1.3 million sub drop

[Deleted]

WoW is a casual game. PERIOD. It's success was being more casual than it's competitiors and being more accessible for casuals. PERIOD

Defeating all level appropriate content, maxing rep, maxing all professions and gaining all the best gear and enchantments for your character(s) are not things a casual gamer will do. You just partially repeated something I said earlier, which is that WoW became successful because it catered to both the casual and the hardcore. But merely having elements that appeal to casual players does not make a game 'casual'. WoW is as casual or hardcore as you want it to be.

[Deleted]

I think the problem with MOP was because it was not outland of northrend etc. It was a theme some people just do not like.

The intro quest leading to mop (the cutscenes for both factions) was really well done and they way the handled questing was fucking glorious. If TBC had this level of quality to its questing I would have enjoyed that far more.

I think for the next xpac we will get a burning legion as a trump card and if they at least do this level of quality in their presentation of content I think we could be onto a winner. I just hope we get some more dungeons and less gating via dailies they can burn in a fire.

Sorry but I can't agree with that. Questing in tbc had some extremely deep moments. In mists there's too much silliness and immersion breaking shit. At least for me.

Oh and don't forget, it's HORRENDOUSLY linear

[Deleted]

I agree with some of that. Especially the story/script/immersive aspects. Man nothing to this day compares to going through the black portal for the first time. It was great man you saw hellfire on the other side and it was like star trek or something. Their was a big nebula in the sky and the stair of destiny is soooooooooo huge on the other side. that was WOW. In mists you start on a ship and you jump down. weee...

Having said that I'm not sure you can recapture that. I think they tried to do that in mists and it largely fell flat. Well for me anyway.

You start on a ship and then you fly around 2 hours trying to get lucky enough to get a kill credited to you and try to kill the ship. Oh mist launch how absolutely stupid it was^^

[Glorious Leader]

Why schould they take it all away I didn't say that. I just think they schould remove LFR and well thats it, so that people might have a reason to do endgame in player organised groups.
flying mounts aren't bad.
Raid attunements while annoying, where removed with the sunwell patch, but where also something that people got together for to complete.

I think you overemphasize badge gear i mean 2 badge per heroic, and you needed 25-50 to get something it took a lot of time.
10 man raids where made into a good beer league feature with karazhan and in wrath all raids where available to be beer leagued.

and well now a days the color purple on gear is overrated. That heroic dungeons dropped purple gear oh well, it was a good reason to do them.

Not all quality of life features are bad but if the endgame ends up being a single player game because of them in a mmo well I am not surprised that they can't retain their customers.

Well lfr is taking something away still. Lfr is an amazing tool for SOME CASUAL PLAYERS. Players who can't commit to a raid schedule. players who raid at odd hours. Players play sporadically. They should be able to see the raids to. The problem with LFR is that it swallows up to many players who would otherwise be running raids if their was an appropriate raid format/difficulty for them. This goes back to beer league.

2 badge per heroic and 25-50 dungeons is still WAY MORE QOL than nothing. Which is what you got when IOQD came out unless you were in a raiding guild.

[Trassk]

Absolutely true. Kudos for the memories.
Yes I think they wanted to get a bit of that feeling but sorry, the outlands is a dark, grim, land litterally torn by war.
Much more fitting to the world of WARcraft n my opinion than any of the zones in mop.

sorry to pop your bubble there, but if saying warcraft needs more WAARRRR in it, then given the numbers that have left recently in this now war themed expansion, war isn't the answer to making the game good again.

[Deficineiron]

Non-GAAP revenue in the quarter for Online Subscriptions (the bucket that is primarily WoW) is down 22% year-on-year.

and you have to assume that that number may have been increased due to call of duty elite, if it grew.

22% decline yearoveryear could imply a net decrease in western subs of well over 500k year over year, possibly more. was this non-deferred?

as you note, the majority only means 1 more than 50%. they used that language a while back as well, but the numbers implied something like 30% of sub losses were western in that quarter.

[Glorious Leader]

Defeating all level appropriate content, maxing rep, maxing all professions and gaining all the best gear and enchantments for your character(s) are not things a casual gamer will do. You just partially repeated something I said earlier, which is that WoW became successful because it catered to both the casual and the hardcore. But merely having elements that appeal to casual players does not make a game 'casual'. WoW is as casual or hardcore as you want it to be.

They will if it's aimed for them to do it. They didn't merely have elements that appealed to casual players, they revolutionized the genre by focusing on the casual experience and not simple hardcores. WoW is as casual as the developers make it to be and that's the problem with mists. They made it to be less casual and casual players subsequently weren't engaged. Shock and surprise.

[Deleted]

sorry to pop your bubble there, but if saying warcraft needs more WAARRRR in it, then given the numbers that have left recently in this now war themed expansion, war isn't the answer to making the game good again.

War themed expansion?
No not really, that's what they told us but the juice here is not war, is how do the wise pandaren help us stop fighting each other.
As the French say... Fuck that.

[Trassk]

well duh you just quested your face off from 85-90 doing the exact same shit over and over again with less diversity than what they did in cata and less dungeons during the questing experience and then they ask you to do more of it over again? I don't get why anyone at blizzard thought hey man they've been questing from 1--90 lets give them more quests....

Blizzard also have done this thing since cataclysm of making wow's questing system feel completely lineal, even in mists, you can't progress though a zone unless you finish chains of quests, instead of like vanilla where hubs were open to you and allows you to explore and do things there.

Also, its a small nit pick, but something that bothers me about the quest reward system in mists is how they only give you 1 item, or maybe two if lucky, to choose from rather then a choice. This might seem inconsequential, but for me, just like the questing itself, it doesn't feel like I have 'choice' in what I can do or choose as reward. Maybe I want the leather pants instead of mail, it looks nice for roleplaying. Maybe I want the staff instead of the mace.

[Deleted]

well duh you just quested your face off from 85-90 doing the exact same shit over and over again with less diversity than what they did in cata and less dungeons during the questing experience and then they ask you to do more of it over again? I don't get why anyone at blizzard thought hey man they've been questing from 1--90 lets give them more quests....

Compared with classic,tbc and wrath. The questing experience also gave you very few choices, you had to follow a predetermined cause while levelling and to that with alts oh my.
at least after hellfire and zangarmarches you could choose where you where going to go next. Or in wrath you could choose from the start between the fjord and the tundra. You had a lot more freedom in choosing in which questing path you would take to get to max level.

[Glorious Leader]

War themed expansion?
No not really, that's what they told us but the juice here is not war, is how do the wise pandaren help us stop fighting each other.
As the French say... Fuck that.

God don't get me started on the fucking pandas. I am so sick of hearing go slow. I am so sick of being patronized by their supposedly old and mystic wisdom telling me and my side to STOP THIS WAR!!! as if their opinions on the matter should fucking matter one bit. Theirs only one thing that stops the war between the horde and the alliance and it isn't some fat panda telling me what's up. it's a bigger threat than that.. much bigger...

[Deleted]

Blizzard also have done this thing since cataclysm of making wow's questing system feel completely lineal, even in mists, you can't progress though a zone unless you finish chains of quests, instead of like vanilla where hubs were open to you and allows you to explore and do things there.

Also, its a small nit pick, but something that bothers me about the quest reward system in mists is how they only give you 1 item, or maybe two if lucky, to choose from rather then a choice. This might seem inconsequential, but for me, just like the questing itself, it doesn't feel like I have 'choice' in what I can do or choose as reward. Maybe I want the leather pants instead of mail, it looks nice for roleplaying. Maybe I want the staff instead of the mace.

I agree wholeheartedly with both of your points.

[Osmeric]

They will if it's aimed for them to do it. They didn't merely have elements that appealed to casual players, they revolutionized the genre by focusing on the casual experience and not simple hardcores. WoW is as casual as the developers make it to be and that's the problem with mists. They made it to be less casual and casual players subsequently weren't engaged. Shock and surprise.

I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. I think they THOUGHT they were making it more casual, with things like pet battles and the like, but the motivation for that was "here, do this stuff so we can keep making HC raid content that we personally like".

The core issue here is a dev team doing things for themselves (even if they cloak that in a layer of BS about "for the good of the game"), not their employer. There's a fundamental disconnect, and ultimately Vivendi has to be the one to put a stop to it. It's just a matter of how long they'll be willing to let things go before they realize they have to put their foot down.

[Deficineiron]

TBC released the most significant QOL features of any expansion to date. Crafting for gear options, heroic dungeons with *gasp* EPICS, badge and vendor gear for filthy casuals WHO FARMED POINTS IN DUNGEONS, flying mounts to get around and even the removal of RAID ATTUNEMENTS *gasp*.

worth at least noting that the 2.3 badge items might takea couple of weeks for a heroic-a-day player to farm a single item's cost, and the 2.4 items, (esp 150 badge items) represented a very substantial time investment, perhaps 30-45 hours in heroic dungeons or 7 kara clears.

[Glorious Leader]

I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. I think they THOUGHT they were making it more casual, with things like pet battles and the like, but the motivation for that was "here, do this stuff so we can keep making HC raid content that we personally like".

The core issue here is a dev team doing things for themselves (even if they cloak that in a layer of BS about "for the good of the game"), not their employer. There's a fundamental disconnect, and ultimately Vivendi has to be the one to put a stop to it. It's just a matter of how long they'll be willing to let things go before they realize they have to put their foot down.

How much more do they need to bleed? I think the problem is they don't recognize that the motivations are almost all the same across the board except for the tiny minority of HC players. Progress their characters in a reasonable fashion. Get reward out of the game. pet battles and brawlers club and all that is good I have no problem with it but trying to fit everybody into something is dumb. It doesn't work like that. It's good to offer those things but people want gear and progression of their characters in an environment that doesn't pressure them to perform or die where they can have a blast playing with other players.

[Deficineiron]

Compared with classic,tbc and wrath. The questing experience also gave you very few choices, you had to follow a predetermined cause while levelling and to that with alts oh my.
at least after hellfire and zangarmarches you could choose where you where going to go next. Or in wrath you could choose from the start between the fjord and the tundra. You had a lot more freedom in choosing in which questing path you would take to get to max level.

classic zones you could easily level up 4 toons or so witout repeating hardly any quests, between the 2 factions.

[Glorious Leader]

worth at least noting that the 2.3 badge items might takea couple of weeks for a heroic-a-day player to farm a single item's cost, and the 2.4 items, (esp 150 badge items) represented a very substantial time investment, perhaps 30-45 hours in heroic dungeons or 7 kara clears.

Which is still a vast improvement over vanilla and over other mmos at the time. Man try farming furbolg or argent dawn... Or the skin of the beast or the epic chest piece in Scholomance.

[Deleted]

God don't get me started on the fucking pandas. I am so sick of hearing go slow. I am so sick of being patronized by their supposedly old and mystic wisdom telling me and my side to STOP THIS WAR!!! as if their opinions on the matter should fucking matter one bit. Theirs only one thing that stops the war between the horde and the alliance and it isn't some fat panda telling me what's up. it's a bigger threat than that.. much bigger...

Yes it's unbearable.

[Trassk]

God don't get me started on the fucking pandas. I am so sick of hearing go slow. I am so sick of being patronized by their supposedly old and mystic wisdom telling me and my side to STOP THIS WAR!!! as if their opinions on the matter should fucking matter one bit. Theirs only one thing that stops the war between the horde and the alliance and it isn't some fat panda telling me what's up. it's a bigger threat than that.. much bigger...

the funny thing about the pandaren message is... it did nothing. Before mists was released, metzen said war was the enemy in mists, and we would have to look at ourselves and our actions having consequences because of what war caused, and from the start, I believed it would show this, knowing how the sha worked and what conflict caused in the lands...

But it didn't have any impact. The horde and alliance still faught, there was no grand realization from factions, lore characters or players, they still fucked around on pandaria, caused the sha to manifest, beat it up, and then carried on fighting. It was like having a trainer in a fat fighters club telling people they need to loose weight, presents them with a table of cakes, where the fatties begin to eat, and the trainer just stand there saying 'no, thats wrong... urm... stop that... urm...', until the tables empty.

the message of mists has been completely lost, because we are still warring, infact patch 5.3 is said to show war raging across lands, so what did anything we 'learned' in pandaria honestly do for the story?

[Osmeric]

Yes it's unbearable.

I see what you did there!