I propose this: Give the raids back to the raiders

[MoanaLisa]

I play random games with my friends from vanilla days and I posed the question as to why even increase level cap at all and develop 'level' content. The leveling is short lived, but once you hit cap... we expect a lot. It's an opinion, but I just find it an issue of wasted resources.

The answer to this is relatively simple. Blizzard believes that players want or need to feel a sense that their characters progress over the long run. Moving from 80 to 85 and then to 90 while your power increases (bigger numbers) satisfies that purely psychological need. In fact, this has created something of a problem for the designers because the size of the damage/healing/health numbers are getting out of hand and that will need to be addressed (search for the technical term 'squish'). Now, I think that 'must progress' is something of an arguable proposition but only arguable. Several years of everyone being at the same level may feel somewhat stagnant to the casual gamer in which case they might say, "Thanks and adios."

So we get patches for end game and expansions to progress to the next thing. Moving sideways is not apparently an option and I can't say that I think it's viable for a mass-market game. Once you stop progressing, the game can more easily appear to be *over*. That's death for an MMO.

[Talen]

I agree whole-heartedly about wanting to have the same system as BC of having to tier up through the lower versions and work your way to the end. It was a pretty neat system, how late in the expansion people were still doing CoT things to get to Kara and moving on from there.

Because being stuck in the "gear up new player - see him poached by more progressive guild - recruit - gear him up" was great fun. As always, some people liked running Kara or whatever...but other got sick to the hind teeth of it because of the continuing need to gear up new members of their guilds.

In Vanilla I believe it was less than 10% of the population cleared Naxx, then about 16% cleared Sunwell in BC, and it was somewhere around 40% cleared ICC in WotLK. (These are stats I am trying to remember from past articles I can't find through google, so I'm sorry if they are off).

They are off. By about a factor of 10 in the first two. Not sure about the clearance of ICC myself though.

EJL

[Deficineiron]

This is wrong and thus invalidates your whole post.

Even while the time where subscribers dropped, WoW revenue has always grown and continues to do so.

For anyone following this poster who confuses his post with a truthful statement (it isn't), know that this post is completely and totally false and can be easily verified as such on the activision IR page's filings.

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 01:29 AM ----------

This is simply wrong, as even a cursory examination of the earnings statements would show. WoW revenue dropped dramatically over Cataclysm.

get this from the blizzard 2008 10k

We consider the World of Warcraft boxed product including expansion packs and other
ancillary revenues as a single deliverable with the total arrangement consideration combined and
recognized ratably as revenue over the estimated product life beginning upon activation of the
software and delivery of the services. Revenues attributed to the sale of World of Warcraft boxed
software and related expansion packs are classified as product sales and revenues attributable to
subscription and other ancillary services are classified as subscription, licensing and other
revenues.

they did 320m in q4 2008, with NO box sales in that number. They later changed things to include box sales in the mmo number.

Subscription,
licensing and
other revenues 320

This number (and the revenue for 2008 in general for wow, all without box sales included) is a big part of the basis of my assertion that the western sub peak was in early 2009 (vivendi ceo's 12m sub comment). In fact, wow without boxes never matched that revenue number again, not even q1 2009. It is gaap, but not sure how much stuff in it would have been deferred anyway without boxes.

Tangentially of interest, came across a comment in a filing from this time period that release of bc in 2007 was a part of why they sold more Classic wow boxes in 2007 than in 2006.

[vradar]

I would just like it if instead of having to do "normal" dungeons and raids to acess the "heroic" versions which makes it a boring grind for the people who think normal is too easy and is just more gear grinding, that it was made so that you could somehow choose to "skip" normal stuff and go straight to the harder heroic dungeons + raids without having to go through normal just to get the gear required to start heroic raiding. It's like in diablo where you have to go through multiple "easier" difficulties doing the same content over and over again to get to the content that is at your skill level/considered challenging, whereas in TL2 straight from the start you CHOOSE what difficulty you start on and it will be hard from the start rather than hard after you beat the content once or more. Now as to balancing/implementing something along these lines is a different problem entirely. But something similar to this could solve a lot of problems people have with raiding since heroic content came out.

[Crashdummy]

. In Vanilla I believe it was less than 10% of the population cleared Naxx, then about 16% cleared Sunwell in BC

If my memory doesnt fail me, the actual numbers where that less than 2% of the population cleared Naxx 60 and less than 5 cleared Sunwell.

That was a big problem and a big reason why the system failed.

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 08:17 AM ----------

This is simply wrong, as even a cursory examination of the earnings statements would show. WoW revenue dropped dramatically over Cataclysm.

At least the first 3 times in Cata that they announce a sub dropped in Cataclysm they also said that whiloe the subs dropped, the Blizzard revenue went up, mostly because of side services.

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 08:23 AM ----------

There is so much conjecture in this thread that the opinions expressed will always spark an outburst of comments. I haven't played World of Warcraft in a very long time, but this game sure has had massive changes involving the direction it went. I play random games with my friends from vanilla days and I posed the question as to why even increase level cap at all and develop 'level' content. The leveling is short lived, but once you hit cap... we expect a lot. It's an opinion, but I just find it an issue of wasted resources.

Because more people enjoy leveling than raiding.

Raiders are a huge minority, even considering LFR raiding, there are still more people that HAVENT raided than the ones that did.

The game had massive changes, but oonly at the start of Cata Blizzard changed the DIRECTION. The direction of the game has been the same from Vanilla untill the very end of Wrath, make the most casual fiendly MMO in the markets. Only at the start of Cata that direction changed to try to cater for a vocal minority of hardcores qqing about Wrath.

We know how that ended.

Blizzard greates advantage is its greatest problem. The GUHE playerbase Blizzard has means that a lot of their players want different things from each other, so they have to develop for all of them.

That means leveling, lore, casual things to do, dailies, casual dungeoning, nono casual dungeoning, casual raiding, non casual raiding, casual PVP, non casual PVP etc, etc, etc

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 08:39 AM ----------

For anyone following this poster who confuses his post with a truthful statement (it isn't), know that this post is completely and totally false and can be easily verified as such on the activision IR page's filings.[COLOR="red"]

What i say its not false, you might first want to check your facts before treating me as a lier

"Activision Blizzard on Tuesday announced better-than-expected Q3 2011 net revenues and earnings, reporting that the company delivered GAAP net revenues of $754 million, as compared with $745 million for the third quarter of 2010. This gain was achieved via digital channels, accounting for more than 57-percent of the company's total net revenues. "

Look at how much subs Blizzard lost in Q3 2011, while they earned 10 more million in revenue than the previous year.

So please, before calling other posters as liers, investigate a little and dont talk of things you dont have a clue about, thanks.

[Osmeric]

At least the first 3 times in Cata that they announce a sub dropped in Cataclysm they also said that whiloe the subs dropped, the Blizzard revenue went up, mostly because of side services.

They may have said GAAP revenue went up from the previous year. This happens at the start of an expansion, since GAAP revenue includes deferred box sales revenue, and the year-ago quarter (at the end of an expansion) didn't have many box sales.

If you just want to look at what they actually made in a quarter, and not have things confused by deferred revenue, you look at the non-GAAP numbers. After the initial surge (when these included lots of box sales) non-GAAP numbers began to be lower than the previous year (before Cataclysm). Quarter-on-quarter, both GAAP and non-GAAP numbers also declined over the expansion.

Overall, they have not been saying WoW revenue has been going up, since it most definitely has not. Go look at the tables in the earnings reports; Deficineiron and I have been all through the expansion.

[Crashdummy]

They may have said GAAP revenue went up from the previous year. This happens at the start of an expansion, since GAAP revenue includes deferred box sales revenue, and the year-ago quarter (at the end of an expansion) didn't have many box sales.

If you just want to look at what they actually made in a quarter, and not have things confused by deferred revenue, you look at the non-GAAP numbers. After the initial surge (when these included lots of box sales) non-GAAP numbers began to be lower than the previous year (before Cataclysm). Quarter-on-quarter, both GAAP and non-GAAP numbers also declined over the expansion.

Overall, they have not been saying WoW revenue has been going up, since it most definitely has not. Go look at the tables in the earnings reports; Deficineiron and I have been all through the expansion.

I just gave ane xample of Q3 2011. That is not because of box sales.

There is a reason why FTP games work, the revenue from secondary sources is Great.

Again, Q3 2011, (long after game launched, so not many box sales included) earned 10 millon more than Q3 2010.

tehir subs went down, their revenues went UP.

I dont know why you are trying to argue this, numbers dont lie.

[Sryson]

But it gets nerfed all the time.



at 7:19 Greg Street explains that he nerfed TBC style raiding so that "Everyone is able to see it". He failed miserably at this. WoW worked better when people knew that raiding is not for everyone. This is why the game is going down. Greg Street ruined WoW.

you sir is not being fair. if every1 pay the same monthy fee and some (casuals) dont get to enjoy the whole content, there will be more rage on forums. Plus wow 's player base consists of more casual players than hardcores.
i think Greg made the right thing.....

[Osmeric]

I just gave ane xample of Q3 2011. That is not because of box sales.

There is a reason why FTP games work, the revenue from secondary sources is Great.

Again, Q3 2011, (long after game launched, so not much box sales included) earned 10 millon more than Q3 2010.

tehir subs went down, their revenues went UP.

I dont know why you are trying to argue this, numbers dont lie.

Oh good grief. You gave numbers for all of Activision-Blizzard, a company that sells a number of other products than WoW. You've heard of the Call of Duty franchise, for example?

The earnings reports give numbers broken down more finely. In particular, there are numbers in the reports for just WoW revenue. If you look at these numbers, WoW revenue is definitely declining.

Let's look at Q3 2011, for example. Reports are available from http://investor.activision.com/index.cfm (and more specifically, http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...CY11_Final.pdf ):

Under "Non-GAAP Net Revenues by Segment/Platform Mix", "Online subscriptions" (definition: "Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services. "), we have:

Q3 2010 $282 M
Q3 2011 $274 M

This is particularly damning because Q3 2010 was the last full quarter of the Wrath expansion (outside China). And yet, non-GAAP net revenue had already fallen below that mark.

[Deficineiron]

I just gave ane xample of Q3 2011. That is not because of box sales.

There is a reason why FTP games work, the revenue from secondary sources is Great.

Again, Q3 2011, (long after game launched, so not many box sales included) earned 10 millon more than Q3 2010.

tehir subs went down, their revenues went UP.

I dont know why you are trying to argue this, numbers dont lie.

Sigh. You are arguing something other than mmorpg/licensing/sub/other revenue and trying to pass it off as only Wow-revenue, then intermixing revenue and income. Furthermore, the profit numbers of wow are not released separately ANYWHERE, and product development isn't broken down by title. Not sure if you are arguing the blizzard revenue number as a whole (sounds like it), but you certainly aren't talking the category which, until q4 2011, included wow only. Wow's q3 2011 revenue (non-gaap) declined both sequentially and, if memory serves, year over year, and was roughly around 274m.

I dont know why you are trying to argue this, numbers dont lie.

numbers don't, but posters can misrepresent what the numbers they post actually are. Why not post the column from the 10q your numbers come from?

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 12:36 PM ----------

Under "Non-GAAP Net Revenues by Segment/Platform Mix", "Online subscriptions" (definition: "Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services. "), we have:

.

You know this of course but others may not - from q4 2011 forward, this category also includes call of duty elite, which as far as I can figure was maybe worth 30m for ths category in q2 2012. Wow revenue, even with annual pass and the one-time in q2, is shockingly low, like 75% of late bc/early wotlk levels (ignoring q4 2008, which I still haven't figured out what made it so much higher than even q1 2009, when subs hit or nearly hit 12m.)

[Crashdummy]

Oh good grief. You gave numbers for all of Activision-Blizzard, a company that sells a number of other products than WoW. You've heard of the Call of Duty franchise, for example?

The earnings reports give numbers broken down more finely. In particular, there are numbers in the reports for just WoW revenue. If you look at these numbers, WoW revenue is definitely declining.

Let's look at Q3 2011, for example. Reports are available from http://investor.activision.com/index.cfm (and more specifically, http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...CY11_Final.pdf ):

Under "Non-GAAP Net Revenues by Segment/Platform Mix", "Online subscriptions" (definition: "Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services. "), we have:

Q3 2010 $282 M
Q3 2011 $274 M

This is particularly damning because Q3 2010 was the last full quarter of the Wrath expansion (outside China). And yet, non-GAAP net revenue had already fallen below that mark.

Those numbers you gave are for subscriptions only, of course when subs drops subs revenue will go down, but WoW generates money from other sources too.

Even then, taking your own chart, and taking nine months, non-gaap online subs its 877M in 2010 and 905M in 2011. In those nine months, WoW lost subs.

[Osmeric]

Those numbers you gave are for subscriptions only, of course when subs drops subs revenue will go down, but WoW generates money from other sources too.

Did you even bother to read what I posted?

"Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services."

Pets and mounts are part of "value added services", btw, as are faction/server/name changes.

[Crashdummy]

Did you even bother to read what I posted?

"Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services."

Pets and mounts are part of "value added services", btw, as are faction/server/name changes.

Yes i read it, and its wrong, for example, that quote you are giving says it includes boxed products, which we know non-gaap doesnt include them, as well as expansion packs.

Pets, mounts and faction/server/name changes are not included.

Do you even bother to read your own quotes?

[Osmeric]

Yes i read it, and its wrong, for example, that quote you are giving says it includes boxed products, which we know non-gaap doesnt include them, as well as expansion packs.

Pets, mounts and faction/server/name changes are not included.

Do you even bother to read your own quotes?

Non-GAAP includes box sales in that quarter. What it doesn't include is deferred revenue from box sales (and certain other things) in previous quarters. To put it another way: the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP is not what they count, but when they count it.

Also, what part of "all World of Warcraft products" did you not understand? Pets, mounts, etc. are WoW products.

At this point you are just running on ego and cluelessness. Stop digging your hole deeper.

[Varabently]

Unfortunately I think we are much too far down the rabbit hole. I agree they should have just fleshed out dungeons/non-raiding activities instead of complicating raiding. I think heroic raids are stupid. Why would I want to do the same raid with a new mechanic? That's boring. I'd rather go back to the dungeons-->heroics-->10 man-->25 man in terms of difficulty. Just give more to each level instead of make multiple versions of the same thing.

Blizz is making the same mistake with the timed runs (the name escapes me...challenge modes?) versus adding new content. Financially this makes sense, same with LFR/normal/heroic. It's easier to switch some numbers than to make a whole thing content. I would rather them remake old raids than to do the same raid 100 times each patch. I'd rather have MC/BWL/BT/Hyjal etc scaled up. Hell, give them the same drops, who cares? That seems easy enough, just like adding lfr/normal/heroic. Just tweak numbers. I'd rather say "OK team, we are doing MC/BWL this week for drops, next week we are doing BT/Hyjal/Sunwell, then we are doing Naxx/Ulduar" etc. That sounds fun to me. I know I can do those now, but there's no progression.

[Deficineiron]

Those numbers you gave are for subscriptions only,

more falsehoods, the time-frame you are using does include box sales. But you knew that, didn't you?

* Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing
royalties, and value-added services.

Online subscriptions* 905 877

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 03:46 PM ----------

Pets, mounts and faction/server/name changes are not included.

* Revenue from online subscriptions consists of revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing
royalties, and value-added services.

this is becoming a slapstick routine. next a number will get pulled out and it won't include subscriptions, I suppose.[COLOR="red"]

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 03:54 PM ----------

[Talen]

Unfortunately I think we are much too far down the rabbit hole. I agree they should have just fleshed out dungeons/non-raiding activities instead of complicating raiding.

Wouldn't have worked. It would be ideal in some ways, but it wouldn't have worked. Once Blizzard got to the point where raiding needed to justify its investment in raiding, then Raiding needed to attract more numbers.

I think heroic raids are stupid.

Maybe. But the triple difficulty level is a part of what allowed the raids to become more accessible, part of what brinsg more players into the raid environment.

Why would I want to do the same raid with a new mechanic? That's boring.

Because its more challenging. And because it offers better loot. However, I agree with you as far as repeating the raid on Heroic after you have done Normals. If you were to ask Blizzard I suspect they would answer is to avoid an exploit (which is at least partially why the Heroics have the raid lockout system they do - to avoid the same raid stacking per encounter) or because Blizzard feels Normal needs to be finished first as a matter of principle/game design wheer you have to finish one difficulty before moving to the next. I can't think of any exploit and I suspect its the latter but I could be wrong. I would prefer breaking that link, to let those who prefer Heroics to just go straight in.

I'd rather go back to the dungeons-->heroics-->10 man-->25 man in terms of difficulty.

So would some others here. The big problem is that it didn't work. The model above ensured Normals wern't worth running at end game, and 10 mans were seen as a joke. 25 man guilds also poached a lot of players from 10 man guilds and most players ignored 10s because 25s was where the action was at. The sytem helped cause gear inflation, fermented strife and trouble between guilds, encouraged burnout with necessary multiple runs, did nothing to attract non-raiders into raiding and so on.

EJL

[leewillzy]

I find it pathetic that Blizz feels they need to dumb down content for the majority. If you can't play the game, don't play the game. Its as simple as that. Y

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh dear. Blizzard isn't your friend, its a business. They have to make all content available to everyone, its common business sense. I'm sure you and your "hardcore elitist raiders" with jobs at Mcdonalds and PC World will probably never understand even the simplest of business models.


Anyway back on subject, I use to be in a semi hardcore guild back in the days of Vanilla. But now I've returned after a year break and I don't have the time for raiding 11 days a week just to beat a boss thats got more HPz. LFR is one of the best things thats happen to WOW.

[kiltofake]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh dear. Blizzard isn't your friend, its a business. They have to make all content available to everyone, its common business sense. I'm sure you and your "hardcore elitist raiders" with jobs at Mcdonalds and PC World will probably never understand even the simplest of business models.


Anyway back on subject, I use to be in a semi hardcore guild back in the days of Vanilla. But now I've returned after a year break and I don't have the time for raiding 11 days a week just to beat a boss thats got more HPz. LFR is one of the best things thats happen to WOW.

Ah ok so its ok for blizzard to nerf content and make it easy now becuase you have enjoyed your hard core raiding before and now u dont havce time to raid as much?
Casuals get to see content, they have brought in LFR for this reason. Normals are for every day guilds and hardmodes are indeed ment to be hard. I didnt get to kill some heroicbosses in current content, I was upset but i didnt blame blizzard. Fact being I wasnt good enough, my guild wasnt good enough. Ive since improoved and ive cleared all content since. I have no problem if I cant kill a HEROIC boss. Its ment to be Heroic for a reason. It just means I have to keep trying and keep gearing up. The game caters for all but I do think they have started to give to much instead of letting people earn it... I started playing this game becuase of the frill of working on a boss and finally getting a kill.... now its just a case of "oh we cant kill, lets just do something else they will nerf it in a week or 2"
Personally I dont think they should nerf heroic raiding, At all. Every time you gear up this is in my eyes nerfing the boss. Give people stuff to work at instead of making it easy. No wonder people get bored. I mean come on, did Sega make Sonic easier when I couldnt clear it... I mean come on ffs I had to stay up all night just to finish the game becuase if I turned off I had to start from fresh.....

[Osmeric]

Ah ok so its ok for blizzard to nerf content and make it easy now becuase you have enjoyed your hard core raiding before and now u dont havce time to raid as much?

What is this "ok"? Is it anything beyond your personal preferences? If so, where did this standard come from? If not, why should we care what you personally want?