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

[Deleted]

And people will come out of the woodworks to tell you that the game was succeeding because it was in a growing phase and super popular. Anything they did would have worked! I'll never understand how this argument holds ANY weight whatsoever. If the game wasn't enjoyable, people wouldn't have been flooding in by the millions.

People seem to think WotLK was some insanely good expansion that really nailed it and brought in so many subs. It brought the sub count up by 500k from beginning to end (western subs actually began dropping in early 2009; WotLK was released Nov. 2008). TBC, on the other hand, brought the sub count up by 3.5 million from beginning to end. Am I supposed to believe that Blizzard looked into their crystal ball to determine that people wanted a more casual experience after TBC? I must be missing something. Either way, there's no telling how things would have turned out had WotLK been more like TBC in overall design, so maybe they did have the right idea. We'll never know.

My point exactly. I'd have likewise countered with "it was already at 11 million by the end of Burning Crusade, Wrath literally did nothing but add 1 million subbers, & then sustain that 12 million mark for a long time. Hence, obviously, while they did do good with Wrath, it wasn't the same "ground breaking" thing that Vanilla & Burning Crusade were."

The problem is the actual statistics are overshadowed by the whole "Sub count peaked during Wrath (12 million), & then held steady until Cataclysm." That's all most people focus on, not Expansion growth, or whatever, just that, single, specific fact.

As for the crystal ball thing - by late 2008 the VG Industry as a whole was already moving towards "casualisation," & I think that had an influence on Wrath's development (Activision merger). It's likely Blizzard was piss-scared of falling behind the "curb" for years on end until the next Expansion Pack came out, so instead of risking their star IP on what at the time was (& continues to be, to this day - in a different form) perceived as an ever-shrinking "core playerbase" in the entire Industry at the time (PC Gaming is Dead/Dying/etc.), they instead opted to slowly introduce casuals to WoW instead. Then, once they realized how interested the afore-mentioned casuals actually were..... see post-Ulduar Wrath.

However, I do give the "anything would have worked" argument slight credit. It's true, Blizzard had both a hell of a lot of wiggle room, & none at all at the same time with WoW's future. They could have done a lot, & the community would have given them a chance, simply because at the time, we had blind faith in them. Everything they'd done up to that point was near-universally awesome. Hell, until post-Ulduar, even Wrath was doing just fine with most people. Wrath's fucked up Launch Raiding stuff was overshadowed by the leveling experience & the rest of the content for most people, & then of course came Ulduar, which set Wrath "right back on track." Then they started with the Trial of the Crusader stuff, the LFD Systems, etc. & everything started going downhill, permanently.

If they'd sustained the amount of "casualisation" to manageable levels, as with 3.0/3.1 Wrath, instead of like with 3.2/3.3 Wrath, then they'd have still managed just fine IMO. It would have forced them to create a real balancing act between Hardcore & Casual, which with some effort they could have successfully maintained over time. Unfortunately, we all know how bad Blizzard is at long-term vision & balancing, so of course, the inevitable happened; they got greedy.

[Aehl]

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

Yeah, great idea.....lets promote the ideal of 90% of people watching it on YouTube (which is free)., and 10% or less raid. The ones watching it on YouTube arent

Paying subs
Buying the expacs
Using microstransactions
Referring friends

..so tell me, where will the devs and the company get the revenue to make content?

Catering to the hardcore and the elite means that you shut out the rest.Shut out the rest and they stop paying for the game.

Where do you THINK the money to MAKE the content comes from?

The Tooth Fairy?

Telling the MAJORITY of your customers "this isnt for you' is literally telling your customers you dont want their money and they "arent worthy of your product"

So they leave. With their wallets.

Bottom line: The players that you sneer at are the ones who PAY for the content you dont want them to see because they cant dedicate fifteen hours a WEEK on a set schedule.

RL is a thing, you know?

Did you ever take economics? Do you understand that the money for the raids you enjoy has to come from somewhere? Or do you live in this deluded state that you are ENTITLED to have others pay for your fun?

LFR has a reason and a purpose and a specific goal in mind. It is there to allow for the MAXIMUM number of people to see raid content that costs a fucking MINT to make. The dev and art and sound and design budget alone runs into the MILLIONS of dollars

Note that word. Budget.

They have a specific amount allocated to work with. If the metrics of that budget show they have blown millions on content less than 2% see..guess what happens to that budget?

It gets CUT, because what has been spent is seen as wasted.

Participation = cost allocation and resource allotment.

Lower participation and completion means "Sorry, we cant give you xxxx million for raids this financial year. You used up xxx million for less than 20,000 players. Cant justify that cost and the shareholders and investors are livid"

If the financial teams wont sign off on it you can damned well BET that the CEO sure as hell wont either..and lets not forget that. The CEO has to sign off on the budget allocation.

LFR justifies the cost for you to raid mythic.

You're welcome.

[lazorexplosion]

Lol at anyone who thinks molten core was the reason WoW attracted millions of players. No, it was overwhelmingly the actual world and questing and dungeons that bought unprecedented numbers of people to WoW. That's what the casual players prefer doing and the casual players are the overwhelming majority of the market and being the first to tap into that market is what made WoW a juggernaut. Only an insignificant niche ever did the raids.

If people chose their MMORPG for raiding content, and especially exclusive raiding content, Wildstar would be a success instead of they literally can't give that shit away.

Throughout the entire genre, raiding only attracts a decent number of people when it's both stuffed with bribes and made incredibly easy. Anything otherwise and it ends up being insignificantly niche. Deciding the whole end game will revolve around it is pure poison.

[Aehl]

Wildstar would be a success instead of they literally can't give that shit away.

Wildstar lost 90% of their revenue and 90% of their playerbase in a year. They catered to the 1%

Guess who's left?

[lazorexplosion]

Everything they do to subsidize raid participation poisons the rest of the game.

Raiding needs the best gear to bribe people into doing it which causes everything else becomes trivial and unrewarding as soon as you step in a raid.
Put good rewards in anything other than raiding? Raiders complain that it's mandatory and get it taken out.
Catch up mechanics? Great for making sure raiders can get the biggest possible pool of fresh recruits, terrible for the longevity of everything else.
Care about the end of the story? Go raid. Don't want to raid? Enjoy your unfulfilling story with no end.

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Wildstar lost 90% of their revenue and 90% of their playerbase in a year. They catered to the 1%

Guess who's left?

Nobody. Because even the 1% don't hang around when there's no player base to pay for the development of new content. Catering to the 1% doesn't even get you enough money to continue to cater to the 1%.

[Deleted]

Lol at anyone who thinks molten core was the reason WoW attracted millions of players. No, it was overwhelmingly the actual world and questing and dungeons that bought unprecedented numbers of people to WoW. That's what the casual players prefer doing and the casual players are the overwhelming majority of the market and being the first to tap into that market is what made WoW a juggernaut. Only an insignificant niche ever did the raids.

If people chose their MMORPG for raiding content, and especially exclusive raiding content, Wildstar would be a success instead of they literally can't give that shit away.

Throughout the entire genre, raiding only attracts a decent number of people when it's both stuffed with bribes and made incredibly easy. Anything otherwise and it ends up being insignificantly niche. Deciding the whole end game will revolve around it is pure poison.

Hm? Oh, you must be talking about Classic WoW!

You know, that age way back when Dungeons could last for hours? When you could spend an entire afternoon in Blackrock? When you actually needed to stop, think & plan things out instead of rampaging through Trash Mobs & Bosses alike? That long-gone age when Dungeons were basically the size of small Raids? (Especially since there was no global hardcap of 5 Players, for that matter).

Yeah, that's what all of you "Raiding meant shit" people always forget; Dungeons weren't originally so shit. Even during Burning Crusade, Heroic Dungeons served the same purpose; "non-Raiders" went from spending hours in those to spending hours in Karazhan, Gruul, & Zul'Aman later on, while the Hardcore crowd got through Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, Black Temple & Sunwell. Things only changed to the current "FACEROLL, GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO" model in Wrath.

Otherwise, yeah, it's true, only about 1% of players ever saw the inside of Naxxramas 40. So-the-fuck-what? Did it stop people from drooling over decked-out T3 Epics in Orgrimmar/Stormwind respectively? Hell-fucking-no. "Insignificant." HAH. If we were anywhere near so insignificant, Burning Crusade would have never focused so hard on Raids, you delusional idiots.

[Gilgameshh]

Raiding needs the best gear to bribe people into doing it which causes everything else becomes trivial and unrewarding as soon as you step in a raid.

Raiding is fun because it's organized, large group gameplay. The more people you play with, the more chance for error, the harder the game becomes. Raiding is the hardest content, so it's only reasonable that raids have the best loot; it's not a bribe whatsoever. I don't know where you get that idea.

Put good rewards in anything other than raiding? Raiders complain that it's mandatory and get it taken out.

I enjoy raiding more than anything else in WoW at this point, but I would still play the game if they removed it and replaced it with tiered dungeons of equal difficulty instead. Even if dungeons are more accessible because they require less people (would love to have some 10-man dungeons again), the problem is that the difficulty is what turns people off from the content in the first place.

What you're saying is that because raid gear exists, you feel non-raid gear is worthless. No matter what content they replace raids with, that gear superiority problem will always exist unless they make everything so easy that anyone can do it. That doesn't sound like a very appealing design to me. Is there an alternative when the game is pure vertical progression?

Care about the end of the story? Go raid. Don't want to raid? Enjoy your unfulfilling story with no end.

Very legitimate problem with raiding, but one that can be fixed. I'd say the majority of people I've ever raided with (on an RP server, mind you) couldn't care less about the story. The people who care the most, from my experience, are typically the ones that aren't interested in raiding. I don't think that's fair at all to force people into raiding to see the story unfold.

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You know, that age way back when Dungeons could last for hours? When you could spend an entire afternoon in Blackrock? When you actually needed to stop, think & plan things out instead of rampaging through Trash Mobs & Bosses alike? That long-gone age when Dungeons were basically the size of small Raids? (Especially since there was no global hardcap of 5 Players, for that matter).

Damn, I miss those dungeons a hell of a lot. Not sure why dungeon design needed to be changed to zerg style. I don't think all dungeons need to be like BRD, but it would be great if we could still have a couple per expansion. Definitely some 10-man dungeons/raids, too.

[Deleted]

Everything they do to subsidize raid participation poisons the rest of the game.

Raiding needs the best gear to bribe people into doing it which causes everything else becomes trivial and unrewarding as soon as you step in a raid.
Put good rewards in anything other than raiding? Raiders complain that it's mandatory and get it taken out.
Catch up mechanics? Great for making sure raiders can get the biggest possible pool of fresh recruits, terrible for the longevity of everything else.
Care about the end of the story? Go raid. Don't want to raid? Enjoy your unfulfilling story with no end.

1 - Raiding is the PvE Endgame, always has been, always will be, no matter what % of the playerbase is actually interested in it.
2 - Specifically, where? PvP? Blame Blizzard for refusing to separate PvP & PvE. Raiders would have long since stopped giving a shit about how good PvP Gear is, if only Blizzard would just separate the two damn things, BUT NO, so, of course, Raiders end up complaining because "I don't want to do PvP to maximize my PvE Gear for Progressive Raiding." As for non-Raiding PvE - Yeah, like I said, Raiding is the PvE Endgame. Deal with it.
3 - Not if they're done right. Blizzard seemingly refuses to understand how to do them right, so yeah.
4 - Yeah, good point, except for they "fixed" that with Normal Mode in Wrath. Yes, I'm referring to both 10-Player Normal Mode (pre-3.2) & 10/25-Player Normal Mode (post-3.2). Outside of that, once again; Raiding is the PvE endgame. If you don't want to Raid, wait for the Movie. It's neither a perfect solution, nor a firsthand experience, but yeah. I'd be fine with Raids getting a Dungeon Mode, as long as the Loot is reduced accordingly, tbh.

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Damn, I miss those dungeons a hell of a lot. Not sure why dungeon design needed to be changed to zerg style. I don't think all dungeons need to be like BRD, but it would be great if we could still have a couple per expansion. Definitely some 10-man dungeons/raids, too.

Because the casuals don't have the patience to sit through 4-6 hour long "grindfests" anymore. TOO MUCH EFFORT! & like others have said - they won't invest into something that only interests 1% of the playerbase (at this point), so yeah.

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Raiding is fun because it's organized, large group gameplay. The more people you play with, the more chance for error, the harder the game becomes. Raiding is the hardest content, so it's only reasonable that raids have the best loot; it's not a bribe whatsoever. I don't know where you get that idea.

This, exactly. Agree with the rest of the post too, though.

[Ishayu]

Exclusivity isn't bad for MMO's at all. It's just a position Blizzard has hypnotised themselves into after A LOT of forum QQ from people who are bitter about "not having time" (more like not having a large enough desire) to see it. What's funny about this is that there wasn't a great deal of QQ about it before Blizzard brought it up, but once the rocks started rolling down the hill, they were unstoppable.

As many people have already pointed out, partial exclusivity directly linked to a good progression and difficulty curve where you move through content. A game that gets harder as you progress over lots of content necessarily must be designed in such a way that more people see the early content than the late content - and if you want almost everybody to have something to strive towards, there needs to be content almost nobody has seen.

You contrast Blizzard's raid philosophy of 2005 with that of 2016 and it's very clear that something weird has happened. At some point, WoW became less about being an MMORPG and more about providing the absolute same content, that being raids, for everybody. While one portion of the playerbase wants it to be end-game and exclusive, and are thus unhappy, and another wants to do mostly open world RPG stuff in their own time and are tired of farming the same raid in LFR over and over again, a whole bunch of people have decided to play an older version of the game where this isn't even a problem because raids are hard end-game content that not everybody can or needs to see.

[Sci Fi Samurai]

By the end of BC, Blizz said less than 1% of the player base had gone into Sunwell.

That's a lot of people paying $15 a month for content they won't see.

Personally I'm ok with content that's exclusive to less than 1% of the player base, but less than 1% of the funding should go into developing it.

[mysticx]

Raiding is fun because it's organized, large group gameplay. The more people you play with, the more chance for error, the harder the game becomes. Raiding is the hardest content, so it's only reasonable that raids have the best loot; it's not a bribe whatsoever. I don't know where you get that idea.

I have two questions, not trying to flame or anything:

Is "Difficult because another guy might mess up" really a fun sort of difficulty?

Secondly, do you think normal+ raiding would have the participation it has if it didn't have the best rewards? It's obvious that in WoW gear is the big incentive to do anything, since if there's anything Blizz wants to increase participation on, it's done by improving rewards...

[Deleted]

You contrast Blizzard's raid philosophy of 2005 with that of 2016 and it's very clear that something weird has happened. At some point, WoW became less about being an MMORPG and more about providing the absolute same content, that being raids, for everybody. While one portion of the playerbase wants it to be end-game and exclusive, and are thus unhappy, and another wants to do mostly open world RPG stuff in their own time and are tired of farming the same raid in LFR over and over again, a whole bunch of people have decided to play an older version of the game where this isn't even a problem because raids are hard end-game content that not everybody can or needs to see.

In other words, the endless QQ ragefest whinefest of "I pay as much money as anyone else, but I've never set foot in XYZ because bla bla bla, bla bla bla."

Although, I have no doubt that the Industry's general shift towards casuals rather than dedicated playerbases had something to do with the shift as well. Remember, we're talking about 2008. The Activision merger had recently occurred, & the entire Video Game Industry was beginning to think they knew best, because <analysts>.

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By the end of BC, Blizz said less than 1% of the player base had gone into Sunwell.

That's a lot of people paying $15 a month for content they won't see.

Personally I'm ok with content that's exclusive to less than 1% of the player base, but less than 1% of the funding should go into developing it.

I keep hearing this, & yet; If they'd said "'we're removing Raiding in Wrath," you think only 1% of the playerbase would have raged over that? Hah!

People used to accept that they wouldn't see Kil'Jaeden, because. It didn't stop them from loving Raiding, regardless. It didn't stop them from cheering on their favourite Guild, or drooling over Server celebrities, etc.

We may have eventually accepted that removing Raiding was "for the best," as it allowed them to focus more on bite-sized content like Dungeons, but it would have also alienated a lot more people than "1%," resulting in a massive subscriptions number drop with Wrath. Hell, most of the fanbase wouldn't even exist today if it wasn't for Raiding.

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I have two questions, not trying to flame or anything:

Is "Difficult because another guy might mess up" really a fun sort of difficulty?

Secondly, do you think normal+ raiding would have the participation it has if it didn't have the best rewards? It's obvious that in WoW gear is the big incentive to do anything, since if there's anything Blizz wants to increase participation on, it's done by improving rewards...

Sure, some people are attracted to Mythic because "best rewards," but many of them are attracted to Mythic because "highest difficulty." The "best rewards" to them is just a by-product of the "highest difficulty" thing, so, yes/no.

As for the first question - again, yes/no. It requires a certain mindset, really, but yes, it can be very fun...... & very stressful at the same time. Also very hilarious when you have a Raid Leader who loves to shout at people when they screw up, if you're a jackass who likes to laugh at people getting shouted at over vent, because it's not you he's shouting at (this time).

[Deleted]

Fine in theory. One problem in the past was that to raid you had to either join a guild that raids and can make the raid night, or PUG.

The problem with PUGs, and a lesser extend with guilds, is that players decides who they accept to join their group. This puts players in control who can raid or not. As the tier progress, the entrance requirements rises, either gear, achievements etc.

So it is not entirely due player not putting effort to get into raiding.

yes, like my second part of the quote, that you ignored, said, it's also in the responsibility of the game to cater to its audience. When players don't want to be in guilds to raid, make it easier to raid outside of guilds.
What I'm saying is, that it's not one-sided. this is not a movie, this is a game and in a game the player also has to deliver to progress on and I'm not talking about money.

[nekobaka]

I have two questions, not trying to flame or anything:

Is "Difficult because another guy might mess up" really a fun sort of difficulty?

Secondly, do you think normal+ raiding would have the participation it has if it didn't have the best rewards? It's obvious that in WoW gear is the big incentive to do anything, since if there's anything Blizz wants to increase participation on, it's done by improving rewards...

For those who enjoy team oriented activities I would say yes it is fun.

Gear progression is part of WoW and especially important for organized raiding to allow players to tackle bigger challenges while also feel like they are getting more powerful for overcoming those challenges.

Personally gear was not the driving force for raiding as was the enjoyment of it as a group based activity that involved teamwork. Have made friends both through guild raiding and PuG raiding. I enjoy the social aspect that comes with such an activity. Understandably not everyone wants such or at least from a game. Which is why I have been for bringing back and creating viable non-raid endgame activities for everyone. WoW is a theme park MMO. Just because raiding is considered the pinnacle doesnt mean there cant be something in between otherwise there is nothing to be at the peak of.

[HuxNeva]

Metrics driven development:
- You put a 1M$ stash of cash in the center of a scalding hot swimming pool, watch masses of people diving into water trying to retrieve the cash get burned time and time again, then decide people like boiling hot swimming pools and go turn up the water heat everywhere.
- You go to the river to count the number of cyclists swimming across the water to decide if you should build a bicycle bridge there.

Doh!

[Gilgameshh]

Because the casuals don't have the patience to sit through 4-6 hour long "grindfests" anymore. TOO MUCH EFFORT! & like others have said - they won't invest into something that only interests 1% of the playerbase (at this point), so yeah.

They won't even create a reasonable amount of dungeons to begin with. Really unfortunate times for anyone who likes to sink their teeth into content.

You and I are definitely on the exact same page.

[Klingers]

I guarantee you the actual problem with WoW is raiding. Raiding has never attracted many players, not in WoW, not in any other MMORPG. Most people don't really enjoy it, hate the organizational headaches it brings, the required time and organizational commitment is ever more unsuitable as the market grows older and the fact that it's a weekly activity makes it terrible at giving you a reason to log in most days which makes it poor at keeping people around. Even raiders acknowledge that if you don't bribe people into doing it with the best gear in the game, it would be abandoned.

Instead of taking the obvious conclusion of 'raiding isn't popular, we should make less of it and make it less important', they just keep doubling down on pushing people into in more and more, and making it more and more prominent in the game and spending more and more effort into it and by side effect making everything else unimportant and trivialized by the power inflation of the gear bribes they put in raiding.

WoW's population will continue to shrink until Blizzard recognizes the plain obvious fact that the bulk of the MMORPG market doesn't want more goddamn raiding.

lmao, could you possibly be more out of touch?

No, I think he's right on-point. The only way you can suck more than a small minority of any sort of player into raiding is by making it so you push a button to play with randoms and the difficulty is so easy it's fail-proof... At which point it basically stops being raiding.

Blizzard are finally doing at the launch of Legion what they should have been doing for the last four or five years: A focus on smaller group content. Mythic five-mans with scalable modifiers is a brilliant idea. They foster small-group cooperation. The logistical headaches of real raiding go out the window but players can still feel like they have access to something with a high skill ceiling and progression curve.

Of course the proof is in the pudding. Some more mid-expansion dungeons are probably going to be needed to stop this new model from getting stale. Nobody's asking for a new tileset, They can quite easily just re-use a raid's.

[Gilgameshh]

Is "Difficult because another guy might mess up" really a fun sort of difficulty?

To the point that it is today, absolutely not. Mythic difficulty is just difficulty piled on top of difficulty to extend content life and cater to the smallest group of raiders in the history of WoW. Randomly assigned jobs that bosses now give to raiders is terrible design if you ask me.

If we're talking vanilla/TBC/WotLK responsibility for individual people, yes I think that's absolutely fun. You could assign people to do the difficult parts of the encounters and let the others play a relatively easy game. There are still assignments today, but it's still far too messy for me to really enjoy. Fair point to bring up, but it's an easy fix if they go back to older encounter designs. The problem is that add-ons and guides have become insane crutches, so easier boss encounters might just end up being too easy with the tools we have today. They need to restrict add-on usage in raids, imo. I also hate that they give people access to raids/dungeons in beta, although I understand the reasons for it.

Secondly, do you think normal+ raiding would have the participation it has if it didn't have the best rewards? It's obvious that in WoW gear is the big incentive to do anything, since if there's anything Blizz wants to increase participation on, it's done by improving rewards...

I understand what you're saying, but I think that's an unfair question to ask. Raiding isn't boring for those that have the skill/time, so putting reasonable rewards that match the skill/time/dedication in normal+ will appease people. However, if LFR had its rewards reduced to match the skill/time/dedication of the content, hardly anyone would do it. If content is fun, people just need a reasonable reward. If content is boring, the reward has to be better for people to do it. The key is for Blizzard to create fun content for every type of player, because otherwise they're just gifting epics to people who are inevitably going to quit since the allure of progressing their character has disappeared. That's what I feel like has been happening the last couple expansions, although the lack of content in general plays a large part as well.

Because of the difficulty that comes with raiding, it makes sense for it to be the pinnacle of end-game content. There should be so much content for people to do outside of raiding that they don't care if they reach that pinnacle, but I would argue that the story needs to be removed from raiding and added to content that even ultra casual players get to see. That being said, Blizzard obviously has changed to metrics-driven content development and raiding might be a casualty sooner than later as a result. It's too bad we can't just get more niche content to satisfy a broader range of people.

[nekobaka]

No, I think he's right on-point. The only way you can suck more than a small minority of any sort of player into raiding is by making it so you push a button to play with randoms and the difficulty is so easy it's fail-proof... At which point it basically stops being raiding.

Blizzard are finally doing at the launch of Legion what they should have been doing for the last four or five years: A focus on smaller group content. Mythic five-mans with scalable modifiers is a brilliant idea. They foster small-group cooperation. The logistical headaches of real raiding go out the window but players can still feel like they have access to something with a high skill ceiling and progression curve.

Of course the proof is in the pudding. Some more mid-expansion dungeons are probably going to be needed to stop this new model from getting stale. Nobody's asking for a new tileset, They can quite easily just re-use a raid's.

The sad thing is GC admitted the mistake of lack of new dungeon development post launch and need to bring back focus to non-raid content as an endgame half-way into MoP only to have Watcher spit on that going into the next expansion. Had me laughing big time seeing Watcher take a 180 and praise the importance of dungeons going into Legion. Still not going to hold my breath for post launch dungeons just incase he gets greedy again and cuts post launch dungeons to rush out a raid tier as he did in WoD.

[miffy23]

It isn't, and you can have both exclusive content as well as a broad range of accessible content.