Convenience vs Community

[Lumicide]

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)

Convenience is king (of what we think we want, not what is necessarily best for us).

On face value it always sounds like a good deal:

1. You never have to use LFG chat again! Hey, that sure was somewhat tedious. YAY!
2. LFD/LFR makes it easy to gear alts. Hurray, sounds great!
3. Playing with your friends X-Realm. Sounds good!

1. Because talking to anyone would be a bad idea.
2. Because being a guild is just a waste of time.
3. Because making new friends on your server is difficult.

These pro-convenience features are all about avoiding the community. We no longer have to talk to anyone to experience the whole game, in an genre where the 'social' aspect of the game is its 'core feature'. When everyone you play with is just a random face, that you'll never see again, there's no incentive to be cordial, competent, or even present. It's not as if MMO's really stand on their own with just their gameplay, presentation, or storytelling.

"We should just build new features focused on making these other features work."
One step forward, and two steps back, feature creep:

LFD/LFR'ers are rude, incompetent, or afk:

Use Kick feature

Kick is abused (kick diminishing return is added)

Kick DR is unbiased and doesn't realize that your kicks are legit (can't kick)

Build a new system of kicking that analyzes the situation to make sure people aren't kicking frivolously
(I'm sorry, this doesn't even sound remotely possible.)

None of this makes people behave better, it just an anonymous punishment. Vengeance may make you 'feel' good, but it doesn't solve very much.

Humans are simply better at vetting other humans, than computers are. We evolved, over millions of years to doing it after all, and computers have only been around for decades. I feel if we want to have a good community, to have a more fun game, and hopefully make Blizz to more $ -- we should just get rid of these features.

"Once you've given someone convenience, you can't just take it away!"
Sure you can. And what's the worst that can happen? Subs are already falling as fast as they ever rose to begin with.

"If you get rid of X-Server play we're going to huge have queue times on BG's and barren regions on some servers"
Be somewhat aggressive in merging servers, and instate a faction quota. Get it balanced, and try to keep it that way.

-------------------------

Do you think I am right, or wrong? And please answer with why.

[llandrywyn]

Repeat after me:

"Correlation does not equal causation".

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

[Fibh]

People will always find excuses.

"Peak was during wotlk, the easiest expansion hur dur"

They don't realize the 2 peaks were right after wotlk release when people still believed it was gonna be like TBC and at cata release because cata was announced as leaving easymode wotlk behind and going back to tbc.

Not much can be done about it though. Scrap the bad features and millions of entitled casuals leave. Keep those bad features and millions of players leave because the game isn't even close to as good as it used to be.

[Lumicide]

Repeat after me:

"Correlation does not equal causation".

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

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Anyone could say: "No features of WoW could be proven to correlate to the decline subscriptions and community of WoW. And to the same effect, the improvement of WoW."

It's such an uninteresting answer. But I suppose it's right, we should just despair and never try to think of what could possibly improve anything. :(

Art is a very hard subject to be objective about. The only way to be even fairly certain would be to experiment. And as I'm not Blizzard, that would be very hard to do.

So I'm curious, do you have any ideas that you think would improve it?

[Vaelorian]

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.

[hrugner]

The problem isn't just that they marginalized the way WoW's community grew, they also didn't put any sort of additional community structure in it's place. There wasn't some ark waiting to carry the community off while their corner stones were sunk; everyone was just left to drown in the little sea of fast paced high yield anonymity that is done so much better in single player games.

[Deleted]

Another thing which, in my opinion, ruined a lot is the 'competitive' PvP which was introduced. I remember when arenas were introduced I was really excited, but now I realise the damage it did to the game.

PvP in WoW has moved from anecdotical (Vanilla and early BG's) situation ("I was grinding something, and two alliance jumped and I managed to beat them!"), over tbc were there was still some interaction between the world and PvP, to MoP where PvP is a totally seperated game. The situation now might be good for 'PvP balance' and highly competitive PvP players, but for the largest portion of PvP'ers it is simply not interesting anymore.

PvP which was a big part of the original immersive world that WoW was has been turned into a mini-game.

[Deleted]

First off, I often see posts where people say "These pro-convenience/"casualization" features are good business decisions. If I were Blizzard I'd do it too."

I wonder if they know what they're talking about.

Yeah, because it's basic knowledge on how ANY business works.

But you just pull out a fancy graph and think you look smart, but that's not how it works. That graph needs to be accompanied by actual facts.
And the fact is, ANY product will go in decline once it's old and outdated, WoW is no exception.

Making the game more casual friendly (read: accessible) only prolonged the lifespan of the product, if they didn't make it more accessible WoW would've declined even faster. These are very simple business facts, go read a book about economics, it's all in there if you don't believe me.


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.

It's the stupid (yes, sorry to say it but it's true) fans that think the decline is due to making the game more casual. Yeah, if you're so smart then why aren't you running a business yourself, hmm?

- - - Updated - - -

So I'm curious, do you have any ideas that you think would improve it?

What is there to improve? When the first cars were invented people were still trying to breed faster horses. It's just a stupid battle that you can't win. That's pretty much what you're suggesting as well. In the end a horse can't compete with a car. WoW can't compete with newer games. There is no simple change to WoW that will bring people back in masses. WoW is old and outdated, it has been in decline for a few years now and that will only continue.

The only thing that could get people to return would be releasing WoW 2 with an updated engine, updated graphics, updated game mechanics, new story, etc. But that would be an entirely different game.

[Vaelorian]

It's the stupid (yes, sorry to say it but it's true) fans that think the decline is due to making the game more casual. Yeah, if you're so smart then why aren't you running a business yourself, hmm?

How could they know the game was in it's prime around WOTLK? How could they? They couldn't and decided for more convenience and more braindead content. Thén the decline started. But the braindead content has it's core in the cross-server things. If we merged servers as was asked so many times, these braindead things would not be needed.

And running a business yourself, how do you know if he or anyone in this thread isn't running a business? And you know, most of the time people who would like their own business do not have the starting capital to do so. And plenty of idiots out there who do have the starting capital but do not have the vision to keep their business going well.

[hrugner]

That chart is a tool that can be used for interpreting data, it doesn't actually mean anything on it's own. It doesn't indicate what event caused the tip at each of the major transitions and it certainly doesn't describe as precipitous a drop as WoW is seeing now. It doesn't do anything to interpret the importance of iterative releases or Blizzards release cycle, and is in fact designed to interpret sales of a product that can have objective improvements leaving older versions to drift into obsolescence.

[Lumicide]

Another thing which, in my opinion, ruined a lot is the 'competitive' PvP which was introduced. I remember when arenas were introduced I was really excited, but now I realise the damage it did to the game.

PvP in WoW has moved from anecdotal (Vanilla and early BG's) situation ("I was grinding something, and two alliance jumped and I managed to beat them!"), over tbc were there was still some interaction between the world and PvP, to MoP where PvP is a totally separated game. The situation now might be good for 'PvP balance' and highly competitive PvP players, but for the largest portion of PvP'ers it is simply not interesting anymore.

PvP which was a big part of the original immersive world that WoW was has been turned into a mini-game.

Ah, memories, the first time I saw "Contested territory", think that was... Stone Talon Mountains. Definitely irritating to die to ganks, but gratifying to survive! Now just fly/teleport to the desired instance, and never interact with anyone on the ground.

Resilience, imo, adds a bit too high of a bar between PvP and PvE, since the gear awarded from each of them is only useful in its respective field (besides some of the PvE -> PvP overlap). Back during WotLK was the only time I got geared up in both PvE and PvP gear on 1 character, my mage Full Wrathful and mostly full T10. Segregates the community pretty well too, lots lots of people to one or the other. Unless you can devote 29 hours a day, or no desire to play anything but your main, it's real rough to put the necessary time in for PvE and PvP. Favorite thing about vanilla was the fact that gear was optimal, or sub-optimal for PvE/PvP respectively, rather than the current viable/non-viable. (though it wasn't exactly balanced).

[Deleted]

Favorite thing about vanilla was the fact that gear was optimal, or sub-optimal for PvE/PvP respectively, rather than the current viable/non-viable. (though it wasn't exactly balanced).

I loved doing raids, and then taking me new gear for a spin in some world PvP. It didn't really need to be balanced because there was no competitive PvP, no rankings, just fun.

[Lumicide]

--snip--
graph/ad hom
--snip--
cars
--snip--

You seem to act as if that "fancy" graph of yours is an absolute rule, and that nothing in the universe may defy it.

I never claimed some sort of superior intellect, that's why I asked if I was right or wrong, and why. If I seriously though I was superior to all, I would just tell you "I'm not responding to anyone who disagrees with me", and there would be no discussion. However, I don't see how people can be so utterly certain that "casualization" was the unquestionably superior choice. The subscriptions only show what it was, not what it could have been, and the latter cannot be known.

Also do you think that the other suggestions, trying to resolve LFD/LFR issues, while trying to prevent feature creep, improves WoW? Does it keep the game more sustainable? Or are they simply doing everything right to keep it on the "optimal" trend? I can't imagine any company doing 'everything' right. Even Valve. I'd be surprised if SteamOS turns out big and offers real PC-OS competition. (This is partly due to AMD's Linux "drivers")

The only way to really know if something can improve it, is to test it on the community when they think it's not a test. Say : "We're getting rid of <all this>" community freaks out, and they are forced to deal with it. You see what happens later. Now that's clearly a very risky thing to do, especially with a multi, multi-million $ product.

WoW 'has' been competing with newer games, even in its current state, it's by a wide margin, the most popular MMO. Maybe it really can't be recovered, but I don't see what's going to take its place. EQ:N 'almost' looked promising 'til I heard about its movement system, basically 'hold a button to do cool things' all over again, rather than proper control. But I suppose the argument would be, casualization is ubiquitously better.

I loved doing raids, and then taking me new gear for a spin in some world PvP. It didn't really need to be balanced because there was no competitive PvP, no rankings, just fun.

There were ranks! I was ranked, Knight Lieutenant and Legionnaire (and a few scouts)! But, I actually do enjoy the balance (1v1 esp, don't care nearly as much about the rest). Vanilla gear's inclusiveness was the best, but late WotLK's PvP really felt spot on.

[Vaelorian]

Lumicide for president

[-Superman-]

In this thread: People who do not work for Blizzard, do not have concise and evaluated data, have never been given a full root cause analysis of the data, and use Latin terms making them sound like snobs. Hate to break it to you kids, but only Blizz knows why things are the way they are. The only thing I can confirm from that chart is the launch of Cata saw the most users and the end of cata caused the biggest plummet of users. Only definitive data we have is... oh wait... we have no definitive data.

[Mad_Murdock]

In this thread: People who do not work for Blizzard, do not have concise and evaluated data, have never been given a full root cause analysis of the data, and use Latin terms making them sound like snobs. Hate to break it to you kids, but only Blizz knows why things are the way they are. The only thing I can confirm from that chart is the launch of Cata saw the most users and the end of cata caused the biggest plummet of users. Only definitive data we have is... oh wait... we have no definitive data.

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.

[Vaelorian]

In this thread: People who do not work for Blizzard, do not have concise and evaluated data, have never been given a full root cause analysis of the data, and use Latin terms making them sound like snobs. Hate to break it to you kids, but only Blizz knows why things are the way they are. The only thing I can confirm from that chart is the launch of Cata saw the most users and the end of cata caused the biggest plummet of users. Only definitive data we have is... oh wait... we have no definitive data.

You assume they have actual valuable data. And you assume they know how to extrapolate valuable information from that data.

I think that most people who do not have any numbers whatsoever are trying to let Blizzard see the truth (in their eyes). They feel Blizzard is extrapolating information from their data INCORRECTLY.

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.

Especially the "fun" factor seems to be missing in their thoughts about certain features. For them it seems popularity = fun.

I doubt this is true.

Other then that you are ofcourse totally right. No one has numbers. But we could basically say what you just did in any thread on mmo.champion then couldn't we

I will edit my post with some examples as to why I think they have flawed numbers or extrapolated wrong.

- When I close/unsub my account I get a few questions as to why I am closing/unsubbing my account.
I get loads of options, yet none of them matter to me or are in fact the very opposite to what I think is wrong with the game.
You can say the game is too hard.
You can say Blizzard nerfed your class too hard.
You can say LFR is too hard.
You can say features are unaccessible.
Things like this.

Then we have 1 option that says: "other" and if you click on this you have like 255 tokens to fill in your complaint. (or 355 whatever, it ain't much).

But the thing is, Blizzard assumes that you feel the game is too hard. Also you have to select why you are unsubbing. If you don't care, you might aswell click the first one. Does Blizzard know how many of people do this? Or are they genuinly thinking that everyone fills in this form in a serious manner?

What would be better in terms as this (but more work) is to just have 255 tokens in which the client can say in short what they do not like. In the form itself should also be included a way to form a complaint to Blizzard about what you feel is wrong and why you are actually unsubbing. So an e-mail address or something.

Sure every cancelation would have to be read by an employee or a computer who has learned to "read" could (the place where I work has a limited version of this).

- the statement: LFR is fun!
Most people who do LFR have no other choice because they do not have time/won't make time to raid in an organised manner. LFR is something that helps them progress their character. Good for them. And because it offers gear beyond 5 man heroics AND valor (pretty nice amount) and if you are an enchanter a chance on a Crystal... it is the most efficient way to gear up and make enchantments cheap. What is human nature again? Ah yes the path of the least resistance.... So people are going to do LFR en mass. It certainly is popular - the masses are all into LFR!!! But is it fun? I gather some people do like LFR. I emplore everyone to ask themselves if they find LFR fun, or do they find the gear they get fun or the chance to get gear fun or the valorpoint gain fun to ultimately get gear via that way - or if they genuinly find LFR fun to do?
Personally I'd rather do Candy Crush then LFR. But alas, because I do not raid organised/scheduled, I'd have to make due with LFR. I do it for the gear and valor. That's it. If there wasn't any gear in LFR, I would step into LFR once and then never again.

The thing is there is no content other then simple 5 mans who aren't worth it after gearing up for LFR apart from getting valor.
Scenarios are so dumb in terms of difficulty that I just do a daily heroic scenario for the valor only, and then leave it rot.

I wish they just up the difficulty in 5 mans again. So it keeps on being challenging while still having decent loot. I would even be content if 5 mans would drop just a few points below the newest LFR. More 5 mans should be added too.

Again, Blizzard does a very poor job at knowing what is fun. Blizzard said they know people dropped like flies on Cata because it was too difficult. Well maybe Blizzard should have thought about what caused that. As I already said, if you did not have a guild or you weren't playing with people from your own server, people would quit after a wipe or 2. Or kick you if you made a mistake. If the 5 man was from your own server, this process would take longer. People would be forced to learn a bit more then they are now. Accountability.

But Blizzard did not foresee all that crossserver stuff. They should have merged servers. But they gave us a shitbandaid that created more problems then it solved.

If they actually merged servers, LFR would be serverwide only. Queues would maybe be a bit longer but not much. Same for dungeons. People would be nicer too. They have too. People would make friends again easier. Maybe more guilds would be possible. Easier to recruit someone.

[Deleted]

You guys can link all the pointless graphs you like. Fact is, I still have plenty of community in spite of all the convenience they've added.

Why? I have a guild.
While many of you won't really admit it, that's where real community has always been.
If you actually want a community, try talking to people. There seems to be some misconception that the only replies you'll ever get are "SHUT UP FUCKWAD ITS A GAME!1" or something similar. The truth? Very few people will actually react this way. Most people will engage in friendly chit chat. The problem is the people QQing about community not actually doing anything to help foster it. Rather than make forum posts about it, why not actually play the game and talk to people outside of your guild for a change? Trust me, it works wonder.

Why else do I get both? Keep reading...

LFR? Didn't ruin anything. Quite easily, I manage to talk with and engage with the people in any LFR group I'm in. At most, 9 out of every 10 groups might be a nightmare. Not the ridiculous amount people on this forum make out. Because, you know, if one group is bad, they all are! >_>

LFD? Same thing. I talk to people. The only change I'd make is to have it prioritise people on your server before looking at others when grouping.

Flying? Improved my immersion. Fantasy game... flying on a dragon... yeah, real immersion breaker. I'm a Vanilla player and I still use my ground mounts, love them even. But there is nothing about flying that ruins the game for me. Telling me it breaks my immersion is the stupidest reason you can ever give. I dare you to prove it doesn't.
You can't fly until max level so I also fail to see how it ruins the questing experience. How can people kill the mob, fly up, land on the next one and repeat if they can't fly while questing, anyway? >_>
Make ground mounts more attractive and maybe people will actually use them willingly without having to force them into doing it. Whenever you have to design your game so that you're forcing players to do something they dislike, you're failing as a designer by removing options.

As for the casual argument, I spent the first 5 months of WoW going live by taking the piss out of it's players while I was playing EQ. Why? Because it was piss easy in comparison. Saying WoW was ever hard is a joke. Has it gotten even easier since release? Of course it has. It had to. Would Blizzard be happy with only having, let's say, 2 million subs that were active and always consistant? Who would? lol The problem their is that their investors and such have seen the massive number of people the game could bring in and now assume it should always be that high. So, Blizzard have to try get as many people playing as possible. There is also the FACT that if they actually started merging servers in the traditional sense, idiots on forums like this would declare the end of WoW all the more. It's negative publicity.

The game has always been a casual one and it always will be. You simply can't argue with that.

Statistical evidence, regardless of how weak it is, is always more valid that anecdotal evidence.

[Akraen]

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.

[Deleted]

And yet, just barely.

No, not really. Anecdotal evidence is weak and circumstancial.