WoW has a generation problem

[Deleted]

If your life has not changed in the last 5 years, and you still have that much free time, it might be necessary to stop and wonder why

I could say that's because i've not made any bad decisions? No offense though. (i do have full-time job)

[-Superman-]

I could say that's because i've not made any bad decisions? No offense though. (i do have full-time job)

I meant more from a "I'm still at the same call center, in the same apartment, same roomates, g/f sometimes, always broke cause I eat out alot and my car always breaksdown" kinda way. You know... the way we lived in/just after college No offense taken.

---------- Post added 2013-03-19 at 08:41 AM ----------

Why do you think that your value system should apply to anyone else? To me personally, it looks like you have a pretty crappy life, but I'm not judging you for it, whatever floats your boat. Just saying, that what you like to do, does not give you the right to judge how other people wish to spend their time. If someone enjoys gaming 10 hours day (And has the means to survive), who the hell are you to tell them they are wasting their time?

I don't know about you, but I work to exist, and I exist to have fun. Gaming is what I find fun, therefore I work to game. Working is the means, fun is the end. Nothing you do on this world is significant by any measure, so I choose to live life for me.

Like I said, some folks just have that kind of free time. If they do, that's great for them. My response was to the OP. Not my problem that you took it personally. If you love to game 24/7 outside of work, that is your life and your biz.

[Vokal]

It seems that you have taken a collection of data points and assigned them cause and effect.

That is how you use data to show what has transpired, thank you for stating the very obvious.

The reality is you have no clue why subs have dropped or risen at any given time

Leveling and end-game get harder, more time-consuming and grindy. What a coincidence people happen to start leaving in large numbers at the same time as that right?

And when Blizzard makes a U-turn on their game design to shift it back to it's previous difficulty players suddenly start coming back...?

If you don't call that a clue I don't know what you would. I understand that you disagree with me, but to disagree with me in addition to not acknowledging something as obvious as this just makes you seem incredibly biased and unrealistic when it comes to defending your argument.

and you have no proof otherwise. You are speculating, nothing more, nothing less.

Really? And what is it that you're doing when you indicate so religiously that a harder game that requires a bigger time and effort input from players and is even more grindy is better and will bring in more players whilst retaining more of the current subscriber base.

Atleast my argument has numbers to fall back on that can be used to support an argument. What about yours?

You have done little to demonstrate how or why an even more grindier, time consuming WoW with a difficult progression system would bring in and retain more players.

---------- Post added 2013-03-19 at 08:55 PM ----------

I don't know about you, but I work to exist, and I exist to have fun. Gaming is what I find fun, therefore I work to game. Working is the means, fun is the end. Nothing you do on this world is significant by any measure, so I choose to live life for me.

While I completely disagree with your premise of what makes a game fun and what makes this particular game fun (both for myself and, in my opinion, other people), I can somewhat agree with and relate to this.

The point of life is to find the places, experiences, people and relationships that invigorate, entice, stimulate and to ultimately define you in part. This is different for everyone.

Everyone's idea of an ideal life is not mortgage, multiple car payments and a large family that you have to work like a dog/work-horse to support. Some people just want to find something they love and someone they love and live their own version of a happy life.

[melodramocracy]

The issue folks see in this game is a micro-example of what has been happening to the entire entertainment industry, which demonstrates the basic idea that availability is inversely proportional to how much something is appreciated or valued in the long term.

In the gaming industry, there are more worthwhile titles to play than ever before, more ways to find out about them, and it's easier than ever for a dev house to actually put something to market. This all causes a higher number of available titles, which means more competition. This, naturally, feeds the idea that rewards for players should be frequent, because the idea of being rewarded, or always having something 'new' to do, is part of what holds a players attention. If a company can do both of these things, they stand to make more money by having more frequently paying customers. This is why many single player campaigns are so short, why DLC is so effective. And if a player gets bored, or hits some sort of wall, he or she will simply move on to something else.

And gamers, being what they are, will tend towards the shortest / easiest route to some version of success in any scenario, even if it will be the thing that holds their attention for the shortest amount of time.

The music industry sees the same sort of thing as well. No need (to an extent) for label backing in the digital age means that listeners have far more of a selection to choose from, which also means that simply writing good music isn't enough to hold anyone's attention. Have no doubt, if the internet was a thing when the Beatles came out, they'd have been a brief blip on the radar.

[Madruga]

Well, today we have a retardely wide range of games available for someone to play. The competition is so big, that people tend to invest less time to a single game.

Not only that, but there are far more entertainment options than, let's say, the era where Everquest came. Or even the era when WoW came.

So, it is natural that people will want to spend less time on an MMO like before.

Add to that the fact that the people who were harcore MMO gamers in te beginning probably have families, jobs, things that reduce even further the time available for playing. These folks probably shift to a much more casual playing style. Not because they really want, but because there simply is no time.

So yes, the MMO population is shrinking. Slowly, but it is. And we can expect a gradual shift from hardcore mentality to casual. Heck, even today this is already happening... Less and less guilds are raiding Normal and Heroic modes in Wow, with the advent of LFR and more casual content to do. Guilds in Rift are suffering to recruit people, and the raids in Rift are nothing short of amazing. Most other MMOs are going F2P or B2P, trying to appeal to a population that has more options for gaming than ever before.

[Elhana]

There are so many different games out there, even in the same genre. Games have to compete for players' attention. If players have to go through a grind they find boring, they'll just go play something else. Extra Credits just came out with a video about intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

While intrinsic part is important at first glance, I always found that it was extrinsic rewards that kept me playing MMOs. Molten core runs were otherwise mind numbing in the end, but we all did for ages for those two people waiting for thunderfury and gearing alts, we simply had fun chatting for that hour. Blizz could keep saying their daily quests/scenarios are fun and awesome, but when every mouthbreathing kid on the server has same gear (even being non-heroic color) and you are almost forced to play dungeons (and raids now too) with people you'll never see again - I really cba doing that shit anymore and neither most of the people I played with.

Somehow lots of people want sandbox MMO this days, not an engaging single player slasher WoW is slowly becoming.

[TheRabidDeer]

That is incorrect.

WoW's subscriber base has increased in size when they made changes that made endgame more accessible and decreased in size when they did the opposite.

Noticed how the game crossed 12 million subs during Wrath and faced a sharp decline at the start of Cata? The subscription bleed in Cata was only controlled when they introduced LFR, came out with easier normal mode raids and heroics and introduced conquest and conquest gear via queing random bgs.

It seems people dropped WoW and went to find a new game the minute it seemed they'd have to spend 70 hrs a week on the game to get anywhere, instead of your claim that this behaviour would be brought on by the game getting easier and progression consuming less time.

Blizzard learned from their mistakes in Cata and decided to continue to maintain an accessible and less time consuming end game setup in MOP, the result of which was that subscribers increased to and stabilized at 10 million subs.

You can say whatever you want to defend your argument that a harder, inaccessible game with a massive time requirement and lots of grinding is optimal....the truth however is revealed easily via the numbers and it disagrees with this notion. More people will continue to play the game if end game is accessible, easy and rewards efforts with progression without having to dedicate your entire life and every waking hour to it.

You are pretty much dead wrong. WoW rose meteorically in vanilla and TBC, then stagnated and dropped off. It hit 11 million subscribers in Oct 2008 shortly before WotLK was released. It wasnt until Oct 2010 that it hit 12 million (a full 2 years after it hit 11 million, which was a year longer than anticipated) then started to decline. All of the changes to difficulty/accessibility to raids has been an attempt to KEEP subscribers, not increase them.

[Tomana]

You are pretty much dead wrong. WoW rose meteorically in vanilla and TBC, then stagnated and dropped off. It hit 11 million subscribers in Oct 2008 shortly before WotLK was released. It wasnt until Oct 2010 that it hit 12 million (a full 2 years after it hit 11 million, which was a year longer than anticipated) then started to decline. All of the changes to difficulty/accessibility to raids has been an attempt to KEEP subscribers, not increase them.

Maybe it has something to do with the competition absent during vanilla and BC as well as WoW being in a different part of its life cycle back then?

[TheRabidDeer]

Maybe it has something to do with the competition absent during vanilla and BC as well as WoW being in a different part of its life cycle back then?

Certainly far more likely than the rubbish that he came up with.

[Tomana]

Certainly far more likely than the rubbish that he came up with.

It's not rubbish, it's just simplified to the extreme. Those threads pop every so often that recounting the whole story again and again is just impossible. But comparing sub evolution in vanilla vs LK/Cata needs to be done very carefully, because the playerbase and the strategic context is very different in terms of competition, playerbase and gaming habits.

[SamR]

Threads like this sound like they were written by people who never played any other MMOs before WoW. The whole point of WoW in 2004 was that it was much more casual than other MMOs on the market! That was the appeal. That's why it got so big.

Vanilla WoW might seem hardcore and grindy compared to now, but compared to the MMO market in general at launch, it was a lolcasualfest.

As the gaming competition has gotten more casual friendly, WoW has also moved to implement more casual friendly features.

[TheRabidDeer]

It's not rubbish, it's just simplified to the extreme. Those threads pop every so often that recounting the whole story again and again is just impossible. But comparing sub evolution in vanilla vs LK/Cata needs to be done very carefully, because the playerbase and the strategic context is very different in terms of competition, playerbase and gaming habits.

His theory: Making it easier made subscriber count rise:
Evidence: Crossed 12 million during wrath, dropped during cata, stabilized with easy features
What hes missing: The 11 million that initially joined before wrath. The fact that it was already fairly stable before LFR/easier content was released

He is trying to pick data points that fit his conclusion and ignores everything else. It isnt simplified, it is cherry picked in an attempt to make his theory valid. He is making the data fit the conclusion rather than coming to a conclusion based on data.

[SamR]

His theory: Making it easier made subscriber count rise:
Evidence: Crossed 12 million during wrath, dropped during cata, stabilized with easy features
What hes missing: The 11 million that initially joined before wrath. The fact that it was already fairly stable before LFR/easier content was released

You mean the 11 million who subbed to WoW because it was the most casual friendly MMO on the market?

[Tomana]

His theory: Making it easier made subscriber count rise:
Evidence: Crossed 12 million during wrath, dropped during cata, stabilized with easy features
What hes missing: The 11 million that initially joined before wrath. The fact that it was already fairly stable before LFR/easier content was released

What you're missing: that there was a huge churn among those 11 million that joined before wrath because the game was ill-suited to casual players. So it grew because the flow of new players outweighted the churn. Once the MMO market hit its wall in 2009+, this scheme was no longer defensible. Since 2009, MMOs operate in a saturated market, which was not the case in 2004 through 2008.

[Masser]

getting married, having kids, kids growing up, etc.

I'm not gonna waste my short life with that kind of nonsense!

[TheRabidDeer]

You mean the 11 million who subbed to WoW because it was the most casual friendly MMO on the market?

I guess CoH/Guild Wars/Aion werent very casual friendly (I know there was another AAA title that came out too, but I cant remember what it was called)? Was it more casual friendly than EQ? Yea. But there were many that came out, the "WoW killers", that were equally casual friendly that usually didnt pull through. GW did well on its own and carved out its own share of the market but it didnt impact WoW subscribers.

What you're missing: that there was a huge churn among those 11 million that joined before wrath because the game was ill-suited to casual players. So it grew because the flow of new players outweighted the churn. Once the MMO market hit its wall in 2009+, this scheme was no longer defensible. Since 2009, MMOs operate in a saturated market, which was not the case in 2004 through 2008.

I dont recall a huge churn among those 11 million that complained about it not being casual friendly. Also, the MMO market hasnt really hit a wall... there are a ton of gamers out there that havent tried it. We just saw a very large surge in gamers during this time. There is still a huge potential market. I assume Titan is going to attempt to tap into that market.

We havent had any major changes to the MMO formula since WoW, so 8-9 years of no change makes it a difficult thing to sell.

[Pull My Finger]

No, it's not a generation thing. The industry is changing and gaming habits have as well.

[Osmeric]

Then why play a MMORPG in the first place ? Games like CoD or Mario Kart and thousand of others give you exactly that ?!

What you are really saying to these people is "please don't tempt Blizzard to change the game, with your horrible, horrible $15/month."

[cityguy193]

Good. Maybe the new generation knows that the skinner box type of gaming is toxic and does not actually produce happiness.

[teddytous]

The problem with wows grinding is imo a little to much RNG in the current model.

I prefer games where money is more important to level and their are no hard level caps, money being better gear, and you can directly grind, or built income at a steady pace, with RNG based bonus's. In wow gold means nothing, and getting a random roll of the dice is all that matters. This is just my opinion though.