[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Sharuko]

Creating highly challenging content that is difficult to reach creates a feeling in the game world that casual MMOs do not have. The feeling that there is 'something bigger than you' is a really key part of creating an immersive MMO imo. Its emotion that hooks players on these games more than thought. An MMO that can fill players will a sense of grandeur and scope, and some fear and frustration to go with it is going to have a much more loyal fanbase than an MMO that relies on monotonous, repetitive, emotionless tasks (WoW dailycraft for instance).

Yeah exactly, people think this issue is just black and white.

[akaTheDude]

Notice the astronomical rate of growth that abruptly flatlines as soon as Wotlk hits. No one on this forum will ever admit it, but casual is what killed WoW.

I notice it....trust me...and all of my friends notice it too

[Sharuko]

You and I...we are on the same page. Might be alone these days...but hey its cool

That was the case, but I think a lot of developers now are growing balls and realizing that trying to attract everyone is not the best solution to your game. The most important aspect of a game with longevity is having your hardcore playerbase as the pillars.

[Sharuko]

Well, we shall see.

Trying to emulate TBC in 2013 seems like putting yourself on the fast track to F2P (which doesn't always turn out bad, I suppose) from where I'm sitting.

Eve is another example of a game with a hardcore playerbase that grows over almost 10 years. All these MMOs that were on a fast track to F2P were extremely casual friendly. I should note that I am a casual player, very casual in fact. But I understand the need to cater to the top % of the playerbase.

[RoninaThorstone]

Notice the astronomical rate of growth that abruptly flatlines as soon as Wotlk hits. No one on this forum will ever admit it, but casual is what killed WoW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_saturation followed by Cata which is widely considered the worst expansion of WoW.

and as this guy points out:

Yep so casual that 0.67% of the playerbase has killed Heroic Garrosh. Oh wait.

Casuals aren't downing heroic Garrosh. There is simply a wider range of content difficulties. That number is actually lower than the percent that completed Naxx40 or Infernal dawn 20 which raises the question, is wow harder than ever? The numbers support the idea that it is, in fact, harder.

Now, if wildstar is able to offer a wide variety of content for all skill levels, then great. Otherwise they are going to be missing out on potential players (and thus payers)

[ShimmerSwirl]

This is why I hate any talk about WoW subscription numbers. People will always point to them and say that the ups and downs are because of one particular thing that they like/dislike.

A much more realistic view is simply that the game grew fast when it was new and leveled off/slowed down as it got older, and is now in a decline phase due simply to age....but if we say that, then we can't claim all sorts of other things about how the numbers support 100 different individual views! Not nearly as much fun.

But the truth is it didn't "gradually level off". It was still growing at an incredible rate all the way until the very end of BC. And the the growth 100% stops, dead halt. The single biggest thing that changed in that time was the huge shift to casualizing everything in wotlk. I don't think thats a biased opinion, that is simply to me the most obvious and logical answer to the growth stoppage.

[akaTheDude]

A much more realistic view is simply that the game grew fast when it was new and leveled off/slowed down as it got older.

I am not sure why age of a game comes into this? The reason I ask this is because there hasn't been another MMO that can compete with WoW. These days if you want to play a MMO, WoW is your game...sad but true


Example:

I mean look at the wheel....damn its old.....but people still love it ( hey its a stretch but you know what I mean )

[Sharuko]

[Now, if wildstar is able to offer a wide variety of content for all skill levels, then great. Otherwise they are going to be missing out on potential players (and thus payers)

I think the complete opposite, if you pander to everyone, the payers will stay short term, but will not stay long term. You have no unreachable goals, the game is over, you can stop subbing. You beat Garrosh in LFR, game is over for you. Nothing left to do.

[xdrop]

It may be harder to kill Garrosh on heroic, but no one gives a damn about it. You killed him with no effort in raid finder, why care to kill him on heroic? "Yay we killed him, lets do it again on heroic it'll be so much fun"... no. I never understood that, never will. PvE in WoW is boring to me, maybe thats why. For other games that isn't really the case. I actually find PvE in other MMO's to be much more fun, don't ask why.

Also for the sub numbers going down... I blame it on casualness. Clearly the height was wrath, before raid finder and all that garbage. People still played the game without raid finder and the sub numbers prove it. Become more casual and the sub numbers drop insanely. Somewhere along the line Blizzard stopped making the game for people who love MMO's, and made it for the casual player who doesn't like MMO's as much. Just my two cents. You can't argue raid finder made the game better, the numbers don't support it.

[akaTheDude]

Damn this makes me sound old but here we go.

#1 reason imo, that casuals are starting to take over.

Kids grow up these days and "win" at everything. Come in last at the race....here...you get a ribbon anyway because you are a "WINNER"


The world needs losers too.

[xdrop]

This is actually surprisingly common thinking for some reason. People really seem to believe that WoW would just keep growing and never decline - in defiance of all previous data on product life cycles - if only Blizzard had done X thing differently. (Of course, no one really agrees on what X is.)

WoW will die out eventually, can't stay on the top forever. Also I disagree with Hiya, WoW isn't the only MMO to play... there are a lot of good ones out there, hence why people play them. Warlords of Draenor will either make or break WoW... if it flops, WoW dies. If its great, WoW lives.

[akaTheDude]

It may be harder to kill Garrosh on heroic, but no one gives a damn about it. You killed him with no effort in raid finder, why care to kill him on heroic? "Yay we killed him, lets do it again on heroic it'll be so much fun"... no. I never understood that, never will.

This right here. I miss the days when you progressed. You killed one boss and moved on. No more heroic mode crap. Why would I want to kill the same boss again??


Ok i am out...back to something productive lol

[Punisher069]

Damn this makes me sound old but here we go.

#1 reason imo, that casuals are starting to take over.

Kids grow up these days and "win" at everything. Come in last at the race....here...you get a ribbon anyway because you are a "WINNER"


The world needs losers too.

That logic would work if the game was in fact, real life, but it's a game.

[Sharuko]

Also for the sub numbers going down... I blame it on casualness. Clearly the height was wrath, before raid finder and all that garbage. People still played the game without raid finder and the sub numbers prove it. Become more casual and the sub numbers drop insanely. Somewhere along the line Blizzard stopped making the game for people who love MMO's, and made it for the casual player who doesn't like MMO's as much. Just my two cents. You can't argue raid finder made the game better, the numbers don't support it.

I agree, the point of MMOs is to try and convert the casual players to hardcore players. That should be the goal of all MMOs if you want longevity. Things like LFR do the opposite, they convert even the hardcore players to casual players.

- - - Updated - - -

Kids grow up these days and "win" at everything. Come in last at the race....here...you get a ribbon anyway because you are a "WINNER"

If everyone is a winner, no one is a winner. I agree with you.

[Deleted]

I think the complete opposite, if you pander to everyone, the payers will stay short term, but will not stay long term. You have no unreachable goals, the game is over, you can stop subbing. You beat Garrosh in LFR, game is over for you. Nothing left to do.

Weird...

I beat him in lfr weeks ago, finally did 25man normal and 7 heroic, still playing...

[Zeek Daniels]

I think the complete opposite, if you pander to everyone, the payers will stay short term, but will not stay long term. You have no unreachable goals, the game is over, you can stop subbing. You beat Garrosh in LFR, game is over for you. Nothing left to do.

Another problem is Blizz doesnt break down subs by East vs West. So we have no idea of knowing how NA/EU numbers have looked since vanilla compared to now. Maybe the NA/EU population has been relatively level since Wrath or Cata +/- 300k subs fluctuating in that range over the past few years. The big drops in total subs have been caused by the Asian MMO market getting more attractive games over the years. And a big wave of subs left starting in cata and through MoP.

Building the Asian Market has been both a good thing and a bad thing for blizz. On the one hand they have millions more potential users than NA/EU, on the other hand those users can all up and quit when a new game comes out and their sub fee to WoW isnt yearly or montly but by the hour. So you get a new game that gets popular and then boom mass exodus from the asian market and blizz loses its asian playerbase and the NA/EU players think its all their players, which it might be a combo of both but we dont know since blizz wont release that information. However blizz would not have done cross realm and fake merges if players were not leaving the game and realms becoming dead. There are alot of MMO's on the horizon and a few that released in the last 2 years that still hold at least half a million players. And more games that hold Half a million means less subs for WoW in the future.

[Sharuko]

Weird...

I beat him in lfr weeks ago, finally did 25man normal and 7 heroic, still playing...

Are you a casual player? Doesn't seem like it.

[Deleted]

Are you a casual player? Doesn't seem like it.

About 15ish hours/week

Spend longer on twitch really

[ShimmerSwirl]

That's why all this talk about, "WoW listening too much to the players instead of what they did in TBC" is just rubbish pandering/appeal to nostalgia, etc. It's not like the hardest of the hard content is a pushover nowadays.



That's the smarter approach than trying to emulate TBC, certainly.

You are making the same mistake I see many others make with the whole "casual hardcore" debate. Its not *just* raid bosses that define the line between hardcore and casual, its the entire world. I would actually say raids aren't even the biggest part of the equation.

A few things in WoW that have become very casualized over time:

-Gold. Substantially easier to acquire it now than before.

-Titles. Handed out like candy now, used to be a symbol of a good player.

-Mounts. Used to mean something when leveling, now they are practically given away for free and at lower levels. Endgame mounts have lost their prestige because there are SO many of them. Even if you have a truly rare one it gets lost on the shuffle of the 100 other "proto drake whatever".

-Professions. Again, being level capped in your prof used to be an actual accomplishment and a sign of a dedicated player. Stupidly easy to level now for anyone.

-Dungeons. Used to be epic journeys that created many players fondest memories in WoW. A trial ground where you were forced to improve you play if you wanted to succeed. Things like threat, mana management, coordinated CC, meaningful loot, complex boss abilities...all gone in favor of mindless button mashing.

-Buff system/class uniqueness. It used to require some knowledge and a little skill to put groups together, mixing classes that had good synergy with each other etc. Forming a raid group was an art unto itself. Now its just jam 25 people into a group and go.

-Elite mobs. Used to be hard hitting and scary, added some real authenticy to the world. Now they hit like wet noodles and make players feel like unjustified gods for killing one.


Just too much catering to the casual players who don't want to take the time or effort to do anything thats remotely challenging.

[Sharuko]

About 15ish hours/week

Spend longer on twitch really

So you are 7/14 Heroic which 14% of guilds have done, with 15 hours a week? I guess WoW has really gone complete casual.