IS Legion killing the wow playerbase?

[Elestia]

I really hope that Legion takes away most of the casual players who only do world quests and raidfinder. Then Blizzard can scrap raidfinder and focus more on the content that actually makes the game fun.

Yesssssss.

[Tomyris]

But you also can't blame players from chasing incentives. When Blizzard gives you a really good reason to run Mythic+ dungeons over and over and over, you can't say "Damn those players for chasing the carrots we laid out for them!" Unfortunately we went from garrisons which incentivized zero effort gameplay (log in, send missions with help of addon, log out) to world quests/M+ which incentivized a TON of playing. It just seems like no matter what incentive scheme blizzard comes up with, players aren't happy.

What I deduce from that is that the game model just doesn't work. Gear treadmills are old hat, which includes AP-like systems that reward you for playing a LOT. I made this post in another thread, but I'd really like to see a game that doesn't have a gear treadmill. You get a base level of gear, sort of like how PvP is. Once you're geared, you're geared and new gear is maybe different stats, but ilevel remains the same. You can get the base gear from anywhere and there's no good incentives to force players to do X or Y. In this world, people just play what they want and don't feel manipulated or forced to do a certain type of content. The incentive is fun.

And you did not hear the screams of agony from pvp players?

[Elestia]

Nothing will be worse then the Killing of WoD that happened at the end of S1 and the beginning of S2. Most players quit during this time

Legion is more refreshing then WoD..so while Legion is killing playerbase it should not be as bad as WoD.

Who knows without actual numbers. Imo, there's plenty for casual players to do, the game still makes it very easy to participate and obtain gear. If it's pruning people that don't want to participate then that's great. The game isn't at fault for lack of content.

[Roadblock]

IS Legion killing the wow playerbase?

Only in the highest M+ and mythic raids I guess.

For 99% of the game the Legion barely tickles.

[Deleted]

And you did not hear the screams of agony from pvp players?

Idk, seems like instanced pvp is more balanced than ever. I bet a good player could get gladiator with any spec/class at the moment. Maybe aside from some of the tanking specs, not sure.

[Tomyris]

Idk, seems like instanced pvp is more balanced than ever. I bet a good player could get gladiator with any spec/class at the moment. Maybe aside from some of the tanking specs, not sure.

I was referring to ''no gear incentive" for doing pvp. I lost count on how many threads I seen with people complaining about not having a purpose when doing pvp. That is why I do not believe in a no reward game. I would play wow if there were no rewards in pvp and raids, just with friends, for fun, but I am not sure about the rest of the playerbase.

[Elestia]

I also loved Vanilla BC and Wotlk, but for entirely different reasons than Legion. Atleast from the perspective of someone who has cleared endgame raidcontent and enjoys raiding a lot.

Legion is really a two sided coin. On one hand, there is plenty of stuff to do, you progress your character almost every day.
On the other hand, the activities that you do to progress your character is an endless grind with endless rng.
Legion would be so much better with a lower Artifact Power cap. No legendary rng and no titanforge rng.

I never understod the concept about calling an 850 items a "welfare epic" because the difference between a fully geared character compared to an 835 geared character is greater than it was in vanilla, tbc and wotlk. People are too focused on the color of specific items instead of the ilvl which is truely what makes or breaks an item in most cases.

There's a certain element of fun in gear RNG. If playing with friends I think it's great, it's fun and exciting when someone gets something crazy good. If you're a completionist with a superiority complex, maybe this isn't a good time to be playing.

[Halyon]

Eh, seen plenty of people who like it, plenty who don't...I'm in the quitters camp myself because the grind just got to me. Leveling was pretty good, if a bit disjointed, but good nonetheless.

I personally think the reason there's so much shebang about it is because the playerbase is getting divided and more up on the fence because that's just how the climate is these days...you're either A or B, no middle-ground.

[tyrlaan]

Sorry but it's been like 12 years since I've "drooled" over gear. I'm sure many agree when I say we don't want to spend an hour making a group for sunken temple only to get there wipe in the first room and have the tank leave. Vanilla was great...12 years ago. Time to move on.

Or as Farondis would say, "Vanilla was great...10,000 years ago."

[Varaben]

And you did not hear the screams of agony from pvp players?

I didn't. But to be sure, what I mentioned is clearly a very different game and would be a total ripout of existing systems. It is not something you could add in piecemeal, but what was done in PvP.

And maybe that just means the game isn't fun anymore. If the only reason to play the game is to get better and better gear, then the game IS the gear treadmill and that's OK. There were other PvP changes as well like the talents and prestige system, so you can't exactly say "well this was tried in pvp and it didn't work." It was tried but many more variables were added, so the result is not clear whatsoever.

I have no idea and no reason to think this would be any better I guess, but it's just an idea for a different type of game.

[Carnedge]

If I had a nickel for every time someone used this excuse after someone says they feel forced to do something...

And yes, there ARE things that make you FEEL forced to do them. If you're a competitive player, you are, in fact, forced to do a lot of things in Legion, else you'll fall behind quickly and not be helping out your team as much as others. Call it what you will.

So you're not actually unhappy about Legion... you'rs just lazy.

You're "competative" and hate that you actually have to do stuff to stay "competative" besides just raiding 2 times a week.

gtfo

[Varaben]

I was referring to ''no gear incentive" for doing pvp. I lost count on how many threads I seen with people complaining about not having a purpose when doing pvp. That is why I do not believe in a no reward game. I would play wow if there were no rewards in pvp and raids, just with friends, for fun, but I am not sure about the rest of the playerbase.

But reward-based games have serious problems such as scaling, RNG, balancing rewards from different sources, etc. Those take serious development time. You could divert those resources to making more content. Imagine if there were 50 dungeons at max level and a story that weaved them together. Or 5 zones like Suramar that focused on max-level questing.

If people say there's "no purpose when doing pvp" then pvp isn't fun and that's a problem. It used to be fun in Vanilla when there were no rewards. Obviously that was WAY back when and there's other issues; my point is we can see no-reward systems that have worked in the past.

[darklogrus]

People keep telling me "IT'S CUZ CRZ BRO!!! CRZ IS ENABLED!!" I play on a Connected Realm that is only connect to 1 other realm. I see players EVERYWHERE, yet the only time I tend to see them from Realms I'm not from is when I choose to find a group in Group finder that has someone from another server.

99% of the time the massive groups of people flocking around dailies are all from my server.

Its probably because you have become oblivious to the indicator that shows you their from another realm. 10 people crowding around me right now, not 1 is from my connected realm and 8 are unique.

[Elestia]

And you did not hear the screams of agony from pvp players?

It's really what's best. Imagine playing any other online pvp game. Take Halo - imagine if in order to stand a chance you had to get your armor through REQ points. There would be absolutely noone playing - imagine the outcry. Same goes in WoW PvP... why would anyone want to pvp just to lose to people actually less skilled then they are? When gear was in pvp there was no balance - rather than learning to properly play around certain abilities, you'd pack up, stay alive and soak HKs. And get rewarded for it! Here's your pvp set.

And then once you had your set? Why even pvp?! It's like in the southpark episode - they kill the guy and Kyle says 'Well... what do we do now?!?" Cartman: "What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game!" That entire episode eloquently epitomized WoW. So broken, you have to endure the 'boar' - fest to enjoy it and once you were there you may as well just not play.

Playing the game for the sake of playing the game because it's intrinsically fun SHOULD come first. Why there's a question of whether the game should work in the first place is beyond me.

[epLe]

It's really what's best. Imagine playing any other online pvp game. Take Halo - imagine if in order to stand a chance you had to get your armor through REQ points. There would be absolutely noone playing - imagine the outcry. Same goes in WoW PvP... why would anyone want to pvp just to lose to people actually less skilled then they are? When gear was in pvp there was no balance - rather than learning to properly play around certain abilities, you'd pack up, stay alive and soak HKs.

Such statements only prove you have no idea what you talk about.

PvP gear was good in Vanilla to MoP, then they scrapped the resilience (bad move) and it got abit shittier in WoD.
Then Legion came along, that bipolar expansion we now play.
PvP gear was "too forced" or "too grindy" for the dragonslayers, so they scrap em.
Then add PvP talents and Prestige systems? -Like their not any more grindy or forced.. GG Blizzard.

[eStarks]

In my experience, I've seen more people return than leave.

[Nethlord]

I said this in another prior post, but I took off from legion back at the end of October. The biggest factors for me leaving were simply this.

*Legion is WoD, with what the garrisons represented (a quest table full of inane missions that rewards the player from useless to quite good), but with the player doing those quests themselves. Chuck-in a random ilvl slider to addict people to keep doing them (the WQ has a epic that is ilvl 840, but it could WF or TF to 875!! I'll just keep doing these until I get it!) and you have WoD. I won't put it past Blizzard that the Class hall board was going to be the hub for ALL of these, but once the community saw the exact same mission table that was in WoD, they dropped it and pushed most of the functionally to the world map....because that doesn't function at all like how the mission table did...

*Blizzard design for every expansion is formulaic and it finally caught up to me after nearly 12 years of playing this game. Sure it's a new coat of paint with a new zone, and dungeons and raids, and story; but it's the same damn wall we have been painting for YEARS! In the actual expansion you are playing, would it make any difference what level you are? Take WoTLK for example. Our max level was 80 and everything was balanced around 80. then cata...85...MoP...90...WoD..100 see where i'm going with this? The level increase is unimportant as whenever the expansion rolls out the game is balanced around this itty-bitty place on the map, with the same rules as before.

Items for current max level can only be found here, content is based around this max level in this one place...instanced end-game content is for this...and the entire rest of the world be damned! The pre-patch had me hopeful. Finally, they had the newest expansion interacting with zones and people from all over the world! Real, end-game content would be spread to other zones and places for the length of the expansion!! And I don't mean a quest here or there...I mean full-on high level zones dotted across the world. The Legion was actually invading Azeroth en masse!! There was urgency to rise-up and quell them. The prepatch did that so well. Within months, all they invaded was a bunch of ancient islands that no one cared about and ignored the rest of the planet.

"Oh, they were/are building up their forces here to fully take over the planet!!"

Not really, they showed just how huge their forces were by invading multiple sites across the planet...why did it stop, especially when they just handed the factions their collective asses at the tomb? I know why....Blizzard formula and they don't deviate from it...they just scramble to band-aid fix things they were going forward with when MILLIONS OF PEOPLE LEFT BECAUSE OF THOSE THINGS!

Are any of you surprised people are leaving? For all the new ideas at the start, I think most that have left realized that all Legion was/is is a repackaged WoD. Just take a objective and critical look at what Legion offers and then compare it to WoD.

I know, you see it too, same package, different wrapping paper.

[Elestia]

Such statements only prove you have no idea what you talk about.

PvP gear was good in Vanilla to MoP, then they scrapped the resilience (bad move) and it got abit shittier in WoD.
Then Legion came along, that bipolar expansion we now play.
PvP gear was "too forced" or "too grindy" for the dragonslayers, so they scrap em.
Then add PvP talents and Prestige systems? -Like their not any more grindy or forced.. GG Blizzard.

Not at all. PvP gear was forced and it was grindy in a format where was inappropriate. 1-10 pvp talents take no time at all to complete.

- - - Updated - - -

thats not how it works.


By that logic i can say "take dark souls, you can defeat the final boss in no armor and level 1, should also be the case in wow"


you cant compare a fps with a mmorpg

Absolutely, you certainly can compare people's expectations of pvp. Pvp is pvp whether it's being modeled in Halo or WoW. The underlying argument remains: why compete if you literally don't have a 50% chance of winning? Let who wins be determined by skill, not who has more armor.

[Akka]

Hmmm... interesting... I've been playing Vanilla WoW on a private server having more fun than I have in years. It's AWESOME to see LFM posts in chat, dozens of people leveling in every zone I go to, thriving economy, people with gear I can inspect and drool over, leveling that is meaningful and rewarding, having to actually USE all my talents to level, excited to get the next talent point because I need that lil extra to tackle the next zone, a green drop and I am squeeling with excitement.

But but but but ! That's obviously nostalgia-rose-tinted-glasses-and-wrong-memories ! Science proved that Vanilla wasn't fun and you think you do, but you don't !!!

[Deleted]

PvP gear was good in Vanilla to MoP

PvP gear was only "good" when you're the one who got it in time and were able to bash those who geared up later... But "noob bashing" has little to do with real pvp.