"Players rarely argue for less convenience." - Ghostcrawler

[Seefer]

Where does it say in the ToS that players need to continue improving in order to play WoW? Who made up this rule that people need to keep getting better, as if their skill in WoW was somehow important? What about someone who plays WoW occasionally? What if the group that plays infrequently was actually the majority? Should there not be features that appeal to them?

Meanwhile, raiding keeps increasing in difficulty for those who are getting better. Each tier, the progression race is alive and well. I think the devs are striking a decent balance between the types of people who play.

If people don't want to be good at something why do it? I never suddenly got a hair up my ass to go try and play football because I had no desire to be good at it! If people want to raid they should be a good player! If they don't want to be good at it do other things!

[MoanaLisa]

If people don't want to be good at something why do it? I never suddenly got a hair up my ass to go try and play football because I had no desire to be good at it! If people want to raid they should be a good player! If they don't want to be good at it do other things!

Absolutely. Little kids should never bother with Little League baseball because they aren't really very good at the game. People shouldn't bother to jog because they'll probably never really be in shape to run a marathon. People should avoid video games--even if they enjoy them a lot--because they might not be any good at them and might enjoy them just as they are. Amateur theater companies and dinner theaters should just stop because after all, they're not ever going to perform at the same level as a professional company. And amateur musicians who enjoy messing around and making music, even if badly, should just stop that too.

Who the hell do they think they are not performing at top level but still enjoying what they do.

Seriously?

[Seefer]

Absolutely. Little kids should never bother with Little League baseball because they aren't really very good at the game. People shouldn't bother to jog because they'll probably never really be in shape to run a marathon. People shouldn't avoid video games--even if they enjoy them a lot--because they might not be any good at them.

Seriously?

if you have an interest in something and want to go far in it you need to IMPROVE, stop trying to twist my words around and go all hyperbole.

[MoanaLisa]

if you have an interest in something and want to go far in it you need to IMPROVE, stop trying to twist my words around and go all hyperbole.

Who says people have to want to go far in it? You? Maybe people just enjoy doing what they're doing. Not twisting your words at all.

If people don't want to be good at something why do it?

That seems clear enough and could certainly apply to anything at all outside of video games and WoW.

[Deleted]

This thread once again shows what kind of people play WoW nowadays. It is pointless to argue anything on this forums, because you get overrun by Blizzard apologists/little kids using their circular logic and flawed analogies. I just find it funny, during Cata when heroics were supposedly "challenging" (hint: they were waay easier then TBC) people cried their eyes out on the forums. It really showed what kind of a playerbase WoW has been attracting since 3.0. A playerbase you don't want to acommodate your game to.

The subs are dropping though, and that's all that matters in the end. Because this new generation isn't used in paying through the majority of an expansion, but to pay for 2 months then come back 1 year later again for 2 months to see what's "new". And Blizzard has been acommodating them since 3.0. Just so they can play this solo game for a month and unsubscribe.

[Seefer]

Who says people have to want to go far in it? You? Maybe people just enjoy doing what they're doing. Not twisting your words at all.



That seems clear enough and could certainly apply to anything at all outside of video games and WoW.

If people want to raid they should be good enough to raid yes? If they aren't and don't want to try and be good enough then they shouldn't raid..........which is what LFR is full of, people who like to ignore mechanics and do 20k dps, facerolling to epics.

[Holtzmann]

The subs are droping though, and that's all that matters in the end. Because this new generation isn't used in paying through the majority of an expansion, but to pay for 2 months then come back 1 year later again for 2 months to see what's "new". And Blizzard has been acommodating them since 3.0. Just so they can play this solo game for a month and unsubscribe.

So, you'd like Blizzard to ignore the biggest potential demographic out there, one that's still growing, in favor of "your" dwindling generation of hardcore, dedicated players with free time to spare?

[Deleted]

Right. You're actually supporting my argument. People who use the number of LFR threads as reason for whether or not it's good for the game are trying to incorrectly associate the number of people supporting an argument with how true an argument is. You're saying that's incorrect, and so am I.

Well I'm glad we've cleared up that confusion, at least. I did think that was fairly clear in the post you replied to, but these things happen and there's a good chance I was sleep-deprived and not operating with complete clarity.

As for your second point, that's precisely why no one's opinion is any less valuable regardless of how many people support it.

As a stand-alone opinion, I would agree. However if someone is attempting to affect change within a game, their opinion becomes more valuable when they can back it up with data (and vice-versa).
e.g. It's no longer a valid opinion to say that "most people hate LFR" when all available evidence (be it # of forum posts or Blizz's own data) disagrees with that assertion.

[Deleted]

So, you'd like Blizzard to ignore the biggest potential demographic out there, one that's still growing, in favor of "your" dwindling generation of hardcore, dedicated players with free time to spare?

You are right. That's why the subs are growing.

Oh wait...

[Seefer]

So, you'd like Blizzard to ignore the biggest potential demographic out there, one that's still growing, in favor of "your" dwindling generation of hardcore, dedicated players with free time to spare?

If you keep the players who stay all expansion long and ignore the ones who stay for 2 months out of an expansion and maybe come back during a big patch you'd make more money, it's always better to keep stable people vs once in a while subbing in a game like this.

Oh and if they went back to TBC model or even WOTLK I bet you'd see more raiders come back and stick around.....you know........back when Blizz could spot 12 million subs not "We are bleeding subs"

[Ronduwil]

I'll never understand why people describe Cataclysm as The Great Difficult Era. It wasn't. The heroics were just as easy as WotLK's. Cataclysm's downfall was Blizzard's approach of resting on it's laurels and the subsequent lack of content, not it's supposed (nonexistent) difficulty.

Really? Because I can't think of any FYAD mechanics from WotLK. At worst I remember void zones where people would start yelling if you parked in them for ten or more seconds because then you might make the healer OOM. In contrast, Grim Batol alone had:

• General Umbriss periodically charged a random player. If that player and/or the people near them failed to get out of the way it was instant death for them
• Throngus dropped pools of lava that players had to keep out of. The tank had to kite him in certain phases to avoid death. He would periodically shoot flames out in front of him that would kill any player not standing behind him. While all this was going on archers were raining fire arrows on the group so if you lost one or two DPS the healer was pretty much guaranteed to OOM before the group could kill him.
• Dhraga Shadowburner periodically summoned a minion that would make a beeline for a random player. If the group failed to kill the minion before it reached that player it was pretty much guaranteed death for that player and everyone around them. Don't forget the dragon phase where the dragon would periodically flame everyone standing in front of it to instant death. That's in addition to the stupid minions.
• Erudax would periodically cast a shadow gale. Anyone not standing in its eye died within seconds. On top of that he would periodically summon two adds. These adds had to be DPSed down before they reached the eggs or they would heal Erudax and hatch whelps that would pelt the group with death balls, causing the healer to OOM.

Every single boss in this instance featured 1-3 mechanics that were above and beyond anything in WotLK with the exception of Oculus. Even Oculus was easy if everyone knew their role and how to perform it.

The only people raiding LFR constantly are those who are doing so for VP for some reason, or because they're moderately casual raiders who work mostly on normal modes and are possibly gearing up their alts here and there. The hardcores you mention, where you need at least 2 characters raid-ready, they're not raiding LFR. They're raiding Heroics, with both characters, and have no reason to hit LFR at all, on either character. Unless they're making a brand-new alt, in which case they'll hit LFR for a couple weeks at the very start of the gearing process, and then never again.

This was my personal experience. I did LFR for supplementary gear for maybe two weeks. After that the gear from normals and/or VP was way better than anything from LFR. As a healer I did LFR a lot for the quick valor. 60% of the time I would zone into the last boss and then it was a fifteen minute fight for 120 VP. Fastest valor ever. They nerfed the VP in MoP so at that point I didn't bother to queue except to use my coins for the Sha touched weapon that never dropped for me.

Players are responsible for building and maintaining their communities, not Blizzard.

This is true, but the Cataclysm heroics actively impeded efforts to build communities. You could no longer bring everyone in on dungeons and raids because even one bad player caused everyone to fail. It forced everyone to pick and choose the "best" players -- not the nicest, the most cooperative, or the hardest working players: only the most skilled players. In a multi-player game most people prefer to play with those who are going to make the experience enjoyable. Those people are not always the most skilled. This is why guilds started falling apart. If the raid leader can't bring his wife along or if the guild leader's girlfriend is causing a wipe every fight those people are simply going to quit playing. Lose enough of those key players and the raid is done. You can have 25 skilled players who don't have an ounce of leadership between them. No matter how skilled they are, they're not going to form a viable guild or finish a successful raid. I believe that selecting only for those people is what's killed the game.

So people who play games to get fame and money are not special? Man someone better tell Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, and any other sports player, as well as Swifty who gets paid to play this game, any chess player who wins big, poker players etc........cuz hey they are all just games.

The difference is that those games attract enough interest to bring in advertising revenue and fill stadiums. In contrast, no one watches WoW because it's boring as hell. Even the hardest boss fight is the same exact fight every single time. WoW isn't chess where you're pitting two sets of strategies against each other. It's not golf where players navigate courses to drop the ball into a hole despite variances in weather. It's not basketball where two teams of extremely skilled players go head to head. It's not baseball where you're pitting extremely skilled hitters against extremely skilled pitchers. It's a computer game in which the players labor under well-defined constraints against a completely predictable boss that performs the same set of actions every single time. How are you going to get anyone to buy into that? A raid is fun to watch once. After that there's no point. No one would ever watch the top ten guilds in action week in and week out they way they would watch a season of basketball, baseball, or football. That's why your comparison doesn't apply.

[Pull My Finger]

Personal opinion here but I think they don't remove it because

1) They are afraid to EVER admit when they screw up

2) You can't put the genie back in the bottle, what is done is done, kinda like flying mounts.

Just let me get this straight: does that mean that you truly, genuinely believe that Blizzard actually think they "screwed up" with LFR and would rather remove it, if they could and had the balls to admit a mistake?

[Nihth]

So, you'd like Blizzard to ignore the biggest potential demographic out there, one that's still growing, in favor of "your" dwindling generation of hardcore, dedicated players with free time to spare?

I doubt the hardcore generation is dwindling tbh, just look at DOTA2, LOL, HON, SC2, POE and similar games, many many millions of players (combined).

[Ronduwil]

If people want to raid they should be good enough to raid yes? If they aren't and don't want to try and be good enough then they shouldn't raid..........which is what LFR is full of, people who like to ignore mechanics and do 20k dps, facerolling to epics.

That's because there's nothing else for them to do! Take away LFR and what have they got? Dailies? Scenarios? "Heroic" dungeons? Do you honestly think that those activities are going to retain anyone in their current state? MoP's last patch featured 16 new raid bosses and 0 new heroic dungeons. The 16 raid bosses are aimed primarily at the top 1% of the WoW population. What is everyone else supposed to do if not LFR?

[nekobaka]

So, you'd like Blizzard to ignore the biggest potential demographic out there, one that's still growing, in favor of "your" dwindling generation of hardcore, dedicated players with free time to spare?

This demographic doesnt want all the same things, but Blizzard has been trying to cater to them as if they do. If a player doesnt have free time to spare then how do they play WoW to begin with? Sounds silly to market a progression based MMO where there will always be players who are behind the curve to those who have no time to play games in the first place.

That's because there's nothing else for them to do! Take away LFR and what have they got? Dailies? Scenarios? "Heroic" dungeons? Do you honestly think that those activities are going to retain anyone in their current state? MoP's last patch featured 16 new raid bosses and 0 new heroic dungeons. The 16 raid bosses are aimed primarily at the top 1% of the WoW population. What is everyone else supposed to do if not LFR?

These things you dismiss used to keep players busy due to them being designed to be slower to consume compared to now. Scenarios are new while players tend to ignore them in large part due to how optional they are towards character progression compared to LFR and same with dungeons which was made to be blown past in a blink of an eye. Without LFR there will be more focus on non-raid content providing character progression for non-raiders. Blizzards solution of trying to shove everyone into raids isnt working out so well so far particularly when they are not meant to be engaging.

[Seefer]

That's because there's nothing else for them to do! Take away LFR and what have they got? Dailies? Scenarios? "Heroic" dungeons? Do you honestly think that those activities are going to retain anyone in their current state? MoP's last patch featured 16 new raid bosses and 0 new heroic dungeons. The 16 raid bosses are aimed primarily at the top 1% of the WoW population. What is everyone else supposed to do if not LFR?

I dunno, what did they have to do in Vanilla, BC, WOTLK before LFR when they WEREN'T bleeding subs?

[brunnor]

Absolutely. Little kids should never bother with Little League baseball because they aren't really very good at the game. People shouldn't bother to jog because they'll probably never really be in shape to run a marathon. People should avoid video games--even if they enjoy them a lot--because they might not be any good at them and might enjoy them just as they are. Amateur theater companies and dinner theaters should just stop because after all, they're not ever going to perform at the same level as a professional company. And amateur musicians who enjoy messing around and making music, even if badly, should just stop that too.

Who the hell do they think they are not performing at top level but still enjoying what they do.

Seriously?

What he is saying is that once you decide what level you want to be at, you should work towards it. Take jogging for example, if you goal for jogging is get in a little better shape, then no problem but it still takes effort. The catch is when you are on your normal jogging to get in better shape then you decide you want to run a marathon without running more. You fail miserably if you do that. So the logical step after that is to re-evaluate your goals.

WoW's logical step has turned in to crying about how hard it is to run a marathon and demanding that you be given something just like a marathon but requiring little to no effort to complete but still getting a similar medal to those who run the normal marathon.

If your goal in WoW is to raid and see content, then do it. Don't bitch and moan and want things easier to accommodate you. This is a massive game that accommodates to all types of players and just because it doesn't specifically hit your exact time frame or effort or anything doesn't mean it needs to be fixed to make it right for you.

People's goal seems to be easiest epics possible and that is just a crappy game model to base a game around.

[Seefer]

What he is saying is that once you decide what level you want to be at, you should work towards it. Take jogging for example, if you goal for jogging is get in a little better shape, then no problem but it still takes effort. The catch is when you are on your normal jogging to get in better shape then you decide you want to run a marathon without running more. You fail miserably if you do that. So the logical step after that is to re-evaluate your goals.

WoW's logical step has turned in to crying about how hard it is to run a marathon and demanding that you be given something just like a marathon but requiring little to no effort to complete but still getting a similar medal to those who run the normal marathon.

If your goal in WoW is to raid and see content, then do it. Don't bitch and moan and want things easier to accommodate you. This is a massive game that accommodates to all types of players and just because it doesn't specifically hit your exact time frame or effort or anything doesn't mean it needs to be fixed to make it right for you.

People's goal seems to be easiest epics possible and that is just a crappy game model to base a game around.

It's like using a god mode cheat in a video game and bragging you beat the game and it was easy after you bitched about how hard it was til you found the cheat code lol.

[Holtzmann]

You are right. That's why the subs are growing.

Oh wait...

If you keep the players who stay all expansion long and ignore the ones who stay for 2 months out of an expansion and maybe come back during a big patch you'd make more money, it's always better to keep stable people vs once in a while subbing in a game like this.

Oh and if they went back to TBC model or even WOTLK I bet you'd see more raiders come back and stick around.....you know........back when Blizz could spot 12 million subs not "We are bleeding subs"

Yeeeah... no.

Do you want to know why the subscriptions are dwindling?

1- World of Warcraft is 9 years old. People playing any game for a long time end up getting tired of it.

2- A lot of those 12 million players back in BC and Wrath have either gotten tired of the game, or decided to take up other hobbies and obligations as they became older. Someone who was 16 when Wrath of the Lich King was released is now 21 and probably either dealing with college and/or work.

3- The pool of players who would like to play World of Warcraft is very small, compared to the ever-growing pool of people who have played the game and stopped. Far more people have stopped playing than play right now. It was true in Wrath, and it's even more true now.

4- World of Warcraft has a lot more real competition now than they had back in the day. There's a limited pool of MMO players and only so much time they can dedicate to games, meaning most only play one or two at a time. And with a lot of free-to-play MMOs out there (not just conventional MMORPGs), there's only so many people WoW can attract and keep.

And those are just a handful of many out-of-game factors out there. If you think the drop in subscriptions was solely, or even majorly caused by design decisions, you're sorely mistaken. I only wish Blizzard revealed the statistics on what people answer when they cancel their subscriptions. I'd be willing to be good, hard cash that the two top reasons would be "lack of money" and "lack of time", with a comfortable lead over the other options.

- - - Updated - - -

What he is saying is that once you decide what level you want to be at, you should work towards it. Take jogging for example, if you goal for jogging is get in a little better shape, then no problem but it still takes effort. The catch is when you are on your normal jogging to get in better shape then you decide you want to run a marathon without running more. You fail miserably if you do that. So the logical step after that is to re-evaluate your goals.

WoW's logical step has turned in to crying about how hard it is to run a marathon and demanding that you be given something just like a marathon but requiring little to no effort to complete but still getting a similar medal to those who run the normal marathon.

If your goal in WoW is to raid and see content, then do it. Don't bitch and moan and want things easier to accommodate you. This is a massive game that accommodates to all types of players and just because it doesn't specifically hit your exact time frame or effort or anything doesn't mean it needs to be fixed to make it right for you.

People's goal seems to be easiest epics possible and that is just a crappy game model to base a game around.

Quick question: what if your goal is to just relax and have fun, without necessarily striving towards improvement? What if you just like seeing mobs and bosses dying and don't particularly care about applications, simulations or theorycrafting?

[Seefer]

Yeeeah... no.

Do you want to know why the subscriptions are dwindling?

1- World of Warcraft is 9 years old. People playing any game for a long time end up getting tired of it.

Lame excuse, there are older games out there still selling millions of copies

2- A lot of those 12 million players back in BC and Wrath have either gotten tired of the game, or decided to take up other hobbies and obligations as they became older. Someone who was 16 when Wrath of the Lich King was released is now 21 and probably either dealing with college and/or work.

Possible but still I don't believe in coincidence when the game is bleeding subs since Cata

3- The pool of players who would like to play World of Warcraft is very small, compared to the ever-growing pool of people who have played the game and stopped. Far more people have stopped playing than play right now. It was true in Wrath, and it's even more true now.

Wrath had the most subs ever

4- World of Warcraft has a lot more real competition now than they had back in the day. There's a limited pool of MMO players and only so much time they can dedicate to games, meaning most only play one or two at a time. And with a lot of free-to-play MMOs out there (not just conventional MMORPGs), there's only so many people WoW can attract and keep.

Yep and most of their competition sucks.

And those are just a handful of many out-of-game factors out there. If you think the drop in subscriptions was solely, or even majorly caused by design decisions, you're sorely mistaken. I only wish Blizzard revealed the statistics on what people answer when they cancel their subscriptions. I'd be willing to be good, hard cash that the two top reasons would be "lack of money" and "lack of time", with a comfortable lead over the other options.

I'd be willing to bet it's game design.

Quick question: what if your goal is to just relax and have fun, without necessarily striving towards improvement? What if you just like seeing mobs and bosses dying and don't particularly care about applications, simulations or theorycrafting?

Then play a console that doesn't have other people relying on you.