Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Ronduwil]

Such as?

Raiding has always been the end game, simple as. Now there's more to do at max level than ever before.

Such as heroic dungeons. There have always been two progression paths. In the past casual players spent months running heroics and/or attunements and/or rep grinds. In Cataclysm all of that content was repurposed as a means to get players to raids faster. The (flawed) assumption was that all casuals wanted to raid and would do so if only they could get to the raid in a reasonable amount of time. These days you ding 90, clear the "heroic" versions of the same dungeons you probably ran while levelling, and call it a game by the end of the month because the only activity to look forward to beyond that is LFR. But please go on thinking that this game is casual-friendly. It's anything but. The only thing you and I probably agree on is that LFR sucks.

[LeperHerring]

That's because 90% of the friends worth making in the game are going to prevent your character progressing in the game because they can't or won't take the time to read sixteen detailed strategy guides on the current tier's raid bosses plus a strategy guide on their character's optimal talents/rotation for each fight (they aren't even the same anymore because you're expected to switch talents between fights). That's why people don't make friends any more. When you have to choose between buddying up with hardcore players to progress and buddying up with the people you like to stagnate you might as well buddy up with the people you like in another game.

That's nonsense. It's just your own little fantasy where all "hardcore" are psychopathic narcissists and anyone that's actually a nice person must be crap at the game and/or utterly incapable of arranging a few nights per week to play, and there's nothing in between the two.

[Risale]

I have been playing since TBC and still play today and I still enjoy playing this game and trust me when I say I have tried many many other games and MMO's over the last few years and always come back to WoW.
Why do you ask well to be honest I haven't got a bloody clue other then I actually enjoy playing this game.

Now you may ask yourself is he a casual or a hardcore player, well I am both, shocked you there perhaps but you can be both.
I have cleared ToT up to and including spanking Ra-den (did blizz even test this fight or were they high on something?) but I am not in a top 10 guild so therefore I consider myself to be a casual player, I might go as far as semi-hardcore but thats it.
I have great respect to the players that are in the top 10 because they are living proof you can beat the system, they do it every time and the rest of us will copy paste 95% of their tactics into our own raids, it is these players that we look to on how to spec/glyph/gem/reforge our toons to get the best out of us with our skill and our time commitment to raiding.

So did casuals destroy WoW no they didn't but neither did the hard core raiders.
From a very simple view point you can look at it this way, the hard cores make sure the casuals now how to kill a boss (tactics, gear etc etc) and the casuals make sure that Blizz makes new bosses to kill (by paying there subscription), they are 2 sides of a single coin and 1 can't exist without the other.

[Deleted]

Depends. If casuals are those that think there is a button bloat, strive to homogenization and wish for some qol corrections that are a direct pvp nerf then yes. Otherwise, whatever, I am not gonna even meet them since I dont do LFR/low mmr pvp

[Osmeric]

And the reason it had good word of mouth and an addicting experience was due to a large part the great community it created.

I really see no evidence for this. I think this is another example of a hardcore, raid-oriented player viewing the game through the lens of their own atypical experience.

Statements from Blizzard are that only a minority of players engaged in raiding. Most just leveled. This didn't require community (the group quests of the past were failures and were mostly skipped.) And we have that guy at Wildstar telling us that 2/3 of MMO players play essentially solo.

The "community" as the driver for the game is a myth.

The reason why other MMOs are failing is that it's a very, very hit driven genre. It's the same reason why we won't see Facebook fall to another social network any time soon.

But we haven't seen 2/3 of Facebook users abandon that platform. We HAVE seen 2/3 of the people who have played WoW stop playing it.

Why aren't the other MMOs picking up most of these players? I suggest it's because WoW has ultimately soured most of them on the MMO concept, particularly the concept of a game that panders to the thin slice of best players. The ponzi scheme of the ego, like any ponzi scheme, ultimately fails. Sending most of your players the message that "sorry, you kind of suck" is no way to sustain a successful longer term business.

And stop acting like it's so black and white; that you must cater everything to either casuals or hardcore. It's perfectly possible from every perspective to provide content for all play styles. They did it in vanilla, where I didn't ever step into a raid yet had a great time. They just almost doubled the developer team size from the disbanded Titan team, so they could easily diversify the content creation and start building different content for different playstyles.

Actually, I'm coming around to the position that it is not, in fact, possible to cater to all play styles. Catering to hardcores inescapably poisons the game for everyone else.

BTW: you observed that they have enlarged the development team with Titan people. That means they are doubling down on maximizing the number of players. They are pretty explicitly not planning for a shrinkage to just a small hardcore kernel. And this means that they have to retain the casuals. Since casual engagement was the problem with MoP (as they said at the Q1 earnings presentation), this means they are going to do even more in the next expansion for casuals. You think MoP is casual focused? You have not yet seen casual focus.

[DeathbyFrostBomb73]

I'm talking about walkthroughs. When 99% of raiders are reading detailed strategy guides and/or watching kill videos prior to their first encounter with a given boss they are cheating.

This is just a really, really, really, really dumb statement.

[iggie]

I'm just waiting for a real new MMO challenger to come along. SWTOR has potential but their end game was horrid. GW2 is all pvp. Still waiting...

[Ronduwil]

That's nonsense. It's just your own little fantasy where all "hardcore" are psychopathic narcissists and anyone that's actually a nice person must be crap at the game and/or utterly incapable of arranging a few nights per week to play, and there's nothing in between the two.

Why do you keep repeating that lie? I never said that all "hardcore" are narcissists, and I didn't say anyone was a psychopath. I said that your guild policies are sociopathic and that your statements (not all hardcores, just your statements) are narcissistic. That's not a fantasy. I even put up a post with the clinical definition of narcissism and accompanied each bullet point with one of your statements. I'm sure that most hardcore players are perfectly nice people. Players like you give them all a bad name by claiming that you only play this game for the challenge while doing everything in your power (addons, strategy guides, simulators, optimizers, exclusionary guild policies) to minimize that challenge. One post you're bemoaning the lack of community and the next you're proudly exclaiming that you will not invite anyone into your guild who can't take a raid boss down in less than three tries. You have yet to explain how you can reconcile that.

[Deleted]

I'm just waiting for a real new MMO challenger to come along. SWTOR has potential but their end game was horrid. GW2 is all pvp. Still waiting...

last time I checked GW2 had better pve than pvp. and nothing of that 2 is actually any good

[LeperHerring]

I really see no evidence for this. I think this is another example of a hardcore, raid-oriented player viewing the game through the lens of their own atypical experience.

Statements from Blizzard are that only a minority of players engaged in raiding. Most just leveled. This didn't require community (the group quests of the past were failures and were mostly skipped.) And we have that guy at Wildstar telling us that 2/3 of MMO players play essentially solo.

And once again you're wrong. I was never a "hardcore", the most I raided was 3 nights per week (granted I did clear as much or more of the end-game than "hardcore"). The whole of vanilla I was a casual and only did 5-mans and gold-making (didn't quest, pvp, raid or even join a guild). However, I can tell you that if the game only had that content that I "engaged in" and nothing else, I would've never even considered buying it. That's because a large chunk of the value in WoW does not come from the content you see or engage in, it comes from having a compelling game world and community, which in turn comes from having a variety of content catering to a variety of playstyles.

Actually, I'm coming around to the position that it is not, in fact, possible to cater to all play styles. Catering to hardcores inescapably poisons the game for everyone else.

And I see no evidence whatsoever to come to that conclusion. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true. And providing some content for progression raiders is very different than "catering to hardcores".

Since casual engagement was the problem with MoP (as they said at the Q1 earnings presentation), this means they are going to do even more in the next expansion for casuals. You think MoP is casual focused? You have not yet seen casual focus.

That's what they've been saying for a long time, and that's what they have moved to address. The game is now 100% casual/bad focused, yet the -2M subs/year trend continues. And those players are largely casuals, the current model does not cater for them. It's be bads that it caters for and that are staying in the game. But Blizzard can keep going in the same direction and their sub trend will continue in the exact same direction. Until the shareholders have had enough of it and force WoW to go f2p with cash shops and pay2win through the nose. That's where the game is going if we're realistic about it.

[SodiumChloride]

Statements from Blizzard are that only a minority of players engaged in raiding. Most just leveled. This didn't require community (the group quests of the past were failures and were mostly skipped.) And we have that guy at Wildstar telling us that 2/3 of MMO players play essentially solo.

I would argue just because most play solo doesn't mean there is no community.

That said, just because there is a lot of raiding going on doesn't mean there is a good community. If no one talks to others outside of their raiding guild, there really isn't much of a community to speak of. If the game has a disproportionately high number of rude elitist that can't be bothered to help a new player, then the community is far from healthy.

TL;DR : raiding != community

[Pann]

That's what they've been saying for a long time, and that's what they have moved to address. The game is now 100% casual/bad focused, yet the -2M subs/year trend continues. And those players are largely casuals, the current model does not cater for them. It's be bads that it caters for and that are staying in the game. But Blizzard can keep going in the same direction and their sub trend will continue in the exact same direction. Until the shareholders have had enough of it and force WoW to go f2p with cash shops and pay2win through the nose. That's where the game is going if we're realistic about it.

There around 150-200k that have killed one boss on heroic difficulty in T15 how will catering towards them stop 2 million players per year leaving?

[LeperHerring]

There around 150-200k that have killed one boss on heroic difficulty in T15 how will catering towards them stop 2 million players per year leaving?

Because it's not catering to those people. It's about diversifying the game so that the majority once again find it worth playing.

[Pann]

Because it's not catering to those people. It's about diversifying the game so that the majority once again find it worth playing.

The majority are the bads and casuals. So Blizzard should start catering to them instead of expecting them to be happy with watered down hardcore content?

[LeperHerring]

The majority are the bads and casuals. So Blizzard should start catering to them instead of expecting them to be happy with watered down hardcore content?

Correct. Blizzard should make content specifically for them instead of trying to feed them watered down progression raiding content. They should also make content for progression raiders, and pvp players and solo players etc.

[melodramocracy]

If I learn about a topic before an exam, i'm not cheating.

If I watch a video of an opposing player i'm going to be up against before playing him in a game of sport i'm not cheating.

The definition of cheating:
Act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, esp. in a game or examination: "she cheats at cards".
Deceive or trick.

Finding out what abilities a boss has before hand is not unfairly or dishonestly gaining an advantage. Blizzard never implied that they didn't want this to happen, in fact just the opposite, they put their own version in the game.

It's not 'cheating' per se, but it is removal of the element of surprise, which is a very big factor in video games. There's a sense of immersion when you need to find out what a boss does via discovery vs. reading about it ahead of time. People willingly forego this for the expectations of 9/24 other people (this is partially the reason that things like DBM are considered mandatory add-ons). And again, while not cheating, it does likely accelerate content consumption faster than intended.

Blizzard never implied that they didn't want this to happen, simply because they knew such a premise is impossible to enforce. Their own version was just another concession to player behavior under the guise of 'QoL'

On a side note, damage meters have a similar impact on the game. As min-max behavior becomes standard across the playerbase, encounters become designed with that in mind, which simply makes such gameplay mandatory. It's a bit of a shame, but that's the corner the devs have painted themselves into a bit.

[Galaddriel]

The problem is the vast casual majority doesn't want to raid and Blizzard keeps trying to get them to raid.

Blizz: Aw darn, we made this beautiful raid and nobody came.
Vast Casual Majority: Well yeah. Raids.
Blizz: I know. How about shared lockouts. That way you can raid how you like.
VCM: Still raiding.
Blizz: I know. We'll make leveling ez mode so you can get to raiding faster.
VCM: Darn. You ruined the best part of the game.
Blizz: How about we make a different kind of raid? A raid just for casuals? (busts a LFR)
VCM: Now I know why I don't like raiding. Give us something else to do. Dungeons. Dance studio. Fix PvP. Anything.
Blizz: But...but RAIDS!
VCM: Not interested Blizz. This is getting boring.
Blizz: I know! A new and improved kind of raid! Flex raids!!
VCM: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz (unsub)

Raids are cheap content. It's in Blizzard's best financial interest to make one instance that players run for months.....if they can get the players to buy it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Correct. Blizzard should make content specifically for them instead of trying to feed them watered down progression raiding content. They should also make content for progression raiders, and pvp players and solo players etc.

While not entirely unreasonable this would mean blizzard has to essentially not make a single new raid again for the next 5 years, because that is the appropriate allocation of funds the playerbase warrants.

[Ronduwil]

Correct. Blizzard should make content specifically for them instead of trying to feed them watered down progression raiding content. They should also make content for progression raiders, and pvp players and solo players etc.

Thank you for finally stating that. I actually agree with you on this.

I think we only disagree on the cause of the current situation. The idea that casuals "ruined" the game by begging for raiding content boggles my mind because no casual that I know (and I've known lots) ever asked for raiding content. Blizzard took it upon themselves to streamline their game in a way that forces everyone to raid-readiness as quickly as possible, and they also took it upon themselves to remove any form of progression that didn't involve raiding (and I include LFR as raiding because that's what it is). That wasn't done for casuals. That was done with the hope of turning casual players into raiders. Even Flex raiding, which is admittedly a step in the right direction, is not aimed at casuals. It's aimed at raiders.

That having been said, I'm not silly enough to say that raiders ruined the game. No player ruined the game. Blizzard ruined the game on their own by misjudging the mass appeal (or lack thereof) of raiding. That's not the fault of casuals or hardcores. That's Blizzard's fault.

[Xenomech]

Nope. Casual players did not ruin WoW.