Blizzard Explains the Entire History of World of Warcraft

[Deleted]

Are you sad that he didn't say "all of those haters who told us we ruined the game with LFR because they didn't like the fact that lower-end gear was now purple colored? Yeah they were totally right, what the hell were we thinking, those armchair game designers totally know more about designing our game than we do!" or somesuch?

I dont know what you are talking about

But they went as far as to praise the Garrison system...in a epic way.

[HawtFist]

Thats not nearly as common as you think. Even the F2P are pretty casual if you dont spend money.

What it is, is that the MMO BEFORE WoW weren't as casual and WoW came out and was thee most casual, and almost everything after was at that same base casual level.

I think I get it now. You wish they made games for you. Every time a game you like becomes less for you, it bothers you. I get that. I went through that with Warhammer 40k (the tabletop game, before 7th and 8th made it decent again and they lowered their prices somewhat) and when DoW3 came out I was appalled.

But here's the thing, Toppy - you can't insist that you're right and the devs and ~1-5 million people are wrong and terrible. And frankly, they can't insist that you are wrong and terrible. Because we are talking about a subjective opinion of what is fun in a certain genre of game. The developers do what they do to make their company money and give the experience they think will entertain the majority of the players in order to keep making that money. And the players will play what they subjectively feel is a fun/good game. We can talk about what objectively makes a good game, to some degree, but when it comes time for people to pony up money for something to have fun with, then everyone's opinion is about equal. when more people have an opinion that something is fun, then you have to expect them to cater to that.

I hope, for you, that they make more games that you find fun. That are complicated and hardcore in the way you like. I hope it to the same degree that I hope they'll bring back games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance and those console Balder's Gate games so I can play with my wife again. But in the end, you can't say that the devs and the casuals are doing something wrong for creating and having fun with the current content. It's just not a good argument.

[HawtFist]

This just at a side note..

/snip

This is good, I'm feeling this. As a casual player hoping to transition to semi-hardcore (which is why I found and read stuff on MMO-C) this really spoke to me. I feel like the vast majority of the community treats the hardcore players like gods whose word should be law and like they are super special in every way just because they are super special at playing a certain facet of a game. And that's silly, to me. It's like my local softball league basing all the rules, how the field is set up, what equipment is used, and so on, entirely off what the MLB players are saying about the game.

[Deleted]

While it is really silly that devs listen to that small minority. Actually the hardcore gaming community is nothing but adding toxicity against the normal player community. On the other hand we casual gamers pay their content. And then these guys even dare to ask to remove casual gamer content as like LFR or LFD because these special snowflakes feel they lost their "exclusivity".

I mean.. when will they actually accept that it is THEM who are carried by a majority who never play their minority gameplay, be it rated pvp or mythic raids?

Who is the parasite here?

It is not the casual gamers. With having one matchmade raid difficulty compared to three guild group difficulties.

You are not listening to the problem

Anonymity

Queues with random people we will never meet again

Constantly being grouped with random people we will never meet again.
No "server communities"
No more knowing the entire server, meeting the same people, knowing all the guilds of the server.

Yes.
Queues bring convenience and fast grouping. But they also destroy the community.

We need to see the pros and cons of one system.
I know the "old ways" will never come back.
But we need to see the good and the bad of one system.

[RagnorZ]

This just at a side note..

Explain WOTLK which was wow's peak popularity, you know where casual gamers used to get off there arse form a semi organised group and raid (because LFR didn't exist).

[Toppy]

Explain WOTLK which was wow's peak popularity, you know where casual gamers used to get off there arse form a semi organised group and raid (because LFR didn't exist).

WotLK had some of the most casual raids of all time. Naxx and Trial were both hilariously easy and puggable (honestly still the two easiest raids we've ever had). Ten man ICC was also very easily puggable.

[Toppy]

Ok, let us see the pro and cons:

Pro:
- Million of players play dungeons and see the raid content

Cons:
- Some organized players miss "community".

Well.. i am all for million of players playing the game, you know? Instead of some "community" players that want LFD and LFR removed.

You realize that WoW's biggest rises in community numbers were during periods of no LFD and LFR right? I myself like LFD and LFR, just pointing out your argument is completely wrong.

[Deleted]

Ok, let us see the pro and cons:

Pro:
- Million of players play dungeons and see the raid content

Cons:
- Some organized players miss "community".

Well.. i am all for million of players playing the game, you know? Instead of some "community" players that want LFD and LFR removed.

Too much convenience makes you feel dead inside.

At least thats how i feel everytime i queue for LFR or LFD....i feel dead inside.

All im doing is grouping with random people i will never see again and on top of that we are not even facing a decent challenge. Its a roflstomp.
So there is neither an oportunity to make social bonds (because the content is too easy) nor it is a oportunity to meet familiar faces.

[RagnorZ]

This is good, I'm feeling this. As a casual player hoping to transition to semi-hardcore (which is why I found and read stuff on MMO-C) this really spoke to me. I feel like the vast majority of the community treats the hardcore players like gods whose word should be law and like they are super special in every way just because they are super special at playing a certain facet of a game. And that's silly, to me. It's like my local softball league basing all the rules, how the field is set up, what equipment is used, and so on, entirely off what the MLB players are saying about the game.

You should just ignore internet trolling and get stuff done.. join premade groups to get m+ stuff done, add tanks and healers you liked playing with to your friends list, join a guild like a 1 or 2 day a week heroic raiding guild. Use open raid or join one of the discords like the friendship mount one.

[Onikaroshi]

This is good, I'm feeling this. As a casual player hoping to transition to semi-hardcore (which is why I found and read stuff on MMO-C) this really spoke to me. I feel like the vast majority of the community treats the hardcore players like gods whose word should be law and like they are super special in every way just because they are super special at playing a certain facet of a game. And that's silly, to me. It's like my local softball league basing all the rules, how the field is set up, what equipment is used, and so on, entirely off what the MLB players are saying about the game.

So much wrong in one post though.... like seriously

The only 100% true thing about the whole picture is

-Casuals are the majority
-hardcore are the minority

if you take it piece by piece

-casuals pay for the hardcores tokens
can't be backed up, in fact, in our casual heroic guild the only one who pays with tokens doesn't even raid. This entire thing is up to each person, some casuals have millions of gold because that's their things, some hardcore players have pennies because they don't care.

-hardcores don't pay to play they buy tokens
even if this were true (its not) that would mean every hardcore actually won blizz an extra 5 bucks per month, win win

-casuals are the ones who buy mounts and pets
everyone buys mounts and pets.... hell, if you really want to play that game, hardcores are the ones who buy server/faction/race changes, not really true either as EVERYONE buys them

-casuals run social and normal guilds
and? also throw heroic and some mythic guilds in there because you can totally have a 1 night a week casual mythic guild

-casuals are the ones who pay the devs
really? everyone pays their sub in one way or another, if you didn't have people paying with token you wouldn't have people buying tokens....

-hardcores play a lot of hours a day
casuals can play a lot of hours a day too, same person who doesn't raid, spends more time online then anyone else in the guild, honestly it only depends on your life schedule

-hardcores get 3 organized difficulties
completely contradicts the point in the first part about casuals running normal mode guilds. Hardcores only get one really, normal is never touched, heroic is a pushover for them, so mythic is the only one they get

-add nothing useful to the normal player community/are toxic
wow, kind of generalizing there, I've run into just as many toxic people calling themselves casuals as the opposite, people are who they are, doesn't matter what they consider themselves.

-hardcores dominate the development
... you realize they create heroic raids and then base everything around that? Heroic is easily a casual raid level. The mythic version takes very little in the means of resources.

Dungeons are first created at a heroic level as well and then adjusted, M+ once again, very little in the way resources to do.

y'all need to also define your version of "casual" because its pretty damn broad term, it could literally describe Joe the Pet Battler all the way to Jimmy the 2 day a week heroic raider.

[RagnorZ]

WotLK had some of the most casual raids of all time. Naxx and Trial were both hilariously easy and puggable (honestly still the two easiest raids we've ever had). Ten man ICC was also very easily puggable.

Normal Antorus is also super easy though!

[Onikaroshi]

Normal Antorus is also super easy though!

Both normal and heroic were extremely puggable, hell most normals and heroics of all raids since they changed it in wod have been extremely puggable for the casual raider.

[Deleted]

Learn about product lifecycles.

*shadowpunkz sheds a tear*

I teached you well my son. Im proud of you

Only thing missing is the posting of the actual legendary graph

[Toppy]

Oh please. Do you want to tell me you do not know the difference between coincidence and causality, and do you want to pretend that an older game has the same lifecycle rise as a newer game?

Your argument is wrong, as you act as if WoWs growth period had anything to do with the missing existence of a group finder.

Learn about product lifecycles.

Your argumentation is literally this:

During the growth period of the tree, there was no squirrel.
When the squirrel appeared, the tree stopped growing.
Remove squirrel so the tree could grow again!

You were the one arguing that LFD and LFR somehow was connected to player growth and retention.

All I did was point out how that doesn't match with the numbers, for LFR especially.

[Count Zero]

The majority of the sub decline since peak player counts in Wrath was actually quite steady and not "massive" all at once. The only outlier is WoD brought a shit ton of people back at release who didn't stick around. Until they stopped reporting sub numbers.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...on-Subscribers

If you level out the huge sub increase at WoD launch down to the usual bump in numbers during a launch, the sub count loss is actually quite a smooth down graded hill, not uncommon for a game this old. Far less people leave over "changes" then do just because they've been playing for 13 years and got bored.

WoW's sub losses over the years were generally on par with or actually better than the subscription mmo industry as a whole.

As in, other games lost as many or more subs as WoW, percentage-wise in the years we have data for.

No narrative on WoW's sub losses have ever made sense, considering this fact.

[SirBeef]

The devs, and in special Mr. Hazzikostas sit in a hardcore filter bubble, believing their game should be catered to their own bias only.

LFR and the dungeon finder are the most successfull ways to form groups in World of Warcraft. Millions use these tools every day. Asking devs to balance to benefit competitive or guild organized players only, is like asking the government to rig taxes to benefit the wealthy. Catering to the organized guild raiding crowd is nothing but populism, based on a focus onto a few only, which fit best to the bias of the game director, and cry loudest.

I mean, if Mr. Hazzikostas ever should wonder why millions buy the expac, but cancel the sub after a few months, he should ask himself whom the start of an expac mainly caters to.

Mr. Hazzikostas should think about the question where he is different to a populist like Donald Trump, as he, like him, caters to his own crowd only, no matter if they are just loud criers or the real majority.

Swing and a miss. If he only catered to his hardcore crowd all queuing would be removed, long ass attunements that required guilds would be back, PUGging would be nearly impossible. All the QoL changes that made what was once only available to the hardcore groups would be gone and only available to them again. This is not the case, and I would argue his influence has made all aspects of WoW more accessible to the majority casual player-base.

- - - Updated - - -

You still act as if the squirrel is responsible for stopping the tree growing.

What would the numbers have been if they did not add LFD and LFR?

Fact is, that after LFD was added, the numbers still rised.

Fact is, that short after LFR was added, the number dropped way slower than before.

Fact is, the game started to decline in the first patch of Cataclysm, when everything got harder. Both dungeons and raids.

WoW has always lost a tone of players each day/week/month since launch. It just happened to be gaining more than it lost until the end of WotLK. It started to decline then, picked up a tad during Cata then began declining. If massive losses throughout it's lifespan were not happening there would be now way it had over 100M accounts.

- - - Updated - - -

WoW's sub losses over the years were generally on par with or actually better than the subscription mmo industry as a whole.

As in, other games lost as many or more subs as WoW, percentage-wise in the years we have data for.

No narrative on WoW's sub losses have ever made sense, considering this fact.

Any one trying to pinn down a development decision to sub losses in general is idiotic. For every drop there are thousands of different reasons people left. Some may be game changes, but I doubt it was ever the majority. The declines in the numbers from peak line up almost exactly with a typical product lifespan model. Meaning the longer it's out the less interest it will garner until it is over. It truly is a nothing to see here topic.

[Vynestra]

WoW's sub losses over the years were generally on par with or actually better than the subscription mmo industry as a whole.

As in, other games lost as many or more subs as WoW, percentage-wise in the years we have data for.

No narrative on WoW's sub losses have ever made sense, considering this fact.

Ontop of that wow is making more money than ever before.

Sub #'s don't matter if the bottom lines number is higher.

[Onikaroshi]

Ontop of that wow is making more money than ever before.

Sub #'s don't matter if the bottom lines number is higher.

You have to wonder though how it affects other games. Like we know that a good part of the reason wow makes a good amount of money is tokens. That 20 bucks for the token goes under the WoW column in the ledger. What if that person uses that token to buy say... OW? Does that mean that OW sales look 20 dollars worse? Now multiply that by all the blizzard balances you know those tokens are filling up. It's all going to actiblizz anyway so it really doesn't matter, but I wonder how wow would look without tokens and if the sales of other games would look higher.

[Magnagarde]

They've shown that they've learned from their mistakes in WoD through the way they've handled the Order Halls and the way missions will work in BfA. Actions speak more than words and in that regard, we don't need Blizzard telling us all the time that their garrison system didn't work as intended. We know it, they know, they've cut their losses in WoD to work on Legion and they performed admirably well.

[Thetruth1400]

I understand LFD was some of the factors that contributed to ending the feeling of server comunity but god I don't miss spamming trade chat for 30 minutes when my friends weren't around.

Agreed, I don't mind it for it making groups easier, but they could have implemented it a lot better. First, they could have made it just limited to the servers we were on, just a feature that makes it a lot easier to find the people besides spamming trade. If that wasn't enough, then the next step could have been to link 3-5 servers and see if that was enough. Instead they linked battlegroup servers which are 25 servers together from the start, which killed the sense of community right away.

I can say with almost 100% certainty that I probably have never seen the same LFD people after the one run we do together; they're just faceless names in a crowd, not people who you can make any connection to, which really kills the feel of community and sense of belonging within a group that you could befriend over time.