Watcher confirms that raiders are a "minority"

[Sinirlan]

good.

without realisation of mistakes they cant correct it.

focus on raiding made this game loose milions of subs.

they are clearly changing it in legion still not enough yet but a very good direction.

Can You please enlighten me? What does "majority" of players actually do?

[Angel of Justice]

Raiding is garbage. Always has been. Always will be. It's so important in WoW because Blizzard can do just about anything and have money thrown at them by gamers.

Oh look more people spouting out their irrelevant opinions as fact. Adds alot to this "discussion",please tell me more.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

But I don't think those higher tiers have quite the same allure if you've already seen the content, even in a dumbed-down version. In WoLK and Cata, I was a raider who cleared normal and dabbled in H raids. I didn't invest a lot of time on H because I felt like I'd already spent weeks on those fights and it was just the same scenery with some new tweaks added. The thrill for me was facing the Lich King for the first time. Finally making it past Syndragosa and reaching the Frozen Throne. There I was, alongside Tirion and my guildies, preparing to tank the Lich King!

If I had already zerged him a dozen times in LFR, I just don't think it would have been the same.

[Angel of Justice]

Can You enlighten me? What does "majority" of players actually do?

As Ion said,the majority quest and do world content,as thats how you get to max level,then they separate into their own "minority" groups,this isn't really news,its just people twisting words and taking things out of context to further their agenda/opinion

[Icemix]

Sounds like a good reason to rebalance raids and remove mythic. Normal-heroic is how it worked and how it should work again

erm ... lol? why? because you can't do it? In my personal opinion, I would like to see LFR and normal removed. Leaving mythic only or maybe heroic too. You either leave 1 difficulty, but then make it challenging or you make something like the hardmode system in ulduar. I really enjoy having similar, but not the exact same tactic. Doing mythic after doing heroic doesn't feel at all dull. Doing heroic after normal does. lfr is just like being stranded on a remote island with the natives who are at the same level as they were 100 years ago

This guy above seems to explain it better:

But I don't think those higher tiers have quite the same allure if you've already seen the content, even in a dumbed-down version. In WoLK and Cata, I was a raider who cleared normal and dabbled in H raids. I didn't invest a lot of time on H because I felt like I'd already spent weeks on those fights and it was just the same scenery with some new tweaks added. The thrill for me was facing the Lich King for the first time. Finally making it past Syndragosa and reaching the Frozen Throne. There I was, alongside Tirion and my guildies, preparing to tank the Lich King!

If I had already zerged him a dozen times in LFR, I just don't think it would have been the same.

[Angel of Justice]

good.

without realisation of mistakes they cant correct it.

focus on raiding made this game loose milions of subs.

they are clearly changing it in legion still not enough yet but a very good direction.

WoD wasn't really more focused on raiding then any other expansion,its the lack of other things to do,and lack of content patches that made it loose milions of subs

[Sinirlan]

As Ion said,the majority quest and do world content,as thats how you get to max level,then they separate into their own "minority" groups,this isn't really news,its just people twisting words and taking things out of context to further their agenda/opinion

I know that but maybe our logic is flawed, maybe majority of player base is doing something we didn't even noticed and have fun while we die from boredom?

[Spiral Mage]

The amusing part is, if he really thinks that's a minority, then that's easily disproven, inspect players around you, or in any dungeon you run, or LFR you run or just standing around in Tanaan and more often than not, guess what they're wearing .. raid gear. Guess where that comes from? Raiding.

If it were truly a minority that raids, you wouldn't see so many people in raiding gear but it's infact more uncommon to see people without a few pieces of raid gear, than it is to see people with raid gear, so somethin' aint right there. But it wouldn't be the first time the devs have said something completely inaccurate.

The devs tend to twist the truth to suit their agendas, that's all. Nothing more to see there. So, all that's "confirmed" here, is that Watcher -thinks- that's the case. But he's wrong, which also isn't uncommon.

I've had some personal exchanges with him in the past, where his responses really implied he honestly had no idea what was going on in the game at all. This is about on par' for that.

[Ahovv]

But I don't think those higher tiers have quite the same allure if you've already seen the content, even in a dumbed-down version. In WoLK and Cata, I was a raider who cleared normal and dabbled in H raids. I didn't invest a lot of time on H because I felt like I'd already spent weeks on those fights and it was just the same scenery with some new tweaks added. The thrill for me was facing the Lich King for the first time. Finally making it past Syndragosa and reaching the Frozen Throne. There I was, alongside Tirion and my guildies, preparing to tank the Lich King!

If I had already zerged him a dozen times in LFR, I just don't think it would have been the same.

I agree with this. Multiple difficulties ruin the feeling of progression on encounters, particularly when most of the mechanics are the same.

[Angel of Justice]

I know that but maybe our logic is flawed, maybe majority of player base is doing something we didn't even noticed and have fun while we die from boredom?

Most sit in garrison and whine about no content while at 10k achi points and 13/13 in LFR and no CM's done,and/or 5k honor kills and 1k arena rating

[Leih]

Because if you cater to the true "majority" the only thing Blizzard would focus on each patch is improving the virtual chatroom functions, making it easier to spam analthunderfury links and having the game mail you rewards automatically every couple of months. It's a minority that actually actively take part in all the content regardless of what is there, lots of people are really casual players.

Besides, that quote is taken way out of context. Ion's point is that, individually, you can say that any form of content caters to a minority because people tend to do one thing and not everything. If there is 100 people and 5 of them try everything, 25 of them raid hardcore, 25 of them pvp hardcore, 20 of them farm AH all day and 25 of them are casual RPers, then you can safely say that raiding, pvp, AH farming, and RP are all minority activities because none of those have a majority of the customers...

[psyquest]

goooooooooooooad this is full of fail


the game is not split into completely separated gaming populations....

some people pvp pve and other things
some people just pvp
some people hunt achievement do pve a tiny bit of pvp
some people just do dungeons
some people actually just play the auction house

This game is a PVE game at its core, being an mmorpg, so obviously areas like dungeons and raids will take the most time for developers. If those two areas did not exists, might as well have a LOL type of game.

If you look at things without dwelling into analysing player behavior, you will find that minorities plays each part of the game. But extrapolling what watcher said to write a thread like this is stupid.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

If 20% do pet battles, 10% only do dailies, 10% raid, 20% pvp, 20% hunt achievements and 20% just hang in a city and chat - then there are 5 minorities that still make up 100% of the population.

For simplicity sake.

...and even then, not everyone quests from 90-100 at the same time. When you raid, I may be levelling an alt.

- - - Updated - - -

Beg to differ. They are on this forum

Your numbers overlook that most of the subsets overlap. Think of it like a multiple choice poll rather than a pie graph. Maybe 30% do pet battles, 40% do dailies, 30% raid, 25% pvp, 40% work on achievements, 40% look for old transmog pieces, and 80% hang out and chat sometimes... I don't know what the actual numbers are, but you get my point. Even looking at it this way, the only activity that wouldn't be a minority activity is hanging out and chatting. And we want more social activity, not less.

[psyquest]

Your numbers overlook that most of the subsets overlap. Think of it like a multiple choice poll rather than a pie graph. Maybe 30% do pet battles, 40% do dailies, 30% raid, 25% pvp, 40% work on achievements, 40% look for old transmog pieces, and 80% hang out and chat sometimes... I don't know what the actual numbers are, but you get my point. Even looking at it this way, the only activity that wouldn't be a minority activity is hanging out and chatting. And we want more social activity, not less.

Exactely, well explained!

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Beg to differ. They are on this forum

lol - the forum is what we do when we're stuck at work and can't log into WoW to sit around our garrisons. :P

[Deleted]

So if the majority of players don't seriously raid nor do serious pvp, then WTF THE FUCK DO THEY ACTUALLY DO IN THE GAME?!

No, seriously, I'm starting to understand why Korean f2p MMOs don't have any real end-game content - because apparently people are more interested in milking cows, grinding their asses off, and wasting time with bullshit casual content, rather than do PVE raids or PVP above 1500 ratings.

Blizzard, honestly, I don't know why you bother, just fuck it, go home!

[Daffan]

Why would people want to do anything when they can get better gear from afking in a battleground, following an arrow in Ashran or simply looting items from Naval shipyard. All of which are 700, 710 and 705 item level.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Exactely, well explained!

lol ~ I thought YOU explained it better. But Watcher's point was really in response to why player feedback wasn't always incorporated into new builds. He was explaining that the feedback from any one group of players has to be balanced with those engaged in completely different ways of enjoying WoW. I read that to say "as much as raiders would prefer that every hunter spec be sophisticated and challenging to master, the developers feel it's important to have a BM spec they can channel new players into for knocking around Darkshore" (my example, not his). Watcher was trying to explain that they are designing one game that has to satisfy several different activities.

[Smauldy]

We've known this since the beginning. Raiders are the vocal minority and always will be. The thing is though, squeaky wheels normally get the grease.

[Klingers]

There's some crossover, but let's look at how well-serviced each group of players has been in the last two years.

• PVPers - Well, except for Trashran they've gotten sweet fuck-all content in the game since 5.3 came out in May of 2013;
• People who like world content - 10 hours of leveling content in 6.0 and some fill-the-bar endgame zones, a cut launch zone released a year later with some more fill the bar endgame zones and welfare epic drops making everything previous obsolete, woo!
• Dungeon fans - 8 great dungeons in 6.0 obsolete after a week, scaled 10 year-old content as time-limited weekend events
• Raiders - Well, now these guys are the lucky ones. 3 Raid tiers in 3 years. Blizzard are looking after you guys.

I mean to be fair there is overlap for some players. Some people are lucky enough to get a yearly raid tier and a battleground every 3 years. Got to give Blizzard some credit for that.