"Players rarely argue for less convenience." - Ghostcrawler

[lawow74]

Why would anyone aside from a masochist argue for LESS convenience? Do you force yourself to sleep on the ground, take only cold showers and eat uncooked food you have to scrape off the road everyday? Do you routinely open your window and scream into the night "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this electricity anymore!" ?

They want to believe that, unlike real life, the harder you strive towards a goal the better the reward will be, always and forever. Many of them are probably small and insignificant in their real life and know that no matter what they do, they will remain that for the rest of their days.

So they seek escapism into a fantasy world where they can feel like they're important and matter, and want the rules of that fantasy world to match their dreams of striving towards that goal and then being lauded as special and awesome for getting there.

And when that fantasy world does not match up to that and instead reminds them of their real life, they cry out against it.

(okay, I know that's probably a tiny minority of the actual reasons, but I could not resist taking a jab)

[Kanegasi]

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

I love the completely random number.

[Jokerfiend]

Or perhaps you are doing a terrible job at perception. Just because you see people complain on WoW forums, MMO-Champ forums, etc does not mean a lot people are complaining. For instance let's say wow has 8million people, 1million between various forums (for instance MMO has ~372k). Now if every single one of the 1 million people complained you would still only have 12.5% of the people complaining about this. Would that 12.5% be worth it to drastically change things back when the remaining 87.5% are content?

The problem is.. are the other 87.5% venting otherwise?

Working in the food service or the service industry in general, teaches you that, JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T GET COMPLAINTS, DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT'S GOOD OR PEOPLE ARE CONTENT. Most people, will take the loss, never come back, and move on.

This is flawed argument.

Seriously. Now, take the sub count loss. Sorry, losing millions players isn't content by any standard. Of course, you are going to use, mid expansion, old game, or whatever excuse you want.

So you can take roughly, 1-2% of the player base that is vocal and damn sure bet, that a lot of their guildmates, friends, or relatives have heard about their opinions. Will take into account said opinions. Might even agree with said opinions, but will continue to play.

I just don't get where this ideology comes from.

[Mosotti]

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

12 million would have left if you still had to run like an idiot until level 40, wait for hours to get a group for a dungeon, and never ever see the inside of a raid, not to mention killing a boss. Your head is living in 2005, install the updates...

[Jokerfiend]

12 million would have left if you still had to run like an idiot until level 40, wait for hours to get a group for a dungeon, and never ever see the inside of a raid, not to mention killing a boss. Your head is living in 2005, install the updates...

Then if was so bad, then. Why did people put up with it? So Why was it OK in 2005 and not OK, now... please explain?

[Itisamuh]

Then if was so bad, then. Why did people put up with it? So Why was it OK in 2005 and not OK, now... please explain?

People actually did complain about a lot of the inconveniences of the time, hence their changes. And also, as others have pointed out countless times, it had no real competition at the time and was still far more convenient and casual friendly than the little competition there was. Now that people have experienced better, it would be absolutely unacceptable to return to some of the old ways. On a forum so heavily interested in things being progressive, this should be fairly easy to understand.

[Lylandra]

Convenient doesn't have to mean "casual-friendly".

Since I started playing there have been a LOT of convenience-increasing changes, including:

- Paladin buffs that work for longer than 5 minutes and/or work on a group of people instead of being ST
- Hybrid DPS specs being made viable in numbers
- any other tanking class besides warrior was made "useful" for tanking instead of buffing/offtanking dat add
- Removal of buff reagents
- flying mounts
- several "must have for my class to work properly" talents being made baseline (Hello mage without evocation/instant AE)
- Druids getting a normal rezz
- Guild banks
- profession trainers who train *all* ranks in capital cities, no more LFG Uldaman each 5/10 levels of enchanting
- transmogrification
- the disenchant button which pops up once an enchanter is in your group

In fact, MoP in the beginning has been fairly casual-unfriendly compared to WotLK, besides the annoyingly easy heroic 5 mans. Dailygrind required you to play daily instead of having the choice when to to your rep/valor. And "normal raids" were beyond most previously DS raiding groups. I remember having a blue/green geared mage in our when we downed Halfus in Cata. And Naxx was a very easy entry-level raid. I remember the stoneguard mercilessly killing groups which formerly did DS10 HMs.

Those players who *do* wish for less convenience almost always talk about "casualcraft" and "LFLOL". I've, in fact, never seen anyone argue that paladins should be buffing machines again, that beartanks should be teddys again or that guild banks should be removed from the game.

[Normie]

Did you just write that GC ist not responsible for the direction of the game? If so, no point in argueing with you anymore. You've perfectly disqualified yourself.

GC is not responsible for the direction of the game. He's one of several senior people responsible for the direction of the game. However, he tweets more than the rest of them.

[brunnor]

Or they're just sick of it because they've been playing it for 8 years. Most games don't last a fraction of that time.

The amount of people who have been playing this game for all 8 years is probably really small. Saying that is the reason for losing 1.3 million is a bit sketchy.

[Deleted]

A small vocal minority has been complaining. The vast majority has not.

This is probably the true issue then. I think it's about damn time blizzard simply introduced an in-game voting/survey system for game changes.

[Seefer]

But he's not responsible for any of that other than his tweets.

He is responsible for the articles he writes on the WOW website.

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They want to believe that, unlike real life, the harder you strive towards a goal the better the reward will be, always and forever. Many of them are probably small and insignificant in their real life and know that no matter what they do, they will remain that for the rest of their days.

So they seek escapism into a fantasy world where they can feel like they're important and matter, and want the rules of that fantasy world to match their dreams of striving towards that goal and then being lauded as special and awesome for getting there.

And when that fantasy world does not match up to that and instead reminds them of their real life, they cry out against it.

(okay, I know that's probably a tiny minority of the actual reasons, but I could not resist taking a jab)

Again with the stereotyping and insulting of people who get into this game, I love how you people say it's us more hardcore players doing the insulting etc but it's really YOU.

[brunnor]

People actually did complain about a lot of the inconveniences of the time, hence their changes. And also, as others have pointed out countless times, it had no real competition at the time and was still far more convenient and casual friendly than the little competition there was. Now that people have experienced better, it would be absolutely unacceptable to return to some of the old ways. On a forum so heavily interested in things being progressive, this should be fairly easy to understand.

WoW isn't really losing players to other MMO's though. Other MMOs are about as low pop as ever minus the little burst they get when they go F2P. WoW is losing people to no games or other types of games it seems. That isn't a cry to bring those other types of games in to WoW, which they seem to be doing, its a cry to make their MMO worth playing over the other games again. There were plenty of good games that came out during WoW's life and each one would take a very minor group from WoW. I remember Aion hitting in Ulduar and thinking it would take tons for WoW cause it was a pretty good game. It took practically no one in the Q report. That is because people liked WoW more than Aion(and others).

WoW needs to go back to catering to the MMORPG market and stop worrying about trying to pick up people from Halo or Pokemon. Those types of people will always return to their type of game when the new one appears.

[MoanaLisa]

This is probably the true issue then. I think it's about damn time blizzard simply introduced an in-game voting/survey system for game changes.

Let players design the game? Thanks, but no.

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WoW needs to go back to catering to the MMORPG market and stop worrying about trying to pick up people from Halo or Pokemon. Those types of people will always return to their type of game when the new one appears.

The MMORPG market is full of free-to-play games, some of them quite good. The reason? MMO's generally have all been shrinking dramatically over the last few years. For the most part catering to the MMORPG 'market' is a losing hand since it's not getting any larger and in any case new gamers coming along are pretty much going to choose free over pay most of the time. I've been playing Rift the last few weeks and really in most ways the play experience is not that different from WoW. Except it's free.

[Itisamuh]

WoW isn't really losing players to other MMO's though. Other MMOs are about as low pop as ever minus the little burst they get when they go F2P. WoW is losing people to no games or other types of games it seems. That isn't a cry to bring those other types of games in to WoW, which they seem to be doing, its a cry to make their MMO worth playing over the other games again. There were plenty of good games that came out during WoW's life and each one would take a very minor group from WoW. I remember Aion hitting in Ulduar and thinking it would take tons for WoW cause it was a pretty good game. It took practically no one in the Q report. That is because people liked WoW more than Aion(and others).

WoW needs to go back to catering to the MMORPG market and stop worrying about trying to pick up people from Halo or Pokemon. Those types of people will always return to their type of game when the new one appears.

I don't outright disagree with anything you said, but I still think they'd shoot themselves in the foot to backtrack. You've got to keep in mind that far more people have quit playing than are playing now, regardless of their reasons for quitting. I'd wager that the majority of people playing now haven't played for more than two to four years. It's a lot easier to make people adjust to easy change than to make them adjust to hard change. I personally wouldn't care all that much if a lot of the things in the game went back to the old way, but a whole lot of people would.

[brunnor]

The MMORPG market is full of free-to-play games, some of them quite good. The reason? MMO's generally have all been shrinking dramatically over the last few years. For the most part catering to the MMORPG 'market' is a losing hand since it's not getting any larger and in any case new gamers coming along are pretty much going to choose free over pay most of the time. I've been playing Rift the last few weeks and really in most ways the play experience is not that different from WoW. Except it's free.

Why isn't it growing though? Why is it deemed that the MMO market is dead? The MMO market has gone down some, but that doesn't mean it can't go up if the game play is up to par. Yeah, people will go try the F2P games if they are interested in MMOs. That doesn't mean they are going to stay with the first one they try if they like it. They will probably ask around for the "best" MMORPG to try it out. If WoW was amazing and wonderful and everyone loved it, you bet your ass those people would come try out WoW. If you are a gamer and enjoy playing games, you know they cost money, the price is a deterrent but it isn't an obstacle that can't be overcome by great game play and immersion.

[Seefer]

I don't outright disagree with anything you said, but I still think they'd shoot themselves in the foot to backtrack. You've got to keep in mind that far more people have quit playing than are playing now, regardless of their reasons for quitting. I'd wager that the majority of people playing now haven't played for more than two to four years. It's a lot easier to make people adjust to easy change than to make them adjust to hard change. I personally wouldn't care all that much if a lot of the things in the game went back to the old way, but a whole lot of people would.

Been playing 8 years myself, the only things I really have issue with is cross realm everything ESPECIALLY LFR, it took something that took coordination and knowing your class and completely bastardized it, it has nothing to do with the gear for me and everything to do with the fact that it put the next to last nail in the coffin of the community and guilds (final nail is queuing for arenas) and completely took everything I love about this game folded it up and wiped their ass with it.

[brunnor]

I don't outright disagree with anything you said, but I still think they'd shoot themselves in the foot to backtrack. You've got to keep in mind that far more people have quit playing than are playing now, regardless of their reasons for quitting. I'd wager that the majority of people playing now haven't played for more than two to four years. It's a lot easier to make people adjust to easy change than to make them adjust to hard change. I personally wouldn't care all that much if a lot of the things in the game went back to the old way, but a whole lot of people would.

I'm sure there would be tons of flak about changing things back, but that is no different than they got when they changed it to where it's at. Yes, a lot more people have quit WoW than are playing it currently, but it is possible to bring those people back if what they quit over is fixed or changed. Past WoW players know how good WoW is, that is the best market to aim at really, bringing back old players cause they'd be willing to give it a try again, most likely, because they did enjoy the game before.

While they may or may not shoot themselves in the foot changing back, it's not like things are going great currently. They need to try something to move it in the right direction.

[Seefer]

Why isn't it growing though? Why is it deemed that the MMO market is dead? The MMO market has gone down some, but that doesn't mean it can't go up if the game play is up to par.

Exactly, MMOs were not a big thing when WoW came out, they were considered "nerd games" like Dungeons and Dragons........if they stopped fucking around and doing stupid shit and got innovative again they could come off life support, but right now they are just milking it until it bleeds it's last drop, like they don't even give a toss about the game anymore.

[Syran]

This is probably the true issue then. I think it's about damn time blizzard simply introduced an in-game voting/survey system for game changes.

Blizzard has its own developers and leads, it's their job to design a game. People should be kept in the loop, sure, but ultimately the biggest decisions should not be made by them.

[Deleted]

A small vocal minority has been complaining. The vast majority has not.

"Vocal minority" is a buzzword used by Blizzard to justify not having to listen and react to every complaint on the forum. Fact is only a small fraction of the WoW population is "vocal" about anything on the forums or on Twitter, be it positive or negative. So no matter what the argument is and whether it is in favor of or against Blizzard's ideas, they can always discard it as coming from a "vocal minority".

A lot of people have been complaining about the game being too casual/easy/convenient. And yes, while they may seem like a minority when compared to the game's total population, they certainly aren't a minority when simply looking at the vocal part of said population (people who post on forums and Twitter).