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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    WoW will always be a reflection of the people who play it. American cultural attention span shortens, vocabulary worsens, focus and interest level declines, social skills deteriorate, then in order for the game to remain successful it must allow them to still chase a carrot.

    For some of us, the idea of getting an epic was incredible back in 2005. Those of us who made it into a real guild felt like we were a guest in someone's home until we became comfortable, then we felt like family. Then it took a lot, and I mean a lot of drama to make someone leave. You could withstand a month of wipes on Vaelastrasz and still show up with a bag full of consumables, including those whipper root tubers.

    It wasn't great back then, but people had a certain stamina and appreciation for the small victories. There was meaning in each step and it meant something to the people. I don't put this on Blizzard, other than they could be described as enablers-- though as a game maker they have to be reactive to shifts in cultural dynamics and psychology.

    We're a breadcrumb culture now. I hate it. I really hate it. But I am a minority.

    Only thing for those of us in the minority to really do is become the architects of our own reality. Guild lead the way we want to and keep filtering through the crap, waving at the entitled as they join and leave our guilds year after year at an accelerating pace.

    Don't expect it to be different in any other game, it's much bigger than Blizzard. It's in our office buildings, schools, games, movies, and music. Meaning and depth are leaving for the micropleasures of sweet and salty breadcrumbs. All media/entertainment producers are satisfying the shallow minded and keeping their hands in the bag, nibbling on morsels of entitlement.
    This is also very much true.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by llandrywyn View Post
    Repeat after me:

    "Correlation does not equal causation".

    You are making assumption about data with no proof of causal relationship. Opinion is opinion.
    I can agree with this.

    The bigger thing to notice in this graph, however, is not that WoW has declined because of some suggested cause, but that EVERY MMO listed has declined in the same time period.

    I think the only thing that can really be assumed by this graph is that the genre is declining, not a specific game.

  3. #23
    Deleted
    I agree with you OP, but it doesn't change the fact that people are lazy and they have changed the game to a point where it's unfixable social wise because of that.

    At this point I don't even know how it could be fixed anymore.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    T.b.h. I too am one of those people that think Blizzard is not very good at extrapolating information from the data they might have.
    Of course you are. Everyone on MMO-C is far far smarter than anyone at Blizzard. Why we can magically look at any set of data points and know EXACTLY what it "really means". You couldn't possible be wrong about anything, it can only be that Blizzard is wrong and Blizzard doesn't know how to understand the data.

    Your examples lack real numbers, you have some numbers and and this is important, YOUR BIAS, and so you're going to make those numbers match YOUR BIAS. You don't like Scenarios because they aren't difficult enough FOR YOU. So clearly, they are trash for everyone else ? No bias there right ?

    They made dungeons harder in Cata, they got tons of negative feedback, they had a large Unsubbing in the first quarter, we can only assume the information they got back was "Game too hard" and in came the nerfs. Of course you're free to argue the game wasn't too hard, it was that 99% of the players are just terrible. Hmmm...clearly, they don't know how to read the data.

  5. #25
    Mostly just want to disagree about the punishment not working.
    There's a difference to being put to jail, and having your life fucked over, and then there's the punishment of wow.
    In wow you get kicked, and get a 15 minutes timer, or just have to redo a boss again. It's inconvenient, but not something that is making your life harder overall. On top of that you can easily change it, by being nice, while in jail it's too late.

    The places i've administrated i've had great success with giving people a slap on the hand, simply because most people isn't so bad IRL as online. The lack of consequence makes it hard for them to get an idea to why they shouldn't behave just as they want.
    You specially see this with old users logging in on a newly made user, and insult people. Then you make it clear that you know who they are, and will tell it if they don't stop, and they do 1 of 2 things.
    1) Become embarrassed and shut up.
    2) Begin to flame you in messages/private saying they don't care, but don't post a public word after that.

    That's my personal experience at least.

    About something to analyze the situation. You can make it more simple. Seeing if the kicks you make are acknowledged/agreed on by other people. If you often try to kick people that isn't kicked you're probably not a good shot at who deserves to get kicked. If, on the other hand, your kicks always goes through, you don't get a timer at all.
    It's a pretty simple system, and while it's not completely fail safe, it's better than the current.

    Would love an option to sign up for lfr/lfd/bgs with people from your server/merged servers only. People tend to be much more nice to people that they know they can meet again.
    Everyone has so much to say
    They talk talk talk their lives away

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mad_Murdock View Post
    Of course you are. Everyone on MMO-C is far far smarter than anyone at Blizzard. Why we can magically look at any set of data points and know EXACTLY what it "really means". You couldn't possible be wrong about anything, it can only be that Blizzard is wrong and Blizzard doesn't know how to understand the data.

    Your examples lack real numbers, you have some numbers and and this is important, YOUR BIAS, and so you're going to make those numbers match YOUR BIAS. You don't like Scenarios because they aren't difficult enough FOR YOU. So clearly, they are trash for everyone else ? No bias there right ?

    They made dungeons harder in Cata, they got tons of negative feedback, they had a large Unsubbing in the first quarter, we can only assume the information they got back was "Game too hard" and in came the nerfs. Of course you're free to argue the game wasn't too hard, it was that 99% of the players are just terrible. Hmmm...clearly, they don't know how to read the data.
    Read what I wrote at the top of this page.

    I'd like the OP to as well. Everyone argues on one side or the other of this and neglects to see the larger picture.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    Then you need to go that step further and see that WoW was already a convinience product in 2004. The games before were harder and less convinient. These games are partly still there, yet you too came to WoW....

    And even with your "bigger" picture argument - Blizzard might see this too, but they are into serving their product to the consumers at hand - not changing the society. Tall Order anyhow. With 7 million playing, that means 7 BILLION DON'T play.
    Think most people came to WoW because it was getting them a step further into the story that WCIII showed them. It did for me.

    If I had interest in Ever Quest, I would have played that. I didn't think the comics were all that great. Hence me not having any interest. I had interest in Ultima Online. But at the time it came out, I had no PC yet. (I was a bit late)
    I played Ultima games at a friends house before.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    Think most people came to WoW because it was getting them a step further into the story that WCIII showed them. It did for me.

    If I had interest in Ever Quest, I would have played that. I didn't think the comics were all that great. Hence me not having any interest. I had interest in Ultima Online. But at the time it came out, I had no PC yet. (I was a bit late)
    I played Ultima games at a friends house before.
    I can agree that the only reason I started WoW was because I played WC3 and thought the idea was cool. I had no real interest in MMO's (my aunt, uncle and cousin played EQ and WoW and I thought it was ridiculous how much they played and said I'd never do that) but after some RL changes and a basic interest in Warcraft, I decided to try it out.

    Glad I did.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    Read what I wrote at the top of this page.

    I'd like the OP to as well. Everyone argues on one side or the other of this and neglects to see the larger picture.
    Here's the problem I have with the usual, My Generation had it right, the new generation is terrible. Each Generation will just apply the 8th century Hesiod quote to the next

    "I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint"

  10. #30
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    Personally I think you are right. But here comes the next guy (not me) saying in capslock: IT IS A 9 YEAR OLD GAME!!!!!!
    Which I personally find a very flawed argument. It is popular still, it is a cult thing even.

    But here comes the guy saying in capslock: BUT PEOPLE GROW UP!!!!
    Which is a very flawed argument aswell... People sure did grow up. But growing up has nothing to do with liking or even playing a game or not. Personal circumstance does or choice does. While some people married at 25 and got a kid, I myself a MANY MANY people like me still found the time to play WoW with decent raidingguild. And as Blizzard said themselves: more people have quit WoW then play it. This was already true when WoW was at its peak of 12 million. So it sure isn't a "growing up" issue.

    And as you can see from your chart, other games never put a dent into WoW's popularity.

    So there must be OTHER reasons for it to decline. And convenience and loss of immersion are MAJOR factors.

    LFR/LFD: while both are major contributors to its decline. But LFR/LFD isn't the real reason behind it. But while it "fixes" some thing (which I will get to soon), it also destroys a community.

    A server takes care of its own. If we had a server only LFR/LFD it would not be as bad... But guess what? Some servers have a very very low amount of players on it. So LFR/LFD would not work nicely because the queues would be insanely long.

    So we have a low populated server... How to fix this? Oh right... instead of merging servers for real... we got Cross Server things like LFR/LFD. And because it is cross server everyone can be an asshole to everyone.

    While I won't deny there were assholes in Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK, from my POV they WERE kept in check. They would also be kept in check by themselves because they needed other players to continue their game or they needed to pay 8 euro to name change. And also you usually had a guild or 2 on the server that for some reason invited all the assholes. Usually it would collapse within a period of 6 to 8 months, but everyone knew not to bother with people from THAT guild. Now you don't have that anymore. People are unaccountable. Very bad for business imo.

    So again if they merged servers, some stuff would probably not have been an issue.

    Then we come to the matter of content that is so trivial, you won't bother with it after getting from it what you wanted.

    - 5 man heroic dungeons
    - LFR

    I must admit I have been pretty "commited" to WoW and my character. I raided heroic for as long as it existed and have raided since Vanilla. But back in Vanilla, TBC and Prenerf Cata, 5 man heroics did actually matter for the entire expansion.

    Now you could say that this is not true. Gearupgrades will make such content trivial. I say this is a flawed argument. Sure the content does get easier even if at first it was challenging. But you can easily make that content more fun to play if you handicap yourself. Such as: going without a tank, going with 5 dps, going without a healer etc etc. Or just trying to beat a selfmade timer. You can do this ofcourse if the content was trivial to begin with... sure. But doing this gimmicky things only stretches the content a bit more. If you begin with pretty hard dungeons, you make em last a lot longer.

    Now in come the people who say: "But hard dungeons is what drove people away, look at Cataclysm ZOMG!!!"
    This is probably true. But how did this happen? Why did it drive people away? Was it the difficulty? Was it that really? Or was it LFD(cross server) that made this happen? Because if you did not go with your own guild, you could have a lot of issues with those dungeons. But if you were with your own server kind of people, or guildies you would def. had a better chance at completing them.

    1. you would probably not kick people right away
    2. you would probably stay for more wipes

    This in turn would potentially make for better players and more easily make friends. But only at the start of an expansion.

    Why? You can make friends anytime some would say. Sure sure... you can make friends. People who claim this are probably 14 and are already calling people "friends" when someone says "hi" to them. I say this because dungeons take like 15/20 minutes. And because there are no wipes and no communication needed, you cannot truly get a decent assesment on someone. Why bother giving out your Real ID anyway. You very much likely won't contact those people ever again. You have no basis of potential friendship anymore, not enough anyway.

    We need 5 man challenging content, but we need others to be able to do them. And these others need to have the patience to wipe and the respect to be polite. How do we do this? Yes no crossserver bullshit.

    But alas Blizzard moved away from server merges because of all sorts of things, names of people to name one. I care about my name. I was the first one to use it, came up with it by myself without some form of name generator. I even have a story on how I got my name. If we would still be in Vanilla thru WOTLK I would even have a very good reputation connected to the name. But I would GLADLY give it up if it meant we could merge servers as was intented by the community.

    Then comes the Flying into the game.

    People say: Do not use flying mounts if you hate them.
    Like I said so many times: People take the path of the least resistance. If you do not, you will fall behind. And you would also be alone, because no one else uses their groundmount when it is not needed. Zones themselves are designed nowadays for Flying Mounts. So no in the content we have now, we cannot lose flying mounts. But we sure as hell can make new content without flying mounts. But Blizzard is too scared to use this tool.

    Immersion would be better. People who claim riding is tedious on a groundmount making travel time longer, is not immersive, do not understand what real immersion is or can do without it. I would tell these people to please play another game where you special niche is actually appriciated. WoW used to be really immersive. It was very much an adventure if you set a goal to go somewhere. Sure sometimes you would feel like: Ok... I need to travel for 20 minutes now... pffffff. But overal it would not bother me at all. It was awesome also seeing your guild at raidtime, take the Flight Paths. A long chain of people flying. We had fun while getting to the instance. We communicated.

    About other convenience features. I don't mind portals much as long as they are functional and not too common. What I don't feel is right is why they don't have portals in every major city. I would just go into a different city whenever I felt like it as my home. It just does not make sense to me apart from getting a sense of having a busy server. If this is the reason, then my former statement comes into place about merging servers.
    Lots if Truth in this quote.
    I'd like to add some anecdote's from my recent (!) playing on a classic realm. I played vanilla 9 years ago and i played MoP last year so i wanted to refresh
    my memory. First things i noticed after reaching Lvl 14.

    - In MoP my char would be probably around lvl 40 in the same time.
    - I had no space in my inventory. Getting a new Bag was always full of joy ( I now have a six slot and a four slot bag!)
    - I read the Questlog almost everytime. While traveling.
    - I asked other player's standing nearby if Questlog lacked information. (warlock quest, mob location info)
    - I grouped with another player for Hogger and for some Mobs i had to kill for a quest in Westfall which were LvL 15. I was Lvl 12 at that point (orange quest).
    - I travel a lot. Especially to stormwind to learn new spells.
    - I died multiple times.
    - I died after resurruction in a mine because every fucking mob respawned. I should have joined the group i met inside this mine.
    And last but not least:
    - I have so much fun leveling.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Compstance View Post
    I can agree that the only reason I started WoW was because I played WC3 and thought the idea was cool. I had no real interest in MMO's (my aunt, uncle and cousin played EQ and WoW and I thought it was ridiculous how much they played and said I'd never do that) but after some RL changes and a basic interest in Warcraft, I decided to try it out.

    Glad I did.
    I am not sure I am glad about getting WoW. Sure it was a RUSH while I had a blast. Sometimes I still do.

    But my playtime in the way I did it, had a huge huge cost.

    When I started it, while it was fun, it was an escape from a broken relationship. She was still living with me when I broke up with her. But other then the need for her still living there (I couldn't kick her out and live with myself) I needed to escape basically.

    But then I took it further. I obsessed so much over this game that I neglected my real life social circle. I began to skip social events like birthdays. Or even forget that someone had his birthday. The only people I really saw during this period of about 7 years... were my parents, my guildies (at guild events) and the pizzaguy. I grew fucking fat (from 90kg to 115/120). Just recently I gotten 108 again. It might take me a while to get back to my normal weight.

    So yes I am glad I did get to know the game. But on the other hand I would probably have a very different life right now if I did not. I am not sure which life would be the most happy. I am currently pretty happy. But well I did not really keep my social circle in the end. Starting to make a new one tho. Still I do see my former guildies whenever we get a chance.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    I am not sure I am glad about getting WoW. Sure it was a RUSH while I had a blast. Sometimes I still do.

    But my playtime in the way I did it, had a huge huge cost.

    When I started it, while it was fun, it was an escape from a broken relationship. She was still living with me when I broke up with her. But other then the need for her still living there (I couldn't kick her out and live with myself) I needed to escape basically.

    But then I took it further. I obsessed so much over this game that I neglected my real life social circle. I began to skip social events like birthdays. Or even forget that someone had his birthday. The only people I really saw during this period of about 7 years... were my parents, my guildies (at guild events) and the pizzaguy. I grew fucking fat (from 90kg to 115/120). Just recently I gotten 108 again. It might take me a while to get back to my normal weight.

    So yes I am glad I did get to know the game. But on the other hand I would probably have a very different life right now if I did not. I am not sure which life would be the most happy. I am currently pretty happy. But well I did not really keep my social circle in the end. Starting to make a new one tho. Still I do see my former guildies whenever we get a chance.
    I can see how that can be rather destructive, but that goes along with anything used to escape bad situations. Drinking for instance, isn't bad for recreation, but when used as an escape it leads to destructive behavior. While I've played a LOT in the past, it's always been scheduled around my priorities, so it's never been an issue for me to play as much as I do.

    To be completely honest, I actually STARTED WoW about a week after my ex left. I was about a year into college, and I woke up for class one morning and there was a note on the counter saying she didn't want to be married anymore. Never saw her again. About a week later, I called my cousin and asked him about WoW, because I needed something to help me focus for my classes and make my apartment feel less empty. I've been playing ever since.

    I've actually got OCD (more obsessive than compulsive, but I won't get into that), so it helped tremendously to get my mind focused during college and all that was going on, and gives me something to keep my mind occupied in general (basically, something to obsess over that doesn't drive me crazy, because WoW is controllable for me, whereas the other things my mind might obsess about aren't).

    I'll never suggest to someone that they start playing WoW if I feel that they don't have the rest of their life in order, because it can cause people to ignore things they shouldn't.

  13. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    Then you need to go that step further and see that WoW was already a convinience product in 2004. The games before were harder and less convinient. These games are partly still there, yet you too came to WoW....

    And even with your "bigger" picture argument - Blizzard might see this too, but they are into serving their product to the consumers at hand - not changing the society. Tall Order anyhow. With 7 million playing, that means 7 BILLION DON'T play.

    Blizzard deals with that handful of people interested in MMOs and they will try and make a game that is fun for as many as possible.

    You hopefully notice the words "fun" and "game".

    And - yes...I agree, hard bosses can be fun. So..why does the OP need to drag LFR into this and use it as argument for decline? There is still a heroic mode with barely 1000 ppl killing the hardest boss in the game.

    If there is this huge untapped reservoir of players eager for a challenge? Here it is. It always was there. And be it Naxx 40 in Classic aor now Garrosh in SoO - it always was only a handful that was up to that challenge.
    More convenient than it's ancient predecessors, yes. I'm was suggesting that it's become too convenient, as to become damaging to the community, and likely to sales. The social element of an MMO is a pretty large part of it.

    I never said anything about difficulty. Though personally LFR makes boss kills feel tedious/banal.
    Last edited by Lumicide; 2013-11-20 at 04:14 PM.

  14. #34
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    Convenience. Whatever makes life easier makes me happy. Fuck communities - most of them are toxic anyways.

  15. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mad_Murdock View Post
    Facts Hurt! Stop throwing them around!

    In the grand scheme of things, WOW's player base is pretty small. You have a lot of people who have been playing since Vanilla (or at least claim too). These are the same kind of folks that stuck with Everquest until they turned off the server.

    Personally I think Blizz is taking away some of these different things like flying, because they know the core crowd won't leave or won't stay gone. Maybe they are also proving that taking away all these things won't bring back millions of subs. There seems to be this pocket of people who think if they just reverted WoD back to Vanilla, suddenly the subs will start climbing again. My opinion is the ship has sailed They've had a awesome run and their doing their best to keep the game healthy and interesting.

    But has Superman noted. We have so little actual data, we can't feel too confident in our expert analysis.
    I am all for "speculation", but people need to understand without solid, extrapolated data, every thing said on this topic is assumption. Anyone who assumes they are in the right with their opinion regarding the data even being viable is a fool. I know the truth hurts, but someone had to say it.

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Lumicide View Post
    Graph, removed, and edited for clarity. People can't keep their eyes off it and focus on the topic of the post. (I'll admit, I shouldn't have put it there in the first place)
    You mean the graph was removed because it didn't support your talking points, since most people remember WoTLK as being a very casual friendly experience, through and through, with plenty of convenience such as tome of cold weather flying (to help you level alts) and even when LFD was introduced later on in WoTLK most people embraced it.

    Subs started falling in Cata, not only because the game was getting old, but because Blizzard failed to round up a growing botting problem that screwed over anybody who relied on gathering skills, and because the 10/25 lockout merge basically told casual raiders to "bend over and call us daddy, lulz". It was the most convenient levelling experience, but other than levelling, it was extremely inconvenient. LFR didn't show up until the Hour of Twilight patch, and even that was an insult to the intelligence of casual raiders.

    And Cross realm battlegrounds? lol, that was introduced in like 2006. That's a Vanilla convenience feature. Sure, you had to fly over to the portal, but then Battle masters were introduced IN THE BURNING CRUSADE. Which put the ability to que for battlegrounds all in one convenient spot.

    None of your points are supported by, well, anything.

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Kamico View Post
    - I travel a lot. Especially to stormwind to learn new spells.
    - I died multiple times.
    - I died after resurruction in a mine because every fucking mob respawned. I should have joined the group i met inside this mine.
    And last but not least:
    - I have so much fun leveling.
    If dying a lot means that much too you. Why not level the Ironman way ? Where you only equip Grays and Whites ? No giving yourself funds, or bags, no using health potions, no grouping with people to help you kill things, No talent tree. Of course, part of the rule of Ironman, if you died, that was it. Character is dead forever. But you could modify that part to your liking.

    Lots of folks participated in it. There is even a website to track it http://wowironman.com/ Once again, people who want more challenge find a way to make it more challenging. Those that don't, go to the forums and complain
    Last edited by Mad_Murdock; 2013-11-20 at 04:18 PM.

  18. #38
    90% of the time, I keep realizing how the game always gets worse when other people are involved in what you do. The "social aspect" sucks and "the community" blows. That's why the game is getting worse and worse right now - because Blizzard is trying to bully players back into "being social".

  19. #39
    IMO I am irked by the fact that said convenience is now being adopted by parts of the dev team, the early level talents are just copy/paste of either:

    a) Move speed buff at 15 + CC at 30
    b) Move speed buff at 15 + some sort of healing at 30

    Some of the talents later on are still lazy (Fist of Justice is simply Hammer of Justice with +20 range) or simply old base abilities made into talents (Mind Control).

    Then they went on and homogenized everything else among the classes including part of the play style, a pally now feels like half rogue with clunky combo points

    Don't even get me started on revamps, ugh...

    Quote Originally Posted by Hardstyler01 View Post
    This is true for ALL products. Once new versions come out the older versions go in decline. Or do you honestly still watch movies through VHS? It's really simple basic economics, I'm sure Blizzard is fully aware of this effect and have made changes to the game accordingly.
    You posted the theory and yet fail to understand there are flaws to the Product Life Cycle Theory

    1) There is no set time in which the product must be in each stage (Decline? Didn't many say WoW is not 'dying'?)
    2) May not apply to all products (Radios are still around and will still be around even after a long time)
    3) Emphasizes a lot on the product instead of the brand (People may still play WoW because they like Blizzard's games and would like to try their MMO sometime in the future)
    Last edited by championknight; 2013-11-20 at 04:32 PM.

  20. #40
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    Well, one could argue that the player-made carrots exist because the Blizzard-made carrots became too quickly earned.

    When I finish content--or hell when I'm still progressing through it, the only real carrot left is beating every other frost mage and attempting to topple the class as a whole. That's the only real goal left. I would argue that it was much better to have only one version of a boss. Killing Illidan felt amazing. Killing Garrosh on LFR saps some of the allure out of doing it on Flex, which takes some cool factor away from it on Normal, and by the time you get to Heroic it's just... going through the motions and more crucially playing better.

    So the focus is on playing better, not the content itself. The consequence of that is, and can only be, metrics popping up to analyze how we are playing.

    And that is the problem.

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