Has LFR effected the non-raiding Endgame?

[Deleted]

What? Back in wrath people constantly did dungeons at max level to farm justice/valor/orbs and we didn't have LFR then.

LFR has no negative impact on the game.

[Deleted]

One of the problems is that, when you look at computer gaming manufacture objectively, we as a gaming community are getting very little for our money.

7m players at ~£8 pm (guessing at an average depending on if you pay for 1 month or 6) is £56m pm or £672m per year (before taxes). EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic is reckoned to be the most expensive video game of all time to develop at approx $200m (about £125m). That's paid for in 9 weeks by WoW's subscriptions.
Obviously the two aren't directly comparable as Blizzard need to maintain a much larger staff post-development (GMs, community reps, Devs) as well as the server running and maintenance costs but what it boils down to is that Blizzard are playing pauper despite the massive income. This isn't taking into account store sales, character services

With all that in mind, I don't think the player base is unreasonable in requesting more CONTENT across a broader spectrum. More dungeons, battlegrounds, quests etc. The counter-argument is that Blizzard has a team of designers and artists etc. and recruitment isn't as straightforward as "get more people in". They have to get "the right people". It's not simple etc. Maybe it's not but it should still be happening.

P.S. I'm not expecting 100% of the money to go back into the game, they are a profit-making company after-all.
P.P.S. I'm a fan of raiding and the game meets my personal needs well though I also used to enjoy 5-mans a lot more in previous expansions, they're not fun nor worthwhile in WoD. Looking forward to mythic dungeons but still would like to see more content.

[Deleted]

I think there are more things to do in each expansion than there ever were in the previous one. That being said, as an MMO, the choices for people who play the game essentially solo are always going to be limited. The end game is basically organised PvP or PvE.

I do think that the legendary questline in both MoP and WoD has changed what everyone will end up doing at level cap, however. And with LFR being the vehicle for that for many players, you could argue that LFR becomes basically essential for all players, regardless of what they enjoy most.

[Pharreldruid]

When has non raiding ever been end game? Even in vanilla end game was MC, BWL etc. just because most players were still leveling and didn't make it to end game doesn't mean end game didn't exist.

[zorkuus]

When has non raiding ever been end game?

Ever heard of dungeons for example?

[mysticx]

When has non raiding ever been end game? Even in vanilla end game was MC, BWL etc. just because most players were still leveling and didn't make it to end game doesn't mean end game didn't exist.

I had plenty of endgame running 5-mans for badges/emblems/VPs all the way up to SoO, thank you very much...

Endgame is what people do at level cap (And that means "Not just raids", despite Blizzard's current fixation on them), but there's preciously little outside of raids in WoD once you finished the levelling quests, all other expansions had far more useful things to do at level cap than WoD, and that's the biggest shortcoming of the expansion

[Bethanie]

LFR isn't the problem per-se, rather it is simply the method/excuse Blizzard used to justify diverting development time away from Dungeons into Raids.

Prior to LFR the situation was that the vast majority of end game development went into raids, which only a tiny fraction of the playerbase ever actively engaged in, with what was left over spent on dungeons and 'other stuff' that the majority of the playerbase engaged in. So rather than diverting development time away from raiding and focusing on the content that the vast majority of their customers wanted, Blizzard (successfully) tried to force players into raiding via LFR.

Personally I would love Blizzard to sacrifice a couple of raid tiers and give us more dungeons, though it won't happen because the vocal minority of raiders would complain even more than now.

[Deleted]

Endgame is what people do at level cap (And that means "Not just raids",

End game is a chess term used to describe the period when you will complete the game. It is not a synonym for level cap content. End game is undeniably raiding or group PvP (and the hardest brackets of both). As for dungeons, I'm not sure which expansion you think had that as more of a test than challenge modes do now.

[Apexis]

I feel like since the introduction of LFR, all other parts of the endgame have been diluted. When only a fraction of the player-based raided, there was a strong need to have end-game content that was not based around raiding- rep grinds, dailies, dungeons- content that progressed the story, and kept players who were solo or in small groups engaged.

With LFR, and the vast majority of players raiding, I feel that the content has shifted to a raiding exclusive endgame- everyone can raid via LFR, so why spend the time coming up with other things for non-raiding players to do?

The way I see it, its Blizzard's excuse to not make more content outside of the LFR or raiding for that matter. They are trying to get to a model of expansion content that allows them to make yearly expansion. The only way they can get there is to limit the amount of world content past the leveling process. This why the went to a timeless isle concept/Apexis dailies, turn rep into an only grind if you really want to proposition. The grind use to be part of the leveling process, but in recent years they turned that into a track meet to get to the end game content.

They are coming to the end in this game, while their other games are starting to bear fruit and will soon completely take over WoW as their go to cash cows. We are in the time in this game where it just not going to matter to them over the long haul. We are simply going to continue to get small bite size chunks of content, like what came in 6.1 and more timeless isle style of content that is coming in 6.2 until enough people leave the game on a permanent basis. Making expansions that provide some initial means of story through leveling and tying them into raid content is a small enough foot print to get to a point where they can really get to a yearly turnaround. Question is....Are enough people going to buy into the whole concept.

Those that think the next expansion is going to be grander and much more in depth are simply kidding themselves. Blizzard is showing you right now what they are planning to do in to future with the content they now make. If it something you have enjoyed over the last 5 months or so then the simply have you on the hook, if not then the overwhelming amounts people that already left will continue to happen until they get down to a couple million or so subs. Which really get closer to the amount of people that only raid. I think they would like to get to a point where they only have to make raid content, maybe throw some pet battle stuff in for those that raid and pet battle and then throw in a timeless isle here and there to fill in any other time in between raids.

[Deleted]

When has non raiding ever been end game? Even in vanilla end game was MC, BWL etc. just because most players were still leveling and didn't make it to end game doesn't mean end game didn't exist.

I was still running Scholomance...
Well it's hard to compare vanilla to anything today because the times were so different, but basically what I did was run 5mans, MC only trash, dabbled in pvp, spent tons of time on professions which I loved until 6.0. "Raiding" for pug scrubs like me meant killing max. 1 boss per raid when the content was nearly out-of date. I actually switched to private servers from time to time so I could actually see BWL and kill Chromaggus, etc etc.
In BC, Karazhan was easy enough to be raided as a pug, but it was still alot of 5man and spirit shard grinding, lower city rep grind etc.

[Traveler Voltin]

Blizzard is just plain lazy and blame lfr it.

[DeadmanWalking]

When has non raiding ever been end game? Even in vanilla end game was MC, BWL etc. just because most players were still leveling and didn't make it to end game doesn't mean end game didn't exist.

Raiding is not the only thing that is end game or else raiding would be called end game and not raiding. End game is anything you can do once you get past all previous expansions and make it to maximum level, end game content includes rep grinds, fishing activities, PVP, dungeons, scenarios, mount collecting, ect. Basically what you will be doing for majority of your time in that expansion. There is even end game economy, which in the first tier of wod was mostly just selling savage bloods as that was the only mat with any kind of value.

[Dadwen]

I had no problems with MOP's outside raid content so, no blizzard just dropped the ball IMO in WOD.

[RickJamesLich]

No doubt LFR has impacted the end game, if you have masochistic tendencies I suppose it's alright, but one of the biggest impacts on the end game was when people demanded nerfs after they made the Cata heroics require some thinking. That in itself was a cause of people being used to mindlessly easy heroic 5 mans from Wrath... so where the real screw ups happened are debatable.

As for LFR, IMO they need massive changes to it, since it's essentially a practice mode, why not make it official? I think between that, and only having *some* of the bosses being available in LFR, it would make the content a lot more interesting and offer a reward for those that advance.

[zephid]

Yes LFR has probably had an effect on non-raiding endgame. If LFR didn't exist Blizzard would probably feel obligated to create more non-raiding content for the non-raiding (non-raiding as in not taking part in organized raids) community, which would be bigger compared to now since most people who runs LFR wouldn't be raiding anything at all if LFR didn't exist.

[Kokolums]

Yes. It extended it's longevity by letting many, many more people experience raids.

If LFR hadn't been implemented raids would've taken a back seat development wise and smaller, more focused content would've flourished.

I'd like to think that without LFR raiding would've died out almost entirely. Giving how much they cost to produce and how few players were actually running them.

Bet we'd have some fucking awesome 5 mans instead, less having to deal with megomanical guild leaders to play too

if LFR and the group tool had never been implemented, the playerbase probably would have swelled upwards of 30 million. people would have been forced to socialize and make friends for the past 8 years which would have snowballed the playerbase. there would be a TON more raiders today and there would probably have been more raids than what we got with LFR.