Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Glorious Leader]

Best advice, sleep with a healer. Makes all the difference.

Mmmm I tried that once. Got into a fight. Hell hath no fury like a healer scorned... Bitch life gripped me into eye sore... and then bubbled herself and ran away

[Gungrir]

Sorry about that. Lost my head for a moment.

- - - Updated - - -



It is for me but I have advantages. My playing partner is a healer so I go in on those queues which are rarely more than a couple of minutes. I understand the problem others face though. I've never really felt the need to have to run LFR either and never really quite sympathize with those heroic types who will do anything for their guild in real life but spend too much time writing petty complaints about it on forums. Lastly, as I've said a few times in the last week and undoubtedly at least once in this thread my LFR runs generally go OK although coming in on a partial run is annoying. But then, I don't spend a ton of time in queue in any case so another queue isn't a huge deal personally.

Best advice, sleep with a healer. Makes all the difference.

Hi, i am a healer!


But i am pretty sure a Tank is even better.

[Ronduwil]

It's better to say Blizzard Activision or the business isn't just developing for raiders only. Ghostcrawler et all I don't know anymore. I think they are seriously stuck on stupid on this and can't imagine that people would turn their nose at raids.

I imagine that Ghostcrawler is drawing a pretty hefty salary right now. They're based in California so I bet he's in the low six figure range. WoW isn't an open source labor of love running on donations and good will. It's a for-profit game that is developed and distributed through a publicly owned corporation. I guarantee that someone is taking note of the downward subscription trend! Maybe the developers don't give a damn, but anyone who has developed software before knows that developers only get so much input into which features get added.

[Glorious Leader]

Just wait. The march of history is almost over, when it comes to this topic, and Ghostcrawler and friends will have no one to cater to soon.

Question is as subs continue to decrease how long can they go saving raids in lieu of everything else in the game? Imagine if the game dwindled to say a million or two. Would we get new bgs? Would get timeless isle or just a raid instead? what else would go out the window?

- - - Updated - - -

I imagine that Ghostcrawler is drawing a pretty hefty salary right now. They're based in California so I bet he's in the low six figure range. WoW isn't an open source labor of love running on donations and good will. It's a for-profit game that is developed and distributed through a publicly owned corporation. I guarantee that someone is taking note of the downward subscription trend! Maybe the developers don't give a damn, but anyone who has developed software before knows that developers only get so much input into which features get added.

I should note I really do like Ghostcrawler for the most part. He's done some stupid shit (the wow dungeons are hard blog comes to mind) but he can acknowledge that and in the past hes acknowledged numerous and plenty faults with the game. They just seem to be so fucking stuck on raiding is everything man. I don't get it. I don't want them to be fired I'd rather they reevaluate decisions they made or fundamental assertions they have. I'd rather them actually diversify content and not pay lip service to it in favor of really just making one kind of content.

Right now while I do agree somebody is taking note I don't think their getting pressed to much. It reminds me of that Metallica album Lulu. Lulu is a terrible fucking album but the guys who made it (lou reed and metallica) had ultimate creative freedom and I think to a large extent the developers do now and it's produced a monstrosity without constraint or without enough constraint. I imagine they were given an option move away from raiding or broaden the appeal of raiding instead of simple being told move away from raiding as an end game model. Maybe lfr was just another iteration of the raiding model. It's hard to say. Boy I'd like to be a fly on the wall.

[Invictus9001]

My question is how exactly did the casual "ruin" WoW?

People who play in a casual sense.. who don't necessarily have 18 hours a day in free-time to play the game and/or aren't in a raiding guild.. did not ruin the game. What ruins the feel of this game, or any other online game, is mostly attributable to the attitudes of the people playing it. That's everyone from the guy who criticizes your game-play with 'L2P noob LOL' (and gives no constructive feedback), all the way to the douche-bags who pull a boss and then leave a dungeon/raid group.

Blizzard has been far too secretive and seemingly hands-off in their approach to dealing with such problem elements. GM ticket responses all state that 'the report will be investigated and appropriate actions taken'.. and yet leaves victims of douchebaggery to wonder if anything ever really happens. Part of the problem lies in the anonymity people hide behind online. Their reasoning is, 'Oh I can pull this boss, leave group and escape unharmed while they die. Too funny! I'll never get busted!' If something happens to such a person, only that person knows of it (and maybe that person's closest friends). Otherwise, we see nothing.

Blizzard seriously needs to institute name-and-shame tactics for such individuals. Their character(s) should be rendered into corpses, shoved onto pikes outside the capital city Auction Houses, and clear tooltips/signs made viewable to denote who it is and why that person ended up there. The toon(s) in such a situation should be unplayable for 24 hours of actual play-time, not real-time hours. The other characters on that person's account should have their speech privileges revoked entirely - no tradechat trolling, no LFG, nothing at all. Those other characters should be given the equivalent of a deserter debuff that also prevents them from using any que of any type (BG, LFD, LFR) and entering any instance or raid for 24 hours of actual play-time. Penalize their experience gains to only 10% of their normal possible gain (given rested or not, BoA gear or not, etc). Make these people who foul things up for the rest of us actually feel some pain, and let us who have been victimized by that behavior at various times and various ways actually sense a true and present justice.. instead of receiving a form-letter response in-game and wondering what, if anything, actually happened to him/her/it.

I'll stop there. Agree if you like; disagree if you wish. I stand by what I've written here. Empowered to do it, I'd make it happen immediately.
#My2Cents #HatersGonnaHateTheTruth

[vesseblah]

Casual players tend to be more toxic. Or just the new generation of players are toxic.

I should add Bad casual players are the absolute worst and are what most people are talking about when they say Casual.

Wannabe poser elitists are the most toxic players if you look at this forum. Those special snowflakes are the people who demand exclusive content and all of Blizzard resources tailor-made for them. Everybody else has glass half full but theirs is always half empty.

Other theory. Casuals demanded LFG, with LFG you get the 4-chan of gaming.

These theories are both evident with Brawler's guild. Players give buffs, are helpful, give rezzes, give advice. This is because (At least at the start) Only good players can handle Brawling, That and it is server based, meaning dicks are quickly shunned (Like it was in TBC)

Brawler's Guild has been CRZ from day one, throwing your idea out of the window.

[SodiumChloride]

Casual players tend to be more toxic. Or just the new generation of players are toxic.

What?!

Who are the ones throwing hissy fits, flaming people left and right, in instances when things don't go exactly as planned? It ain't the casuals I can tell ya that.

Either people like you are severely deluded, have an incorrect of the definition of "toxic" as used in this context or is a troll.

[Grimble]

Wannabe poser elitists are the most toxic players if you look at this forum.

This. The wannabes talk way, way, way more shit about "bads" and such than actual hardcore elite types do.

[Tomana]

But really, It's Blizzard who "ruined" WoW. It was their own doing. Only thing casuals did was bark at Blizzard with their entitlement demands, and that's REAL easy to ignore.

What is harder to ignore is a) the huge churn rate / low retention rate the game had in BC and b) the finance guys asking you why the heck did you spend millions in a raid most people won't even see (SWP).

- - - Updated - - -

What philosophy is that? They're all time intensive. Every last one of them. Again, MMO's recipe for success on any level at all = consistent, frequent players. Take that away, and it all falls apart rather quickly.

Then why did all those pseudo-hardcore MMOs all failed?

- - - Updated - - -

Yes they are bad. Not casual.

OK, so most people playing the game are bad. Which makes sense. So what should developers do: boot them out of the game and deprive themselves of a huge of revenue? Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

[Gungrir]

What is harder to ignore is a) the huge churn rate / low retention rate the game had in BC and b) the finance guys asking you why the heck did you spend millions in a raid most people won't even see (SWP).

- - - Updated - - -



Then why did all those pseudo-hardcore MMOs all failed?

- - - Updated - - -



OK, so most people playing the game are bad. Which makes sense. So what should developers do: boot them out of the game and deprive themselves of a huge of revenue? Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

Are you saying Darkfall failed? *Hurr Durr* *shake fist* how dare you!

[Tomana]

The thing you're overlooking in what Glorious Leader and others are saying is that based on statements by devs and GCs tweets, the entire purpose of LFR was to increase raid participation numbers so that the devs could justify the resources that let them make what was made in Mists, giant raid tiers.

Exactly. There is no way GC or everyone else will be able to justify the huge raid costs otherwise. And guess what - it is the case. Spending millions for a small % of hardcore is like burning money in your chimney to heat your house - it is hideously inefficient.

[Vintersol]

Exactly. There is no way GC or everyone else will be able to justify the huge raid costs otherwise. And guess what - it is the case. Spending millions for a small % of hardcore is like burning money in your chimney to heat your house - it is hideously inefficient.

Yes. Vanilla / TBC was so much fail in terms of subscriptions... this kind of argumentation is well trained into the brains of the audience...

[Tomana]

I am casual but give me an extra 4 hours every day and I could be hardcore.

But that's precisely the problem! Some people are casual not because they are bad, but because they can't commit to that much hours.
I raided all of BC and LK, why do you think I would have stopped? Precisely for the same reason you're talking about.

You can't expect from people in today's world, working big hours, having families, etc... to spare so many hours to play. It is not realistic (talking Western Europe/US here).

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. Vanilla / TBC was so much fail in terms of subscriptions... this kind of argumentation is well trained into the brains of the audience...

Do you even know the difference between churn, retention rate and subscription? Because from what I see, the answer is no.

[Flaks]

What?!

Who are the ones throwing hissy fits, flaming people left and right, in instances when things don't go exactly as planned? It ain't the casuals I can tell ya that.

Either people like you are severely deluded, have an incorrect of the definition of "toxic" as used in this context or is a troll.

It IS the casual players though despite what you might think. When casual players are given a taste of hardcore content, they start thinking they're better than they actually are. This leads to a sense of entitlement and eventually the outpouring of toxicity that we hear nowadays. True hardcore players (not even world firsters, just hard mode raiders and even most normal mode raiders in this day and age where the vast majority are in LFR, people who run challenge modes, gladiators etc.) generally don't give two shits about their dungeon runs and just do their strokes and be done with it if they ever even do things outside of their own guild/groups.

[Vintersol]

Do you even know the difference between churn, retention rate and subscription? Because from what I see, the answer is no.

I see parroting phrases from blizzard employees that let the people think the game was totally crap until WotLK. The success of this "crap" is showing the opposite...

[Navitas]

Another day another 'Did XXX ruin Wow" thread.

Learn to use the search function.

[Gungrir]

I see parroting phrases from blizzard employees that let the people think the game was totally crap until WotLK. The success of this "crap" is showing the opposite...

You think the success of WoW was based on having hard raids? I am pretty sure that's not the case.

[vesseblah]

I see parroting phrases from blizzard employees that let the people think the game was totally crap until WotLK. The success of this "crap" is showing the opposite...

Just because some forum posters understand basic economics better than you doesn't mean they're blindly parroting what Blizzard says. Maybe they're trying to educate you... Ever thought of that?

And nobody claims the game was crap before WLK, it was good at the time. But what the game was back then is not good enough today.

[Deleted]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, The Hardcore players are the one that are ruining WoW with their Ignorance..

[Deleted]

I actually wonder how many people from vanilla still plays the game and how many from other addons? I have the feeling thats a very small group. I would have stop long time ago if i didnt have the possibility of free time that studiying offers you. From my experience, started bc, many more like 75% dont play anymore.
There is no point to make a poll here in a wow fan forum, because people that stopped years ago will not show up here. Also people showing up here are more likely to be hardcore wow players. I started to think about it bacsuse gc said that there were always alot of people stopped playing but the difference is that not so much new players starting today.
If there are only a little minority vanilla and bc players its no wonder why blizz changed their way to designing the game. They will try to attract new fresh players with easier way to get to end game.
Blizzard will have statistics about this and they will build the game around the biggest group of customers. Everyone here would do the same, if it would be about their money.