Why is exclusivity bad for WoW (and other MMOs)?

[Zyky]

Carrying a burden is something most of those accept, support, and welcome.

EX: carrying alts of friends, carrying those who paid, carrying those learning.

Those are pro-community, not hurting it by "carrying the trash."

Carrying people who then actually think they're good enough to be in a high end guild is exactly like I said, carrying the trash. It doesn't help the community one bit. It helps the single person and allows them to guild hop until they find someplace that'll tolerate their garbage play style.

[OreoLover]

Carrying people who then actually think they're good enough to be in a high end guild is exactly like I said, carrying the trash. It doesn't help the community one bit. It helps the single person and allows them to guild hop until they find someplace that'll tolerate their garbage play style.

This is extremely insignificant.

People can see their number of kills/achieves with a quick check. They can check their skill outside of the raid, and again within if viable.

IF they find "someplace that'll tolerate their garbage play style," THEN you've reached pro-community again. So even that works out.

[mhdoe]

If you like mythic or heroic raiding great you get better gear for it and exclusive looks for mythic having raids accessible with lesser rewards is not a bad thing. Honestly people need to stop their "special snowflake" mentality and enjoy playing and helping others not the toxic i am better then you crap mmo's community's have become. I have seen people torn apart in trade chat when they were just looking for advice or the location of something in game.

[Faible]

The special snowflakes are the ones Blizzard has been catering to all along. The casuals, giving them all the accessability they wanted and thereby bringing wow to its knees.

Individually LFR, LFD and alike is awesome. Combined it makes a boring game.

[Dormie]

What's ironic is that it's actually the people demanding to see end game content at non-endgame that have the special snowflake mentality.

[MoanaLisa]

Exclusivity by itself is not a bad thing. Usually though, you pay for that exclusivity in one way or another. You want exclusive access to better seats, special areas, whatever it may be you will pay for that privilege. That's not available in the game though. Everyone pays the same to access all available content like raids, dungeons and things in the world.

In a situation like it is with the game all it does is make expensive content more expensive to produce as a function of how many people will see it when current. So have your exclusiveness if you like. It's very likely to make that content less viable to produce in a game that is squarely pointed at mass market casual gamers.

Should that small percentage that raid at high levels pay more for exclusive entry into that content? Sure, why not? That's how the rest of the world works.

[Ringthane]

As the developers themselves have said, it also is a waste of money and resources for them to design a bunch of content that so few players will ever get to see. I think they said that after Sunwell came out (right around Wrath's release).

[Shakari]

I think it all stemmed from the emergence of metrics-driven development. The developers now feel that if everyone isn't participating in everything, then it's a waste of development resources. Exclusivity cannot exist with this developer philosophy and exclusivity is in fact seen as a failure: if everyone isn't doing the content then something is "wrong" and money was wasted developing that content. So content is designed to be done by everyone.

Basically, money over fun.

Nothing to do with money it's to do with keeping more people happy, unless you think your a special snow flake and deserve content that you can do and no one else can, in which case you need to come back to the real world .... as game companies don't operate like that if they want to succeed.

And yes if only 2% of the gaming population get to see the end game content (hello original Naxx) then yes it is a waste of development time, you develop a game for all your customers to play, alienating 98% of your paying customers would not be a smart move lol and I'm glad Blizz learnt it.

[Kolvarg]

Honestly people need to stop their "special snowflake" mentality and enjoy playing and helping others

Problem is for the most part the game has become so accessible that there really isn't a true community to help and cooperate with because of how easy it is to get what you want even without a guild or that much effort or time.

If raiders are a minority, even with all the accessibility, then the solution isn't to push everyone to washed down versions of it. And if (apparently) the majority of people doesn't want to raid, raiding certainly shouldn't be the only part of the (PvE) game that offers substantial challenge.

[nathrizarri]

Then you're talking about Obsession/Addiction which obviously isn't "cool", however there's less risks involved with being addicted to a game than being addicted to say alcohol or drugs which cycle in party people. Fishing costs a shitload of money in gear, traveling and so on.
Of all the evils "gaming" as a hobby is one of the least harmful ones, there's been cases of people addicted to gaming or letting their gaming influence their work, school or private life- sure. But more frequent or as frequent as other hobbies? Not really. I'm fairly certain that it's less common than other forms of addictions.

So we playing "Let's justify" game now?

Really no need to. Addictions are addictions, no matter how much they cost you in terms of material, their mental impact is the same. Returning to the topic, once a person becomes purely result driven by any kind of activity, time to step back and chill out has come. As a person with multiple hobbies I know that phase quite well and easily distract myself out of that state by switching from one from another. The reason why I specifically mentioned "empty life" phrase was exactly this.

[Deleted]

Yes, yes you should be denied.


I've got a metaphor that I think accurately describes the mentality of how the game as developed, it also applies to real life with people on welfare..

Imagine yourself as a worker-ant. You got to work 110%, every hour of the day, every day, all week, all month, all year, all your life. Gotta gogo workwork.
Now, I come and tell you that you don't have to work on Mondays, becase we're nerfing content and giving you 50% xp boost.
I come and tell you that you dont have to work on Tuesdays, because we're adding LFR
I come and tell you that you dont have to work on wednesdays because we're gonna throw gear at you
I come and tell you that you don't have to farm gold anymore because we're adding garrisons and free proffessions for all your alts.
..... and so it continues..
You now only have to work on Sundays

At which point do you think the majority of people would start thinking "Well I'm only working one or two days now, why the F can't they make me skip those aswell??? Why do I have to work at all? This is nonsense!"

TLDR;
Individually LFR, LFD, Gear, whatever is awesome. Comebined it makes a game that's completely boring. Accessability is what has brought WoW to it's knees.

I see people using the " WE HAVE NO CONTENT " argument. BS I say, pure BS. We have a shit ton of content, HOWEVER, it is all irrelevant because of feffin gear-resets. Getting 700-710 pvp gear in 1 day, skipping 2/3rds of the expansion. Highmaul? BRF? Decent raids, shame non uses them (Do not pull the lfr/legendary ring on me, it doesnt hold)

Not only is your analogy to wow wrong, it´s also insulting and ignorant towards people on welfare.

[Eapoe]

If you like mythic or heroic raiding great you get better gear for it and exclusive looks for mythic having raids accessible with lesser rewards is not a bad thing. Honestly people need to stop their "special snowflake" mentality and enjoy playing and helping others not the toxic i am better then you crap mmo's community's have become. I have seen people torn apart in trade chat when they were just looking for advice or the location of something in game.

The downside to this is that the "I am better than you" mentality is a given fact. I've seen people shoot down the "super bowl defense" a lot, the problem is that it still applies. Everyone has the same chance to raid mythic raids and get the gear they want and the high stats and look associated to it, the problem is they have to be able to put the time in to do it. Special snowflakes are real, and people try to pull them down off of a so called high horse because of many reasons. The issue is, they ARE special snowflakes. They are the people who put the time and effort into getting this stuff completed.
To compare to another game, there are easy, normal, hard mode difficulties. Not everyone is capable enough to clear on hard mode, and just like these other games WoW still gives everyone the ability to "beat" the game thru LFR, but the rewards for higher difficulty are still there for the hard difficulty. It's a fact of life. People are still given the ability to see the content, just not all the epeen from the associated gear.

[melodramocracy]

Exclusivity isn't bad.

This particular title is plagued with what seems to be many players who actually don't enjoy the core of the game experience, and are so entirely reward-driven that the idea of someone else having something they do not is unbearable.

[nathrizarri]

Exclusivity isn't bad.

This particular title is plagued with what seems to be many players who actually don't enjoy the core of the game experience, and are so entirely reward-driven that the idea of someone else having something they do not is unbearable.

Spot.

On.

Been saying that for ages.

[Kolvarg]

(hello original Naxx)

Naxx was an extreme, and partially because it didn't last long enough considering all the investment required to even get there.

Need 40 people online, need people to be very well geared from previous raids, need people to have different item sets for different fights, needing people to complete attunements - all things that boosted the "exclusivity" a lot, certainly wasn't just the lack of lower difficulty modes.


And please don't defend the poor companies. Everyone understands they want and must make money. Doesn't mean we should just take that as our motto and give up any resistance to want our games to be good for the players instead of 10% more profitable for the studios.

[tangers58]

It isn't, blizzard just needs to pander to the whiners. That is why things like realm firsts, world firsts, any title that takes effort had to go

[Shakari]

Only one who denies content to you is yourself. If you cant do content becouse you dont have time or you are bad at the game then problem is and awlays was in you not in game desing. You dont deserve to see content just becouse you spend money on it.

Well it seems blizz want more happy paying customers and disagree with this.

Also what do you think you pay a sub for :P to see content, what your arguing is what content you should see, and given there is just one level of sub and it covers all the content it kinda makes it a moot point.

Personally I don't get this selfish "I want content only for me" attitude, why does it hurt you to have others see the same thing as you? there not getting better loot anyway so your ego is safe there lol

[godgunner]

exclusivity is a bad thing that it excludes some people for no other reason then that they dont/cant meet some arbitrary requirement.
BUT most of WOW is NOT exclusive. HARD raids with great rewards that most players will not experience is not exclusive.
All the gear and raids are open to every paying player. It just up to the player to decide if they are going to put the effort/time into
experiencing everything. People that say "I pay my sub just like everyone else so i should get everything" are right, Blizzard gives them full
access to everything any other subscriber gets. Its just to experience it you have to put in effort.
Point is the only REAL exclusives are things that can no longer be obtained or real money pet/mounts. (who needs that crap)

[Shakari]

Naxx was an extreme, and partially because it didn't last long enough considering all the investment required to even get there.

Need 40 people online, need people to be very well geared from previous raids, need people to have different item sets for different fights, needing people to complete attunements - all things that boosted the "exclusivity" a lot, certainly wasn't just the lack of lower difficulty modes.

Well what's your answer for the sunwell as only 1% of people completed that when it was current, that was out more than long enough ...

and catered to even less people at a time the game was at its most popular .... bascially a waste of time designing it.


Thing is yes the 40 man and progression made it harder, but that;s what people seem to be arguing for, exclusivity ... which makes no commercial sense realistically and practically for the majority of the player base.

[Kolvarg]

Well it seems blizz want more happy paying customers and disagree with this.

Also what do you think you pay a sub for :P to see content, what your arguing is what content you should see, and given there is just one level of sub and it covers all the content it kinda makes it a moot point.

Personally I don't get this selfish "I want content only for me" attitude, why does it hurt you to have others see the same thing as you? there not getting better loot anyway so your ego is safe there lol

Should a blind person be mad at a movie maker if they pay for a movie and yet they can't see it?

And no I'm not trying to be mean to blind people, or say that, if we could, we shouldn't make movies that blind people can watch.
I'm saying if you are not able to experience/enjoy a piece of media properly, there's plenty fish in the sea. Not every games need to be playable by everyone. It's your choice to pay for what you want to play. If you think you don't get enough worth out of it because you are unable to complete X part of it, you can just play something else that's more fitting for your abilities and availability, no? =P