Will I Ever Get Another WoW/TBC?

[Redblade]

a blue post a couple months ago said 2 million people had done dragon soul on either lfr normal or heroic thats only 2 million out of 10 million with lfr. if only 2 million people raided when you could que for it what makes you think the number was anywhere near that for anything back in bc with things like attunements?

Lets say it was only 50% of that who raided, how many raided SW have little to nothing to do with it as BC had linear raiding so most raiders would be in lower tier content, this would still make for 10% of the total population raiding, something that would translate to 1.3 million players, more than enough to justify developing raids.

The mistake a lot of people make is to not demand content for the way they play the game but instead ask to have other players content reformatted to fit their needs, this is where Blizzard went wrong and started to develop raids for everyone hence alienating raiders instead of developing content for non raiders. One must ask why they push so many changes to raiding in favor of getting another 10% of the players to raid, wouldn't their time have been better spent developing content for the 80% that don't raid and just keep raiding the way it was.

only 1000 guilds ever did sunwell assuming each guild had at a minimum of 25 people thats around 25,000 people out of i believe 8 million. compared to cataclysm 2 million out of 10 million

Completed Sunwell I assume, again though, linear raiding compared to segmented doesn't work, comparing DS with Karazhan would be a more fair comparison as they held the same value progression wise.

---------- Post added 2012-10-03 at 03:10 PM ----------

It's completely beyond me how people can get hung up over such secondary and hardly relevant things like "progression models" so much it becomes a game-breaker for them. It totally reeks of "let's find something I can bitch and be miserable about to make myself important." Really ridiculous.

One is persistent for the entire expansion where you have a constant goal to strive for and every piece of gear makes a difference in trying to achieve said goal, the other resets your progression and efforts every 5-6 months after being nerfed to the point where trained monkeys would be on the verge of completing it.

I'd say the difference is quite big and makes for two very different game experiences, something that is highly discussion worthy.

[Azuri]

Rift, best PVE MMO on the market atm with the closest resemblance to tbc with all the QoL features of a modern MMO imo. 10 and 20 man content that is actually different content on separate lockouts, novel idea. Content needs to be run in a tiered sequence for new players you just can't jump into the latest tier and dominant it.

[Brittany]

The problem with your logic here is that a grind like the old Furbolg and Winterspring trainers was totally optional content, same as Netherwing and Sha'tari Skyguard was in BC. People arguing that they don't want grinds like that for the most part do it because they want the reward but have no interest in the actual effort to get it, this in turn deprives people of content, especially people who like long term goals with a visible reward to show for it at the end of the long road.

In short, it's an entitlement issue that has nothing to do with being outdated nor grind for grind sake.

Hey, I did the grinds.. every last one of them

I'm just saying, video game developers seem to stay away from that now. Look at XBOX achievements when the first games came out. I believe I have a few games that I completed, yet picked up less than 100/1000 points. I didn't avoid killing anyone until the last boss, or play the game without ever using the x button. Compare that to now and I've hit or close to 1000 for the last 8 or so, doing barely more than completing the game on the hardest difficulty.

I think not so many people did those grinds, or got those achievements, so they were made easier. I don't believe it is because of people whining (although people did sure), but don't have facts to prove it. Only Blizzard have the numbers of what percentage did what. I know I was one of 4 people alliance side to do the furlbog grind on my server in vanilla. They have to weigh up whether it's worth the resources for that small a percent. Yes, many people did start the grind, but not many finished. Skyguard was nowhere near as big a grind as the two in vanilla.

As for Sunwell, your general raid group would wipe on the very first trash mob. We did, while progressing on Illidan, the top boss pre-sunwell. It wasn't until we farmed him for a bit that we could make any progress in there. We got to Brutallus in the end, then the nerfs came, but still that wasn't content for the masses.

[Redblade]

Hey, I did the grinds.. every last one of them

I'm just saying, video game developers seem to stay away from that now. Look at XBOX achievements when the first games came out. I believe I have a few games that I completed, yet picked up less than 100/1000 points. Compare that to now and I've hit or close to 1000 for the last 8 or so, doing barely more than completing the game on the hardest difficulty.

I think not so many people did those grinds, or got those achievements, so they were made easier. I don't believe it is because of people whining (although people did sure), but don't have facts to prove it. Only Blizzard have the numbers of what percentage did what. I know I was one of 4 people alliance side to do the furlbog grind on my server in vanilla.

The problem is that Blizzard cares how many completed it, optional rep grinds for a mount is just that, optional, even if only 10 people ever complete it doesn't really matter, it's not like that type of content takes a lot of developer effort. Sadly Blizzard these days seem to think players needs to be herded through content and given access to all rewards so nothing is truly rare and unique.

As for Sunwell, your general raid group would wipe on the very first trash mob. We did, while progressing on Illidan. It wasn't until we farmed him for a bit that we could make any progress in there. We got to Brutallus in the end, then the nerfs came, but still that wasn't content for the masses.

Yeah it wasn't a raid many did, it wasn't out for long though and due to linear progression it was made for the top raiders at that point in time, if Blizzard didn't reset any and all progression with expansion people would have got to SW in due time, there are ways to go about helping progression along even in the linear model if one wishes to do so.

Blizzard just didn't seem interested in it after BC, same as they made a half assed effort with the talent system in Cata knowing they didn't want to keep it, they could have made the talent system work just fine but simply didn't care for it.

[iceberg265]

There is....another

WildStar. Some of the original WoW devs are behind it. I'll give you the one quote from the lead dev that gives me hope this will be something more than yet another casual-oriented MMO:

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Well thats definitely something to watch...looks good, maybe it will end up being really amazing.

[Brittany]

Yeah it wasn't a raid many did, it wasn't out for long though and due to linear progression it was made for the top raiders at that point in time, if Blizzard didn't reset any and all progression with expansion people would have got to SW in due time, there are ways to go about helping progression along even in the linear model if one wishes to do so.

Agreed. We would have completed Sunwell. Sure Brutallus was a wall, but we got the fight down, just needed the gear. So we needed to farm Kale and Felmyst a bit longer. Then Mu'ru would have taken a while. Then KJ. But I'm sure we would have got it.

I can't quite remember how long it took us to clear BT/MH but I would estimate over half a year of weekly raiding. I personally wouldn't be willing to put that time commitment in a game any longer, so it's nice I can do stuff without playing that much. I'm kinda a "hardcore" player on a casual schedule. But yeah, I didn't see anything wrong with the previous model for people who were willing to spend the time doing it. The "casuals" were having fun in Kara and on Gruul and things, so it's not like they had nothing to do.

I just think "streamlining" is something I'm seeing everywhere, from Mass Effect xbox games to James Bond movies to WoW. Devs don't like to cater niche markets anymore so they make it so everyone can enjoy in theory increasing their revenue. Only those niche markets don't enjoy it as much as they enjoyed it when it was geared directly toward them. I dunno, it changed once so it may well change again, who knows.

[Jabberwocky]

Rift, best PVE MMO on the market atm with the closest resemblance to tbc with all the QoL features of a modern MMO imo. 10 and 20 man content that is actually different content on separate lockouts, novel idea. Content needs to be run in a tiered sequence for new players you just can't jump into the latest tier and dominant it.

This man speaks truth. For the first time in years, I am psyched for the Rift expansion more than I was for WotLK. (Stopped WoW two months into Cata and haven't even bothered with MoP)

I honestly think it may even get 2 million sales as the hype for this really very great game grows.

BTW, that guy who posted Wildstar ruined it for me. I am not impressed at first glance. I am a sad panda!

[Redblade]

I can't quite remember how long it took us to clear BT/MH but I would estimate over half a year of weekly raiding. I personally wouldn't be willing to put that time commitment in a game any longer, so it's nice I can do stuff without playing that much. I'm kinda a "hardcore" player on a casual schedule. But yeah, I didn't see anything wrong with the previous model for people who were willing to spend the time doing it. The "casuals" were having fun in Kara and on Gruul and things, so it's not like they had nothing to do.

That's one of the benefits of linear raiding, the only time limit for your progression is the expansion end, before that there is always something for you to aim towards unless you belong to the top 1-5% of the raiders. Personally I quite WoW the day they started nerfing DS with the buff as my 2 day a week guild didn't complete HC at that time (6/8), something that wouldn't happen with linear progression as there is less need to nerf, especially that soon.

I just think "streamlining" is something I'm seeing everywhere, from Mass Effect xbox games to James Bond movies to WoW. Devs don't like to cater niche markets anymore so they make it so everyone can enjoy in theory increasing their revenue. Only those niche markets don't enjoy it as much as they enjoyed it when it was geared directly toward them. I dunno, it changed once so it may well change again, who knows.

Sadly an effect of gaming turning in to big business (largest entertainment business in the world), one can only hope it swings back towards development aimed towards the gamers again, not holding my breath for it though.

[Shinzai]

The problem is that Blizzard cares how many completed it, optional rep grinds for a mount is just that, optional, even if only 10 people ever complete it doesn't really matter, it's not like that type of content takes a lot of developer effort. Sadly Blizzard these days seem to think players needs to be herded through content and given access to all rewards so nothing is truly rare and unique.



Yeah it wasn't a raid many did, it wasn't out for long though and due to linear progression it was made for the top raiders at that point in time, if Blizzard didn't reset any and all progression with expansion people would have got to SW in due time, there are ways to go about helping progression along even in the linear model if one wishes to do so.

Blizzard just didn't seem interested in it after BC, same as they made a half assed effort with the talent system in Cata knowing they didn't want to keep it, they could have made the talent system work just fine but simply didn't care for it.

Actually, some of the most significant changes to the talent system occurred across the length of WotLK and Cataclysm boiled it down to a finer grain. They realised that people didn't really care what the talents said, as long as they had the best DPS setup, that was all that mattered. You could make all sorts of other choices, but in the end, there was only 1 cookie cutter build for everything. Once certain sites had their cutters up, no one bothered to look at talents again.

At least with MoP, there's some mild choice making in action. Some of it more diverse than it outwardly appears. Nothing is 100% better than everything else and people are finding that almost all of the talents are equal, or at least so difficult to choose between that it comes down to an almost situational basis. There's literally no point in having a 51 or 71 point talent system, when people are going to pick 20 specific talents and ignore the rest. It just makes things needlessly complicated for new comers and incredibly boring for people who know exactly which talents to fill in whenever they reset or swap builds.

And as I stated before, the amount of people raiding at the time of Classic/TBC was almost non-existent. If only 10-20% of the population has cleared Dragon Soul with LFR built in, you can safely assume that 1-5% of players cleared any of Classic/TBC's top end raids. Sure, you'll have a lot of people that ran Kara and SSC and the like for weeks, or even months, but that's all. As much as people love Ulduar, it had one of the lowest clearance ratios around. Algalon was only ever seen by about 1% of the game's players too and in my opinion is one of the best bosses ever (Dat monologue).

People bitched about WotLK's raids and TotC, but in the end, they were some of the most enjoyed, because most of them weren't that demanding in 10man normal, or even 25 normal to an extent. WotLK was the most open WoW had been in a long time, and as others have pointed out, Cata tipped that on its head. Most of the Cata raids were hard (yes I know most regular raiders like my self and better would not consider them hard, but referring now to the general public) and they got very little attention because of it. Even Magmaw seemed to be a major bane of pugs for some reason. Firelands pretty much shot pugs in the face and left everything to upper tier raiders only. Most people that ever went in there ran around getting rep and random epics, then may have pugged Shannox and left. Then Dragon Soul drops with LFR and is almost instantly the most visited/beaten/whatever raid of all time.

As much as I despise LFR difficulty on a personal level, I can see the necessity for its existence and it's simply unfair to expect 90% of a game's population to never actually know what the end-game is even vaguely about. Rift, as much as people harp on about it, is not a friendly game to newcomers or those without guild ties/people willing to go through low end content to get them upto speed. It's part of the reason why it's never going to be a majorly dominant MMO. Being the fantastic top 5% of a game is cool and all, but if no one else really knows what that means, other than you play the game, a lot, then is there really any point?

[Redblade]

Actually, some of the most significant changes to the talent system occurred across the length of WotLK and Cataclysm boiled it down to a finer grain. They realised that people didn't really care what the talents said, as long as they had the best DPS setup, that was all that mattered. You could make all sorts of other choices, but in the end, there was only 1 cookie cutter build for everything. Once certain sites had their cutters up, no one bothered to look at talents again.

You must have missed the blue post stating they wanted to remove it for Cata but decided against it so the Cata iteration had no chance to be good simply as the developer didn't believe in it.

At least with MoP, there's some mild choice making in action. Some of it more diverse than it outwardly appears. Nothing is 100% better than everything else and people are finding that almost all of the talents are equal, or at least so difficult to choose between that it comes down to an almost situational basis.

Which means you have less choice, either it's decided by if you PvP or PvE, theory crafters will do the math on the direct dps increasing once and it will be decided what's best, for any other choice the encounter designer is more of a decision maker than you are.

There's literally no point in having a 51 or 71 point talent system, when people are going to pick 20 specific talents and ignore the rest. It just makes things needlessly complicated for new comers and incredibly boring for people who know exactly which talents to fill in whenever they reset or swap builds.

And this is what I mean, there are ways to make the 51/71 point systems work and be quite interesting, it's just a question of will. Mostly you have to stop viewing every tier as a hard choice but instead have hard choices every other or third tier with lesser choices in between. Balancing stats is another way to help that system along, if your first tier is 5% crit and something useless dps wise there is no choice, if on the other hand the first tier is 5% crit and 5% haste and those stats have similar values then it's more of a play style choice. I could go on about how to make it viable but at the end of the day if the developer doesn't believe in it there is no way they will design it well nor give it the chance it deserves.

And as I stated before, the amount of people raiding at the time of Classic/TBC was almost non-existent. If only 10-20% of the population has cleared Dragon Soul with LFR built in, you can safely assume that 1-5% of players cleared any of Classic/TBC's top end raids. Sure, you'll have a lot of people that ran Kara and SSC and the like for weeks, or even months, but that's all. As much as people love Ulduar, it had one of the lowest clearance ratios around. Algalon was only ever seen by about 1% of the game's players too and in my opinion is one of the best bosses ever (Dat monologue).

Yet as I said you can't compare DS with SW due to the differences in segmented and linear progression, comparing DS with Kara or T5 would be much more appropriate due to entry requirements. Also Algalon is hardly a measure stick for Ulduar as not many aimed to do him, nor was he aimed at the general public but more for the hardcore raiders.

As much as I despise LFR difficulty on a personal level, I can see the necessity for its existence and it's simply unfair to expect 90% of a game's population to never actually know what the end-game is even vaguely about. Rift, as much as people harp on about it, is not a friendly game to newcomers or those without guild ties/people willing to go through low end content to get them upto speed. It's part of the reason why it's never going to be a majorly dominant MMO. Being the fantastic top 5% of a game is cool and all, but if no one else really knows what that means, other than you play the game, a lot, then is there really any point?

This is where the mindset of the general gamer fails, there should be content added for the non raiding players instead of adjusting raiding to accommodate the general player that didn't have any interest in raiding to begin with, again I'll quote the fact that only 20% completed DS even with LFR and massive nerfs, it simply isn't worth sacrificing the overall raiding for the increase over making additional content that fits the 80%.

As for being top 5%, I'd say it mattered in vanilla and BC much more than it does now, back then it actually felt rewarding now it's kinda mehh, sure it's nice to kill the boss but you already done it in normal to unlock heroic and the gear is just a recolor, hell not even mounts are unique but instead recolors as well. Back then you could look at some one with better progression than you and strive to get what he had, now all you have to do it wait for the nerfs and you will get it for free.

[Shinzai]

This is where the mindset of the general gamer fails, there should be content added for the non raiding players instead of adjusting raiding to accommodate the general player that didn't have any interest in raiding to begin with, again I'll quote the fact that only 20% completed DS even with LFR and massive nerfs, it simply isn't worth sacrificing the overall raiding for the increase over making additional content that fits the 80%.

Though I do agree with quite a few of your viewpoints, I'd say that this part in particular the problem with a hardcore raider's view point more than anything. Why create content for the 5-20% rather than the 80%? Going by that, they should just remove raids and spend the time making nothing but casual content. It makes sense that they create the content for the 5-20%, but which is also accessible to the other 80% via LFR or what have you. It would be interesting if they made a further tier; Challenge Mode raids. These would be unnerfed, with pre-set gear for everyone involved. They would be selectable as a starter instead of Normal or Heroic and would represent the raid in a completely unmodified and incredibly challenging way. They could offer the special mounts and titles there instead, while removing the ability to steam roll it over time.

Touching back to the talent trees again, it would just further complicate things; either people would feel inclined to drop their top tier talent to pick up the extra percentile bonuses further down, or only 1 percentile bonus would be necessary for a specific tree, thus removing the point of choice again. I do see what you're getting at though, but it would be incredibly hard to balance in a meaningful way.

[Madruga]

Actually, back in BC I saw a lot more raid content. Currently, LFR and hardmodes are being used a a separate tier, and the old content is essentially wasted for more casual raiders every time a new tier comes out.

I don't want to worship anyone. I want incentive to progress, and that incentive comes from seeing new places, or killing new bosses that others haven't seen. I didn't worship the players, I worshiped what they were doing, and I wanted to do it too.

These days, who cares if you're 3/8 HM or 4/8 HM? We've all seen it, on some level. It's a whole different experience to say, "I just killed the lurker below. And it was epic." Not that the kill was epic. Tough, down-to-the-wire boss fights can happen today. I mean the experience. The experience was epic. I think that most BC raiders will know what I'm saying. If you didn't raid back then, all I ask is that you please acknowledge that there could be some credence to this, for those who have experience it, before you write it off as wrong or unfair.

P.S.... Alyssa, thanks for helping to explain my point.

Off topic, but what are you playing these days? Still playing wow? Rift? I'm lost.

I am playing WoW, having a good time in Pandaria. Been willing to try Rift, but I don't have time for 2 MMOs =X

I do acknowledge that the days of hardcore raiding in WoW are over. Well, more or less, you can still strife to get Realm Firsts, and that new Feat of Strength that requires you to beat Heroic mode without the buff seems nasty... I think only 2 or 3 guilds in my realm will be able to do that, since only 1 guild defeated Ragnaros before the nerfs, and only 2 guilds defeated Spine before 5%.

But, thank god for that. I can´t afford to put too much time in WoW anymore. Without doing raids, I would probably quit. Heck, even doing Normal mode is not enough, I want Heroics.

[Brittany]

Personally I quite WoW the day they started nerfing DS with the buff as my 2 day a week guild didn't complete HC at that time (6/8), something that wouldn't happen with linear progression as there is less need to nerf, especially that soon.

In my opinion that is the worst thing about these nerfs. A lot of the time they come way too fast and they're not wanted by the playerbase.

For instance, I quit hardcore raiding after TBC and sat in as a guest member of a raiding guild for Wrath and for Cata.

The guild was raiding (not me) heroic stone golem council or something, and had the fight down.. 1-2% wipes. The next day, it got nerfed and they killed it along with most casual guilds on the realm. I remember they were close to getting firefighter down, then nerfs. I never saw the point in nerfing heroic modes. I get nerfing the normal ones, but these players work weeks on one boss, and theres little point. They may as just well wait for the nerfs and not waste their time.

When cata released, i levelled archaelogy before hitting the content (to avoid the rush). I sold all the greys for nothing, I had to use x amount of fragments. Almost a week later they gave you more money for doing it and nerfed it. I was punished for doing it early. This shouldn't happen. If they want it easy, have it easy, but put it in the game easy, don't waste peoples time.

[Redblade]

Why create content for the 5-20% rather than the 80%? Going by that, they should just remove raids and spend the time making nothing but casual content.

You miss the point, WoW can be developed and maintained by 10% of it's player base so it is viable to develop content for such a group, same as it's viable to have Pokemon in WoW, I don't care for that but don't see an issue with it's addition as it surely cater to some players. This applies to the whole game, instead of claiming they shouldn't develop this that or the other due to the size of the group it caters to, we as gamers should demand them to develop all of the various content types, at least if they as developers want to cater to all types of gamers instead of being a niche game.

Currently they are developing for the 10% that do want and enjoy raiding while spending extra resources to balance and deal with the issues that arises from i-lvl inflation and such to push the other 90% in to content they didn't want to do in the first place. If they really want to let everyone see the content (something that is mostly an excuse to get shiny rewards) then add a ICC style buff to old tier raids within a linear progression path that increases for each new tier content, using BC as an example T4 would get 5% buff at launch of T5, 10% when T6 is launched and so on, helps progression along without disrupting the natural flow of things.

I think they would be better off developing more content outside raiding for those 90% instead, there are tons of ways to make casual and solo content that require both effort and skill or just time while giving nice unique rewards for it.

Touching back to the talent trees again, it would just further complicate things; either people would feel inclined to drop their top tier talent to pick up the extra percentile bonuses further down, or only 1 percentile bonus would be necessary for a specific tree, thus removing the point of choice again. I do see what you're getting at though, but it would be incredibly hard to balance in a meaningful way.

Isn't that what actual choice is though, never said it would be easy to balance but I'm sure Blizzard can afford a good theory crafter or two to not screw it up to much while still making it interesting, I'm quite sure it's just a matter of will to make it work, something Blizzard didn't seem to have after BC.

I never saw the point in nerfing heroic modes. I get nerfing the normal ones, but these players work weeks on one boss, and theres little point. They may as just well wait for the nerfs and not waste their time.

Between LFR, Normal and Heroic I don't see any reason to nerf anything (guilds doing normal like a challenge to), if they can't balance three difficulties to have close to seamless transition in difficulty I'd say they failed as developers, hell if they insist on segmented progression with various difficulties then add another mode or two and make sure to get it right so nerfs are unnecessary.

Didn't do DS with the buff but I'm assuming that 30% basically made normal be LFR difficulty and heroic be what normal was without the buff, only creating an illusion of progression without needing to develop more content.

[Tarien]

I fail to see how you feel Rift content is better

Maybe because some people like a bit of a challenge, and maybe they don't like having to beat the same boss for the same looking loot multiple times because it ruins the feeling of accomplishment?

MMO have evolved from the prehistorical ages of Vanilla and TBC. They were great games/expansion for their time, but the industry progressed from that time, there is no room for games like those in todays gaming..

Well, that's subjective really. What one person calls improvement another might call a total fail. And if WoW is improving, why is it losing subs?

[Vespian]

Blizzard told us the stats. It was an estimated 5% of the player base in TBC was actually raiding all of the end-game content. WotLK boosted that number hugely to start with and the reason the subs were so high was because the WotLK opening raids were very accessible (easy) and lots of people wanted to see more about Arthas and the PR/advertising section of Blizzard went insane on the run up to its release. Numbers began to decline with Ulduar's release and constantly free-fell after that. The amount of people who only actually had the first 4 bosses done in Ulduar until ICC released/Cataclysm and beyond was probably ridiculously low (This is speculative, but judging by conversations and achieves most people had at the time, probably not far off).

People seem to base everything around this baby boom that was WotLK and don't actually look at the fact: It was a one off. The numbers hit with WotLK are unlikely to ever be hit again, it was well timed and marketed to death. It cleaned up because it was programmed to and there was little/no competition. Blizzard has refined and re-defined the game endlessly since TBC and has bowed to the majority's demands. WoW is how it is now because of the players.

Are you reading what you post? 5% of all people were raiding the hardest dungeon in the game. Not the first beginner raid, but the hardest dungeon. WOTLK boosted subs, because its premise was good, the storyline a core element of the old Warcraft and all tBC players were still there. Had WOTLK come after Cata, it would have been in the same place MoP is right now, being an expansion that most "probably won't buy for the first time ever".

The players are definitely the cause of its downfall. Those 12 mil people never were gamers to begin with. A portion were housewives that were used to playing mahjong all day. An even larger portion were friends of friends of friends that weren't normally all that interested in gaming, but WoW had a hook.

The more people joined, the louder the crying became about paying for the game meaning access to all content. "We don't pay for only 50% of the game, we pay to get all of it" And Blizzard, who had a "go back to your cave you evil consumer' policy before and during the majority of tBC, caved in and changed that company policy into one less focussed on integrity and more on money.

I don't want to go back to Vanilla, I just think all changes went too far. Blizzard is a company of extremes. Nerfs often had to be fixed by semi-buffs, because the nerfs were too severe. The same applies to the core game, but they never fixed those extremes. Those, they just let be.

[Djuntas]

Doubt it OP. I just dont see much being done to the MMO scene. Maybe I should try Guild wars2, but after trying Rift, I just dont wanna jump on another MMO, in hope of something better, and feel dissapointed. I do agree Rift exspansion looks promising trough, but I really hate paying the sub fee ontop off exspansion price.

Can atleast say MOP didnt bring anything new to the table, and inn some ways made things worser. My sub run's out soon, and I will see if raiding will be worth coming back for, or future patches I guess.

[Shinzai]

Are you reading what you post? 5% of all people were raiding the hardest dungeon in the game. Not the first beginner raid, but the hardest dungeon. WOTLK boosted subs, because its premise was good, the storyline a core element of the old Warcraft and all tBC players were still there. Had WOTLK come after Cata, it would have been in the same place MoP is right now, being an expansion that most "probably won't buy for the first time ever".

That's pretty much what I just said... By TBC's "end game" I was referring to Black Temple and above. And as I said, WotLK opened up the raiding game. I already mentioned that Kara and maybe SSC would have a decent amount of people going through them, but that's it. My point was that the number of raiders was nearly non existent and that making content easier and tiering it into normal/hc/10/25 is what opened up the game to more people.

[Vespian]

That's pretty much what I just said... By TBC's "end game" I was referring to Black Temple and above. And as I said, WotLK opened up the raiding game. I already mentioned that Kara and maybe SSC would have a decent amount of people going through them, but that's it. My point was that the number of raiders was nearly non existent and that making content easier and tiering it into normal/hc/10/25 is what opened up the game to more people.

I called myself a raider when I still only did Karazhan, as well as when I was raiding BWL/AQ40 in Vanilla. The number of raiders was far greater than you pretend. Blizzard took the same approach you do. Explaining statistics the wrong way, probably on purpose, to pave the way.

[Ituhippi]

Hope not. MoP is much more interesting than a new WoW/TBC.

---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 01:01 PM ----------

I called myself a raider when I still only did Karazhan, as well as when I was raiding BWL/AQ40 in Vanilla. The number of raiders was far greater than you pretend. Blizzard took the same approach you do. Explaining statistics the wrong way, probably on purpose, to pave the way.

No, the statistics were right. With what super powers can you prove otherwise?