Why must everything be accessible?

[Koward]

Well not everything is accessible. I can't mountjack someone and ride off on their mount while they complain about a stolen mount. I can't break into the bank or the auction house to steal from there. I can't steal weapons and armor from the opposite faction for my own use. Sadly wow is just like life in many ways. You don't always get to see and do what ever you want. Even with hard work you do not always get everything you want. All you can do is learn to live with what you got.

OP obviously mean "why is there no unbeaten content out there for the majority of the population".
And no, a difficulty level is not the kind of unbeaten content that makes the world bigger. Not for an MMO at least. Not sure if WoW is still one.

[aviger]

Clearly they've never lost EXP or items on death.

I came from Everquest.. WoW is casual as anything

[DarkIron]

Anyone that wants easier content or complains they have to play with other people in an MMO is f'in retarded, plain and simple. Done. Argument over.

I remember when people use to play games and over come challenges. Not bitch and moan like little bitches cause they couldn't do everything at minimal effort. And to all you' fucktards that say you pay to play so you should get to see everything too. You can you fucking scum of gaming, no one is stopping you but you. Stop being lazy cunts and go out and earn it.

[Deleted]

I remember when people use to play games and over come challenges. Not bitch and moan like little bitches cause they couldn't do everything at minimal effort. And to all you' fucktards that say you pay to play so you should get to see everything too. You can you fucking scum of gaming, no one is stopping you but you. Stop being lazy cunts and go out and earn it.

In what alternate timeline that happened? Because I started playing on an age where the great players were rewarded with points and scoreboards, and yet the games were enjoyed by every single person.

[High Marshal Sigismund]

Raiding is an interesting case to bring up. We know for a certainty that they were unhappy with participation in raid content and they moved to fix that. No, it's not an example of raiding going away but Blizzard has sent very clear signals that the parts of the game that they consider important will be "fixed" through participation systems until the utilization rate is high enough to justify the ROI.

Again, I'm not criticizing Blizzard even a little bit for trying to provide incentives to leave solo play once in a while and get out into the greater group game by limiting participation in some group content to pre-made non-random groups. It was the right thing to try. If players had responded to it as they hoped I'm certain they would have left things as they are. Throwing in the towel on Karazhan and the two dungeons that were mythic-only likely signals that whatever they hoped would happen, didn't. Or at least not enough.

We'll see how they handle it in the future but the first signal we have about that is that there's going to be a heroic random-queue version of the new dungeon in 7.2.

Definitely. There's a real issue about a lot of the playerbase not wanting to go the extra mile and manually join groups, but it is what it is. I think what Blizzard did in creating heroic versions of some of the Mythic-only dungeons was far more preferable to putting Mythic dungeons in LFD, which is what some folks were clamoring for, at least on the official forums.

[DarkIron]

In what alternate timeline that happened?

Clearly before you were born.

[Deleted]

Clearly before you were born.

And that's how pink glasses works, people. Do tell us what outstanding hardcore games came before 1981 (my birthyear). And I'm not talking about the buggy pieces of shit.

[Otimus]

Growth peaked in Wrath 3 quarters after the Lich King was dead. Even with the year long ICC patch, Wrath grew even in the last quarter before Cata. So no, it wasn't just about killing Arthas.

Going by some facts we know pretty much for sure, which is barely anyone raided in vanilla, TBC, and WOTLK, and in the run up to cata, Blizzard said in an interview that they had something like over 40 million previous paying subscribers who no longer play, you can pretty much see more or less what was happening with WoW.

It was replacing lost subs with as much or more than them when they quit. Which is to say, the difficulty or lack there of probably had nothing to do with anything, because people weren't even doing that content at all. In fact, IIRC, most quit before even hitting cap.

That's probably why there was so many sweeping changes. To try and stem the tide of the death of churn. Then passive/non-gamer/whatever interest in WoW pretty much started to die, so churn stopped, and they've more or less been left with trying to figure out ways to try and keep people playing/paying. IIRC, LFR actually DID temporarily stop the flow of leaking subs at the end of Cata.

Legion is probably going to have pretty good retention, too, because there's a lot of real casual and hardcore grinds there for most playstyles, and that's probably what keeps people subbed more than anything (Constant character progression, rather than hitting a road block most people don't want to bother crossing).

[Rend Blackhand]

Blizzard pouring all those resources into things only about 5% of the super hardcore players can do is an incredible waste and bad business strategy.

Catering the the hardcores will kill the game stone dead.

[Orodin]

Honestly - that is a fairly ignorant mindset that YOU need to be a special snowflake and have access to content that others should not. I used to be a progression raider, years ago... now, I just hop on because I am loyal to the brand and I like to experience the story. That includes seeing all of the raids, pvp, etc.. If I couldn't do that, then I would just drop my sub. I know /how/ to play at a high level, but I have no desire to do it these days; 1 kid and hopefully another the way, a busy job and a busy life make it nigh impossible to be that raider.

I am guessing you are a millennial? Its a very common theme of that age to feel 'special'. Get over it. Get over yourself. Everyone wants to and can play their own way.

[May90]

I think WoW should just feature multiple difficulties applied to ALL content, like most single-player RPGs do. Make 5 different difficulties, the lowest one being a steamroll and letting everyone, even the worst players in the world, experience all the content - and the hardest requiring incredible skill and teamwork to get through. Make different servers for different difficulties. As it is, they have to balance accessibility with providing challenge for more demanding players, and that just can't work at the same time.

[Deleted]

OP: you forgot this is a game. If you want to prove that you are to good, try win some real life competitions (Olympics or anything like that, excel at math or physics?), else don't bother here, we are here to play games and have fun.

[melodramocracy]

Casual players are and we actually want stuff to do.

We already have plenty of stuff to do. The majority of complaints seem to revolve around not wanting to actually go do those things, yet receiving the rewards from it anyhow.

[Deleted]

Because WoW playerbase is no longer mostly 16 year olds who have too much spare time like it was back in the day. People have grown up and got jobs and families now. And it's the same people who still make up most of the playerbase. They are those casuals you are refering to, raiding probably 1-2 times a week and trying to do their World Quests when got the time for it. It would be just retarded to cater to the 0,5% segment that is considered "hardcore", when they are not the ones keeping the game going.

[Blayze]

We already have plenty of stuff to do. The majority of complaints seem to revolve around not wanting to actually go do those things, yet receiving the rewards from it anyhow.

No, it's that Blizzard are trying to force players into failing content--mythic dungeons, organised raiding--by locking questchains and story behind those activities.

[melodramocracy]

No, it's that Blizzard are trying to force players into failing content--mythic dungeons, organised raiding--by locking questchains and story behind those activities.

Aspects of story have been hidden behind raiding since day 1 of this game. In fact, most story wrap-ups happen there, so I'm not sure what else you'd expect. Nor do I see how mythic dungeons are considered 'failing content'.

[Otimus]

We already have plenty of stuff to do. The majority of complaints seem to revolve around not wanting to actually go do those things, yet receiving the rewards from it anyhow.

It's not that, I don't think, people just don't want to do organized content. Take that for what you will. I don't think it's right to call them lazy or wanting everything handed to them for wanting things that way. It's just a preference.

It's like applying for guilds. No one wants to do that. But you can easily see why it's a thing.

For a lot of people, that sort of aspect crosses some sort of line in a game that they don't want to bother with, whereas they wish they could just play it.

(and it most certainly doesn't mean they should "just play Skyrim" or whatever, either. This is just the way things are now. People love matchmaking.)

[Deleted]

The only problem with raiding at the moment is lfr. It's understandable that it was created when there was only heroic and normal, but now that we have flex in the form of normal and heroic I see no point in keeping lfr. Normal now is what lfr was supposed to be imo.

[Ringthane]

I should be grateful? For what exactly?

That you still have the game to play at all? Look at how many games tried to cater to a specific playerbase. Where are they now?

[Blayze]

Aspects of story have been hidden behind raiding since day 1 of this game. In fact, most story wrap-ups happen there, so I'm not sure what else you'd expect. Nor do I see how mythic dungeons are considered 'failing content'.

I don't know about you, but I completely skipped over Heroic dungeons and almost completely avoided Mythics on my way to raid-ready iLevels.
I haven't set foot in any Mythic dungeon so far except for when a quest sends me there.

As for story wrap-ups being locked behind raiding, that wouldn't be an issue now we have Raid Finder, and yet Blizzard locks specific story conclusions and entire encounters behind Mythic raiding. If I might as well watch the fight or the Mythic phase on YouTube, then I might as well watch all the lore on YouTube.