1. #1301
    Quote Originally Posted by TomFord View Post
    To think that casuals ruined wow is a complete joke. Without them, this game would have 1 Mil subs. Ive played since later Vanilla, and everything blizzard is doing seems appropriate for the time. LFR, Flex, etc. I dont have alot of time to dedicate to this game anymore, so I have become a casual when I was once hardcore.
    But blizz implements stuff like LFR and flex and the game subs drop. Why? To cater to a certain demograph that many will agree probably don't like MMO's in the first place. Perhaps if they focused their MMO on people that enjoy playing that type of game.... the subs would go up once again?

  2. #1302
    Quote Originally Posted by mmowin View Post
    the game in itself was a lot harder since there was no LFR or group find for anything plus you had to flyout to the actual instance.
    Yes, using a fp was "hard".

    You have no idea of the difference between difficulty and annoyance.

  3. #1303
    its only certain casuals who ruined it. it cant be them complaining about raiding. only the real raiders state real problems and thats what blizz listens too. pvp on the other hand...those arena whiners never stop screaming.

  4. #1304
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    But blizz implements stuff like LFR and flex and the game subs drop. Why? To cater to a certain demograph that many will agree probably don't like MMO's in the first place. Perhaps if they focused their MMO on people that enjoy playing that type of game.... the subs would go up once again?
    Because the game is going on ten years old. I keep pointing out that pretty much every single MMO in fucking history has started losing subscribers at around the six or seven year mark, and people like you keep trying to ignore it so that you can cling to your dipshit fantasy that Blizzard will someday regret throwing you under a bus.

    Spoiler: It's never going to fucking happen.

  5. #1305
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimble View Post
    Because the game is going on ten years old. I keep pointing out that pretty much every single MMO in fucking history has started losing subscribers at around the six or seven year mark, and people like you keep trying to ignore it so that you can cling to your dipshit fantasy that Blizzard will someday regret throwing you under a bus.

    Spoiler: It's never going to fucking happen.

    The "old game is old" argument I don't think really works, considering blizzard always re-invents stuff and is releasing content every 4 to 6 months. IMO the problem is they aren't hooking in new players because the experience is pretty boring. Is it a more casual experience? Yes, but it's also kind of a forgetful one at the same time. As for blizz "regretting throwing their fans under the bus" I guess we'll wait and see. They may regret it at the next quarterly results meeting where they find out they lost more subs perhaps?

  6. #1306
    I am Murloc! Tomana's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Silvermoon City
    Posts
    5,292
    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    1. 4 raid modes of which you can only do 1 if you so desire, but more time gives you the ability to do all 4 and thus have an edge over others
    So did LK. And it was not that bad, frankly, especially for TOTGC which was short anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    2. daily quest hubs, a lot of them and their respective quests give valor points and those can be used to purchase even more stuff
    Hence the 5.4 changes with no valor items. But yeah, early MOP was a huge timesink - which caused a lot of casual players to run away.

    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    3. easy 5 mans that those who have a lot of time at their disposal can spam to their heart's content and again get an edge over someone who cannot spend as much time
    To get what? VPs? See above? What else could you possibly want to get in a 5-man besides enchanting mats?

    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    Were it skill based we'd have a single mode of difficulty with commensurate rewards and more time spent would not matter, because if you could beat it you would reap the rewards.
    Oh, trust me, if it was skill-based, a lot of the wannabe hardcores whining on the forum would whine about not being able to down bosses
    MMO player
    WoW: 2006-2020 || EvE: 2013-2020 || FFXIV: 2020- || Lost Ark: 2022-

  7. #1307
    The scrubby casuals did ruin it, yes.

  8. #1308
    I am Murloc! Tomana's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Silvermoon City
    Posts
    5,292
    Quote Originally Posted by NigelGurney View Post
    I would consider the free expansion, mount, faction change, server transfer, and D3 game a far more realistic reason for the stall.
    What free expansion? Also, faction change was implemented before cata (September 2009 if I'm not that much mistaken)

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by vvilly View Post
    The scrubby casuals did ruin it, yes.
    If you want to prove something, you should at least include some facts in your posts, that would be helpful
    MMO player
    WoW: 2006-2020 || EvE: 2013-2020 || FFXIV: 2020- || Lost Ark: 2022-

  9. #1309
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Tralfamadore
    Posts
    32,405
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    I like dungeons and I can tell you do too, but having *a lot* of dungeons wouldn't work for a lot of reasons. People would just get sick of running them, with raiding the zone is simply much larger and with only being able to do it once a week, it has a lot more longevity. Beyond that, having just one type of content makes it hard to balance, even if you have a lot of different modes. For example, a lot of newer guys complained about cata heroic dungeons despite the fact that they could just run normal, likewise here, heroics would have to be nerfed to be pretty easy or otherwise people would get upset. The next step from there is they clear all the dungeons too fast and people get bored with the content.

    I know a lot will hate to here this, but if WoW lost raiding the game would lose subs, plain and simple. Even from non-raiders, because they wouldn't have any sort of next level to get to. That's what has happened in other MMO's, if there's no depth to the end game content, there's not much of a reason to level. Sure, you could make an alt, but at that point, why level that if you'll have the same problem your main has?
    You shouldn't read too much too much of my personal preferences into it really. The post was constructed as a direct response to Brandon's question as to what could ever replace raids. So I dreamed up a content model that would look attractive to all sorts of players that could substitute for raids, i.e. replacing content you spend a long time in with content that is continuously refreshed with new additions. It's vaguely analogous to replacing expensive epic movies with arc-based episodic television: something new every week that over time tells a main story along with side stories. Scenarios (heroic and normal one week) and dungeons (various difficulties) on alternate weeks. It's taking disposable content to it's logical conclusion. Would those who live to raid heroic difficulty exclusively care for it? Of course not. Would I subscribe to it? I don't know. Maybe. Both models for content in popular culture of all kinds are perfectly viable in the commercial sense.

    What I set out was really a different game. However, I think it's a model for content that would be more attractive than you imagine. You and I will just agree to disagree on how many people in the game are standing outside the fancy restaurant of raiding wishing to get in. I don't think it's quite as many as you believe and in any case the owners of the restaurant for some mysterious reason aren't really terribly interested in having them inside in any case even though there's plenty of room for them. It's not difficult to imagine that a constant weekly or bi-weekly flow of new content would cause many people to decide they weren't really that interested to start with and they would move on to other things with little in the way of regrets.

    Setting a game up this way makes sense in any case. Raiding as it now exists proposes that staying in the same raid for weeks at a time, doing it once with possible numerous failures, and then doing it all over again but harder is a more attractive idea to most people than taking whatever is new this week or fortnight (two weeks), consuming it and then moving on to the next bit a week or two later. I think that's a hard sell. And many game design studios are beginning to agree. Smaller, more frequent content updates are the order of the day and into the future for MMO's.

    But just to be very clear, I don't really know how I feel about that. I'm more traditional than you might imagine in that respect. That said, forums should be interesting places to propose radical ideas, examine them, turn them inside out and discuss them. The plain fact that forums are also full of rage, immaturity and stupidity isn't helpful but I prefer it to blogging since the response if any is more immediate.
    Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2013-09-15 at 06:00 PM. Reason: Cleaned up some ambiguous language
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  10. #1310
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Tomana View Post
    What free expansion? Also, faction change was implemented before cata (September 2009 if I'm not that much mistaken)

    - - - Updated - - -



    If you want to prove something, you should at least include some facts in your posts, that would be helpful
    Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I didn't say they were introduced then, I said they were all given away free to get people to rejoin and retain existing players. A far more likely reason for the apparent stall in sub loses.

  11. #1311
    To me the elimination of daily quest hubs is a huge mistake. 5.3 was the most boring patch ever because there were no dailies and hence, no reason to log in every day. The weekly quest was also horrendous and the rewards, other than the Hydra pet, useless. 5.4 is better with more to do but it could also use a series of dailies. They are ruining what was a very good and fun expansion with this "experiment".
    Desktop ------------------------------- Laptop- Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
    AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU ---------------AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS with Radeon 680M graphics
    AMD RX 6600XT GPU -------------------AMD Radeon RX 6800S discrete graphics
    16 GB DDR4-3200 RAM ----------------16 GB DDR5-4800 RAM
    1 TB WD Black SN770 NVMe SSD ------1 TB WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD

  12. #1312
    Dreadlord Santoryu's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Location
    Staples Center
    Posts
    822
    Quote Originally Posted by Tomana View Post
    So did LK. And it was not that bad, frankly, especially for TOTGC which was short anyway.


    Hence the 5.4 changes with no valor items. But yeah, early MOP was a huge timesink - which caused a lot of casual players to run away.


    To get what? VPs? See above? What else could you possibly want to get in a 5-man besides enchanting mats?


    Oh, trust me, if it was skill-based, a lot of the wannabe hardcores whining on the forum would whine about not being able to down bosses
    WOTLK was when WoW jumped the shark. TOC is one of the worst and laziest raids in the game's history.

    Hardcores don't whine, they just beat the bosses by any means necessary. It's the entitled casual vocal minority that whines for nerfs.

  13. #1313
    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    Hardcores don't whine, they just beat the bosses by any means necessary. It's the entitled casual vocal minority that whines for nerfs.
    In fact, almost no one "whines", from any demographic. The vast majority of players post nothing at all.

    What players DO is unsub if they are unhappy. Are you criticizing them for doing this, or criticizing Blizzard for responding?
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  14. #1314
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Tralfamadore
    Posts
    32,405
    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    It's the entitled casual vocal minority that whines for nerfs.
    To this very specific point, raids are no longer nerfed while current tier. LFR sends you a "You're welcome."

    People still argue whether or not the general difficulty is appropriate or not but nerfs in the sense that was all the thing during WotLK and Cataclysm T11/T12 are, as a practical thing, not done any longer.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  15. #1315
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    You shouldn't read too much too much of my personal preferences into it really. The post was constructed as a direct response to Brandon's question as to what could ever replace raids. So I dreamed up a content model that would look attractive to all sorts of players that could substitute for raids, i.e. replacing content you spend a long time in with content that is continuously refreshed with new additions. It's vaguely analogous to replacing expensive epic movies with arc-based episodic television: something new every week that over time tells a main story along with side stories. Scenarios (heroic and normal one week) and dungeons (various difficulties) on alternate weeks. It's taking disposable content to it's logical conclusion. Would those who live to raid heroic difficulty exclusively care for it? Of course not. Would I subscribe to it? I don't know. Maybe. Both models for content in popular culture of all kinds are perfectly viable in the commercial sense.

    What I set out was really a different game. However, I think it's a model for content that would be more attractive than you imagine. You and I will just agree to disagree on how many people in the game are standing outside the fancy restaurant of raiding wishing to get in. I don't think it's quite as many as you believe and in any case the owners of the restaurant for some mysterious reason aren't really terribly interested in having them inside in any case even though there's plenty of room for them. It's not difficult to imagine that a constant weekly or bi-weekly flow of new content would cause many people to decide they weren't really that interested to start with and they would move on to other things with little in the way of regrets.

    Setting a game up this way makes sense in any case. Raiding as it now exists proposes that staying in the same raid for weeks at a time, doing it once with possible numerous failures, and then doing it all over again but harder is a more attractive idea to most people than taking whatever is new this week or fortnight (two weeks), consuming it and then moving on to the next bit a week or two later. I think that's a hard sell. And many game design studios are beginning to agree. Smaller, more frequent content updates are the order of the day and into the future for MMO's.

    But just to be very clear, I don't really know how I feel about that. I'm more traditional than you might imagine in that respect. That said, forums should be interesting places to propose radical ideas, examine them, turn them inside out and discuss them. The plain fact that forums are also full of rage, immaturity and stupidity isn't helpful but I prefer it to blogging since the response if any is more immediate.
    Yeah, I'll admit that I do sometimes get annoyed on the forums, but I think some people let it bug them a bit *too* much. Back to LFR, strictly my opinion here but I think it would be much MUCH better if you could only do like half the bosses, but give them mechanics that you do need to follow, and up the rewards in the process. LFR in a lot of ways is quite grindy, between queue's and the amount of wings that a player will want to do in a week, a lot of guys just spend time on their flying mount waiting for the queue to pop.

    With a shorter, but more challenging format, it gives the bosses more depth, making it feel like you are in a raid, but at the same time it's not as overwhelming as you don't need to learn the mechanics for 14 different bosses (and not saying it has to be the first 7 bosses of the raid either). LFR doesn't have much communication, but IMO that's just because there's no need for it. I don't think that means that there's no way communication will never happen, if the opportunity presents itself, a lot of players would probably surprise themselves. And wipes will likely happen for some groups, but wipes have always been a massive portion of raiding, most of the time you're in a raid you will likely wipe more than you actually kill a boss. Just my thoughts on the topic, but I think it would improve a lot of different aspects of LFR and wouldn't really cost any more development or resources (it may save cash in fact lol).
    Back to your point,

    I definitely do think newer 5 mans should be released. ZA and ZG were only a massive disaster only because they were out for SOOOO long and they were the only progression if you couldn't raid. Those first few weeks of those 2 places tho IMO, those were some of the most fun in 5 mans I've personally ever had. If they planned it out a bit and were smart about it, I'd concede that something with more 5 mans could be viable.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    In fact, almost no one "whines", from any demographic. The vast majority of players post nothing at all.

    What players DO is unsub if they are unhappy. Are you criticizing them for doing this, or criticizing Blizzard for responding?


    I'd call some of it whining lol, not trying to sound mean here either, but look at something like the Emperor Shao grind for example. People are complaining about it being a hard grind, despite the fact that it offers almost nothing but vanity items like a mount and a pet, and many have asked for it to be nerfed, despite the fact that they can ignore it entirely and they would be missing nothing in doing so.

  16. #1316
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    To this very specific point, raids are no longer nerfed while current tier. LFR sends you a "You're welcome."

    People still argue whether or not the general difficulty is appropriate or not but nerfs in the sense that was all the thing during WotLK and Cataclysm T11/T12 are, as a practical thing, not done any longer.
    Which suggests that Blizzard have realized that making content too assessable is not a very good long term solution.

  17. #1317
    Dreadlord Santoryu's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Location
    Staples Center
    Posts
    822
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    To this very specific point, raids are no longer nerfed while current tier. LFR sends you a "You're welcome."

    People still argue whether or not the general difficulty is appropriate or not but nerfs in the sense that was all the thing during WotLK and Cataclysm T11/T12 are, as a practical thing, not done any longer.
    They still insist on those stupid raid wide buffs that stack on a weekly or some other arbitrary basis so that people can "see" the content DESPITE THE FACT THAT LFR IS MEANT TO DO THAT. God the irony.
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    In fact, almost no one "whines", from any demographic. The vast majority of players post nothing at all.

    What players DO is unsub if they are unhappy. Are you criticizing them for doing this, or criticizing Blizzard for responding?
    You can never have everyone happy. I'm sad Blizzard didn't stick to this.

    BTW how do you multi quote a single post? I.e. sentence by sentence?
    Last edited by Santoryu; 2013-09-15 at 06:29 PM.

  18. #1318
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    The "old game is old" argument I don't think really works, considering blizzard always re-invents stuff and is releasing content every 4 to 6 months.
    1) Every single MMO in the fucking world releases new content periodically.

    2) Every single MMO in the fucking world declines after 6 or 7 years at most.

    3) Every single MMO in the fucking world has dipshits who want to tell you that the "real" reason for this decline is because of some stupid imaginary design problem.

    4) These imaginary design problems are never really the same between different games, yet somehow they always magically crop up at around the exact same 6 or 7 year mark every time.

    So let me get this straight, Rick, you're telling me that games don't really age, that the product life-cycle doesn't really exist, and that every MMO developer so far just happened to make awful (yet unique) mistakes at the six year mark by sheer coincidence? That's kind of a fucking extraordinary claim, don't you think? That's the sort of claim that takes a lot more to front than just "DERR SUBS WENT DOWN AND I BLAME THAT THING I DON'T LIKE" from a minority of forum slobs.

    IMO the problem is they aren't hooking in new players because the experience is pretty boring. Is it a more casual experience?
    How many potential new WoW players do you think exist? Infinite? How long do you think they all play? Forever? Tell me, oh guru, when do YOU think a game begins to just get old and lose players? Never? Every single game would grow to infinity if only every single MMO designer stopped fucking it up?

    Yes, but it's also kind of a forgetful one at the same time. As for blizz "regretting throwing their fans under the bus" I guess we'll wait and see. They may regret it at the next quarterly results meeting where they find out they lost more subs perhaps?
    No, they won't. They will sit at their meeting and count their lost subscribers and never give hardcore dipshits crying on the forums a fucking thought because there just aren't enough of them to matter either way.

    Shit, hardcores can't even stink up the forums properly. Every time one of them makes a "remove LFR" post on the WoW General it gets instantly downvoted into oblivion. Yeah woo, way to show the blues that real trendsetting hardcore power.
    Last edited by Grimble; 2013-09-15 at 06:32 PM.

  19. #1319
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    WOTLK was when WoW jumped the shark. TOC is one of the worst and laziest raids in the game's history.

    Hardcores don't whine, they just beat the bosses by any means necessary. It's the entitled casual vocal minority that whines for nerfs.
    In a sense ToC was great for semi hardcore guilds, except Anub stuff ( and shared lock out ). So most of them could get heroic gear for ICC normal mode... that's why ICC was a "great" Tier, in a sense....

    There is only ONE problem: 10 = 25 decision.... this and just this...

    I can't understand how people can support the 10 = 25 paradigm.....

    Those 10man guilds are so fragile, versatile, it leads to a guild jumpers community and angry, bored people...

    It's just a " pug, friend and family format ". When a server have no 25 man guilds anymore, it's dead, even if you have like 50 10mGuilds.

    Raid feeling = Max people = 25 (and no, lfr isn't)

  20. #1320
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Tralfamadore
    Posts
    32,405
    Quote Originally Posted by Paraclef View Post
    Those 10man guilds are so fragile, versatile, it leads to a guild jumpers community and angry, bored people...
    And yet, one of the primary problems with guilds in BC was jumping/poaching.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •