Casuals > Raiders, when it comes to content - misconception

[Deleted]

Just to clear up a couple of things about EVE:

Guys, guys, EVE Online is a niche game. Its objective never was to draw large crowds because of its complicated mechanics. So it is bound to be kept in a niche.
BUT the difference is that its dev costs are much lower (static ship models and planet are cheaper to design than armor, raids and stuff), so they are pretty happy with their niche placement.
(On a related note: I finally gave up and bought EvE yesterday. )

Yes, it is a niche game. No, it's dev costs are not necessarily lower. Those ships aren't static - plenty have moving parts, every weapon or drone has it's own animated model, and every module has a visual effect. Then there are the planets, lots of them, each one unique. Then there's all the beautiful, beautiful background art.
Oh, and let's not forget the regular, free expansions. Trust me, CCP pumps a crapload of money into EVE.

Namely, Eve is a space-based economic and territorial conquest PVP game with no raids and almost no PVE content in general.

News to me, seeing as how I do nothing but PvE in EVE. Solo or in a group there's plenty to be found.

On top of that, Eve was a flop when it released. CCP bought it back from Simon & Schuster for pennies on the dollar, and spent years slowly building an audience from complete obscurity. It took almost 3 years just to hit its first 100k subscribers, and has absolutely nothing in common businesswise with a big hyped-up hit like WoW.

EVE was a flop because of its competition at launch: Earth & Beyond. Another space game, that was considerably more accessible and gave a more direct sense of involvement with the ship. E&B had the mass appeal - but not the content, so it died a deserved death. Guess where all the space-loving gamers went?

It really is unfair of you to dismiss people using EVE as an example when it's pretty clear you know next to nothing about it. Besides which, just because CCP is using a different business model than Blizzard, doesn't mean their continued success can just be ignored. If Blizzard were to give their customers the same kind of attention and care that CCP do, they'd likely do even better.

[nekobaka]

No, the subs started going down after they made some retarded tuning to heroics and raids in early Cata. They actually tried to reverse WOTLK's philosophy and it backfired on them.

Which was what, faster grinds and gear catch up. Yup Cata followed that and even gave non raiders a vastly increased progression rate compared to WotLK and the pitiful amount of badge from a daily heroic which would be the design change that bit the developers back in the butt requiring them to make it far more grindy in MoP. Only a minority saw ICC and a minority of that saw LK. Reversing WotLK philosophy would be to implement attunements and remove gear catch up.

T11 25 man was no harder than ICC 25 man and personally felt about 20% ICC buff with prenerfed T11.

I wouldn't call them lazy, I think they put way too much effort in things that people didn't want.
Yes, I know, people kept asking them to update the entire world over and over. But those people didn't knew that it would be so much effort and that takes away from other stuff.

It was an effort to cater to the altohalics and new players and in the end the developers screwed up with how much development time they spent and did acknowledge it as the reason why a lot of non-raid content was so pitiful for things like dailies which was a part of the same team that did the old world revamp. But nope instead of blaming Blizzard for their screw ups, players blamed the raiding "hardcore" who had nothing to do with the design choice to revamp the old world. Now the hardcore altohalics on the other hand do share some blame.

No. decline started with Wrath actually (it was only not recognized because wrath was released in China at the end, so subs went up again. If you see before it it was decline all the way)

One of the posters pulled all the stats in another thread. US and EU was dropping in WotLK and Asia off set it. Subs would have gone down regardless in Cata. Nothing has been official said that the developers could have kept those numbers and the developers expected it. There has been a lot of overturn from the games launch including in WotLK and only now in last quarter was the first time the developers have said that the overturn has started to stabilize meaning a lot of overturn at the end of Cata and MoPs launch.

I'm fairly certain they were talking about BT and sunwell.

I think it was only those who cleared Sunwell and a lot of players like to quote it out of context to make reference to the economy and turn it into a 99 vs 1 thing except the 1% in WoW usually stay out of general discussion and it is really the 99% fighting among themselves.

[Tomana]

Cata was hardly updated too. I was very surprised by how lazy Blizz were. Maybe they bit off more than they could chew.

The loss of the world itself didn't help.

Totally agree, the resources were spent on old world rather than on end-game didn't help. But the 5-man tuning certainly played a role as well.

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Yes, it is a niche game. No, it's dev costs are not necessarily lower. Those ships aren't static - plenty have moving parts, every weapon or drone has it's own animated model, and every module has a visual effect. Then there are the planets, lots of them, each one unique. Then there's all the beautiful, beautiful background art.

You cannot, even in the worst nightmare, compare it to the effort needed to model bosses, raids, and character in a "standard" MMO.
EVE is basically models (and modelling a vehicle is MILES easier than a humanoid) and background.
That does not mean it's not a good game of course

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Which was what, faster grinds and gear catch up. Yup Cata followed that and even gave non raiders a vastly increased progression rate compared to WotLK and the pitiful amount of badge from a daily heroic which would be the design change that bit the developers back in the butt requiring them to make it far more grindy in MoP. Only a minority saw ICC and a minority of that saw LK. Reversing WotLK philosophy would be to implement attunements and remove gear catch up.

Raiding was not the issue, 5-mans were. The transition from LK to Cata was far too brutal in that respect.

[Deleted]

You cannot, even in the worst nightmare, compare it to the effort needed to model bosses, raids, and character in a "standard" MMO.
EVE is basically models (and modelling a vehicle is MILES easier than a humanoid) and background.
That does not mean it's not a good game of course

That would depend on how many of those models were actually new rather than the same old thing either rehashed or straight cloned from previous iterations. You have a fair point, though - particularly on modelling the vehicles vs. humanoids.

[Osmeric]

Raiding was not the issue, 5-mans were. The transition from LK to Cata was far too brutal in that respect.

I think there were some people who just do 5 mans, who saw what the Cata 5 mans were like, and said "I'm outta here".

I think there were some people who wanted to raid, but saw what the 5 mans were like, and went "the raids are going to be harder than that?!" and then gave up.

And I think there were some people who made it through into T11, found the raids were unenjoyably difficult, and stopped.

I think there were also those who were on the borderline, and had guilds collapse out from under them for these reasons, and friends depart, and then left themselves.

[Dormie]

And your source for that is?
I'm not saying he is right, but his statement has as much support and reasoning as any "Subs went down because of X!"-argument.

It's not like anyone has facts, we have to go by info we have. Large amounts of people don't leave over dungeon tuning. Not that the tuning was even bad, people were crying for nerfs before they even got out of blue gear.
As far as guessing why subs have fell, judging be the data WE have, the whole new philosophy Cata brought is the biggest indicator, considering the real sub decline came following its release.
People try to dismiss that, and then turn it around saying that WoW would have lost more subs if it didn't change. But that lacks even more proof than what I said..
It gets dark because the sun goes down... Oh nevermind, correlation is not causation, silly me...

Equally as delusional as

Actually not. What I said has logic behind it. Calling Cata/MoP non-casual defies logic, since they are more casual than WoW has ever been(FACT).

They started diping in wotlk bro.

That was normal end of expansion decline, like you will soon be seeing for MoP.

Of course it did. People expected something better than even WOTLK (hence the sub increase just before Cata) and all they got were stupidly tuned heroics. Look at the sub graph, it's a looooong fall up to 4.3, where easy 5-mans and LFR stopped the decrease for 2 quarters.

They were only stupidly tuned for stupid people. The problem isn't that they're overturned, it's that the playerbase is so bad/lazy that they no longer have patience for any mandatory content that isn't complete faceroll. LFR only stopped sub drops temporarily because it was something completely new to the game, that alone got old players to resub at least a month just to check it out.

[Dormie]

No no, I completely agree with you.
The moment they made dungeons and raids much harder it caused a massive decline in subs.

That had a very small affect. People are always bitching about dungeon difficulty tuning, most people don't quit over it. That was a very small part of what they changed after Wrath.

[h1ko]

In the end, multiple things have cause sub losses. Dungeons, raids, LFR, PVP, all of it caused sub losses. Blizzard at this point is trying to cater to everyone which is working and not working at the same time. Complaining and saying that one solution is better then the other isn't going to do any good and in the end, Blizzard is going to do what they want. If they want to keep LFR cause "casuals" like it, then they are going to do that. If they want to go the "hardcore" route, then they will do that. Blizzard at this point is going to do what they can to keep subs and keep money rolling in and we are all here just to see what happens next.

[Grimble]

Hey! Hey, get back here with those goal posts!

Excuse me? It's not "moving the goalposts" when I said most of this in a giant bullet point in the very first post I linked. The fact that you mysteriously think Eve is a valid comparison to WoW even though the two have almost nothing in common isn't my problem.

The entire reason for comparing WoW to other games in the first place is to determine whether its subscriber loss is an alarming fuckup that should be taken as a sign of design failure, or a natural part of the game's lifecycle. Pointing out that one oddball indie PVP game (which took 3 years just to break 0.1m subs) went longer without decline doesn't tell us a fucking thing in answer to that question.

That is explicitly why I compared WoW to "only the most successful market-leading games" in my linked post. I could have easily compared WoW to a bunch of flops like WAR/AOC/SWTOR, or a bunch of also-rans like DAOC/COH/LOTRO, all of which declined much sooner than WoW, but those wouldn't be very constructive comparisons either, even though all those games are much more similar to WoW than Eve is.

For the record, there's at least one other weird indie MMO, besides EVE, that also went past six years without a decline in users. It wasn't blurbed on the front page of MMOdata though, so you don't know about it. Since it has even less in common with WoW than Eve does, I'm not going to bother bringing it up either.

[HeedmySpeed]

That is explicitly why I compared WoW to "only the most successful market-leading games" in my linked post. I could have easily compared WoW to a bunch of flops like WAR/AOC/SWTOR, or a bunch of also-rans like DAOC/COH/LOTRO, all of which declined much sooner than WoW, but those wouldn't be very constructive comparisons either, even though all those games are much more similar to WoW than Eve is.

For the record, there's at least one other weird indie MMO, besides EVE, that also went past six years without a decline in users. It wasn't blurbed on the front page of MMOdata though, so you don't know about it. Since it has even less in common with WoW than Eve does, I'm not going to bother bringing it up either.

So you left out other MMO games because they don't agree with your argument.
And you're saying no matter what Blizzard did they would have the same subscribers left they have today?
You still believe the design choices had no impact on subscriber turn out because the game was meant to go down this way?

If this was all so true why did they even bother flipping the "nerf everything for the mouth breathers" switch?

This is really hard to grasp my head around that you blame the sub loses at age because other akin MMO's did the same.
Ok fine, age has all to do with it and it's completely 100% out of the devs hands. They could've added farting magical donkeys to the game and the same thing would have occured.
Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking?

[PrairieChicken]

That was normal end of expansion decline, like you will soon be seeing for MoP.

Actually wrath decline started since Naxx was launched and for entire Xpac

[Duronos]

Even I raided during BC and I had minimal time to play the game, I never believed the 1% shit. I was a casual, I never progressed past Tier 1 (Kara, Gruul's, MK) but I still raided.

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Actually wrath decline started since Naxx was launched and for entire Xpac

It leveled out during Wrath... Decline did start but it wasn't noticeable. When ToC came along, that's when the game started getting stale for me, I could skip Ulduar, a tier I was working towards and I just felt fucked? They always talk about, "Everyone should see the content", well why couldn't I see Ulduar? Because you could out gear it with 5 mans... It just pissed me off.

[worsthitmanNa]

Even I raided during BC and I had minimal time to play the game, I never believed the 1% shit. I was a casual, I never progressed past Tier 1 (Kara, Gruul's, MK) but I still raided.

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It leveled out during Wrath... Decline did start but it wasn't noticeable. When ToC came along, that's when the game started getting stale for me, I could skip Ulduar, a tier I was working towards and I just felt fucked? They always talk about, "Everyone should see the content", well why couldn't I see Ulduar? Because you could out gear it with 5 mans... It just pissed me off.

You didn't see Ulduar because you didn't pug it... You could out gear it but the hard modes were still their. Its honestly your fault.

[Duronos]

You didn't see Ulduar because you didn't pug it... You could out gear it but the hard modes were still their. Its honestly your fault.

Nobody was raiding it after ToC, literally there was no reason too so people just skipped over it.

[worsthitmanNa]

Nobody was raiding it after ToC, literally there was no reason too so people just skipped over it.

There was titles, mounts, and upgrades. I saw pugs form in trade on my server even during icc and toc. There were still pugs for naxx from time to time(till this day I have no clue why). If not why didn't you start you own pug? Ulduar dropped 239 gear on heroic which was better than what dropped out of normal toc. Their were still reasons to run it. I was running it while trying to get a shield because the one in Toc never dropped. Heroic even with Toc gear was a bitch Btw. I mean people still ran the ruby sanctum instances for the mounts so Its hard to believe there were no pugs. Were you on a low pop server?

[Duronos]

There was titles, mounts, and upgrades. I saw pugs form in trade on my server even during icc and toc. There were still pugs for naxx from time to time(till this day I have no clue why). If not why didn't you start you own pug? Ulduar dropped 239 gear on heroic which was better than what dropped out of normal toc. Their were still reasons to run it. I was running it while trying to get a shield because the one in Toc never dropped. Heroic even with Toc gear was a bitch Btw. I mean people still ran the ruby sanctum instances for the mounts so Its hard to believe there were no pugs. Were you on a low pop server?

Well, pugging wasn't really a thing for Ulduar or Naxx on my server. ICC yes.

[worsthitmanNa]

Well, pugging wasn't really a thing for Ulduar or Naxx on my server. ICC yes.

You missed out if you made it through ulduar heroic. Icc would have put you to sleep felt like the game was in slow mo honestly.

[Duronos]

You missed out if you made it through ulduar heroic. Icc would have put you to sleep felt like the game was in slow mo honestly.

Oh don't worry it did.

[GuyClinch]

This is really hard to grasp my head around that you blame the sub loses at age because other akin MMO's did the same.
Ok fine, age has all to do with it and it's completely 100% out of the devs hands. They could've added farting magical donkeys to the game and the same thing would have occured. Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking?

Funny stuff. I agree.. Let's face it - while making your game to hard for everyone is a mistake. Making your game faceroll isn't really a solution either. People burn through the content too fast - and they don't make any social connections. Its not at all important that everyone sees all the content either. You do want some content for everyone though - you need a modicum of challenge to keep people interested but not too much. Its tough but the Blizzard of old nailed it.. THe new guys they said screw it - make it faceroll. Try any of the sub 60 dungeons that were made in cata..

Cata was not the bashtion of difficulty that people are making it out to be. It had some road blocks put up in a half hearted attempt to slow the casuals from burning through their limited content.. that's about it..

[Grimble]

So you left out other MMO games because they don't agree with your argument.

If I chose to factor in every derp random MMORPG in history, the average age-at-decline would drop to a lot less than six years, making Blizzard look like huge geniuses just for doing as well as they have so far. While that would be a fun rhetorical point in terms of sticking it to people like you, it would also be intellectually dishonest. Therefore I instead chose to compare it to its direct predecessors, highly successful mainstream games with lots of cash behind them, relative to their time.

If you have an alternate theory, one that explains why World of Warcraft was supposed to follow the same business cycle as Eve Online until those damn stupid developers fucked it up, feel free to elucidate. I'll listen. It's going to have to be a pretty outlandish theory though, given that Eve is a quirky indie that flew under the the radar for years, while WoW is a heavily-hyped behemoth.

But you don't really have one, do you? You just looked at the front page of MMOdata, saw that blurb about Eve still growing after all these years, and wanted to go "neener needer you're wrong about a thing" without taking even a second to consider the context of what the fuck you were talking about.

And you're saying no matter what Blizzard did they would have the same subscribers left they have today?
You still believe the design choices had no impact on subscriber turn out because the game was meant to go down this way?

While design choices can obviously impact subscriber retention, in all but the most extreme cases it's a much slower and more distant impact than grandstanding forum dipshits seem to imagine. Furthermore, while it's certainly possible to chase your customers away if you piss on them hard enough, it's much more difficult to make design decisions that magically keep people from just plain getting bored and quitting after playing the same game for years and years and years.

It's even more difficult and less realistic to expect any particular design decision to attract lots of brand new players to an old game that they've already been ignoring for years. If they couldn't be won over back when WoW was on South Park and the hype was at its peak, they're sure as hell not going to be won over just because you nerfed raids, or buffed raids, or whatever. They've never played the game and that shit means very little to them.

If this was all so true why did they even bother flipping the "nerf everything for the mouth breathers" switch?

Every successful game makes adjustments over time in order to maximize the length of time the average user remains subscribed. But it's a gradual process that involves a lot of experimentation and feedback, and it's almost impossible to tie net subscription changes to particular design decisions when you're an outsider with no internal numbers except for a quarterly report of total subs. If they also published the length in months of the average WoW subscription, armchair quarterbacking would be a hell of a lot easier.

Your average dipshit forum kid though, they don't want to hear any of that fucking shit. They just wait for the particular point when outgoing finally exceeds incoming and total subscriptions go down for once, and immediately blame whatever the fuck is going on at that specific moment that they happen to dislike.

For all we know, the length of the average subscription has gone up, and the only reason they're losing subscribers is because they can't find millions of new WoW players to shovel into the system ever year the way they used to. There are, after all, only so many people in the world who will ever give a fuck about World of Warcraft.

The only way you can even begin to guess at why a particular game is losing subscribers is to compare its trajectory to that of other similar games, and in that regard WoW is doing just fine.