Catering to casuals, I've seen it happen twice.

[Eleccybubb]

I am not saying it isn't. It is just to show that going hardcore is not THE ONE thing that makes the success of a game.

Aye. I think Guild Wars 2 suffered early on as well by having PvP be it's main focus. FF14 has a similar problem to where people just aren't interested in the type of PvP it brings to the game.

[Jtbrig7390]

I cant comprehend why people still playing the game at the moment. Doing pet battles and collecting herbs.. what a joke.

Maybe its because they are enjoying themselves. Believe it or not but different people like different things.

[Blayze]

TBC didn't make the game easier than vanilla though.

Yes it did.

Between badge gear, a lower reliance on resistance gear, profession gear not all being completely worthless, lower raid sizes making it easier for more guilds to field raid teams, catch-up mechanics resulting from said badge gear and new dungeons added during the expansion's lifespan...

This is on top of concepts like daily quests being added to provide casuals with more stuff to do.

[Daffan]

I had played since vanilla, the best time i had was in the TBC. Lead a guild in Vanilla at end of high school, was too much had to quit for college. Quit after aq40. Came back for the TBC, never quit the TBC. The best time i had playing was in TBC. Could pug tier 4 every Tuesday, raid tier 5/6 during the week. Some Tier 4 was still good, and some heroic dungeons last items were still good. WOTLK got boring towards the end quit after i completed ICC. CATA was great in the beginning, got boring towards the middle. Quit after first tier come back for dragon soul. Mist got boring after first tier quit right after TOT was released. WOD was great but too short, quit after i completed HFC. Blackrock was best Raid in WOD. Looks like legion will be good in the beginning, but will it last we well see.

All expansions are good in the beginning because their is loads of content and no way to skip it. SO everyone has something to do.

It's only after patch 1 and 2 when they introduce tons of skip mechanics and catchup that people start running out of content faster and faster, as all the content they never did just becomes obsolete.

[Morssoe]

Catering casuals only takes away from hardcore players which are minority.

WoW had its peak in wotlk, cause ppl at that time were more aware of wow and wanted to try it. Then ppl leave for different reasons. It happens to any game.

[Jtbrig7390]

No point in doing that when casuals get to see the same content and get epic gear.

So your mad because someone in LFR gets to see easy mode of a boss and get worse gear.....

- - - Updated - - -

Casual players rapidly run out of content they can do that rewards anything. Small guilds were penalized in raids by the flex scaling mechanism.

Fundamentally though, WoD continues to send the message to casual players that they are second class citizens, that the devs only grudgingly provide them content (and then ensure it has bad rewards). The message sent is that the devs despise having to serve casual players. When things had to be cut, it was the casual experience that suffered.

The casual experience would be enhanced by purging the dev team of those developers who can't come to terms with who their real audience is.

It does seem that Legion is changing all of that. But time will tell.

[Shinv]

The Bean counters that buy out our gaming companies need to to stop trying to force to appeal to a casual market. Games are meant to have some struggle to them to be rewarding when you achieve something. WoW just doesn't deliver on that feeling anymore so it barely even appeals to anyone new.

Why do they "need to" do that? Because you want them to?

And "meant to", plus $5, will get you a large cup of brown caffeinated water at Starbucks. It's a feckless concept without any significance.

I just wanna know why do dislike the notion of games are fun for individuals when challenging with any kind of struggle. Like this isn't even a casual vs hardcore comparisons. Its so basic with any game that jumping to why shouldn't even be question. Are video games just the exception. So yes I believe games are "meant to" your coffee is just half wit humor defending something I just can't grasp with you.

[Deleted]

Yes it did.

Between badge gear, a lower reliance on resistance gear, profession gear not all being completely worthless, lower raid sizes making it easier for more guilds to field raid teams, catch-up mechanics resulting from said badge gear and new dungeons added during the expansion's lifespan...

This is on top of concepts like daily quests being added to provide casuals with more stuff to do.

The content was, as a whole way harder than vanilla stuff. There were the hardest heroic dungeons ever designed, the raids were very hard (only a handful of guilds got to clean them before they were nerfed), people cried very hard on the forums about the attunements quests...

Also, there was still a lot of resistance gear being used, up to the black temple.

It s not because people can get gear easily than the game is necessarily easier, especially when back then the game relied more on strategy than on sheer numbers. Obviously since 3.0 the game became mostly a number game, things changed.

[Glorious Leader]

I just wanna know why do dislike the notion of games are fun for individuals when challenging with any kind of struggle. Like this isn't even a casual vs hardcore comparisons. Its so basic with any game that jumping to why shouldn't even be question. Are video games just the exception. So yes I believe games are "meant to" your coffee is just half wit humor defending something I just can't grasp with you.

Cause its turns out not tk be true for most people. What the developers found was that when provided with challenge most people simple gave up. If you insist on providing challenge to players it has to be done in a fashion in which the player will think that he can overcome it within reason and not feel like giving up. It's a very fine line.

[cFortyfive]

Yes it did.

Sure it did. I remember all those high warlords and world pvp heroes not even breaking 2k. Or how dungeons and raids were certainly a whole lot easier

Wildstar

Don't get it it was a shit game for weebs and asia grinder lovers.

[Jokerfiend]

They should hire a group of people who study how human mind works and how they react to certain things. The whole Cataclysm launch HC Dungeon fiasco could've been avoided if the LFG system had never been implemented. People get quickly used to something being easy, when it suddenly gets harder large portion of the player base choose to whine instead of improving themselves.

That is why these "casualization" errors that Blizzard and other companies have made are difficult to reverse. You make one once and it will most likely haunt you for a long time.

This person was there and knows the cause of the debacle. Yeah, this is the problem. By the time a majority of players reached anything in TBC is was already over and farmed. Then, WotLK came out with it's easy heroics and for 2 years left people lazy and fat. Then dropped a return to TBC style heroic and we were left holding our dicks.

Blizzard has over corrected so many times, like an SUV that hit a patch of ice. This was, that way, then WoD left the vehicle on it's side, crashed and done.

We will see in Legion.. I don't have much hope.

[Glorious Leader]

The content was, as a whole way harder than vanilla stuff. There were the hardest heroic dungeons ever designed, the raids were very hard (only a handful of guilds got to clean them before they were nerfed), people cried very hard on the forums about the attunements quests...

Also, there was still a lot of resistance gear being used, up to the black temple.

It s not because people can get gear easily than the game is necessarily easier, especially when back then the game relied more on strategy than on sheer numbers.

The raids were a joke especially compared to today. TBC casualized the game so much it's not even funny. Everything people lament about warcraft got its start in TBC. Welfare epics? Check. Flying? Check. Removed attunements? Check. The game had been on an increasing path of not only casualization but also inclusiveness right until cataclysm when they decided to start cutting the wheat from the chaff.

[Edison]

Uhm WoW has always been casual. It was the healthier alternative to Everquest.

What was seen as casual back in 2004 is vastly different to what it is today.

[Deleted]

The raids were a joke especially compared to today.

It is not what history shown. I remember very well guilds breaking their teeth on gruul, maghteridon vashj, kael thas, archimonde and muruu. It took several month to guilds to finally clear the raids which came with BC release. And I m only talking about the good guilds, as the average one struggled way before reaching the bosses I was talking about.

Also, regarding the current raids difficulty, I can too design encounters where you d wipe if you react 0.25 sec too late, but that wouldn't make the raids interesting (and that's exactly why raids aren't as popular as they used to be back in the day).

[Osmeric]

I just wanna know why do dislike the notion of games are fun for individuals when challenging with any kind of struggle. Like this isn't even a casual vs hardcore comparisons. Its so basic with any game that jumping to why shouldn't even be question. Are video games just the exception. So yes I believe games are "meant to" your coffee is just half wit humor defending something I just can't grasp with you.

I dislike game design concepts that are divorced from reality. The design you endorse does not work, and your earnest desire that it would work doesn't change that.

The point of my "meant to" comment is that the argument you are making there isn't even wrong. The whole concept of games "meaning to be something" is crap with no reality. There is no entity anywhere deciding what things should mean. There are design concepts that work, and those that don't.

[Jtbrig7390]

What was seen as casual back in 2004 is vastly different to what it is today.

Still doesn't change the fact that WoW has always catered to the casual market. Its only a given that over time they keep doing it and change with the market.

[anon5123]

Blizzard creates a good game, World of Warcraft, which goes to become one of the most popular online games since the invention of computers

Activision, an evil company known for not caring about the player, merges with Blizzard to form the holding company of Blizzard Entertainment and Activision

Stopped reading here.

Blizzard has said over and over that Activision has 0 impact on their development.

OP pls go

[Deleted]

Still doesn't change the fact that WoW has always catered to the casual market. Its only a given that over time they keep doing it and change with the market.

No, back then wow didn't want to cater to casual player but to make the MMORPG genre fun by removing most of the hassle which came in the older games of the genre. Nowadays blizzard tried to cater to a different type of player, which do not really exist.

[Deleted]

"The game is slowly dying"

Actually it is going pretty fast.

[Fynzie]

I'm glad we have some top analysts on MMOC to tell us that WoW started his downfall with the introduction of X or Y feature.