Blizzard has created a divided community - discuss.

[Deleted]

This might get long, so apologies in advance.
So I've been thinking lately, while reading the numerous threads revolving around the game becoming "too casual" or LFR related flame wars, and it's made me realise how divided the WoW community is at the moment. It is VERY difficult to argue there is no divide present, and I would say that the blame for this division of the community lies squarely at Blizzard's feet.

Their desire to try and please everyone, combined with their loss of interest in the more competitive and challenge focused elements of hardcore raiding has led to this seriously damaging divide in the game's community. The divide between hardcore raiders who think "what the hell are they doing to the game I've loved for the last 6 years?" and the casual community, who think "why can't these elitists just let us have our fun?"

The problem is that both sides present some compelling arguments. The hardcore would argue that they are the ones who have been playing for years, and who have supported Blizzard through thick and thin, and that the game they fell in love with now is no longer recognisable. The hardcore players argue that elements like LFR and the normal / heroic mode split have "ruined" the true spirit of raiding - which used to be about killing hard bosses, and if you couldn't kill them then you just had to shape up and try harder / spend more time refining your tactics. These people argue that LFR and easy normal modes have trivialised the sense of excitement about a raid. There is no longer any "mystique" about them, because (aside from hard mode only phases like Heroic Rag P4 or hard mode only bosses like Sinestra or Algalon) everyone has seen the fights anyway by the time you get to heroic mode.

Conversely, the more casual community, which has grown immensly since Wrath of the Lich King, argues that the game shouldn't be a job, and that they pay the same sub fee as the hardcores, so why should they be treated like second class citizens? Why should a raid only been seen by 1% of the community? Surely everyone should be able to raid and get epic loot? Why should we have to spend weeks running an older raid just so we can see the new content?

Both sides present some decent points, however it is the fact that there were two sides at all which has become the biggest problem, and it is a problem which is causing serious damage, whether you want to admit it or not, to the wow community in general. Back in Vanilla and TBC, raiding was hard. It required skill and effort, and the ability to commit to a fair amount of play time even if you just wanted to clear Karazhan. (Which was a pretty hard instance before you outgeared it) it was, in part, because of this that Blizzard decided to make raiding more accessible in Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK was launched and the hardcore raiding community went berserk. Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and the Eye of Eternity were obliterated in three days by people still wearing alot of level 70 gear. However ALOT more people started raiding. People for whom raiding had been a pipe dream in TBC could suddenly go into a raid instance, kill bosses fairly quickly and walk out with epic loot.

THIS was where the divide began. Up until then, the raiding population wasn't particularly huge, and it was kind of all or nothing. You either raided or you didn't. However with Wrath of the Lich King, I would argue the concept of casual raiding was born. Guilds which were previously purely social levelling guilds could now go and start killing raid bosses. While this did happen in TBC, the numbers were FAAAAR smaller.

Ulduar went a long way to repairing the damage that Tier 7 did to the hardcore raiders, presenting an exceptional instance, with some of the best boss encounters Blizzard has ever created. Then ToC came out and the raiders went berserk again. Another easy raid instance, which was fast to clear - a casual player's dream?

By the time Wrath of the Lich King was over, the playerbase had swelled enormously and so too had the raiding population. There was now a very clear split - you had the hardcore raiders, who were crashing like water on rock against heroic 25 man Lich King, and you had the more casual groups, who were still struggling to beat him on normal mode, but who were emboldened by success in ToC and Naxxramas etc. (Ok there were far more splits than this, because you could subdivide even further between the "just starting heroics" guilds, the Lich King hc progress guilds and the "still 9 - 10 / 12 heroic I HATE U SINDY / PROF P guilds etc, but for the purposes of this argument the two outlined above are the important ones)

Cracks were already starting to appear in the community, between the hardcores who thought that hc Lich King was perfect and that the rest of the instance was too easy, and the casuals who were simply nowhere near that level but had gotten used to killing bosses and getting shiny titles etc. These cracks opened into a full scale ravine when Cataclysm hit. Many of the hardcores were joyful at this return to a world of challenging 5 mans, which required CC and a properly executed kill order, and which had boss abilities that could actually kill you. The casual community however hit a brick wall, struggling to complete even the heroic 5 man content, they went into Tier 11 and promptly had their rear ends handed to them on a plate by some very challenging and unforgiving (even on normal mode) boss encounters.

Blizzard felt that maybe they had gone abit too far with Tier 11 and the vanilla Cata heroics, and so made adjustments for later content, but by now the damage had been done. Viscious flame wars were breaking out all over the community, with hardcore raiders telling people to just suck it up and get better, and that this is how the game should be, and the casual community calling them elitists and raging about how they pay subs too and so they deserve to be able to kill everything at least on normal.

LFR was the crowning moment in the whole issue up until this point, and now it seems there is no way to reconcile the two groups.

The point of that long winded and clearly VERY cool story (bro) was to illustrate my core belief - BLIZZARD have caused this divide. Through their actions and design decisions over the course of the last two expansions, they have created a nasty split in their community. A split which is probably never going to get better, only worse as the endless "REMOVE LFR AND TELL THE SCRUBS TO L2P" and "I LOVE LFR ALL RAIDERS ARE ELITIST TWATS" threads continue.

Did they drop the ball? Should they have kept on their TBC course and focused more effort on trying to teach people how to raid effectively, rather than just lowering the difficulty and thus irritating their more hardcore playerbase? Was this divide inevitable from the minute they launched WOTLK with T7 in the state that it was? Has their back and forth between difficult and easy seen over the course of Cataclysm only served to widen the divide further?

Discussion hats people!

[Zdain]

There have always been 2 groups, Casuals and Hardcores it isn't a recent creation. With that said, I think the only thing hardcore players have any right to bitch about is the nerfing of Hardmode encounters. So what you don't like LFR, don't freaking do it, it allows people to actually see a raid without all these idiots spamming about having to have a certain ilvl in order to join a normal raid. LFR did next to nothing to hardcore raiding because the ilvls on the items from Heroic FL was 391 and for the most part the ilvl for LFR is 384. The only exception was allowing hardcore raiders access to more T13 tokens in the beginning of the progression grind.

As for the overall quality of raiding, it's going to fluxuate, programmers and devs are human. Illidan and KJ were great fun, 25m KT was a let down, Alone in the Dark was enraging, Anub wasn't bad, Heroic LK was a difficult fight, Sinestra was an alright one, Heroic Rag was fantastic, and both the Deathwing fights were let downs.

[RoutanClan]

Pro tip : this is going to start another flame war between those who call themselves elite(who make up most of this forum),normal players who defend the changes lightly, and the 2 causal players asking for 410 gear for clearing hoggar.

Can these people just stop.

[Windfury]

Honestly I think there will always be some sort of division in any large community. If it wasn't this we'd have just found something else to argue over. You can't please all of the people all of the time etc.

[Nobleshield]

The divide exists in a much greater capacity now since there's normal and heroic (not counting LFR since it's for a totally different type of player) and normal modes no longer matter.

[Aurabolt]

Blizzard didn't Divide the Community. The Community did that on its own.

[RoutanClan]

The divide exists in a much greater capacity now since there's normal and heroic (not counting LFR since it's for a totally different type of player) and normal modes no longer matter.

Normals don't matter anymore because the content has been out too long meaning anyone who used to run normals is now either geared or trying to gear up for heroics.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Blizzard's biggest mistake was convincing one half of the community that the other half are horrible players that just whine.

Cataclysm review on amazon.com

[rated]

An MMO isn't meant for casual gaming imo. It's a time sink...something you spend a lot of time on. Blizzard is trying to go against this though and hence the arguments that follows.

[Kakokun]

I think they should remove heroic mode, up the difficulty on normal mode slightly and have hard versions of fights like it was in Ulduar. If you can't clear the raid then too bad, that's what LFR is for.

Though my biggest issue with all these different modes is the stupid stat inflation gear gets.

[Nobleshield]

Normals don't matter anymore because the content has been out too long meaning anyone who used to run normals is now either geared or trying to gear up for heroics.

Even when a new raid just comes out, normal mode doesn't matter. It's all about heroic now that there's two difficulties. Normal mode is just seen as a stepping stone to heroic, with heroic being the "real" raid, when heroic is meant to be 100% optional.

You would probably never find a guild that's content with only clearing normals (by content I mean clear it on normal and never bother to try heroic, not one that can't do heroic), because progression only counts with heroic modes.

That's the biggest problem with the game now IMO, we should have it where there was just one version of the raid, difficult but not insanely hard, so the elite guilds clear it quickly, the good guilds clear it a little while later, and the average guilds can clear it before the next raid launches. Instead we have the current model where elite/good/average clear normal pretty quickly, and heroic is a huge roadblock for all but the elite for quite some time, with some guilds never progressing at all.

[Jeleh]

To be honest the top and bottom end are probably the most satsfied, the extremely casual raider can do lfr and get his gear/see content, the hardcore raider can push the envelope and get world firsts.

Where the current system breaks down is in two places; first the gap between content is so long that once top players clear the raids, there is little left for them to do, an area of raid challenge modes/extremely hard achivements are probably the only thing that could satisfy this group inbetween the huge lull of content. Secondly, the significant number of players in the middle. Basically these guys aint good enough to be top end raiders but consider themselves above others, they are the ones who complain about LFR/content becomming easier/nerfed everyone seeing content.

A bunch of special snowflakes who can't accept they are not top teir players, but are above average complain because the increased numbers who can push on with lfr/nerfed content take away from their desire/need to feel awesome when they are not.

Those at the top don't care, they just want more to do/even harder challenges as they get more gear. Those at the bottom are happy they can gear up/improve their chars and see content.

A nice feature would be an ability to have raids scale with damage/health based on Ilvl, say a reverse ds buff so after you clear it on heroic first time, you can add in the buff that increases mobs healths/damage by 5%, clear that mode, you unlock the 10% version, no new loot just an achi after each version this gives the real hardcore raiders a continuing challenge as they gear up.

[slime]

Well written post. And yes - the groups have always existed @ Zdain, but he/she isn't talking about the fact there ARE two groups - he/she is saying that Blizz has caused a divide between them. Before, they co-existed hand in hand and were friendly and helpful to each other. Now, they hate each other - is what the OP is saying. And I think he/she is correct there is a great deal of animosity there now I didn't see before.

But there real REAL question.... does it even matter.

[notorious98]

Here's a good concept. No nerfs for Heroic content, ever. No buffs, no health drops, no damage reductions (aside from the tuning used during top guild progression). They said that heroic would be for the hardcore. If that's the case, eliminate all nerfing to heroic raiding. Killing a boss on heroic mode while it's relevant should be an accomplishment, not something handed out to people through nerfs so they can feel special about themselves.

As for the heroic dungeons, if it didn't afford you the opportunity to get purples, I don't see the problem with making them less difficult. Personally, I had no problem with needing to CC something and kill the rest. It's something I actually enjoyed when I played TOR. Interrupting enemies should be something used in many encounters. It's an ability, give us a reason to use it. But I can understand that not everybody wants to take a full hour out of their time to run a dungeon. On the other hand, it was a formula that worked well in BC to drive subs up over 10 million. So, either way, I don't have an issue with either. They're dungeons. They aren't meant to be so super hard that you can't complete them, even for casuals. Leave dungeons and LFR for casuals, normal for semi-casuals, and heroic for hardcores. There is a way to cater to everybody here.

[fengosa]

To me it sounds like you're describing the mmo-c community not the wow one. For the most part you can play the game how you want and not ever have to care about your progression or what people think of you. Bgs are really the only place where success is determined by people you didn't choose to play with but for every bad team you play with, you play against another give or take. Even then you can format a premade if you want to avoid the Russian Roulette aspect of the game.

---------- Post added 2012-08-11 at 03:28 PM ----------

The divide exists in a much greater capacity now since there's normal and heroic (not counting LFR since it's for a totally different type of player) and normal modes no longer matter.

To organized experienced guilds probably not. But there are plenty of people who consider normal mode DW a satisfying kill and don't try, or can't, progress past that.

[Keske]

Just look at how much the definition of what harcore player is. These days if you raid on a regular basis you're pretty much considered hardcore. Back in the days I had people leave my 4 days a week 3 hour raid guild, cause they wanted to go hardcore, if you ran a 4 day guild today you would be considered top notch hardcore. Back then the hardcore guilds were the ones running either a 6 day scheduel or a 5 day 4+ hours each raid scheduel. The game has undergone a massive shift in design. It now targets a much younger audience, so ofcourse there will be a rift. The 11 millions that played back then is not the same people that play now, they have replaced what used to be their core with a new younger, non-gamer core that doesn't want to dedicate themself to the game. So the rift will be there untill all the old players leave, and blizzard has made their stance very clear on wich type of person they want playing their game. now they are just smoothing out the bumps

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Here's a good concept. No nerfs for Heroic content, ever. No buffs, no health drops, no damage reductions (aside from the tuning used during top guild progression). They said that heroic would be for the hardcore. If that's the case, eliminate all nerfing to heroic raiding. Killing a boss on heroic mode while it's relevant should be an accomplishment, not something handed out to people through nerfs so they can feel special about themselves.

As for the heroic dungeons, if it didn't afford you the opportunity to get purples, I don't see the problem with making them less difficult. Personally, I had no problem with needing to CC something and kill the rest. It's something I actually enjoyed when I played TOR. Interrupting enemies should be something used in many encounters. It's an ability, give us a reason to use it. But I can understand that not everybody wants to take a full hour out of their time to run a dungeon. On the other hand, it was a formula that worked well in BC to drive subs up over 10 million. So, either way, I don't have an issue with either. They're dungeons. They aren't meant to be so super hard that you can't complete them, even for casuals. Leave dungeons and LFR for casuals, normal for semi-casuals, and heroic for hardcores. There is a way to cater to everybody here.

Wouldn't mind the top part, not the bottom.

Normal should be the bridge between LFR and Heroic. The first bosses are easily tuned (like LFR) and ending bosses are tuned more toward heroic starting bosses. This way players can progress to the no-more-nerf heroic because they learned tricks in normal.

But no, dungeons will never be for casuals because dungeons are short. You can't spend more than a week farming the same 3 heroic dungeons, you can spend months working on raiding.

[notorious98]

Wouldn't mind the top part, not the bottom.

Normal should be the bridge between LFR and Heroic. The first bosses are easily tuned (like LFR) and ending bosses are tuned more toward heroic starting bosses. This way players can progress to the no-more-nerf heroic because they learned tricks in normal.

But no, dungeons will never be for casuals because dungeons are short. You can't spend more than a week farming the same 3 heroic dungeons, you can spend months working on raiding.

What are you even talking about? Dungeons are only for farming for hardcore raiders. To many, many, MANY casual players, it's a big source of their entertainment. It's how they spend a majority of their time. It isn't about farming for gear for most of them. They LIKE running the dungeons.

And this is the crux of the issue at hand. You're looking at things purely from your own perspective. It's not about your perspective. It's about the perspective of the whole. For the most part, hardcore players don't give a shit about dungeons after they have the gear needed to raid. So every subscriber should suffer from your vision of how a dungeon should be throughout the life of an expansion for your 10, or so, days of farming for gear? Please.

[Santoryu]

There is definitely a rift in the game's community. However, you cannot succeed by trying to cater to everyone, it just doesn't work. The trick is to have everyone equally unhappy. (Eduard Taaffe said that)
I believe LFR is a positive addition to the game for those really time-constricted players to satisfy their need to experience the dungeon. It also means that Normal and Heroic modes should, by logic, not be nerfed as substantially as they have been in the last 3 tiers.

Keep in mind: the subscription you pay allows you access to all the content, it does not give you the right to be able to kill everything if you are not good enough.

And in enforcing the latter, Bizzard have dealt the game almost indelible damage.

[Tazila]

Actually the largest group difference is the minority that vocalizes their opinions and the majority that stays silent.

When you talk about how people talk about this and that, you're just talking within that minor vocal group. The silent, still playing majority is massively overwhelming of the opinionated vocal group.


Either way, I think it'll always be divided seeing as people play this game for different reasons.


And I don't blame LFR for raid burnout. DS was boring as it was, LFR just happened to have the misfortune of being released with it.