Why does content have to become obsolete?

[CptAwesome]

This is absolutely not true in any real sense. Games are meant to make money. Usually they do this by entertaining customers. Now entertaining customers is such a massively broad goal to accomplish that it encompasses alot of things. I can list you a fuck ton of games that didn't challenge me one god damn bit but were the most compelling experiences I"ve had in like 20+ years of gaming.

Games are NOT MEANT to be challenging. They are meant to make money. That's it. The whole meant to be challenging thing is a myth,a ghost you conjure to reinforce a value or belief system you have about games which doesn't actually exist. It is not a fact.

Here's the problem, subscription based games like WoW need to be at least somewhat challenging or people will just complete them and stop paying. It's not like console or offline games where you pay your money then the developer doesn't care if you spend 300 hours on it or 30 mins, they still have your money and if you beat it really quickly you just move on to the next.

WoW needs you to keep playing and paying so it needs to retain a certain level of difficulty, it can't just be all faceroll all the time.

With that said, you made some pretty retarded comments earlier in the thread about elitists wanting to be special so I think we can safely assume that you don't know what you're talking about on this issue either.

Raiders don't give a shit about the LFR crowd seeing bosses and running around with epics, we just don't like a) being forced into joining them and b) the fact that you can play absolutely horribly in LFR and still be rewarded for it.

[Glorious Leader]

Here's the problem, subscription based games like WoW need to be at least somewhat challenging or people will just complete them and stop paying. It's not like console or offline games where you pay your money then the developer doesn't care if you spend 300 hours on it or 30 mins, they still have your money and if you beat it really quickly you just move on to the next.

WoW needs you to keep playing and paying so it needs to retain a certain level of difficulty, it can't just be all faceroll all the time.

With that said, you made some pretty retarded comments earlier in the thread about elitists wanting to be special so I think we can safely assume that you don't know what you're talking about on this issue either.

I think the loss of subs during the "hard" dungeon content in cataclysm (and the subsequent 180% shift in design from that) should suggest that when content is to hard people leave. "Somewhat" challenging is obviously not as challenging as many of you would like and in addition to the aformentioned shift in dungeon philosophy you also notice the inclusion of flex raiding as a means to include more players in raiding with a lower difficulty setting. People by and large are not interested in challenging content. Shoving it down their throats causes them to leave. The goal of games is to make money, challenge is not relevant to this in the slightest except in so far as it presents a barrier to entry and ultimately a barrier to entertainment.


With that said, I think if you spent two minutes thinking about it instead of getting on my ass for speaking truth then you'd realize how fucking obvious what I said is. I think we can safely assume you don't have a clue on anything related to this game, well at least anything outside of 13/13 hc, as narrow of a perspective as that offers I'll grant you that much which is more than you would do for me.

[Pull My Finger]

Yes it was... Blizzard constantly tells us they wanted players to beable to experience raids. Its not about getting equal loot otherwise LFR gear wouldnt exist.

LFR players just get the added bonus of free loot, with the extra joy of a shallow and hollow raiding experience. If anything LFR curbs enthusiasm for the game.

Lastly theres nothing elitist about wanting a challenge in WoW, believe it or not games are meant to be challenging.

Blah poop. You can twist it as much as you want. LFR is regular content for people who don't have the time and/or will to commit to organized raiding. It's as simple as that. You can pointlessly argue semantics now. But what Blizzard means with "experiencing content" is playing the game. Doing dungeons, looting gear, the whole package. Get over it.

[SodiumChloride]

WoW has been boring me lately so I went back to Everquest and its just awesome to see level 100 people still raiding old content for actual gear and wearing level 95 stuff or even level 90 stuff thats more than a year or two old. They never even complain about it. People understand that only the best guilds do cutting edge content and the casual crowd either does group content or raids older expansions. They are 100% perfectly happy with that and they dont hit the forums acting like 12 year olds on their periods. Yet what would happen in WoW if Blizzard said OK only level 90s in the best guilds will do current content? Everyone else you will do ICC, then Cata Raids, and eventually MoP raids. People would go crazy. But why? Why is more content available such a bad thing? I would love to have 4-5 raids available for me to do every week rather than only ToT. Why does everyone feel like they have to only be raiding ToT or the game will end? Whats wrong with going through ICC and then through Cata, before getting into MoP stuff?

No one went crazy. They just quit because they can't catch up with their friends.

I thought the whole reason for adding LFR was to give people the chance to see everything? Well when I hit 90 and immediately jump into LFR when did I ever see any raids from Wrath or Cata? Shouldnt Blizzard just accept the fact that people do progress at different paces and not everyone wants to do cutting edge raids. Slower progression doesnt mean you are a bad. Maybe some people just like taking their time and enjoying the content rather than rushing for world or realm firsts. Why cant people start raiding content 10 levels ago and then once they get gear they work through content 5 levels ago. Then once fully geared you raid level 90 stuff. You dont have to raid 4-5 days a week like the uber guilds with all of that stress. You progressed with a like minded guild at your own pace. You actually got to enjoy all of the content along the way. I mean do people really only enjoy leveling to max level as fast as possible and then ONLY doing 1 raid for gear for month after month?

Would like to do LFR Dragonsoul for the unique tier set ...

Anyway, people do "progress" at their own pace. If you are having trouble, Blizzard would give you a leg up via VP gear and in the worst case dungeon debuff. Of course, there will be people crying about how Blizzard is nerfing content for the "causals" ...

[Tojara]

None of us will ever know why people stop playing, there are thousands of different reasons and it's always going to be opinion, never fact.

The only really concrete thing you can say as to why people stopped playing is because the game is fairly old.

Anyways I don't necessarily agree nor disagree with the notion that people left during Cataclysm because the heroics were hard. To have the discussion as why, well I would think that it's more of their design philosophy changing drastically all the time. You go from TBC with very hard dungeons to WoTLK dungeons, then back again. People who started in WoTLK (and there were a lot) might have gotten completely thrown off when their interpretation of the game, and/or what they play the game for just suddenly shifted drastically with the release of Cataclysm heroics.

I think the complains and from what we have heard in tweets etc from Blizzard is essentially true. Too much change can be a bad thing, and constantly reinventing things or overhauling things between every patch/expansion isn't necessarily a good way to design the game.

More on topic. I think past expansion content becoming obsolete is fine. I like that there are good reasons to go back and are encouraged through pets, transmog and other vanity items. Hell, even story if you weren't able to complete it when it was relevant. What I don't really like is things becoming obsolete within the same expansion cycle.

[Deleted]

Hey, Molten Core is pretty fun to solo...!

Especially when you get "le-drop" http://www.wowhead.com/item=17204 ....

Wait...I got that on my Monk. On my first. Run. On my monk.

My monk.

$£*(*$ U BLIZZARD I CAN'T $£$R!!! USE IT %*)%*! DROP ON MY $*W$ ALT THAT CAN! %$R%(!!!

*ahem* sorry for that silly, silly outburst.

[CptAwesome]

I think the loss of subs during the "hard" dungeon content in cataclysm (and the subsequent 180% shift in design from that) should suggest that when content is to hard people leave. "Somewhat" challenging is obviously not as challenging as many of you would like and in addition to the aformentioned shift in dungeon philosophy you also notice the inclusion of flex raiding as a means to include more players in raiding with a lower difficulty setting. People by and large are not interested in challenging content. Shoving it down their throats causes them to leave. The goal of games is to make money, challenge is not relevant to this in the slightest except in so far as it presents a barrier to entry and ultimately a barrier to entertainment.


With that said, I think if you spent two minutes thinking about it instead of getting on my ass for speaking truth then you'd realize how fucking obvious what I said is. I think we can safely assume you don't have a clue on anything related to this game, well at least anything outside of 13/13 hc, as narrow of a perspective as that offers I'll grant you that much which is more than you would do for me.

You are talking utter crap. WoW was doing just fine in TBC when heroic dungeons were hard, then WOTLK comes along and suddenly everything is easy, not much changes, then Cata heroics come out like the TBC ones and all hell breaks loose. Why? Not because they were hard but because the playerbase had been conditioned into thinking that heroics were supposed to be aoefests. If they had just kept the same difficulty ifrom TBC into WOTLK it wouldn't have been an issue, it was the shift in design that caused the problems, not the difficulty level itself.

I also like how you think you can have a go at me just because I kill heroic bosses and this somehow means I don't do anything else in the game. Newsflash, I have alts, I'm into achievements and vanity crap so I see a lot of the game unlike you who seems to spend most of his time on the forums complaining about the damn thing. Perhaps if you spent more time actually playing, you would become good enough to actually down some bosses?

[Rucati]

Because doing the same content for years is boring? Cata raids were trash, and the only good raids in Wrath were Ulduar and ICC (arguably). Why would I want to be stuck doing those? That would be awful.

The reason content has to become obsolete is because otherwise the game gets incredibly redundant. I mean if that's what you're looking for pick up a single player game and you can play the same content for years. But you won't. Because it gets boring after you've done it a couple of times.

[seam]

LFR was never about "seeing everything", a lie spread by people who want to justify their elitist and harmful attitudes.
LFR is offering raiding to those not able to commit to the strict schedule that has become associated with traditional raiding.
Flex still has that same scheduling requirement since it needs at least a minimum number of 8 to start the raid in the traditional means.
If anything Flex is a far better option for traditional raiders than it is the time constrained LFR raiders.

For what it's worth, when I had a 7 day trial back during Dragonsoul(Had quit in Firelands), I used it soley to see the raid. I didn't care about loot...and having always been a raider I just wanted to see the content.

Cata raids were trash

Nyeh?!
Cata raids were my favorite so far...as a whole. Ulduar(Yeah Wotlk) being my all time fav...followed shorly by Firelands.
BWD is one i always found awesome as well, and from what I saw of Dragon Soul(Or the second half at least) it was preeetty awesome.

[Akraen]

Item squish would help a lot - honestly I would be fine if we were all still level 60 but still getting ready to go into Tier 16. Things can scale, characters can progress-- but leveling being the only character progression technique in WoW is a bit of a problem I think.

[seam]

Item squish would help a lot - honestly I would be fine if we were all still level 60 but still getting ready to go into Tier 16. Things can scale, characters can progress-- but leveling being the only character progression technique in WoW is a bit of a problem I think.

But consider for a guild who is progressed and needs people, and a person who is in Tier 1 or 2 currently.

Normally this leads to 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

But the guild recruits this person, and they jump to Tier 16.

Basically, my point is, people will still skip as much as they can... But now you have a MASSIVE gear gap between level 60s.
Consider the original difference between T1 and T3.... And that was before ilevels were an issue.

[Akraen]

All sorts of cool ideas help alleviate that. Item levels need not be the only way to gain power and progress.

Power shards could be gathered and combined to unlock glyph slots, create new talents by piecing together components. Professions could be integrated into character progression at a deeper level. Imagine killing bosses to gather ingredients to create augmentations that increase the ilvl and add unique procs to items you received in lower tiers, bringing them up to the maximum level.

Picture a Staff of Dominance being spliced with a Dinomancer's staff via a new profession that melds weapons together.

New talents can be unlocked via gathering boss drops as well. Attunement systems can exist to guide people through various parts of progression. Old stuff can be easier or tuned to be completed as a 5-man once it's no longer the most recent tier.

So many options exist to the creative mind, ways to progress a toon far beyond the concept of higher level, higher item level that they've got going on now.