Blizzard doesn't want you to play

[ehxy]

You don't have to do those things. I very rarely log in except to raid. I don't do world quests, alts, dungeons, etc. I just raid right now, because I'm interested in other things at the moment. You can do that, too, instead of blaming Blizzard for it.

Giving us hoops to jump through and offering us an actual interesting experience are two very different things you know. I've got real life world quests like, do the dishes, mop the floor, do my laundry I log in to video games to feel empowered like slay dragons and experience interesting story, have an adventure and obtain the best transmogs!

[Deleted]

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

That's my point, 7.2 is so heavily gated you have to subscribe for 11 weeks to enjoy it... It doesn't matter if you're only playing 1 day a week but ultimately you need 3 month game time to experience it as opposed to having it all immediately in the first month

[Deleted]

That's my point, 7.2 is so heavily gated you have to subscribe for 11 weeks to enjoy it... It doesn't matter if you're only playing 1 day a week but ultimately you need 3 month game time to experience it as opposed to having it all immediately in the first month

Yes. You pay an expansion price for a patch.

[Beckers]

I don't want you to play.

[Deleted]

So a company wants to have profits???? Seriously??? thx for opening my eyes!!!
PS: i will remain suscribed because of raids and casual PvP anyway.

[Deleted]

So a company wants to have profits???? Seriously??? thx for opening my eyes!!!

Careful, strawmen catch fire easily. Don't burn your fingers.

[Haloswin]

That's kind of a fake dilemma, and not really true.

We don't object to Blizzard making money. What we object to is how it seems any time they have a choice between making the game better and making less profit, or making the game worse but making more profit, they ALWAYS go with more profit.

So you're cool with a company turning a profit -- but you get to decide how much. Brilliant. Do you also get to put limits on how much athletes earn? How about celebrities? Should a recording artist only be allowed to sell a certain number of records before they have to be given away? I've started two different companies -- one of them was much more successful.. I should have checked in with you first to make sure we weren't too successful.

To put it another way, the purpose of a GAME company should be to make money by making a good game. No one should begrudge them their rewards for creating a great and successful game. (I don't know how many of the people who made WoW a success are still at Blizzard.) But most people get upset when they see a company making a good game worse because that makes them more money.

And there you have it -- good is subjective. I've played since late in Vanilla -- there are a great many systems in game I consider to be better now than in those days and there are things I miss. The one thing I learned a long time ago was that not everyone likes the same things. In your previous statement you opine that it's their zeal to turn profits that has made the game worse.. I'd say their attempt to try to cast as wide a net as possible in order to make as many people as possible happy that's made it worse. Their fear of losing some aspects of their player base has led to miscalculations IMO... But I'm sure you view that as greed first and foremost. Meanwhile everyone who has ever spent money to make money understands that's just how you stay in business, well everyone except those people that think they get to decide how much a person or company should benefit from their efforts/ingenuity.

As for "founding their own game company", let's see Blizz open up the WoW IP to competitors (like WotC did with D&D) and then we can judge them fairly on the open market. As it is now, they look at lot like some people milking the IP they own, and not doing a particularly good job at anything but the milking.

The MMO-RPG concept is already open for anyone else to create their own game. Blizz didn't invent it -- they took their take of if and made it work. The DnD OGL and d20 system license doesn't really apply here. Chevrolet wouldn't allow Toyota to build an exact copy of their Corvette with a prettier interior and call it a Celica Super-Sport -- that's essentially what you're asking them to do.

Capitalism and competition are all well and good, but worshipping at the altar of profits are good because they're profits, or pretending that people who have put time and money into the game have no stake it in are BS positions.

Entitled, self righteous BS meanwhile is always in vogue....

Dude, Im a consumer too.. I know what I'm getting and what I'm paying for. I even know when to walk away and throw my cash at something else when I feel my standards aren't met. There comes a time when a person has to cut bait, particularly if they feel they are being sold an inferior product by a greedy corporation...

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Next time when you go to a cinema, watch only 2 minutes of a movie and then leave, then come back in a week and watch another 2 minutes, and so on and so on. Because, you know, dem stupid people nolifing content so everything must be time-gated.

I know you think you made a point but. Unless a person can somehow watch a 2 hour movie in 2 minutes yours is an apples and oranges comparison. But, I do agree with the whole "no-lifers blah blah blah", narrative being old.

To be honest, I've wondered if the reason (other than keeping people subbed), they gate things these days is to try to close the gap between those who have the time and those who do not -- in some ways to try curb the toxicity between the two camps.

All I know is every time I see the terms "no-lifers" and "filthy casuals" thrown around I think of this George Carlin skit... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWPCE2tTLZQ

[DarthMonk79]

You're actually wrong, the majority of people who complained in the past were casuals/softcore raiders. Hardcore players farmed a bit, took a break before the next tier or stockpiled gold by selling runs every week. The top 10% rarely complained about not having anything to do. Sure there's always a few outliers in any statistic when you're talking about the randomness of people, but there were very few people actually getting on the forums and complaining in BC-MoP when they were guilds completing content. WoD is a massive exception to what I'm talking about because they literally put that expansion out with nothing to do outside of raids. WoD was nothing like any prior expansion, it wasn't even enough content to be called an expansion.

I agree WoD is hands down the worst expansion they came out with. That being said I did love the zones and all the random treasures and stuff. Garrisons were okay but could have been so much cooler. I loved the idea of them it just fell flat. I remember they said at blizz-con that we'd be able to mount trophies and such everywhere. Like from raids and such.. have like Onyxia's Head mounted above the entrance into the Town Hall.. yet we got the generic garrisons that had very little you could do to decorate them.

[kamuimac]

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

you are looking for non existent problems - i understand that you love wow but times change and so do game - if you played any other mmorpgs over last 2-3 years you would know that whole world is shifting direction into chinese grind type of mmorpg - wow was just old relic that had to adapt to rest of industry .

[tss]

Their metric for engagement is hours played, and it's pretty transparent how their design decisions in Legion flow from that.

[Zyky]

I agree WoD is hands down the worst expansion they came out with. That being said I did love the zones and all the random treasures and stuff. Garrisons were okay but could have been so much cooler. I loved the idea of them it just fell flat. I remember they said at blizz-con that we'd be able to mount trophies and such everywhere. Like from raids and such.. have like Onyxia's Head mounted above the entrance into the Town Hall.. yet we got the generic garrisons that had very little you could do to decorate them.

I was at the Blizzcon where the announced WoD, I remember going to an art panel that they didn't show on the stream or any recordings of it, they talked a lot about how they had different building arts, both concept and models, for being able to customize your buildings with a specific race style. They also talked a lot about how you'd be able to pick which zone you wanted your garrison in, not sure if you've ever seen this video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQ7U2qPZvo), but there were so many different styles for Garrisons and I feel they took the very lazy way out.

Back to the point on hand, I strongly believe Blizzard is making some kind of play to destroy hardcore raiding completely this expansion. There's a very small amount of people even able to do the content quickly anymore, back in the day there were dozens of guilds that could clear content in the first 2 weeks, now we're looking at overtuned junk content that's only difficult because of the poor tuning. The mechanics aren't anything hard, they just hit hard and extremely punishing if a single person screws up. I honestly believe they're either trying to cut Mythic completely from the game by making people absolutely despise it this expansion or if they're completely serious with this tuning they're going to drive away a large portion of the community which will either force them to 1) cut the difficulty out of the game and go back to 3 difficulties, 2) start tuning mythic to be even easier than WoD Mythic was, or 3) Cut down the Mythic Raid size to 10 or 15. Details on #2, a lot of people are quitting and it isn't the poor playing players, this is showing in the statistics, at the beginning of this tier we lost 4 top 10 guilds from the game, portions of 2 of them merged to create a new guild, but a few from both quit. There's several others in the top 100 that have just disappeared from the game too. If you want to go beyond that MANY guilds are dying that are stuck at 3/10M because of the poor tuning.

[MrKnubbles]

It's possible that they're also stretching out aspects of the game so people won't beat it instantly and get bored and quit.

[MoanaLisa]

Clearly they do want you to play and to say anything else is nonsense.

Their primary measurements now for investors are monthly active users and engagement. Engagement is pretty much defined as how much customers play. To wit (from the 2016-Q4 investor call):

In 2016, consumers spent approximately 43 billion hours playing and watching Activision Blizzard content, on par with Netflix and over one-and-a-half times Snapchat. Blizzard’s fourth-quarter play time surpassed the previous record set in the third quarter.

Overwatch had its second and third seasonal events, Halloween Terror and Winter Wonderland, each one driving new records for engagement with the game. World of Warcraft saw an increase in total play time for the quarter, surpassing the Q3 expansion launch quarter and all non-launch quarters in the last four years.

[Blayze]

Legion is what happens when grind and RNG are mistaken for content.

[MoanaLisa]

Sure, some were a pain in the ass but there were also really epic quest chains that were absolutely worth the effort.

Also, never forget that WoW originally used to have deep roots to classic RPGs and especially Dungeons & Dragons. The game used to be more focused on the journey itself, less on material things. For example, I won't ever understand why people didn't like attunement quest chains. They made sense. They gave you purpose to do certain content and served as a slow build-up to endgame content.



As I said, both approaches come with pros and cons. There is no perfect solution pleasing everyone. I for one would ditch the antiquated leveling concept completely and come up with something new but that's another story...

You can either do the leveling or not do the leveling. You choose. That's about as perfect as it's going to get. Blizzard has decided to weight toward allowing returning and new players to play with their more advanced friends if that's their situation. That's perfectly logical and good business.

[Sughs]

Do what i do, only subscribe 3 or 4 weeks after major patches, when the gates on content are all opened. I can do most content while subbing only 3-4 months a year. Don't think many people are paying more than half a year, at best, since mid MoP.

[oathy]

It struck me this evening whilst Grinding the 100 ancient silks for the Tailoring quest.
Was in the Crescent ruins for about 2hrs. the Drop rate was atrocious. there's utterly no flow in this latest patch. WOD had its issues but at least the Jungle patch really flowed. Once the odd quest is done that's it. the spaceship flying over opening portals is a total waste of space.

Everything is linked to doing dungeons and Mythic at that. I've been in other 5 man raids and people think I'm just a poor player
I cant explain to them I play the game with only the use of 3 fingers owing to my disability. So when everything is linked to dungeons (Mythic)
maybe its rose tinted glasses. but in previous expansions there were always a few routes for players to reach the same destination

[MoanaLisa]

It struck me this evening whilst Grinding the 100 ancient silks for the Tailoring quest.
Was in the Crescent ruins for about 2hrs. the Drop rate was atrocious. there's utterly no flow in this latest patch. WOD had its issues but at least the Jungle patch really flowed. Once the odd quest is done that's it. the spaceship flying over opening portals is a total waste of space.

Everything is linked to doing dungeons and Mythic at that. I've been in other 5 man raids and people think I'm just a poor player
I cant explain to them I play the game with only the use of 3 fingers owing to my disability. So when everything is linked to dungeons (Mythic)
maybe its rose tinted glasses. but in previous expansions there were always a few routes for players to reach the same destination

Why did you bother to grind the quest though? Your disability aside (I sympathize with that in that I'm older now and not nearly as quick or twitchy as I once was and honestly have no interest whatsoever if being that way) if you are not interested or likely to play higher level dungeons or raids is there really a need to play in a very boring way just to get it out of the way quickly? Why not do 20 a night for five nights? Was collecting silks the single only thing that you need to do? Are you demonstrably worse off for stretching it out a bit?

I'm not attacking you or anything but trying to demonstrate that with a longer view and a little patience there's less need to do things that you end up disliking intensely before you've finished.

[Cyclone Duke]

I enjoy the game, I appriciate the fact I can delay emissaries for 3 days and blast through them at once. I don't feel pressured or obliged to play play play grind grind grind - because AK is slowly increasing and becoming my relaxation-granter. I'll never fall very far behind my peers so long as I do AP quests now and then and keep on top of my AK.

I get to enjoy my raids because I don't need to play 24/7 to be ready for my 6 hours of raiding I do a week. I there's no cap of AP for me to rush towards due to the infinite nature and the near-pointlessness of me to truely grind when just a few days later my AP income will be 1.3 stronger and the farming done prior to that time was that much less necessary.

If I want to grind out some nethershards, I just go to the sentinax and do what feels fun - using all my sentinax items i looted beforehand and summoning as many bosses as possible. And they've made that the best thing to do instead of farm murlocs for 5hrs.

The game is designed so that I can log in for 30 mins every day with 3 days being 90-odd minutes for my daily upkeep and general gameplay. And then I raid for 3hrs, 2 nights a week. During all of this I enjoy what's set in front of me and I always have something to look forwards to right around the corner - with a bigger reward somewhere a bit far off when i plan ahead. Some nights I'll get a transmog run going with guildies or we'll hammer out a couple of m+.

Some parts of the game really annoy me (needing loot-ability on a boss kill to loot quest items... buggy invasion NPCs and bosses...) and some design choices annoy me (flex raiding very punishing at some numbers of players - transmog system very restrictive - artifact is a staff? no 1h/offhand transmogs for you!), lack of immersion elements such as gul'dan acknowledging destruction warlocks, illidan not acknowleding DHs.

Some downsides I overlook, some I just huff and get over and don't get mad about, because the world isn't perfect and I can't let every single small gripe in the things I take part in get me down.

Overall I really enjoy the game, it suits my "game play appitite" even when I'm hungry for all different kinds of gameplay. And it homes my wonderful guild and friends. And casting 5 Havoc'd chaos bolts in a row is fucking awesome.

[SirCowdog]

A better comparison were "next time you get your hands on the Breaking Bad box set, watch only 2 hours per day". So you have something to watch for an entire months and not burn out by watching all over 4 days and then complain you got nothing to watch.

That analogy is a little inaccurate. Try this one:

You get charged an extra $15 every month you don't finish the season. And they only let you watch just enough each day/week that finishing a season takes just over a month.

Yeah...nothing shady about that at all.

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Legion is what happens when grind and RNG are mistaken for content.

Thing is, that CAN be done. Look at Diablo 3. All it takes is ensuring that the grind and RNG are enjoyable. D3 showers you with loot and builds, and the difficulty scales up appropriately.

We see some of that in M+, but not really anywhere else in the game. All wow really needs is more OPTIONS to scale up difficulty and drops, similar to D3. The reason why the content needs to be stretched with so much filler is because it's too linear and too disposable. If we applied the mechanics of M+ scaling and increased drops to even just world quests....well, wouldn't that increase the lifespan of the content in a more enjoyable way than time-gating?