Game Design Article about Classic Vs BFA Analysis:

[Relapses]

If you are part of those who liked WOTLK, please dont give feedback regarding Classic because you dont belong to that group.

Good to know that since the last time you made this incorrect leap in logic you have now decided to add gate keeping to your ever growing repertoire of fallacies.

Keep up the good fight, dude.

[satanicway]

Not to mention wotlk was the conclusion of the main storyline from the wc3 rts's. The reason most people played wow in the first place.

I agree lfd wasn't great for the game but imo it is ridiculous to claim wotlk sucked because growth slowed down/stopped.

Also I heard it's impossible to like two things and liking wotlk excludes you from liking classic

Edit: also claiming wotlk had "negative growth" is wrong. Went from 11m at the start to 12m. And that includes the first ever year long content drout. Decline didn't start until cata.

The wrong assumption is to believe that suddenly, after continuous gains on EVERY quarter from release to end of TBC, WoTLK had not one non-growth quarter but almost ALL quarters without growth.

As you said Lichking is the "conclusion of the main storyline of wc3",(...) and "The reason many played wow in the first place"
And yet that expansion received NO GROWTH.

Why is that? See where your arguments contradicts yourself?
By your own logic, we should have seen growth till Arthas death, and then decline.

But that is not what we see.
You claim the game was getting old, but why did it start just exactly before WOTLK is lauched?
Explain why WoTLK has an initial spike, like all other expansions have, but then suddenly a growth of zero, if prior months on TBC we were having growth each quarter?

If it was like you were saying, we would see a small reduction of growth during WoTLK, not a sudden flat line.

[Relapses]

The wrong assumption is to believe that suddenly, after continuous gains on EVERY quarter from release to end of TBC, WoTLK had not one non-growth quarter but almost ALL quarters without growth.

As you said Lichking is the "conclusion of the main storyline of wc3",(...) and "The reason many played wow in the first place"
And yet that expansion received NO GROWTH.

Why is that? See where your arguments contradicts yourself?
By your own logic, we should have seen growth till Arthas death, and then decline.

But that is not what we see.
You claim the game was getting old, but why did it start just exactly before WOTLK is lauched?
Explain why WoTLK has an initial spike, like all other expansions have, but then suddenly a growth of zero, if prior months on TBC we were having growth each quarter?

If it was like you were saying, we would see a small reduction of growth during WoTLK, not a sudden flat line.

This is very, very stupid because you assume things we cannot know. For one, we have no idea how many people quit in WotLK. For two, we have no idea how many new players WotLK attracted. For your argument to hold any water, both of those things need to be known.

Consider the possibility that from Vanilla thru WotLK that WoW had the same exact new player generation. Through Vanilla and TBC, players still quit, the game simply attracted more than enough new subscriptions to offset the ones that left. In WotLK, however, the game reached market saturation and the maximum number of players who would play WoW at one time was achieved. This is around 12 million subs. At market saturation, the same number of people who joined throughout the previous expansions continued to join at the same rate. It was simply offset by the number of people who unsubbed. This explains the "stop" you observed.

Now, I can't actually know this because I don't have any of the data but there's the catch. You don't either and it's just as silly for you to believe your assertion is correct when the very possibility that I could be correct completely contradicts you.

This is why it's ridiculous to support any argument with sub levels. We simply don't have enough pertinent information to do anything other than guess. And if you're guessing that the expansion where WoW reached its theoretical maximum number of players -- and held it there for two straight years -- was a "failure," you better damn well believe people have every right to contest your findings.

[Notdev]

The wrong assumption is to believe that suddenly, after continuous gains on EVERY quarter from release to end of TBC, WoTLK had not one non-growth quarter but almost ALL quarters without growth.

As you said Lichking is the "conclusion of the main storyline of wc3",(...) and "The reason many played wow in the first place"
And yet that expansion received NO GROWTH.

Why is that? See where your arguments contradicts yourself?
By your own logic, we should have seen growth till Arthas death, and then decline.

But that is not what we see.
You claim the game was getting old, but why did it start just exactly before WOTLK is lauched?
Explain why WoTLK has an initial spike, like all other expansions have, but then suddenly a growth of zero, if prior months on TBC we were having growth each quarter?

If it was like you were saying, we would see a small reduction of growth during WoTLK, not a sudden flat line.

You keep wording it in a way to make it seem we didn't have growth in wotlk. But we did. Just making sure you know that. "Negative growth" as you put it earlier is 100% incorrect.

We didn't see more growth in WotLK because most of the people who wanted to play it were already playing. If someone really wanted to see the conclusion of the LK storyline, they were more likely to play at the start of WotLK, not pick it up in the middle or end. Not to mention, the 1 year content drout was horrible for sub numbers and did WotLK no favors and is a valid con for WotLK.

You can also attribute some growth in late BC to WoTLK being on the horizon. Coincidentally, the exact time and reason that my friends and I started playing.

The true first failed expansion was Cata. The first tier (as well as age of the game and a less popular endboss) Did more to damage the game than anything else ever did, IMO. Coincidentally (or maybe not) they made the game more grindy/increased 5 man difficulty/less casual/basically removed "easy" mode raiding. Who knew making the game less accessible would kill subscription numbers?

WotLK did *some* damage in the form of LFD, but it definitely was not a failed expansion. It was literally the peak of WoW.

[satanicway]

You keep wording it in a way to make it seem we didn't have growth in wotlk. But we did. Just making sure you know that. "Negative growth" as you put it earlier is 100% incorrect.

We didn't see more growth in WotLK because most of the people who wanted to play it were already playing. If someone really wanted to see the conclusion of the LK storyline, they were more likely to play at the start of WotLK, not pick it up in the middle or end. Not to mention, the 1 year content drout was horrible for sub numbers and did WotLK no favors and is a valid con for WotLK.

You can also attribute some growth in late BC to WoTLK being on the horizon. Coincidentally, the exact time and reason that my friends and I started playing.

The true first failed expansion was Cata. The first tier (as well as age of the game and a less popular endboss) Did more to damage the game than anything else ever did, IMO. Coincidentally (or maybe not) they made the game more grindy/increased 5 man difficulty/less casual/basically removed "easy" mode raiding. Who knew making the game less accessible would kill subscription numbers?

WotLK did *some* damage in the form of LFD, but it definitely was not a failed expansion. It was literally the peak of WoW.

Disagree, and you have no data to back your claims.

What we know is that many people were still joining the game, but for the first time WoW was losing players at the same rate it gained players.
We know that because the devs said it more than once and because at the time we still had access to pretty complete report calls of blizzard quarters. (I mean, i know that there was a influx of player, but a loss of players at the same time, and not a stable community.)

There was not "everyone that liked WoW was subbed and there were no new players joining".
What we had was a huge wave of new players coming because of the name of the Lich King, but so many people leaving that for the first time the game had zero growth.

Both you and otaXephon are just circling the problem and avoiding the main question here.
Why just some months before WoTLK the game was gaining players?
The content drawn out of TBC also happened, and the game was growing each month.

You can't explain why it started exactly as WoTLK started. (After the release spike, but this we must agree happens on each and all expansions, even WoD)

[Relapses]

Disagree, and you have no data to back your claims.

What we know is that many people were still joining the game, but for the first time WoW was losing players at the same rate it gained players.
We know that because the devs said it more than once and because at the time we still had access to pretty complete report calls of blizzard quarters. (I mean, i know that there was a influx of player, but a loss of players at the same time, and not a stable community.)

There was not "everyone that liked WoW was subbed and there were no new players joining".
What we had was a huge wave of new players coming because of the name of the Lich King, but so many people leaving that for the first time the game had zero growth.

Both you and otaXephon are just circling the problem and avoiding the main question here.
Why just some months before WoTLK the game was gaining players?
The content drawn out of TBC also happened, and the game was growing each month.

You can't explain why it started exactly as WoTLK started. (After the release spike, but this we must agree happens on each and all expansions, even WoD)

I quite literally spelled out how the exact phenomena you're asking to be defined could have occurred so I don't know what you mean by "circling the problem." In fact, I'm not even saying that I'm right. I'm fully aware I could be dead wrong. But that's not because I want to win (or lose) an internet argument... It's because I'm honest enough with myself to know that it's improper to support an argument with unknowable information. This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made out of, and the one about WotLK being the linch pin that began the "downfall of WoW" is particularly prevalent on this message board for some reason. (Technically discussion of conspiracy theories is against site rules but this skirts the lines.) Articles like the one in discussion here do little to alleviate this issue.

[satanicway]

I quite literally spelled out how the exact phenomena you're asking to be defined could have occurred so I don't know what you mean by "circling the problem." In fact, I'm not even saying that I'm right. I'm fully aware I could be dead wrong. But that's not because I want to win (or lose) an internet argument... It's because I'm honest enough with myself to know that it's improper to support an argument with unknowable information. This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made out of, and the one about WotLK being the linch pin that began the "downfall of WoW" is particularly prevalent on this message board for some reason. (Technically discussion of conspiracy theories is against site rules but this skirts the lines.) Articles like the one in discussion here do little to alleviate this issue.

Yes, lets put an article with dozens of references, and many different arguments, and that explicitly says that it's data does not prove that WoTLK was the problem, but that can be interpreted as an indication that problems might have started in it, as a "conspiracy theory".

Just because you like WoTLK you are calling anything that MIGHT be evoking a critique to it as conspiracy theory.

What you want is not a discussion, but to block it and ridicule it because you don't want your worldview questioned.

[Relapses]

Yes, lets put an article with dozens of references, and many different arguments, and that explicitly says that it's data does not prove that WoTLK was the problem, but that can be interpreted as an indication that problems might have started in it, as a "conspiracy theory".

Just because you like WoTLK you are calling anything that MIGHT be evoking a critique to it as conspiracy theory.

What you want is not a discussion, but to block it and ridicule it because you don't want your worldview questioned.

This is getting hilarious at this point. How many times do I need to repeat myself? I am not defending WotLK and it's incredibly dismissive to imply I am. You want to talk about evidence supporting a world view counter to the facts but you're the one trying to place blame of modern WoW's issues on WoW's most successful expansion. (I also argue that WoW still being here is evidence these issues aren't nearly as bad as people on this forum like to imply.) So yet again, I repeat: I don't really care who is right or wrong, I care about people making shitty arguments and supporting their shitty arguments with completely unknowable information.

[satanicway]

This is getting hilarious at this point. How many times do I need to repeat myself? I am not defending WotLK and it's incredibly dismissive to imply I am. You want to talk about evidence supporting a world view counter to the facts but you're the one trying to place blame of modern WoW's issues on WoW's most successful expansion. (I also argue that WoW still being here is evidence these issues aren't nearly as bad as people on this forum like to imply.) So yet again, I repeat: I don't really care who is right or wrong, I care about people making shitty arguments and supporting their shitty arguments with completely unknowable information.

The only base for you to point that it was "WoW's most successful expansion" is the exact data presented there.

See who is losing sight of the whole point here? =D

Edit: Oh and btw, the article point was not even WoTLK. That was just an en passant topic to see where things might have derailed.
You are turning it into the main point of discussion to this simply because you don't like what you saw.

Btw, what you are doing is a logical fallacy, as you are asking for someone that brought an argument to bring undeniable proof of it else it is all becomes proved as false and garbage in your view. Meh.

[Gaidax]

Just a shitty article full of regurgitated memes really.

[Mermeoth]

Well the article says what plently of us realized long time ago.

I am glad they realized WotLK was 1st expansion to fail. I always get a lot of hate for saying that.

[Relapses]

The only base for you to point that it was "WoW's most successful expansion" is the exact data presented there.

See who is losing sight of the whole point here? =D

Edit: Oh and btw, the article point was not even WoTLK. That was just an en passant topic to see where things might have derailed.
You are turning it into the main point of discussion to this simply because you don't like what you saw.

Btw, what you are doing is a logical fallacy, as you are asking for someone that brought an argument to bring undeniable proof of it else it is all becomes proved as false and garbage in your view. Meh.

You're still missing the point. Let me make even more simple:

Saying WotLK is when WoW started to decline "because reasons" is fine. I have no problem debating the merits of critique of WotLK, though I do strongly disagree with the idea of referring to it as a failure given the incredible dominant force in gaming WoW represented during the years WotLK was around.

Saying WotLK is when WoW started to decline "because reasons" and because "that's when sub growth stopped" is not fine since we would have to know how many people actually quit WoW and how many new people started playing in order to come to any type of reasonable, fact-based conclusion.

That's it. Now, I'm sure you'll be quick to point out the the author of this article does admit the numbers don't tell the whole story but once more, this is only thrown in after he's already written WotLK off as the "first failed expansion."

The greater criticism I have with sub level arguments is that you can use it for literally fucking anything. I see morons posting the sub level graph and correlating it with shit like transmog, dailies quests, flying mounts, the LFD, the LFR, a shitty raid tier somebody personally disliked, 10 man raiding, 25 man raiding, a content drought, the fact that Warlocks were OP in SoO, Monks existing... literally fucking ANYTHING that has happened since WotLK is pointed at and said to have been the reason people quit. It's dumb. It's a disingenuous argument. It needs to stop.

This is getting dangerously off topic and I’m growing tired of saying the same thing twelve different ways but I’ll end on this note: I will never understand players' obsessions with correlating sub losses with specific game play changes. We will simply never know because Blizzard will never release their retention/player engagement data. However, I do know one dude who has actually seen this data has gone on the record to say that in his experience gameplay changes were incredibly far down on the list of reasons people actually quit. Sadly, these types of threads would be far less entertaining if everybody simply accepted the reality that most people quit for literally no fucking reason at all. C'est la vie. :^)

[Multitorix Davlen]

I will never understand players' obsessions with correlating sub losses with specific game play changes. We will simply never know because Blizzard will never release their retention/player engagement data. However, I do know one dude who has actually seen this data has gone on the record to say that in his experience gameplay changes were incredibly far down on the list of reasons people actually quit.

Im kinda in this camp. I've never stopped playing a game that i've spent many hours/years into because i got sick and tired of a mechanic or design change. It's usually because I'm bored (15 years of the same game despite changes DOES get boring after a while). I will say I DO understand why people want to correlate sub loss to game play changes. It's all confirmation bias into a game they don't like or have never liked. Humans in general find it troubling when other people believe/like something different than them and those same humans will make it their life goal to get people on the same boat as them. You see this in other aspects of life but I'm not gunna get into those as its not appropriate for the current topic.

[lummiuster]

This is a ridiculous conclusion. Blizzard could have made perfect changes every single xpac and they would have still eventually seen a decline. The game is old. It gets old. It's not for everyone all the time. People also get old. 15 (5 at the time). year old games with dated graphics and a subscription don't appeal to most new gamers. Wow picked up players in vanilla/bc because it was new.

Not to mention wotlk was the conclusion of the main storyline from the wc3 rts's. The reason most people played wow in the first place.

I agree lfd wasn't great for the game but imo it is ridiculous to claim wotlk sucked because growth slowed down/stopped.

Also I heard it's impossible to like two things and liking wotlk excludes you from liking classic

Edit: also claiming wotlk had "negative growth" is wrong. Went from 11m at the start to 12m. And that includes the first ever year long content drout. Decline didn't start until cata.

Compare the 12 quarters before WotLK was release with the quarters of WoTLK. Obvious dramatic change. Problem was WoTLK. Can't say blizzard would have lost subs with perfect xpac. Thats just not true. Ever since WtoLK, there has been people quiting the game asking for classic..

[Will]

Oh look another post where people without a faintest clue about markets quote the famous sub numbers chart as "proof that wotlk flopped." Never mind complex things like market saturation or the fact MMOs in general were losing traction to other genres during that period. Never mind the fact the game was training 1 player for each that quit despite this.

[phattsao]

1) No, when I am finally done with sth in classic I merely feel relieved that the boredom is over and a wee bit frustrated that I wasted so much time on what should be a simple task (like collecting 10 bear asses).

2) Theoretically when the game is completely new, yes. Considering that I am a veteran of 12 years and there is nothing to learn anymore: pure frustration about the fact that the game does not value my time and deliberately wastes it at every friggin opportunity. Also long corpse runs + wPvP just suck.

I agree that socially, classic feels more like playing with people and less playing with bots but I do miss the shared tags a lot. It is again frustrating and time wasting having to work against people that have no interest in grouping because drop rates are shitty enough as it is w/o having to farm for 2. My friend and I abandoned many a quest because we had 1 item of 20 or so needed (for both) after killing 10 mobs. Having to kill around 200 just to get some meaningless leveling quest done is insanely boring.

I'm not saying BfA does everything right. I have plenty of beefs with it (e.g.: excessive RNG, constant resets invalidating time spent, daily brickwall limitations), to the point that I am no longer interested in dedicating much time to it. Classic has it's own sore spots though and in many ways BfA feels more fluid, more refined, more fun to play.

Sounds like something like Fortnite is more your kind of game. Instant gratification. Different strokes for different folks.

That being said, this article is hard to read. Like, it makes my eyes hurt. The formatting or spacing or something is very odd.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Perhaps I'm too pragmatic for my own good but I would prefer to look at this from the angle that WoW wouldn't still be here today had the changes not be made. Regardless, it's still wayyyy too early to say whether Classic will have long term success and it's certainly too early to begin fantasizing about a version of retail WoW sans-accessibility.

I disagree entirely with the bolded. There is a lot of evidence to point to the contrary.

I feel like change for the sake of change is almost never necessary. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel when the wheel is working fine. This is where Blizzard went wrong.

WoW was virtually unchanged for several years and continued growing. It was only until they started adding massive features that the players lost interest. I know correlation =/= causation, but is it really that big of a stretch to think there's some kind of relation between the two events?

Contrary to what Blizzard believes, people don't just stop doing something they love / enjoy. We're creatures of habit and if something gives us positive feelings, we'll continue to do it. There had to be a change of some kind that made people not enjoy the game as much.

For me, I choose to believe that it was the massive changes and pushing away from the RPG part of MMORPG. All of the little QoL changes that they made that weren't necessary. And I think the fact that so many people flocked to Classic is somewhat proof of this.

[Relapses]

I disagree entirely with the bolded. There is a lot of evidence to point to the contrary.

I feel like change for the sake of change is almost never necessary. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel when the wheel is working fine. This is where Blizzard went wrong.

WoW was virtually unchanged for several years and continued growing. It was only until they started adding massive features that the players lost interest. I know correlation =/= causation, but is it really that big of a stretch to think there's some kind of relation between the two events?

Contrary to what Blizzard believes, people don't just stop doing something they love / enjoy. We're creatures of habit and if something gives us positive feelings, we'll continue to do it. There had to be a change of some kind that made people not enjoy the game as much.

For me, I choose to believe that it was the massive changes and pushing away from the RPG part of MMORPG. All of the little QoL changes that they made that weren't necessary. And I think the fact that so many people flocked to Classic is somewhat proof of this.

So really think that every single player who has ever played WoW would continue to play WoW forever as long as it stays exactly the same? You actually believe that not a single person quit from the beginning of Vanilla through TBC? That had another triple-A game developer not released a MMO with all the QoL features you hate that WoW, stubbornly refusing to change, would have simply remained just as popular? Because if you do think that, WoW would presently have about 200 million subscribers. And somehow, some way, your expectations are completely reasonable. Yet my assertion, with the only proof being that retail WoW is still a thing 15 years after its release, is incorrect.

That’s cool. You do you.

[Echocho]

Pretty spot on. The game being easy but time consuming means that almost anyone can be on the top guild in the world if they have the time.
This is what made the game great, the playing field was equal. You could be the most skilled video game player in the world and you would still fail if you didn't put in the time and the effort

[LionSinMaikeru]

So really think that every single player who has ever played WoW would continue to play WoW forever as long as it stays exactly the same? You actually believe that not a single person quit from the beginning of Vanilla through TBC? That had another triple-A game developer not released a MMO with all the QoL features you hate that WoW, stubbornly refusing to change, would have simply remained just as popular? Because if you do think that, WoW would presently have about 200 million subscribers. And somehow, some way, your expectations are completely reasonable. Yet my assertion, with the only proof being that retail WoW is still a thing 15 years after its release, is incorrect.

That’s cool. You do you.

I don't believe I said any of that. I said people don't stop doing something they love. In psychology, it is explained that humans tend to take the path of least resistance because we're wired to do things that make us the least uncomfortable / bring us the most pleasure. People don't just choose not to do something if it brings them joy. The only reason they'd stop is if changes were made that outweighed their love of said thing.

I also never said that nobody ever quit ever o.o. You're putting up strawmans here.

But there's a lot of proof that your theory of "if the game never had changes not been made, WoW wouldn't still be here today!" isn't logical.

For one, it's a popular franchise. There are tons of popular franchises that are still popular with their fanbase even after long periods of time with no major changes. There have been Vanilla private servers since TBC with some people playing for many years. Another good example is Diablo. Diablo 2's last expansion was released in 2001. Players continued playing the game and replaying for over a decade before Diablo 3 finally came out. Or how there was like over 14 years between Duke Nukem releases.

Don't underestimate fan dedication.

For two, I didn't say NO changes at all. I said massive changes that made the game feel less like an RPG. That could be a huge reason why people walked away. It's like if you enjoy cheese sandwiches and get them for lunch every day. One day they're out of your favorite cheese, but offer you a slightly different one. This is fine, because it's still a cheese sandwich. But then one day they say we're out of cheese and give you a BLT. This is not the same sandwich you know and love.

This is what it's like comparing Classic to Retail. Two different sandwiches.