Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Deleted]

They are not fired (maybe) because WoW is still after all this year n1 mmo.

[Firebert]

When the LFR supporters say that only LFR make raiding financially viable, then why did they do raiding in the first place before[ LFR?]

Raiding participation fell between ICC and Firelands as the population of every server fell, and guilds/PuGs tightened up their entry requirements to raid with them, leaving many more would-be-raiders out in the cold.

They raided in WotLK because it was accessible, and the community decided that it wanted to start shutting these people out.

[Noorri]

Raiding participation fell between ICC and Firelands as the population of every server fell, and guilds/PuGs tightened up their entry requirements to raid with them, leaving many more would-be-raiders out in the cold.

They raided in WotLK because it was accessible, and the community decided that it wanted to start shutting these people out.

I would say it was Blizzard that started shutting people out when they increased the difficulty of normals. Guilds had no choice but to increase their entry requirements so the guild wouldn't fail miserably at the new raids and have their guild fall apart.

[melodramocracy]

So, LF Arenas, LF Normal Raids and LF Rated BGs coming up soon then?

You can already 'practice' arena, no?

Yes, I can certainly see a LF 10 man option at some point. And rated bg's not being solo-que was a huge huge mistake to begin with.

---------- Post added 2013-04-18 at 10:05 AM ----------

Funny, I had exactly the opposite feeling. Blizzard bends over backwards to snub the casuals, only grudgingly doing anything for them. Tiny numbers of favored-child elite players get attention all out of proportion to their number.

Reality of the games development disagrees with you. The overall scope of content in this game is heavily slanted in favor of casual players.. and if you look at the game as a whole, you would agree.

If anything, the casual player (for lack of a better word) spends a lot more time demanding that content be adjusted down than 'elitists' do asking for exclusion. And Blizzard does listen.

The current trend of eventually nerfing even heroic mode raids (weekly buff stacks) reflects this.
The ongoing trend of making leveling quicker reflects this.
Every new feature, UI change, etc put in game is to make things easier. Look at how questing is now vs. 5 years ago, for example.
etc.

Very little unique content is developed to be truly challenging. You'll get 1, maybe 2 heroic-only raid bosses per expansion. Challenge modes are dungeon rehashes with different stats.

[Firebert]

You can already 'practice' arena, no?

That's the twos queue, still need a friend for that.

And rated bg's not being solo-que was a huge huge mistake to begin with.

I can only agree with this. Arena's been split between those that want CP (twos) and those that want rating (threes), don't see why there's no parity with Rated BGs.

[Seirith]

I have always been a raider but I got bored very quickly after MoP and stopped playing right after my guild started to raid. I also really no longer like having WoW as a "second job" which requires me to be on and play certain nights and times. Sometimes I want to go to bed early or just watch TV but couldn't because I has promised many weeks prior I would be at the raid. I loved the group I raided with and miss playing with them but I don't miss the "second job" aspect at all.

[Glorious Leader]

Reality of the games development disagrees with you. The overall scope of content in this game is heavily slanted in favor of casual players.. and if you look at the game as a whole, you would agree.

If anything, the casual player (for lack of a better word) spends a lot more time demanding that content be adjusted down than 'elitists' do asking for exclusion. And Blizzard does listen.

The current trend of eventually nerfing even heroic mode raids (weekly buff stacks) reflects this.
The ongoing trend of making leveling quicker reflects this.
Every new feature, UI change, etc put in game is to make things easier. Look at how questing is now vs. 5 years ago, for example.
etc.

Very little unique content is developed to be truly challenging. You'll get 1, maybe 2 heroic-only raid bosses per expansion. Challenge modes are dungeon rehashes with different stats.

Shitty normal tuning, the atrocious valor gain, the lack of anything worthwhile to use justice points for (i.e not making old valor gear costg justice points) the atrocious rep grind to even SPEND valor, emphasis on daily quest grinding for a pittance of rep each quest, the abusrd amount of hp on the mobs in pandaria, gated lfr release, the utterly HORRID leveling experience from 85 to 90, lack of flying for alts (indeed the entire alt unfriendly experience), removal of hgwt and 100% quick and the dead (an apparent "bug") and a host of other piss poor decisions suggest other wise. This experience caters to ONE group of players, and it isn't casual and even the developers acknowledge this. GC himself said it "Non-casuals are more likely to stick with us". This expansion has been a terrible grind and it's not casual friendly iin the slightest. It is squarely aimed at one group.

[yjmark]

I find this amazing too that no one has been fired for the massive sub losses, my guess is that the clause that prevents Activision from interfering in Blizzard's day to day running has offered some form of protection to those responsible. This is all well and good when you have massive amounts of new players entering into the game, as in the past, to mask the losses but I cannot see any other company showing such loyalty in the face of losing a quarter of their customers.

Since you don't know why the sub losses occurred, why would you think that someone should be fired?

[Pann]

The other reason might be that sub losses have never changed, but sub recruitment has cratered. GC wouldn't be responsible for that, the marketing team would be. And even then, wows age etc is against it when it comes to getting new guys and gals.

I think you are right that there has always been a large number sub losses but these were masked by new players. Personally I don't think Ghostcrawler is the route of all evil that some make him out to be, but whoever in Blizzard is responsible for the lack of new players, and I think it is a lot more complicated than just a marketing problem, would probably not be afforded the luxury of almost two and half years (since Cata) to address the issue in most other walks of life.

They are not fired (maybe) because WoW is still after all this year n1 mmo.

WOW might still be the number one MMO but its ability to generate income is significantly worse than it was three years ago and it is not showing much signs of turning that around many other companies would have had wholesale changes of personnel in such a position.

Reality of the games development disagrees with you. The overall scope of content in this game is heavily slanted in favor of casual players.. and if you look at the game as a whole, you would agree.

If anything, the casual player (for lack of a better word) spends a lot more time demanding that content be adjusted down than 'elitists' do asking for exclusion. And Blizzard does listen.

The current trend of eventually nerfing even heroic mode raids (weekly buff stacks) reflects this.
The ongoing trend of making leveling quicker reflects this.
Every new feature, UI change, etc put in game is to make things easier. Look at how questing is now vs. 5 years ago, for example.
etc.

Very little unique content is developed to be truly challenging. You'll get 1, maybe 2 heroic-only raid bosses per expansion. Challenge modes are dungeon rehashes with different stats.

WOW is far from casual whilst many parts of it might be easy it is very time consuming, just to cap your weekly VP via LFR and throwing in a couple of heroics you can spend upwards of four to five hours queuing.

Most casual players are not interested in and never set foot in a normal, let alone heroic, raid and the nerfing of levelling if anything is more aimed the hardcore player that wants to jump into end game content as quickly as possible than casual players.

Since you don't know why the sub losses occurred, why would you think that someone should be fired?

I'm sorry where did I say someone should be fired?

[Glorious Leader]

Christ they even got rid of the your first 7 heroics will award valor. That was extremely casual friendly. I could get valor at any point and NOT MISS OUT on it. Now I can get valor at any point but I miss out on the bonus. It's lame and is only for hard cores who can log on every day.

[Osmeric]

just to cap your weekly VP via LFR and throwing in a couple of heroics you can spend upwards of four to five hours queuing.

The way you do this is queue for LFR, then queue for random LFD, then queue for random scenario. The scenario will pop almost immediately. After it's done, the random heroic 5 man will pop, and when that's done, you usually have just a short wait for LFR (if not, do some more scenarios/5 mans while you wait). Alternately, if you want to do dailies for lesser charms, you can do that while waiting. Useless downtime can be kept to a minimum.

[yjmark]

I'm sorry where did I say someone should be fired?

In the post I quoted....here it is again:

I find this amazing too that no one has been fired for the massive sub losses

[Pann]

The way you do this is queue for LFR, then queue for random LFD, then queue for random scenario. The scenario will pop almost immediately. After it's done, the random heroic 5 man will pop, and when that's done, you usually have just a short wait for LFR (if not, do some more scenarios/5 mans while you wait). Alternately, if you want to do dailies for lesser charms, you can do that while waiting. Useless downtime can be kept to a minimum.

Don't get me wrong I know that you can do other things whilst waiting in the queue but the amount of time needed to accomplish anything in game is far from casual.

In the post I quoted....here it is again:

I think you should reread what I wrote, where does it say that I think anyone should be fired?

[melodramocracy]

Shitty normal tuning, the atrocious valor gain, the lack of anything worthwhile to use justice points for (i.e not making old valor gear costg justice points) the atrocious rep grind to even SPEND valor, emphasis on daily quest grinding for a pittance of rep each quest, the abusrd amount of hp on the mobs in pandaria, gated lfr release, the utterly HORRID leveling experience from 85 to 90, lack of flying for alts (indeed the entire alt unfriendly experience), removal of hgwt and 100% quick and the dead (an apparent "bug") and a host of other piss poor decisions suggest other wise. This experience caters to ONE group of players, and it isn't casual and even the developers acknowledge this. GC himself said it "Non-casuals are more likely to stick with us". This expansion has been a terrible grind and it's not casual friendly iin the slightest. It is squarely aimed at one group.

JP's are somewhat irrelevant for many, sure. But they're also not really relevant in this topic.

Grinds aren't challenging content though. Blizzard wants you subbed, and to remain subbed, and to do that, they design content that makes you want to play often and consistently. This is nothing new, it's how MMOs have always operated. And when they don't, subs fluctuate, players feel like there's nothing to do, etc.

And leveling in this, or any other expansion, isn't difficult. At all.

[Osmeric]

Don't get me wrong I know that you can do other things whilst waiting in the queue but the amount of time needed to accomplish anything in game is far from casual.

That may be true, but because you can do other (useful) things during the wait, the queue time does not actually count as wasted time. The total time spent is (time in LFR + time in other content), not (time in LFR + time in LFR queue + time in other content).

[yjmark]

I think you should reread what I wrote, where does it say that I think anyone should be fired?

So when you say "I find it amazing no one was fired" - you do not think anyone should be fired? I'm not trying to be nitpciky. Just trying to understand what you wer trying to say. I read it, and it seemed like you thought someone should have been fired, but noone was.

[Pann]

That may be true, but because you can do other (useful) things during the wait, the queue time does not actually count as wasted time. The total time spent is (time in LFR + time in other content), not (time in LFR + time in LFR queue + time in other content).

From reading your previous posts about how many alts you cap each week I guess you have it down to fine art. I was trying to highlight that even the casual play is not so casual and to be honest I think this is one of the reasons for falling interest in MMOs, but that is a whole other discussion.

So when you say "I find it amazing no one was fired" - you do not think anyone should be fired? I'm not trying to be nitpciky. Just trying to understand what you wer trying to say. I read it, and it seemed like you thought someone should have been fired, but noone was.

WOW is the primary source of income for Blizzard and during the past two and half years it has lost almost a quarter of its customer base many other companies would have fired multiple personnel for such poor results that is all my comment meant. I made no mention of whether I think anyone should be fired or not.

[Osmeric]

So when you say "I find it amazing no one was fired" - you do not think anyone should be fired?

If there's an accident and I say "I'm amazed no one was killed", am I saying that someone should be killed?

[Firebert]

If there's an accident and I say "I'm amazed no one was killed", am I saying that someone could have been killed?

Fixed that for you, as it's what's usually meant.

[Huehuecoyotl]

JP's are somewhat irrelevant for many, sure. But they're also not really relevant in this topic.

Grinds aren't challenging content though. Blizzard wants you subbed, and to remain subbed, and to do that, they design content that makes you want to play often and consistently. This is nothing new, it's how MMOs have always operated. And when they don't, subs fluctuate, players feel like there's nothing to do, etc.

And leveling in this, or any other expansion, isn't difficult. At all.

i would rephrase one part of your reply;

"Blizzard wants you subbed, and to remain subbed, and to do that, they design content that makes you feel like you have to play often and consistently"

from the comments on this site about dailies, i dont think anyone really WANTS to do them.