"Players rarely argue for less convenience." - Ghostcrawler

[DrSteveBrule]

Players rarely argue for anything period.

The forums do in fact represent a small portion of players.
Just because the majority of forum goers are in support of an idea or change it doesn't mean the rest of the WoW community is.

And for those arguing that Blizzard has more data so Blizzard knows best: are you fucking high?
They have misinterpreted their data since time and memorial, it's been proven over and over again.
They don't always make the best choice.
If you can't see that then you're a blind follower and there's not point in arguing with a lap dog.

[Otimus]

So apparently people on the forums only account for a small minority of the playerbase? Well then why on earth did blizz listen to the forum complainers in 4.1 and decide to nerf all the heroics...

That wasn't them just listening to that.
That was them noticing over a million players leaving, and asking them why.

As has been said. People don't complain or praise, really. They either play or stop playing.

[Frogged]

No. My point was Blizzard listens to the community when the data backs them up. In the case of the Cata heroics, the data showed that people were dropping out of dungeons and dungeons were taking hours to complete along with people unsubbing from the game over it. That's why they made those changes.

And yet, they never once made any polls or asked anyone I know about whether or not they liked the dungeons. They had data, read a vocal minority on the forums, and made a guess.

Side note: Hello Destil! I don't know you but I'm slightly excited.

[cwowtbang]

What irks me is when people say vocal minority. Vocal would have to indicate sound, but when I read I don't hear anything. Anyway, can you all stop pulling statistics out of your ass? People are complaining for a reason.

[But I Hate You All]

What irks me is when people say vocal minority. Vocal would have to indicate sound, but when I read I don't hear anything. Anyway, can you all stop pulling statistics out of your ass? People are complaining for a reason.

Some are complaining just to complain

[Woceip]

So apparently people on the forums only account for a small minority of the playerbase? Well then why on earth did blizz listen to the forum complainers in 4.1 and decide to nerf all the heroics...

You assume that is all they went by. You assume too much.

[Deleted]

What about the 4 million players that left WoW but don't bother to complain?

It was mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a blue post (which I can't find) that the most common reason people put for leaving is "lack of time"

It's really not hard to see why changes are made or why features are added when this is the reason people are giving...

And yet, they never once made any polls or asked anyone I know about whether or not they liked the dungeons. They had data, read a vocal minority on the forums, and made a guess.

You don't think they have ways of recording how / what happens in raids / dungeons out side of polls or talking to people you know? How wonderfully naive.

[Trassk]

Vocal minority with a big mouth is not the same as the content majority.

however, that doesn't mean the devs can just ignore those that speak up, usually its the few who do speak up that could have something worth hearing about.

[cwowtbang]

Some are complaining just to complain

I understand that. People need to pick up a thesaurus and a dictionary and comprehend what the fxk they are writing.

[Frogged]

Vocal minority with a big mouth is not the same as the content majority.

however, that doesn't mean the devs can just ignore those that speak up, usually its the few who do speak up that could have something worth hearing about.

I agree completely. I hate when people dismiss an idea because a smaller population supports it. As if it makes the idea any less good or valuable.

[melodramocracy]

That wasn't them just listening to that.
That was them noticing over a million players leaving, and asking them why.

As has been said. People don't complain or praise, really. They either play or stop playing.

I find it extremely hard to believe that Blizzard gets the bulk of their feedback about game conditions when it's essentially too late (ie, someone filling out a very non-specific questionnaire during the unsubscribe process). No smart company would wait till then.

Forum responses most certainly are paid attention to, and I'm quite sure Blizzard does read unofficial forums as well as their own.

To assume that forum majorities do not reflect the viewpoints of player majorities is essentially like stating that polling doesn't work.

[Otimus]

I've never understood comments like this. WoW grew in subscription numbers by a very large amount during vanilla and TBC. Admittedly, it was the shiny new toy in vanilla, but it kept climbing despite how few people were actually raiding and the even lower number of people who did Naxx or Sunwell. Yet, somehow, there's an argument out there that that doesn't work, despite the evidence to the contrary. Naxx was huge, 15 bosses. And yet, what, less than 1% of the population, something like eight or nine thousand players ever killed Kel'Thuzad at level 60...out of over six million. Yet somehow, they found the time to devote to developing it and only gained subscriptions. I'm not saying it has to go back to that way, but I just don't find that argument valid.

During Vanilla, TBC, and WOTLK, though, the game didn't really "grow", it just had massive amounts of people coming and going. That doesn't really happen as much anymore. Blizzard has said as much. It's had more previous subscribers who no longer play, than people it has playing total.

One reason for that is that once you cap out, doing most anything was massively inaccessible for the average payee, for various reasons, until WOTLK. That became marginally more accessible, and dungeons became very accessible. Then in Cata, they had conflicting ideas on that, and that caused problems. Now the problem is the game just flat out isn't a revolving door of players anymore, and they're having to do their best to try and keep people to stay, rather than relying on the revolving door while placating the hardcore more than the casual.

[Endus]

I agree completely. I hate when people dismiss an idea because a smaller population supports it. As if it makes the idea any less good or valuable.

That's not why they dismiss it. It's a point that's brought up when that small percentage says "look, everyone on the forums agrees". They're making an argument about the popularity of the idea, but they're incorrect about how widespread that popularity is. That's why people dismiss it by pointing out the majority of players are content, defusing that appeal to popularity entirely.

If your idea is good and stands on its own merits, you wouldn't have been bringing up how many forum-goers support it, anyway. It would stand on its own merits.

[Otimus]

As fair a point as that is, my real point is more along the lines that I think the average person is simply more calm like this. I don't see a big reason to go scream from the rooftops over a video game. The vocal minority comments are true for not only the people who are upset, but also the people who are happy. I only really float around the MMO-Champion site because it's a convenient source of interesting news stories, otherwise I wouldn't even be in this thread. And I almost never visit the WoW forums. I don't think I've posted there in years, literally.

I don't always think Blizzard's statistics will tell the full story either, considering there's people like me that don't really care to bring out the torches and pitchforks for a video game. I'll still do LFR and I won't tell anyone off because of the items they got. I'll probably one day cancel my subscription with no fanfare. Where as, if they made changes I find more positive, it's more likely to keep me playing. Someone made a fair point about the 4 million or so subscribers that simply stopped playing. Not all of them went quietly, but many of us will.

It doesn't put me in the majority by any means, but I think it's also a little unfair for people, like ones in this very thread, to simply proclaim numbers like 1% or vocal minority being the only ones against it. I felt much more rewarded when things were harder to come by and when the rewards (to me) seemed more interesting. And I'm sure there's others that log in quietly and will one day vanish without an uproar.

If what Blizzard has said about having more former players total than current, the amount of people who just "no longer play" is probably closer to 16+ million now, rather than 4 million. Think about that for a moment.

[melodramocracy]

I agree completely. I hate when people dismiss an idea because a smaller population supports it. As if it makes the idea any less good or valuable.

As always:

complaints I happen to disagree with: useless qq
complaints I happen to agree with: important, and worth looking into. (ie, bliz plz fix)


one person leaves: no one cares, good, can I have your stuff, you'll be back, cry moar
one million leave: weeks spent theorizing why the game is dying, and how to save it via the forums.

[killidan]

This has to be the most infuriating tweet I have ever seen from Ghostcrawler

Either the community managers are doing an atrocious job, or the designers are pretending complaints don't exist

I mean, players have been complaining about WoW being more and more casual-friendly since WoTLK, complaining about its accessibility and convenience. This story really begins with the implementation of LFD towards the end of WOTLK, then flying mounts in cataclysm, and finally LFR. Dozens of LFR threads are made weekly, how come players rarely argue for less convenience?

Casuals ALWAYS cry and beg for convenience. They start with "Oh I have a job, I come home tired, I have N kids, I only have one hour per night, I'm not unemployed blabla" and then they go on saying "I pay $15 and me wants 20minute dungeons, free epics, wanna see all the raids, total faceroll, wait epics not enough, now me wants free legendaries, instateleport, LF dungeons, LF raids, LF your mom", and the crying and begging goes on and on.

Casuals destroyed WoW. The "rot" in WoW development team goes far deep and WoW cannot be rescued without a radical amputation and a painful recovery. If they continue inaction, WoW will bleed subs until dead. If ever made, WoW2 will be simply more of the same of Cata/MOP crap, unless Blizzard takes bold action.

There are millions of hardcore gamers that once populated those now empty servers. There are lot of nerdy kids who enjoy games more than facebook-deep. Blizzard's foolish attempts to get non-gamers play WoW failed miserably. Blizzard will fail unless they start tailoring their games for gamers.

[Frogged]

Now the problem is the game just flat out isn't a revolving door of players anymore, and they're having to do their best to try and keep people to stay, rather than relying on the revolving door while placating the hardcore more than the casual.

That's a rather large assumption. If we're all playing the game, mine is that they took the short-term pay over the long-term investment and are now paying dearly for it as their game is slowly realized as being one-dimensional and effortless.

If your idea is good and stands on its own merits, you wouldn't have been bringing up how many forum-goers support it, anyway. It would stand on its own merits.

I don't think I've ever brought up how many people support my ideas when I talk about them. That tends to be from the realm of the casual.

[Belisaurio]

Endgame yes, but for who? The 300k people that raids normal/heroic or the other 8 million that dont?

Its true that not making new dungeons gives them alot of extra time working on raids sure, but in the current state of the game, I dont think they would spend as much dev time on raids as they currently do, if they removed LFR.

LFR allows alot more players to see and experience the raids, therfore they can justify to spend more dev time on it.

Yeah, they don't count LFR or Normal modes, but what I was saying it's the same.
Doesn't matter the people that can try to fight your boss, you want to create the best boss ever. This can be seen in vanilla, started for the first raid (MC), and looking only in design and mechanics, it was the worst raid ever. the second one, BWL, has unique models and some interesting fights, they tried another mechanism that you need a special equip from another raid and a profession to create it. And this with all vanilla raids: improve quality and quantity.
The same can be said with other expansions, they created a new isle, with hardest bosses ever and new unique models for all of them, and only a low % of people tried to fought.

I mean, doesn't matter the population in raids for devs to create new content. They always looked the best for endgame content.

[cwowtbang]

I think the game is a slight mess. They are trying to find a balance between what needs to happen development wise and trying not to cave to the demands of their player base. I'm not sure where I stand in all of this. Just one example... I do think on some level blizzard has no idea what they want for some classes. Warlock for example: ablilities were "Not as intended", but some how certain abilities made it to live as intended. Hunters and their cool-down changes... etc... Its a bit confusing, but knowing what you want is half of the battle.

[Otimus]

Casuals ALWAYS cry and beg for convenience. They start with "Oh I have a job, I come home tired, I have N kids, I only have one hour per night, I'm not unemployed blabla" and then they go on saying "I pay $15 and me wants 20minute dungeons, free epics, wanna see all the raids, total faceroll, wait epics not enough, now me wants free legendaries, instateleport, LF dungeons, LF raids, LF your mom", and the crying and begging goes on and on.

Casuals destroyed WoW. The "rot" in WoW development team goes far deep and WoW cannot be rescued without a radical amputation and a painful recovery. If they continue inaction, WoW will bleed subs until dead. If ever made, WoW2 will be simply more of the same of Cata/MOP crap, unless Blizzard takes bold action.

There are millions of hardcore gamers that once populated those now empty servers. There are lot of nerdy kids who enjoy games more than facebook-deep. Blizzard's foolish attempts to get non-gamers play WoW failed miserably. Blizzard will fail unless they start tailoring their games for gamers.

If you consider the average WoW player to be "hardcore" based on their participation in endgame raiding or Arena or RBG participation, there's probably never been "Millions" of "hardcore gamers" in WoW. Maybe one million-ish.