1.3 million sub drop

[Glorious Leader]

sometimes, i pick my tablet up, and start playing freaking angry birds or cut the rope for an our for zero benefit. What i wont out of this experience, is puzzle to solve, how to tackle a problem, given the game mechanics.

my mom, another generation, prefer crosswords. she can spends anywhere between 15 minutes to 2 hours to finish a crossword. That's casual gaming right.

translate that to wow. You can have casual gaming without reward, just for the fun of the game mechanic. Killing creature, doing quest. or can you really?
maybe the need for a reward in casual play come from the fact that the gameplay isn't rewarding enough, fun enough by itself?

could that be the issue?

Well I agree in part about the game play not being rewarding. It could use some refreshment but that only applies to players who have been doing this for years. I mean either way you square it the developers are ultimately at fault here not the "market" or the games age or any shit like that. It isn't exactly attracting new players either.

To some degree or another wow has always been about the carrot on the stick. In the past we got used to having more carrot and less stick. This expansion has been all stick. Look if reward didn't actually matter then I dont udnerstand why we couldn't have kept the cataclysm model. Of course it matters.

[Vankrys]

No. You and your mom are unlikely to play x without reward if other people actually get rewarded for playing x and you sure as hell don't pay on a monthly basis and play x without reward if other people get rewarded.

you have me very confused

[Glorious Leader]

Take a look at this - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/5403325. More then 250 000 viewers and money raised for charity. That's more viewers then some MMO's have players. It's not irrelevant.

For a game with 8 million subs it's pretty irellevant. They raised money for a charity they didn't sell boxes or subs. It's irrelevant as far as the game is concerned. Nobody cares what blood legion does.

[Deleted]

There's also people in cow and murlock costumes on Blizzcoms. Do those sell boxes and more importantly subscriptions as well? With their streams and their "take this wonderful, high quality mousepad"-sponsors these clown guilds prolly make less than guys toiling barren fields in some third-world countries. They sell nothing, they mean nothing and their compensation mirrors that.

People in cow and murlock costumes on Blizzcons aren't taking casual approach to WoW either. Look up my link.

[Seefer]

For a game with 8 million subs it's pretty irellevant. They raised money for a charity they didn't sell boxes or subs. It's irrelevant as far as the game is concerned. Nobody cares what blood legion does.

For you to think nobody cares is laughable at best.

[Glorious Leader]

For you to think nobody cares is laughable at best.

For you to think that people (or any significant chunk of people) do care is extremely egotistical.

[Deleted]

For a game with 8 million subs it's pretty irellevant. They raised money for a charity they didn't sell boxes or subs. It's irrelevant as far as the game is concerned. Nobody cares what blood legion does.

Nobody cares what "insert top guild" and yet quarter of million people watches how they play. Seriously.

[Glorious Leader]

Nobody cares what "insert top guild" and yet quarter of million people watches how they play. Seriously.

For charity or to support a good cause. Not because of how they play. Hell a quarter of a million people is less than they lost in subs this quarter. Hardcores aint stoppin the sub loss and they aren't bringing players back either. Nobody cares wht they do. Well nobody except the developers who've catered to them so much this expac.

[Vankrys]

I mean either way you square it the developers are ultimately at fault here not the "market" or the games age or any shit like that. It isn't exactly attracting new players either.

on that i agree at 100%
the designer have the power to shape the game, and thus, over time, the expectation the playerbase have about the game.

For example, there were a lot of talk about how so many switch to 10-man, leaving 25-man dying. People argue that people choice, not blizzard fault. I am convinced that this is a direct result of game design, and thus, game design can influence player decision.

Do serious raider run LFR for fun every week or to get an edge on gear. i mean some may find it fun, but a lot felt they have to to be competitive.
Do people run dailies purely for fun, or they kind of have to if they want to be the best they can be.

I understand that i did arge for 10 parges that dailies and lfr are casual content, yet some very dedicated gamers feel they must do or lag a little bit behind.

And i think this is a direct result on game designer.

So yes, game designer does have influence on playerbase behaviour.

[HeedmySpeed]

Understand that casual, in the sense being used has nothing to do with raiding and everything to do with a time investment. Currently wow requires a hefty time investment no matter what you do. If your pace is 1-2 hrs a day you will arguably never see anything improving on a single character, much more several alts, with the current set up. People will stop caring and stop trying then unsub.

Someone who RPs 10 hours a day is not a casual player...

1 hour a day???? At that point why the hell are you playing an MMORPG? What's the matter with you?

2 hours I can see being the cut off for "casual" in terms of an MMORPG player.
But having 2 hours a day is more than enough to see a good portion of the content.

A 2 hour raid schedule is perfectly sensible but admittedly you won't have success of a 3 hour raiding guild (duhhhhhhh).
Sure you might not ever see a Heroic mode kill but I most definitely think you can get through Normal.

Personally I think it's the need to see it all is what is killing players. You don't have to. There's no problem doing yesterdays Heroic raids other than one problem.

Finding people.

Before I was in a good raiding guild the only problem I had was finding players. If they added a system ala Openraid where you could find players easy and group with there's no need for nerfs and making content trivial and uncompelling.

[Excessiv]

Someone has to say it.

What makes you think you're that special that you need to create a 2nd thread after the main page thread?

[Glorious Leader]

So yes, game designer does have influence on playerbase behaviour.

Well yea but it can reall backfire on them to. Like I said you can't give players something one expansion (hell almost two expansions) and then take it away from them and expect them to just go with the flow. You can only adapt player behavior going forward, never backward. If you try to backward you get people leaving. They tried to adapt player behavior going backwards this expac. GC said in a tweet that it's hard going back but the reality is that it's extremely easy to do development wise. It's just detrimental to keeping players interested in the game.

[Sansnom]

The community.

Say what you will about the convenience of lfd/lfr/realm transfers but I remember the days when I logged on and was instantly invited to run a dungeon with my friends. Anyone know a good tank/healer/dps? And you'd say yeah, my buddy is a tank let me check. He joins the party and you were cool for knowing a good player.

All that networking, that community building stuff is gone with all this stupid crz/lfd/lfr bridging dead servers crap.

Also gone is the time spend in city spamming trade for hours looking to join a PUG dungeon as a DPS. If I managed to get 1 or 2 dungeons run in a week I would have been happy.

[Ragashii]

Someone has to say it.

What makes you think you're that special that you need to create a 2nd thread after the main page thread?

Maybe because this thread is now 51 pages?

[Vankrys]

Well yea but it can reall backfire on them to. Like I said you can't give players something one expansion (hell almost two expansions) and then take it away from them and expect them to just go with the flow. You can only adapt player behavior going forward, never backward. If you try to backward you get people leaving. They tried to adapt player behavior going backwards this expac. GC said in a tweet that it's hard going back but the reality is that it's extremely easy to do development wise. It's just detrimental to keeping players interested in the game.

or, when applicable, you can try to make a slowly 360° to end up where you start and nobody noticed (right, like that's gonna work)

[Deleted]

For charity or to support a good cause. Not because of how they play. Hell a quarter of a million people is less than they lost in subs this quarter. Hardcores aint stoppin the sub loss and they aren't bringing players back either. Nobody cares wht they do. Well nobody except the developers who've catered to them so much this expac.

So you are saying that same amount of people would watch yours and mine guild doing LFR because they will support a good cause?
No one said hardcores are stopping subs - but you said none would care if all hardcore players left the game. I would say Blizz would surely care.
And where did exactly devs catered to hardcores in this expansion? There is more then ever casual content in game - battle pets, scenarios, focus on dailies, easy heroics, farming. Was it successful is different story.

[Seefer]

For you to think that people (or any significant chunk of people) do care is extremely egotistical.

No, for me to say people care about watching ME play would be egotistical, please look the definition up, for me to say that people care what Blood Legion does is pure honesty because REAL raiders not LFR Heroes watch videos put out by them or other top guilds to learn.

[Glorious Leader]

No, for me to say people care about watching ME play would be egotistical, please look the definition up, for me to say that people care what Blood Legion does is pure honesty because REAL raiders not LFR Heroes watch videos put out by them or other top guilds to learn.

They watch them for instructional purposes not because they are activelly hero worshipping blood legion. Hell even the guilds that do that are getting smaller and smaller in number. You're a dying breed.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 02:43 AM ----------

So you are saying that same amount of people would watch yours and mine guild doing LFR because they will support a good cause?
No one said hardcores are stopping subs - but you said none would care if all hardcore players left the game. I would say Blizz would surely care.
And where did exactly devs catered to hardcores in this expansion? There is more then ever casual content in game - battle pets, scenarios, focus on dailies, easy heroics, farming. Was it successful is different story.

No. I'm saying people who wouldn't normally care about watching blood legion or whoever will have their interest peaked if it's in the name of a good cause. I stand by what I said. Nobody (or next to nobody at any rate) will care if hardcores leave. Except the developers who have catered to them so hard this expansion. There is less actual casual content in this game (in so far as character progression and reward) than ever before. They've made the game a massive grind and made this current raid tier harder than ever and shoved everybody into lfr. It sucks.

[Seefer]

They watch them for instructional purposes not because they are activelly hero worshipping blood legion. Hell even the guilds that do that are getting smaller and smaller in number. You're a dying breed.

Which means people CARE, it has nothing to do with hero worship but they CARE what they do, and the reason we are a dying breed is because LFR heroes are too afraid to up their game and do real raiding! And please don't gimme that line about "lack of time" cuz my raid team is full of married, employed parents they just manage their time better.

[Glorious Leader]

Which means people CARE, it has nothing to do with hero worship but they CARE what they do, and the reason we are a dying breed is because LFR heroes are too afraid to up their game and do real raiding! And please don't gimme that line about "lack of time" cuz my raid team is full of married, employed parents they just manage their time better.

No they don't. If tmmrw Blizzard made an instructional video people would follow that video. they don't care about what the raid guilds do, they care about how to get the raid done. Big difference. Actually I'm kinda surprised the developers haven't done a better job of instructing players. Alot of bad information out there.

Your a dying breed because nobody cares to appeal to your sense of vanity and nobody shares that sense of vanity about clearing heroic bosses. They just want to have a good time with their friends.