Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[announced]

I will never understand why people prefered to have to: feed pets with shit, buy vials and poison mats, buy arrows, buy runestones for portals, symbols for paladin buffs and all that crap. I hated all of that stuff. Maybe the raids were more fun back then but these minor inconviniences really bothered me always and I don't miss them. Also mounts @ lvl 40&60 was total bullshit, 20&40 is much better for leveling.
Does anyone remember how boring leveling lockpicking was? Because I do. This brings me to weapon skills, when you got a new bow and you used a gun before all your attacks miss because of your skill being level 1 instead of 200 :/

On topic, not casuals ruined the game but blizzard that wanted more income by making the game attractive, faster, convinient and less time consuming.

i miss all this shit. call me oldschool but id always stock my mage with like 100 portal and teleportation runes, and dust for making arcane portals for food. it was awesome. i loved being prepared and having everything i needed to contribute to my raid. it wasnt much of a hassle, infact, it was enjoyable. you could just buy everything you needed to and it only took a few mins. if everyone did their job without being forgetful no1 ever made a fuss about it.

sure its nice not having to look after those things, but overall they werent hard things to collect. im outta arrows? gee i better buy or make more. durr... weaponskills not maxed? umm.. how about doing that while your waiting for dungeons or something, mounts at 40/60? ya that kinda sucked but that wasnt much of a problem either, it was easy getting to 40. no flying till 60? well thats fine we'll be in outland flying anyway
lockpicking? i cant comment on that, im sure it was painful but i never bothered making a rogue back then soo.. didnt care.

i do feel like elitists ruined wow more than casuals did, people are asking like 500 ilvl to do MSV in pugs atm, like really, you couldnt beat it 40 ilvls ago? but then again, we get some pretty stupid casuals so.. here we are. elitists ask too much of people, and casuals drag their names through the mud bringing the whole pug name down.

[Deleted]

Nothing ruined WoW, you just get bored of it.


I never thoguht i'd get bored of certain games but i always do as does everyone

WC3
AoE 2
DoW
TF2
etc etc

[Deleted]

lockpicking? i cant comment on that, im sure it was painful but i never bothered making a rogue back then soo.. didnt care.

skilling lockpicking was pretty easy and fast, was kinda sad that you didnt need to skill it anymore, but really no big deal and nothing to cry after.

[Lotharion]

No I'm not wrong just that my experience was different than yours. We were trying to gear up folks (myself included) in older raids while still dedicating nights to to progression in hyjal and bt. It was far from casual (especially if you had ANY turn over in your guild and lost crucial key players) but that's what the raids called for back then and it's ultimately why I stopped.

Raiding is simple not as casual as "anything else". Spending an hour or less in a dungeon is pretty casual. Spending 30 minutes in a scenario is pretty casual. Killing baal in 15 minutes is pretty casual. Raiding is far from all these things. Raiding is not casual content and never will be even in lfr. It is by it's very nature NOT CASUAL and subsequently casuals are not entertained or enthralled with it. If it was then it would have served to engage casuals which it hasn't. At any level.

Yes, I spent a lot of time in the previous tier gearing up as well. You are wrong because the term casual doesn't have a strict time period in its definition. However, 2-3 nights a week is far from what I would deem 'hardcore'. Not only that I managed a life while still progressing in TBC, I would have deemed myself a casual. Funnily enough, it was in Wrath that I started raiding 5-6 nights a week, and Wrath was much more easy (time restrictions were also lower i.e more casual) than TBC.

There is no way Karazhan was casual content at least it wasn't when we tried to clear it (full clear, first and second week into BC), there where a fair amount of wipes involved before the fights became second nature. TBC was the very definition of casual unfriendly, everything about it was farming either reputation for Heroic Dungeon attunements or mats for raiding and most of the casuals where prolly in normal 5 man dungeons logging in for 1-2 hours at a day or hugging some Sproggans in Zangarmarsch.

Karazhan was casual. Any dungeon is hard when no one has any gear, no one knows the fights or when there's somewhat large attunement chains involved. After all that crap was done though, Kara was pretty damn easy and we regularly cleared it in one night after a while. How is a 4 hour Kara clear not casual?

i do feel like elitists ruined wow more than casuals did, people are asking like 500 ilvl to do MSV in pugs atm, like really, you couldnt beat it 40 ilvls ago? but then again, we get some pretty stupid casuals so.. here we are. elitists ask too much of people, and casuals drag their names through the mud bringing the whole pug name down.

You guys seriously need to get your head around the terms 'casual', 'elitist' and 'hardcore'. A casual player is a player that spends a few hours raiding a week, a hardcore player spends a few hours a day playing at least. An elitist can be either casual or hardcore, but it doesn't matter because they're an asshole. Player skill has nothing at all to do with either term, but is easily the most important factor in raiding and has been since TBC.

Blizzard ruined the game by constantly catering to those who always wanted more accessibility, even when it meant breaking the game to deliver the accessibility. As I've already said, raiding sucks when you're killing bosses you don't know the strategy to while playing with 24 randoms.

[grexly75]

Well I have not played for over 2 months, still get those moments whether or not to resub but I beat it down trying to ween myself off WoW (still come here to see what is what lol).. Main reasons I stopped were the inane gear grind no sooner do you get fully kitted out than you have to do it all over again when a new major patch comes was fun for many years started playing in classic..

But well just got bored with it all got to the point where I could not stand even queuing for a scenarios/dungeons/LFR, And the capping of valor points got tiresome..

But the main tipping point was when I took a month off to get some zeal into playing back when one of the guildies gave me a load of abuse because I took time off (the guild I was in is a casual type guild) and so was hoping to get back into raiding when I got back (they did have a vacant spot at that time and they did know I was taking a break) but in the end I thought this was a good time to give this game a long break..

Even patch 5.4 though sounds interesting I am not coming back at least not anytime soon..

[Simca]

Casuals casually caused chaos 'cause causality.

Cats.

[Lotharion]

Well I have not played for over 2 months, still get those moments whether or not to resub but I beat it down trying to ween myself off WoW (still come here to see what is what lol).. Main reasons I stopped were the inane gear grind no sooner do you get fully kitted out than you have to do it all over again when a new major patch comes was fun for many years started playing in classic..

But well just got bored with it all got to the point where I could not stand even queuing for a scenarios/dungeons/LFR, And the capping of valor points got tiresome..

But the main tipping point was when I took a month off to get some zeal into playing back when one of the guildies gave me a load of abuse because I took time off (the guild I was in is a casual type guild) and so was hoping to get back into raiding when I got back (they did have a vacant spot at that time and they did know I was taking a break) but in the end I thought this was a good time to give this game a long break..

Even patch 5.4 though sounds interesting I am not coming back at least not anytime soon..

Yep, I'm the same. I got incredibly bored of the gear grind a year ago and only came back recently because I wanted to kill Garrosh. I don't see myself sticking around after that as I'm already starting to get sick of trudging through scenarios, then heroics, then LFR tiers.. etc. Not only that but my server is practically dead so it's impossible to find anyone to raid with until virtual realms comes in.

WoW is in a pretty dreary state right now even though I like a lot of the new changes. There's just not enough people playing anymore.

[Vintersol]

Just because some forum posters understand basic economics better than you doesn't mean they're blindly parroting what Blizzard says. Maybe they're trying to educate you... Ever thought of that?

I'm fine with economics, thanks. But i don't agree that a better accessibility to raids or the FFA modes doesn't changed anything in terms of success. Sure, WoW had its peak in WotLK. Not a surprise, because at this point, blizzard started aggressive advertising that include TV Spots etc. to claim people that doesn't played a mmo before. So it's not a wonder that subscriptions were going up. The game dropped down to 7.7m atm, even with so much things that are easy to claim, QoL improvements, DF, LFR and so on. What's the reason for that? The age? The rivalry with other games? The mmo market is full of bs games. So where they are going? The audience is getting older? Maybe. But, there are new potencial customers growing up.

Don't get me wrong. I said earlier in this thread, that i don't agree that casuals ruined the game. Blizzard had made too many changes, that the majority of content isn't special nor really enternaining. Back in the days it was weird to have 5 - 6 alts. Today it's weird not to have so many. And that's one of the things that are watered down.

I don't know how to explain better. I agree that content for 5% of the playerbase isn't really efficient. But i don't believe that it was a gamebreaker.

[Lotharion]

I'm fine with economics, thanks. But i don't agree that a better accessibility to raids or the FFA modes doesn't changed anything in terms of success. Sure, WoW had its peak in WotLK. Not a surprise, because at this point, blizzard started aggressive advertising that include TV Spots etc. to claim people that doesn't played a mmo before. So it's not a wonder that subscriptions were going up. The game dropped down to 7.7m atm, even with so much things that are easy to claim, QoL improvements, DF, LFR and so on. What's the reason for that? The age? The rivalry with other games? The mmo market is full of bs games. So where they are going? The audience is getting older? Maybe. But, there are new potencial customers growing up.

Don't get me wrong. I said earlier in this thread, that i don't agree that casuals ruined the game. Blizzard had made too many changes, that the majority of content isn't special nor really enternaining. Back in the days it was weird to have 5 - 6 alts. Today it's weird not to have so many. And that's one of the things that are watered down.

I don't know how to explain better. I agree that content for 5% of the playerbase isn't really efficient. But i don't believe that it was a gamebreaker.

I suspect people aren't playing anymore for the same reasons I quit a while ago: the gear treadmill just gets terribly boring after a while. Before I quit I remember hating the thought of going into another dungeon to try and upgrade gear, it was just so boring. There's also a lot of good MMO's on the market now, like GW2 (which is free). The WoW endgame goals haven't changed since vanilla, if anything it's gotten harder to gather some gear.

But yeah, LFR has nothing to do with the dropping subscribers. People don't quit out of protest, they quit because they get bored.

[grexly75]

Yep, I'm the same. I got incredibly bored of the gear grind a year ago and only came back recently because I wanted to kill Garrosh. I don't see myself sticking around after that as I'm already starting to get sick of trudging through scenarios, then heroics, then LFR tiers.. etc. Not only that but my server is practically dead so it's impossible to find anyone to raid with until virtual realms comes in.

WoW is in a pretty dreary state right now even though I like a lot of the new changes. There's just not enough people playing anymore.

If I do come back will be long after the last LFR section is open, and since Flex is following the same path as LFR in terms of wing opening (I think) I will wait till then.. But yeah totally agree the game is just not the same anymore.. Been playing for 8 or whatever years not sure now I think was about 6 months before the release of TBC and used to play everyday (I have a lot of spare time) lol.. Anyways yeah I find other things too do now and they don't cost me $15 a month to play lol..

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I suspect people aren't playing anymore for the same reasons I quit a while ago: the gear treadmill just gets terribly boring after a while. Before I quit I remember hating the thought of going into another dungeon to try and upgrade gear, it was just so boring. There's also a lot of good MMO's on the market now, like GW2 (which is free). The WoW endgame goals haven't changed since vanilla, if anything it's gotten harder to gather some gear.

But yeah, LFR has nothing to do with the dropping subscribers. People don't quit out of protest, they quit because they get bored.

Agree 100% the constant gearing after awhile just wears thin especially if been playing ever since vanilla.. The expac I loved the most apart from TBC was WoTLK just something about WoTLK that made it great for me.. But yeah in the end just yeah (heck I have free to play Rift and I hardly play that)..

[Vintersol]

I quit a while ago: the gear treadmill just gets terribly boring after a while.

Thats why i quit too.

[SodiumChloride]

It IS the casual players though despite what you might think. When casual players are given a taste of hardcore content, they start thinking they're better than they actually are. This leads to a sense of entitlement and eventually the outpouring of toxicity that we hear nowadays. True hardcore players (not even world firsters, just hard mode raiders and even most normal mode raiders in this day and age where the vast majority are in LFR, people who run challenge modes, gladiators etc.) generally don't give two shits about their dungeon runs and just do their strokes and be done with it if they ever even do things outside of their own guild/groups.

Hardcore content? 5 mans are hardcore content? LOL.

I used to run with SimpleiLevel. The biggest whiners are always the ones with the best gear. There will be whining about how the tank is fail, the healer is fail, or the DPS is fail and god forbid if someone makes a mistake and the group wipes as the prima dona drama queens will explode in indignation, flaming people left and right. THIS IS THE TOXIC COMMUNITY I'M TALKING ABOUT!

Apparently being new to/"bad" at a video game is now a crime! No wonder WoW is losing players, shitheads like you are scaring all the newcomers away! A welcoming environment this isn't, I can tell ya that! Seriously, get over yourselves.

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Agree 100% the constant gearing after awhile just wears thin especially if been playing ever since vanilla.. The expac I loved the most apart from TBC was WoTLK just something about WoTLK that made it great for me.. But yeah in the end just yeah (heck I have free to play Rift and I hardly play that)..

Ya, nothing but raids and gear get boring after awhile.

This is why people started saying WoW isn't much of an RPG anymore - no, not going to debate you on this point - as there is nothing else but gear and means of getting gear. It's more like a themed slot machine.

[Tomana]

I see parroting phrases from blizzard employees that let the people think the game was totally crap until WotLK.

I don't need phrases from Blizzard employees to analyse dynamics in a sector I'm familiar with.

The success of this "crap" is showing the opposite...

Success despite a huge rate of churn is only half a success. If WoW was more accessible from day one, there is no way to tell how it would go. But most players quitting before level 10 and the remainder having no access to end-game content, is not the optimal model. Better than the competitors (which is why it took off), but still perfectible.

[melodramocracy]

The only thing time consuming about LFR is the queue time which is, for a lot of people, time lost and wasted. It's another reason why putting LFR aside and leaving it to those who want to do it is the best thing and to try to get one's self into a guild for the more organized and social form of raiding.

To be fair, if you're sitting in queue and not doing something else, however trivial, to advance your character, then you have no business complaining about anything in this game being too much of a grind.

/not you specifically, of course

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Then why did all those pseudo-hardcore MMOs all failed?

I'm not sure how this question is relevant to anything I said.

[kamuimac]

... takes out popcorn and sitting comfortly to watch this ...

[Vintersol]

Success despite a huge rate of churn is only half a success. If WoW was more accessible from day one, there is no way to tell how it would go. But most players quitting before level 10 and the remainder having no access to end-game content, is not the optimal model. Better than the competitors (which is why it took off), but still perfectible.

You think less people quit before maxlevel today? I don't think so. Subs are still dropping, even with all convenience options that are implemented. The entry barrier is still the same like before to get in the game, except some stupid descisions like making mobs in the starting zones neutral.

[Tomana]

The game dropped down to 7.7m atm, even with so much things that are easy to claim, QoL improvements, DF, LFR and so on. What's the reason for that? The age? The rivalry with other games? The mmo market is full of bs games. So where they are going?

The main reasons are: the age, the competition from F2P games (yes, they are mostly crap, and yes they can cost you more than a sub, but people are stupid this way), and the fact that early MOP and Cata failed to interest casual players for obvious reasons. Add to that the general fact that Cata old world revamp ate too many resources that would be otherwise spent on endgame.

The audience is getting older? Maybe. But, there are new potencial customers growing up.

New generation gamers aren't interested in MMOs which require you to commit to a single game. They play mobile games and Facebook games. Or MOBAs/shooters. MMO is somewhere there down the list.

I don't know how to explain better. I agree that content for 5% of the playerbase isn't really efficient. But i don't believe that it was a gamebreaker.

No, it's "finance breaker". BC raiding model was hideously inefficient from a financial PoV. Which is why they changed it for LK.

[Vorkreist]

The current state of wow is what you "90%" casual crowd wished for and begged blizz for all these years. And yes its dry and dying. Hope you're happy with it.
The casuals and here i mean the "carebears" that get offended if someone criticizes their play in any way, the people that cba to learn the class and the game altogether and lots of other issues, the ones that whined years after years to blizzard "blizzz gaem 2 hard, we want epics and legendaries to rain from the sky while i afk", the people that foolishly believe easier access to content means "growth", the people that can't understand how mandatory challenge is in any kind of game.
I'm glad I played in the times when everything wasn't dumbed down and thrown in your face, when I couldn't see all the content so easily but that pushed me more to get better at the game to reach that.
The point where the train derailed must have been wotlk because I really can't remember in tbc tons of people complaining about the game. Most people where too busy playing it and enjoying what they wanted. Tons of guilds only managed to clear Kara and that was enough and quite the amazing experience in itself. Nobody felt like, hey, am bad, lazy but I'm entitled to faceroll the end game raids because "I have a life blizz, i have 10 children crying for food so I can play only 30 mins per week please tailor the game for meh" spam posts.

[Itisamuh]

I suspect people aren't playing anymore for the same reasons I quit a while ago: the gear treadmill just gets terribly boring after a while. Before I quit I remember hating the thought of going into another dungeon to try and upgrade gear, it was just so boring. There's also a lot of good MMO's on the market now, like GW2 (which is free). The WoW endgame goals haven't changed since vanilla, if anything it's gotten harder to gather some gear.

But yeah, LFR has nothing to do with the dropping subscribers. People don't quit out of protest, they quit because they get bored.

Agreed completely. Granted, I'm more of a PvP person, but it's still the same principle. I'm tired of gear being a constant constraint to my fun.

[Tomana]

The entry barrier is still the same like before to get in the game, except some stupid descisions like making mobs in the starting zones neutral.

It was not a stupid decision, because prior to that, a lot of people quitted before lvl 10. I remember the Tauren starting zone in vanilla and I understand how it made some players run away, especially when playing weaker classes.