Is WoW always going to be like this?

[Akka]

WoW is "dying" primarily because it is a 10 year old game.

I've seen the "age" argument used since late Vanilla (yes, late VANILLA). Sorry if I can't take it seriously anymore.

That, combined with the fact that it continues to carry a subscription fee, and that there are far more options available when it comes to good quality MMOs on the market, means that there will be more people leaving than resubs or new people coming in. Other considerations are periphery concerns at best.

I doubt that the subscription in itself is really a problem. If you really like a game, paying 15 bucks a month is really nothing. Apathy and lack of interest are, IMO, much more probable suspects.

[miffy23]

Well first thing to do is to change lfr gear to be rare, since color means more than ilvl.

This is one of those things that I have repeatedly stated would be good.
LFR should not reward epic gear. No matter the ilvl.

There needs to be this base setting of "reach max level, get your good blues, get rewarded with epic gear for actually playing PVE/PVP endgame" again.
Why should a new player care about normal/heroic gear having better ilvl or higher numbers? MAKE IT FREAKING PURPLE AND TAKE THEIRS AWAY.

[nekobaka]

For better or for worse, whether you like MoP or not, it has been stagnant - and i'm not talking about sub numbers. Or the content per se, for it has been excellent. But as Preach illustrates very well in the video, and I and others have described in this thread, there is very little fresh blood coming into raiding.

Raiding is the heartpiece of WoW, and the casual approach with LFR, while looking great and flashy on the surface, is slowly corroding the essence of PVE.
There is nothing wrong with LFR per se as an "easy, casual activity for everyone" - but it acts as a very tight fishing net that lets almost nothing through to the "real" PVE endgame, being normal raiding and beyond.

I would argue that Flex is the casual approach to raiding while LFR is the non-raider approach to raiding especially when LFRs main target audience was players not interested in raiding.

[Akka]

Well as far as LFR saving raiding, thats a paraphrase from something that the lead producer of WoW actually said in an interview regarding LFR. He pretty much said that Blizzard could not continue to devote resources to developing content that such a small percentage of the playerbase actually got to utilize. The implication was that Blizzard would not have continued developing raids without LFR, or a similar solution to make raiding more accessible than it was at the time, in place.

And AGAIN, this was about MoP, after two whole expansions of the "new design philosophy" - which is precisely the philosophy which is hated by the people you're arguing with.
So AGAIN if anything it's proving your opposite number's argument - *I* am saying that the "old design" had no problem with raiding, supplying me with facts that points that the "new design" caused raiding to fail is just furthering my point...

[Dormie]

The way I see people not 'seeing' the content is it is good, as there is still something for them to play for. In BC I only got up to SSC. It's not the games fault, I could of gone all the way to Sunwell given enough time. But TK-Sunwell served its purpose to me as something to work towards.

[nekobaka]

Well as far as LFR saving raiding, thats a paraphrase from something that the lead producer of WoW actually said in an interview regarding LFR. He pretty much said that Blizzard could not continue to devote resources to developing content that such a small percentage of the playerbase actually got to utilize. The implication was that Blizzard would not have continued developing raids without LFR, or a similar solution to make raiding more accessible than it was at the time, in place.

Still waiting on a source that says specifically that as the one I found says it differently to the tune of more resources leading to bigger raids.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...he-Daily-Blink

LFR justifies the creation of more raid content when millions of players are able to see content. Only a few thousand people actually saw Kel'thuzad, but millions saw Deathwing. The reason Mists of Pandaria is starting with 18 bosses and adding larger raid tiers than we have had previously is because many players are going to see the raids through LFR.

Blizzard got more resources by pulling resources away from five mans as the developers intended to shove five man players(non-raiders) into LFR in order to keep them busy. This later prove to have been a mistake and a regret around the time 4.1 came out. WoD is seeing the return of resources going back to five mans and due to the team being even larger might have some dedicated artists to making dungeons.

[Akka]

The way I see people not 'seeing' the content is it is good, as there is still something for them to play for. In BC I only got up to SSC. It's not the games fault, I could of gone all the way to Sunwell given enough time. But TK-Sunwell served its purpose to me as something to work towards.

Exactly.
I didn't see AQ40 nor Naxx in Vanilla. I didn't see Sunwell in TBC.
Yeah I bitched, yeah sometimes I was frustrated, but it was the "good" frustration : the one which draw you back to the game and makes you want to play and see more and pushes you to do things and improve - and, through all that, cause you to HAVE FUN, the better kind of "fun", the one that makes you feel you accomplished something game-wise.

Starting from WotLK, frustration was more about being annoyed than being required to improve - success was guaranteed, so instead of becoming a prize, it became an expectation, and so it being denied was irritating instead of motivating.
At the same time, the "fun" became staler and shallower, the same difference than between a restaurant and a McDonald. Getting things because everything gives a "reward" regardless of what happens, is just not as enticing as actually managing to succeed to earn it though gameplay challenge.

But the entitled spoonfed crowd prefer to put its head in the sand and imagine some kind of ghostly oppressive police trying to put down casuals out of spite, instead of being able to acknowledge that a game is simply more fun in the long term when it requires you to - gosh - PLAY instead of faceroll your keyboard.

[Thunderball]

Exactly.
I didn't see AQ40 nor Naxx in Vanilla. I didn't see Sunwell in TBC.
Yeah I bitched, yeah sometimes I was frustrated, but it was the "good" frustration : the one which draw you back to the game and makes you want to play and see more and pushes you to do things and improve - and, through all that, cause you to HAVE FUN, the better kind of "fun", the one that makes you feel you accomplished something game-wise.

Starting from WotLK, frustration was more about being annoyed than being required to improve - success was guaranteed, so instead of becoming a prize, it became an expectation, and so it being denied was irritating instead of motivating.
At the same time, the "fun" became staler and shallower, the same difference than between a restaurant and a McDonald. Getting things because everything gives a "reward" regardless of what happens, is just not as enticing as actually managing to succeed to earn it though gameplay challenge.

But the entitled spoonfed crowd prefer to put its head in the sand and imagine some kind of ghostly oppressive police trying to put down casuals out of spite, instead of being able to acknowledge that a game is simply more fun in the long term when it requires you to - gosh - PLAY instead of faceroll your keyboard.

QFT. But you wont be able to explain that to anyone who didnt try that. And that's the vast majority of people who play right now.

[brok3nh3lix]

WoW is "dying" primarily because it is a 10 year old game. That, combined with the fact that it continues to carry a subscription fee, and that there are far more options available when it comes to good quality MMOs on the market, means that there will be more people leaving than resubs or new people coming in. Other considerations are periphery concerns at best.

This, blizzard has stated to their investors (who lying to could cause a whole mess of legal issues), that they are not seeing significant increases in the rate of player loss, but rather they are seeing less new players as time goes on. They have always had a constant churn of players, just there is less new players coming in. Among other reasons mentioned above an a few others, people fail to realize that wow is well past its peak in market awareness saturation or brand awareness saturation, Its peak in the area happened back some where around BC, maby wrath. This brand/market awareness is the % of people who are aware of the product. Most every one in the US/Europe and wows main markets will at least know that wow is a video game, probably know its online in some way, and that it involves a lot of time. These people have generally made the decision to play or not, and the amount of available people they could possibly attract new to the game will diminish over time as it is inverse to the amount of people who are brand aware. No amount of marketing will have a significant effect at this point in that regard. Marketing at this point is aimed at reminding people who have left that the game is here, in hopes they might want to come back. To expect them to keep the same number of new incoming players the same as BC or Wrath is ridiculous and unfounded. Player retention rates havn't changed dramatically, and its also ridiculous to think that after nearly 10 years that there would not be players who simply move on, no matter how good the game is. If they didn't make many of the changes they had, and stayed stagnant in the BC era design philosophy, they likely would have far fewer subs than they do now (though we cant accurately measure this because it is not the case, just as we can not accurately say that they would have more subs now if they had for the same reason).

add this to every thing else above, such as aging player base with new priorities, market shifts such as the influx of high quality, F2P mmos. Regional changes such as Asian markets where the profit model isn't even the same, and they have games that are not available here that are also popular competing with wow. Its death by 1000 cuts, not a few big ones, and its inevitable. I find it amazing that they have the player base they still do while still using a sub based model in their primary markets, after this long of time. People point to LoL and its huge numbers, but there they count every one who logs in once in a month or what ever, and there's no cost to that player to only log in once a month, for wow, the cost is the same as if they logged in every day, not to mention its unclear how they count people with multiple smurf accounts, which again, costs them nothing.

[Saxtorph]

I hate this argument....

Yes, subs have gone down. No one, even Blizzard, can say EXACTLY why. Is it because the expansion packs is "the worst ever?" Is it because there are dozens of other MMO's out there that pull subs away? Is it a change in the population of players where they can't play anymore due to family or other personal obligations? Has the MMO market changed? Is it any combination of any of the above? Or maybe a completely different reason that we can't see?

Stop point at an expansion you don't like and blaming the sub drop on it. It might be a contributor to the sub loss, but so could a dozen other things.

It's because that's the easy conclusion for people that have no empirical data, but somehow think they are experts. Correlation does not imply causation. It's a big concept, I know. I'm sure when subs continue to go down throughout WoD the know-nothings will still be crowing the same old line, "X ruined WoW." It truly is amusing sometimes.

[Remsaa]

To OP,

Do you want accessibility or a challenge?

Heroic is no joke and has better gear. WoD will introduce Mythic mode for even more of a challenge.

When defeating Heroic Garrosh you get a cinematic not available to anyone that did him on other modes.

Sure you can do a LFR and see a toned down version of the bosses and experience the environments but being able to beat Heroic, sit in the gear with that high of an ilvl with a title that tells people you didn't do it the "easy way" still set you apart from all the people you are complaining about. Also those very same people are what keep this game alive and thriving.

The better question is not "Will WoW always be like this" but "Will there be people always bashing others for how they play it".

[Deleted]

tbh without the millions of casuals there would never be any new content, no new raid no new expansion, blizzard basicly trys to keep the majority paying and give them some small stuff like lfr to do, theyre paying for the content of the hardcore players. Its simple as that, as much as i hate all the things that blizz changed, they just did it for the money of course but in the end its also for the survival of the game, the game youre playing.
Does anyone think blizz would pay hundreds of people for only maximum 500000 subs, no way. They would probably release only one raid a year and that would be one of bad quality made by a couple of people that were useless on some project that pays for the company.

[Lolvanish]

What the fuck did i just read

[nekobaka]

Versus what? Having to farm resistance gear? Or do you mean an unnecessarily long attunement chain?

I don't understand how there's any more or less effort required than before. All they did was improve the game and elitists like yourself can't handle it.

Hey lets gut five man content and shove everyone into LFR for a long term grind instead of making raiding alternatives long term viable then end up regretting trying to shove players into something they dont like and return to providing five man content and LFR getting kicked off its pedestal.

[Octania]

not a big fan of lfr, too many friends that i recruited to the game leveled up to max lvl, did the current raid content in lfr/ some normal bosses and then went "ah okay so thats it, i played through the game" and quit. there is no real carrot on a stick that gets you to keep going, to keep trying to improve in order to see that infamous instance that your buddies told you about. That's what got me hooked during classic/tbc ... now i just keep playing for whatever reason.

[Kazmodius]

I don't care! Are you telling me a player that does NOTHING can complete 99% of content in this game? And there are still no World social interaction? Did Blizzard said anything to counter this in the future? Im not that well informed about things atm....

No, because raiding doesn't compose 99% of end game anymore. As for doing LFR, gear in there is worth crap it's only another level to let everyone ''raid'' and see the whole game they pay for, while still being completly clueless about it. Then you have other player that does Flex, Normal, HC those are the real raiders.
TDRL LFR is not a raid but mostly cut scene set into 25 man heroic dungeon of 3 bosses per ''wing''.

[Ronduwil]

That, on the other hand, is absurd reasoning. LFR didn't save raiding at all, it actually destroyed it. If you were smart enough to write the second sentence, you can, no doubt, understand the problem of making raiding basically the only relevant content of the game and pushing everyone in it (and, in the process, removing everything in raiding that was actually raiding, so it's just as much solo and casual content, instead of having actual separate parts of the game for solo and casual content).

I do understand the problem with that. However, I wonder whether you would be happier with the alternative of making five man dungeons the end game with transmog gear challenge modes as the new end game content for former raiders. I don't think you understand that that's what a world without LFR would wind up looking like. I would personally be overjoyed. The people actually calling for LFR to end? Not so much.

[Akka]

I do understand the problem with that. However, I wonder whether you would be happier with the alternative of making five man dungeons the end game with transmog gear challenge modes as the new end game content for former raiders. I don't think you understand that that's what a world without LFR would wind up looking like. I would personally be overjoyed. The people actually calling for LFR to end? Not so much.

The game managed to reach its peak, both in sub and in quality, before LFR (and even LFG). If there is problems with removing them, then they are problems which have been ADDED with the "new design", not problems that actually needed to be fixed...

[Ronduwil]

if lfr was at least tuned like current flex there would be a severe uproar by the shitters (@mods: i'm sorry for the choice of words, but i just can't think of something better fitting)

I feel sorry for you that the players in every LFR run that you've participated suddenly developed bowel problems mid-raid. Personally, words like "inexperienced," "new," "naive," and "undergeared" come to mind. Everyone run has a troll or two and sometimes even a belligerent player, but once these guys are outed they're typically kicked. Sometimes they slide under the radar if the run happens to go smoothly, but those cases are not so bad because, well, the run went smoothly.

thinking they could afk their way through all the content

This is a myth. No one AFKs though content. Seriously, just try to gear that way. For one, if you aren't in the room when the boss fight starts you don't get loot, even if you're present, taking AoE damage, and even healing yourself. I know because I've been in groups where the tank couldn't wait two seconds for me to zone in so I popped into the instance 2 seconds into the fight. It sucks. Second, even if you manage to be in the room, as soon as there's a wipe (and just about every run these days wipes once or twice) the AFKer is the first to be kicked. Third, even if there is no wipe, there are some people who are simply sensitive to the issue and will immediately out an AFKer at the earliest opportunity. They're promptly kicked. So by all means queue for 45 minutes, AFK win loot, be kicked, queue again into the same fight, AFK, be kicked, and repeat over and over. Tell me how quickly you get loot that way.

but they would die down after some time (let's say 2-3 months) and we would be left with a superior community!

That old Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark song, I Was Only Dreaming, pops into my head.

"survival of the fittest" is what's missing this game. do something to improve yourself or stay at the bottom without having anything achieved at all.

This game is not an experiment in Darwinism. That exercise is best left to academia. Blizzard's goal is to make money, not to naturally select the "fittest" players for their game. You've seen The Last Starfighter one too many times:



- - - Updated - - -

Please list the "far more compelling" content. Because it just sounds like hyperbole.

Sure. Here's the list:

• Heroic: Hellfire Ramparts
• Heroic: The Slave Pens
• Heroic: Mana-Tombs
• Heroic: Sethekk Halls
• Heroic: Black Morass
• Heroic: The Shattered Halls
• Heroic: The Botanica
• Heroic: Magister's Terrace
• Heroic: The Blood Furnace
• Heroic: Underbog
• Heroic: The Escape From Durnholde
• Heroic: Shadow Labyrinth
• Heroic: The Steamvault
• Heroic: The Mechanar
• Heroic: The Arcatraz
• Heroic: Auchenai Crypts

- - - Updated - - -

The game managed to reach its peak, both in sub and in quality, before LFR (and even LFG). If there is problems with removing them, then they are problems which have been ADDED with the "new design", not problems that actually needed to be fixed...

I'm still not finding your argument that the game reached its peak when almost no one raided as a compelling argument that exclusive raids were crucial to its success. To be honest the conclusion I would draw from that is that they should scrap raids altogether and focus on making content that players will actually enjoy.

[Dormie]

I'm still not finding your argument that the game reached its peak when almost no one raided as a compelling argument that exclusive raids were crucial to its success. To be honest the conclusion I would draw from that is that they should scrap raids altogether and focus on making content that players will actually enjoy.

TBH I have a hard time believing noone raided to begin with. It's what Bliz would lead us to believe with their stats. But anyone who played back then knows that raiding/PuGing was quite popular, even if it was just Kara.