I propose this: Give the raids back to the raiders

[Rexxr]

Some of us who walked away at the start of Cata came in well before WotLK. I started back in original WoW, and the initial Cataclysm design philosophy was a game breaker for me. I know plenty of others for whom things went similarly. Not all have returned to the game now.

I walked away in Cata came back briefly at 4.2 hope firelands would be all a nice change of pace (it was not), and MOP seems to be same junk. At least this time i am not coming gave away all my herbs, ore, cloth, and gold to one friend that still plays.

Also it is just not me out of my original guild of 20 RL friends and 30 friends we meet playing WOW, i was the last one to hang up.

[Deleted]

Interesting, most players are now at 85! This is diffeent to wrath and TBC.

They plan to make it harder to get geared for the latest tier if you are absent.

Well worth a listen.

[Osmeric]

They plan to make it harder to get geared for the latest tier if you are absent.

I wonder if this was a reaction to people who said "meh" to the start of Cataclysm and left for a while, knowing they could come back.

They needed (I imagine) to make it a little harder to pick things up again after putting them down, just to disincentivize dropping your sub for a few months.

[Finbezz]

ITT: Casuals saying "special snowflake" every other word.

On topic: I'm fine with whatever blizz does as long as it doesn't completely remove the option of harder content.

[Pendraeg]

It's fine the way it is. I don't care about raiding and never will, but any aspect of the game should be accessible to the masses. I don't necessarily think heroics should be nerfed so others can do them later (that's what normal and looking for raid are for, isn't it?) but everything else is in a better place, or getting there. I'm sorry, but if you think the meat of the game should be available to only a very tiny portion of the player base (those who are willing to live in big guilds) then you're definitely playing the wrong game, and I'm willing to bet you won't find a good game that fits your model.

---------- Post added 2012-09-19 at 03:57 AM ----------



Then start in heroic, don't look fights up beforehand and have a challenge. It shouldn't matter what others do.

Because you CAN'T. You're required to complete Normal before you do heroic. At least it was the last time I looked.

[Gilian]

Might have been a big mistake, but there will be reasons. Imagine you own a restaraunt. For every 8 customers who come in for a meal, 3 of them look at their plates, get up and walk out. You still have 5 customers, who are all completely happy. But 3 people in 8.... that's a lot of potential profit you are watching walk out of the door.

Wouldn't you try and find a way to get the other 3 to stay and eat?

Ofcourse, but I wouldn't change 80% of my menu and potentionally lose 2 of the 5 customers that were happy. Especially when I already have the best restaurant in the world. Besides that I am also seeing more and more customers coming in while the losses (the 3 people who leave) stay around the same so there is just no reason for me to change my menu that much.

There is ALWAYS room for improvement that doesn't mean you have to change your winning formula completely.

I think that sub groth started to slip, then blizzard made the game more accessible (wrath) then subs still declined, so they went partially back to a TBC mentality (harder PVE content) and the subs stopped slowing in growth and started instead to become losses. Quickly blizzard reversed their decision and went back to wrath style access and difficulty. Lo, subs stopped declining as badly.

Dunno if you played mop but blizzard are being very smart with it. The TBC style gameplay is there, it's just harder to get accidentally be put into (i.e. no queues for challenge modes) and doesn't impact player progression much. They've hived off their hardcores and given everyone else lots to do.

Subs were already at a peak at the end of TBC and start of WotLK. After that, during WotLK, they started declining. They never declined during TBC. They were already making the game more accessible during TBC, this obviously also attracted a lot of players. That doesn't mean making it extremely accessible results in even more subscribers.

[Deleted]

Ofcourse, but I wouldn't change 80% of my menu and potentionally lose 2 of the 5 customers that were happy. Especially when I already have the best restaurant in the world. Besides that I am also seeing more and more customers coming in while the losses (the 3 people who leave) stay around the same so there is just no reason for me to change my menu that much.

There is ALWAYS room for improvement that doesn't mean you have to change your winning formula completely.

They didn't change 80% of their menu. Raiding is like 15-20% of their menu.

Would you chance 1 customer to potentially not lose 3? Blizzard did.

Subs were already at a peak at the end of TBC and start of WotLK. After that, during WotLK, they started declining. They never declined during TBC. They were already making the game more accessible during TBC, this obviously also attracted a lot of players. That doesn't mean making it extremely accessible results in even more subscribers.

Wow went more hardcore. Lost more subs than being accessible.

Every wow killer that is more hardcore dies on it's arse.

Ther trend is pretty clear on this.

[Gilian]

Turn that logic around: they obviously thought the BC design was flawed. So they must know SOMETHING that caused them to want to change it.

I suggest it's because the vast majority of players didn't raid, and those non-raiders had significant churn. Yes, net subs went up -- but how many people left during that time, balanced (temporarily, since the market is finite) by new blood coming in? We know there are LOTS of ex-WoW players, and only a small fraction of them could have been hardcore raiders.

They are far from having enough information to predict a loss in subscribers if they don't change the game, like they did after TBC with WotLK. Blue posts even said they don't have all the information they would like to have.

Anyway, if they thought TBC design was flawed after gaining so many subscribers then they must think WotLK and Cataclysm were even worse after losing millions of subscribers. Or is this some weird logic? Haha.

Whatever, if people don't want to see it then what's the point in discussing this. Acting like my logic is flawed or something... gaining more subscribers is good and losing subscribers is bad it's really that simple. The only way to lose such massive amounts of subscribers is by making mistakes. So the only thing I can conclude from that is that the design we had in WotLK and Cataclysm were just very bad compared to the design we had in TBC. Accessibility is not bad if you implement it properly so not by ruining other great parts of the game. I guess they were too much focused on accessibility. They have these nice mottoes or slogans and then they want to keep their word. "Everyone should be able to see content", "bring the player not the class", etc. Sure, this is all good but not when you screw up the game in the process.

---------- Post added 2012-09-20 at 02:30 PM ----------

They didn't change 80% of their menu. Raiding is like 15-20% of their menu.

Would you chance 1 customer to potentially not lose 3? Blizzard did.





Wow went more hardcore. Lost more subs than being accessible.

Every wow killer that is more hardcore dies on it's arse.

Ther trend is pretty clear on this.

They didn't only change raiding, wake up.

WoW only went more casual from beginning to start. More and more casual and accessible. Even the start of Cataclysm was 100 times more accessible than TBC.
Nerfing dungeons is accepted much better by players than when you buff dungeons. So when they buffed heroics everyone was in shock. I have already mentioned this in previous comments so if you don't want to hear it then so be it.

[Dylamoo]

They didn't change 80% of their menu. Raiding is like 15-20% of their menu.

Would you chance 1 customer to potentially not lose 3? Blizzard did.





Wow went more hardcore. Lost more subs than being accessible.

Every wow killer that is more hardcore dies on it's arse.

Ther trend is pretty clear on this.

I don't see how this could work in this games scenario. Especially the restaurant one, content will always be accessible from this point on with LFR for every single raid. The argument is since there is a mode available for content to be easily accessible to appease one community change and tweak the other one and put it up to the community that enjoys raiding hard to their standards would really be that simple. You can't also use the money argument either because you can just do number tuning which won't cost more assuming blizzard pays their staff salary and not pier diem.

Also i'm pretty sure WoW also lost a large chunk of sub base when content came out was too easy. I clearly remember a large base of players chunking after they sent out nerf bats as well pretty much they keep deciding to go to one extreme end and resulted in a loss of players from each community. Also I highly doubt people who quit WoW for other games are casual players, casual players are less likely to leave a game they already committed to since they allegedly have no time to begin with why start a new game from scratch requiring even more time? The reason why most people quit WoW isn't because it got too hard, most people who quit WoW got sick of it not because of raiding.

The reason why the other new games failed was because while yes there were quality of life issues, there was also issues of things like very crappy physics engines which resulted in uncomfortable gameplay. I also gather from trying out new mmo's people still talk about WoW during the world chat etc. This proves that people aren't really giving the new games a real try or chance, it seems more like an actual addiction WoW created within the mmorpg community. While in a new game they seemingly suffer withdrawal symptoms a drug addict faces. What do all drug addicts do when they try and quit? They think about the substance and pretend it's not on their mind. Therefore with at least this scenario you can conclude that there are a large base of players that won't leave wow not because it's the best game out there but because they
A. are addicts
B. Have been so immersed in WoW that they can't fathom other styles of games
C. Have no time to start something new
D. The games are bad to begin with ex: Crappy physics engine.

I myself find myself in a little bit of all 3 catagories, I personally always critique games that don't have WoW like features, have been playing WoW since beta, and find it really difficult to commit to new games since I got older. I'm way off topic now so i'm going to give my opinion about the subject matter at hand, I think casuals have a right to play the game and access content through LFR but should also remember they should not be handed everything on a silver platter. I think hardcore and actual raiders deserve content to their liking and not have it affect casuals, I think the casual community should draw a fine line between what they deserve and what hard core raiders deserve. I Think the hard core community should accept easy in LFR and leave it alone but continue to complain if their normal and heroic content are lacking. If blizzard did this they would be covering up the entire spectrum of issues that seem to be the biggest problem in WoW right now.

Also don't argue money, when a company generates the amount of money blizzard does as an mmorpg/gaming company. They'd risk losing more profit if they could only maintain the casual base while the hardcore raiding community potentially leaves for other games. You want to make a very consistent flow of money? A simple business rule, make the customer happy, if you make all the customers happy you make more money. More happy customers brings in more customers because happiness attracts the want to become happy. Granted it goes without saying that you can't make everyone happy but you certainly can make a large amount of both worlds happy casual and hardcore and also theres that between the hardcore and casual.

[Osmeric]

They are far from having enough information to predict a loss in subscribers if they don't change the game, like they did after TBC with WotLK. Blue posts even said they don't have all the information they would like to have.

Anyway, if they thought TBC design was flawed after gaining so many subscribers then they must think WotLK and Cataclysm were even worse after losing millions of subscribers. Or is this some weird logic? Haha..

I didn't claim they had perfect foresight, only that there must have been something in BC that they didn't like (and I made a guess at what it was).

It's not obvious that the performance of Wrath and Cataclysm means they think BC was better, for reasons we've gone over many times (for example, market saturation/exhaustion of the potential player pool), and because they have not moved back to a BC model.

So the only thing I can conclude from that is that the design we had in WotLK and Cataclysm were just very bad compared to the design we had in TBC.

This is true only if all else is the same. Ceteris paribus. But all else was NOT the same, so one cannot make this inference. And, clearly, Blizzard isn't making this inference, since they are not moving back to the BC model.

[Deleted]

We don't have the information Blizzard has so we can keep guessing all day long. It might be that during Vanilla and TBC the influx of players was so large it covered the loss of players and when WotLK hit Wow wasn't flavor of the month any more so the recruitment of new players stagnated but the loss continued. That is my personal theory at least based on the small sample of players I know. The casual players I know irl played until TBC lvl 70 when they had nothing more to do and they quit. Then they came back for WotLK and played through the end as they had plenty to do with pugs and ez heroics and then quit again early cata. It is just a theory but I think I've seen Blizzard saying that lot more quit the game than those that are actually playing the game.

[jazen]

This might be a little off-topic but I kinda want 40 man raids again ._.

I know they were a pain in the ass to organize but... It was just so cool having 40 people duking it out at a giant monster! Even though caster basically had to resort to wands half the time :/ But things have changed mana-wise.

the world bosses are supposedly 40-man difficult....not sure if that is accurate, but that is what has been posted.

[Dylamoo]

the world bosses are supposedly 40-man difficult....not sure if that is accurate, but that is what has been posted.

that's inaccurate, you only need a 25 man raid to do them and i think some 10 mans are able to if they're really organized

[mrwingtipshoes]

that's inaccurate, you only need a 25 man raid to do them and i think some 10 mans are able to if they're really organized

"It will take a raid of roughly 40 players to take down the Sha of Anger. He will appear in different areas of the zone and change what is spawned around him.
Scenarios are a replace"

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...-Blizzard-News

First post on the front page.

[Dylamoo]

"It will take a raid of roughly 40 players to take down the Sha of Anger. He will appear in different areas of the zone and change what is spawned around him.
Scenarios are a replace"

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...-Blizzard-News

First post on the front page.

ahh i only did the lizard and he was a face roll

[Deleted]

So, the lead content designer has stated this in an interview:

LFR justifies the creation of more raid content when millions of players are able to see content. Only a few thousand people actually saw Kel'thuzad, but millions saw Deathwing. The reason Mists of Pandaria is starting with 18 bosses and adding larger raid tiers than we have had previously is because many players are going to see the raids through LFR.
Beta was very successful, even without level 90 premades. Thousands of people participated in raid testing and provided feedback.

So... there you go!

[Uvwaex]

I didn't claim they had perfect foresight, only that there must have been something in BC that they didn't like (and I made a guess at what it was).

It's not obvious that the performance of Wrath and Cataclysm means they think BC was better, for reasons we've gone over many times (for example, market saturation/exhaustion of the potential player pool), and because they have not moved back to a BC model.



This is true only if all else is the same. Ceteris paribus. But all else was NOT the same, so one cannot make this inference. And, clearly, Blizzard isn't making this inference, since they are not moving back to the BC model.

Economics in my mmo-champ? Applause.

[Deleted]

The reason Mists of Pandaria is starting with 18 bosses and adding larger raid tiers than we have had previously is because many players are going to see the raids through LFR.

This is the typical Blizzard PR bullshit. Cataclysm had half the number of raid encounters of WotLK. First cutting their content production in half, and then redoubling it and claiming "look at us, we're so cool for putting in more stuff into the game!" should not impress you. I wouldn't be at all surprised if after the initial load of content they cut production back down to half-tiers and small instances.

[Deleted]

This is the typical Blizzard PR bullshit. Cataclysm had half the number of raid encounters of WotLK. First cutting their content production in half, and then redoubling it and claiming "look at us, we're so cool for putting in more stuff into the game!" should not impress you. I wouldn't be at all surprised if after the initial load of content they cut production back down to half-tiers and small instances.

they have already stated that they devoted much time working on the world revamp and that had an effect on their delivery of end-game content. So you're comparing apples to oranges here.

[Deleted]

they have already stated that they devoted much time working on the world revamp and that had an effect on their delivery of end-game content. So you're comparing apples to oranges here.

Which is yet more Blizzard PR bullshit. The revamp was done before Cata launch and didn't stop them from also putting out a full first raid tier in Cata (although admitted not a particularly good one). Rest of the raid content was developed after Cata shipped while no resources were being used on the world revamp, meaning that they simply did not put enough talent working on the raid content for whatever reason (most likely they were put on MoP or other projects instead, which is a total scumbag move when they had explicitly promised more raid content that WotLK had).