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

[Deleted]

Something that is often ignored in this discussion is that this exclusivity only worked in the early days because the majority of players didn't reach the point of raiding. Vanilla had such a long leveling that casuals (in the meaning of putting little time in the game and not playing efficiently) didn't reach the point of "there is nothing to do except raiding". Most vanilla players did not reach level 60 in vanilla! The exclusivity worked because most excluded players didn't even know they were excluded. It's like being excluded from a party you don't even know is going on.
But over time more and more players caught up and join the party, which is why Blizzard had to make raids more accessible, because their playstyle was not compatible with hardcore raiding

[Deleted]

The exclusivity worked because most excluded players didn't even know they were excluded. It's like being excluded from a party you don't even know is going on.

Yes, and besides the reasons you mentioned, youtube,twitch and the like were not the thing they are now, when vanilla came out.

[Deleted]

This would imply that players these days are better then they used to be, which i do not think is the case, i think they are equal. However look at the process of leveling. A regular player would use atleast 6+ days of playtime to reach level 60 in vanilla. Now, even without any xp boost or heirlooms, you will use at most 1-2 days of playtime. Those remaining 4 days of content had to be found somewhere, which for blizzard made accessible raid seem like an easy solution.

[Daffan]

This would imply that players these days are better then they used to be, which i do not think is the case, i think they are equal. However look at the process of leveling. A regular player would use atleast 6+ days of playtime to reach level 60 in vanilla. Now, even without any xp boost or heirlooms, you will use at most 1-2 days of playtime. Those remaining 4 days of content had to be found somewhere, which for blizzard made accessible raid seem like an easy solution.

That's basically seeped into the whole game now.

Takes little time to level

No time to gear / free gear

Skip over entire raids / pieces of content

Have very little to work on/progress.

no relevant content.

[Deleted]

You pay to access the servers you dont pay for the game.
Therefor you are entitled to what you can achieve if you are bad you stay at the bottom, if you are good you see everything in the game.

Just because you pay you are not entitled to everything.
The lore goes with progression aka if you are bad well tuff luck you wont finish the lore.
Think about it as a book of 9999 pages one you always start yet you can never finish cause you are bad.
That is how WoW lore should be for bad people at the game.

Really? What about those 50€ for expansion? Isnt that paying for the game?
Look, if I cant have access to whole game, I wont buy it. Many other will do the same. Then you will cry about sub drops and noone to play with. And Blizz will stop developing if they have small audience. Do you really want that to happen??

[Deleted]

use youtube, problem solved, mucho story without this filthy try hards

Exibit 3: when left without arguments, go for insults

[Gimlix]

Special snowflaking much?

You need to understand that this is a game. I pay the same to play it as you, I should be denied content because I am not as good as you are? And because I can't get as good as you because people don't want the particular class/spec I want to play? The super bowl analogy doesn't work as all teams have a chance to see the Super Bowl, in the old way, not everyone had a chance to see content.

Also added, that what do you give Raiders who beat the raid and were fully geared to max? There was nothing ... by adding other difficulties it allowed raiders to do more.

Edit: I am editing this point do to an assumption people are making. I am not asking for the same gear or access to the same other stuff other players get. By content I am referring to story and the progression of said story.

Sorry but paying money like everyone else doesn't give you permission to see everything you want.
people like you are the reason MMORPG games are dying. "I'm, special and i wanna see just as much as the people who actually put loads of time in the game"

Please, leave WoW.

[Glorious Leader]

Please, leave WoW.

Does anyone really think this is a solution?

[Deleted]

Does anyone really think this is a solution?

While that's not a solution, he still does have a point. Buying the game doesn't mean being entitled to experiencing everything it offers without moving a finger. You're paying to get the opportunity to experience this game. It's on the player to take it on.
That being said, the game should be developed for its audience. Dark Souls, for example, is allowed to be super hard and elitist because that's where its audience is. WoW has a completely different and more diverse audience and therefore should also cater to them.

[Eapoe]

Exclusivity is not bad, people and company's just have to choose what to exclude. As is now, it's not ENTIRELY bad. LFR/Normal let's everyone see all the content for lore purposes and what killing bosses looks like. Heroic/Mythic is good for exclusivity in that not everyone can accomplish these things for multiple reasons, and these players that dedicate the time, and know how to play their class and the game, get better rewarded for it.
To use a real world analogy, baseball is not an exclusive sport. Everyone (barring any handicaps that completely exempt them from it) can play baseball. Not everyone has the skills to make it to AAA or better, yet everyone is able to enjoy it as the same fundamental experience. The people playing in their backyard will never play in the World Series, but that doesn't mean they can't play the game.

[Glorious Leader]

While that's not a solution, he still does have a point. Buying the game doesn't mean being entitled to experiencing everything it offers without moving a finger. You're paying to get the opportunity to experience this game. It's on the player to take it on.
That being said, the game should be developed for its audience. Dark Souls, for example, is allowed to be super hard and elitist because that's where its audience is. WoW has a completely different and more diverse audience and therefore should also cater to them.

His point is a bit of a strawman and it's a strawman for exactly the reason you list. It is not up to the players to design the game, in fact the players DID leave because of the games design.

[PrairieChicken]

People need carrots to keep playing, current model does not offer anything if you don't raid

[Varaben]

Something sucks for sure, specially if you are really trying.
At the same time, if without even trying, you beat that last level, something sucks also.
It has never happened to me with just one exception, wizards&warriors of DW bradley. the submarine damned door gets bugged at like 85-90% percent of the game completion and there is no way in heaven or hell i can solve that bug, and believe me i have tried hard to find a solution, but nope i failed at that.
A shame, because the game is very very good, but hell yes i am pissed i never managed to get to the pharoah.
I had to watch the final fight in youtube; and this is a game that requires quite a lot of dedication.

- - - Updated - - -



And still, this was the defining factor that attracted people to the RPGs game genre to begin with, it is the same concept that works well in Dark Soul series, Bloodborne, and demon souls, But not in a MMO, majority of people clearly gets away of the "rise to the occassion" because they can´t stand the logistics problem, and the sometimes zero reward for their efforts, because it is a large group effort not an individual one.
We will have to see if the new 5-man raiding in legion is or is not better recieved by the population.

Totally agree, and what's funny is that even casual players who don't raid still don't want to be handheld and given easy content. I don't have data here, but my wife plays WoW off and on and got so frustrated playing WoD because it's so easy. She's literally never been in a raid and barely been in dungeons and she's played off and on since TBC. She just quests and does professions and that's it. But professions being so easy and the garrison being a mini game is a real turnoff for her.

So this argument that players won't rise to the occasion might be true, but I'm thinking it's only true if there's levels of content like LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic. Why rise from LFR to normal if you still get epic gear and get to see the content? I think that's a real decision that a LOT of players probably make. I think if you look back at Vanilla and TBC, a lot of players did get to see raiding, albeit they didn't see the higher tiers. I'm curious what percent of players saw Karazhan that actually wanted to see it. Or what percent of players saw ZG/Ony/AQ20 (entry level raids I guess you could say) that actually wanted to see it? I'm guessing the barriers to entry there are actually pretty easy to get around.

My point is that for most people, challenge is fun and super easy content is not fun. It doesn't feel rewarding to steamroll content. It feels cheap. And what Blizz has done by segmenting raiding content is made raiding in general, feel cheap. For many players, LFR *IS* raiding, and very few LFR bosses offer a any sort of challenge, even to extremely casual and undergeared players. Why Blizzard thinks players want this type of content I will never know. What's worse is they put carrots in LFR (Valor and augment runes) to force players (ok, not force, but strongly encourage?) who wouldn't normally do that content to do it. What the hell?

[Glorious Leader]

People need carrots to keep playing, current model does not offer anything if you don't raid

Precisely. People then took the advise to leave and they did!I guess blizzard should do nothing about this because people already came up with the solution. Leave the game...

[Irian]

People don't say raid difficulties are bad because of exclusivity, people say it's bad because it's virtually the worst way to promote exclusivity.

It's not that the average player can't do Mythic right now. The amount of guilds that have cleared Mythic Archimonde in WoD's downtime attests to the fact that the difficulty curve isn't too excessive. It's more of a question of "Why do we need this?"
In fact, arguing against difficulty modes is almost promoting exclusivity. In Ulduar, very few players got to see all the hard modes and Yogg 1 light (or 0 for that matter) because it was too difficult, but people were able to tackle them at their leisure. With increased difficulty modes, people just don't care.
There's nothing fun, nothing engaging, nothing that makes you want to go back and do a slightly harder-tuned version of each boss that would encourage anyone to rise to the occasion and take on such a challenge.
That is why exclusivity in this form is horrible, because it just doesn't appeal to virtually anyone except the very easily amused or the hardcore. I don't mythic raid anymore but virtually everyone I know of from my days doing endgame raiding comment repeatedly on how the greatest difficulty of hardcore raiding is actually finding people who will give a shit enough to go past Heroic difficulty mode.

[Alteiry]

This is on topic of "we don't need 4 raid difficulties to cater to every playstyle". Why do people feel like exclusivity is bad? Raiding used to be THE level of awesomeness you wanted to achieve. Raiding used to be nearly exclusive to guilds only, thus forcing people to find a guild if they wanted to raid. You also needed to be somewhat "good" at the game and your class if you wanted to raid. There was no hand-holding, babysitting mode. There was one mode: raid mode. You were either a raider or you weren't. It gave (some/most) non-raiders something to work towards. When I first started playing and saw everyone in their awesome raid gear, it made me want to get better. That desire pushed me into theorycrafting and made me a better player. Having that proverbial carrot-on-a-stick is healthy for the game because it breeds better players in the end, and I think we can all agree (maybe?) that the skill level of the average player has dropped considerably over the years. Why? Because there isn't just one "raid mode" anymore, you have a figurative slider bar that lets you see raid content at your skill level. For some/most, they're content doing LFR or pugging through the LFG system, even despite the better gear in heroic and mythic. They're seeing the content, getting SOME sort of character advancement, and the game ends there. Waving Mythic gear in front of people's faces isn't enough to make them want to go out and "get good" anymore like it used to.

I know common rebuttals to this usually go something like, "Well, Blizzard doesn't want to spend dev money on something that only a fraction of the players will ever see" blah blah blah. I get this point, but its very easy to justify exclusive content when the game's better days had exclusive content. When every player gets to see the Super Bowl (albeit a watered-down one), there's no drive to see a "slightly-harder mode" of the same Super Bowl.

Raiding has always sucked. What people like about raiding is getting loot. The raiding itself is novel the first time you're clearing a raid dungeon, but it quickly becomes a mindnumbing, boring chore, much like having a job you initially like because it's new but then tolerate only because you need the money. Literally everyone I know who has raided in this game agrees, it's fun the first time but then becomes boring as fuck. If people REALLY liked raiding they would be willing to do it without getting loot.

So when you're talking about liking exclusivity, you're talking about liking the exclusivity of loot, not the exclusivity of raiding. That's why raiders take such fucking offense to "welfare epics", because it diminishes their special snowflake status.

[Dormie]

His point is a bit of a strawman and it's a strawman for exactly the reason you list. It is not up to the players to design the game, in fact the players DID leave because of the games design.

are leaving*

[Deleted]

Honestly, I'm glad it's the way it is today, our raid schedule in vanilla was brutal with 6 - 8 hour raid days when new content out... I can say outright that I put mythic raiding behind me after BRF, this is part because I'm the GM of my guild and I just can't find the drive to spend hours per day recruiting and then raiding for hours 3 days a week. Instead we remodelled our guild for Legion to a point where mythic is not in the deck but at least we can do Heroic in a smaller group and still experience it.

That being said, it did feel more rewarding to get loot in vanilla / TBC, but I'd say it was both a good and a bad thing. Bad as in the time investment to be on the top end was so brutal compared to what it is today.

[Darththeo]

Sorry but paying money like everyone else doesn't give you permission to see everything you want.
people like you are the reason MMORPG games are dying. "I'm, special and i wanna see just as much as the people who actually put loads of time in the game"

Please, leave WoW.

You like everyone else is assuming I want to be GIVEN the stuff. I am not asking to be given the stuff. That is your stupid assumption on what I stated.
Let's say they make raiding current Mythic difficulty only ... what happens? People leave.

Without reasonable accessibility the game dies. Meaning there needs to be a difficulty the average player can complete. You can't compare MMO to single players game in this. A single player game can be as difficult as it wants ... an MMO needs to be able to clear content in order to continue to pay to use the server.

[SoBBeN1]

Raiding has always sucked. What people like about raiding is getting loot. The raiding itself is novel the first time you're clearing a raid dungeon, but it quickly becomes a mindnumbing, boring chore, much like having a job you initially like because it's new but then tolerate only because you need the money. Literally everyone I know who has raided in this game agrees, it's fun the first time but then becomes boring as fuck. If people REALLY liked raiding they would be willing to do it without getting loot.

So when you're talking about liking exclusivity, you're talking about liking the exclusivity of loot, not the exclusivity of raiding. That's why raiders take such fucking offense to "welfare epics", because it diminishes their special snowflake status.

I like raiding for the challenge to down new bosses, but now for me lfr kind of took that feeling away.