Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Pann]

It's not a solo activity. You're not supposed to be rewarded only for your personal performance, but rather the aggregate performance of the team. If you want a solo game, play a solo game.

What are you on about? You do realise that the very mechanics you are championing caused people not to run the group content? No one wants to spend an hour or more carrying out a task that they have no chance of completing through no fault of their own. When you get a situation where someone who does not know the fight is, more than likely, going to wipe the group unsurprisingly players do not want to group with them.

Seriously? It's not the most difficult thing in the world, but it's something at least. You can't just go in and randomly hit whatever or spam AoE.

The only thing that need for CC takes away is the ability to use AOE skills killing one mob after another is not skilful.

[Deleted]

So are you going to point out how this is relevant, or are you just pointlessly moving the goalposts to avoid the fact that you don't have a leg to stand on? The fact that the "six year rule" holds true even for games across different cultures and audiences makes it MORE true, not less. The only real non-example I can think of is Eve Online, but that game is nowhere near "mainstream" and functions with such different priorities that comparing it to WoW is almost pointless.

Games like WoW begin to age out after about six or seven years. They just do.

Sure they age, but you want to blame WoW's decline solely on the game aging which just isn't true.

Certain intellectual properties are mainstream and last for decades for a reason. Star Wars is old but millions of people are going to watch the new films.

We'll see, and I'll be interested to see how the movie goes over, but remember the example of Ultima. That series ran for decades and had maybe a dozen successful PC games, plus another dozen or so console ports across multiple generations, and pretty much invented the MMO genre on top of all that. Now it was never even "mainstream" in the eyes of some WoW kiddy.

I am willing to bet that not only was it old but people found better games to play. D&D declined too but medieval fantasy is still very popular as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have shown.

[Pann]

Ill say it again. The same thing could happen in WotLK heroics. Cata was not unique.

Then what about the CC is too hard complaints. Players did not want to work together as a team and coordinate. CCing rewards smart play and different comps will tackle a pull differently and as players get more gear they can relax CC needs and change their strategy. There is nothing skilful or interesting about having a mage run in and tank a pack of elites like a chicken with its head cut off and mindlessly AoE them to death.

Yes, the same thing could happen in Wrath but by the time LFD was released, and the popularity of heroics really took off, players far out geared them.

I don't think I saw any complaints that CC was too hard. I saw many that it broke too easily and if the tank did not pick the add quickly enough the mob would kill the player that CC'd it as healers were no longer able to keep the player alive.

The situation of a mage tanking and killing a group of elites would require far more skill than sheeping X and sapping circle whilst everyone kills skull.

[Sodia]

If something takes more time, it is by definition, harder.

Also, I take it you never actually tried 4 horsemen back in Vanilla, or KT, or M'uru, etc etc.

good that you tried so tell as whot kills ppl on 4 horsmen

[Tomana]

Star Wars is old but millions of people are going to watch the new films.

Yet SWTOR was not well received.

[Deleted]

What are you on about? You do realise that the very mechanics you are championing caused people not to run the group content? No one wants to spend an hour or more carrying out a task that they have no chance of completing through no fault of their own. When you get a situation where someone who does not know the fight is, more than likely, going to wipe the group unsurprisingly players do not want to group with them.


The only thing that need for CC takes away is the ability to use AOE skills killing one mob after another is not skilful.

What are YOU going on about? Group activities are carried out as a group. If its too difficult for the group you'll fail and that's life. Whats the alternative? - make it so easy any group can do it regardless of how clueless?

[Pann]

What are YOU going on about? Group activities are carried out as a group. If its too difficult for the group you'll fail and that's life. Whats the alternative? - make it so easy any group can do it regardless of how clueless?

The alternative is exactly what happened in Cata; people stopped running the group content, complained it was too hard and then when Blizzard refused to do anything about it they took their money elsewhere.

[Deleted]

Yet SWTOR was not well received.

It had 1.7 million subs at first. It just wasn't as good or as smooth as WoW. But Star Wars is still very popular despite being "old".

According to your logic it should have died after 6 years, but nope, it's still here.

[Pann]

Yet SWTOR was not well received.

It was received well enough to make its development costs back within the first couple of months.

[Tomana]

According to your logic it should have died after 6 years, but nope, it's still here.

It is a shadow of its former self. Yeah, it's still around, but it went down very fast. Not even made it through the whole life cycle.

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It was received well enough to make its development costs back within the first couple of months.

Which is not enough by modern AAA standards.

[Sharein]

I actually think that raiders have ruined WoW, with their constant complaining and demanding Blizzard to cater the game and all its content to them and them alone.



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The only thing "destroying" WoW is time.

As time goes on:
-There is less and less to add to the game.
-The experience is less "fresh" and more "stale" for everyone playing it
-The engine and graphics fall farther and farther behind their potential
-There's less lore that hasn't already been added to the game causing more "out of their ass" lore to be added to the game
-Players who've been playing for a long time have higher and higher standards about how good everyone should be which leads to:
-New players fall farther behind growing more and more intimidated to even interact with anyone else for fear of being trashed for being a "noob"
-Aging player base (WoW isn't as exciting for someone 14 years old today as it was 9 years ago for reasons already listed and more). As player base ages a growing percentage of the players get full time jobs, families, or just grow out of gaming.

Time is the reason WoW's subs are declining, above and beyond anything else and there is absolutely nothing Blizz can do to stop it. They can slow it down a little maybe if they make the right decisions, but nothing will change the fact that this game is old and we've already done the Illidan and Arthas storylines that were so popular back in the day.

Nail and head.

The only things that are currently "ruining" WoW are time and nostalgia.

[vesseblah]

It had 1.7 million subs at first. It just wasn't as good or as smooth as WoW. But Star Wars is still very popular despite being "old".

Not 1.7M subs but 1.7M people who bought the retail box. Their subs was below 500k when it went F2P.

ArenaNet announced 3.5M ppl has bought GW2 but no real numbers how many are actually playing. I know 6 ppl started it from my previous WoW guild and none played it in 2013 any more.

[Bad Ashe]

imo: both yes AND no.

for the same amount of time the company spent on dumbing down the entire aspect of the game and making each and every of the farthest reaching features availiable at single clicks, they could have just worked on what casuals actually wanted: more overall content.

that would have made everyone happy and not just the median average of players.

[Osmeric]

It was received well enough to make its development costs back within the first couple of months.

I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case.

[Grimble]

Honestly the whole kerfluffle over subscriber numbers is mostly a big bunch of nothing. Every really successful MMO grows for a few years, plateaus for a couple more, and then begins to decline. Everyone at Blizzard knows this, and has known it since the beginning. The game isn't ruined, it isn't doomed, and it isn't going to shut down. Right now here in 2013 there are Ultima Online and EverQuest players on their forums bitching that the loot on the new boss sucks, blah blah blah, and those games came out back when Clinton was in office.

I'm sorry some of you thought this was going to be the one magical MMORPG that defied the odds and kept growing for all eternity, but I don't think your expectations were very realistic. No one plays WoW forever, and the number of people who will ever be interested in trying WoW is not infinite.

[Pann]

I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case.

You could be right, but I seem to remember EA saying it would be profitable with 500k sales, anyway this is going far off topic so I'll leave it here.

[Glorious Leader]

Mists of Pandaria is the most casual oriented expansion ever. Ra-den is the only raid or dungeon encounter in the whole expansion that doesn't come with a difficulty so easy that you can win while being away from your keyboard. How you can look at MOP and think that the expansion is focused on hardcore players... I have no idea. Blizzard's focus on casual gaming has been absolute this expansion and the results have been a terrible failure.

It's far to time consuming for far to little gain. The time/reward ratio took a massive hit and the alternatives to raiding all kind of suck. It is in many ways the least casual friendly expac. The things they offered for casuals are all surface activities with no character progression behind them.

[Otimus]

I actually think that raiders have ruined WoW, with their constant complaining and demanding Blizzard to cater the game and all its content to them and them alone.



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Nail and head.

The only things that are currently "ruining" WoW are time and nostalgia.

I agree with this.

By and large a large portion of the player base seemingly does not want to raid, has not wanted to raid, and simply does not raid. Yet, that's where all the focus has been. Casual players had no meaningful content outside of leveling (if you want to call that all that meaningful), really, for a long time, and that got destroyed to make it easier for people to.... get to raiding content easier! To get their buddies and their alts maxed out to.. RAID SOME MORE! Raid. Raid. Raid. Blizzards over-focus on the hardcore and just giving the casual players pity content rather than anything at all meaningful has "destroyed" the game. In a way, you could say that it LAUNCHED destroyed, if you think about it, in a way. The really casual players have never really been given any attention. Just pity content while the hardcore get the "real" content. Blizzard doesn't care about anyone else, seemingly thinking the casuals will pay anyways, I guess?

[Ethas]

You could be right, but I seem to remember EA saying it would be profitable with 500k sales, anyway this is going far off topic so I'll leave it here.

EA is a small company, compared to Activision-Blizzard tho.

[Osmeric]

The things they offered for casuals are all surface activities with no character progression behind them.

And more specifically, they are many things with no time limit on when they have to be done. Raid content becomes obsolete. Pet leveling? You can do that whenever. So, if you get bored, you don't have the nagging "I will lose my chance at this if I unsub" from that kind of content.