What's really wrong with WoW.

[Relapses]

It doesn't.
It explains that people don't just outright quit because one specific change, that's it.

And you, for some reason, read into it that's some massive rebuttal to everybody that doesn't like the direction of the game.

It is a rebuttal to anybody who uses unknowable atrrition data to support their point. That's been my criticism this entire time.

It doesn't really reflect well on the game when a lot of people nowadays only stick their heads into the newest expansion every two years and then leave after 1-3 months.

Obviously would explain why Blizzard really invests more into marketing these days, but that's another story.

For all the shit Blizzard gets for not listening to its fans the ultimate irony is that this shift in business model is representative of the way most people play WoW these days. We can argue endlessly about whether this is the best thing for it longterm but it's unquestionable why it happened.

[Kralljin]

It is a rebuttal to anybody who uses unknowable atrrition data to support their point. That's been my criticism this entire time.

I find it weird to then construct a "this supports the modern direction" out of it, when the two primary reasons (that we at least read from data) aren't necessarily related to the direction of the game, and in the case of "My friend quit" utterly ambiguous.

For all the shit Blizzard gets for not listening to its fans the ultimate irony is that this shift in business model is representative of the way most people play WoW these days.

Considering that assumed "trend" established itself with WoD...i'm not sure if the playerbase knowingly set that trend but rather has some relation to the product itself.

[Relapses]

I find it weird to then construct a "this supports the modern direction" out of it, when the two primary reasons (that we at least read from data) aren't necessarily related to the direction of the game, and in the case of "My friend quit" utterly ambiguous.

I don't support the modern direction full-stop. I simply encourage people to consider the possibility that there's more to the discussion than just "WoW was more popular in the past therefore the design decions made back then were better," versus "modern WoW is less popular and the lower subscription numbers reflect poor design decisions."

Considering that assumed "trend" established itself with WoD...i'm not sure if the playerbase knowingly set that trend but rather has some relation to the product itself.

We saw bumps/drops with the expansions prior to WoD. WoD simply represented the largest rise/drop we had see up to this point. I've long contended that even Legion likely saw a similar drop off but it's impossible to know since Blizzard stopped sharing the data.

[Kralljin]

I don't support the modern direction full-stop. I simply encourage people to consider the possibility that there's more to the discussion than just "WoW was more popular in the past therefore the design decions made back then were better," versus "modern WoW is less popular and the lower subscription numbers reflect poor design decisions."

Conversely, i think too many people attempt to use that as justification that the path WoW went was the only logical way, when i believe it mostly comes down that Blizzard thought they could have their cake and eat it too (catering to "new audiences" vs. retaining players) while also having no coherent vision for the game anymore.

We saw bumps/drops with the expansions prior to WoD. WoD simply represented the largest rise/drop we had see up to this point. I've long contended that even Legion likely saw a similar drop off but it's impossible to know since Blizzard stopped sharing the data.

Those were not even close on the level of WoD.

You had basically no decline going from Wotlk to Cata, then some decline, small increase with MoP launch, then steady decrease.
A massive bump with WoD release, followed by a massive drop.

You basically have that occuring once before WoD, from Cata to MoP and there it was rather small.

Even if it occured during Legion, it's clearly something that has only established itself during the last 6 years of WoW and was previously not the norm, which is a big hint that Blizzard struggles to retain players beyond an expansion launch since WoD.

And frankly, the way they roll out WoW content, or the state expansions are in at launch, doesn't hint that they somehow readjusted their business practice towards it (besides maybe more marketing).
It's not like WoW expansions now have one massive content update at launch and then you only get small droplets of content over the course of two years until the next big update.

[Tarx]

I push myself to play the game and level up but tge quests and leveling areas are boring with meaning less lore and uninspired. 3 days and I can't play more than 2 hours a day due to boredom.

[Cæli]

the issue is that a game can't stay high quality forever, that if the staff change, the game changes too, and such staff do that for a living, not for contributing to history primarily, so we just witness the game being downgraded as time pass, with new generations wanting it changed to a previous downgraded state because of nostalgia, which accelerate the downgrade.

I would say it's not possible for someone under 26-30 years old to have a legitimate opinion, since he didn't really experienced all the previous iteration, so his view could be biased, and I've observed many times that newer players are very often open to replacement of the older things in the game, which accelerate the downgrade.

if blizzard want to keep wow lucrative long term, they need to focus on classic and stop retail expansions development for wow 1.
with china behind, a wow 2 can hardly go wrong. to cater to the younger audience, a wow 2 can't do as bad as wow 1 in terms of popularity. wow is dead to the average player. first comment you see by the average player on wow is "isn't wow dead"

[Relapses]

Conversely, i think too many people attempt to use that as justification that the path WoW went was the only logical way, when i believe it mostly comes down that Blizzard thought they could have their cake and eat it too (catering to "new audiences" vs. retaining players) while also having no coherent vision for the game anymore.

I feel like this view is pretty cynical and operates on the premise that Blizzard went out of its way to fuck over portions of its playerbase. You're free to have this perspective but I prefer a more pragmatic viewpoint myself. The game changed to cater to the largest number of players possible which led to things like AP grinds and endless amounts of timegated content. Initially I was extremely critical of Blizzard's approach because it burned me out in Legion but I've since come to view the changes made throughout BfA in a generally favorable light. This is my opinion and I don't expect anybody to agree with me but I feel like this more fair to Blizzard than the cynicism you described. To each their own.

Those were not even close on the level of WoD.

You had basically no decline going from Wotlk to Cata, then some decline, small increase with MoP launch, then steady decrease.
A massive bump with WoD release, followed by a massive drop.

You basically have that occuring once before WoD, from Cata to MoP and there it was rather small.

Even if it occured during Legion, it's clearly something that has only established itself during the last 6 years of WoW and was previously not the norm, which is a big hint that Blizzard struggles to retain players beyond an expansion launch since WoD.

And frankly, the way they roll out WoW content, or the state expansions are in at launch, doesn't hint that they somehow readjusted their business practice towards it (besides maybe more marketing).
It's not like WoW expansions now have one massive content update at launch and then you only get small droplets of content over the course of two years until the next big update.

Again, it's hard to draw correlations because sub levels only tell you one half of the equation. All of these conclusions you're trying to figure out are predicated on a presumption that the only thing relevant to your argument is the fact that subscriber levels trended one way or another. But since we don't know how many new players were generated in these periods of time the actual number of gained vs. lost subscriibers gets lost in the shuffle. It's impossible to know if WoW's playerbase decided to begin consuming the game differently or if WoW's game design decisions made players react this way. I would say, however, all things being equal, to me it seems far more likely that average WoW players who may have had time to be a concurrent subscriber at some point in their life are more likely to become cyclical subscribers at a later point because it simply isn't realistic to expect people to consume something like an MMO the same way until the end of time.

[loras]

Well tbf, constructive criticism is needed.

But yes, all the people suffering from ex-partner syndrome in relation to this game, are tiresome.

This, basically.

[Ryzeth]

That is easy. Years ago, WoW had 100 MILLION accounts created but only ever a maximum of 12 million players. So yeah...the "majority" left

Not that it means anything really...unless one is so inclined to drag out the old "it means the game is dead" trope. But then it was pretty much always dead ^^

That doesn't explain why people left, though. There are myriad reasons why people might have stopped playing, and a lot of them have nothing to do with changes to the game. Hell, a lot of them have nothing to do with the game itself, even.

[Kralljin]

I feel like this view is pretty cynical and operates on the premise that Blizzard went out of its way to fuck over portions of its playerbase.

Considering how Blizzard needed to have Classic's success shoved into their faces to acknowledge that there may be an actual value in the old style of the game, i tend to disagree.

Quite frankly, the way Blizzard has acted towards people over the past decade who wanted elements that were more in spirit of the original game was more like "yeah...no, that doesn't work nowadays, it's just nostalgia!".

Let's be real, especially mid / late Wotlk they really went nuts with demolishing a lot of aspect that were established during Classic.
Now, years later, you have people like Morhaime saying stuff like "Yeah, maybe it was a mistake to increase accessability at the cost of social aspects" or Ion admitting that LFD maybe also had some actual drawbacks.

Sorry, but statements like "You think you do, but you don't" don't drop out of the sky, especially from a team that is usually rather careful in choosing their words.

I'm not saying they went out of their way to fuck with their playerbase, they just thought they knew better than players and that is also something for which Blizzard devs are notorious for.

[Klingers]

Sometimes raging into the void is the only catharsis we have against seeing a long-loved MMO be ground into dust by Ion Hozikostas's lawyautism-fueled systems-first design approach.

[Ryzeth]

Sure, I agree...there are myriad of reasons...and may "a lot" of them have nothing to do with the game itself. This unfortunately exposes you to the same line that you threw to the other guy: [citation needed]

Citation for what? You don't see people in-game spouting half the shit MMO-C users frequently are about Shadowlands.

Also people are (unsurprisingly) taking the OP far too seriously.

[Alkizon]

...and we back to this

[Zantera]

I think the playerbase is the biggest problem honestly. Too many people with different strong opinions wanting different things which makes it impossible for Blizz to perfect every aspect of the game.

[Ryzeth]

Hehe...sometimes I actually think 1/ chat is MMO-C. Especially during events like the Zombie invasion when tons of ppl come back.

And I wonder...why did you come back if it is all sooooooo bad and unfun and broken etc...

There are people who actually voice their displeasure constructively. Those ones are fine.

Unfortunately there are more who are going to hate on the game no matter what Blizzard does. Even if they do exactly what they want, they'll still find something to whine about. They don't want the game to get better, they want people to hate it as much as they do. When it fails, they get mad and call people Blizzard fanboys, among more hateful things.

The latter tends to be what MMO-C is full of. Their 'suggestions to improve the game' are, more often than not, things that'll only make it worse.

[Vasilisa]

I push myself to play the game and level up but tge quests and leveling areas are boring with meaning less lore and uninspired. 3 days and I can't play more than 2 hours a day due to boredom.

Perhaps you need a break then? I haven't been playing for 2 years, just got back and I'm having fun. Perhaps it would work for you as well.

[dope_danny]

You forgot to include "The REAL reason" in your title of "thread where i am that guy complaining about people complaining too often even though near word for word this happens just as often".

You sure showed them, you showed everybody! The one from the prophecy. The Big Man.

[Kralljin]

I think the playerbase is the biggest problem honestly. Too many people with different strong opinions wanting different things which makes it impossible for Blizz to perfect every aspect of the game.

I think you mistake cause and effect.

I think that Blizzard attempts to cater a lot of different tastes, despite them sometimes being diametrically opposed to each other.
However i don't think they're doing that based on Player feedback (because Blizzard is not that keen on listening to the playerbase), it rather stems from them no longer having a coherent vision for the game just throwing elements in there that may seem popular to some people.

The issue that people want different things precisely stems from Blizzard only taking a halfassed step, i think a lot of that would disappear if the vision (and thus design) would be more clearer, because more people cannot expect X in a game that's clearly going in direction Y.

A good example here is PvP balance, while always tricky, attempting to balance PvP around a small scale deathmatch mode is extremely difficult, yet Blizzard has decided that since TBC some pseudo E-Sport mode is the pinnacle of WoW PvP, of course those players that enjoy that sort of thing expect better balance, which get reinforced by Blizzard as they introduced a mode that caters towards them and the most prestigous PvP rewards come from that mode exclusively.
Not to mention that Blizzard themselves host Tournaments on that front that attempt to appear very serious and professional.

[WowIsDead64]

Have you considered maybe it wasn't constructive in the first place?

Or not in the right place?

"No fly - no buy" - isn't constructive criticism.

Writing big article, that explain, how approach to content is changed in terms of more casual-friendly gameplay with flying and why it's so necessary for me, that I can't play without it, and why it's so bad, when Blizzard try to compensate flying, even when they finally return it, that makes things even worse - is. Problem is - Blizzard ignore both.

[Relapses]

I think you mistake cause and effect.

I think that Blizzard attempts to cater a lot of different tastes, despite them sometimes being diametrically opposed to each other.
However i don't think they're doing that based on Player feedback (because Blizzard is not that keen on listening to the playerbase), it rather stems from them no longer having a coherent vision for the game just throwing elements in there that may seem popular to some people.

This is the second time you've said this in this thread and I'm genuinely curious: What is this "coherent vision" you're referring to here? This seems like such a completely abstract and nebulous concept that it could be used to describe pretty much anything Blizzard decides to do (or not to do).