"Players rarely argue for less convenience." - Ghostcrawler

[brunnor]

..so if WoW is no longer that game..by that logic..should you still play WoW? is there no game that fullfills your needs as of today? If not..then why? Apparently it is so easy to make a fantastic game, just make it like Classic WoW...

WoW is rapidly not becoming that game, that is correct. Before I do go, I figured I'd try to help fix things before hand. If they don't go that way, then I will move on.
I'm sure I can find a new game that will full fill my needs but I would prefer to say with the one I've devoted tons of time, money and effort to. When I quit everquest it was easier on my because my guild just left for WoW, so I was able to keep my friendships in tact and such, but that wouldn't be the case here so it is harder to do. That being said, Wildstar has good things I hear and Everquest:Next info will be coming soon, so hopefully that will be welcome news seeing how things are currently going here.

When did I ever say it was easy to make a fantastic game? I never even implied it or hinted in that way at all. Making a great game is hard or everyone would do it. What I was saying is that just because you have two fantastic games on their own, doesn't make them a fantastic game together.

[melodramocracy]

Going by that statement one would wonder why haven't they put in instant teleporters to almost anywhere for the 'sake of convenience'

/raid 'summon plz'

[Deleted]

I'm simply stating you can't use the number of supporters as support for an argument.

Not on it's own, but it's perfectly valid in countering the people claiming that the number of LFR threads is proof that it's a problem.

Besides which, when it comes to whether something is good or bad gaming there is no "fact" - only opinion.

[brunnor]

Personally, I wish they would just give the elitists what they want in WoW. WoW is approaching 9 years old. All you elitist should stay in WoW re-living your glory days. The rest of us will move on to newer games and we don't need all your negativity and toxic behavior to follow us.

"You" do that anyway. You always have and always will. The more causal players will always move on to something different at some point because they aren't invested in said game.

[Spike`]

Honestly i think they now will make the right balance if they want to and dont miss this opportunity

1. LFR: For the people that have less time to play the game. (work, family, etc)
2. Flex: Great for Casuals that are on bad guilds/normal guilds (or no guild at all) and the ones that usually only kill after 2/3 months the last boss in normal mode and have friends to play this (can even be some of the ones that only do LFR on weekend)
3. Normal: Medium Guilds, now with flex they can up a little the difficulty on normals, not much, just a little.
4. Heroic: now its the time to really appeal to hardcode/semi hardcore guilds/players, they can really up the difficulty because of Flex

they can please all the raiders community unless in last minute they have a brain freeze

[Duronos]

The way I see it, they've been going down this path for years and it's really not done them any good. You can say the game is old but games like EvE Online have maintained a very good sub base (for a non-WoW MMO) for a very long period of time. I honestly believe it's the route they've been going down for years that has just started to slowly dwindle the WoW sub base, there is kind of a correlation if you think about it.

Now I'm not saying WoW is bad, it's just not as good it seems and I'd like to see Blizzard "experiment" by trying to make things a little less convenient and actually implement things where the community wouldn't just be your guild. For an MMO, it's important that there is a community social aspect that is server wide and you know who's a jerk and who is not. Whether any of you believe it or not, Blizzard has a direct impact with implementing ideas into a game regarding players socializing, you can use the bad argument that you "make an effort and actually just talk to anyone" but this is a video game where most of us play for fun. Feeling forced to socialize in an MMO is weird. Back before they implemented LFD etc. I just met people naturally and talked to them, I didn't feel like I was forced.

You just look like that weird kid at a high school lunch where you sit down with the "rich popular kids" trying to socialize. Back then it was something that just naturally flowed because the game worked like that, in essence it was your second life.

As a player, you had to make a name for yourself back then.

[fangless]

We're talking about a game here! WoW isn't a construction project or ground-breaking research. Games are supposed to be pleasant. I don't understand people who expect games to be work. I honestly suspect that those people don't have enough work to do in real-life so they look to games to provide a sense of accomplishment. That's not what games are made for. Games are supposed to be a diversion from the onerous reality of day-to-day living. If you want to participate in an activity that demands honest effort and offers tangible rewards get a job or raise a family. Don't log into an online game and complain that it's not making you "work" hard enough.

If there was a smiley for throwing my hands up in the air in defeat, I would post it.

[melodramocracy]

We're talking about a game here! WoW isn't a construction project or ground-breaking research. Games are supposed to be pleasant. I don't understand people who expect games to be work. I honestly suspect that those people don't have enough work to do in real-life so they look to games to provide a sense of accomplishment. That's not what games are made for. Games are supposed to be a diversion from the onerous reality of day-to-day living. If you want to participate in an activity that demands honest effort and offers tangible rewards get a job or raise a family. Don't log into an online game and complain that it's not making you "work" hard enough.

Games are made for entertainment, and not everyone derives entertainment from the same aspects of a video game.

Plenty of games on the market cater to what you're referring to, why not just go pick one of those?

[Eadoin]

I'm still not really sure why WoW has this perception that it's too casual friendly. Compared to early TBC when we had to farm 100 elixirs a night + flasks + food maybe, but the highest level content is harder then everything in TBC sans-Sunwell.

MoP has content for both hardcore (TBC-style) and casual (WLK-style). Why is this a bad thing? Why is more content ever a bad thing?

[brunnor]

Games are made for entertainment, and not everyone derives entertainment from the same aspects of a video game.

Plenty of games on the market cater to what you're referring to, why not just go pick one of those?

They don't need to anymore since they came here then bitched and moaned until they got what they want.

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I'm still not really sure why WoW has this perception that it's too casual friendly. Compared to early TBC when we had to farm 100 elixirs a night + flasks + food maybe, but the highest level content is harder then everything in TBC sans-Sunwell.

MoP has content for both hardcore (TBC-style) and casual (WLK-style). Why is this a bad thing? Why is more content ever a bad thing?

At the time, Sunwell was about inline with what we currently have. Players(and mods) have gotten better over the years and made once "hard" bosses seem easy now. PTR testing, dungeon journal, websites like this one and other things have all made it much easier to kill bosses. The number of times bosses were 80% changed from PTR to live back in the day was huge. So walking in to bosses was still a pretty big mystery.

While it has both types, they are both watered down from their "roots". While there are easy heroics and reps, there is almost no reason to do them, unlike Wrath. While there are heroic raids, they are much less involved and interesting than before. WoW is trying to get some of everything and giving off a watered down half ass experience in all fields, and that's the issue.

[xanzul]

..of which 34 000 are considered active. The thread about the pet store had 1300 replies while a poll about it had 475 people voting. (Btw 300 of those were pro or agaisnt while 175 just didn't care). Those threads are then blown out of proportion like "Everyone is against the pet store"

However when MMO C has pet or mount giveaways, suddenly you see 15 000 (!) replies. People just don't see as much an issue with many, many things that are brought up.

Plus there is the fact (especially on this forum) if anyone god forbid says anything remotely positive about the game they are flamed to hell and back for absolutely no reason.

[Deleted]

And whine on forums is for the most part irrelevant. LFR is the new hate object for people who have a need to push others down in order to feel good about themselves. In vanilla it was the Unstoppable Force, in BC it was Badge gear that was clost to T6 in power, in WotLK it was easy heroics and in Cataclysm it was Dragon Soul and the 5-man heroics. If you take away LFR as that hate object they will move on to a new feature to hate on.

All of these things r not even close in how many pages of forum discussion they generated. I could mention many more even bigger issues that generated massive forum discussion... but they also fall short to LFR.

LFR is in a league all on its own for Wow controversy.

[Normie]

We argue against it because it takes away what being an MMORPG is. If I wanted an instant gratification game, I would go play one like that. I play an MMORPG to be immersed in the world and progress my character over time. Blizzard is trying too hard to bring all possible gamers to WoW rather than sticking to what made them popular and doing it really well. Farmville and Pokemon additions, while nice to some, aren't what an MMORPG is about. They have a place in the gaming world, just not together.

What made WoW popular was bringing "all possible gamers" to it. That's essentially the definition of popularity. When everyone does it or wants to do it.

There are no particular rules regarding "what an MMORPG is about." If you think there are then you are thinking inside the box, and inside the box is where the MMOs with a few hundred thousand subscribers/players live.

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LFR is in a league all on its own for Wow controversy.

No it's not.

Welfare epics, hybrid tax, PvP gear in PvE, blah blah blah, someone finds a good troll/whine and the community latches on to it in an endlessly repeating loop for a couple of years. LFR is just the whine du jour.

[Deficineiron]

They were trying out something new. They don't make every decision based on data alone. Sometimes they make gambles that people will like a change that they just don't have data for.

well, the poster I replied to says they analyze every decision vs. expected game impact/revenue impact, and you suggest they just gamble and try major game-changes out, presumably without detailed analysis to support it (though you know when dealing with masses of statistics, you can make the data say anything if you want to and work at it. the east anglia folks managed to eliminate the middle age warming period by this same method).

I have no idea why the lvl 85 tuning decision got put through (along with several other cat. decisions that still puzzle me, 10/25 lockouts particularly), but I suspect you are both wrong in part, and that the truth also involves internal politics/factions pushing for content at a more traditional difficulty tuning vs. what was let out in wotlk release (even a blue has said naxx25 wasn't tuned as hard as they would have liked, think chilton but not sure).

[xanzul]

What about the 4 million players that left WoW but don't bother to complain?

What about them? Different people quit for different reasons many of which have absolutely nothing to do with the state of the game at all. Also keep in mind players quit for entirely contradictory reasons so trying to attribute lost subscriptions to a single cause is pointless.

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GC is pretty oblvious to anything anyone wants in this game. The design team has shown over the years that their idea is the only way. Just read the piles of dev responses on MMO each news post, and it's basically "No, you're wrong, we don't see this as an issue".

Less convenience? No one would argue for that because people want things to be easier. Well, here you go, 3 years later, this is the game THE COMMUNITY has asked for.

You do realize typically when GC or any of the developers says anything about the game most times they phrase it in such a way to get more targeted feedback right? What people mistake as "my way or the highway" is usually an attempt to get players to elaborate on a particular subject while making their own stance clear but most times players like you just fly off the handle and start raging. Communication with developers can only improve if players are willing to actually listen and comprehend what is being said.

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So apparently people on the forums only account for a small minority of the playerbase? Well then why on earth did blizz listen to the forum complainers in 4.1 and decide to nerf all the heroics...

Because of their own analysis of their own metrics that none of us have access to. I know people like to believe Blizzard makes knee jerk reactions based on what players say (while at the same time simultaneously accusing them of not listening to players) but everything Blizzard does and says is backed with hard data. Maybe instead of nitpicking over nonsense why not enter an actual discussion with them?

[El_Diabl0]

Players don't complain, but Blizzard *should* be able to see the results of their changes by how much and in what ways players are engaging with the content available to them.

I know that this is not what they're doing, but consider this scenario.

If you put every item for sale at a vendor and put the same gear as a drop from a very hard boss, almost everyone will choose to buy the item rather than kill the boss for the item. Some people will still go and kill that boss, but most will think "Why waste my time, he doesn't drop anything I need". Does that give you any incentive to continue playing the game? No. Why? Because you can get everything you want easily and you have no reason at all to actually play the game.

A game is not just about getting the best gear for your character, but that's part of the game. The same can be said about how your character look. And if you only play the game to see content, you kill a boss once and never goes back to it. Additionally, if you play only for gear, and are able to simply buy the gear you want, you may even stick around long enough to get the gear, but will probably quit shortly afterwards.

It's the little things that drives someone to keep playing a game. And if the game is too easy, most people will faceroll their way through it, get bored and look for something else to do.

[jakeic]

During pre-WoLTK lots of people provided feedback Pallys being too good, some even did the math and what not to show it was. Then Blizzard countered it would balance out at 80 despite the numerous constructive threads (and non constructive) telling them no

Guess where that went...

i think you mean DK's.

it seems obvious that if blizzard has all the data pertaining to wow, yet are still losing subs, they are either unable to accurately interpret the data or unable to implement the changes required to prevent sub losses.

[Sithalos]

The problem with LFR complainers is that most of them are casuals themselves, as it makes no sense why somebody in a hardcore guild would care about what goes on in LFR.

Makes recruitment pretty hard when 70% of the people on your server haven't set foot in a real raid since Firelands.

[Eadoin]

At the time, Sunwell was about inline with what we currently have. Players(and mods) have gotten better over the years and made once "hard" bosses seem easy now. PTR testing, dungeon journal, websites like this one and other things have all made it much easier to kill bosses. The number of times bosses were 80% changed from PTR to live back in the day was huge. So walking in to bosses was still a pretty big mystery.

While it has both types, they are both watered down from their "roots". While there are easy heroics and reps, there is almost no reason to do them, unlike Wrath. While there are heroic raids, they are much less involved and interesting than before. WoW is trying to get some of everything and giving off a watered down half ass experience in all fields, and that's the issue.

I can't speak for Heroics/Reps and reasons to do them simply because I'm the type of person who will do reps for the sake of having more reps at exalted (Yes, I know this is a very stupid reason, which is why I'm not qualified to speak about rep grinds ), but the one thing I will say is a definitely enjoyed the dailies this xpac much more than last. I never liked Tol Barad and Molten Front, while nice, seemed to be lacking. I liked that there was a lot of reps and lots of different daily hubs, though I do wish that gear wasn't tied to rep, traditionally rep has mostly been about vanity stuff (aside from in-raid rep), and for the last few patches it has been.

As for Hardcore type, it may just be a subjective thing but I could not disagree with you more. ToT is one of the better raids in a very long time and I've enjoyed heroic modes very much. In addition Challenge modes have been a blast and something I continually enjoy doing.

[Crookids]

This has to be the most infuriating tweet I have ever seen from Ghostcrawler

Either the community managers are doing an atrocious job, or the designers are pretending complaints don't exist

I mean, players have been complaining about WoW being more and more casual-friendly since WoTLK, complaining about its accessibility and convenience. This story really begins with the implementation of LFD towards the end of WOTLK, then flying mounts in cataclysm, and finally LFR. Dozens of LFR threads are made weekly, how come players rarely argue for less convenience?

Surveys and statistics do not consist solely of forum posts and posters.

/thread