The Last Starfighter
"Listen, Centauri. I'm not any of those guys, I'm a kid from a trailer park." - Alex Rogan
"If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be!" - Centauri
You do realize GC has been scathingly critical of Blizzard since he left right? Oh right sorry...you are one of the aforementioned shitposters.
- - - Updated - - -
So because your reason for quitting isn't similar to others that makes all but your own personal reasons for quitting invalid? Get the fuck over yourself.
- - - Updated - - -
You have the option of filling in your own reason and don't give me any bullshit about not enough space in said form. Not one single complaint about this game involves writing a long manifesto and really can be condensed to some very valid salient points that can and do fit in said form. Players are also directed to submitting suggestions for the game using the in game suggestions tool as well and doesn't require quitting the game to use it.
Design changes drive retention in fact. MMO's must change to survive. The art is in determining how much and what kind of change is required to freshen the design.
Some work better than others. Some are popular; some are not. But when developers close the door on development and stop changing the game that signals end-of-life has started.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
"Developers do care if you stop playing their game and they want to know why. However, for games like WoW and LoL, the answers are almost always “I have less time to play now (job/school/family” and “My friends don’t play anymore.” (I’m basing that on having seen a lot of data - it’s not super open to debate.)
Dropping a game because of a specific design change (despite what you might read on forums / Reddit) is actually pretty rare"
Everyone I know from my guild that stopped playing, stopped playing due to design changes...... out of touch.
They went from "no flight ever again" to "flight after completing a lengthy list of requirements". That is hardly a complete reversal. This bears out their claim that developers were divided on this issue and in how to address it. Only bs here is more flybabies unable to understand flying was never the end all be all of this game.
- - - Updated - - -
Oh enough already. NOTHING said in EU forums is ANYTHING different from Us forums.
- - - Updated - - -
If Blizzard was losing subscriptions that rapidly due to lack of flight exclusively why in the fuck would they change their position of NOT FLIGHT EVER to NO FLIGHT UNTIL ACHIEVEMENTS ARE DONE? Do you fucking idiots seriously not understand how truly asinine this claim is? If the players had Blizzard devs by the balls like flybabies claim wouldn't we have gotten unrestricted flight immediately?
- - - Updated - - -
A large number of forum malcontents on the official forums have been claiming to quit for years and are still there and have actually been called out repeatedly for it. A certain forum regular has posted no less than 3 different "i quit" threads in the past 6 months and yet doesn't leave or quit. They are actively playing the game and using that game's forums. So no I'm sorry but most people who make a big show of quitting Wow never actually do or at worst they quit a month or so and come back and start up the nonsense again.
- - - Updated - - -
Yeah sure he is in denial. It is almost like clockwork that you start spamming your stupid bullshit on the forums every single quarterly shareholders meeting.
- - - Updated - - -
It is an example of one of many times where players went into absolute hysterics over a game play change. Doesn't exactly curry favor for the complainers.
I also thought about wod as an outlier, but its not as clear as that aswell. WoD had i think a pretty massive advertising, i remember alot of things 2 of which are:garrosh axe statue in the center of a big city (or multiple cities) in US and the fact my aunt told me back then: ''hey did you see that warlords game? is that like the thing you are playing?''
So i knew if my aunt heard/saw it in cyprus they threw extra money and efford in advertising.
And what happened is i think WoD attracted quite some new players and also brought back some old players who had quit, much more than other expacks (anything after wotlk). So that creates a whole new dynamic about the number of people who left, cus we just dont know, was the drop in subs due to the increased ppl joining leaving soon after? Or a combination of that and all the other reasons we know including the infamous cyclical nature.
Fine. He doesnt know why players are quitting "now". happy? The fact remains that when he was at Blizzard he saw this data over a period of years and more importantly has seen similar data in a different genre of online gaming. In short? I will take what he says as valid information rather than pretending shitposters here on this site have any actual knowledge of anything.
- - - Updated - - -
I'm sorry i was unaware LoL was losing players?
pretty certain that some random game developer doesn't give a toss that I have unsubbed due changes in the game I Personally don't like.
^^^^^^
everyone complains that game companies make nothing new, and no innovation, and how call of duty and assasins creed are bullshit cause its just more of the same thing, nothing new
meanwhile people like mario and pokemon, and scream about how super amazing the games are and how they are allways fun....
people want more content faster ,they hate content drouts, meanwhile an amount of the player base who are quitting wow cause there isnt enough to do.. are now playing servers that will soon hit a point where they will stop... and never release new content... and the content they are doing they have allready done hundreds of times before...
you can never please everyone, so you must go for the majority...
and no, not the vocal minority
The people here associate community building game changes with said community falling apart because they were no longer able to restrict the "unwashed" from doing said content. I'm sorry but those kinds of people can turn communities into shit rapidly and other players are just fed up with it. LFD and LFR and cross realm zones and any other tech involved in wow has been built to give power to players in how they do content rather than be arbitrarily barred from it because reasons.
what he writes definitely sounds true for when he was still involved with wow, but that was before "cyclical subs" became a thing. im sure IRL moving on is still a major reason people quit, but i think other reasons are starting to grow in percentage and will continue to do so over time.
I mostly agree with what you just said. GC is in a position to have had access to more information that we do as players. The only question I have is how relevant that information is in light of a more fundamental change to the game, such as the removal of flying and the more facebook-oriented gameplay of WoD. People might not quit over smaller changes, like how their individual favorite class plays, but nothing on the level of a the shitstorm that the flying issue caused happened while he was still at Blizzard.
Now, before you go nuts on me, I'm not trying to claim anything specific about flying or non-flying. There's a few threads already dedicated to that. I'm just pointing out that while GC might be correct within the context of his experience, there might be things OUTSIDE his experience that have happened in WoW since he left for LOL.
yes they do
but that amount is extreamly minor
and its not usually because of that
its because they have so little time to play, or their friends dont play, and thats the real reason, but that thing is the straw that broke the camels back, and anything else woulda been enough to make them quit
idk if you know, but it is EXTREAMLY rare that a player is like "WOW I LOVE WOW, i spend 24/7 playing it, its the best game out there its so fun omfg i love it" hey guys were gunna make flying an acheiv based thing you will get half way through the expansion "I FUCKING HATE WOW, NO FLYING? I QUIT"
its a hundred things they dont like about the game, that makes them quit, but the one to break the load is the one they blame
very VERY few players go from "im loving this game" to "i quit it sucks" because of 1 feature...
and tracking down all these features is impossible because its different for each player
that doesent happen... and if it does its 1/100000
not all players do lfr, not all players do norm, not all players do heroic, not all players do mythic, not all players do pet battles, not all players do casual pvp, etc etc etc
but all players have a limited amount of time, and they have friends who play the game or they dont... so of corse that will be the biggest factor
Last edited by FelPlague; 2017-02-12 at 01:58 AM.
He was asked about statistical data and how about they handled it.
Basically GCs answer could be reduced to "nope, the data we get from players who fill out the form is not even close to being worth be be evaluating it". And he is clever enough to net get into personal interpretations which is basically what 90% of the people demand on those questions he answers.
People who buy time blocks of game time off Blizzard's own store aren't asked either.
One of the reasons I stopped subbing, aside from Blizzard double charging me, was to avoid that stupid questionnaire that you had to complete in order to stop your subscription. Last time I did you were unable to end it until you completed to the form. An early version of that exit exam let you end your subscription just by saying you no longer had time to play. Otherwise you had to go on to fill out the rest of the form. I can't remember when it changed (Cata maybe?), but I'd suggest that the number of people clicked 'not enough time' just to be allowed to stop their subscription without having to be bothered by filling out the rest of the test wasn't trivial. I'd bet if it's the same form I saw in Cata that a number of people just click 'N/A' down the line to get out of there sooner too.
Well, that is one of the principle of attraction of online games. People are social. I think they are. They just don't need to be social to every person they meet in the a group settings like dungeons and raids.
Not talking to you does not mean that person is being anti-social. That person is just not talking to a random stranger. If people takes offences, then I wonder who actually have a social interaction problem.
An online game just implies lots of players playing at the same time. It does not imply it is a 100% team base game. If it is, it would be more than just a MMO.
You think a 100% MMO that requires groups for every part of the game would succeed?