Casual players dominate WoW, yet game is still focused on esports?

[schmonz]

Around 25% of all profiles on wowhead have the highest s3 mythic+ dragonflight keystone achievement.

https://www.wowhead.com/achievement=...-season-three#

Around 40% of all profiles have the s3 entry level keystone achievement.

https://www.wowhead.com/achievement=...r-season-three

40%+ play mythic+ casually, 25% play it on a high level.

You have a notable minority, and a small minority.

My prediction is, as older WoW gets, and as more the developers cater to mythic+ players, as lower the number gets of both percentages that do not play mythic+ and those that play wow at all. WoW is actively being turned into a dungeon brawler, and the players that do not play mythic+ will not play at all for longer than a initial hype.

In the end, WoW will be played by the players it is catered to. And even if mythic+ is adressing a minority only, even a niche like that is comparable big nowadays. Simply as the PC games market gets bigger and bigger.

The market for pc gamers grew from 1,1bn PC players in 2008 to 1,89bn players nowadays. If WoW would adress a broad audience, it could easily address double digit millions of players nowadays concurrently.

[LedZeppelin]

Wow having AWC / M+ thing doesnt make WoW an esports title. There is soooooo much casual content in this game.

[Relapses]

I dunno. I think systems can be put into place that encourage raiding as the best and fastest way to get stronger (with some unique trinkets / items attached to Mythic only fights) - but also allowing non-raiders to progress towards said end-game over a longer period of time (it's somewhat like that rn).

I wager this is a goal with Delves. It's funny that a lot of times the discussion about ways to get casuals their own endgame path usually result in people inadvertently describing Delves followed shortly by somebody who identifies themselves as a casual saying, "no, I want real dungeons!"

c'est la vie

[Ielenia]

Eh, they could add M0 (not 1-10) to the finder and require everyone but the healer to have a interrupt. And if you spec into a stun ability (AoE or single) it'd give you priority in that role (outside of healer). There are ways to reliably have the system require certain things of the player, and especially if they get faster queues and / or better rewards for doing it.

Well, starting TWW, mythic0 is going to be our current 1-10, so the idea of putting it in the LFD kind of has been defenestrated, otherwise I agree on that. However, I don't think the idea of prioritizing those with talented interrupts/stuns would work very well. You see, it's my experience doing LFR and LFD that players that aren't participating in organized group content tend to not really care for responsibilities, meaning they're often not going to bother interrupting or stunning and preferring to just DPS down everything. Which means, as I see it, that feature would just slow down queue times a huge deal as we'd have a "tank shortage" situation, though in this case it would be a "CC shortage" situation.

[PenguinChan]

I wager this is a goal with Delves. It's funny that a lot of times the discussion about ways to get casuals their own endgame path usually result in people inadvertently describing Delves followed shortly by somebody who identifies themselves as a casual saying, "no, I want real dungeons!"

c'est la vie

That's what I'm thinking, a new open world progression system for casual players to push through over time. They started doing it in Dragonflight with the item sets for open world but... I think that variant kind of fell flat on its face. Delves on the otherhand if they're properly tuned and designed kinda like Eureka / Bozja was, it could be potentially a lot of fun. Especially if you're a tank or healer, you actually matter in those open world scenarios lol.

And yeah, they want 'real dungeons' as in 'I want to queue for it' - which is a dilemma.

You can't make Heroic like Cata release otherwise the game would die, people would be babies about it. If Blizzard could teach players over time in dungeons (normal and heroic) I don't see why we wouldn't get M0 (not M+) as a queueable thing if you meet a few requirements. I'm sure people disagree on that notion, but I'm not really fond of the current group finder being an almost glorified version of the RDF tool. Until higher level keys, that is. IMO it's funny how people can finally learn to get better and have queue systems for it. FFXIV proved that, maybe WoW can soon.

Well, starting TWW, mythic0 is going to be our current 1-10, so the idea of putting it in the LFD kind of has been defenestrated, otherwise I agree on that. However, I don't think the idea of prioritizing those with talented interrupts/stuns would work very well. You see, it's my experience doing LFR and LFD that players that aren't participating in organized group content tend to not really care for responsibilities, meaning they're often not going to bother interrupting or stunning and preferring to just DPS down everything. Which means, as I see it, that feature would just slow down queue times a huge deal as we'd have a "tank shortage" situation, though in this case it would be a "CC shortage" situation.

It's nice that they squished it down and made M0 the base experience (at the M10 ilvl). And the reason I mention that is so that there is the ability to deal with situations without the need to redo talents mid-dungeon. As for people not using their abilities - you just gotta make it satisfying / rewarding. IE: Interrupt an enemy, it blows up the entire group with a mini-knockup stun. Silence a caster, and suddenly the things it was buffing are now weak and exposed. Stuff like that where visually, the action changes things more visceral than just a... Reduction to damage to the tank or the group.

Elite-type enemies in a lot of dungeon crawlers and horde shooters / slashers are a good example of 'oh shit that's something I gotta deal with / pay attention to'. Not enough for them to, y'know, end everyone's lives. But they require your attention and having to deal with them (sooner rather than later) is preferable. You can brute force it, again, but often it slows things down if you do. Spitball takes ofc, just thinking what may fit within WoW's design.