"No new content for a year, I quit!"

[Cheekun]

It really depends on what your financial status is. When I was single I'd go out every day to lunch and spend between $18 and $25. Now that I have a family I spend between $5-$9 a day. People complain about $15 but then they buy a 12 pack and drink it over 2 nights or smoke a pack of ciggs. Those activities add up much faster than a WoW sub.

Not that I smoke or drink that often, I have to admit that this argument is pretty weak. At least with the alcohol you're getting something for that money. We are talking about expansion cycles that have historically been year long droughts between packs. That'd be like spending 180 dollars on alcohol and then being told you can pick it up in a year. Who the hell would actually do that?

[Deleted]

Trump will make America great again. Including Blizzard and WoW!

[FelPlague]

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/525

this is ALL i need to say about this..

[Heffladin]

I'm going to have to ask you to explain how wow is a huge scam. I'm going to get some popcorn and a tinfoil hat for this also

I never claimed WoW was a huge scam. However other products may be - which I was referring to consumerism. I suppose I could have covered the spectrum of anything from a - great deal to a huge scam. I'm saying that videogames shouldn't be devoid of criticism of how much value you are getting from your money, that's all, and as far as I know WoW makes a pretty penny.

[Deleted]

I never claimed WoW was a huge scam. However other products may be - which I was referring to consumerism. I suppose I could have covered the spectrum of anything from a - great deal to a huge scam. I'm saying that videogames shouldn't be devoid of criticism of how much value you are getting from your money, that's all, and as far as I know WoW makes a pretty penny.

Just because someone makes money does not mean they are scamming people.

The only game designers i've known to scam people are the ones offering early acces to games that never actually hits a release stage.This has happened multiple times on steam as an example.

I dont think i've seen this happen with any of the bigger coorporations yet though

[Issalice]

1. People like to vent, it's cathartic. They are also paying customers and feel they should vent their anger/frustration.

2. If you pay a sub fee you should be getting something for it otherwise why subscribe if the expansion should be enough? I'm still subbed, so I'm not saying this applies to me, I still find enjoyment in the game during content droughts. But that's just me, I can completely understand the other point of view.

[Heffladin]

Just because someone makes money does not mean they are scamming people.

The only game designers i've known to scam people are the ones offering early acces to games that never actually hits a release stage.This has happened multiple times on steam as an example.

I dont think i've seen this happen with any of the bigger coorporations yet though

Not necessarily the gaming industry I'm talking about either, just in general, and with the word scam I'm overexaggerating. I think the Master Chief collection was a pretty bad deal as it stood, but that was not because it lacked content though, but how well it worked. Bigger companies usually don't dissapoint their consumers that much that they get outraged by it, but it does happen. Unfinished games has become alot more common now that they take so much time to make.

[Deleted]

Yea it's the kid mentality, "give me what I want otherwise i'm gonna cry like a baby." Sadly Blizzard listens to those people too much....

Blizzard employees listening to the people who pay their bills. You sure throw around the word kid a lot for someone who doesn't even grasp this basic concept.

[MoanaLisa]

First of all, no this is NOT an "I quit" thread. I already quit long long ago, but I still read the forums to know when the new/next expansion comes and to see if I'll be coming back.

Now that the disclaimer is done...

I basically have two questions to the community:

#1. There is this phenomenon around WOW/MMOs that people feel the need to advertise they are quitting. Can someone explain that (why) to me?

#2. Why do people in MMOs people feel the need for constant new content? In othergames this is not expected or needed (X-COM for example, has great replay value), isn't the point in MMOs to just roll a new character and re-experience the world again as a new class/role once you have completed it?

Well, you bothered to mention that you quit some time ago. So maybe you answered your own first question. It wasn't anything I needed to know to answer your questions.

As for the second, I tend to think that replayability goes down the longer you're in the game. Expansions may show you something new but face it: quests are quests, dungeons are dungeons and raids are raids. If you've been player a number of years there's not much to be gained by going through the motions several times unless you have a reason to keep a lot of alts. I've experienced the world a bunch of times as all of the classes with which I have any interest. It's not a big deal. Good or lesser expansions, there really is a certain sameness that sets in after a while.

[Deficineiron]

ON 2.... MMOs generally do NOT have great replay value. What you and everyone else who makes this comment forgets is that for people who've been around through several of these droughts, we've had quite literally years of downtime in which to do prior expansion content, etc. I've played since late vanilla. I've been through the downtimes in TBC, LK, Cata and MoP. If you figure that each had 9 months of actual downtime (i.e. I've played the last patch and there were still 9 months to go), that's *three years* of downtime.

Now add in that what you would consider old content now, I've done a) as new content and b) again as old, soloble content.

lk, cat, and mop may well be 3 years just themselves, iirc. especially if you ignore 'raid in a room' 3.4.x, which I do more or less discount.

bc was more like 4? months from 2.4 till the major raid nerfs pre-3.0.2, and only a minority of guilds had killed KJ by that time. claiming 2.4 led to downtime puts you in an extreme minority.

I think the 'downtime' principle does not apply to tbc in nearly the same sense it applies to later expansions. From what I understand, it is much more comparable to naxx40 in terms of participation/completion before the next expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard employees listening to the people who pay their bills. You sure throw around the word kid a lot for someone who doesn't even grasp this basic concept.

Activision-Blizzard pays their salaries, and makes the rules. The views of customers are almost irrelevant, from what I can tell, as shocking as that may sound. They certainly compile data on retention patterns but I think the way they are using that data is likely to be quite different than how people here would like.

a hypothetical example - for now 4 expansions, the final patch/raid has lasted roughly a year. blizzard experts working with their internal data detect a possible pattern of players unsubbing after they finish the level of raid content they intend in final tier.

what players think might happen - blizzard works to get better spacing with more content and keep players engaged longer, rather than have a one-year content drought over and over and over and over.....

what blizzard does - a variety of schemes to encourage people to stay subbed without adding more content to the current expansion. this includes pre-pay schemes, introduction of boosted characters (to allow instantly playing current final raid tier in a new clss or whatever), introduction of general access betas as part of pre-pay scheme (which requires staying subbed), etc. Public faces are sent out each cycle to talk about how they want faster expansions and how their team is the biggest ever, to help ease the frustration of players. internally, company achieves goal of offering only 1 major raid patch in latest expansion vs. norm of 2.