WoW has to be inviting for young gamers - but it's not

[Alydael]

The WOW community is too toxic for the younger gamers. I would imagine you are talking mostly 16-20 ish. That is a social age and they like the positive interaction. WOW is not welcoming at all to younger gamers or even new players. Some servers you log unto and the "community" consists of a bunch of players spamming chat with boosting ads.

Blizz redid the leveling for this x-pac and I convinced some people to give the game a shot as a group. Roughly 6-8 first time players. They loved the leveling and everything, then they hit end game and were like "WTF?" They didn't last long after that.

I think times have changed and if Blizz wants this game to return to success, they have a long way to go to make it more welcoming and less toxic. I know they say it is the players but it is mostly the design of their reward structure and the way they structure the end game. You can be challenging while not toxic, a ton of games pull it off.

[Boricha]

We can't confirm WoW's demographic, but I think WoW is struggling to capture any audience at the moment and demographics aren't something it has the luxury to concern itself with. It simply lacks content for casual and hardcore audiences alike, unless you are competing in MDI.

[Itisamuh]

The WOW community is too toxic for the younger gamers. I would imagine you are talking mostly 16-20 ish. That is a social age and they like the positive interaction. WOW is not welcoming at all to younger gamers or even new players. Some servers you log unto and the "community" consists of a bunch of players spamming chat with boosting ads.

Blizz redid the leveling for this x-pac and I convinced some people to give the game a shot as a group. Roughly 6-8 first time players. They loved the leveling and everything, then they hit end game and were like "WTF?" They didn't last long after that.

I think times have changed and if Blizz wants this game to return to success, they have a long way to go to make it more welcoming and less toxic. I know they say it is the players but it is mostly the design of their reward structure and the way they structure the end game. You can be challenging while not toxic, a ton of games pull it off.

Your experience with people of that age group is apparently a lot different than mine. They are probably the most rude demographic. Typically older players are more mature and nicer in general and much younger players are naive enough to be led.

I think the toxic issue has more to do with the game being older than anything else. Any game with a long standing established community will have a lot of know it all snobs that forget what being new or casual is like. Nothing the developers do will fix that mindset.

[Mojo03]

From my time spent browsing the FFXIV official forums, Gamefaqs, r/FFXIV, /xivg/ on 4chan, FF14 youtubers, etc, I get the impression that the FFXIV fanbase is overall much younger than the WoW fanbase.

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WoW isn't dark 100% of the time. It has questlines with levity, such as the Azshara or Uldum questlines in Cata, or adventuring with Brann, or a lot of Pandaria, and so on.

I think the biggest impediment to attracting new players is that the game just isn't fun for newcomers and the barrier of entry of getting caught up and learning all of the mechanics is too great. You have to have already been in WoW to tolerate it.

Ya, I mean it’s very anecdotal. And its plausible they could also be immature older people on those forums who come off young. It’s hard to really know.

In my experience, FF14 community seems vastly 25+ people who grew up playing WoW or other MMOs.

I attribute it to the aesthetic, the starting experience, the insanely long MSQ, the excessive and long cutscenes, and generally how old of a game it feels to play that quickly turns off younger people. I don’t think younger people make it very far in FF14. At least in western countries.

Same kind of issues that turned off so many streamers for so long.

And I obviously know WoW isn’t 100% dark, but in my experience Gen Z wants light/upbeat/fun games and WoW can come off taking itself way too seriously and feel generally pretty drab.

And I don’t think all the negative attention its been getting helps.

I’d agree with you though that the barrier for newcomers is in a bad place and that adds to turning off people. Blizzard seems to know that and instead of fixing the issues, seems to be leaning more into nostalgia to get former players to come back.

[Mysterymask]

Let niche games be niche..

Dead serious you want a good community the solution isn't get all the youngins to play but foster what's already there

Wow's a toxic cesspool of elitism? The only way to change that is if they take away the things that arguably keeps modern wow going...there are tons of better games to reach out to wow's weakpoints.

[Taarna]

Fuck young gamers.

[Soon-TM]

Wow's a toxic cesspool of elitism? The only way to change that is if they take away the things that arguably keeps modern wow going...there are tons of better games to reach out to wow's weakpoints.

Do you mean that the only way to combat elitism and rampant toxicity among the playerbase is to kill the game as we've come to know it? Damn that's a harsh indictment.

[cuafpr]

if you think wow is that easy don't try another MMO....

[Kokolums]

The Newcomer chat is so much more active than any General chat I'm in. I talk with new players all the time, helping answer questions and point them toward various game resources for doing things that they want to do. The chat is also really friendly. I personally think the Newcomer chat is the best social feature of the game.

WoW used to use global LFG as newcomer chat. but when they destroyed the in-game community (and removed global LFG) it died. they later brought back global LFG but it was too late. the community was dead and people no longer socialized.

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the first step is to make the satchel more rewarding. reward people for helping those in need.

[Unlimited Power]

Games that appeal to young people are games like MOBAs, Battle-Royale, tactical team based FPS like CSGO and Valorant, auto-chess battlers, Minecraft, Among Us etc.

I enjoy none of those games, and I most certainly don't enjoy surrounding myself with the bundles of immaturity that are teenagers, so I'm not sure how the game striving to appeal to a younger audience would in any way improve my experience.

MMO is an outdated genre that'll never appeal to younger audiences anyway.

[Mojo03]

MMO is an outdated genre that'll never appeal to younger audiences anyway.

The current EQ/WoW grind and raid model all big MMOs follow probably won’t.

Even with that model, no one is really doing it that well right now. The big ones have major problems, that probably won’t ever get properly addressed, but something built on new technology, that takes the best components of what’s out there now could completely take over the MMO space quite easily.

I’d also imagine the future MMO will be something that lets the players be more creative/lifestyle/community focused. Those seem to be key components that keep people playing MMOs.

Imagine a game that lets you design armor or housing items and then operate a digital store to sell them. Or community made dungeons/events with weekly rewards for the creators. That’s the future. There is nothing like that currently and it’ll be huge when it comes.

FF14 does the lifestyle/community part the best currently, but still leaves a LOT to be desired.

It’s just no one is willing to take the risk on something too different considering how expensive and time consuming they are to make.

Also we haven’t see Riots yet and they’re killing it in the industry right now. Who knows what that will be, but I could very easily see it sweeping the MMO space and being a huge force in all of gaming.

[Aleksej89]

its been a long time since wow was good... two expansions of overwhelmingly bad game/system mechanics, not to mention awful story.
and that is assuming legion is counted as above average, which is debatable since it had a mix of big ups and big downs.

there are countless games more appealing to the young crowds, while wow is filled with mechanics that will repulse them.
wow is for old players that are too inert to look for other games, and blizzard knows it hence the minimum quality + maximum grind + cash milking designs.

[Miffinat0r]

People keep saying this. It's manifestly absurd. The notion that players are retained by content beyond what they're comfortable with is ridiculous, and most players have low skill ceilings. Ghostcrawler himself said most players do not want challenging content. The experience in FF XIV confirms this.

QFT.


People really need to stop lying to themselves about that issue.

[Mysterymask]

Imagine a game that lets you design armor or housing items and then operate a digital store to sell them. Or community made dungeons/events with weekly rewards for the creators. That’s the future. There is nothing like that currently and it’ll be huge when it comes.

You are literally describing some servers in second life...the only reason that aspect isn't so big is because the "OTHER" aspect is also very big

[Munson85]

One person I asked and my own personal opinions tell me WoW has trouble attracting young people

Even if it did who cares because SPOILERS - young people get old, and if oldies play guess what younglings turn into!

[Tojara]

I don't think young people typically play MMOs in mass anyway. Pretty much everybody who plays MMOs are pretty much in the same age demographic, and that includes both WoW and FF14. Maybe FF14 is a bit younger of a crowd, but I don't know. I just see loads of people ranging from 25-40 in these games, and there's 'boomers' everywhere.

The MMO community is still big and I think trying to get younger audiences into MMOs probably would alienate the 'veteran' playerbase.

At the end of the day WoW just needs to be a better game period. The things it does well it's consistently done well for over 16 years. We are, however in a drought in regards to new features dating back to Legion, which will be nearing 6 years at the conclusion of Shadowlands. A pretty long stagnation period IMO and is probably the biggest reason people are flirting with other games, MMOs or just hanging it up for the meantime waiting for something 'new' to come up.

The game at it's core from a dungeon, raid and combat perspective is still arguably the best of any MMO, or at least the same in some of those areas. It does a huge disservice to it's 16 years of old content by not making it relevant at all and simply using it as a short jaunt through the disjointed leveling experience. Not saying it's a good thing for everything in the past to be incredibly relevant forever, but they could have a far better "timewalking" in the game than what they have now. Aside from that, I personally think the faction divide does far more harm than it does good at this point, and essentially gives them far more work to come up with questlines that half the player base is never going to experience.

Account wide stuff would do wonders. They're starting to understand that now, but you shouldn't really have to invest anymore than gearing and leveling another class IMO. Watching the power growth IMO is fun and even the progression systems that people whine about are generally good too (with the caveat being that you only have to them once). The intro quest to the final patch in BFA was pretty fun "IMO" but that sort of shit wears thin when you have to go through that questline on every single character (and yes, I know you can skip a couple portions of it, but it's was still a time sink).

[Kokolums]

At the end of the day WoW just needs to be a better game period. The things it does well it's consistently done well for over 16 years. We are, however in a drought in regards to new features dating back to Legion, which will be nearing 6 years at the conclusion of Shadowlands. A pretty long stagnation period IMO and is probably the biggest reason people are flirting with other games, MMOs or just hanging it up for the meantime waiting for something 'new' to come up.

I know some praise Legion, but it didn't attract new players. there was a collapse of players in WoD. Legion saw less players then WoD.

its more like the playerbase keeps shrinking every xpac, and especially big fuckups accelerates the decline for a bit.

[deenman]

The game costs too much to get into. Game + expansion AND a monthly fee?

well actualy you dont buy the game,you only need a sub to play everything pre current expansion,so you only buy the latest expansion

also the token makes wow very cheap,i havent spent real money on a sub in years,or on any expansion since the token came

making gold is also very easy,just find a half decent guild that wants to boost,in wod we had 2 of our main raiders start the game in wod and by the time hellfire came out they were progressing mythic with us and on the boosting team

[Sucralose]

I know some praise Legion, but it didn't attract new players. there was a collapse of players in WoD. Legion saw less players then WoD.

its more like the playerbase keeps shrinking every xpac, and especially big fuckups accelerates the decline for a bit.

Blizzard should realistically be looking at condensing wow into perhaps 12 active servers at this point or bit the bullet and remove the mythic raid restrictions. It honestly feels like they are willing to inflict more and more damage to the game to milk cash shop sales rather then address decade old problems.

[Mojo03]

well actualy you dont buy the game,you only need a sub to play everything pre current expansion,so you only buy the latest expansion

also the token makes wow very cheap,i havent spent real money on a sub in years,or on any expansion since the token came

making gold is also very easy,just find a half decent guild that wants to boost,in wod we had 2 of our main raiders start the game in wod and by the time hellfire came out they were progressing mythic with us and on the boosting team

How much do you make boosting?