1) add thousands of RNG elements
2) add time gated mechanics to prevent people from finishing
3) raise prices of services
4) ???
5) expensive sports car.
1) add thousands of RNG elements
2) add time gated mechanics to prevent people from finishing
3) raise prices of services
4) ???
5) expensive sports car.
And someone who isn't getting what they want will attribute their personal gripes with any given measure despite there being A LOT more changes than those they want to acknowledge, both in-game and external.
If those changes were the only ones happening in-game then there might be some basis to that argument.
But there weren't.
You can't take the faction of the evidence you find convenient to prove a point while ignoring the rest.
They aren't "catering" to the wrong audience.
The audience complains when they arent the sole ones getting attention.
The game pretty much went from solid stone impenetrable fortress of the MMO market, to extremely flashy and tall castle of cards, you take RNG gearing and timegating out and the whole thing falls down.
Explained it in previous posts. You seem to constantly move the goal posts or have completely forgotten my original post. Your moving the goal posts is unconducive to any reasonable discussion although any discussion was not really necessary as I simply expanded upon a contributors thoughts regarding the apparent necessity of time gated content.
Shall I recap and expand?
Whether the content ends in 2-3 hours or 2-3 weeks is, in most games, the prerogative of the player. Time gating introduces nothing but a contrived prolonging of the same volume of content.
The primary function in WoW for this gating is to keep players subscribed. Gating exists to remedy the very obvious incline and decline of subscription numbers surrounding content release, which is a phenomenon not just limited to WoW, it exists across the genre, the industry and basically the entire consumer market in some form.
When something new is released that people want there is an uptick in revenue, sales or consumption. Chasing and competing for this uptick in consumption is essentially Business 101. Upward trends. Upward trends means expanding businesses, repeated upward trends means successful businesses. (note: simplified)
For Blizzard the strategy is providing just enough content with just enough regularity to make the decline in subscribers as close to flat as possible when viewed on a graph against time. With consistent numbers they have a reliable revenue stream and can focus on expanding that revenue through targeted marketing, micro transactions etc.
Blizzard has an edge case because WoW experienced an explosion of growth that no other company has been able to replicate however their motivations are the same: profit.
If you'd like my opinion on the matter, contrived gating rather than organic progress is unlikely to encourage me to offer praise or applause in regards to game design. The game is fraught with these mechanisms and they are not present to enhance gameplay in any way; they exist to keep you playing for longer.
This comes from a player who has no issue with the subscription, I'm subbed regardless, it's cheap and I don't buy any other games. But I'd like to tackle the content at my own pace, when I want to tackle it, rather than have it drip or spoon fed to me because some of the other players are irregular with their subscriptions.
I'll leave you guys to discuss paytowin; your responses, collectively, echo a sentiment reflective of immaturity that offers me no foothold to have any meaningful discussion. It's internet "I know you are but what am I" except, sadly, you don't know. Just think you do and think if you type "you're wrong" enough times it somehow becomes true.
I feel the same. I don't mind the subscription costs, in fact, I prefer a subscription model to F2P with a shop, because the latter always costs more than a monthly sub. Thing is, they have gating on the one hand - not only raid and dungeon lockouts as we have had before since Classic and later TBC for heroic dungeons, but now we also have gating in professions (profession CDs still exists, at least in alchemy; also ranks in patterns and random stats are a kind of a gate, because you either perform inefficient before getting at least rank 2, or you have to grind many more materials, because you don't know the outcome of your work), in quest storylines, and in reputation farming (which is better than in WoD but you have still very hard diminishing returns when you try to power through). On the other hand, on top of all gating, there is excessive RNG, which undermines my sense of progress even further. Having RNG upgrades for items which already are on a weekly lockout is disgusting.
The latter. I was just thrown off by what in the world p2w has to do with the OP.
Back to gating, you call it that but I prefer to see it as pacing. WoW after all has many different legs to stand on; laser focusing on the idea of time gating is what it is, a perspective that doesn't look at the whole picture. And the whole picture doesn't just include WoW as a game, but WoW as a game to this player. That player. The mythic raider. The dungeoneer. The quest whore. So on.
Or:The primary function in WoW for this gating is to keep players subscribed. Gating exists to remedy the very obvious incline and decline of subscription numbers surrounding content release, which is a phenomenon not just limited to WoW, it exists across the genre, the industry and basically the entire consumer market in some form.
The primary function in WoW for this pacing is to keep players engaged in the story according to Blizzard's designs. Pacing can exist here to remedy immersive disconnects that occur after one-time content is completed and the experience is reduced to more or less the sum of its parts after performing tasks day after day after day.
We're both drawing conclusions based on logic but slanted depending on feelings. Neither of us are right or wrong but my point is that there's a lot more to consider than the usual upturning of the nose.
Anyway here's a give a take, here. *Should* Blizzard have created a campaign that provides eleven weeks worth of gameplay before (assuming) ToS is released? Is there a guarantee that this campaign content is something all players will be engaged in? How is the player bandwidth balanced with the other elements of the patch (dungeons, outdoor content)? What about organized PvPers who couldn't care less for this campaign?
Is it worth that sort of investment? Or, instead of a paced campaign with other activities, should players wait three more months in 7.1.5 before dumping everything in at once?
Your opinions are strong and supported by some facts and assumptions. I don't think you're outright wrong, but there's a lack of perspectives. Just call me skeptical.
I'm telling you they could just release 7.2 in 10-11 weeks and have no raid pre-quest while playing a game of fuck off, and letting you go first. But instead of that, they're giving you content. You don't have to do the content, but it's there.
- Invasions
- Reputations/dailies to grind.
- More AP capacity
- Pre-ToS quests
They could have just put all this in the game in 10 weeks. Instead you get it now so you can play. So yeah, you don't have to suck their cock over it. At the same time, you probably shouldn't be a salty salt shaker over it either.
Perhaps Blizzard should make interesting content that lasts 2-3 weeks. Oh? It costs too much? Really now? *looks at investor portfolio* Mmmmm. Seems like you've been reaching record profits and sales for the last 10 years Blizzard, how does it cost too much?
Ohhh, milking a dying horse, got it. Continue on making new card packs and champions for much more successful games about your games.
There are no worse scum in this world than fascists, rebels and political hypocrites.
Donald Trump is only like Hitler because of the fact he's losing this war on all fronts.
Apparently condemning a fascist ideology is the same as being fascist. And who the fuck are you to say I can't be fascist against fascist ideologies?
If merit was the only dividing factor in the human race, then everyone on Earth would be pretty damn equal.
Shit has been gated since 2004.
How do you think you got into Molten Core?
This is nothing new to WoW. If it is not your playstyle then dont play
Hey man, be careful with all that truth, you might accidentally shock a few worshippers.
*gasp* *running and checking something else which happened in the last 12 years to find somewhat remotely similar in order to have an argument to justify any shit which is happening and which might possible happen in the foreseeable future*
As a side note, if something was not perfect in the past, it doesn't mean that it has to be proposed again and glorified in its form (both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking, e.g. rng, gating) and, at worst, it doesn't mean that it has to be justified for the sole reason that it was/might have been present in the past, after all.
Last edited by Seneca; 2017-03-29 at 06:48 AM.