Former WoW team lead Mark Kern - MMO's have become too easy

[GrieverXIII]

How well the game is doing is irrelivent to me, i like it easy.

There's plenty of genres that caters to people like you. Ever heard of Angry Birds? Not like it matters anymore since Blizzard is bending over to your kind just for money.

[Wildmoon]

Yeah, look how well the game has been doing since he's gone and the welfare philosophy has went full speed.

Not sure what you are talking about. We don't know when he left and WoW losing subs or gaining subs are not only the result of design philosophy. There are a lot more things to keep in consideration. For example, even if CATA was 5x times better than TBC, it still wouldn't gain 4 million subs like TBC.

[squid]

I hear it a lot, but I don't think you can complain about a game being too easy until you are completing it's hardest content. WoW has 3, soon to be 4 levels of raiding, a ton of people protest features like LFR but can't complete a heroic boss. Play at the difficulty you desire, you can sit in the easiest most available content and complain, or challenge yourself. And don't give me that "I don't have time to get into heroic raiding it takes too much time and effort and my RL life is busy", that may be true but you are using the reason for LFRs invention against itself.

Basically people complaining about how easy something is are either not challenging themselves, or spitting on people in lower content out of elitism.

[ManOluck]

Repeated this for 10.000 times already.

Subs losses having NOTHING to do with in game issues.

The subscription market is no longer the standard and MMo's are replaced with faster on line games.

The general market changed and MMO's turned free to play, no wonder WOW lost some 25% subscription when the others went for 0 % subscriptions.


In your hate against Blizzard you didn't even notice the subscription market changed.

People these days LIKE to play GARBAGE, as long as it is "free to play".

NEW people will NEVER pay a subscription if all that free to play garbage is STILL out there


I can wait ... because the money will run out of these former AAA's sooner than many expect.

Blizzard got the message: they wait with their next MMORPG until the shake out of these free to play thingies is finished.

Opinion not fact.

Try again.

[Otimus]

Full article:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/7540

His basic overall premise is that the desire for "accessibilty" promoted everything being presented and consumed faster and faster and ultimately the world gets lost. An MMO is supposed to be about the journey as much as anything, and that the immersion in a world has been lost in favor of shuffling people along faster.



Unfortunately at the end of the article he goes into a sort of commercial for his latest project, which a lot of people will focus on, but I think his points are what a lot of posters here have been saying.

While he ABSOLUTELY has a point, and anyone with that viewpoint like yourself, has a point, I think, ultimately, with the way games started heading in 2005/2006 or so, and where it's at now, if MMOs DIDN'T do what they've done, they'd of been entirely lost on the mainstream as a genre. EVEN with doing this, they're still slipping from the mainstream fairly fast. The itch most MMOs scratch is being scratch by things without all the MMO baggage to go with it (Both a good, and a bad thing in various respects.)

and it's not just free to play MMOs or whatever that's causing this. It's things like XBOX Live, Call of Duty, DOTAs and whatnot. A lot of stuff now has light RPG elements of some kind (i.e. leveling up a weapon), without the commitment and dedicated and hours needed to play an actual MMO. Most people are going to be satisfied by that, and when they have to put time, commitment and scheduling into a game, they're going to just say "no", except for a niche.

[GrieverXIII]

Repeated this for 10.000 times already.

Subs losses having NOTHING to do with in game issues.

The subscription market is no longer the standard and MMo's are replaced with faster on line games.

The general market changed and MMO's turned free to play, no wonder WOW lost some 25% subscription when the others went for 0 % subscriptions.


In your hate against Blizzard you didn't even notice the subscription market changed.

People these days LIKE to play GARBAGE, as long as it is "free to play".

NEW people will NEVER pay a subscription if all that free to play garbage is STILL out there


I can wait ... because the money will run out of these former AAA's sooner than many expect.

Blizzard got the message: they wait with their next MMORPG until the shake out of these free to play thingies is finished.

See, this is the perfect example of a double standard. For a long time people blamed difficulty for sub losses. Specially at the begining of Cataclysm. Now that the game has went their way and is suffering even more, suddently sub losses are irrelevant to the game.

Hint : The F2P genre is mostly striving in Asia.

[Tomana]

This guy should get an economy and finance course right about now.
Hopefully Red 5 has someone like this, otherwise we'll end up with another dead WoW killer.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 12:59 AM ----------

See, this is the perfect example of a double standard. For a long time people blamed difficulty for sub losses. Specially at the begining of Cataclysm. Now that the game has went their way and is suffering even more, suddently sub losses are irrelevant to the game.

Because MOP didn't go their way. That's the whole point. MOP requires a lot more time to be sunken in it than late Cata.

[Hb]

Nice buzzword. I also hope you realize that the pejorative of "welfare" was first thrown at WoW during BC. You know, the expansion that people who quit the game love to wet themselves over like it was the best thing ever.

---------- Post added 2013-06-30 at 10:48 PM ----------



Heroic modes? High-end PvP?

Guess those aren't counted because people can do LFR and random bgs?

Yeah, that's totally a reasonable argument you're making.

Also LOL @ acting like a very specialized tactic used by one class (Which is the only one designed in this way to do what he has done. Warlocks can also do so to a lesser degree, but nowhere close) killing a raid boss means the game is super easy now. Get back to me when everybody can do that shit or you're just blowing smoke.

Keep denying. Game have become too easy get over it. Heroic modes? are you serious? Thats not even hard anymore. Not even HC raiding. High end PvP is nothing but playing very OP comps these days, skill has left the building.

[Tomana]

That's what game developers are supposed to do. That is their job. Players need something to strive for, even if it is unreachable (aka BC and Wrath). Let developers develop! However, this is a lost cause in WoW because everything is so heavily diluted now.

It's not up to the devs to decide what customers want. This is the job of CEO and Marketing.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 01:00 AM ----------

Keep denying. Game have become too easy get over it. Heroic modes? are you serious? Thats not even hard anymore. Not even HC raiding.

Right, Ragnaros in vanilla was so much harder than in Cata. Oh wait, it's actually the other way around.

[GrieverXIII]

Not sure what you are talking about. We don't know when he left and WoW losing subs or gaining subs are not only the result of design philosophy. There are a lot more things to keep in consideration. For example, even if CATA was 5x times better than TBC, it still wouldn't gain 4 million subs like TBC.

If he's been working on a different MMO that is close to release, i'd be willing to bet he left around 4 years ago at the very least. Guess when the game shifted? And obviously they aren't the only factor but its part of the equation.

[Deleted]

MMOs didn't really come too easy, they just shifted far too much into theme park territory at the expense of immersive, cohensive world where you can carve a name of yourself and rather just are "part" of the pre-determined story arc.

Very true indeed.

[Paulosio]

Focus on the journey etc etc, It just sounds exactly like SWTOR and how the leveling experience will never be the same with another class it will make the game the best the world have seen, heard it before as they say. Leveling is boredom and it is in no way shape or form something i consider vital to a mmo game.

After playing wow for years I sort of agree but WOW is the 1st and only MMO i've ever played and when I started I enjoyed levelling... Once you've done it about 10 times it isn't quite as fun. I still quite like levelling a character through a new xpac... but only once. After the 1st time it's tedious.

[GrieverXIII]

This guy should get an economy and finance course right about now.
Hopefully Red 5 has someone like this, otherwise we'll end up with another dead WoW killer.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 12:59 AM ----------



Because MOP didn't go their way. That's the whole point. MOP requires a lot more time to be sunken in it than late Cata.

I don't think we play the same game. The only remotely "time consuming" part was the rep grind that has been anihilated very quickly. Now you can hit 90 and end up with an average ilvl of 480-490 in a day. Its actually exactly how late cata was except that you get a welfare legendary now on top of it.

Edit : Here's my Druid, 3 days /played at 90 including the time doing Challenge Modes : http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...winds/advanced

[Hb]

It's not up to the devs to decide what customers want. This is the job of CEO and Marketing.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 01:00 AM ----------



Right, Ragnaros in vanilla was so much harder than in Cata. Oh wait, it's actually the other way around.

Raiding in this game havent been difficult since TBC. Complete walkover since day one of Wrath and till now.

[Tomana]

I don't think we play the same game. The only remotely "time consuming" part was the rep grind that has been anihilated very quickly. Now you can hit 90 and end up with an average ilvl of 480-490 in a day. Its actually exactly how late cata was except that you get a welfare legendary now on top of it.

What on earth are you talking about? Hint: new players dinging 90 don't have the commendations and the bunch of gold to buy the high level items. So no.
MOP rep grinding, for instance, is far more time consuming than Cata or LK. There are no 5-man catchup etc...
All of that repulsed quite a lot of casual players.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 01:06 AM ----------

Raiding in this game havent been difficult since TBC. Complete walkover since day one of Wrath and till now.

Top guilds disagree with you. And guess what, I believe them.
Also, TBC raiding wasn't hard except for a couple of bosses. It was comp- and class-reliant, which is not the same thing.

[Wildmoon]

WoW devs have slowly been bending the knee to what gamers think they needed and wanted.

I have seen people make fun of Blizzard and other companies for "telling me what I need and how to play"

Guess what?

That's what game developers are supposed to do. That is their job. Players need something to strive for, even if it is unreachable (aka BC and Wrath). Let developers develop! However, this is a lost cause in WoW because everything is so heavily diluted now.

WotLK is the epitome of casualness.

[DeadmanWalking]

Oh wow, some guy who use to work for blizzard is opinionated about something. Call me shocked. Those that agree with him will hold this up as the holy bible though.

[Hb]

What on earth are you talking about? Hint: new players dinging 90 don't have the commendations and the bunch of gold to buy the high level items. So no.
MOP rep grinding, for instance, is far more time consuming than Cata or LK. There are no 5-man catchup etc...
All of that repulsed quite a lot of casual players.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 01:06 AM ----------



Top guilds disagree with you. And guess what, I believe them.
Also, TBC raiding wasn't hard except for a couple of bosses. It was comp- and class-reliant, which is not the same thing.

I guess thats why everything is cleared from day one now compared to weeks / months in TBC.
And thats HARDLY because of not having X class in your raid.

[Wildmoon]

Raiding in this game havent been difficult since TBC. Complete walkover since day one of Wrath and till now.

Heroic raiding is harder than old days. I am talking about mechanics.

[Tomana]

I guess thats why everything is cleared from day one now compared to weeks / months in TBC.
And thats HARDLY because of not having X class in your raid.

What frigging weeks? M'uru and KJ took 3 days to kill. BT took a week. What the hell are you talking about?