Casualization is the biggest problem wow: True or false

[Blayze]

Wrath was THE casual expansion. It was the wrath's whole thing. It was when blizzard practically changed the entire game into something different with easy casual gameplay in mind.

People that don't realize this are the people that started in wrath and are ignorant to how damaged the game really was, it was massively more casual then BC and it introduced all the things that would go down to be the ruiners of WoW.

Of course it snowballed since then and even though I could not bring myself to like wrath at the time due to all the casual changes and being doomed to sit in dalaran with nothing to do waay more then I would have liked it is actually a huge step up from where it is now.

But obviously nothing beats Vanilla/BC for true quality gameplay, which is why the whole nostalrius thing happened.

The only reason wrath wasn't completely terrible is because they didn't drain all the good things from BC out of the game yet.
They waited for cata to do that.

The reason cata got such big sub numbers at the beginning was because blizzard was playing it off like cata was going to be the new BC and they were ditching the casual mindset.
shortly after cata when people realized that was not true they all started leaving.

You must be smoking some serious shit.
Vanilla was more casual-friendly than Everquest, TBC more casual-friendly than Vanilla and Wrath more casual-friendly than Wrath.
Subs only started dropping in Cata, which was when the developers tried to make everyone more hardcore.

[primalmatter]

You must be smoking some serious shit.
Vanilla was more casual-friendly than Everquest, TBC more casual-friendly than Vanilla and Wrath more casual-friendly than Wrath.
Subs only started dropping in Cata, which was when the developers tried to make everyone more hardcore.

TBC wasn't more casual friendly then vanilla it required quite a bit of grinding even for dungeons never mind raid attunement. It wasn't crazy but it was a touch more then vanilla.

[djcoin]

You must be smoking some serious shit.

No you are sir lol. You clearly have no memory of those expansions or did not play in them. It's not even debatable.
Oh wait...I think you're trolling.

[Tomana]

Wrath was THE casual expansion. It was the wrath's whole thing. It was when blizzard practically changed the entire game into something different with easy casual gameplay in mind and the subs went flatline after 4 years of constant near vertical climbing.

This is flat out wrong. All of the MMORPGs market started stagnating around 2009, as you can see on this graph:
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/TotalSubs.png

People that don't realize this are the people that started in wrath and are ignorant to how damaged the game really was, it was massively more casual then BC and it introduced all the things that would go down to be the ruiners of WoW.

How on earth was it damaged? What are you even talking about?

But obviously nothing beats Vanilla/BC for true quality gameplay, which is why the whole nostalrius thing happened.

Yes, because the server being free has absolutely nothing to do with it. Oh, and ~12000 players online does not equal the whole wow playerbase.

The reason cata got such big sub numbers at the beginning was because blizzard was playing it off like cata was going to be the new BC and they were ditching the casual mindset.

And yet, cata subs plummeted because of, among other things, retarded 5-man tuning.

[Nubulous]

Wrath was THE casual expansion. It was the wrath's whole thing. It was when blizzard practically changed the entire game into something different with easy casual gameplay in mind and the subs went flatline after 4 years of constant near vertical climbing.

People that don't realize this are the people that started in wrath and are ignorant to how damaged the game really was, it was massively more casual then BC and it introduced all the things that would go down to be the ruiners of WoW.

Of course it snowballed since then and even though I could not bring myself to like wrath at the time due to all the casual changes and being doomed to sit in dalaran with nothing to do waay more then I would have liked it is still a huge step up from where it is now.

But obviously nothing beats Vanilla/BC for true quality gameplay, which is why the whole nostalrius thing happened.

The only reason wrath wasn't completely terrible is because they didn't drain all the good things from BC out of the game yet.
They waited for cata to do that.

The reason cata got such big sub numbers at the beginning was because blizzard was playing it off like cata was going to be the new BC and they were ditching the casual mindset.
shortly after cata when people realized that was not true they all started leaving.

Saying that patch 4.3 was the only casual part of cata is like saying 2016 is when the WWF started fake fighting.

Wrath actually wasnt too bad for the first half of it. I couldnt stand it anymore after the stupid raid that was Trial of the Crusader...that along with some other changes made me quit until the end of Cata

[Blayze]

No you are sir lol. You clearly have no memory of those expansions or did not play in them. It's not even debatable.
Oh wait...I think you're trolling.

TBC wasn't more casual friendly then vanilla it required quite a bit of grinding even for dungeons never mind raid attunement. It wasn't crazy but it was a touch more then vanilla.

Try again, children. Some of us remember badge gear, and more to the point, some of us remember the time BEFORE badge gear.

Compared to Vanilla, TBC content practically bled welfare epics from every orifice, and started phasing out Resist gear--a process Wrath continued by letting you craft three or four pieces of gear that gave you almost all the Frost Resistance you would ever need for Sapphiron and Sindragosa.

[nekobaka]

You must be smoking some serious shit.
Vanilla was more casual-friendly than Everquest, TBC more casual-friendly than Vanilla and Wrath more casual-friendly than Wrath.
Subs only started dropping in Cata, which was when the developers tried to make everyone more hardcore.

Cata was hardly more hardcore. Grinds was heavily cut from WotLK to make it even more casual friendly. Despite nerfs in difficulties subs still plummeted from lack of content all around. T11 got only a 20% nerf that made it easier than ToC while wearing ICC gear. Lack of content quarter after quarter was continually listed as the cause of sub losses.

MoP went grind heavy and intentionally increased the difficulty of raids to push casual PuG raiders out of organized raiding. The community slapped the devs back hard for the game being too hardcore. Grinds got nerfed hard and Flex with a lower difficulty was introduced with great praise.

Funny how the expansion with more grinds and higher barrier to organized raiding gets praised as casual friendly while the one with short grinds and little content gets called hardcore.

[Blayze]

Cata was hardly more hardcore. Grinds was heavily cut from WotLK to make it even more casual friendly. Despite nerfs in difficulties subs still plummeted from lack of content all around. T11 got only a 20% nerf that made it easier than ToC while wearing ICC gear. Lack of content quarter after quarter was continually listed as the cause of sub losses.

MoP went grind heavy and intentionally increased the difficulty of raids to push casual PuG raiders out of organized raiding. The community slapped the devs back hard for the game being too hardcore. Grinds got nerfed hard and Flex with a lower difficulty was introduced with great praise.

Funny how the expansion with more grinds and higher barrier to organized raiding gets praised as casual friendly while the one with short grinds and little content gets called hardcore.

Cata was more hardcore because it had fuck all world content, fuck all dailies (The Tol Barad faction had more than all the others combined), dungeons were an overtuned shitshow and you were punished for earning your Valour in the wrong order with that stupid half-cap.

Then the troll heroics came out and we were expected to grind just those two dungeons for Valour.

That introductory raid tier's introductory bosses were horrible; Omnotron shat mechanic combinations at you, Halfus changed weekly, Conclave had stupid levels of movement and Magmaw annihilated tanks.

Spirit was destroyed too, which made healing an absolute nightmare, and one-shot mechanics became the order of business for almost every fight.

The 20% nerf was Blizzard's way of saying "now you casual fucks can play, but we want you to always be a tier behind the real raiders."

That was the last straw for my casual raiding guild; it never recovered, though we managed to kill Madness after enough came back for 4.3.

So no, Cataclysm wasn't casual-friendly like you claim it was.

[FuxieDK]

It also had the highest number of new players being added per month, if one assumes industry typical churn rates (note: I am talking about gross, not net, new subs.)

No it didn't.. Not even vclose..
Vanilla: 8M players in 2 years = 333K per month
TBC: 4M increase in 2 years = 167K per month
WotLK: 500K increase in 2 years = 20K per month

WotLK did not really bring in new players; it was the beginning of the end., because it was a BAAAAD expansion.

[Sansnom]

Wrath was THE casual expansion. It was the wrath's whole thing. It was when blizzard practically changed the entire game into something different with easy casual gameplay in mind and the subs went flatline after 4 years of constant near vertical climbing.

If TBC had the growth, then why would Blizzard change their formula? As they say, don't fix what is not broken. They probably saw something that we have not, and cannot, during Vanilla and TBC that influence their decision to change then.

[SoulSoBreezy]

After reading through some of the replies, I still don't understand the point of the conversation.
"Casualization" isn't the problem. It's the business plan. All that's being argued here is if it's your problem personally, or not.

[Osmeric]

No it didn't.. Not even vclose..
Vanilla: 8M players in 2 years = 333K per month
TBC: 4M increase in 2 years = 167K per month
WotLK: 500K increase in 2 years = 20K per month

WotLK did not really bring in new players; it was the beginning of the end., because it was a BAAAAD expansion.

Actually, Wrath brought in more new players per month than Vanilla or BC.

The reason one can say this is there's a fairly well known fact that MMOs churn through 5% or more of their players per month. So, to just keep stable, Wrath had to be bringing in more new players, just because the total number of players was larger. Of course it was also losing lots of players, so the net sub change was small. But new players were coming in.

TLDR: you are confusing gross and net sub change numbers.

[Tomana]

After reading through some of the replies, I still don't understand the point of the conversation.
"Casualization" isn't the problem. It's the business plan. All that's being argued here is if it's your problem personally, or not.

The problem is, there are a lot of self-proclaimed hardcore players who feel that a) everyone who doesn't have silly play time must GTFO and b) that Blizzard must develop content just for them with resources obtained with other player's subs.

[Glorious Leader]

Try again, children. Some of us remember badge gear, and more to the point, some of us remember the time BEFORE badge gear.

Compared to Vanilla, TBC content practically bled welfare epics from every orifice, and started phasing out Resist gear--a process Wrath continued by letting you craft three or four pieces of gear that gave you almost all the Frost Resistance you would ever need for Sapphiron and Sindragosa.

ToC was fucking BRILLIANT and the only r3ason it gets the hate it does is because it's largely what raid content should look like. Handfull of bosses in one room with little.to.no trash. Instead we got the exact opposite. Super 13+ boss raids. Of course raiders hate it, it shows them how insignificant they are...

[Velerios]

No it didn't.. Not even vclose..
Vanilla: 8M players in 2 years = 333K per month
TBC: 4M increase in 2 years = 167K per month
WotLK: 500K increase in 2 years = 20K per month

WotLK did not really bring in new players; it was the beginning of the end., because it was a BAAAAD expansion.

In german we call something like this a "Milchmädchenrechnung", a very naive miscalculation.

Vanilla and BC brougtht in a critical mass. In Vanilla the game was NEW AND SHINY and Vanilla to this time was VERY CASUAL!!! If we see vanilla now (and yes, i think that vanilla was the second worst experience) it seems very hardcore, but look at what were the alternative MMOs to this time. They were all super hardcore, nothing compared to WoW. To this time, WoW was the casual game under the MMOs. And BC even followed this by making the world more accessable through daily-quests in 2.1.

It also had the hardest raiding-experience, but blizzard already said that less than 1% (more like 0.1%) raided in Sunwell successfully. WotLK was not bad, it simply peaked the WoW-Population. The potential was simply not higher.

So no, WotlK was not bad, the 3rd raid-Tier was simply bad, and that only because it was never intended that the Argent Tournament was the 3rd raid Tier. Personally i think that it was intended that Ulduar and the Argent Tournament comes out at the same time. But Blizzard needed to delay the Tournament because of DALALAG. Dalaran was in WotLK an ultra-laggy zone. Simply because of Wintergrasp too many player were in nearby cells, so gathered in the same place. The Argent Tournament should actually be in Crystalsang Forest as it would make sense, because the Argend Dawn was more or less destroyed before the 1st gate. Making the Argent Tournament in Icecrown was only because of massive lag-spikes, because the server couldn't hold the load when both dalaran, Wintergrasp and Argent Tournament in the same place. Nowadays this would be no more problem because they can phase things out, but in WotLK phasing was not as developed.

And because they need to change a lot of things, we had the tournament and subs naturally declined.

Still the 2 patches that were mostly for the hardcore-people were Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor. And we know how good these expansion were.

[SoulSoBreezy]

The problem is, there are a lot of self-proclaimed hardcore players who feel that a) everyone who doesn't have silly play time must GTFO and b) that Blizzard must develop content just for them with resources obtained with other player's subs.

It's okay to not like it. That's not a problem either, that's just one of many human reactions. No design decision is 100% accepted or reviled by players, not even having your real name on the WoW forums - though I'm sure it was pretty close to 100% disliked.
Ion's quote about WoW's community being comprised of multiple small communities cleverly dismantles most of our arguments regarding what we think is best or worst for the game. It's okay to complain, but let's not kid ourselves; players don't agree with what's best at all, which basically defaults Blizzard's design evolutions to really be the best compromise between its entire playerbase.

[Seefer]

Explain. Wildstar (albeit a different game than WoW) went the hardcore route that WoW once followed in Vanilla (attunements and such) and it failed so miserably.

It was an all around shitty game, from wonky combat system to comic bookish graphics and races, I get tired of people saying "Well Wildstar was hardcore"................good for it! It was a horrible damn game!

[Glorious Leader]

It's okay to not like it. That's not a problem either, that's just one of many human reactions. No design decision is 100% accepted or reviled by players, not even having your real name on the WoW forums - though I'm sure it was pretty close to 100% disliked.
Ion's quote about WoW's community being comprised of multiple small communities cleverly dismantles most of our arguments regarding what we think is best or worst for the game. It's okay to complain, but let's not kid ourselves; players don't agree with what's best at all, which basically defaults Blizzard's design evolutions to really be the best compromise between its entire playerbase.

It doesn't dismantle shit. It just points out what we've been saying all along. If every playstyle is ultimately a minority then the gross inequity that is raiding is made even more bare. Why should that particular one minority play style get all the time and resources and attention that it does?

[Seefer]

ToC was fucking BRILLIANT and the only r3ason it gets the hate it does is because it's largely what raid content should look like. Handfull of bosses in one room with little.to.no trash. Instead we got the exact opposite. Super 13+ boss raids. Of course raiders hate it, it shows them how insignificant they are...

Man the shit you say just makes you look like a horses ass, you are about as significant as a raider, I swear to christ you won't be happy until gear is mailed to you, raiders and non-raiders are both minorities and their opinions matter about equally...........as in not at all and Blizz will do wtf they want when they want.

[Sansnom]

ToC was fucking BRILLIANT and the only r3ason it gets the hate it does is because it's largely what raid content should look like. Handfull of bosses in one room with little.to.no trash. Instead we got the exact opposite. Super 13+ boss raids. Of course raiders hate it, it shows them how insignificant they are...

The boss in arena aside, it fitted the scenario it was in. And I recall some people were complaining about large raids with long trash pulls and runs between bosses. They were only interested in fighting the bosses and hated the long period between going boss to boss.

So I guess Blizzard listened. Gave us ToGC. Bosses were delivered to us on a plate. We just wait for them to be served. And people complained it was boring and lack "atmosphere".

I though some bosses were interesting, such as Factions Champions.