Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Deleted]

So, you're ok with Blizzard ignoring what you say you want? Just to make sure we're not being hypocritical here.

Why on earth do they have to pay attention? The company make a product of their choosing, then offer it for sale/lease. You pay for said product/lease. If you're not happy with it you either demand a refund, or don't continue to pay for said product. You're unhappy with it, they're not.

[Deleted]

What I DO think is that Blizzard should follow long term desires of the player (and potential player) population as a whole, as best they can, not that of a much smaller minority. And I think they could have done a much better job of this.

Two mistakes can be made here:

1. Missinterpreting those on the forums as some kind of majority Blizzard is/should listening to solely.
2. Thinking that the large majority knows best what is good for the game.

[Deleted]

Casuals turned WoW from a world into a theme park.

[LeperHerring]

Some people can no longer afford scheduling even 2-3 nights a week.

What do you mean "no longer"? There's always been players like that and will always be players like that. I was like that in vanilla, so what I did was 5-mans and gold making. I could've also done questing or PvP, or alts. The game has always had content for all playstyles, but now it only has one type of content (raid instances) that it tries to push on everyone.

[Whiskra]

What do you mean "no longer"? There's always been players like that and will always be players like that. I was like that in vanilla, so what I did was 5-mans and gold making. I could've also done questing or PvP, or alts. The game has always had content for all playstyles, but now it only has one type of content (raid instances) that it tries to push on everyone.

Protip, it's the go to excuse people use when they've grown into adults and acctually should focus on something else than the game, but rather don't because they're still too addicted to it. That's why many consider LFR a blessing.

[ihyln]

Casuals have little to do with the downward spiral that wow is facing. The blame lies solely with ghostcrawler making terrible predictions and repeating the same mistakes over and over.

[Ronduwil]

They spent about the same amount of time watching TV instead, what's your point?

In the context of his post your parents were lazy and entitled because they watch TV instead of improving their gaming skills. That was the point. Sorry you missed that.

That's utter nonsense. My guild raided 2-3 nights per week since TBC and cleared most of the content in the game (including hardmodes).

Ditto for me in Cataclysm. And I got sick to death of seeing the same bosses week in and week, watching the same (otherwise nice) players fail time and again on the same mechanics, and spending 30 minutes at the beginning of each raid trying to hunt down missing players and/or attempting to recruit a semi-geared pug from trade chat and/or friend lists. It's not a fun or social experience. It's the opposite of a game's intended purpose.

We had doctors and surgeons with families,

Let me know how their divorces go.

we had people working on their M.Sc.s etc.

I long for those days. My typical day as a grad student:

• Stumble into the office at noon clutching my cup of coffee
• Spend 1-2 hours grading papers and/or preparing to teach class
• Spend 1-2 hours taking or teaching classes
• Spend 1-2 hours conducting research for my advisor
• Spend 1-2 hours hanging out with my fellow students
• Go home anywhere between 4 and 8 pm to do whatever the hell I want

Good times.

It's a hobby like any other, you don't need 12 hours per day, if you can schedule 2-3 nights per week, it's enough time-wise. Your problem is not that you have a family and mortgage, your problem is that you're bad at the game and instead of trying to improve, you cry to Blizzard to give you everything with no effort.

You're ascribing motives and actions to me that have no basis in reality. I'm actually pretty good at the game and have always been invited into just about every guild that I've run raids with. I generally top the healing charts across all categories (HPS, Dispels, etc.) and seldom fail at any mechanic. I don't throw tantrums when I don't get the loot I want and I never rage when others struggle with mechanics. I've never cried to Blizzard and I don't expect to gain anything in the game "for free." On the other hand, I am sick to death of the raiding grind and since Blizzard refuses to put anything new into their game that doesn't revolve around raiding I don't see the point in sticking with WoW.

[Yalingo]

Blizzard ruined their own game by listening to small sections of the community that whine on their forums instead of making the game they wanted to make.

Blizzard consistently made great games for a very long time before unfortunately folding to obnoxious forum posters and tweets.

[dryankem]

People who ruin WoW: "Give me stuff or I will cancel my sub!!!"

Problem is that this is the argument of LFR heros ("If you change LFR I will cancel my sub!!!") who only stay subbed to see the content once and leave again, complaining that there is nothing to do. And Blizzard listened to them and is only now realizing (by the numbers of lost subscriptions) that you can't build a game around these unreliable, uncaring folks.

And yet it would take me a long time to find a post where a casual has actually posted "Give me stuff or I will cancel my sub!!" but I can sure find posts were raiders are complaining that a casual gets purple coloured names on their gear (and honestly who the hell cares).

There are no LFR heroes claiming they are real raiders now, yet for some reason some raiders keep telling us the opposite and claiming it as fact.

[Deleted]

Back when I started in TBC I had [and I continue to have] very little time available for gaming purposes, the rest being eaten day-in and day-out by assignments etc. Small, fractured timeframe made it almost impossible for me to see even a meager dungeon - it merely takes fingers of both of my hands to count the grand total of dungeons I have ever been to prior to LFD tools and NONE of those have been completed, as groups were prone to breaking apart for even the most trivial reasons.

The 'ZOMG! ! ! Death of social WoW! Caesuals ruined teh WOW!' that is LFD/LFR actually enabled me to see the insides of dungeons each time I logged in. I immediately rolled a priest so that I could get in even faster AND be of some use to a group. I finally felt that I get the most out of the local equivalent of 15$ per month.

Bottom line: If 'casual revolution' 'ruined' WoW, then only in a manner that targets those who deserve their method of extracting 'fun' to be wrecked.

[Venant]

So if the difference between casual and hardcore players is primarily determined by the amount of time they spend playing the game, then what would make the 'casuals' want to spend more time playing the game?

Or should we be asking, how could we make it so that the 'hardcores' can spend less actual time playing the game but still get the same level of achievement/enjoyment out of it?

[Whiskra]

And yet it would take me a long time to find a post where a casual has actually posted "Give me stuff or I will cancel my sub!!" but I can sure find posts were raiders are complaining that a casual gets purple coloured names on their gear (and honestly who the hell cares).

There are no LFR heroes claiming they are real raiders now, yet for some reason some raiders keep telling us the opposite and claiming it as fact.

There was a thread on the official forums where someone had misinterpreted one of Ghostcrawler's tweets as that they'd gate out some of the last bosses in SoO from LFR. The following 3 pages were people saying they were quitting until someone brought up that Ghostcrawler didn't say anything like that at all.

[Deleted]

....The following 3 pages were people saying .......

3 pages worth of comments... on official forums... on a topic regarding a bluepost from GC himself.

THREE pages.

lel lel lel comedy gold.

I'm SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE that such a MASSIVE amount of 'feedback' is what constitutes a 'casual decision-making powerhouse'.

[Whiskra]

3 pages worth of comments... on official forums... on a topic regarding a bluepost from GC himself.

THREE pages.

lel lel lel comedy gold.

I'm SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE that such a MASSIVE amount of 'feedback' is what constitutes a 'casual decision-making powerhouse'.

I'm only saying that I see people saying they'll quit if XXX happens or not happens all the time, when he says they're far and few between.

[Zafire]

I absolutely think casuals ruined the game. Back in vanilla, epics were epic. You had to raid through the very first raid in order to be good enough for the next one. Resist gear had a purpose. Rep grinding was rewarding, although not game breaking. You had to travel far and wide for certain profession training. It gave you plenty of things to do, and it made it hard to have more than one character that was actually endgame suited. This formed a sense of character and server identity. Immersion was high back then, and that's what kept ME playing.

Fast forward to today. There is absolutely nothing that keeps me involved besides the same repetitive raid, and the same repetitive heroics. I can make as many alts as I want and get them geared enough to Q raid finder in a week only playing a few hours a day. If you take the challenge out of the game, it is not fun (for me). I don't like games being annoyingly hard (Think Vagrant Story), but I love a challenge and that's one of the reasons I like MMO's. I want everything about one expansion to last the whole expansion. I don't like this whole "Skip the previous patch completely because you can get gear that's better without touching it" thing they are doing. It seems to me, though, games like Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, and vanilla/TBC WoW are a dying breed.

I'm not really saying "The game sucks now! I wont support it!" I quit playing because I got bored. It's not because it's an old game, because I played Final Fantasy XI for six years until it ended up following a similar path as WoW. I played a few months in Vanilla, a few months in TBC, half of WOTLK, and all of cata. I touched MoP, but I didn't even get a character to level cap. Everything is just stale to me.

Slightly off topic:
For example, it's the same reason I keep starting over on Skyrim. Once I get smithing and/or enchanting to 100, the game becomes too simple and easy, so I start over. On this file I'm buying nothing but lockpicks, avoiding smithing and enchanting completely (Although I'm disenchanting), not using trainers to level skills easily, I'm not leveling skills I'm not using just to gain levels quicker (Like Illusion), and I'm not doing silly things to get skills quicker (Sneak against a wall, hit Shadowmere with daggers, etc). It's actually somewhat challenging even on normal difficulty, and I've done more on this file than I have on any other file because I'm having fun with it. I look forward to a quest sending me on a dungeon because I might actually get light armor and sword skillups, instead of thinking "When will this stupid faction questline be over with".

[RickJamesLich]

Casual players isn't the right word, "long term bad players" is more the right word... you know, the LFR guys that demand everything is nerfed, or that they should get a full set of pvp gear from simply doing bg's, I think those ones have done the most harm.

[Katchii]

Casuals didn't kill WoW, the fact that WoW is 10 years old and there are 10 times more MMO's to play now that are just different enough to be interesting than there were 5, 3 or even 2 years ago, is what "killed" it.

WoW still has 5 times (if not more) subscribers than the next most subscribed MMO out there, how can anyone call that "killed" or "dead?"

The decisions the development team has made over the last 10 years (which includes the decision to cater more directly to the "casual" player) has kept this game going for 10 years, and has made Blizzard one of the most succesful gaming companies in the business. And a lot of the people complaining that WoW is "dead" are still playing it...so it can't be all that bad.

[Deleted]

-SNIP-

WoW's current model forces out people whose sole source of pride and fun related to this game was the fact that the next person was never [in the then-foreseeable future] going to get the gear and raid invites that they do? Good riddance.

[Grimble]

It seems to me, though, games like Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, and vanilla/TBC WoW are a dying breed.

It's almost like game companies KNOW people like you and RickJamesLich are an irrelevant minority not worth developing toward.

[dryankem]

I'm only saying that I see people saying they'll quit if XXX happens or not happens all the time, when he says they're far and few between.

I see those posts all the time too: Remove LFR or I quit, remove epic gear for casuals or I quit, remove titles and mounts from old raids or I quit.

There simply is no comparison between the number of so called hardcore crowd posts where they demanding things be removed or they'll quit vs the number of casuals demanding to have access or they'll quit.

LFR was not made because casuals wanted to raid, it was blizzards attempt to get casuals raiding. Casuals also didn't demand to have purple coloured gear but Blizzard gave it to them anyways so that they could feel special too. Blizzard made these choices not the player base. Yes you have whiners on both sides but the vocal minority on sites like this are the ones threatened that they will no longer be special snow flakes.

Now that blizzard has opened up the can of worms that is LFR and LFD it would be rude to remove it from so many people that enjoy it because of a handful of immature individuals that don't feel special anymore.