Blizzard doesn't want you to play

[Echocho]

I'm a forum poster, like you. I don't have to have a different or special opinion of Blizzard to be a mod.

Blizzard is a company. Their goal (like other companies) at a high level is to make money. To make money they need to keep people subscribed and interested in the game. In order to do that, they have very little choice but to release content that is more of a wheel than a path. No one can produce enough content to feed everyone something new every day. They have to dangle the carrot to keep you going.

That's not despicable, that's just...business. If you truly don't like it, found your own gaming company and do as you want.

It worked just fine in the past, you know when the game had about twice as many subs as it does today. The wheel is spinning 1000% faster today than it used to and that's not a good thing. When you do one thing 100 times per week instead of over the course of an entire expansion of course people are going to get sick of it.
You don't have to think everything that comes out Blizzards' backside is pure gold, scoop it up and gobble it down.

- - - Updated - - -

So don't play? Let the casuals and people without the time required to dedicate to an MMO/RPG fade out so the people left can voice what they wanna see again? Im amazed about the amount of grind complaints after the past year or so of how "many people" wanted Vanilla. They didn't play apparently or remember idk.

There's a difference between grind and brain dead repetition.

[SirCowdog]

I'm a forum poster, like you. I don't have to have a different or special opinion of Blizzard to be a mod.

Blizzard is a company. Their goal (like other companies) at a high level is to make money. To make money they need to keep people subscribed and interested in the game. In order to do that, they have very little choice but to release content that is more of a wheel than a path. No one can produce enough content to feed everyone something new every day. They have to dangle the carrot to keep you going.

That's not despicable, that's just...business. If you truly don't like it, found your own gaming company and do as you want.

No, that is only this particular business model, and it is far from the only way to make money or profit.

The reason why it's viewed as being so unworthy is because it preys upon people's investment in the game and their (I hate to use this term, but it's appropriate) loyalty to the franchise.

It's not being done this way because it makes the game better. It's not being done this way to increase the quality of the product. And players recognize that, even if they can't bring themselves to speak with their wallets in response to it.

[l33t]

Agree with OP. The game now is not about gameplay or fun, it is about player retention and maximum milking of everyone who hasn't left already. Hell, even WoD was better, because at least in wod that small bits of content they produced weren't timegated.

"Gameplay" for 7.2:
- Log in
- Do 4 uninspiring and unfun world quests on isle of green boredom, to earn your 300 rep for flying which you'll get in 12 weeks (quests take like 15 minutes of your time)
- Raid if this is your raid day, otherwise log out and go play other game.

Totally best and biggest patch ever, yeah.

Good idea is: just cancel your sub, and when asked why, write everything you've wrote in your post. I hope fucking hazzicostas burns in hell for destroying my game.

There is no middle ground between 100% happy with the current state of the game and hating to play but someone is holding a gun to your head? Cool thanks I had no idea.

Bleh, eleccybulb is a very well known blizzard's WK, he will defend his Irvine overlords no matter what. No reason to even start arguing...

[hulkgor]

Holy hell.

Shitposts getting worse by the day...

[Kallisto]

The issue though is that for everyone waiting the game one way, there is another person that wants the polar opposite that is completely incompatible. Yes at one point wow had 12m active subs. But it was following a story arc from WC3 which ended when Tirion remembered he had bubble.

Once that happened subs began to decline with a mix of people thinking death of Arthas being time to roll credits, age, cataclysm dungeons too hard, cataclysm dungeons becoming too easy, raids too hard, raids nerfed, DS being terrible, transmog (yes people bitched about this and quit), lfr and not enough dailies . Then came MoP which was lol panda, kungfu panda (even though Pandaren predate the movie), a demand for no dailies, heroic dungeons too easy, raids too long even though the community asked them to be this long, not warcraft enough, most complaints again complete opposite of Cataclysm.

Then WoD people complaining about lack of dailies, no dailies being something that was demanded in MoP. With one short raid and 2 long raids which once including world bosses were more raid bosses than cataclysm (I'm including baradin hold and only considering 1 difficulty ), but dungeon difficulty slightly increased, but people complained how they were useless after a week. Late expansion we get mythic dungeons but too little too late.

Then we have Legion. In which by now we realise the wow player could and would rush skyrim or even witcher 3 amount of content in a few days if left ungated. Also we have dailies back, altered so the tedious task of clicking and npc is gone. Dungeon issue removed with mythic plus. More dungeons than either MoP or WoD plus added dungeons, also requested means for people to have a means to have optional ways to gear and the also requested means of post max level xp gain through the ap/ak system.

So now we have feelings of forced when optional, people wanting limits when before they wanted none, people blowing through too much burning themselves out and also complaints about M+ and other things.

Now like I said before what you might want is polar opposite what someone else wants and I feel post Wrath cycle of expansions show it.

A game wows age in reality shouldn't have the following it has, sure people play old classics but not in the millions. The past few expansions have shown that the sides are too entrenched and the happy medium will be the unhappy one. What groups were happy in cataclysm hated MoP, those who liked MoP hated WoD the most (if we disregard theme.) Legion has become the marmite of expansions highlighting the extreme split in the playerbase.

Even though in the end the main core element of the game really hasn't changed much since whenever dailies became a thing, the groups see these changes as huge. And in short no Blizzard isn't trying to screw over the players and only make money with little gameplay.

It's more the company is struggling to create a game that can appease such a schizophrenic fanbase as wow's is, which in the end I feel is impossible.

Blizzard should do I feel one of two things. A) Actively ask everyone that has wow linked to their btag and played for at least a year what do they want in the game mechanically and hope for a coherent workable answer with a strong majority. Or B) pick one of the sides in the playerbase and focus hard on them and hope the losses are made up for with returning players

[DarthMonk79]

Except it wasn't like this until Legion, so that's a blanket excuse. Now after the massive failure that WoD was, that cost them almost 6M subs in a year, they're punishing players with these endless grinds and endless everything. There should always be an end game, there should always be an attainable finish mark, and there just isn't anymore in any aspect of the game. AP has a hard finish, its attainable after 6 months, but hard gated behind those 6 months of knowledge ranks. Raid gearing, no one will ever be full BiS because of the garbage Titanforged system(not to even mention that they tune raids around good RNG with this system, different argument though), it's just impossible. No one will ever be full 925 gear with sockets in every slot. Blizzard maintained subs throughout 3 expansions, maintained and grew subs. BC the sub count kept growing and growing did we have any kind of endless forced grind? nope. Wrath maintained 9-10M subs throughout the whole expansion, was there a forced grind? nope. Cata dropped a few subs, but it wasn't a large amount, but the content was overall pretty good, was there a forced grind? nope. So good for Blizzard wanting to make money, but they made far more money when they actually listened to the playerbase and didn't force a ton of shit on players that no one wants to be a part of.

Except this is what happens... People hit that end game finishing mark and then bitch about not being able to progress their characters more till the next raid or the next expansion. They said at Blizz-con that these weapons would be of use the "Entire" expansion... not maxed out and then just for show in the middle of the expansion, but for the entire expansion. you can max out reps, paragon just gives you more bonuses for doing the dailies and other stuff other than just the regular quest rewards. Yet people feel the need to complain about that... what if exalted was as far as you could go? Then all of sudden people start complaining about wondering why they're are still doing world quests other than for gold and AP. Now you get even more gold, AP a chance at a new mount just for doing stuff that you were already going to do anyways.. so why complain? You guys/gals are complaining because you can't max out your weapon with 1 week of something coming out... yet you also complain when we hit gaps in the game with nothing to do. My god.... I swear its like Blizzard is damned if they do and damned if they don't....

[l33t]

Then we have Legion. In which by now we realise the wow player could and would rush skyrim or even witcher 3 amount of content in a few days if left ungated.

Thanks for a good laugh, sir/lady. Witcher3 amount of content, seriously, that's a signature material

[Oneirophobia]

Nice to see you have nothing to bring to the table.

Indeed, you two have something in common! The "just unsub lol" response has got to be almost as tired as vanilla server posts.


---

On topic, the time gating is getting a little jarring. I really don't like seeing the dozens of Facebook ads from the WoW page along the lines of "come get your class hall mounts!" and "tomb of sargeras is waiting for you!" trying to get people to sub, meanwhile you can't actually access either of those features.

It just feels like false advertising. Remember those sea monkey kits when you were a kid? It's like that crap. So many strings.

Now, I've been playing this game for over a decade and I'm a little too attached to just quit altogether, but I worry the time may be drawing near. Heroes of the Storm just pooped on everything by switching to Overwatch's "Hey, want this cool skin? Buy a box for a chance to get it... maybe you'll spend a dollar, maybe you'll have to spend $200! WOO". If that awful mechanic somehow makes it into WoW, I think that is the line I won't cross.

[Crimewave]

You people need to stop with your weird conspiracy theories.
There's no evil fucking intent to screw whole playerbase over. It's almost like you are trying to make excuses for Blizzard.
Some devs are just terrible and have no idea what are they doing with the game in the long run.

[SirCowdog]

Thanks for a good laugh, sir/lady. Witcher3 amount of content, seriously, that's a signature material

Thing is, both Skyrim and The Witcher have content that's much more dense and detailed than anything WoW has to offer. It's like comparing a slice of processed white bread to a piece of gourmet cheesecake.

[Deleted]

I really don't like seeing the dozens of Facebook ads from the WoW page along the lines of "come get your class hall mounts!" and "tomb of sargeras is waiting for you!" trying to get people to sub, meanwhile you can't actually access either of those features.

It just feels like false advertising. Remember those sea monkey kits when you were a kid? It's like that crap. So many strings.

So true. This fits right in with how they did not specify the content release schedule until after three days had passed from launch. Thousands of people resubbed in the hopes of being overwhelmed with content and some even took a week off from work. Mind you, a few days before the launch in their Q&A it was hyped up to be the biggest patch ever. They did NOT specify that it would all be time-gated.

Had they documented the iLvL scaling fiasco many would have been deterred from resubbing as well. It all just feels there is too much damage control and too much false advertising.

[Deleted]

I'm a forum poster, like you. I don't have to have a different or special opinion of Blizzard to be a mod.

Blizzard is a company. Their goal (like other companies) at a high level is to make money. To make money they need to keep people subscribed and interested in the game. In order to do that, they have very little choice but to release content that is more of a wheel than a path. No one can produce enough content to feed everyone something new every day. They have to dangle the carrot to keep you going.

That's not despicable, that's just...business. If you truly don't like it, found your own gaming company and do as you want.

Yeah every company is a company. Great argument. Bioware is a company. Square Enix is a company.

Obviously that means it is ok for them to do whatever they want and nothing can be criticized.

Hey, newsflash: people don't like greed. It's not a trait people respect. And when people, or companies, act greedy, people don't like it. Blizzard wasn't always like this. They didn't always do this. They became greedier and greedier. Are you even capable of discussing this or can you only make up excuses, you corporate shill?

"Hey, Nestle is a company, don't criticize them for denying that water is a basic human right, they're just a company, they're supposed to make money."

[Echocho]

So true. This fits right in with how they did not specify the content release schedule until after three days had passed from launch. Thousands of people resubbed in the hopes of being overwhelmed with content and some even took a week off from work. Mind you, a few days before the launch in their Q&A it was hyped up to be the biggest patch ever. They did NOT specify that it would all be time-gated.

Had they documented the iLvL scaling fiasco many would have been deterred from resubbing as well. It all just feels there is too much damage control and too much false advertising.

It does feel like they're trying to trick us into playing at this point.

[Deleted]

It does feel like they're trying to trick us into playing at this point.

Yes. They're stretching it out to hit milestones for fiscal quarters. Patch released on the 28th, saw a huge uptick in activity, quarter ended on the 31st. Tomb finally comes out at the end of June, perhaps before Stormblood comes out, and will likely see a surge in activity with the end of the fiscal quarter at the end of the month.

Expect this to continue going forward.

[Huntaer]

Legion has certainly made me think this especially with 7.2

Currently with 7.2 you can't really do much more than we did before 7.2..........

[MarkM88]

Could not agree with you more. I feel even less motivated to play than I did during Warlords of Goldmaking. But damn if I'm not checking my phone to manage my garrison order hall. My only real saving grace to keeping the sub active is that I bought it with tokens at the end of WOD....so at least it's not my own RL $.

Sadly, that means I cannot even vote with my wallet at this point. GG Blizzard.

[Deleted]

They certainly don't in this patch, so I cancelled my sub. Guess the time gating trick doesn't work that well.

[DesoPL]

WoW just became another grindy MMO such Warframe etc, and we must deal with it.

I blame CEO Activision Bobby Kottick for that.

[Twdft]

The reason they gave us "unfinishable" content in Legion is because we no-lifed too much in the earlier expansions and whined "I finished everything there is no content" in all the forums.

We always got a lot of content for our money (yes even WoD, maybe less but enough) and it's entirely our fault as a playerbase when we consume it on day 1 and then hyperbole about nothing to do.

[Beckers]

They want you to pay.

I'll try to be as constructive as possible here. The more you play, the less time you will subscribe, so Blizzard has done everything they possibly can to slow down your gaming experience to keep you subscribed for longer.

AP/AK
They say they want AP to come 'naturally', but there's nothing 'natural' about the AP/AK system. The system has been deliberately designed to make you feel like waiting for the next 5 days for your next order instead of playing the game now. The more you wait = the longer you are subscribed.

Time gating
The less you see, the better. With content time gated and players waiting weeks or months for the staggered release of content (e.g. LFR, flight), Blizzard feels as though they will subscribe for longer.

No more destinations
Blizzard has also removed the ability to really 'complete' a lot of their content including reputation farming. You can no longer ever really finish reputations. This might sound like a good idea on paper ('if they never finish the reputations, they'll never unsubscribe!') but when people realise that there is no longer any goal to achieve, they will stop bothering.

Nerfs
Every lucrative source of currency has been nerfed to oblivion (Mythic+ AP, Nethershards, Mage Tower AP, etc). Why the nerfs? The slower you earn currency, the more time you need to buy items. More time = subscribed longer.

I hope that we return to a 'gameplay first' model rather than a 'metrics first' model. That is the way to retain long term subscriptions as opposed to cheap tactics like AK.



From the US Forums by Ikhj - https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753797048

My subscription is active for 10 years with a break of 1 expansion due to work. This argument does not hold..