Ghostcrawler on unsubbing

[FelPlague]

Ghostcrawler is overthinking it. Online video games NEED to be social. That's kinda the whole point. Catering to solo play in an online game is like planting a tree on a yacht and going sailing and then saying the tree is the real point of the going sailing. Sure, many people love trees. But is that really what its about?

say that to these people, who are getting alot of traction

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...3773942#post-1

notice how the people saying "we want the game to be better for solo players" are getting MASS upvotes, but those saying "no its an mmo be social" are getting disliked to hell?

welcome to the real community



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this is the thing, the community is a community, millions of players... and what your opinion on what is making the game bad, is not thr reality, as there is millions of people each with their own reason of why they quit, and what would stop them from qitting, so trying to cater to anyone is an issue... look above... this... this is a disgrace in my opinion... but the forums dont lie.... the people who want the game to become a solo experiance are getting MASSIVE upvotes, well those who want the game to stay an MMO are getting massive dislikes....


welcome to the future, it fucking sucks... but its a fucking horrid reality we all need to come to accept...



adn the worst part in my opinion?



blizzard is listening to them, taking it as feedback, and yeah i would love to tell blizzard "GUYS DONT FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM, ARE YOU DUMB" look at the ratio? it doesent lie


hundreds of people in this forum wanting the game to be single player, well people who want it to stay, and be even more group oreiented get shut down, because... they are the minority... i hate it... i woulda been there talking about how the game needs more community, and stuff that forces you to group up like group quests, but i would be disliked to hell

[Bapestar]

read the rest of the post...

read even ghost crawlers post, yes people quit because of X but its extreamly low, and most of those people artn even actually quitting because of that

They either quit for that reason or not.

[FelPlague]

They either quit for that reason or not.

so your saying a majority of players will go from "i love this game to" "i quit because blizz added a training dummy that had a reference to domestic abuse"

[Bapestar]

so your saying a majority of players will go from "i love this game to" "i quit because blizz added a training dummy that had a reference to domestic abuse"

Not everyone playing, is in love with the game. You said very few people quit because of X, then say most of those people didn't quit because of that........like what?

[SL1200]

So nobody leaves because they don't enjoy the game or dislike a change???

Well, I dont think he's saying nobody leaves, but he doesn't believe that a significant number of people leave over changes.

[Bapestar]

Well, I dont think he's saying nobody leaves, but he doesn't believe that a significant number of people leave over changes.

Fair enough.

[Super Kami Dende]

Cataclysm heroic dungeons
Battle.net real name display
no-flight
etc.

...made them revert changes pretty fast.

likely none of them over unsubs, since a Majority of the Complaints were on their official forums which require *shock* an active sub to post on.

[Ehrenpanzer]

I'd probably take what he says with a fairly large grain of salt. I mean, you are asking a game developer, if quitting their games is going to bring about change. Noone who wants to keep, or get, a job would ever openly admit that boycotting their company is the best way to bring about change

[Super Kami Dende]

say that to these people, who are getting alot of traction

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...3773942#post-1

notice how the people saying "we want the game to be better for solo players" are getting MASS upvotes, but those saying "no its an mmo be social" are getting disliked to hell?

welcome to the real community



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this is the thing, the community is a community, millions of players... and what your opinion on what is making the game bad, is not thr reality, as there is millions of people each with their own reason of why they quit, and what would stop them from qitting, so trying to cater to anyone is an issue... look above... this... this is a disgrace in my opinion... but the forums dont lie.... the people who want the game to become a solo experiance are getting MASSIVE upvotes, well those who want the game to stay an MMO are getting massive dislikes....


welcome to the future, it fucking sucks... but its a fucking horrid reality we all need to come to accept...



adn the worst part in my opinion?



blizzard is listening to them, taking it as feedback, and yeah i would love to tell blizzard "GUYS DONT FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM, ARE YOU DUMB" look at the ratio? it doesent lie


hundreds of people in this forum wanting the game to be single player, well people who want it to stay, and be even more group oreiented get shut down, because... they are the minority... i hate it... i woulda been there talking about how the game needs more community, and stuff that forces you to group up like group quests, but i would be disliked to hell

IN honesty, I play WoW 95% Solo these days and have done for a couple of years. If things went to needing groups for most things I'd lose interest. When people ask why I don't want to be social in an MMO. Well I tell them that after 12 years of playing I've basically come across every type of player/guild/social group in WoW and whilst I still enjoy the game, I'm over the social aspect, it's toxicity and drama.

[SL1200]

Given the ability by Blizzard. I would play wow solo. Friends in wow are over rated. Guilds suck, and most of the people who play it are jerks.

[SirCowdog]

yes they do
but that amount is extreamly minor
and its not usually because of that
its because they have so little time to play, or their friends dont play, and thats the real reason, but that thing is the straw that broke the camels back, and anything else woulda been enough to make them quit


idk if you know, but it is EXTREAMLY rare that a player is like "WOW I LOVE WOW, i spend 24/7 playing it, its the best game out there its so fun omfg i love it" hey guys were gunna make flying an acheiv based thing you will get half way through the expansion "I FUCKING HATE WOW, NO FLYING? I QUIT"


its a hundred things they dont like about the game, that makes them quit, but the one to break the load is the one they blame
very VERY few players go from "im loving this game" to "i quit it sucks" because of 1 feature...
and tracking down all these features is impossible because its different for each player

that doesent happen... and if it does its 1/100000


not all players do lfr, not all players do norm, not all players do heroic, not all players do mythic, not all players do pet battles, not all players do casual pvp, etc etc etc

but all players have a limited amount of time, and they have friends who play the game or they dont... so of corse that will be the biggest factor

I don't know that what you just said in this post is 100% true. Sure, for most minor things I agree. But there are issues fundamental enough that they end up polarizing large sections of the player-base. RealID was one such issue, I'd submit that flying is another. It's just that most changes to the game aren't effecting enough players to really cause that kind of reaction, and as you said, it takes a LOT of them to build up before a player reaches the point that they want to quit.

[melodramocracy]

Ghostcrawler sends quite clear message here and all he says is quite reasonable. Forums, where the whiners roam, are definitely not the majority of players.

You can argue that they're a minority, but they are the only practical voice available, and any dev who ignores forums is doing his / her game a disservice.

Let's take a theoretical example of pet battles, which happens to be the weekly Dalaran quest this week. Let's imagine that quest participation drops severely every time the pet battle quest shows up. Blizzard sees the end result, but has absolutely no data pointing to "why" unless they listen to opinions on the topic.

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Given the ability by Blizzard. I would play wow solo. Friends in wow are over rated. Guilds suck, and most of the people who play it are jerks.

I wonder what the common theme here is...

[Lady Dragonheart]

say that to these people, who are getting alot of traction

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...3773942#post-1

notice how the people saying "we want the game to be better for solo players" are getting MASS upvotes, but those saying "no its an mmo be social" are getting disliked to hell?

welcome to the real community



- - - Updated - - -

this is the thing, the community is a community, millions of players... and what your opinion on what is making the game bad, is not thr reality, as there is millions of people each with their own reason of why they quit, and what would stop them from qitting, so trying to cater to anyone is an issue... look above... this... this is a disgrace in my opinion... but the forums dont lie.... the people who want the game to become a solo experiance are getting MASSIVE upvotes, well those who want the game to stay an MMO are getting massive dislikes....


welcome to the future, it fucking sucks... but its a fucking horrid reality we all need to come to accept...



adn the worst part in my opinion?



blizzard is listening to them, taking it as feedback, and yeah i would love to tell blizzard "GUYS DONT FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM, ARE YOU DUMB" look at the ratio? it doesent lie


hundreds of people in this forum wanting the game to be single player, well people who want it to stay, and be even more group oreiented get shut down, because... they are the minority... i hate it... i woulda been there talking about how the game needs more community, and stuff that forces you to group up like group quests, but i would be disliked to hell

I know that when it comes to myself and many of my friends, we would all love more solo and small group (less than five) content. It comes up in conversation relative often as well about how we'd love more smaller, fun things to do on our own. Since most of what people do in the game is solo/small group orientated, it makes sense to make more relevant, interesting, and engaging content around that notion.

[Dhrizzle]

And they quit for family reasons again​?

Well if they felt they no longer had the time to dedicate to full-time MMO playing a few years earlier I doubt their situation would have changed so massively since then. As you get older you tend to take on more responsibilities and have less time to dedicate to video games, it's unlikely that the reverse would happen over such a short time period.

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Typical developer arrogance. People unsub because they have jobs and and cant spend time on the game anymore or because their friends left the game. Their friends must of left because they got a job or something. You know the game is 10 years old. That's why they left, not because of something we did.

Something about becoming a game developer on wow makes these people delusional. Must be a cultural thing.

Are you saying that Ghostcrawler imagined what the feedback he has received says, and in reality it agrees with what you think?

[Relapses]

Well if they felt they no longer had the time to dedicate to full-time MMO playing a few years earlier I doubt their situation would have changed so massively since then. As you get older you tend to take on more responsibilities and have less time to dedicate to video games, it's unlikely that the reverse would happen over such a short time period.

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Are you saying that Ghostcrawler imagined what the feedback he has received says, and in reality it agrees with what you think?

It's a common MMO-C circlejerk to disbelieve anything Blizzard says. This thread is a bit more comical since people who disagree with what GC is saying are proving his point even further.

[Deleted]

I don't quite see what there is to discuss.
His points are well made and extremely hard to dispute - he has seen the exit poll data. We haven't. He knows, while we're making unsubstantiated guesses.

It's interesting piece nevertheless - and I guess for us, the MMOC whiners, it should put a bit of a spanner in the works - threatening to quit over features isn't very effective weapon.
Not that anyone here will care, as this thread as already shown - we choose to believe what we believe - the whining and raging will continue.

Oh well. Was a good read anyhow.

[Fabinas]

LoL (pun intended). You seriously expected an active game designer to admit that players quit because of design issues? Of course he'd blame the player personal situations. He's seen the data. Right. We didn't. I don't believe/trust him on this matter.

[Relapses]

LoL (pun intended). You seriously expected an active game designer to admit that players quit because of design issues? Of course he'd blame the player personal situations. He's seen the data. Right. We didn't. I don't believe/trust him on this matter.

It's a massive conspiracy to cover up the fact that transmog ruined the entire fucking game forever!

[Relapses]

From all the things gone wrong in wow, transmog we sure can agree actually really boosted the quality of the game. Or do feel free to elaborate what's wrong with it.

I am hoping you are sarcastic, where we all really know whats wrong with the game. CRZ, lol-rng, no flying, class pruning and all the stuff we have to explain over and over again to the kids that are keeping blizz on the offensive. That is when you get ruin.

Or, more probably, I was definitely being sarcastic and the entirely subjective reasons you describe as "what's wrong with the game" are ultimately fairly unimportant when looking at the greater scope of what drives consumer attrition.

But then I'd be saying exactly what GC said in none so many words so I'd just take what I said at face value instead. :^)

[MoanaLisa]

yes they do
but that amount is extreamly minor

While I agree with what Street has written that set the thread off I think how changes affects players is a bit more complicated.

I played avidly for years. I ran out of things to do in Warlords and unsubscribed until Legion. That's all well and fine. Then they went about revising class fantasies and the rest and when I returned I barely recognized two out of the three specs that I normally play (shadow primarily).

I like Legion. I like the story and content and I think they've done a wonderful job with giving players something to do.

However,

I have found it much easier to become even more casual than I previously was. Prior to unsubbing I played 3 or 4 days a week as a rule for an hour or so a day. Now it's rare for me to do much more than play on weekends for a couple of hours at a time. Because of this, I have discovered other things to do and I don't miss the game when I'm not there making it all the more likely that if I think I have something better to do on some Saturday afternoon, I'll do it instead of putting it aside and playing a regular WoW session.

If I become any more casual I won't be playing at all. And that's how little things can stack up and push people out. I don't know that it comes as these stupid rage-filled tantrums that are so familiar here. It's slower and much more gradual for a lot of people. I don't believe that GC's post really addresses this at all. I have the time to play WoW much more than I do. But I've had a shadow main since BC and the class now is fairly unrecognizable to me and not terribly comfortable to play without going through the trouble of learning it all AGAIN (only to know for a certainty that it will change yet again somewhere down the road). And so even though I may have the time, it's easy to go do other things because, one change at a time, the design has snipped many of the familiar strings that made it comfortable to play and made me confident that I knew what I was doing. And cared about it.

And there you go. One person's story and I'm certainly not angry with the game. But I'm sure that I'm not alone in this.

EDIT: Pertaining to the issue of solo versus group: Nearly all that I do is either solo or with friends/family who also play. We have a very small guild that was assembled to run mythic+ but they are doing fine without me and I'm not so interested in that much repetition anyway. I'm all in when someone asks me if I want to log on to do something but the rest of the time I'm happy enough just logging in to see what's up and play for a few hours if there's nothing else to do.