Do you think blizzard will react to the massive wish for a return to tbc style?

[qwikz]

I'm kinda curious about the people using the argument that Blizzard lost players in the beginning of Cataclysm because of the difficulty of 5man heroics. Wow has been losing subscriptions this whole expansion, doesnt that say something else?

[Lilija]

The game is bleeding subs and yet people say everything is fine and dandy? I wish I could be that delusional. I love how all the people trying to defend this casual direction are using the same points that have been refuted over and over with numbers, hard facts and Blue posts but *We're* in the wrong.

Yeah, because a sub based mmo that has many times more subs than any other and loses less % than all the competitors is in trouble :P Basic math knowledge proves that people who claim how WoW is dying are wrong.

[Chrysia]

I'm kinda curious about the people using the argument that Blizzard lost players in the beginning of Cataclysm because of the difficulty of 5man heroics. Wow has been losing subscriptions this whole expansion, doesnt that say something else?

In just the last page, I went over this. Twice.

[Deleted]

Reading this topic, one thing that really annoys me is the whole 'entitlement' issue. Why is it that saying "I think there should be a progression in raids so the people who put the most work in see the most content" is somehow entitled; but saying "No, everyone should be able to see the content no matter what (including me)" isn't entitled at all. Both sides are basically saying "give me this content", one just doesn't want to work for it. Also why do casual players somehow treat hardcore players as a laughing stock? "Get a life lol, you sure got told by those Blizz admins", why is there need for that? Hardcore raiders get the stigma of being selfish but tbh I get that vibe a lot more from the vocal casual players.
And I was by no means hardcore, I quit a while ago but in TBC I never got past SSC. I knew I was never gonna see Illidan in-game. So what did I do? I read the wiki about the fight, how it worked and I was content. Because I knew I was playing an MMO and as such there was bound to be a difference between the top players and the rest.
Nowadays the difference lies in titles and such. I don't agree with it but that's the way Blizzard chooses to make their product now. Even though subscription numbers continued to rise during vanilla and TBC and continued to drop during Cata.
TBC style raiding isn't going to come back. A while ago there was an article that said 11 million played the game, but 22 million once played but stopped. This basically means hardly anyone from vanilla or TBC is still playing. It's a different game made for different people and both sides will obviously never understand each other. Now there will always be one who still does, quotes my sentence and says "you're wrong" but that's basically how it is. Pity, but yeah either deal with it or stop playing.

[Nemimortus]

One thing people forget when comparing TBC heroics to Cata heroics is that TBC did not have the dungeon finder. Groups in TBC were generally more social because you actually had to talk to other people in trade to form groups which opened the way for conversation. The amount of time it could take to form a full group made players invested in the group. There wasn't an option to just drop after a wipe and have a new dungeon ready in just a few minutes with no effort required on the player's part. Before someone claims that 20 minutes is not "just a few", remember that I am referring to the start of Cata when queue times were rather short.

People were used to the dungeon runs of WotLK where the conversation in the group consisted of "Hi" at the start and "Thanks" at the end (if even that). The anti-social history of DF groups caused the more difficult Cata heroics to fail. It got the point in early Cata where many people began to forgo the DF in favor of guild groups that were much more willing and capable of organization. The lack of people queuing for DF in favor of guild groups is what led to the ~40 min wait times for DPS which persisted until they finally nerfed the heroics to be manageable for a Dungeon Finder group.

[therayeffect]

No the people who normally aren't vocal became vocal and that had blizzard shook.

The game had like 11.5million or so subscribers at that time. I definitely don't recall anywhere near that number complaining about how difficult it was. On top of that, I wasn't even remotely vocal either up until they really started nerfing everything to death and not releasing content. I also doubt Blizz gives that much of a damn about the forums. I don't know if you've read any of their posts lately but they've REALLY gotten arrogant. I can understand being a bit snippy due to the way the internet behaves but telling people what is and isn't fun to them is crossing the line. I think they'll get the message though when subs continue to bleed away, if they nerf MoP into the ground (which is already confirmed). Hopefully they at least release content so we have something to do and aren't farming a terrible instance for 6months+ on super ezmoad.

Personally I feel MoP is looking really "meh" level, basically equal to that of WotLK. Hopefully they actually give a fair range of content for everyone to do and not just casuals. Only reason I'm still playing now is because my WoW buddies asked me to raid :\. That point is really for a different thread though.

Funny how complainers are "a very small and vocal group" when they disagree with you and are the opinion of the vast majority when they agree with you...

I don't recall saying that 'hardcores' are a very large group. In fact I feel the opposite, we're a tiny minority that Blizzard just trounces on because they don't care like they used to about actually releasing a proper game and content.

[Goatfish]

There isn't a massive wish, just like there was just a vocal minatory logging onto forums after they got bored with the content in Wrath and blamed that the game began too easy. Meanwhile, a majority of the players weren't caring to voice their opinions since they were too busy playing the game. That being said, this is the problem, everyone logs on and complain how bad WoW is, and no one takes the time and say "You know what, I like X, Y, and Z of the expansion and I wish you would move forward with A, B, and C in terms of game play." instead we get "Back in my day only those who had a large amount of free time should be considered good players as you are bad for not playing as much"

I want to take a little time and do an experiment. Let us say you have a job, that jobs give you 10-20 bucks an hour. Now you time is worth, 10-20 per hour so if you play the game 5 hours a day for a week you are losing 350-700 dollars playing the game. Now let's say you are a student or unemployed, you time is worth 0 per hour. So are you losing anything when you are playing 5 hours a day for a week, as your time is valueless.

Lets say you have that job, and still have 5 hours of free time a day, if you are going to use this retarded argument at least take into play all the factors and don't just be an obnoxious ass.

[Deleted]

If you want to get technical about it, it was Vanilla that started the casualization trend. If you look at what WoW was competing against at the time, it was far and away the most casual friendly MMO of the time.

You don't need to get technical about it all. TBC changed how the pvp system in the game works completely, which opened up a whole new market. TBC also made raiding content easier to access by removing attunements and such. It also introduced currency based items in the game and tons of dailies so everyone can have their mounts.

[Bryntrollian]

The game had like 11.5million or so subscribers at that time. I definitely don't recall anywhere near that number complaining about how difficult it was. On top of that, I wasn't even remotely vocal either up until they really started nerfing everything to death and not releasing content. I also doubt Blizz gives that much of a damn about the forums. I don't know if you've read any of their posts lately but they've REALLY gotten arrogant. I can understand being a bit snippy due to the way the internet behaves but telling people what is and isn't fun to them is crossing the line. I think they'll get the message though when subs continue to bleed away, if they nerf MoP into the ground (which is already confirmed). Hopefully they at least release content so we have something to do and aren't farming a terrible instance for 6months+ on super ezmoad.

Personally I feel MoP is looking really "meh" level, basically equal to that of WotLK. Hopefully they actually give a fair range of content for everyone to do and not just casuals. Only reason I'm still playing now is because my WoW buddies asked me to raid :\. That point is really for a different thread though.

Im guessing you work for blizzard and was able to read all the tickets about how hard the heroic dungeons were back then ?

[Kaleredar]

At all the above replies...are you guys living in a cave? The game is not doing well, it has lost 3 million players in the last year and a half. The current model of CasualCraft is very clearly resulting in major attrition. Defending the current model and saying there is no place for 'progression' in this modern day defies the obvious facts in front of us.

Not having anything to do is more of a detriment to their success than "casualcraft." If the entirety of subs lost is seen to be an indicator that Blizzard was doing something bad, than it was okay for them to have lost all those subs that quit because heroics were too hard, À la BC?

[PaladinBash]

So a bunch of whingy badcores are going to leave the game? And Blizzard won't have to listen to their complaining anymore? Great times for the casuals, raiders and hardcore. PVP players well...if you love PVP in WoW, that's cool. It won't be changing much but I definitely think a lot of PVPers will be making the move to GW2 because the PVP in that looks lightyears ahead of rated BGs.

[Goatfish]

I've expericed whole TBC not a private server and once again as hardcore raider who is looking for challenge all the time I say that challenging content in WotLK and Cata required more personal skill and knowledge than anything in TBC. TBC required the "right" classes.

Just required the right classes, you mean like how in the top of the server guild I was in we were using whatever we wanted for any of the fights and still clearing them fine? Such as 4 mages in SWP, me being the only resto shaman for quite some time in there. How about having only one warlock? Paladin solo tanking Felmyst was how we first downed that fight.

Having perfect class stacking helped, it was by no means required. Perhaps you were thinking more of HEROIC DUNGEONS where having a shadow priest was a detriment, and so on.

[adventurer]

I fully support this WISH to return to TBC WoW style. I mean, when there is no nerf for raids and dungeons so everyone could see it, when u feel progression because ur items value are not nerfed every patch. Blizzard removed feel of progression and feel of achivement when they nerf ur items value (ur work) every patch. I want to see people with rare items and - say- hey these guys are pro and awesome. I remember time when I knew by name every player on server who got legendary. I want to know that my items will not be nerfed at last 1 year till next expansion. Items value should not be nerfed during expansion.

Game is not deep anymore, it is like stupid show, when u raid, then u get new raid and previous work has NO VALUE. You can start from new raid and never raid previous raid. Why to nerf raids? If there are players from better raids they can help people on lower raids and this will be NATURAL raid nerf for players on lower raids. And people will thank guy from higher raid for help, and this is how respect and community is build.

In ideal, there should not be NERF for items value during FULL expansion. In order to get to next raid you need to finish previous raid. Then this game will be deep and much better. But what they did in WoTLK and Cata and in Pandaria it seems to be even worse is WRONG way. It is not RPG anymore, it is stupid MONEY grind.

[Deleted]

Well, let's look at the numbers. On Cata release, with it's much more time-consuming heroics than Wrath, saw the biggest subscriber loss aside from this last quarter.

Actually it did not, because you're not accounting for the absolute peak Cata reached on its release. It lost quite a lot of subscribers compared to its peak, but not compared to the former expansion. Cata was marketed as a more TBC like expansion, I don't want to generalize, but I can say that was the reason for me and most friends I used to play with to resub just before Cata was released. Also, if you look at the release of WotLK, it had a similar drop after an initial peak. Furthermore, for all we know, the decline could also be attested to China getting bored with WotLK, so there isn't really too much to read into the first few quarters. There surely might have been players who cancelled because the content was too challenging for them, but at the same time there were players coming back because the content was challenging. I for one belong to the massive losses they had after demonstrating that the game was even less like TBC than LK, which meanwhile have turned out to be pretty significant. Don't take this as me knowing exactly how to interpret the subscription numbers, I'm merely pointing out that your way of presenting them is biased and heavily influenced by your personal opinion, just as anyone else's. I'd dare with quite some confidence say that the recent drop in numbers most likely happened due to people running out of things to do and getting bored - which is something that didn't happen in TBC.

[Chrysia]

Actually it did not, because you're not accounting for the absolute peak Cata reached on its release. It lost quite a lot of subscribers compared to its peak, but not compared to the former expansion. Cata was marketed as a more TBC like expansion, I don't want to generalize, but I can say that was the reason for me and most friends I used to play with to resub just before Cata was released. Also, if you look at the release of WotLK, it had a similar drop after an initial peak. Furthermore, for all we know, the decline could also be attested to China getting bored with WotLK, so there isn't really too much to read into the first few quarters. There surely might have been players who cancelled because the content was too challenging for them, but at the same time there were players coming back because the content was challenging. I for one belong to the massive losses they had after the nerfs, which meanwhile have turned out to be pretty significant. Don't take this as me knowing exactly how to interpret the subscription numbers, I'm merely pointing out that your way of presenting them is biased and heavily influenced by your personal opinion. I'd dare with quite some confident say that the recent drop in numbers most likely happened due to people running out of things to do and getting bored - which is something that didn't happen in TBC.

Nice job cutting the rest of my argument, which ended with pretty much exactly your conclusion. That the casual friendly DS has been out too long, and had Blizzard actually delivered the "smaller, faster content patches" they've been prattling about for almost 3 years now, we wouldn't have seen the biggest drop yet.

I'm also slightly basing the information off of a CEO statement that many of their early losses in Cata, in the reason box they pop up for you, were cited as "less casual friendly content."

[Goatfish]

Actually, Ragnaros heroic is... (the hardest boss of all time)

Actually this is false, M'uru is also false though. By sheer number of kills and/or time taken til boss death. Heroic Lich King without the nerf aura is the hardest boss by a good margin. I think I've even responded to you personally about this before, but I could be wrong. I do know I have had to correct multiple people multiple times on that point. I believe second hardest by time taken is still Kael'thas, and second hardest by number of kills (during relevant content) is Kel'thuzad, but I could be wrong on the second place bosses, tis been a while since I've looked.

If you want to go by someones random opinion on how hard mechanics were you might as well find a drunk hobo and give him a list to randomly point at. It will be about as accurate.

[Kaleredar]

You mean a very small and vocal group on the forums were complaining. This is one thing I'll never manage to understand about WoW. How it nerfs the different difficulty modes simply because it's playerbase is too lazy to learn to play. No other game has ever done this as far as I know. It just doesn't make any sense to me and never will.

In addition to complaints, I believe blizzard was actually more riding on pure numbers in this situation. They found that a majority of players had not cleared previous raid content. The solution? Apply nerfs to the raid so that players could clear it. When faced with with prospect of the staggering percentage of players leaving because they had nothing to do, or accidentally hurting the feelings of the minority, they went with fixing the first problem.

The only small, vocal group not backed by numerical data of some form are these "special snowflakes" whom no one can pin down with an accurate description and who a large majority of people that have a gripe with the game right now feels they are... which, in turn, aren't necessarily a large majority of the player base.

[Deleted]

Nice job cutting the rest of my argument, which ended with pretty much exactly your conclusion. That the casual friendly DS has been out too long, and had Blizzard actually delivered the "smaller, faster content patches" they've been prattling about for almost 3 years now, we wouldn't have seen the biggest drop yet.

sorry for that, I might have skimmed through your post too fast, because I see the argument of sub loss at the beginning overused all the time by people wanting to "prove" their opinion.

I'm also slightly basing the information off of a CEO statement that many of their early losses in Cata, in the reason box they pop up for you, were cited as "less casual friendly content."

I don't doubt that, but we don't know the number of people who did enjoy the challenging content, or who would have unsubbed / not come back, if the game started off with dungeons and raids like the ones in the last content patch.

[Goatfish]

Incorrect. Pandaren made an appearance in warcraft 3, which was released in 2002. EverQuest 2 was released in 2004. Blizzard had the idea first.

Tibetan Mythology, estimated 1000 BC had pandas acting like humans first. Get off it.

[voidillusion]

I just loved this argument:

"Ds and LFR (xtremely casual) were actually what stopped the bleeding for a quarter"

My wording, but the idea was this more or less.

So, Anual pass in the same quarter had nothing to do with that right?

Also a SoR that gave you free tranfer and faction change and also allowed you to put a char at 80 also had nothing to do with that right?

It's about time you wake up guys, DS was crap, LFR in DS was crap, and this with continuation of the faceroll model led to the remaining bleeding.