If all the casual players have left for months, should Blizzard change the game?

[Kalexia]

1 - You don't know if it was all the casuals or not.
2 - If it were, Blizzard will want them back, which means they'll change the game to lure casuals, not hardcores who will play regardless.

I don't think Blizzard has a clear idea of how to make a game that appeals to most people anymore. We have two competing ideas here:

A. A coherent online world that people want to spend their time in as a primary hobby.
B. A seasonal lobby game that briefly attracts people for new content and expects them to fizzle out until next patch.

These are two radically different ideas of the game, and they are incompatible with each other. Blizzard seems to constantly be doubling down on B and confused why they don't get the results of A.

[kamuimac]

As well, I do not believe the levels of casual players are that drastic.

As a world content player, as well as mid-ranged raider (HC's) due to lack of time and want for further, I do not think there should be catering for min/max'ing behavior only. There should be separate pages of progression for separate parts of the game with rewards fitting it - and should not be heeded complaints about not being able to achieve all of it.

you can belive hatever you want.

numbers which are aviable on net shows that FF14 has now offocialy more active players then WoW

in this pace by the time 9.1 will be released in august/septemeber wow will loose 70-80% of playerbase

its catastrophicaly bad. much worse then WoD sub looses.

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Should Blizzard change something is a large percentage of their playerbase suddenly quit?


Of course...

until Ion is fired nothing will be change.

[Darsithis]

It's not the case, though.

I'm a casual player. I play Tuesday/Thursday and sometimes on the weekend. I raid with my guild, but we're not pushing mythic, we're still only 9/10 heroic (but we're hoping for our usual AOTC). I get an M+ done maybe once every few weeks. I do some alts and some world quests. This is a perfect game to fit me.

What would you change, though? What would you prefer to see?

you can believe whatever you want.

numbers which are available on net shows that FF14 has now officially more active players then WoW

in this pace by the time 9.1 will be released in august/September wow will lose 70-80% of playerbase

its catastrophically bad. much worse then WoD sub losses.

What numbers? Where? Who vetted them?

[Cracked]

you can belive hatever you want.

numbers which are aviable on net shows that FF14 has now offocialy more active players then WoW

in this pace by the time 9.1 will be released in august/septemeber wow will loose 70-80% of playerbase

its catastrophicaly bad. much worse then WoD sub looses.

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until Ion is fired nothing will be change.

"numbers which are available on the net" is a step below my dad's friend thinks so in making an argument.

[intenz]

This is just how the game is now, it's a theme park not an RPG. You subscribe, play the patch, then unsub when you have had enough of the patch. Repeat 6 months later. People are reluctant to invest hundreds or thousands of hours into a character and invest in it emotionally because they know everything they do will become obsolete in a few months.

[Kalexia]

"numbers which are available on the net" is a step below my dad's friend thinks so in making an argument.

I'm pretty sure he is referring to superdata, which has indicated that retail is back down to pre-shadowlands numbers, and we know they were very low because Blizzard said so in as many words as they could and they were linking servers right before SL.

The game is in a very, very bad state, no matter how much people want to deny it. Classic has had incredible retention while retail fluctuates wildly and seems to be constantly trending downward between the spikes.

[Frozenbro]

numbers which are aviable on net shows that FF14 has now offocialy more active players then WoW

If you got $5 everytime you use this argument on a thread, you would have a Lambo.

[Jujudrood]

It's not the case, though.

I'm a casual player. I play Tuesday/Thursday and sometimes on the weekend. I raid with my guild, but we're not pushing mythic, we're still only 9/10 heroic (but we're hoping for our usual AOTC). I get an M+ done maybe once every few weeks. I do some alts and some world quests. This is a perfect game to fit me.

I'm in the same boat, but our guild is only 8/10 (largely comprised of 20-25 IRL friends and quite a few underperformers/slow learners, so we really don't sit anyone, but we get AOTC each raid eventually).
A good bit of us raidlog because once we hit over 210ish ilevel, we found that there were really no gearing upgrades to be made anywhere, and given our general loathing of PVP, play time is generally raid times and maybe a + here and there.
So I guess in my little corner of anecdotal evidence, us "casuals" are still going strong, too.
Personally, I love it; no longer do I have to log every day or fear falling behind.

I still don't fully understand what the OP or most others, mean by "casual" though; seems everyone has a different definition of this word.
I raid heroic, I run m+10 once a week most weeks for the free 220, I get purple and gold parses a lot (for what those are worth as a tank), but I would be considered casual since I don't push higher keys or raids and only play 6-8ish hours a week, right?
/shrug

[Azerate]

This thread shows how significant damage can a couple clickbaity articles / videos make. Shadowlands is literally the most successful wow expansion ever which after a couple of months of being out lost the seasonal players, which is just what happens after every major patch.

And then, because it gets misrepresented as some kind of an unprecendented mass exodus from the game, we get threads like this one which are just humongous piles of assumptions that aren't rooted in any fact whatsoever.

People who don't do dungeons/raids/bgs/arena have the least reason to quit out of all groups because they have thousands of hours of completionist content in the game. Plus SL has probably the longest collectible grind ever released through anima based collectibles.

[Wangming]

numbers which are aviable on net shows that FF14 has now offocialy more active players then WoW

.

If you have sauce, please share. If not, stop making us FFXIV fans look bad with your dumbness. Thank you

[Unlimited Power]

I guess we're yet to see what patch 9.1 will actually contain. We know we're getting a new 10 boss raid, an 8 boss mega dungeon, more Torghast wings, flying and a new area of the Maw. That said, we've learned practically nothing of what the new area will actually contain with the exception of a couple of mounts and pets. I have hopes that they're able to make the new Maw area at least somewhat interesting for casual players.

And hopefully they can make Torghast more interesting as well. The current reward structure really doesn't lend itself to "endlessly replayable" content. I know literally nobody who cares to run Torghast after getting their Soul Ash or finishing Twisting Corridors layer 8. As a core expansion feature, it has really fallen below expectations.

[Kalexia]

This thread shows how significant damage can a couple clickbaity articles / videos make. Shadowlands is literally the most successful wow expansion ever which after a couple of months of being out lost the seasonal players, which is just what happens after every major patch.

And then, because it gets misrepresented as some kind of an unprecendented mass exodus from the game, we get threads like this one which are just humongous piles of assumptions that aren't rooted in any fact whatsoever.

People who don't do dungeons/raids/bgs/arena have the least reason to quit out of all groups because they have thousands of hours of completionist content in the game. Plus SL has probably the longest collectible grind ever released through anima based collectibles.

"Let them eat collectibles!" is apparently the new mantra of people who are delusional enough to think that if you aren't a hardcore progression player what you really must love is new colors of battle pets.

[Darsithis]

This thread shows how significant damage can a couple clickbaity articles / videos make. Shadowlands is literally the most successful wow expansion ever which after a couple of months of being out lost the seasonal players, which is just what happens after every major patch.

And then, because it gets misrepresented as some kind of an unprecendented mass exodus from the game, we get threads like this one which are just humongous piles of assumptions that aren't rooted in any fact whatsoever.

People who don't do dungeons/raids/bgs/arena have the least reason to quit out of all groups because they have thousands of hours of completionist content in the game. Plus SL has probably the longest collectible grind ever released through anima based collectibles.

Every patch and expansion they come out of the woodwork like termites. WoW has been "dying" for 15 years, and it's still here.

[ONCHEhap]

Well if all the casuals leave the game,that's easily 90+% of the playerbase gone.

At this point Blizzard would probably consider stopping working on WoW

[Kalexia]

Well if all the casuals leave the game,that's easily 90+% of the playerbase gone.

At this point Blizzard would probably consider stopping working on WoW

You're onto something.

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Every patch and expansion they come out of the woodwork like termites. WoW has been "dying" for 15 years, and it's still here.

It's not dying, because the game could be profitable with 10% of its players, easily.

But as a force in the gaming industry, something to be respected and admired and emulated, it is dead. Everything that made the game a cultural phenomenon is long dead. It's a hollow shell.

It's like how the rolling stones are still there. They still put music out. Is it any good? No, not really. It will sell a lot of copies, sure, but they aren't the force they once were. The problem here is that the rolling stones didn't have to delete their good albums to put their bad ones out like wow did.

[oldgeezer]

Only people I still interact with in-game are fellow casuals cos we’re still pottering about, maybe exploring a second or third covenant.

Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing. 20-30 minutes of an evening, log on, maybe do a calling, work on an alt, log off. No raiding, no dungeons, no pvp.

[Azerate]

"Let them eat collectibles!" is apparently the new mantra of people who are delusional enough to think that if you aren't a hardcore progression player what you really must love is new colors of battle pets.

So if you're not doing any dungeons, raids, and you don't participate AND you don't collect anything...what the hell are you even doing? Doing the 5-10 story quests, watching cutscenes and upgrading your gear to 200 ilvl through world quests? Even if people like that exist they are hardly any kind of significant portion of the player base. If you're the "casual" you do casual content. And there's a lot of it. I guess in the end it always boils down to the same thing - there is content in the game for you, it's just not content you like, and that's fine. Feel free to do whatever you want, but don't misrepresent the facts.

Well if all the casuals leave the game,that's easily 90+% of the playerbase gone.

At this point Blizzard would probably consider stopping working on WoW

The thread title is a bit confusing but from the contents of the OP it seems that the author is implying that this has actually happened already. it's not a "what if" thread, but rather "I believe this happened, change the game blizz"

[Aucald]

This thread seems like a "WoW is Dying/Dead" type thread based on metrics that can't be known. Closing this.