The problem is raiding

[Deleted]

Ok. Sure. That's one theory.
How about this one: Raiding has always been a niche thing and it hasn't had any discernible effect on WoW subs.

You present a lot of numbers. Are you actually basing those on something real or are they mostly pulled out of the hat? If you have actual proof for that 10-15% decline of raiders per expac since Wrath, then feel free to present it, otherwise it's just as credible as my theory above.

If you cannot see how much resources and development focus is being put into raids in WoW you must be blind. Even in vanilla when just like 5% of people played raids Blizzard still heavily focused on designing raids more than anything else. Look at Ion currently or the infamous Afriasabi, Kaplan, they are all raid die hards

[ReD-EyeD]

I want a game that has the launcher like LoL

Said no one ever. I would rather not have a launcher made in Adobe Flash.

[Xaredis]

That's the primary reason I think wow subs have been in decline more or less for 5 expansions straight(since wotlk). Let me explain though. Back in wotlk raiding was still this sort of new and exciting thing for most people who were playing the game. It honestly felt like everyone was into it back then. It seems like a huge % of people still playing wow started during wotlk or earlier. The problem is i think the % of those people who still want to raid on a regular basis is deceasing by about 10-15% each exp since then. Bliz has tried a few things to get people to stick around for other end game content with the only partial success I would say being M+ dungeons. Its just not good enough though. So many players who come back for new expansions now are only doing it to dust off some of their older characters and see the sights for a while then leave again.

The other problem is the degree to which the community cries when Bliz provides any other way besides raiding to get good gear. Why are people so obsessed with raiding being the only good way to get gear in this game? Without progression people won't play. ie The game desperately needs other ways to get gear even if its something as easy as warfronts. Which is why they are bringing in a new currency for 8.1. People need to give up the entitlement. Let Bliz explore new forms of end game content that go right alongside raiding and dungeons. Its time. The amount of time being put into raids by the dev teams needs to be cut in half so they can actually polish these other things well enough that people might find them to be fun and worth doing. Raiding is going to be the anchor that sinks this game if it doesn't find a way to innovate itself.

In WoD when they dropped the ball on all other forms of content raiding along allowed the expansion to skim by with the lowest amount of subs it's ever had and it still had over 3x the amount of players as FFXIV the only other subbed based mmo in the same style as wow. I quit FFXIV which is a game you literally cannot enjoy if all you do is raid (because there is a 1/3 of the amount of raids here then in WoW) and everyone I know who still plays its basically raid logs.

Blizzard even if they dropped their raid design team could not create enough content for those who don't raid and retain their subs vs. the 90% of players they lose from normal - mythic raid when they completely drop designing it. Warfronts are great, Island expeditions could use some improvements but I like the idea of them, and mythic + is successful but none of these things need to award the best gear in the game in order to be meaningful.

Honestly blizzard should work on professions as a means to improve the gear you would received from the previously mentioned types of content and maybe have crafters need certain BoP mats from Islands that you'd only gain if you not only won the scenario but went out of your way to gather from some hidden cave or rare spawn. And other cool concepts so that players who don't mythic or heroic raid can slowly but surely by the end of the tier work improve their character close if not up to the ilvl of Heroic - Mythic. With Tfing/Wfing sometimes making the time you spent more valuable than normal.

All in all WoW's is still the most populated mmo during some of its worst expansions ( with a sub model ) and the only consistent positive when its at it's worst or best is that it objectively offers some of the most accessible yet challenging raids ever. Legion which was wow's most successful expansion since WotlK provided more raids with less gaps between them than ever before and just about proves that one of wow's greatest strengths is it's raids. But hey theres a ton of MMO's that provide more content outside of raiding than WoW does and I heard their all really successful I'll list a few for you to try out: BDO, ESO, GW2, and FFXIV all supersede wow when you remove raids from the equation and their popping off.

[HCLM]

If you hire less devs for raids.. you can hire more for dungeons, lore and quest. 0 game dev knowledge required.

Yes, you clearly have no idea whar you are talking about. Game dev studios are hiring enough people to complete their vision. If they would need less focus on raid they would just reduce the raid team, the devs wouldn't be assigned to other teams because it is simply not necessary.

Btw. U should switch to gw2 you cam buy best gest on ah for almost free

[Bhorin]

Yes, you clearly have no idea whar you are talking about. Game dev studios are hiring enough people to complete their vision. If they would need less focus on raid they would just reduce the raid team, the devs wouldn't be assigned to other teams because it is simply not necessary.

Btw. U should switch to gw2 you cam buy best gest on ah for almost free

Why? I am not the one complaining. I merely pointed out the flaw in what you were saying.

[ONCHEhap]

Raiding is the purest form of cooperation in a MMORPG though

It's a massive group content where players have fun and cooperate together to defy the odds.It's litterally the essence of MMORPG gameplays,and the endgoal of most RPGS : getting together with you companions at the end of your journey to defeat the toughest foes yet,foes that will not fall without you and your companions working as one

It also gives non-raiders something to look up to and move forward to

[Jastall]

Raiding was in the game since Classic, how could it possible have been a new thing by the time of Wrath.

To be fair, raiding became accessible in Wrath even if it existed beforehand.

Still, I totally disagree with the OP. Raiding is the one thing that's actually special about this game. Most everything else -PvP, small group PvE dungeons, questing, etc.- is done better elsewhere, especially questing which in this game sucks donkey balls compared to quests in good single player RPGs, owing to WoW's multiplayer nature and lack of choice. But no other game allows me to team up with 20 people and have a good time fighting giant demons, dragons, nascent space gods and what have you. It's a core part of the game and removing it means Blizzard forever loses me as a customer.

Also, the sheer number of ways you can gear up currently puts to rest their argument. You can get decent gear by World Quests, dungeons and M+, Warfronts, PvP and raids. Back in vanilla, you could do dungeons to get basic gear, then it was raid or gtfo mostly. Same for BC apart from arena "welfare epics". In BfA you can get a suite of great, hell for some select players even BiS gear without stepping foot in a raid, even more in 8.1 with the Azerite vendor. I'm a Mythic raider and close to half of my pieces don't come from Uldir. The game has never been less raid or die than now.

[Azelas]

I think this is top 10 most retarded things I've read in this forum, INCLUDING the real life subforum (this is saying something).

What do you want, people to just be at max ilvl by week 2 and run around doing WQs and island expeditions or some shit?

raiding is the only thing keeping this game afloat.

[Deleted]

To be fair, raiding became accessible in Wrath even if it existed beforehand.

Still, I totally disagree with the OP. Raiding is the one thing that's actually special about this game. Most everything else -PvP, small group PvE dungeons, questing, etc.- is done better elsewhere, especially questing which in this game sucks donkey balls compared to quests in good single player RPGs, owing to WoW's multiplayer nature and lack of choice. But no other game allows me to team up with 20 people and have a good time fighting giant demons, dragons, nascent space gods and what have you. It's a core part of the game and removing it means Blizzard forever loses me as a customer.

Also, the sheer number of ways you can gear up currently puts to rest their argument. You can get decent gear by World Quests, dungeons and M+, Warfronts, PvP and raids. Back in vanilla, you could do dungeons to get basic gear, then it was raid or gtfo mostly. Same for BC apart from arena "welfare epics". In BfA you can get a suite of great, hell for some select players even BiS gear without stepping foot in a raid, even more in 8.1 with the Azerite vendor. I'm a Mythic raider and close to half of my pieces don't come from Uldir. The game has never been less raid or die than now.

True, WoW only real superiority in the genre is the raids. The rest is subpar.

I just disagree on the fact that raiding is enough to make a game good. WoW suffers from too much focus on raids and mediocre content for the rest

[Feolthanos]

Looking for raid and the dungeon finder are why this game is dying, stop pandering to the casuals. IF you do mythic raiding you deserve the best gear, if you are a gladiator you deserve the best gear, if you want to play the game casually then you get casual gear.

[La]

Funny, the game did nothing but grow from Vanilla to Wrath, and raiding was a big part of the game then, and the game had far less "casual" features in it. Yet, suddenly over all these expansions, as the game became more and more casual, raiding is the reason people stopped playing? Also, you realize that the people who design dungeons and raids are not the same people who work on open world content and stuff like world quests/island expeditions/warfronts, right? I imagine one or two of them gets put on that in their off time, but that's about it. Nothing is stopping them from innovating and doing new things because of raiding.

Let me guess, though, you want those devs to instead be put into something casual, like warfronts, where everything is basically an LFR free loot boss that gives what used to be mythic level raid gear? Ah yes, truly the savior of WoW.

[Deleted]

Good thing nothing's mandatory anymore. You can play without ever setting foot into a raid and still have high ilvls (M+ runs).

[Zandalariprelate]

That's the most stupid thing I read on these threads and I mean there are A LOT of very... strange threads around nowadays.
Raiding is a core of the PVE aspect. It's what brings people together into guilds and so on.

This, I can't believe people are pushing to eliminate group content in a multiplayer game. This is dumb as asking for skyrim online

[Xaredis]

Yes, you clearly have no idea whar you are talking about. Game dev studios are hiring enough people to complete their vision. If they would need less focus on raid they would just reduce the raid team, the devs wouldn't be assigned to other teams because it is simply not necessary.

Btw. U should switch to gw2 you cam buy best gest on ah for almost free

It's not worth replying to Bhorin I've seen his posts in TFing/WFing threads people like him generally don't understand the fundamentals of an RPG's strengths and frankly make me wonder why they bother to play them so much despite disliking the fundamentals concepts of one, much less an MMORPG. It'd be like me saying towers should be undivable in MOBA's or that champions like zed in (LOL) and shadowfiend in (DOTA 2) should be either easier to play or nerfed because their too hard to play and I have a bad time when someone who's good at them shits on me. I fundamentally don't enjoy PvP games that much and only play them with friends so I have little in terms of any sort of validity in my opinions on such type of games so why the fuck would I try to change the nature of towers and playing around them or the incentive vs time investment of certain champions when I clearly don't even enjoy the fundamental nature of these games.

[Jastall]

True, WoW only real superiority in the genre is the raids. The rest is subpar.

I just disagree on the fact that raiding is enough to make a game good. WoW suffers from too much focus on raids and mediocre content for the rest

I'd say WoW's organized PvE content in general is the best. M+ is a great way to keep small group content relevant and rewarding. Questing is done better in basically every single MMO (but still can't touch good single-player games such as Witcher 3 and Fallout New Vegas), and I won't say anything about PvP as I couldn't possibly care less about it. Crafting was also never really amazing in this game.

But WoW made its mark by having amazing PvE content and Blizzard will never change that because it's what a lot pf players want. Just look at the MMO that put almost all its eggs in the questing basket, SWTOR. Best questing and leveling out of any MMO I played? Definitely. Did that help it survive once players got to the endgame and were stuck in the absolute quagmire that was Ilum? lolnope. FF14 barely bothers with PvP at all and focuses on PvE and crafting yet its raiding is still worse than WoW's.

[Willias]

Quit calling raiding in Vanilla WoW a new thing. Raiding existed in MMOs since at least EverQuest, and was in many other MMOs prior to WoW.

Raiding is the end game coop goal. Not really much else to replace it with in a Massive Multiplayer game.

That said, while it should offer the best rewards, I think you should be able to get close or similar rewards with longer duration grindier activities.

[Darkguyver2020]

Actually, the real problem are the players. But they're too far up their own asses to admit that.

[Bhorin]

It's not worth replying to Bhorin I've seen his posts in TFing/WFing threads people like him generally don't understand the fundamentals of an RPG's strengths and frankly make me wonder why they bother to play them so much despite disliking the fundamentals concepts of one, much less an MMORPG. It'd be like me saying towers should be undivable in MOBA's or that champions like zed in (LOL) and shadowfiend in (DOTA 2) should be either easier to play or nerfed because their too hard to play and I have a bad time when someone who's good at them shits on me. I fundamentally don't enjoy PvP games that much and only play them with friends so I have little in terms of any sort of validity in my opinions on such type of games so why the fuck would I try to change the nature of towers and playing around them or the incentive vs time investment of certain champions when I clearly don't even enjoy the fundamental nature of these games.

Same to you, but replace my name with yours.

Except not only do you not understand the basic fundamentals you're also bad at math.

[Synthium]

As soon as I read the title and first few sentences, I knew I'd agree with you OP. Kungen made a really great video some 3 years ago and he went on to explain that Blizzard wanting everyone to experience raiding costed us the MMORPG content of the game and instead just became a raiding simulator where nothing but numbers matter. I will link it here, in case you didn't see it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MNFWhCw8dg

Many people shrugged him off instantly because it's Kungen without listening to what he has to say, which is a mistake because the guy was 100% spot on.

I love raiding. But every time I log in to the game to play I really want to play it, but there is nothing for me to do except wait for a raid night.

[tttsssrrr]

Said no one ever. I would rather not have a launcher made in Adobe Flash.

Quoted for truth.