I think WoW would benefit from having less difficulty modes and less ilv.

[Relapses]

Merge heroic and normal - first bosses around mid-tier normal bosses, scaling up to the final boss being heroic.

For once, I actually agree with you 100% on this.

[WowIsDead64]

Was touched on in another thread but feels like it should be its own topic. For raids I think the prior mythic tier should be equal to the next raids heroic in terms of power with perhaps a few items carrying over. It isn't a drastic change but would help keep more content relevant for alts and would encourage pugging.

As for dungeons. I think the current system is bloated and inefficient for all involved. Heroic outside of leveling doesn't really serve a purpose its a pointless difficulty mode that offers no challenge and the mythic plus system is a poor system for gearing. I would suggest making mythic 0 just normal. Make mythic 10 heroic and mythic 15 "mythic".

After that you move the mythic+ system into a new game plus area. It doesn't have anything to do with gearing but you add rewards to it similar to pvp. Have a recolored elite/mythic set for hitting a certain milestone add cosmetic flares etc.

I think these changes would help ease people into harder parts of the game without the weird bottle neck you currently see with keys and their punish the key holder tactic that has player either being willing to form their own groups or farming dozens of trivial keys to get into slightly higher ones.

Instead. It actually needs dynamic difficulty. That's why scaling is bad. Some players cried, that content was boring due to being too easy. Ok, Blizzard decided, that it should always be difficult. But HOW difficult? Back in old times it was up to you to decide. You could rush to next location and it would be a little more difficult for you. But you could also outlevel it a little bit and it would be little more easy for you. But now it's forced. Nobody asks you, if location is too easy or too hard for you. And unfortunately current difficulty level of this game doesn't match my preferences and therefore game isn't fun and enjoyable for me.

[RoKPaNda]

Sadly your just wrong. You can look at the health if each server itself. With raiding a servers dead. Now I don't de ide that, blizzard doesn't decide. Only the playerbase does.

You flawed broken and borderline insane logic simply crumbles apart upon any prodding. You make a desperate last ditch plea to popularity without even thinking through that low hanging fruit of an argument.

If we are arguing what is the most popular content in wows history it has and likely always will be the first 10 levels. Shouldn't the game be designed around that?

I do implore you to ponder and test your arguments before presenting them to others.

You're trying too hard, but you might consider a career in stand up comedy because that reply was hilarious.

Are dead servers dead because they don't have a raiding community or do they not have a raiding community because they're dead overall? Correlation does not equal causation. You might have missed it but this thread is about pruning max level PvE content. It's not about how leveling should be balanced. Entirely different section of the WoW team and not relevant to the argument. Though in case you didn't notice, leveling in new expansions IS balanced around casual players. :] That's the second time now you've tried to compare apples and oranges and were completely wrong.

This game, whether you like it or not, is balanced around the average player. Not those of us who raid Mythic.

[Mr Crix]

You're trying too hard, but you might consider a career in stand up comedy because that reply was hilarious.

Are dead servers dead because they don't have a raiding community or do they not have a raiding community because they're dead overall? Correlation does not equal causation. You might have missed it but this thread is about pruning max level PvE content. It's not about how leveling should be balanced. Entirely different section of the WoW team and not relevant to the argument. Though in case you didn't notice, leveling in new expansions IS balanced around casual players. :] That's the second time now you've tried to compare apples and oranges and were completely wrong.

This game, whether you like it or not, is balanced around the average player. Not those of us who raid Mythic.

It isn't a chicken or the egg question... we got to see the servers die in real time during tbc through cata. Once the raiders left everyone else did. Even now if you where to recommend wow to a friend would you honestly tell me you wouldn't have them rolling on a raid server?

The high end in almost all games carries the low end. It's to the point you have to search out outliners to argue otherwise.

[Weeps]

The question I ask here is...

Would removing mythic raid completely damage WoW as only 1-5% of the base plays that difficulty?

[Osmeric]

I can't ever see this being a thing. Mythic is what drives wow and before that heroic. Even the playerbase accepts that without a mythic guild their server is dead.

Mythic is also the only content wow really does better then anyone else. When it falls the house of cards goes with it.

I think this is the sort of mindset that has caused the devs to fly WoW right into the ground. "It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you 'know' that's wrong."

[Relapses]

The question I ask here is...

Would removing mythic raid completely damage WoW as only 1-5% of the base plays that difficulty?

Yes, irrevocably so. High-end raiding has always been the aspirational players of WoW. The ultimate carrot on the proverbial stick. You remove that and the entire foundation the game is founded on falls apart.

- - - Updated - - -

I think this is the sort of mindset that has caused the devs to fly WoW right into the ground. "It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you 'know' that's wrong."

So rather than having appropriately difficult content in a game with a massive playerbase, we should sanitize everything for the lowest common denominator and hand out participation trophies to all players because they managed to type in their username and password correctly.

I'll pass on that.

[Temp name]

I think these changes would help ease people into harder parts of the game

See that's where you're wrong
Most people don't do content, find out it's hard and then say "wow, I couldn't do that, guess I better learn how to play the game better so I can do it"
They say "wow, I couldn't do that, the game is way too hard, I'll unsub"

[Osmeric]

So rather than having appropriately difficult content in a game with a massive playerbase, we should sanitize everything for the lowest common denominator and hand out participation trophies to all players because they managed to type in their username and password correctly.

I'll pass on that.

Yes, I imagine that's the sort of thinking the devs used. The problem with it is it's putting their personal preferences over the interests of their employer. If the game truly would do better as a commercial product by focusing on the average low skill customer, then they've sacrificed billions of dollars on the altar of their own egos.

[Relapses]

Yes, I imagine that's the sort of thinking the devs used. The problem with it is it's putting their personal preferences over the interests of their employer. If the game truly would do better as a commercial product by focusing on the average low skill customer, then they've sacrificed billions of dollars on the altar of their own egos.

Big 'ol citation needed for all of that.

[Osmeric]

Big 'ol citation needed for all of that.

I'm assuming that the hypothesis "the game truly would do better as a commercial product by focusing on the average low skill customer" means that their loss of average players over the years would have been slower, had they focused more on those players. So many millions of players have been lost that keeping even some of them a few years longer would have been worth billions.

[Relapses]

I'm assuming that the hypothesis "the game truly would do better as a commercial product by focusing on the average low skill customer" means that their loss of average players over the years would have been slower, had they focused more on those players. So many millions of players have been lost that keeping even some of them a few years longer would have been worth billions.

Because nobody ever quits a video game for a reason for anything other than, "I didn't get full Mythic BiS for existing," right? It's hilarious that you think this way but no, the existence of difficult content in WoW is not the sole reason it's in a bad place right now.

[Soon-TM]

I'm assuming that the hypothesis "the game truly would do better as a commercial product by focusing on the average low skill customer" means that their loss of average players over the years would have been slower, had they focused more on those players. So many millions of players have been lost that keeping even some of them a few years longer would have been worth billions.

WotLK was a veritable paradise for casuals, and it was a very successful expansion. On the other hand, Cata went full steam with a Git Gud™ attitude at the beginning... and the results were promptly seen.

[Osmeric]

Because nobody ever quits a video game for a reason for anything other than, "I didn't get full Mythic BiS for existing," right? It's hilarious that you think this way but no, the existence of difficult content in WoW is not the sole reason it's in a bad place right now.

Of course I didn't say that. Have you tried arguing in good faith? It leads to a more productive discussion.

[Relapses]

Of course I didn't say that. Have you tried arguing in good faith? It leads to a more productive discussion.

The game shouldn't be brought down to the lowest common denominator as you're suggesting. It should encourage the lowest common denominator to get better at the game. That's pretty much what it does already, though there are too many raid difficulty levels at the moment.

[psyquest]

in WOTLK 25 man gave a siginficant higher iLvl than 10 mans. 13 more.

https://worldofwarcraft.fandom.com/et/wiki/Item_level

Not in MOP if memory serves me right.

[Relapses]

Not in MOP if memory serves me right.

Gear parity between 10M and 25M Heroic started in Cata. It's also when 10M Heroic raiding all but erased the existence of 25M Heroic raiding.

[Osmeric]

The game shouldn't be brought down to the lowest common denominator as you're suggesting. It should encourage the lowest common denominator to get better at the game. That's pretty much what it does already, though there are too many raid difficulty levels at the moment.

But why? If players largely don't want to get better like that, and would tend to quit if forced, and if the purpose of the game is to make money, then obviously it should not attempt to make them better. This should not be difficult to understand.

You seem to be saying the game should adhere to what you want even at the expense of much lower revenue. How could that make any real sense?

[Relapses]

But why? If players largely don't want to get better like that, and would tend to quit if forced, and if the purpose of the game is to make money, then obviously it should not attempt to make them better. This should not be difficult to understand.

You seem to be saying the game should adhere to what you want even at the expense of much lower revenue. How could that make any real sense?

I really fail to understand your insistence of framing the argument as "easy content means more players; only purpose of game is make money so make all content easy to maximize players." There's a helluva of a lot of nuance that you're throwing out the door to make an argument in favor of fundamentally changing one of the few things which sets this game apart from others in the same genre.

[Osmeric]

I really fail to understand your insistence of framing the argument as "easy content means more players; only purpose of game is make money so make all content easy to maximize players." There's a helluva of a lot of nuance that you're throwing out the door to make an argument in favor of fundamentally changing one of the few things which sets this game apart from others in the same genre.

Well, yes, obviously you fail to understand. I'm glad you recognize that.

It's really very simple. The purpose of a commercial game is to make money. Full stop. Waffling about this doesn't change this brute fact. The game is not a work of art, it is not a statement of some kind. It is a machine for getting money from our pockets to Activision-Blizzards pockets. To the extent that considerations of art or other airy pretensions exist, they are in service to this goal.