Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Deleted]

Let me get this straight, when i started wow in tbc wow had 10 mil players right? most of you complain how easy wow is now and how hard it was back then right?
Soo 10 mil players back then were hardcore but 7 mil now are casuals and they're bad? This doesn't sounds good right? because i guess it would take alot of players to make blizzard change the game, therefore the playerbase is casual. therefore who says it's the community that makes blizzard to make bad decissions is full of shit.

[Alphadruid]

Clearly, they have failed to find a way to attract the casuals. Apparently Wrath wasn't quite enough, but when they swerved back toward a more hardcore focus in Cataclysm, the results were worse. And now the changes in MoP aren't good enough either. Casuals don't like grind, and they don't like being put into a raid ghetto. An MMO with multiple difficulty levels is inherently hostile to the average player, since it is constantly sending them the message "you suck!"

This doesn't alter their NEED to cater to casuals. That's where the vast bulk of their customers have been; that's where the money is; that's who they have to retain to sustain the game at anywhere near even the current level of cash flow. They have to do better at it. So far, they still focus on the tiny hardcore minority in the overall design of the game. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, and it isn't working.

Mists of Pandaria is the most casual oriented expansion ever. Ra-den is the only raid or dungeon encounter in the whole expansion that doesn't come with a difficulty so easy that you can win while being away from your keyboard. How you can look at MOP and think that the expansion is focused on hardcore players... I have no idea. Blizzard's focus on casual gaming has been absolute this expansion and the results have been a terrible failure.

[Pann]

If what one person does in the group doesn't matter (i.e., they can't cause you to fail), then the content is poorly tuned. If it's a 5-man heroic instance, then it should require all 5 players to play well in order to clear.

The problem with this model is that is does not reward players for their skill but punishes them for anothers lack of it

That's not a problem with TBC model, it's a problem with Blizzard's class design. Classes without CC should've gotten something equally valuable to the group. And anyway, it's not as black and white as you say, players without CC did run heroics although it was definitely harder to get a group.

It doesn't matter if the class or dungeon design is to blame for certain classes being preferred over others it is still bad design either remove the need for CC, as they did in Wrath or give every class viable CC.

I don't know a single player who couldn't have done heroics, including you. It just didn't happen. Sure it was more challenging to get a group, but if you were an average skilled player with decent social skills, you could do heroics.

Of course players could do heroics however unless they went with a guild group or had a bunch of friends online it was painful to find a group especially if you played one of the lesser wanted classes which is why so many turned to battlegrounds for gear.

That's not correct though. Wow had 11.5M subscriber at the end of the Burning Crusades, which was the most hardcore expansion in the games history. WOTLK peaked the game at 12M.

All of that growth WoW had in vanilla and TBC pretty much stopped in Wrath of the Lich King. The game peaked early in the expansion at 12M, actually lost players, and then recovered the 12M number at the very end of the expansion by ICC/Arthas hype.

The contrast between WoW's incredible success during the Burning Crusades and the minor decline it saw during WOTLK is significant. There was even an article not so long ago where the lead designed for LoL publicly called out GC on these facts, saying how TBC had the casual/hardcore right and so on.

It is doubtful that TBC was any better at holding on to subscribers than Wrath only that at the time more players joined than left. I cannot help but feel once Wrath was released Blizzard priced themselves out of the market by not reducing the price for a new players to get into the game.

[Alphadruid]

Spend all your paycheck on RP , buy all champs to catch up , profit ?

Also you are not taking a penalty for not owning X amount of champs... I know people who reached Diamond with a pool of 20 champs out of the 112.
Also what does WoW ''reward'' you exactly for not playing ? if anything it's a real time hog ( like any MMO )

If you're independently wealthy you can just buy all the champs, but if LoL was like WoW, players would just be given champions and skins as a "catch-up mechanism." Casual players would be posting on the LoL forum explaining how they are too busy in real life to earn IP and would ramble idiotically about how the only reason all the characters aren't unlocked for free is because of "the elitists."

Riot doesn't cater to casual players in that way, and as a result, their game has not been trivialized.

[Osmeric]

WotLK actually peaked at 14.2M in the first 6 months, can't find the link but seen it posted on MMO Champ when I was waiting on my Naxx run in feb 2009

This is not correct.

[Waliah]

Casual players did nothing of the sorts. Casual players are what keeps this game going - Not everyone wants to be a hardcore gamer, and with only them, the wow population would be 1/10 of what it is now.

[Grimble]

And this attitude that's so pervasive in the community of "we hold the stacks" needs to go. This is precicely why entitlement became such a buzzword.

It only became a buzzword with disenfranchised hardcore faggots making QQ posts from the wrong side of game development history. Luckily no one cares about them and they've never made any impact on anything.

[Tomana]

Mists of Pandaria is the most casual oriented expansion ever.

Yeah, except for the tiny fact that it contained a bajillion of dailies and no rep in dungeons. Which sent casual players running away.
Also, if you look at raiding stats, you clearly see that normal mode is overtuned. Which sent some entry-level raiders running away too.

[Grimble]

That's not correct though. Wow had 11.5M subscriber at the end of the Burning Crusades, which was the most hardcore expansion in the games history. WOTLK peaked the game at 12M.

All of that growth WoW had in vanilla and TBC pretty much stopped in Wrath of the Lich King. The game peaked early in the expansion at 12M, actually lost players, and then recovered the 12M number at the very end of the expansion by ICC/Arthas hype.

The contrast between WoW's incredible success during the Burning Crusades and the minor decline it saw during WOTLK is significant. There was even an article not so long ago where the lead designed for LoL publicly called out GC on these facts, saying how TBC had the casual/hardcore right and so on.

Every single MMORPG to have ever lead the market in either Asia or the West began to lose subscribers around the six or seven year mark at the most. Every. Single. One. Ultima Online, EverQuest, Lineage, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, all of them. Six or seven years after release, subscribers began to decline. The also-ran games usually declined much sooner.

Every single one also had dipshits running around trying to claim that THIS TIME it was because the developers foolishly failed to cater to them by supporting whatever their idiot pet design issue was. Nobody has ever taken those people seriously in any game.

Odds are, Blizzard expected to start losing subscribers around 2010 or so back when the game was still in Beta.

[Deleted]

Every single MMORPG to have ever lead the market in either Asia or the West began to lose subscribers around the six or seven year mark at the most. Every. Single. One. Ultima Online, EverQuest, Lineage, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, all of them. Six or seven years after release, subscribers began to decline. The also-ran games usually declined much sooner.

Every single one also had dipshits running around trying to claim that THIS TIME it was because the developers foolishly failed to cater to them by supporting whatever their idiot pet design issue was. Nobody has ever taken those people seriously in any game.

Odds are, Blizzard expected to start losing subscribers around 2010 or so back when the game was still in Beta.

Just because the game is old doesn't mean that's the only reason for its decline.

[RickJamesLich]

Ruin? No. Did they cause the game to slowly bleed subs? Probably. And casual isn't the right word, wow has always had tons of casuals, even through the "harder content" and they did amazingly well (BC had higher subs than right now). I'd have to point my finger towards the people that want all of the content to be incredibly easy as being the main reason why WoW is in it's current state.

[Tomana]

Just because the game is old doesn't mean that's the only reason for its decline.

But it's the main one. No one yet disproved product life cycle.

[Grimble]

Just because the game is old doesn't mean that's the only reason for its decline.

Yet it began to decline at pretty much the exact same age that every other leading MMORPG in the history of the world did. So what's that, a coincidence? Did every single game make nothing but brilliant design decisions for six years and then magically turn into idiots overnight, or is six years just about how long it takes for churn to eclipse adoption under this business model?

Six years in, subscribers begin to decrease, and whatever dumbass little community is on the shit end of the stick at that particular moment tries to bolster its credibility by acting like theirs is THE reason. It's old, it's tiresome, and I was listening to it on the Ultima Online forums ten years ago.

[Lastlivingsoul]

Blizzard does not make its money by giving the majority of all endgame content to the 5% of the playerbase. No money, no better graphics, no new classes, no new expansions, no ANYTHING.

Hardcore players are like 80 year old Grandparents who blather on with the same Fuzzy logic: "In my day we walk 15 miles to school barefoot." Now its "In my day we had to complete 3 separate attunement quests with 40 people in order to see the last boss." Just because you had to do longer more tedious questing and grinding back in BC or Vanilla doesn't mean everyone else has to go through the same crap.

Casuals are the next generation that pay for the future your game. Deal with it.

[Lakrin]

I wasn't aware WoW was ruined.

*shrug*

[judgementofantonidas]

Seeing that raiding in this game has always been a minority participation activity, I'm not sure what your argument here is (or that you even know what it is, aside from shaking your fists angrily at the screen).

I guess you are right. That is why we have such notable fan sites as:


Icy veins with all its information on how to level battle pets and pick herbs on your farm.
Tankspot where you can go for the latest information on transmog gear and running five year old content
Elitist Jerks that is so anti raiding that I do not know why any hard core raider would ever go there.

Not to mention all the sites that track what? Not who farmed the most herbs and ran the most LFRs. Nope. Statistics on who killed what boss and who did it first.

[Alphadruid]

Casual players did nothing of the sorts. Casual players are what keeps this game going - Not everyone wants to be a hardcore gamer, and with only them, the wow population would be 1/10 of what it is now.

Casual players provide the funds, but they're the grim reapers of game content. When game content is designed for casual players, it's made easy and accessible, players consume it very quickly and it dies.

Look at what happened to 5 man heroics. In TBC they were the bridge between leveling content and raiding. Now Blizzard isn't even bother to develop them.

[Deleted]

Yet it began to decline at pretty much the exact same age that every other leading MMORPG in the history of the world did. So what's that, a coincidence? Did every single game make nothing but brilliant design decisions for six years and then magically turn into idiots overnight, or is six years just about how long it takes for churn to eclipse adoption under this business model?

Six years in, subscribers begin to decrease, and whatever dumbass little community is on the shit end of the stick at that particular moment tries to bolster its credibility by acting like theirs is THE reason. It's old, it's tiresome, and I was listening to it on the Ultima Online forums ten years ago.

This isn't Ultima Online. Warcraft is a franchise that will last at least another decade maybe more just like Final Fantasy or Resident Evil. The theme itself is so popular that all Blizz need to do is update the gameplay and it will sell.

There are other reasons for WoW's decline other than just because it's old. People are using "the game is old" as an excuse to justify all the other needless changes that have changed the game into something it wasn't originally.

1. WoW is no longer a world. It is a theme park.
2. Guilds aren't necessary to see raids anymore.
3. The game doesn't reward effort like it once did.
4. Many servers are dead.
5. 10 and 25 man raids share the same lock out.
6. Pandas are seen as childish and comedic.

And last but not least:

7. Class homogenization has made all classes almost the same.

If you don't think that all these reasons have contributed to WoW's decline then I really can't help you.

[Grimble]

I guess you are right. That is why we have such notable fan sites as:


Icy veins with all its information on how to level battle pets and pick herbs on your farm.
Tankspot where you can go for the latest information on transmog gear and running five year old content
Elitist Jerks that is so anti raiding that I do not know why any hard core raider would ever go there.

Not to mention all the sites that track what? Not who farmed the most herbs and ran the most LFRs. Nope. Statistics on who killed what boss and who did it first.

Quick, go to one of those tracking sites and look up how many people have killed a raid boss in Normal this expansion. Now compare that number to total subscribers.

[Alphadruid]

It only became a buzzword with disenfranchised hardcore faggots making QQ posts from the wrong side of game development history. Luckily no one cares about them and they've never made any impact on anything.

Hardcore players make games. When they leave games, those games die.