoad on Serpenshire Cavern or Black Temple because they weren't geared enough but nobody wanted to run Karazhan to help them get the gear they needed, resulting in them having to sit around cities asking for help or bribing guild-members to run.
** Reducing the requirements for Heroics. In Burning Crusade, the heroics required you to run the dungeon enough so that you are revered with the appropriate faction and can purchase the heroic key. Sure enough, players declared themselves "done" with the Normals and decided that the people who still didn't have their heroic keys didn't need their help, resulting in them getting [[CantCatchUp stuck]], being unable to get gear that guilds would accept before letting them even step in Karazhan but requiring on random groups to be forming in trade chats or having to be rich enough to bribe people to run normals with them. Cataclysm brought back requirements for heroics, but even then, it was ''far'' more doable than in Burning Crusade, thanks to the addition of the Dungeon Finder. (That, and you can get qualified for heroics by simply running normals a few times)
** Updating [=PvP=] Gear so newly made [=PvP=] Characters can purchase up-to-date [=PvP=] Gear.
** Removing attunements. Surprise surprise...attunements were toned down or flat out removed so people wouldn't have to stand around cities for months asking for help or bribing people to go through as...surprise surprise, players declared themselves "Done" with them.
** Reducing the number of people that are run by raids in general. Anyone who says they liked 40 man raids better has clearly never tried to corral 40 people through Molten Core and had 40 people living in different time zones syncing their weekly schedules up so they can all run at once.

* In patch 3.3, Blizzard finally caved to all the players who used addons that marked the map with the locations of quest givers and objectives by implementing a system for this into the core game. Never again was "[[MemeticMutation Where's Mankrik's wife?]]" heard in the Barrens...
* In patch 3.3.3, quest items in your bags/bank are highlighted with an orange-yellow border so you can find them among dozens of other items, some of which have the exact same icon.
* In the ''Cataclysm'' expansion, most new dungeons were given a ''teleporter'' that allowed you to skip to various points in the dungeon if you wipe and have to run back in, and this feature was also present in some raid dungeons. For example, in Grim Batol, once you defeat the second boss, the drakes near the entrance will fly you to the end of his hall, and after defeating the third boss, the drakes will take you to where you fought him.
** In some Mists of Pandaria dungeons, if you wipe and re-enter the dungeon you will appear at the location of the last boss you defeated, obviating the need to have teleporters. On the other hand, that can be frustrating in and of itself, as there might not be an ''exit'' near where you come in, thus meaning you will have to teleport out if your gear is broken, no one is nearby to repair it, and the exit is far away.
* Many bosses in various dungeons have a mechanic to reset them. Normally, hostile {{NPC}}s in dungeons will pursue fleeing players until the players are dead or have left the dungeon. If a group gets wiped out to the last man by a tough boss, regrouping can be a slow, annoying process. Fortunately, some bosses will not pursue fleeing players to the ends of the earth. Instead, they'll despawn when pulled out of their throne room and reappear in their starting point a few minutes later, so any surviving players may have a few minutes to resurrect their fallen teammates in peace, saving a lot of time and aggravation. Note that some bosses don't do this, and some bosses trap players in with them when the encounter starts, meaning that there's ''no'' middle ground between victory or death, so this may be a bug.
* The total lack of any anti-frustration features is why the archaeology secondary profession is so loathed. There is no ability to focus on digsites you want, save for an item that increases your chances of getting Mantid digsites after the Mantid archaeology branch was introduced. You only get 4 digsites a continent and what site you get after clearing one is determined purely by RNG, no relation to how many rares or commons you have completed of a race even if you have all of them it won't stop them from appearing just as frequently. The digsites you get on a continent are selected from a handful of preexisting sites so on a continent that is "balanced" toward a particular race this can be aggravating. There are only 4 continents and each continent has at least one race exclusive to them (Outland has Draenei and Orcs, Northrend has Vykrul and Nerubian digsites which exist off Northrend but are exceedingly rare, Kalimdor has Nightelves which again are exceedingly rare outside this continent and Tol'vir and Eastern Kingdoms has Dwarves) so you don't have an option to leave if you want a particular race. Also Troll digsites are common enough in Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend that they just get in the way.
** Archaeology has received several anti-frustration measures over time. Individual artifacts now give you between five and nine fragments instead of three to five, allowing you to complete projects quicker. Each dig site lets you dig up six artifacts at a time instead of three, meaning that you spend more time actually at the dig sites instead of flying between them. Completed Mists of Pandaria projects can be traded in for fragments for another race of your choosing. Most importantly, the chance of getting a dig site for a faction once you have already completed all of their projects is significantly reduced. However, since the chance of ''receiving'' a rare project is still low you can easily be stuck collecting Night Elf fragments from all over Kalimdor because it never gives you to last project that you need...