Hardcore/Elitist community disappears - What happens to WoW?

[Staticus]

Tier 14 is one of the best raiding tiers since ICC for hardcores. It's been a long time since we've had 16 bosses to kill in 1 tier before. Compared to Firelands (7) and Dragon Soul (8), T14 trumps them all by a huge margin. Now, raiding isn't just show up on Tuesday, clear 8 bosses in 1 night, wait till next Tuesday for reset.

It's a breath of fresh air that Blizzard is finally making larger tiers with harder bosses that have more complex mechanics. 16 bosses per tier should be the usual, not 7 or 8 like Blizzard got away with in T12 and T13.

Unfortunately that's only because it's the opening tier of the expansion (T7 had 17 bosses and T11 had 12), you can bet that future tiers will be a lot more like T12/13 were...especially if they'd rather just put in dailies cos they take less effort to make. (in fact I remember someone from Blizz saying that 10 bosses was the ideal amount for a tier)

[Ulvhedner]

Needless to say, if the hardcore/elitist community disappeared, we would have a very different game on our hands. Whether or not it would be a good thing, remains to be unseen. But what I say is this: What happens to any game when the drive to be competitive diminishes?

Because a game can't be good if there's no competition? Say hello to Skyrim or some other game you enjoy where you don't have multiplayer. If you can't think of any, you're doing gaming wrong. There is so much more to a game than just trying to be the best.

[Yriel]

It´s always brought up that without the hardcore/elitist there would be no more addons. I´d really like to see proof that the majority of the addon coders are hardcores.
Then you say that without any hardcores, any real hard content would be gone. So how does that affect me ?
And for your point that the elitists give WoW some credibility... do you really thing that a measurable amount of players started playing WoW because Ensidia was worldfirst in killing some boss or some arena team got gladiator titles ?

[Mad_Murdock]

As the title inquires...

These so called "Hardcore" players, or "Elitists" whoever they may be, however you define or quantify them, are one of the most important facets in WoW. Without them, what's the point of having hardmode raids, or making content difficult? Why have a competitive scene for PVP if there's no truly outstanding players to watch, sponsor, or feature in competitions and at events?

I bet you didn't know this, but the best WoW players in the world. Never played WoW! Think about that a second. How do you know the people who might be the best ever never bothered to play. They opted to play something else, or maybe fate had them lose the ability to play or they simply ended up somewhere else ?

Will Basketball never be the same since we don't have M Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson playing ? Or is there always someone else to fill those shoes ? If the top 100 Guilds in the world quit today, guess what ? There would be a new Top 100 Guilds and those people would be the new go to people. Are you saying that only the top 5 guild\players in the world are capable of figuring stuff out ? Again, how do we know the best people haven't already quit ?

If anything if the top 100 Quit, we might see raiding slow way down and then we wouldn't see monkeys posting such dumb things as "LOL Paragon cleared Firelands in two weeks...LOL..Now what Blizzard!?!?"

The best progression path is Skill. If you haven't already cleared 6/6HC and 6/6 Normal. Then you're looking for gear to carry your lack of skill. And that's not to pick on you, it just proves that skill is better than gear. I'm grinding gear to make up for my (or the guild's) lack of skill, some others don't do dailies at all. Our problem is not gear, we just don't have people who can avoid fire AND do good enough DPS\Heals\Tanking.

There is a reason I haven't tried to get into a more focused Progression guild. I don't want to commit the time and energy required. I think some people feel like they have no choice but to grind, but you always have a choice.

[Scouse]

For whatever reason, the so called "Hardcore" or "Elitist" crowd disappears from WoW. The competitive scene is gone too. PVP and endgame raiding still exist, sure, but the people who were doing this stuff at the highest levels now no longer play.

Sorry, but you are absolutely wrong. There is still plenty of competition, and there always will be. It may be different people (people get older and move on to other things in their life - it's been almost 8 years since the game came out after all) but there will always be others that can replace them, with such a large player base.

[melodramocracy]

Defining a player as 'hardcore / elitist' is a sliding scale, really. They will always exist in WoW, because there will always be world firsts, meters, rankings, etc. As long as these things exist, so will some classification of players who engage in such activities.

[Trendy-Ideology]

A lot of interesting responses and diverse opinions here, good stuff to think on and talk about, except for the few morons that were all like ZOMGWTFCOCKS but Shootandkill already addressed them and said pretty much what I'd have already said.

There's like 16 gear slots in WoW. MSV has 6 bosses. Each boss drops 2 items. That's a maximum of 12 items in the first week. Say you clear it again, then that's 24 items. It's impossible to have every single piece of gear from normal mode by week 2, because that would mean that every single piece for every slot you needed, dropped AND it means that you had no competition for the rolls and got every single piece. The chances of that happening are insanely low. Now, there's the Elder Coins, but by week two you would have 6. If we're being optimistic, then that brings the number of gear slots needed from 16 to 10. Now that's being VERY VERY optimistic, but still. 10 slots. 24 items, and you have to get 10 unique items from the bosses. This means no duplicates from the coins or from the regular drops.

So, if you are in a top guild and you want to get world/realm/region first, then you're going to need everything you can get, so you HAVE to run LFR and you HAVE to do dailies. Not to mention that some of the rep items might be better than what you can get in normal MSV. Come on. Think before you speak, because you're just making yourself look stupid.

Also to the people saying "Only the top 100 are hardcore" I really already addressed that in the OP where I pretty much explicitly said that I wasn't limited the term to just those in the best guilds that are already 5/6HM MV. You know what, if that's all hardcore is to you by your definition, that's fine, but, that's really not how I see it, and, for the purposes of the point I was trying to make, the way that MoP did gear aquisition affected a subset of players inclined to always get the best gear possible as fast as possible in a negative way and those players fall within the scope of how I labeled them. If you have another term you want to plaster on the people who fit that description, then we can call them that, but I think that arguing over the term I used and defined and saying that "It really only applies to XYZ" is to miss the point entirely.

The way that the rep grinds work and the way gear acquisition is gated and the changes to VP acquisition rates impacted a particular subset of the player base in an incredibly soul-sapping fun-sucking way, and Blizzard's response to this so far is to simply write them off as a small fraction of the community and disregard their complaints as being invalid because they don't "have to" do any of the things they're complaining about.

Lots of changes have been made to things that people didn't "have to" participate in for the sake of QoL. All I'm asking for is a QoL improvement for rep and gear acquisition from non-raiding to gear alts and shit faster. And I really don't think it's that much to ask. Gimme a tabard. If Blizzard gave us rep tabards then that would legitimize dailies as being omgwtfsofunbbq when people keep doing them even though they have an alternative. I wouldn't even care if they daily capped tabard rep at 50% of what was available via dailies and hard-capped everyone at 100% of what was available from dailies so that if you wanted to do dailies you still could and if you wanted to do 50/50 you could or if you just wanted to do tabard rep for 50% of the daily value but end up getting rep half as fast you could do that too, which would save a lot of people from wanting to blow their fucking brains out.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

The hardcore are only hardcore because of their passion for the game and their desire for excellence.

The hardcore is about 10% of the players.

There's more soloers who play than that.

The sad thing in all of this though is: all these years that 10% took a lions share of the monies and time. Imagine what MMOs could've been today if only 10% of the monies were devoted to a box and 8 bosses?

I'm just waiting for a true adventure MMO to come out. Seen the raids, the dungeons and the PvP. Want to return to exploring the world and finding more summits to peer from and find whatever treasures that could be found up there. RIFT had some neat achievements for the explorer, how about the same in WoW? EQ2 had it you can climb walls and sides of cliffs. How about the feat of scaling a mountainside? Or reasons to want to go high (or low for the scuba types). Content doesn't just always need to be what kills what and what stats you have...sick of that, seriously.

[Shootandkill]

NO, NO aaaand NO! What you describe is NOT a top guild. It is a very average guild. Any top guild worth the title "TOP" guild has now cleared 6/6 HM. If you have not...you are no Top guild. You ... just....are....NOT

What are you talking about.......

[Necrosaro123]

"Hardcore" players, or "Elitists" are made for "Hard to play games". WoW right now is casual, because most of the players are from 8-15 years old player base.

Who need to pay these "Hardcore" players, or "Elitists" to play WoW anyway? It's completely pointless right now and useless to have these kind of players, because it's just a game.....not a sport. Finally the player base is being made of the right kind of community that needs this game, children and teenagers.

And no, WoW doesn't need them. It's a game not a job, playing 1-2 hours a day it's ok, more than that is sick. Maybe they started to realise that since CATA, when the raids started to being boring and weird.

----------------
I remember back on WOTLK when Ensidia was banned because of the exploit of the Lich king Fight. I always dislike this kind of gamer, it's too much emphasis on a game.

[gurv]

What happens if hardcore/elitist disappear?
1) Won't happen
2) Nothing

Also Challenge modes are a love letter to hardcore/elitists.
And dailies/rep grind is a giant fuck you to a big percentage of wow players, not only elitists.

---------- Post added 2012-11-07 at 10:20 PM ----------

WoW right now is casual, because most of the players are from 8-15 years old player base.

Finally the player base is being made of the right kind of community that needs this game, children and teenagers.

Hahaha, thanks for the good laugh
Check http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/th...factor-page-2/
First item.

[Necrosaro123]

What happens if hardcore/elitist disappear?
1) Won't happen
2) Nothing

Also Challenge modes are a love letter to hardcore/elitists.
And dailies/rep grind is a giant fuck you to a big percentage of wow players, not only elitists.

---------- Post added 2012-11-07 at 10:20 PM ----------



Hahaha, thanks for the good laugh
Check http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/th...factor-page-2/
First item.

Yes i know, WoW is a joke right now....

[NightZero88]

Can't happen. Assuming the top 10% who are currently the elites quit then the people below them would become the new hardcore. So in essence WoW would just lose X number of players which would be replaced by the people below them and nothing would change. Also, nobody cares.

[thevoicefromwithin]

Bandwith consumption goes down, average IQ goes up. Would be a win/win for Blizzard and the remaining users.

[Descolada]

I just don't agree that hardcore and/or elitist are the same thing. If we lost hardcores, like people from Method/Blood Legion and the competitive scene, it would be a problem for WoW. But those people aren't coming to the forums to complain about bads and how they are forced into dailies.

But if you are in a guild that is #1,200 in the world, and yet you strut around your capital city on your realm talking smack and complaining that any bad can get a Heroic mount now, then the game would be about a gazillion times more fun without you...

PS, that way I would be able to talk smack...