Hiring People from the Elitist Jerks site was a mistake.

[Lane]

I don't have actual numbers, of course, but I have a strong feeling that in recent weeks the number of players of all stripes that have reached a point of "enough!" with WoW has been much greater than typical ... driven both by the content drought, the lackluster content itself and the number of content creators pushing traffic to other games and people are finding they can actually have fun in those other games. I had bounced off of FFXIV once before, but all the YouTubers and streamers jumping on it lately caused me to try it out again and this time it's sticking ... thanks in part to me finally reaching that "enough!" point with WoW.

I wrote off FFXIV at launch not because I wasn't enjoying it but because of the MSQ. Aside from having never liked instanced group content I also have fluctuating anxiety with it, so to have the entire game progress gated behind dungeons and raids was an automatic no. I decided I would push through it this time and, so far, it hasn't been that bad. The ARR leveling dungeons remind me a lot of Wrath, which was the last time I could tolerate dungeon running. I can't say for certain it's 'sticking' yet, I'm still dreading the mandatory raids, but we'll see how it goes. I like everything else about the game except for that.

Have you seen this video (Josh Stife Hayes on FFXIV and WoW)? It resonated with me, especially the part about how we keep coming back hoping that the game will be better and it's not. Also, the attachments. I love my characters, I've had some of them for 16 years, I wish I had something I enjoyed doing with them, but when SL took the wind out of my sails of even leveling alts (as an unabashed altoholic) I knew there was a problem. Leveling is so fast now I only get about 10 hours with them before they're in the same SL rut as my main. (Blizzard in their infinite shortsightedness decided to abruptly stop Chromie time at 50.)

[Revamp Man]

We the players are to blame for that man. "Nothing in this game can exist for its own sake anymore" you say. The designer responsible for the Onyxia Head buff came out and said publicly that when he designed this quest, he thought of it as "Something fun a player gets to do ONCE in their character's lifetime, give in the Head of the big bad dragon to the city watch and see it hanging on the city walls, with a fun buff for people in that area". What did we players do with it? Put it on a timer so we reach TBC levels of power during Classic, and abuse IT, along with Dire Maul buffs (another little fun addition) and Songflower buffs (yet another little fun addition) to go and demolish raid bosses in 40 seconds.

That is the players fault man, not the developers.

I would say it’s the devs fault
Especially in today’s world where you have gamers min/maxxing Tetris

[Halliax]

What can I say? I love raidlog and try to push higher keys, even If Im not too good. I dont care about housing, pets or even mounts(only those that are drop from current Bosses), If you could add M+ to wod, It would be the perfect expansion for me. With the years, I changed guilds sometimes(less playable time), and always found good ppl to join Discord figth some Bosses and have a good time(Just like play some ball without leave home).
I know this opinion wont be too popular around here, but maybe you guys need find other games, and stop trying change Wow, It always was a combat game, focused on instances. Its OK If wow will never have 10m players again, different from 2010, there are a lot of good MMOs, and some cater to diferent niches, and this is great.
Tried to play FFXIV on my last hiatus. The game looked pretty(I like animes), but I got bored with the endgame. But its normal, after ALL, I like raidlog.

Edit: That said, there are a lot of things I liked to improve. Balance, new classes, specs, talents, new BGs(some 5x5 bgs would look good, I dont like massive pvp, always feel too small), less chores...

[Crimson Spears]

You can't disagree with facts. Both legion and bfa was rather easy to get to heroic level gear without stepping foot into raids. That is just a fact.

And you are absolutely wrong about the second part, it's the furthest from truth sentence. People love outdoor content but when it's shit people don't do it.

Guess you didn't learn your lesson from WoD. You'll get to that once you realize the only way to continue raiding is to switch to another game
(spoiler alert, because when blizz loses majority of normal players, mythic raiders won't be enough to sustain development costs.)

--- snip ---

Yes handing out super powerful gear is blizzard begging people to try to not only raid and no people do not prefer world content. This isn't runescape.

[Osmeric]

It's the developers job to work around player behaviour instead of caving in and doubling-down on whatever dumb shit the top 10% (max) of players are doing.

Indeed. It can never, even in principle, be the fault of the players that the game doesn't "work". It can only be the fault of the designers for not designing the game so that, with the players and potential players as they exist, the game works. It is the responsibility of the designers to know their customers; it's not the responsibility of the customers to save the designers.

[potis]

Indeed. It can never, even in principle, be the fault of the players that the game doesn't "work". It can only be the fault of the designers for not designing the game so that, with the players and potential players as they exist, the game works. It is the responsibility of the designers to know their customers; it's not the responsibility of the customers to save the designers.

WoWs problems are 10000% player faults.

Every single change was made because they follow the outcry of people without a clue, and eventually since the game is too old, they switched to trying to keep people occupied as long as possible before they expansion hop again, which again, it doesnt really affect the actual gameplay, it just makes the majority of the people that shouldnt be playing this game, pay more, which just works, so why not.

I love how you guys act like its some evil circle of developers around the world that gather and go "Today we ignore these players".

All the problems people cry about over the years, were created because someone else cried about it, LFG/LFR, everything was created for a reason, how you treat it is your problem, not a developers.

[Confucius]

Ion and crew are awesome at systems and spreadsheets and metrics and numbers.

They are horrible at fun.

Ion has engineered the perfect game. Now if they could only engineer some fun...

you have to remember that Ion is a lawyer. And as we all know, lawyers are all about fun and not being pedantic over numbers or splitting hairs.

[Osmeric]

WoWs problems are 10000% player faults.

Absolutely not. Even if we stipulate as true 100% of what you wrote about what players have said, and what players do, it cannot be the players fault. That's because it is not the players' responsibility to make the game work. It is the game designers' responsibility to operate within the context of what the players actually are, and take that all into account when they design the game.

[potis]

Absolutely not. Even if we stipulate as true 100% of what you wrote about what players have said, and what players do, it cannot be the players fault. That's because it is not the players' responsibility to make the game work. It is the game designers' responsibility to operate within the context of what the players actually are, and take that all into account when they design the game.

Lol, the game is working just fine, its a gear chaser, its a Western MMO genre, aka gear chasing with max level, over the Eastern Genre which is leveling chasing over gear chasing, of the early 2000s.

The problem with WoW is the bunch of clueless players that dont even know what they are playing, or the reasons they even started playing.

Feelings or whatever or experiences or fun are irrelevant,i dont deny them, but it has nothing to do with the game , if you arent doing gear chasing, you are basically paying a game that you should not be playing, period.

[Osmeric]

Lol, the game is working just fine,

Watch out for crocodiles in de nile there.

[Crimson Spears]

Lol, the game is working just fine, its a gear chaser, its a Western MMO genre, aka gear chasing with max level, over the Eastern Genre which is leveling chasing over gear chasing, of the early 2000s.

The problem with WoW is the bunch of clueless players that dont even know what they are playing, or the reasons they even started playing.

Feelings or whatever or experiences or fun are irrelevant,i dont deny them, but it has nothing to do with the game , if you arent doing gear chasing, you are basically paying a game that you should not be playing, period.

Part of me agrees with you oddly enough. A lot of players are under the misguided notion that mmo's should offer single player experiences and keep harping that wow is about mythic+,raids, and pvp. It always baffles me why they are still here.

[Valdhammer]

It's kind of ironic in a way as WoW initially hired a bunch of hardcore EQ players. However, those players had the fore site to see that making the game a niche hardcore game was not the way to go. They ended up making the best casual mmo anyone had ever seen at the time.

It could have worked here, but they just got the wrong guy. Listening to Ion talk tells you all you need to know about his direction for this game. His overly convoluted vernacular translates directly into how the last few expansions have gone. People who think they can quantify fun with metrics and charts usually fall flat on their faces doing so.

He’s insufferable. I’d never tire of punching him in his smug face.

[potis]

Part of me agrees with you oddly enough. A lot of players are under the misguided notion that mmo's should offer single player experiences and keep harping that wow is about mythic+,raids, and pvp. It always baffles me why they are still here.

Its the generation of what i call "Skyrim generation" players, that cant understand and never experienced the actual MMO world as it evolved and they think RPG = MMORPG, and that they are somehow the same because RPG, the "massively multiplayer" completely escapes them.

[VinceVega]

Why are poeple trying to make wow into something wow never was?

There is not less to do over all for the casual player. I would argue there is a good deal more. They just added stuff on top for those who have been bored with the quite easy way of wow endgame.
If you don't care about that part don't play it. And don't try to make wow into some asian MMO clone where you can basically ignore every other player and grind your way to the top. There are enough games like that. Play them.

Are there even any other bigger MMOs who have raids? FF14 in a way. But those are... well its FF14.

[Tyris Flare]

https://twitter.com/KihraOfTemerity/...32125754167297

(warcraft logs exploding at launch like usual, many many people participating in the new content)

What all these conversation tend to miss about audiences is cultivation. Over time, wow has and continues to cultivate an audience of people who enjoy certain things (raids, dungeons, collecting). Everyone else moves on. As long as that audience invests enough in the cash shop to provide good revenue, it's not going to change.

Personally, I go for the Occam's razor here: the team makes the game they want to play. They don't inherently try to think about "will this be profitable" because that is not how most developers think in any industry. Corporate will just foist things in here and there.

[Kokolums]

What's funny to me is hearing "the game needs to evolve by adding single player" then later hearing "we cannot move away from single player because that's simply what the game *is*!!!"

[Nerovar]

Indeed. It can never, even in principle, be the fault of the players that the game doesn't "work". It can only be the fault of the designers for not designing the game so that, with the players and potential players as they exist, the game works. It is the responsibility of the designers to know their customers; it's not the responsibility of the customers to save the designers.

Exactly. If the game can't account for player behaviour and becomes unplayable/unenjoyable because of that, then it's bad by design - and it's not the players who are in charge of designing the game.

[kaminaris]

--- snip ---

Yes handing out super powerful gear is blizzard begging people to try to not only raid and no people do not prefer world content. This isn't runescape.

Cool opinion but it seems like you still haven't learned from WoD fiasco. For some reason you are still unable to understand the very basic concept that to make A content you need money, to make a GOOD content you need even more money and how do you get that? Certainly not from top 5% nor bottom 5% of players.

So even if you are in that "lucky" group, you are going in to be disappointed whenever on next big patch you won't get a raid but another selfie camera.

[Triceron]

Cool opinion but it seems like you still haven't learned from WoD fiasco. For some reason you are still unable to understand the very basic concept that to make A content you need money, to make a GOOD content you need even more money and how do you get that? Certainly not from top 5% nor bottom 5% of players.

They have the money.

They don't have the proper people in place to make it happen right.


Kinda like how they have money to make Reforged good, but the project was mismanaged and went to hell. Toss in another team and still have money, and so far Diablo 2 Ressurected is shaping up to be a solid remake that just had its technical alpha with plenty of updates directly based on player feedback. Huge turnaround just from having another team in place and dedicated the time and resources to doing a good job.

Same thing happened with Diablo 3. Project was mishandled multiple times, leading to the terrible launch and the RMAH which screwed the end game.

Change of leadership, and loot 2.0 comes along and changes the entire dynamic, making the game actually playable again.


WoW just needs a shakeup that allows for a unified vision of the entire game. If Ion is really the one responsible for unifying the direction of the game and all its systems, then that's where the core issues come from. The raiding and PVP aspects of the game may be completely fine, but the _lack of everything else has helped popularized other modern MMOs_ has come at that cost. WoW has been unable to pivot to adapt to the competition. It's still making a ton of money, but they're not using it efficiently to build a game that everyone still wants to play. It's a game that people will play just long enough to be done with, and go try the other games that people are talking about.

[Glorious Leader]

Watch out for crocodiles in de nile there.

To be fair it works fine for what the developers intended it to do which is not evidently to retain subs. Maybe they think they can't? As a game for people who want raid logging its the best the games been since wod.