"The biggest thing stopping players from coming back is leveling."...no no no no NO

[Jtbrig7390]

You know, im curious about the WoW target market, and my firm has access to mediamark. Will brb

Can't wait to see this

Like I said tho it makes so sense to me to charge a extra $40"Now $50" for what they have already been doing.

[BenBos]

1. Out of those 100 million players that have tried, not paid for, WOW around 30 million actually paid for the game. So you can immediately dismiss 70 million or so from that total as they are not going to buy the game. Out of the 30 million or so over 20 million of them are ex players why have none of them come back when previous expansions were launched?

2. You are 14 years old and never played WOW. Guess what instead of paying $20 for the Battlechest, $20 for MOP, another $50 for WOD and $15 per month, you can skip having to wade through 9 years of obsolete content and play Wildstar, ESO, Rift, SWTOR or any of the other much cheaper alternatives.

Another vague post with smart ass non meaningful figures and "hopes" of everyone else playing everything EXCEPT a Blizzard game of course.



100.000.000 accounts were created and played some WOW. As stated I know masses of families where ONE account is being used by several members of the same family.

When LOL/WOT use these account figures they are "active" when Blizzard published them every hater came creeping out of the closet they are not "real".

The free to play market was a serious problem for recruiting during the past few years. Yes.

Blizzard tries to counter this by promoting other free to play games (but with a link to the "big" game)... that are far better suited to the F2P market than the costly MMORPG's.

I warned you personnaly about the vast influence that Hearthstone will have on WOW in a positive way. I bet we will see the results at the end of 2014 as predicted in total revenue earned.

[Jtbrig7390]

Very much true, at the moment where I work the WoW Battlechest which is everything up until MoP is $19 and MoP itself is $24, so even adding 1 month of Sub onto that or $15 that is $58 less than 90% of new release games that 14 year olds will buy.

After tax it cost just as much as a new AAA released title.

Maybe like a $1.50 less.

[Ishayu]

hallelujah, Finally someone agrees with me on this point. No one seems to get this

I've added a potential solution to it again. I'll put that edit in here again because so many new posts showed up while I put it in:

I actually agree somewhat with the OP. I don't think GW2 did it better though.

The problem with WoW's levelling is that it's just 40+ zones which you get to do half of each because of constant XP increases, and therefore each zone ends up being 30 minutes of kill X of Y instead of all the interesting and cool questing that happens at the end of the zones. Thing is, if you stick around for a zone you outlevel it so badly that it's simply not smart to stay, and you can't come too early either for a bit of a challenge because the game's minimum level requirements won't let you even try.

There is no challenge. You just pull mobs 5-6 at a time and kill them all in one go without even breaking a sweat.

So in summary: You're skipping all the good story, it takes a long time, and there is no challenge involved.

THIS is why people don't come back to the game. We've been saying this on the official forums for years and years and there are plenty of ways to fix it, but they don't listen to us and then they do a boost instead. Ridiculous.

In my opinion, here's what they must do:

Decrease XP requirements across the board like they planned.

Re-level all the zones. Don't need to redo them or anything else that takes a long time - just retune them.
Zones should span the following ranges:
Starter zone: 1-15
Next starter zone: 15-30
Current 20-25 and 25-30 are converted to the same range: 30-40. Pick one, go through that.
Current 30-35 and 35-40 are converted to the same range: 40-50. Pick one, go through that.
Current 40-45 and 45-50 are converted to the same range: 50-60. Pick one, go through that.
Current 50-55 and 55-60 are converted to the same range: 60-65. Pick one, go through that.
Now, pick either Outland OR Northrend. 65-80.
Next, pick either Pandaria OR Cataclysm zones. 80-90.
And then you've got WoD.
Every zone within Outland, Northrend, Pandaria and Cataclysm must be retuned such that each zone's levels span about twice what they do now.

Allow players to take on quests that are tuned for someone 5 levels higher, i.e. a level 40 must be able to pick up a 45 quest, but not a 46 quest. That number can be tuned. Currently, this number is 1 or 2. In Pandaria and Cataclysm it's 0.

Flatten the gearing/stats curve such that getting items 3-4 levels above your own isn't such a big deal in BG's. (This is already being done, called the item squish)

Flatten the XP curve so that you're not punished as hard for sticking to the current zone. This is especially true for Cataclysm, where there is an XP requirement doubling for every new level. That's ridiculous.

Retune the level to health/damage conversion ratio to be higher, and populate zones a little more densely with enemies.



All of that sounds like hell to implemenent, but actually it's not. Blizzard have underlying systems in place to allow this to the point where they have even aired the thought of Heroic questing where it'd just automatically tune all the mobs to be harder without Blizzard having to lift a finger.

Retuning content is pretty easy. Remaking content is far harder, which is what Cataclysm was. Just do what I stated there, and people won't quit because of levelling. I'm very confident of that.

What I'm not confident about is whether Blizzard will listen to me. They have repeatedly shown that they just don't care about levelling anymore. The entire experience is broken and tends to consist of facerolling starts of zones, being teleported to dungeons, and being roflstomped by people in full heirlooms and level 90 enchants in BG's. No company that cared about levelling would allow the game to reach such a state with levelling.

Please don't hate me mods. I want people to have the chance to see my post in its original context and this thread is moving very fast.

[Jtbrig7390]

100.000.000 accounts were created and played some WOW. As stated I know masses of families where ONE account is being used by several memebers of the same family.

The few small groups you know that do this dose not cover all 7.2million "or whatever the name is number" WoW subs.

[roahn the warlock]

Very much true, at the moment where I work the WoW Battlechest which is everything up until MoP is $19 and MoP itself is $24, so even adding 1 month of Sub onto that or $15 that is $58 less than 90% of new release games that 14 year olds will buy.

battle chest 20

MoP 20

Wod 50

One month 15

- - - Updated - - -

I've added a potential solution to it again. I'll put that edit in here again because so many new posts showed up while I put it in:



Please don't hate me mods. I want people to have the chance to see my post in its original context and this thread is moving very fast.

I actually offered this same solution *gives best friend badge*

[Thelxi]

Not to mention people having multiple accounts and Blizzard including trial accounts of which I personally have made at least 2 throughout my WoW career.

[SL1200]

So then you agree it is completely pay to win?

I've thought it was pay to win from day one.

[roahn the warlock]

Can't wait to see this

Like I said tho it makes so sense to me to charge a extra $40"Now $50" for what they have already been doing.

Seems WoW is one of the few not reported to MRI+

[Tiev]

The Problem with WoW is levelling. Give me a raiding game with a main hub to show your new shinies and that'll be great for me. No levelling, no valor points or any such time sinks, no LFR, nothing but good old raids and Dungeons.


And no, that's not Diablo.

[Mongoose19]

I agree partially with blizzard. Whats stopping people from coming back is BORING questing. And since Cata the questing is nothing but borefest on rails.

[roahn the warlock]

The Problem with WoW is levelling. Give me a raiding game with a main hub to show your new shinies and that'll be great for me. No levelling, no valor points or any such time sinks, no LFR, nothing but good old raids and Dungeons.


And no, that's not Diablo.

It's also not Warcraft. Sorry, stop bitching that your apple isn't a cupcake

[ComputerNerd]

Blizzard HAS the data but they are interpreting it WRONG. Did you read my post? Why do people hate leveling? WHY? Leveling is one the biggest content of this game, there's NINETY levels of it full of quests, dungeons and lore, yet people hate it. WHY? Because there's nothing challenging about it once you've done it once, so unless you really really love the lore and rereading all the quests, it's a GRIND.

Players CHOOSE to go through with heirlooms.
Players CHOOSE to rush dungeons.
It happens while levelling, it happens at level cap.
Those that want a challenge are simply a much smaller minority than they like to believe.

The playerbase has spoken.
They don't want challenge.
Blizzard are interpreting it right.

[roahn the warlock]

I agree partially with blizzard. Whats stopping people from coming back is BORING questing. And since Cata the questing is nothing but borefest on rails.

Yeah, it just isnt stimulating in the least. A game should never make me Zone out

[Pann]

Another vague post with smart ass non meaningful figures and "hopes" of everyone else playing everything EXCEPT a Blizzard game of course.



100.000.000 accounts were created and played some WOW. As stated I know masses of families where ONE account is being used by several members of the same family.

When LOL/WOT use these account figures they are "active" when Blizzard published them every hater came creeping out of the closet they are not "real".

The free to play market was a serious problem for recruiting during the past few years. Yes.

Blizzard tries to counter this by promoting other free to play games (but with a link to the "big" game)... that are far better suited to the F2P market than the costly MMORPG's.

I warned you personnaly about the vast influence that Hearthstone will have on WOW in a positive way. I bet we will see the results at the end of 2014 as predicted.

I realise that trying to have a sensible conversation with you is like pissing into the wind but none of what you have written even attempts to answer what I was asking.

Again, why when the majority of the 100 million never paid a penny for WOW are they going to suddenly hand over money for WOD?

What has how other games count their account numbers got to do with this topic?

What has other games got to do with the topic being discussed? Do you even know what the topic is?

[wych]

I agree partially with blizzard. Whats stopping people from coming back is BORING questing. And since Cata the questing is nothing but borefest on rails.

Whereas pre-Cata most questing was a disjointed grind.

Cata-MoP questing is very linear, but doing it for a first time isn't exactly bad, most of the boring comes from repeating it due to the linearity, this surely isn't an issue for those players who quit

[Jtbrig7390]

Seems WoW is one of the few not reported to MRI+

Dam that sucks lol.

[roahn the warlock]

Players CHOOSE to go through with heirlooms.
Players CHOOSE to rush dungeons.
It happens while levelling, it happens at level cap.
Those that want a challenge are simply a much smaller minority than they like to believe.

The playerbase has spoken.
They don't want challenge.
Blizzard are interpreting it right.

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

- Steve Jobs.

People "Think" they want easy, people are stupid.

If you give a person roller skates in a foot race, and say there's nothing against you for using them, people are going to use them. but when you beat the race in 10 min, it's not that fun

[Tiev]

It's also not Warcraft. Sorry, stop bitching that your apple isn't a cupcake

WoW 5.0 is also very different from WoW 1.0

The game changed in the direction players wanted. Who's to say it won't go in that direction? It seems to be. Slowly. But even if it doesn't. Players decide what fruit it becomes. Not your fixed idea that it shall always be an apple.

Also, Warcraft is an RTS. It isn't World of Warcraft either.

[roahn the warlock]

WoW 5.0 is also very different from WoW 1.0

The game changed in the direction players wanted. Who's to say it won't go in that direction? It seems to be. Slowly. But even if it doesn't. Players decide what fruit it becomes. Not your fixed idea that it shall always be an apple.

Also, Warcraft is an RTS. It isn't World of Warcraft either.

If it changed in the direction players wanted we wouldnt be sitting at an all time low of subs.
Actually, no it changed in the way bitchers wanted. And people generally don't know what they want.

Also, I almost laughed, then remembered no