Originally Posted by
Thyr
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.