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

[Nerovar]

There's pretty significant evidence that players don't engage with cosmetic rewards... CModes. They were around for two expansions and only completed by less than 1% of the playerbase.

Mage tower as also a cosmetic reward and according to Wowhead 30% of all accounts have the achievement. I'd imagine the rate to be a bit higher if the content in question was more than a single boss fight with a single weapon transmog as your reward.

[Relapses]

Was that during WoD or MoP? I took a break at the end of MoP and didn't come back until Legion. I would have been the 1% if I was around then though. This actually explains quite a bit then about their current design philosophy.

MoP had the class sets from CModes. WoD had the weapon models.

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Mage tower as also a cosmetic reward and according to Wowhead 30% of all accounts have the achievement. I'd imagine the rate to be a bit higher if the content in question was more than a single boss fight with a single weapon transmog as your reward.

MT was also way, way, wayyyyyyyyyyy easier by the end of Legion.

[Nerovar]

MoP had the class sets from CModes. WoD had the weapon models.

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MT was also way, way, wayyyyyyyyyyy easier by the end of Legion.

Yeah, true. CMode was a special case because you couldn't really outgear it. But the argument wasn't really about difficulty. The question was whether people would play content if it only rewarded cosmetics. (Also wowhead says 10% did the Pandaria CM gold achievement)

[Yarathir]

If you're going to call me out at least have the courage to @ me. And in any case, I do neither of those things. I encourage people not to look at things from glass half empty but it seems even a moderate position about WoW gets you flamed these days.

I very consciously did not and it had nothing to do with "courage" or lack thereof- after all, what should I be afraid of? More about trying to see if 'someone' would fit their foot in the shoe.

And you consider rhetorically defending everything Blizzard does in the present moderate? Well, I guess we all have our standards.

[Relapses]

I very consciously did not and it had nothing to do with "courage" or lack thereof- after all, what should I be afraid of? More about trying to see if 'someone' would fit their foot in the shoe.

And you consider rhetorically defending everything Blizzard does in the present moderate? Well, I guess we all have our standards.

I don't defend Blizzard. I criticize people who have pointlessly cynical outlooks.

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Yeah, true. CMode was a special case because you couldn't really outgear it. But the argument wasn't really about difficulty. The question was whether people would play content if it only rewarded cosmetics. (Also wowhead says 10% did the Pandaria CM gold achievement)

Was it that high? I'd always just lodged the 1% figure in my mind but it could've been higher. I still think there's a lot of evidence to point to cosmetic rewards being a far less potent motivating factor than gear itself. And often times when Blizzard puts gear (or gear adjacent) rewards in a feature, it's because they want the playerbase to engage with that specific content.

[Kaligon]

Agreed. Warcraft has issues, but the sheer amount of art and super-high quality dungeons and raids in the game is extremely solid. There are more unique mobs with interesting abilities in a single dungeon than you would find in 5 dungeons in Vanilla. This makes the M+ runs way more interesting. Imagine doing M+ in Vanilla Scarlett Monastery -- I love the instance, but there are like 5 enemy models in the entire place and they all have 1 attack and no abilities. We might as well make an M+ Target Dummy.

Everyone asking for more and more content doesn't seem to notice that there are mountains of content. My only gripe is the spacing between patches, but not the quality of each patch. If 9.1 came out 5-6 months after launch instead of 9, it would have been phenomenally received, imho. I give em slack cause of COVID.

[Skylarking]

There's pretty significant evidence that players don't engage with cosmetic rewards... CModes. They were around for two expansions and only completed by less than 1% of the playerbase.

Perhaps that might be true while it's current content. However it also becomes its advantage later on because it does not make the content obsolete. People are running old raids and dungeons constantly.

[Sithalos]

The copium huffing on this website is astounding.

[Osmeric]

There's pretty significant evidence that players don't engage with cosmetic rewards... CModes. They were around for two expansions and only completed by less than 1% of the playerbase.

Or, that players didn't like CModes or M+, but held their noses and did M+ when sufficiently bribed. The problem with that approach is that if the players are asked to do too much, or the rewards are scaled back, they just leave. The scaling back of reward in SL is looking particularly inopportune to me.

[Unholyground]

Peole ave been saying that since the begining ANd what new MMO's? WoW is nowhere near on it's way out.

It is becoming a niche audience though.

[Kallisto]

Mage tower as also a cosmetic reward and according to Wowhead 30% of all accounts have the achievement. I'd imagine the rate to be a bit higher if the content in question was more than a single boss fight with a single weapon transmog as your reward.

But until Antorus came out the amount of people actually doing the mage tower was minuscule at best. It was actually loathed and considered elitist shit when it came out until basically everyone was 2 leggo'd up 4/2 in tier sets (If your class actually benefitted from the 4 set + 2 set) and maxed out weapons. Where the bosses basically fell over themselves because they were no longer a challenge.

That's the part of the mage tower people remember, an auto win, end of expansion free cosmetic reward. Not the Nighthold/Tomb of Sargeras eras where it actually was an actual challenge it was meant to be.

[Nerovar]

But until Antorus came out the amount of people actually doing the mage tower was minuscule at best. It was actually loathed and considered elitist shit when it came out until basically everyone was 2 leggo'd up 4/2 in tier sets (If your class actually benefitted from the 4 set + 2 set) and maxed out weapons. Where the bosses basically fell over themselves because they were no longer a challenge.

That's the part of the mage tower people remember, an auto win, end of expansion free cosmetic reward. Not the Nighthold/Tomb of Sargeras eras where it actually was an actual challenge it was meant to be.

I don't really see the issue with that. The people who want to play it as challenging content do it early on and the people who only care about cosmetics just outgear it at some point. Seems like a win-win.

[Steelangel]

Yeah, true. CMode was a special case because you couldn't really outgear it. But the argument wasn't really about difficulty. The question was whether people would play content if it only rewarded cosmetics. (Also wowhead says 10% did the Pandaria CM gold achievement)

People will play single-player stuff to get cosmetics.

People will NOT play group stuff for cosmetics. Trying to wrangle 4 other people together to get a gear set is difficult, and once everyone in the group of 5 gets theirs, is there incentive to help out someone else? What about if a couple players have alts that also want the xmogs? Let's find 3 more people!

I am not proud to say that I got boosted through one of my MoP runs for the xmog. I only needed Scarlet Halls and not a single one of my guildies at the time who had already done the Cmodes (even with me) had interest or time to help me through. It's stupid.

On the other hand, I could power through the Mage Tower on my own schedule and at my own pull pace. I strugglebussed so hard on the Disc Priest* staff because my priest was radically undergeared for the content, but I did it, and I still rock that damn xmog (especially the bizzaro pink PvP version). If I had had to coordinate those pulls with others, half the group would have given up.

* I realize that it was supposedly the "easiest one" but it was stupidly hard for me because of tight timing and the stacking damage buff. It's like healing Necrotic as Disc. Not fun at all.

[Makaloff]

Blizzard designs cars like that already, it can't get any worse.

we said that in wod and yet here we are with expansions worse than what wod was XD

[Gaidax]

A lot of people did. There were 100+ page topics about Covenants where all the problems that they ended up having were called out with 100% accuracy.

That's some wild statement. MMOC and forums as a whole when it comes to divining flaws in something are akin to shooting full auto machine gun at a target. Some bullets eventually do hit.

Does not mean it was 100% hit rate. There was plenty bullshit that did not turn out the way it was preached either, it would be fair to remember that too.

[Relapses]

That's some wild statement. MMOC and forums as a whole when it comes to divining flaws in something are akin to shooting full auto machine gun at a target. Some bullets eventually do hit.

Does not mean it was 100% hit rate. There was plenty bullshit that did not turn out the way it was preached either, it would be fair to remember that too.

To an extent, yeah. But in this particular situation the biggest problem with Covenants -- the fact that they weren't easily swappable nor were they balanced well -- was pretty obvious from the onset. That was mostly what I was alluding to on the "100% accuracy" part. I probably could've worded it better though.

[Mitak]

We will see how Blizzard handles the next expansion. If any lessons learned or not. The way they are changing paintings though does not really bolster my confidence.

[Zantera]

We will see how Blizzard handles the next expansion. If any lessons learned or not. The way they are changing paintings though does not really bolster my confidence.

I guess we finally found a more stupid reason to dismiss a whole expansion after 'MoP was terrible because pet battles' with 'the new xpac is bad because they changed the paintings"

[cozzri]

We will see how Blizzard handles the next expansion. If any lessons learned or not. The way they are changing paintings though does not really bolster my confidence.

Blizzard basically have been running WoW like they are landlords; slap a fresh coat of white paint on the old turd and sell it up.

Actually, they’ve been doing the same with all their game; Warcraft 3: reforged. Diablo 2: Resurrcted; overwatch 2 soon.

I’m not sure an original thought is left at this company if I’m being completely honest; if it does exist it’s getting lost in the murk of corporate bureaucracy.

[Flutterguy]

We will see how Blizzard handles the next expansion. If any lessons learned or not. The way they are changing paintings though does not really bolster my confidence.

You mean the one we might get in 2023?