IS Legion killing the wow playerbase?

[Eleccybubb]

In mop and Wod we only had the shared servers. I only saw players from Doomhammer and Turalyon. Even in the end. Now i see people from all over. Im on Zenedar now, We are shared with Frostwhisper and one other server. Something on B. Still see people from all over. Eonar, Grim bator etc.

We have had CRZ since MoP as well as Connected Realms. Connected realms were done in 5.4 and CRZ was added in 5.0.4 but Pandaria CRZ was not enabled until 6.0 and Draenor 7.0. So basically until after the expansions were done with.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Cross-realm_zones

[TITAN308]

Screen name is fitting. Lay off the bong.

[ItachiZaku]

Anecdotal evidence: of the 7 guilds I am in, 2 main guilds, the rest accepting invites while I was a lowbie, only 1 of them has activity. The active membership of that guild: 5 people

[glowpipe]

We have had CRZ since MoP as well as Connected Realms. Connected realms were done in 5.4 and CRZ was added in 5.0.4 but Pandaria CRZ was not enabled until 6.0 and Draenor 7.0. So basically until after the expansions were done with.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Cross-realm_zones

Exactly. Now its enabled from start. And still the zones feel empty, cause there are few players around. Sure. Christmas and new years and shit will drag it a little down. But the playerbase seem lower than it has ever been. Our guild lacks dps. We have good progress, We have healers and tanks, but we struggle to find dps. That alone should be a telltell sign. Got nothing to do with Legion. But more the fact that wow is 11-12 years old now. Its natural that people move on.

[Blakebone]

warcraftrealms.com/weeklyactivity.php

That's probably the closest we can get to give us a sub estimate.

[Cows For Life]

warcraftrealms.com/weeklyactivity.php

That's probably the closest we can get to give us a sub estimate.

Looks like after a couple of months, player activity is back down to doldrums of year 2 WOD levels.

[Granyala]

Looks like after a couple of months, player activity is back down to doldrums of year 2 WOD levels.

Makes sense though. From a casual players perspective, we are in a content lull. Nothing to do but raid again.
Everything else is infested with RNG which, to a casual that values his time, makes WoW feel unrewarding.

[nekobaka]

Looks like after a couple of months, player activity is back down to doldrums of year 2 WOD levels.

Historically activity goes up at expansion launch and settles back down to previous expansion numbers. It will be another month or two to see if there is further drop off. The only sure thing that can be said from that data is that Legion has not gaining players. Looking at each servers data shows even the high pop lop sided servers are flagged for needing more census reports. Also this only accounts for NA and EU.

[rda]

Historically activity goes up at expansion launch and settles back down to previous expansion numbers.

No, that was only the case for WoD and now Legion. WotLK had no drop-off at all, one of MoP / Cata (forgot which) had a drop-off, but it was much, much slower and didn't go that far down. Looks like "it's cyclical" is a self-fulfilling prophecy (ie, Ion thinking "well, it's cyclical anyway, so not worth doing much" followed by players thinking "well, it's not much again, time to unsub until another portion - if I bother to come back at all").

[Pua]

Pretty much. However, you've got it wrong that you think Blizzard made this design in favor of the players. Oh they added the RNG all along knowing it will be a pain, however that some people still would farm it and it would be a +% in revenue. It wasn't intended for me and you who might play casually. It's for those who always want better.

I take your point, but I'm not quite so cynical. The reality is that Blizzard had to come up with a system that retains players, while providing a means of developing a character outside of the competitive raiding environment. This isn't a trivial problem, because it ties into the entire concept of what the game represents to wildly differing types of player.

Take me (and, from what you've said, yourself). I'm a casual player, for whom artifact progression and item level matters as far as it gets me into random group content. That's it. I don't raid competitively, my guild doesn't, and as such the entire argument (including the one about legendary items) is completely dissolved. I just don't care. Again, as you rightly mention, the players at the top do care. They want the right legendary item, they want the best item level, and they want the most progressed artifact because they realise that only a tiny fragment of the top players can complete encounters without being appropriately geared, or overgeared.

The snag the designers have is that these players tend to crossover with the like of you and me in one key regard: they want something meaningful to do.

To me, this is where the rubber meets the road.

In providing a system that keeps those top players engaged, everyone else is in a loop where they're simply never finished with anything. The alternative is to provide a system that more casual players can complete in reasonable time frames, and to simply accept that your top players are going to wrap it up quickly, get bored with it, and then potentially quit. What exasperates this is the fact that some "casual players" aren't actually very casual at all - they don't raid competitively, but they play an average of two to three hours a night, which is often a lot more than some competitive raiders.

I suppose there needs to come a point where the designers decide what type of game they want. To this point, we already know the answer; they're going to build the game they want to play, and the majority have hardcore raiding aspirations, habits or guilds.

The snag?

The evidence makes it clear that this isn't the game most people want to play.

The designers are an extreme, and I mean extreme, minority who raid competitively. Around 300,000 people are in the Mythic tier at all, which means that they're the players that are the most easily dispensed with for the future health of the game. We also know that they're the players who are, by far, the least likely to quit because the percentage they make of the population remains consistent no matter what state the game is in.

TL, DR?

Competitive raiders are the least important part of the player base, and the most likely to put up with being under-served.

This was proven (for the few who erstwhile doubted it) during Warlords of Draenor, when raids were the only meaningful content made and the population of raiders stayed roughly the same per capita compared with everyone else. What it also means, indirectly, is that the determination to make sure they're served with "something to do" is evidently the wrong choice, and the health of the playerbase will suffer for as long as Blizzard continues to make said choice.

Legion does a good job of a great many things, and I mentioned my biggest problems earlier in the thread (and in other places).

If you want a short version, it's the determination to keep an insignificant section of the playerbase endlessly entertained... And they've been doing it for years.

It seems to be the lesson the designers just don't want to learn, because they make the game they want to play.

World of Warcraft be damned.

[Deleted]

It seems to be the lesson the designers just don't want to learn, because they make the game they want to play.

I do not think this is the problem, i think the problem is that this genre, MMORPGs, has it´s strong points and it´s weak ones.
For starters it lost his main strong point a long time ago, which was a vibrant new world and a new game style, everything was fresh and amazing, but with time it stopped being like that.
I am not raiding anymore, i do not think i will do it again, and i am enjoying Mythic+ a lot, BUT i know for a fact that the moment the people i am playing with leave, so will i.
I have tried other MMORPGs, some of them not raid centric, and sadly none of them has been to my liking, some of them were bad, but others got me thinking that the problem is that the genre is exhausted.
These games have no choice but to force repetition a lot, because thay can not make quality content fast enough, and after some time no game genre can resist that.
There are examples in the past of video game genres that got exhausted to the point of dissapearing for years, and i think MMORPGs are no exception.
In any case i think it is not that designers do not want to learn, but that they are lost and clueless about what to try next.

[Volitar]

I feel like it killed a lot of the middle class. The super hardcore and the super casual are still there but its pretty hard to find a happy medium in between that in this expansion.

[Osmeric]

I feel like it killed a lot of the middle class. The super hardcore and the super casual are still there but its pretty hard to find a happy medium in between that in this expansion.

Hmm. I seem to be doing ok this expansion, and I'd say I'm in that middle class (just got 7/7H EN). I'm certainly not super hardcore (very little M+).

Maybe you need to define the terms more clearly.

[Deleted]

I feel like it killed a lot of the middle class. The super hardcore and the super casual are still there but its pretty hard to find a happy medium in between that in this expansion.

I do agree, only that i think that finding that happy medium has always been difficult, and not just this expansion.

[Akka]

It seems to be the lesson the designers just don't want to learn, because they make the game they want to play.

World of Warcraft be damned.

I'd say the EXACT opposite. WoW has devolved because the dev made the game according to what they perceived to be player's desires/what would be the most "markettable", against their own preferences, and as such did a subpar game (because you can usually do much better when you actually like what you do).
They made WoW initially as the game they wanted, but caved to "accessibility" to retain subscribers, and in doing so lost the soul of the game and had to design through stat rather than through guts.
I think it was GC himself who admited he liked the threat mechanism and hard content, but that they decided to ditch them for accessibility sake.

Also, a designer should always take feedback into account, but he SHOULD do, at the core, the game HE likes. Catering to the public only ends up making all games bland and the same.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I take your point, but I'm not quite so cynical. The reality is that Blizzard had to come up with a system that retains players, while providing a means of developing a character outside of the competitive raiding environment. This isn't a trivial problem, because it ties into the entire concept of what the game represents to wildly differing types of player.

It is a trivial problem. Outside world sets. Gear that is designed to give advantages to players out in the world. Set bonuses that improve your gathering, or give rep bonuses. Or improve gold rewards. Or increase your chances of getting rare materials. Make it so they can be upgraded over time, to improve the bonuses. Make it so they can only be used in certain zones. Create some kind of wardrobe style setup, so people can store them without it ending up clogging up their bank space. Or make it so the items themselves have a selectable option for which zone they cover, which an NPC in the capitals can change. Then you have quests to do to open up all the different zones. Or, if you want to avoid having to create content for this, just make it so that dailies played in a particular zone fills up a bar to improve gear for that zone. But that would be a lot less fun for players.

Then you have something for people to do in the outside world that has an impact on the way they play in the outside world. If they never raid at all, they have a clear progression path they can follow.

But that involves Blizzard designing for more than one type of player at a time. Which they appear to be incapable of doing, at least since Cata.

[Daffan]

Srsly half the people complain about nothing to do , don't even do the content on anything but LFR. If Blizzard made 50 LFR raids, they'd be beaten in 1 week(day?) anyway because it's so easy. Ppl complain that the problem is the focus on Mythic raiders and competitive raiding, but this so called 'focus' is not the real reason WoW has no content for casuals.

Casuals will never be entertained long when Blizzard gives out catchup and other welfare that makes half the content a complete waste of time.

Unless your raiding Mythic, you have no reason to bother with repeating content.

As a casual; There is no long leveling period (boring timesink anyway), no crafting to care about, no dungeons to 'need' to progress through and then the raids just evaporate into redundancy every patch. As a casual your only hold on the game is IlvL that you don't even really care about because you don't need it for anything. So people just quit. omg It actually makes sense regarding the 'cyclical" play style people keep talking about in this thread

You log in at expac launch, get your 830 item level and do LFR a few times, then quit until next patch/catchup, play for 1 week for the catchup/new LFR then quit again. Now were in that flux period before that next patch/catchup.

[Echocho]

I don't think people are dying from playing Legion. My guess would be that they just quit the game.

[Akka]

As a casual; There is no long leveling period (boring timesink anyway), no crafting to care about, no dungeons to 'need' to progress through and then the raids just evaporate into redundancy every patch. As a casual your only hold on the game is IlvL that you don't even really care about because you don't need it for anything. So people just quit. omg It actually makes sense regarding the 'cyclical" play style people keep talking about in this thread

That's pretty frighteningly spot-on.

[Deleted]

Population has been on a huge downturn since Legion came out even worse than WOD. I think it's because Blizzard pretty much killed alts with the bad AP system.

I've yet to log and see less than 5-6 people online on my friends list at any given time. There were times in WOD where literally 0 people would be online, not exaggerating here.

Also I've put in probably twice to three times the hours in this expansion than I did in WOD, alongside with multiple close friends of mine. I know that's not a huge amount of data but after reading some of the responses here I can see other people are in the same boat.

To say Legion is killing the database just shows how out of touch with the gaming community you really are.