Patch 4.3 Interviews, Blue Posts, Diablo III Beta, Art Gallery Update

[Darkguyver2020]

"They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite."
Daww. The poor widdle babies no longer feeling like special widdle snowflakes when they AFK in their capital city with full tier gear because more players have access to the same content. Oh QQ! /asspat
Might I put emphasis on the word "some", meaning they are the minority. Blizzard made WoW to make money. They won't get money if they cater to the minority, aka, the elitist pricks that don't have a life outside of WoW.

[Divinusvita]

There are more people that played World of Warcraft, but no longer play World of Warcraft, than the number of people that currently play World of Warcraft. They want to lower the barrier to entry and find some way to bring back players that no longer play.

Lowering the barrier, i'm kind of Curious to what that implies but the thing i'm looking at is the "there are more people that played wow, but no longer play...etc", i interrupt that as "that 11mil minus 500k, minus another 600k isn't entirely truthful"

[Asrialol]

Hah, it's as I thought all the time, Mists of Pandaria most likely isn't the expansion.

[Theodon]

"They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite."
Daww. The poor widdle babies no longer feeling like special widdle snowflakes when they AFK in their capital city with full tier gear because more players have access to the same content. Oh QQ! /asspat
Might I put emphasis on the word "some", meaning they are the minority. Blizzard made WoW to make money. They won't get money if they cater to the minority, aka, the elitist pricks that don't have a life outside of WoW.

They also won't make more money if they don't cater to them either. Your attitude only serves to screw the majority you belong to over too.

[Nraktja]

To combat the complaints of armor always looking the same, there is a sub-lead who is in charge of guiding the art team to produce new styles not found in the game yet.

Allow me to say... YESSSSSSS! Finally!

[Axxy]

Personally speaking....

It's not a question of whether it's too hard or not. Some of us haven't quit because it became to hard, jesus, just how dumb can Blizzard get?

Cataclsym turned out to be no more than a content patch, and far less for end-game, non-hardcore players than we had previously had. If Blizzard had spent more time reading their own forums instead of deleting thread after thread at how mundane Cata had become, or reading the QQ threads here at MMO-C, maybe they would listen to the playerbase and try to improve the situation. But no, Blizzard knew best.

There are more people that played World of Warcraft, but no longer play World of Warcraft, than the number of people that currently play World of Warcraft. They want to lower the barrier to entry and find some way to bring back players that no longer play.

Lolwut? Does this mean "it's worse than we thought!".

They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite.

Bollocks!

It's not just the casuals, its the raiders, vets, pvp'ers, all types are quitting.

Content in WotLK was accessible, but in 8 months of Cata, I haven't seen one pug (apart from trash farming) on my server for Firelands, and of whats left of the 25man pve raiding guilds, christ, the top 2 guilds on my server had to join together to raid 25man before FL opened. 25man killed off a lot of people with raidlocks because you log on to raid nights only, no point in logging on for anything else for the rest of the week. Most guilds that have survived are raiding 10man, think only 1 has stayed 25man, but some of their kills were 10man. We won't go there for 5mans and the LFG debacle. The average player shouldn't be required to watch vids or read strats for 5mans, or bribing tanks/healers to shorten queues really does take the piss, even after all the nerfs.

This game has become stale, boring and lacking any imagination to make the game interesting to play. 4.3 won't change this, and probably not in the next xpac either, just more of the same. Nothing I have seen thus far looks tempting to come back to WoW and Blizzard aren't doing enough to entice me to come back, whether MoP is the next expansion or not.

I just don't know wtf Blizzard's thinking is on the players unsubbing since Cata's release?

Either they are in denial
Arrogance in their own position
Incompetence
Or they just do not care?

[McNeil]

So... is Deathwing the only boss in his ''raid''?

[THEORACLE64]

Hah, it's as I thought all the time, Mists of Pandaria most likely isn't the expansion.

"Most of the time" (in relation to Panda stuff).

It's not all the time, and lets be fair, they're not gunna say shit about the next expansion until Blizzcon when it's announced.

[Deleted]

I stopped playing WoW a while ago, but i did play it for about 5-6 years, ever since Vanilla. The thing is, to improve WoW, you gotta realize what you are doing wrong, pretty simple logic, right?

Now, pissing on your costumers, adding mounts and pet-shops, introducing things that are not of the slightest relevance regarding whether it is fun to play or not, re-hashing 5 mans and saying "Suck it", having Raids being a major pain in the ass to perform and even for worse loot the before. Having all of these factors said - how can you literally be BLIND to that you lose about 1 mil subs? I mean, okay, Blizzard is a company that is out to make money - and they have been very successful, now taking away what made quality to begin with, does not add to the formula as in building success - it is rather the opposite. Because people stay loyal for a while, take the shit to the face, but at one point, they are gonna get fed-up. They are not going to do it anymore, it is literally getting boring to even bother with the hassle of the game. Do you even understand how many Subs of ppl who USED to play a lot, only remained because of social contacts in WoW?

Personally, i quit because WoW had come to a certain stage, where you couldn't do a random ZG heroic, as a tank or whatever, just for the sake of short queue (not that you WANT to play a tank, but others seem to rubbish to do it) - without having a Rogue pulling 4k DPS, with insanely crude English , even clearing the god damn dungeon seemed as a feat of strength for these kind of people - and for what, some loot? Yeah well, you get the loot. And? What now? Oh you want to raid? Well, fine, pull your ass through pain in the ass content, for less rewards then before, and suck it that you are stuck with the rogue who is pulling 4k DPS in a HC. At the end of the day, if Blizzard does not smarten up - it will die.

Now that might have been crazy talk before - but you got REAL threats on the horizon now. Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic, hell even Diablo 3 will attract more people to it then WoW probably could - more accessible, new fresh content, is out there - in comparing to a game that has not aged well (WoW) - remain competitive, or you are going to get slaughtered.

[Koeevu]

"They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite."

This is actually from a quote from a Doug Thomas, an associate professor at USC that didn't feel like a special snowflake anymore for getting access to gear that people playing less then 30 hours a week couldn't.

Further down the article you get two paragraphs from another random guide saying that his guilds blew up because of the increased diffculty (I assume in normals). Which is pretty much my experience and why none of my friends & family play anymore. Asking anyone to sit at a computer for five hours on 3-4 nights a week is lunacy.

[dunkleberry]

They also won't make more money if they don't cater to them either. Your attitude only serves to screw the majority you belong to over too.

Yes they will, Blizzard will make more money by catering to the majority then to the minority of elitists. You can't please everyone, and in these cases it is a better business decision to do what the majority wants. But is seems like they are trying to please everyone which will only make everyone upset.

[rboa]

They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite.

lol, not even close. Top 2 things imo are: 1) Most of cata effort was put in the old kingdom revamp. This should have been done as a regular part of maintenance. The players have paid for it already with vanilla. 2) The new threat and healing models made it much harder for those roles to do their job. Unfortunately players in those were already short supply.

[Randris]

I played WoW off and on for a long time. I started in Vanilla 1.6. I stopped being very active about two years ago. Since then I've played a month or two here and there, and played my free 10-day trials Blizz has sent me, just to see if anything has changed. The simple fact for me is that every expansion ends up being the same. Sure, the tileset is different. Some mobs have different skin color. But in the end, it's still WoW.. Same old grind, day in day out. Dailies, professions, instances, PvP etc. It all just starts to blend together until it feels like a second job. It requires such a commitment just to be competitive.

I'm not suggesting that they dumb the game down for "casuals" or whatever. But when a new expansion comes out, and I replace all of my gear within the first two levels, I ask myself "What was the point of all that I just did?". Sure it was fun at first, but like everything else in WoW, once you run Naxx or whatever the 15th time, you're kind of set to auto-pilot. Everything just becomes routine. You aren't having fun anymore.

By the time I did the loot/grind cycle for the third time in Wrath, I seriously started to question what I was doing. With the massive nerf to leveling, that removed all the challenge, and lack of interest in end-game grinding, I no longer found anything fun about WoW. I still sort of keep up with news (hence why I'm here), hoping that something will pique my interest as truly different. However, it hasn't happened, and I don't predict it will. I'm not saying WoW is dead, but it reached its peak and is starting to decline.

[Trapt]

Too late Blizzard. Quitting when my time expires and never looking back. You should have known catering to casuals would just piss off the HC raiders and make them quit. Since when is a casual player more important than someone that spends hrs a day in game? Priorities..get them straight.

[Zeekua]

First of all, I feel the content difficulty right now is almost perfect. The normal modes feel like normal modes to me, and the heroics are actually hard. Back in Wrath, the heroic modes were WAY to easy, other than Heroic Lich King, and normal mode was something you brought your 3rd string alt's to. Look up my character, Zeeklol, for proof of my raiding history if you don't believe I did any of the content I said (looking at you amy). I think I killed more bosses on heroic in ICC then I did on normal. So basically, what I am trying to say is that the people who THINK the normal content is too hard need to step up their game. Plain and simple. The normal modes should be YOUR heroic modes and it SHOULD be hard for you.

Secondly, Deathwing will be the longest encounter in the game? So it's going to be 20 minutes? Because Heroic Ragnaros is AT LEAST 15 minutes long. Longer encounters /= better encounters.

Finally, I am leaving this game (hopefully) for either GW2 or SWTOR. This game has become a bore outside of raiding. I feel like, I have beaten the game and there really is nothing else to do besides that. I have leveled every single class/spec to 85 over the course of 6 years. I have seen everything this game has to offer, even twice now with the rehased garbage that's been thrown at me. Guild Wars 2 actually doesn't have a sub fee and it looks VERY promising. SWTOR is also looking like an amazing game. Blizzard should start looking at their competitors and seeing how they are changing the concept of MMO's (aka no dedicated healers/tanks in GW2 for example) and start adjusting. But that's probably what their "Project Titan" is doing right now. This games core concepts will never change.

[Tilie]

"Player created content is still in the back of their minds because of how well it worked in Starcraft II. Developing tools for players would take a lot of work, but the reward would be great as well."

Does this mean there is still hope for a WoW Map Editor!?!?!?!?!?! =D =D =D

[Vexar]

Lowering the barrier, i'm kind of Curious to what that implies but the thing i'm looking at is the "there are more people that played wow, but no longer play...etc", i interrupt that as "that 11mil minus 500k, minus another 600k isn't entirely truthful"

What they're saying is that subscriber churn implies that they've had at least as many people (12m) play the game at one time who no longer play. For example, Washington DC might have only 500,000 inhabitants but you can bet that through its history it's been home to at least 1 million people who are different from the current residents.

It's a clunky way to say it, but in a clearer way, they're saying that if everyone who'd ever played WoW was playing it right now they would have at least twice the subscribers they have now.

[isendims]

I want one difficulty raids again, I do not like having to progress through the same instances twice. Make the instances longer but the 2nd half of it harder, or make optional bosses that are harder. I also liked ulduar's version of hardmodes the best.

[stonecolde]

chaud! I demand to know what you have done with Boubouille. Let him out of the closet now, We have not gotten to see Boubouille run nude through the streets of Paris yet

[Nepinator]

I think it was a mistake to make the loot from 10 mans and 25 mans exactly the same, as well as making them share a lockout. It's had a serious impact on 25 man raiding and most realms only have one or two 25 man guilds left. There's just no solid reason to raid 25 man anymore, you don't get superior rewards for it. There was a lot more activity in WotLK because people had the option to PuG 10 mans if their guilds main raided 25 mans, or vice versa, and there was simply more to do. Personally I think Blizzard should go back to that model as soon as possible, at least for the next expansion.


It's great that they're bringing out more 5 mans in the next patch though, I'm glad they're giving that more attention. It's more accessible for the casual players (no I don't mean bad players, I mean people who don't necessarily want to commit to raiding) and it gives us something to do besides the raids, but I do miss the 10 man and 25 man raids being separate lockouts.


Right now I do think the game has become a bit "limited" in terms of activity outside of raiding too. World PvP almost never happens nowadays and I think players need an incentive to do it, but then there's the problem of server faction balance, which is non-existent on most realms since it became possible to change factions. I was on a realm that was 50:50 Alliance/Horde, but as soon as faction changes became available 90% of the Alliance players switched over to Horde because Horde had the more progressed guilds and it attracted them over.That's gone off on a tangent but nevermind. xD

edit: this thing seems to like eating my paragraphs, ah well.