Just speaking from what I've seen, I saw MANY posts complaining about Cata dungeons, and I'm sure even people that disagree with some of my other points will agree with this one. Personally I thought it was fun that you still could potentially wipe on stuff like the third boss in Grim Batol - if every boss simply used void zone mechanics, A LOT more would quit now, instead of those that quit because they thought it was too hard. I will agree that between having two raids at the start of Cata, one of them should've been more entry level though. I see we somewhat agree on the lack of challenges (minus in raids) being in the game - right now, even with the timeless isle, while it's cool for a few days, almost everything in there is wrapped around vanity items and just about all those rare spawns die in 10 seconds (it's a pain even getting to them I time for a tag lol). It's alright for now... but I dunno if this one is going to keep players entertained for long.
Time is a resource that the developers cannot purchase or purchase easily at any rate. Nor (as we are told) are employees sufficiently skilled and in sufficient numbers to do what your asking. So yes they do lack resources to make raids AND dungeons and all the other crap they made for DS. More importantly your missing the point whether they can or can't is by and large irellevant. The question is how much return do they get for investing all those resources into that content (raiding) when raiding attracts so few players. Historically very little. With lfr more. Is it a wise and effecient use of resources to build content for so many that takes so much to make?
If someone doesn't feel like raiding, why push them into it?
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Perhaps they can explain it's one of the reasons the game has been successful in the first place? It's like Mortal Kombat with fatalities back in the day, I didn't even know how to do them for the longest time, but it drew interest. Forming an army with 24 other dudes (or 39 back in the day) would sound appealing to a lot of people, not even MMO guys, also the RTS people who played the original WC games.
And yet there is more Hardcore Content being produced in a far quicker amount of time than ever before because the nerfed down version of it is what the casuals are consuming. Its win win, Hardcores get more Raid content and casuals get to experience nerfed end game content at their leisure. If your only driving goal is to have gear so you can primp and prean in front of a mailbox then yeah, I guess you loose.
How would they explain that? There is zero proof for it.
Biggest sub levels were when fewest people raided. To an outsider it just looks like a huge waste of money. You might be right, but you'd need a lot of proof before you get some disinterested investor to hand over hundreds of millions.
So, lets have that proof. Remember, the proof you show has to get a hardened investor who doesn't give a toss about wow and who can also put his money anywhere (oil, gas, gold, stocks and bonds, housing yuadda yadda) to part with their money.
It's a fairy tale. He isn't right. The dragon on the box or the lich king on the box sold more than raiding ever did. In fact you could make a pretty good argument that the ultra focus on raiding actually drove people away from the game. Like lots of people who couldn't commit to it or didn't like the scene and got fucked over because it's ultimately all the game lead to. Even if it had some mythical power to compel a handful of people to play the game, it's driven far more players away from it and cost them alot more subs than it's ever gained them.
The problem is that some folks who raid cannot conceptualize a universe where raiding either doesn't exist or isn't the center of that universe. Since they (and in their defense the developers to) think that it really is the center of the universe and ought to be what everyone aspires to it becomes VERY hard for them to understand why people wouldn't be lured by it and VERY easy to come up with a narrative that puts raiding as the games biggest selling draw.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-09-11 at 05:49 PM.
Blizz has delivered on raids for 8 years, many of which are still quite popular (people run MC even today), blizz is taking a cheaper route that while some newer guys will enjoy, I think it's slowly causing the game to bleed subs. We will probably disagree on this until the cows come home, I get your points, but still firmly contend that between blizz doing this for as long as they have, and the sheer amount of money, they can continue to do so. And also, you say raiding attracts few people, my experience is the opposite, raids existing in wow has brought a lot of players to it (along with a combination of lore), even if those people don't always reach the raids themselves (they may only play for a month, maybe they just couldn't get into a raid group, or maybe they decided to go the pvp route). Without max level content that engages players - who would stick around for more than a few months? Sure they can keep making 5 mans, but we've seen the demands for nerfs, blizz caving in, and what shape they are in now.
Yes your experience is opposite. Okay raiding is your center of the universe. Congratulations. Now we KNOW for a FACT (regardless of your view on this matter or your perception or your circle or whatever) that historically raiding has had VERY LOW participation. So you've built a myth on the one hand and we've got the FACT on the other hand. Which should we believe? That content people NEVER PARTICIPATED IN somehow still managed to entertain them and keep them subscribed. Fairy tales.
Here's what you don't get. I AGREE with you about Blizzard only making raids is shitty. I agree that they ought to offer alternatives to raiding and if people don't want to raid forcing them into it isn't a good idea but their is an economic reality that has nothing to do with their pile of coffers of cash which isn't how it works anyway. I mean loosing subs means luxuries like SWP go out the window but even if they were still growing I would hope they weren't that fucking stupid that they spent all that time and money so that 1% of you could do that crap that took all that time and money. LFR makes total sense in the universe where raiding is the center of the endgame universe. So long as it remains as such LFR will be here and isn't going anywhere. I don't think raiding should be the center of the end game universe so I'm okay with raiding taking a back seat.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-09-11 at 05:54 PM.
I don't know if there will ever be a "prove this person plays wow for this reason", but quite a bit of warcraft's history would indicate that raiding is definitely something that would bring in players if you played the previous games, building armies and fighting it out on the battlefield. The game steadily increased numbers in times that most would agree that the top tier content was not "casual friendly", when they started making heroic 5 mans easy and LFR was introduced, numbers have continually fallen. Why? I suspect it's because while stuff like raids were not the most casual friendly, blizz gave these people other toys to play with. Now I know some will say "well that stuff sucked too", but how was the game getting more and more subs if the content was really that bad?
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Yes my view point is the center of the universe lol. In all seriousness though, if you played wow previously it was all about forming an army and storming into an enemy base, and while the MMO is different, it'd be silly to remove that aspect of the game. It'd be like if the next Super Smash brother's game didn't have Mario or a few other fan favorite characters in it..... would it save the developers money? Probably. Would it have the fans scratching their head, yes lol. If you ask most players why they are doing something like a rep grind or LFR, they will probably answer "so I can get into a raid".
On the other hand if your driving goal is to be able to play a couple of hours a night with a tight-knit group of four or five friends you lose too.
This idea that WoW has been full blown casual since Cata is still mind-boggling to me. There are exactly 0 post-release heroic dungeons to back that statement. MoP has the least casual content of any expansion. Oh, but LFR is for casuals!!! Wrong.
Casual: small groups, limited play time
MoP LFR: 25-man group, 45 minute queue plus another 45 minutes to three hours
MoP Scenarios: No healing or tanks required or desired, three person max
LFR has never been and never will be for casuals. Scenarios are for solo players who prefer to DPS. That's admittedly a subset of the casual population, but it's probably not the majority of the casual population (or wasn't before MoP).
NO IT WASN'T. For lots of people it was about the story. Or it was about the characters. Or it was about lvling the hero. Their experiences WERE DIFFERENT THEN YOURS. See but that's the point. You can't possible conceive that OTHER PEOPLE (apparently lots and lots of other people) HAD ZERO POINT ZERO interest in raiding. In fact the few who are only saying so I can't get into a raid BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THEIR IS. That's the point too. You can't CONCEIVE of a universe that didn't have raiding. It's okay neither can the developers apparently. Lots of players, in fact the overwhelming majority of players CAN.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-09-11 at 06:01 PM.
If you ask most players why they rep grind or do LFR they would tell you its because they want the recipies, the mounts or the valor gear and its not to raid its beacuse thats the best gear that they can achieve in the game without raiding. The majority of people do LFR because they don't have the time to raid because real life is more important than a video game. One day, unless you are totally sheltered from real life, you too will have to become a casual because of these things called girls, kids and bills.
I will agree in a weird twist, LFR really isn't even that casual friendly. Between a 45 minute queue and the long, strange road of winning loot you already have, and going through a 90 min long dungeon, and doing that times 4, I don't think it serves casual players very well.
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*yawn* the typical "I'm playing wow, just like you, but I got a life, unlike you" argument . I've worked for 10 years, got a girlfriend, most of my fellow raiders do too. To be honest, I'd say most raiders I know are more casual than the "casual guys" in LFR.
Almost everyone I've seen from LFR, when I've discussed it with them pretty much said in one way or another "well, I'm hoping at some point to do normal raids down the road". I'm not so naïve as to believe my experience is the only one out there, and there are some that do it for a variety of reasons, but it'd be silly so say that seeing the real raids is not an incentive for why a lot of people play wow. You greatly over estimate the difficulty in raiding.
I mean fact is it's irellevant. Raiding (prior to lfr) had very low participation rates. It wasn't serving to entertain ANYBODY and ultimately hold subscriptions. Well for all that effort and and money to result in such poor participation rates is a collosal waste of time/money/resources. With LFR it's least accessible and potentially serves to entertain more people. Far more than raiding did in the past. Given that people who raid ought to be on theirs hand and knees kissing the ass of every lfr raider. Instead we live in 1984 and it's all twisted around and LFR is this huge sin. Well it is a sin but not for the same reason.
Their was a blue post I wish I could find it but I think it was chilton? or bashiok maybe anyway they explain LFR paying for content creation.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-09-11 at 06:15 PM.
Theres a trick to a short Queue, its called making "friends". If you make a "friend" thats a healer or a tank your Queue is almost instant. People like to bitch and moan that LFD/LFR removed the social atmosphere of WoW but the truth is that people only want to socialise with their server when they are forced to. Actually getting to know the people around you on your server must be way too much effort and its just easier to bitch about how theres no social atmosphere in the game anymore than actually make your own social circle.
And I made a thread on here called "Why do you choose to LFR instead of raiding?" and if you read it you would see that 75% of the answers are because of time. You of course are more than welcome to deny reality and stick to your guns on this one, just dont expect anyone else to agree with you unless they are sniffing the same fumes.
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You are correct sir, it is irrelevant. I have a hard time not responding when someone on the internet is wrong. :P I'm agreeing with you on all your points.
If we kept casuals out of the end game content they would do what a friend of mine does, every expansion he logs in, levels to max, tosses down a few dungeons and then quits until the next expansion while talking about how Game X is a superior game. If the hardcore who hate casuals actually got what they wanted the whle ship would go down faster than the titanic and there would be no hardcore end game content, there would just be END GAME.
Most casual players dont' always have a tank friend or healer friend always on, and as far as I've seen, if the tank or healer drops queue, that dps does too (unless that's been fixed, let me know if that's the case lol). Who is always going to be willing to run a friend thru LFR at the drop of a hat just so they get a short queue? lol
And you do realize LFR is one of the biggest factors to killing the social atmosphere in the game, correct? Hate it or love it, removing the need to socialize in an MMO is just a bad idea, even if it makes things "more convenient", a big part of what makes and MMO the type of game it is, is having that social atmosphere.
So yes, you're thread on MMO speaks out for everyone that plays WoW.... and then you talk about denying reality. Makes sense lol. You seem pretty angry just because I said "a lot of people play LFR so they can get into normal raids"... relax guy, this is just a forum and we're just discussing a part of the game.
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Ok, so let me get this straight. A. The game is based way too much around raiding. B. Nobody (or almost nobody raids). So then how can you explain how Wow has been incredibly successful, the most popular MMO of all time?
Also, let's get real here, who has actually found LFR entertaining? The closest thing I've ever seen was "I was in a good LFR group last night.... we didn't wipe" - does that sound like a really fun experience?
Well before we hold hands and sing koombaya I would still have rather them said no thanks to raiding and instead of shoving people into raids done something else even if it meant raiding took a back seat. I agree with Rickjames when he says if people aren't interested in raiding why shove them into it? Hopefully his fairy tale wish comes true and the developers can produce all sorts of alternatives that actually compete with raiding instead of just funneling players into raiding.
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You see that cool elf on the box. Explained. It's a mix of things but quite honestly the cover art on the box had more to do with it then raiding. I suppose one could do a research paper on the topic and the ultimate conclusion would be wow was an mmo game where you could get things done on your own WITHOUT THE NEED TO RAID. It's actually the exact opposite of what your after. Now taken to an extreme it's pretty lame because wow should have some socialization but not necesarilly the raiding kind especially if that's not what people are after. For people in tbc the socialization amounted to people they met on the way to lvling or friends they ran lowbie and maybe even heroic dungeons with. Old man diatribe there but yea raiding had less to do with wows success that like the cover art. Seriously.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-09-11 at 06:28 PM.