Ghostcrawler on why WoW became a game for casuals

[Astalnar]

And yet LoL is the most played game in the world.

And they say challenge doesn't bring in and keep players. pfft

What are you talking about. LoL is one of the more casual mobas out there.

[Mormolyce]

Only because it has been trivialized since Cata. Why even bother anymore?

Most WoW players NEVER cared for organised raiding.

Vastly more people raid now that there's LFR and Flexi than ever before. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying.

And if you think raiding has gotten easier, you obviously aren't a HM progression raider.

[HeedmySpeed]

Most WoW players NEVER cared for organised raiding.

I wouldn't say that, exactly.

I think it's more that they can't do it for one reason or another (intimidated, lack of skill, lack of time..)
And there seems to be a lot of bitter wannabe raiders who had a bad experience with raiding and condemn it.

[Zagnut]

Oh really? Are the Eldar Scroll games MMOs?

Who cares? The only people who give a shit are raiders worried that nobody is going to bother with the higher settings.

[HeedmySpeed]

Who cares? The only people who give a shit are raiders worried that nobody is going to bother with the higher settings.

Fucking brilliant. "Who cares."

Feels like middle school again.

[Packing an i5]

"It's really refreshing to work on a game where I don't have to worry whether someone's grandmother can pick it up or not."

I've always wondered why gamers themselves don't often seem to feel this way. Perhaps the notion of games requiring integrity doesn't mesh most people's modern view where the only things that can be important in life are the things that make money.
"Hey guys, let's change the rules of chess because it's too difficult for beginners to pick up."

Unfortunately games are not treated with the same respect as classic games like chess. Games are subject to stockholders and bussiness models intent on changing the product to blow with the wind until the wind eventually slowly degrades the product so much that it is unrecognizable.

[Zagnut]

Fucking brilliant. "Who cares."

Feels like middle school again.

There isn't really much else to say when all you can do is rant that difficulty settings are a bad thing for reasons no one is able to actually articulate.

[melodramocracy]

That's pretty much already happening. Seen the MMOs coming for 2015? Quoting Tobold:

All this reinforces to me is what an absolute joke the concept of F2P is for games that have the overhead a proper MMO requires (customer support, updates, etc). In most things, designing for the economic lowest common denominator tends to fail more often than it succeeds.

[Axaron]

I wouldn't say that, exactly.

I think it's more that they can't do it for one reason or another (intimidated, lack of skill, lack of time..)
And there seems to be a lot of bitter wannabe raiders who had a bad experience with raiding and condemn it.

What he said is fact, though.

[ablib]

Ten years from now WoW will be a 20 year old game and new MMO development will have either moved on to sandbox games or spluttered out completely. After ten years of failure the era of trying to clone WoW is coming to a close, and let's be honest, even most WoW players don't care for organized raiding.

I don't think failure to compete with WoW, is ever unexpected. I do think it's intentional with some companies.

Now I believe these run of the mill MMO's that come and go, purposely set themselves up to fail only to make a quick buck. Look at Star Wars. At the time it was the most expensive video game ever made. The game is now a free to play, dead piece of shit. They still made money hand over fist.

When it comes to gamers, it's easy to make money. Now I think the profit from making an MMO comes from feeding off the pools of tears of those who are constantly looking for a WoW replacement. As long as there is that market, you can make something as ridiculous as Wildstar, sell it, market it, and make millions off it for the initial 6 months. Then leave players pissed and high and dry when it fails, before they do it again on the next MMO.

[HeedmySpeed]

What he said is fact, though.

He said they never cared about organized raiding. That's not fact.

Most people never got into organized raiding, is fact.

[clevin]

So, kids.... if casual = more successful, riddle me this.

WoW has become more and more casual since early Wrath (LFR/LFD, no elites on the world, etc)...


And the game has lost 5 million subs since then. SO, what was it about 'easier = more popular' again? Or maybe, just maybe, that's wrong. Not that any of you will admit it.

[Osmeric]

So, kids.... if casual = more successful, riddle me this.

WoW has become more and more casual since early Wrath (LFR/LFD, no elites on the world, etc)...


And the game has lost 5 million subs since then. SO, what was it about 'easier = more popular' again? Or maybe, just maybe, that's wrong. Not that any of you will admit it.

You seem to be assuming that if the game hadn't gone casual, it wouldn't have lost as many net subs.

But this makes no sense.

The basic fallacy of your argument is that you are making a ceteris paribus assumption, that "all else was equal" between pre- and post-Wrath WoW except for catering to casuals. But this is obviously wrong -- many things changed, and particular the market changed.

[ablib]

So, kids.... if casual = more successful, riddle me this.

WoW has become more and more casual since early Wrath (LFR/LFD, no elites on the world, etc)...


And the game has lost 5 million subs since then. SO, what was it about 'easier = more popular' again? Or maybe, just maybe, that's wrong. Not that any of you will admit it.

I think the game has lost a good part of those 5 million subs because they have slowly been deteriorating away at the casualness of the game, since Cata started. FINALLY, Ghostcrawler admitted this, in a way, in his recent tweets. It doesn't look like they learned much of a lesson either with the removal of flight in WoD.

Right now, the game is as casual unfriendly as it was in BC.

[Dormie]

There isn't really much else to say when all you can do is rant that difficulty settings are a bad thing for reasons no one is able to actually articulate.

It makes doing the higher setting pointless for most people. Happy? I like challenging content but I'm not gonna do it just to do it when I've already progressed through it in LFR/Flex.

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What he said is fact, though.

Good luck proving that 'fact'.

And I'd consider PuG raids in BC/Wrath borderline organized raiding, and that was pretty popular.

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You seem to be assuming that if the game hadn't gone casual, it wouldn't have lost as many net subs.

But this makes no sense.

The basic fallacy of your argument is that you are making a ceteris paribus assumption, that "all else was equal" between pre- and post-Wrath WoW except for catering to casuals. But this is obviously wrong -- many things changed, and particular the market changed.

And the basic fallacy of your argument is...well that there's less to support it than his argument.

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I think the game has lost a good part of those 5 million subs because they have slowly been deteriorating away at the casualness of the game, since Cata started. FINALLY, Ghostcrawler admitted this, in a way, in his recent tweets. It doesn't look like they learned much of a lesson either with the removal of flight in WoD.

Right now, the game is as casual unfriendly as it was in BC.

lol what? Are we just putting random WoW terms together in a sentence now?

[Osmeric]

And the basic fallacy of your argument is...well that there's less to support it than his argument.

Please don't be such a baldfaced liar. There is much to support the argument that casualization has not hurt the game.

First, there's the small matter that most players are casual. For casualization to have hurt the game requires that designing the game for these players will have repelled them, compared to a hardcore design. This is absurd, although that doesn't prevent hardcore idiots from imagining that casual players want nothing more than to subsidize a game for their betters.

Second, there are Blizzard's statements (from GC and others) that the hardcore turn in Cataclysm wasn't what the players were looking for.

Third, there are Blizzard's actions in response to the decline. Those actions are proof positive that Blizzard doesn't have data telling them that casualization caused the decline. Just the opposite.

[Zagnut]

So, kids.... if casual = more successful, riddle me this.

WoW has become more and more casual since early Wrath (LFR/LFD, no elites on the world, etc)...


And the game has lost 5 million subs since then. SO, what was it about 'easier = more popular' again? Or maybe, just maybe, that's wrong. Not that any of you will admit it.

WoW began losing subscribers at the exact same age as every other MMO to have ever led the market either here or in Asia. Gosh, what a coincidence. And of course the fact that every game that's tried to bring the hardcore back has been a miserable pathetic failure means nothing, right? Yawn.

[Dormie]

There's a difference between a casual and someone who wants stupid faceroll lala hello kitty gameplay. A game doesn't have to be hardcore to not be so pathetically easy as WoW has become.

Keep defending this stupid gameplay. I just shake my head at all this. The casuals say games are fun and why do you care how others play? The moment the game takes on that attitude it loses integrity. It goes from PC gaming to Wii bowling. No integrity, no depth, no real thought required. Just stupid mindless fun that lasts about 30 minutes.

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WoW began losing subscribers at the exact same age as every other MMO to have ever led the market either here or in Asia. Gosh, what a coincidence. And of course the fact that every game that's tried to bring the hardcore back has been a miserable pathetic failure means nothing, right? Yawn.

Actually it began as soon as it went streamlined and watered down. First with LFG and then Cata did it in. LFG was literally the benchmark where the games philosophy switched.

[A dot Ham]

God riot please come to your senses before this dbag ruins another game.

[melodramocracy]

So, kids.... if casual = more successful, riddle me this.

WoW has become more and more casual since early Wrath (LFR/LFD, no elites on the world, etc)...


And the game has lost 5 million subs since then. SO, what was it about 'easier = more popular' again? Or maybe, just maybe, that's wrong. Not that any of you will admit it.

People tend to make personal judgement calls on sub losses, and given the half-assed nature of Blizzards exit survey, they probably don't have the best data they could either. Some will claim that Cata started the big decline specifically because of difficult dungeons. Others will say that it's simply because the game is old. If / when WoD drops subs further, rest assured that people will say it's because of the no-fly thing.

Universally? I'd say an MMO that is generally considered easy, or at least straightforward to finish at a level your average player finds acceptable, is one that is bound to not retain players for a significant amount of time. And the key here really is 'the average player'.

This is actually one of the larger problems that this game has right now, and the relatively high number of alts that people have is a very good sign that you have a number of subscribers who thoroughly enjoy this game, but there simply isn't enough for them to do, because so much of the content is quick to consume. For your fringe type of player, the one who needs every achievement, and to beat every aspect the game has to offer, I'd say it's a different story, but that's a small minority.

Then there are retention factors that have very little to do with the sheer difficulty of the game, such as the in-game community itself and the concept of you being represented by your character, but that's a different topic.