To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Oh man, that's fucking rich. You make a claim without a source then when you get called out on it, you tell the person asking you to source your claim to "do the research themselves." And yet you're the one in here calling people "meth addicts" for asking others to approach this subject with a shred of integrity. I wish I could make this shit up.

He's literally citing wowprogress as a reliable source of numbers no longer given, in the face of an official source citing stable MAUs.

There's no helping that. Funny how some think that in order to be critical of a game, one also has to abandon any sense for factual representation of reality.

I don't like SL, I've voted with my wallet and will do so again, but you won't find me out here trying to make it seem worse performance-wise than it is if the official records don't support such claims. That's called lying. "Addict" indeed, one is...

It's probably "WOW is dying"-territory now so that's all I'll say further on it.

[Relapses]

Okkkkkkkkk then let's play. Just because THEY don't release numbers anymore (which is because they're too ashamed to show the actual severe dwindling of their numbers over the years) doesn't mean resources don't exist for you to calculate how many people are in the game. This is ALL 83 servers total right now in the U.S., as well as Europe etc.. But since you are hard headed I can gladly provide other links as well. Please by all means get out your calculator since I'm "making things up". https://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us

Wait, when did wowprogress become the de facto aggregate for accurate player counts?

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Imagine for a second, just unironically thinking that WoW's last 3 expansions have performed far better in terms of sub numbers and engagement than ever before.

I never claimed they were better in subscriber numbers. But they almost assuredly are better in terms of engagement. That's a hill I'll gladly die on.

[Shoukyatwo]

Care to link your source for the "can't even retain 2 million subscribers" claim you've made four times now? Oh right. You can't. They haven't released subscriber numbers since WoD.

Yeah I'm aware they haven't released numbers since WOD. Genius. That was literally what I wrote in the paragraph.

The game kept no less than 7 million players at any given point up until WOD. This is all records made public by the company themselves, and that was the point they stopped announcing them because they got embarrassed.

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Wait, when did wowprogress become the de facto aggregate for accurate player counts?

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I never claimed they were better in subscriber numbers. But they almost assuredly are better in terms of engagement. That's a hill I'll gladly die on.

Do you even HEAR YOURSELF? So you're trying to tell me, and the others here easily pointing out you are factually incorrect, that the last 3 expansions have had "better engagement" than the history of WOW? You are the most biased, dishonest, tap dancing make up things as you go along to defend at all cost person I have ever seen in these forums. It's unbelievable.

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HAHAHAHAHA

You take care. You're, as I said, too far gone. Can't cite what isn't given, chump.

I already did cite it. Genius. But ok.

[Magical Mudcrab]

I believe that developers have the right to design whatever fucking game they want.

Sure, but the fact that just designing whatever they want and ignoring player feeback would make them awful developers aside, you cannot design the game in a specific way, claim to know better than the players, and then consistently acquiesce and admit that you made a mistake. Legion legendaries, BfA Azerite armor and corruption, and now the Shadowlands covenant swapping and Azerite power are just the most commonly discussed examples of Blizzard making a stupid decision, designing something that had its flaws pointed out months and sometimes years before a fix was finally implemented, and then releasing the fix alongside some statement from Blizzard affirming that they were wrong.

I'm pretty sure I've linked this to you before but here's a pretty good breakdown of how I feel about player feedback:

https://askghostcrawler.tumblr.com/p...ly-real-way-by

edit: If you don't feel like reading words, here's the important part:

As an aside, the best way to drive change is still to try and clearly articulate your concerns in some public forum and hope that the developers take it seriously. I have talked to plenty of players to know how frustrating that answer might be, because at the end of the day, there just isn’t some kind of magic key that you can use to 100% guarantee that you will unlock that lock. Nevertheless, it’s still the best hope you have.

OK, and Blizzard has literally alienated the communities setup for this. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe there was some controversy during BfA or Legion where players with access to private feedback forums spoke about Blizzard dismissing feedback (I think the main focus of this was a theorycrafter named Magdalena). Regardless, Blizzard has consistently shown an inability to actively listen to feedback, with the Ion and Preach interviews being a good example of Blizzard stating the problem players have and then simply saying they won't do anything about it because of some design philosophy that has been invented for that system. Frankly, the developers hear feedback in the same way a cat does when you tell it not to knock something off the table; the cat looks at you, you have its attention, it can hear you, but it clearly does not understand what's happening.

[Shoukyatwo]

Wait, when did wowprogress become the de facto aggregate for accurate player counts?

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I never claimed they were better in subscriber numbers. But they almost assuredly are better in terms of engagement. That's a hill I'll gladly die on.

Ohhhhhh I see so THAT cliche is coming out now as well. "State your resources". *Person proceeds to link resource* "NOT THAT ONE! You are helpless.

[Dracullus]

What? No they weren't; you are mistaking day 1 purchases, which during WoW's most popular time frame was limited by physical sales.
Bnet Launcher didn't even come out until 2013/2014 and prior to that only Cata offered digital downloads on day 1. Not to mention those day 1 purchase numbers include pre-orders which aren't made on the same day, Blizz is condensing 6 months of purchases and applying them all to one day (even though they account for them as sales during the 6 months as well.) Just from pure sub numbers and player count assumptions we know current wow does not sell as well as it used to.

Don't have to pull old data, since WoD pre-order (it's almost 50% of game life at this point) is dealt almost same way and numbers doesn't show any downfall trend. And making any claims about total sales are just stupid without any numbers.

Expansions perform better or worse, but two things are certain: launch is reset and they will lose big chunk of launch tourist no matter what.

And as I said in other thread: games like WoW, ESO or FF14 are so big that's it's irrelevant for regular player - you will find lot of people to play with no matter what. Big servers in WoW are busy as always, other game use megaservers if I remember correctly (WoW should go this way as well, but that's another topic).

[Yarathir]

Wasn't there also a case where Blizzard literally pulled together a community of higher end players to collect and share data and ideas on how things were lacking, how they could be improved, only to them ignore them and later on shit all over them?

Lol.

[Kralljin]

Blizz could go even beyond and you would still get constant QQ threads how everythin sucks, devs are idiots,

I think that remains the dumbest reasoning that exists.

Complaint threads are perfectly normal and always will exist, especially on a forum where people naturally discuss something they are upset about, because people that are upset want change and thus voice it.
Their existence doesn't proof that something is bad, but it also does not mean that something is actually good.

It's like doing on Oil refill on your car, perfectly normal in regular intervals, not so normal when you have to do it every week.

Citing the presence of hyperbole to dismiss criticism is also terrible, when someone says "this will ruin the game", that's very often hyperbole, but that also doesn't mean it's actually healthy for the game, it frankly is more often an easy excuse to invalidate a certain criticism rather than actually address it.

would be a better place if they would just LISTEN to their feedback.

They don't have to do shit.

Developers don't have to listen to players to design a good game, but we're at a point where this continous cycle of Blizzard dismissing player feedback only to implement it months on has become damn obvious.

It's one thing as a developer to sticking to their guns and saying "this is my vision".
I fundamentally disagree with their vision and most unofficial numbers are also showing that most players are turning away from Shadowlands (for a variety of reasons) - but that's one thing.
When you however dismiss feedback early in the development process only to implement later on, that's essentially an admission of failure, yet repeating this cycle is just pure insanity that i cannot explain other than pride.

If the devs frankly accept that people will be quitting over certain elements, then that's their thing but this bait and switch moves of
(1) Dismissing feedback
(2) Implementing feedback months later
is outright insulting.

[Shoukyatwo]

Sure, but the fact that just designing whatever they want and ignoring player feeback would make them awful developers aside, you cannot design the game in a specific way, claim to know better than the players, and then consistently acquiesce and admit that you made a mistake. Legion legendaries, BfA Azerite armor and corruption, and now the Shadowlands covenant swapping and Azerite power are just the most commonly discussed examples of Blizzard making a stupid decision, designing something that had its flaws pointed out months and sometimes years before a fix was finally implemented, and then releasing the fix alongside some statement from Blizzard affirming that they were wrong.



OK, and Blizzard has literally alienated the communities setup for this. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe there was some controversy during BfA or Legion where players with access to private feedback forums spoke about Blizzard dismissing feedback (I think the main focus of this was a theorycrafter named Magdalena). Regardless, Blizzard has consistently shown an inability to actively listen to feedback, with the Ion and Preach interviews being a good example of Blizzard stating the problem players have and then simply saying they won't do anything about it because of some design philosophy that has been invented for that system. Frankly, the developers hear feedback in the same way a cat does when you tell it not to knock something off the table; the cat looks at you, you have its attention, it can hear you, but it clearly does not understand what's happening.

Sir, you are using fact, things that actually happened not open for interpretation, and logic. The addicted fanboys do NOT want any part of that nor will they have it.

[Relapses]

Yeah I'm aware they haven't released numbers since WOD. Genius. That was literally what I wrote in the paragraph.

The game kept no less than 7 million players at any given point up until WOD. This is all records made public by the company themselves, and that was the point they stopped announcing them because they got embarrassed.

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Do you even HEAR YOURSELF? So you're trying to tell me, and the others here easily pointing out you are factually incorrect, that the last 3 expansions have had "better engagement" than the history of WOW? You are the most biased, dishonest, tap dancing make up things as you go along to defend at all cost person I have ever seen in these forums. It's unbelievable.

Or, maybe, just maybe, subscriber numbers never actually meant fucking anything to players because people would just use them to fuel dogshit opinions like, "500k players left the game, guess they all left because of the LFR." Blizzard has never made public how many new players are generated nor how many old players quit. For all we know, more people were quitting in WotLK than they are currently. But unlike 2010 when WoW was at the height of its popularity, the number of new players to fill in for the ones who left is much lower now. So while subscriber levels are lower, the game is actually doing a better job at retaining the players it has. But I guess you're not even allowed to introduce ideas like that into the conversation since "sub levels high means game good; sub levels low means game bad."

[Queen of Hamsters]

Ohhhhhh I see so THAT cliche is coming out now as well. "State your resources". *Person proceeds to link resource* "NOT THAT ONE! You are helpless.

Because it's a shit one.

People are not obligated to accept a source you cite simply because you're citing it. That would make us sheep, and that sort of reasoning (or lack thereof) is why conspiracy theories and social media are causing problems in society at an ever-growing rate.

People like you citing shitty sources as fact, and idiots accepting it at face value because it's convenient and jives with their feelings.

Relapses is entirely correct in his critical thinking here.

[StillMcfuu]

"Pure sub numbers and player count assumptions"...

..What?

Ya'll are too far gone.

We had sub numbers up until mid WoD, and just from assumptions that we can make now due to info we get straight from the API from mid WOD forward. Hence "sub numbers and player count assumptions".

Do you guys really think a game that has 1/4 of subs the game used to is some how selling better?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Or, maybe, just maybe, subscriber numbers never actually meant fucking anything to players because people would just use them to fuel dogshit opinions like, "500k players left the game, guess they all left because of the LFR." Blizzard has never made public how many new players are generated nor how many old players quit. For all we know, more people were quitting in WotLK than they are currently. But unlike 2010 when WoW was at the height of its popularity, the number of new players to fill in for the ones who left is much lower now. So while subscriber levels are lower, the game is actually doing a better job at retaining the players it has. But I guess you're not even allowed to introduce ideas like that into the conversation since "sub levels high means game good; sub levels low means game bad."

More people were actually leaving during WOTLK. The game was losing players like, 8.1 through to at the very least, MoP.

They released a graph showcasing it. Legion and BfA were hella stellar in retention, if nothing else.

[Relapses]

Ohhhhhh I see so THAT cliche is coming out now as well. "State your resources". *Person proceeds to link resource* "NOT THAT ONE! You are helpless.

You didn't actually state a fucking source. You told people to "grab a calculator" and add up the number of players on a 3rd party website that isn't even close to being accurate. Do me a favor, would ya? Count how many Chinese guilds are on wowprogress. I'll wait.

[Queen of Hamsters]

We had sub numbers up until mid WoD, and just from assumptions that we can make now due to info we get straight from the API from mid WOD forward. Hence "sub numbers and player count assumptions".

Do you guys really think a game that has 1/4 of subs the game used to is some how selling better?

In other words, non-reliable/heavily outdated sources with no purpose beyond supporting a narrative as old as the game itself.

Back in WOTLK it was "subs aren't real!", now it's "engagement and reported profits isn't real!"... Oh well, I'm too old to take people to school over this.

They cited numbers not seen since Cata not long ago with no report in decline since. "1/4 of subs" indeed, to the crowd that'll drink horse dewormer at least. LOL!

[StillMcfuu]

In other words, non-reliable sources with no purpose beyond supporting a narrative as old as the game itself.

Back in WOTLK it was "subs aren't real!", now it's "engagement isn't real!"... Oh well, I'm too old to take people to school over this.

They cited numbers not seen since Cata not long ago with no report in decline since. "1/4 of subs" indeed, to the crowd that'll drink horse dewormer at least. LOL!

I'm sorry you can't critically think this out. Just because you drive a bus to a school doesn't mean you understand what is being taught in the school.

[Yarathir]

The amount of cope is a little embarrassing.

[Dracullus]

More people were actually leaving during WOTLK. The game was losing players like, 8.1 through to at the very least, MoP.

They released a graph showcasing it. Legion and BfA were hella stellar in retention, if nothing else.

Could you find source of this graph?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Could you find source of this graph?

Hope it works, for some reason my adblocker didn't like the website...

http://media.wow-europe.com/infograp...fographic.html

[Shoukyatwo]

Because it's a shit one.

People are not obligated to accept a source you cite simply because you're citing it. That would make us sheep, and that sort of reasoning (or lack thereof) is why conspiracy theories and social media are causing problems in society at an ever-growing rate.

People like you citing shitty sources as fact, and idiots accepting it at face value because it's convenient and jives with their feelings.

Relapses is entirely correct in his critical thinking here.

It's a "shit one" because it doesn't back up your arrogant, self righteous, biased thinking and you can't stand it. Just because YOU don't want to accept something feasible, doesn't mean some hodge podge bullshit 180 is going to negate it. It's a perfectly acceptable source in ANY context. It doesn't support your shit narrative so you want to discredit it. I don't need "critical thinking". I. PROVIDED. FUCKING. NUMBERS.

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The amount of cope is a little embarrassing.

It really is. I legit can't grasp it to save my life.