I don't think we disagree, but just to clarify, most of the people who I came to this game have quit because they got married, had kids and didn't have time to play. People who started playing in college graduated, got jobs and stopped playing to focus on them.
The massive influx of MMO's over the course of the last 5-6 years, especially the F2P games have chewed away at it. I'm sure some people left because they just got bored of it after so many years.
Sure, people quit because of imbalances (real or perceived), or because the game got too hard, or too easy. Or any other number of reasons.
I just think that many of the people who left because they were unhappy with an element of the game think that the majority of people left for the same reason, because hey, if I'm upset and quitting over it, everyone else must be upset over it too, right?
"WAAAH THE GAME IS TOO EASY NOW! WHEN I USED TO PLAY IT WAS HARD!!"
Funny how people always think the difference is because the game is easier, and never because their skills have improved...
"Let's see. There are monkeys that evolved into men and monkeys that didn't. Just as well, there are men that remained men and men that evolved into something else. Do you really think humans are the ultimate form of evolution? How arrogant."
--Kakurine, Evil Zone for PS1
Quite simply put;
all Effort = Time
All Time does not = Effort (take the menial task example) - It takes time to grind 50 Lesser Charms each week and unless you have a very lax deifinition of the word effort (all the power to you if you do) Farming these charms does not require effort.
That was Vanilla wow in most instances - lots of Time little effort - and that's what has had people upset this expansion - Dailies took Time, not effort. LFR takes time (a little more if your grouped with muppets). Neither take a large amount effort.
Effort is a choice - the amount you choose to put in equates what you get out - Effort requires time. I choose to min-max sim my character and plot for ideal reforges. This neither a necessary feature of the game or does it make the game fun. I choose to do dailies. I choose to gather coins each week. I choose to Heroic raid.
The games "difficulty" is a choice brought on by the player. The choice of the player is commit what time they can allocate to the game and how much effort they put in given 1) Time they choose to allocate, and 2) The fundamental game mechanics provide.
This has always been the case. Blizz has not asked you Min-Max Reforge you Char, they have given you the ability to min-max.
I agree with what another poster said - the game isn't easier - the players are just better because we have access to more - internal and external - information. Map Markers for Quest's makes the quests more convenient therefore questing is more convenient = less time consumed; less effort required. So Dailies are easier.
Take Map Marker's away and that doesn't make the quests harder - it just makes them consume more time - take more effort therefore the quest is perceived as harder. There we're no Map Markers in Vanilla/BC bar Add-on and guess what the content is perceived as harder - therefore when we complete the quest we feel more rewarded because it was less convenient/harder.
Blizz attempted to balance the Convenience / Difficulty in the opening months of Cata - that resulted in fantastic guild perks (i.e. Mass Res; Auto-flight points; consolidated achievements) with difficult dungeons (Cata Heroics). The player base rioted so they were nerfed to the ground. Blizz knew once a majority of the palyer base either out-geared and/or knew the difficulty that players would steamroll them alla WOLK Heroics but player base did not want to put in the time and effort.
In MoP Blizz merely moved the difficulty intended for Cata Dungeons to MoP raids / challenge modes. They are legitimately harder then previous tiers. They are more fun then previous tiers mechanically.
Saying "making the game easier is wrong" is the wrong thing to be questioning, what needs to be questioned is "is making the game less or more convenient wrong"
And to jump to an illogical conclusion, not found in fact but only implied by what I have previously stated like the OP did:
Ban add-on's - problems solved /thread
I could be wrong but I doubt it
As I say in everything about the game being easier. The challenge is there if you want it. Challenge modes, Brawler's Guild, Heroic Raids all of these things are for people who want some real challenge out of the game. Who cares if you can get fully epic'd out in a day? People need to realize that the standards of difficulty and prestige are different nowadays. Before it was your gear and your guild. Now titles and mounts distinguish you from other players. The game is easier in some way, and yet the Brawler's Guild has challenge me more than any raid ever has even come close to. Disruptron is definitely proof of that.
games more accessible is what he means and that brings a sense of entitlement to everyone and their mom who plays the game everyone thinks they are great cause purps fall from the sky
Honestly I don't think there is any prestige left in the game. Titles and mounts? lol. I can't remember the last time I looked at someone and said "wow that guy must be really good" or "that guy must be really dedicated to have gotten that". In Vanilla and BC occasionally you would see someone and go "wow!". Whether or not you think that is important for the game will come down to personal opinion.
I think many of the changes to remove tedium from the game were great. Where you draw the line between tedious and drop dead simple is probably different for each person but they were doing pretty good between BC and Wrath. The easier something becomes to achieve the less achievement you feel when you do it, and the less awe you feel for other people who have done it.
I think questing/leveling has been made too easy - in vanilla/tbc leveling was a grind, but it's difficulty and nastiness gave it some kind of a challenge and appeal (to me at least).
These days the leveling grind is much shorter, but there is absolutely ZERO difficulty and "nastiness" - my alt characters are easily capable of pulling 5 to 10 quest mobs at once and swiftly winning the fight at full health.
However the raiding difficulty is more present that ever - heroic ToT is really tough, with it's end bosses being just a brain f*ck.
If you fully finished the latest Heroic Raiding content, then you can truly say that WoW is too easy FOR YOU - but somehow i doubt you have Lei Shen HC on farm
i disagree with this, and believe it is an absolute fact that in fact the game is much much easier in terms of player vs. mob damage at level.
My comments refer to today's state of classic/bc/wotlk content. less familiar with current state of newer content.
at level, outdoor normal mobs dmg vs. player dmg baseline is sharply more favorable to the player than pre-2.3. Pre-2.3, 2 outdoor mobs at level would KILL a baseline player with mediocre gear if special abilities were not used. some mobs, such a troggs, were such a pain at the levels they were found (9-15+ for dwarfs) that it was a real test of developing tactics to pick them off or just ignore the larger groups around stone things. If you attacked a +4 or 5 mob, you were well on your way to dying unless you were twinked. a new player learned quickly the Sir Robin spell - Run Away!
pretty much same for instanced elite mobs. An exception here, the last time I ran one (cataclysm), was bc heroics, which still had fairly high, possibly 2.4x-state damage and abilities - of course, player dmg at level 70 is nearly double what it was in BC at ilvl 115 or so.. I do not think level 80 wotlk heroic mobs did more damage than level 70 bc heroic mobs, or if so, not much more.
- - - Updated - - -
I would suggest that, in their search to retain that x% of new players that quit during their box-purchase trial, they have destroyed the replayability of the leveling meta-game for many players. between on-rails mandatory questing order for YOU, the HERO, and mind-numbing lack of threat of death as a constant factor, I would rather amputate fingers than level multiple alts.
Last edited by Deficineiron; 2013-07-23 at 02:44 AM.
Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.
This is a fairly decent post.
We need an elite class of player to emulate and aspire to be like. Both for PvE and PvP. However i disagree about this being the reasons people are leaving.
Games get old and people want new things. It's a credit to Blizzard that they have maintained such a high level of product for so long.
Last edited by Naughtt; 2013-07-23 at 02:56 AM. Reason: .
I think that the premise is that a game environment with goals requiring dedication to achieve (both solo and group) and an end-game which would become a pyramid of who was able to get to the top would provide players with a game where they FELT there was also more for them to do, another step to take, another boss to try to see, etc. I don't recall anyone in BC complaining that blizzard had some obligation to let them see the content they paid for - it was painfully obvious that if you were willing to dedicate part-time-job effort of your life to raiding and had some skill at your class, you could eventually see it all. The major legitimate issues in tbc were the 10=25 man raid transition for guilds doing kara but unable to field a gruuls' group, and the attunement mechanism esp. related to killing vashj and kael - it has been mentioned that other older mmo's had a number of ways which allowed an attuned group to bring a couple of unattuned guests.
in other words, simply knowing there is more for you to do and SEE ahead has a subtle but real effect in player engagement with the game. You don't get to see the boss on easy, you only see it if you kill the boss before and there is only one difficulty.
I would offer the diablo analogy here? how many folks beat diablo2 on normal? nightmare? hell? personally only beat on nightmare. does that mean I didn't 'beat' the game? well I don't feel that way, saw the whole thing, just not worth doing the increasingly challenging work on Hell just to see the same stuff. In raiding, this model has been imported to wow. Now trying telling everyone who only beat normal or nightmare d2 that they didn't beat the game. most if not all of them would disagree, they saw the whole thing and the next difficulty is just the same thing harder.
Blizzard created the 'all players entitled to see all of the content' mentality from whole cloth, but once implemented, it is certainly a one-way street.
Last edited by Deficineiron; 2013-07-23 at 02:52 AM.
Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.
I'm not saying whether or not prestige is needed, that is left up to opinion. I also never looked up to someone because of their pixels, that isn't to say however I have never seen someone and thought "wow that is impressive". It takes far more than being impressed by how someone looks for me to look up to them or respect them.
Well shit, I've seen the error of my ways thanks to you! The whole time I've been whining!
Whiners are bad rite? Rite guiz?
WAAHAHHHhHH
OH shit! There I go again! It's a habbit!
On a serious note, skills have improved, yes but the difference is they are not needed or required NOW as they were back THEN.
Sure you could always do a Heroic raid without a weapon equipped to make your skills useful again.... but if you HONESTLY were thinking that then you need professional psychiatric help.
What sort of skills are you talking about, kemosabe?
Because if you think the open world, day-to-day kill-stuff-dead was ever meant to be difficult or require skill, you're sorely mistaken. They used to take an enormous amount of time (farming mobs for mats, for example), but they didn't require any skill beyond patience. Nowadays the only difference is that there is a clear distinction as to what's a challenge and what's not. Do you just want to play at your own pace and enjoy killing things and getting stronger? There's LFR and Scenarios. Do you want to dedicate yourself some more and get better rewards for it? Go to Normal Raids or Heroic Scenarios. Do you want even more challenge and even more exclusive rewards? Challenge Dungeons and Heroic Raids are there for you.
Don't assume that just because someone can play the game at whatever difficulty level they chose, doesn't mean the game became any easier for those who want a challenge. Hell, a heroic raid nowadays has more mechanics to pay attention to in a single boss fight than half of Molten Core put together.
Now, if you don't think those are challenging enough... well, I'd ask to see your armory and look for the proper achievements. Or maybe the game really is too easy for you and you might want to enjoy something more challenging. I wouldn't know what to suggest, though. Something Korean, maybe?
Nothing ever bothers Juular.
I'm exactly the player mentioned in the OP.
I played about 3 - 4 hours a night instead of watching TV. I came up in Vanilla and quit after clearing 25m FL.
It was for the exact reasons mentioned. If I wanted something solely entertaining, I would've continued to watch TV. I got a sense of accomplishment from purple pixels. I've inspected thousands of other players with envy.
The sense of accomplishment is gone. The game is perceived as easier by older players because everyone has epic gear and to be fully equipped in current epics through tBC took a certain level of commitment.
While time spent doesn't always indicate a level of difficulty, it does indicate a level of commitment. That's where the line was drawn for me. No one had the patience for wipes and RNG, save the hardcore, and it eliminated mine and my guild's reason for playing. The middle class, as it were, no longer exists.