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

[Adamas102]

If someone can not afford 20 dollars a month they have a lot more to worry about in life that paying a sub in a game. If you can not pay for what is basically thr price of one pizza, you're to poor to even worry about it. Get your life together.

Ah yes, the typical idiot’s response. Would you pay $20 for a single M&M? No?! But it’s only $20!

A low cost can still be too pricey for something if that item isn’t considered worth it. To be honest, the constantly regurgitated “but it’s so much entertainment time per dollar” is more of a poor man’s excuse than anything. I would not fault anyone for thinking that spending over $100 per year plus another $50 every couple years just to play one 20 year old video game is excessive. This idea of WoW being a forever game that gives you the most bang for your buck is a pretty niche mentality.

I spend thousands of dollars per year on more expensive hobbies and yeah I’d consider $20/month too expensive for me to play WoW. I might consider like $3/month (what I feel WoW is truly worth IMO), but until that time I will only pay for my sub with gold.

[Tic Tacs]

Monthly sub is a major barrier of entry for new players, considering young gamers have so many other high quality free options where they can buy skins or other in-game items instead of paying monthly sub and not knowing if they be able to pay that next month or year, they always go for something they can have now.

[roboscorcher]

Honestly, the whole Diablo Immortal fiasco kind of screwed our chances of ever getting a 'WoW Mobile'.

We literally made fun of devs for asking "do you not have phones?" No sane dev is going to want to announce the next mobile title. You can argue that it's their fault for not announcing D4 that year to keep the fans happy, but it is what it is.

We'll see how Immortal launches. If it's bad, don't expect any mobile development from Blizzard in the next 10 years.

[Soon-TM]

We'll see how Immortal launches. If it's bad, don't expect any mobile development from Blizzard in the next 10 years.

Will it though? How long has that thing been in development?

[deenman]

Yes, I'm sure a lot of newcomers who just started to play WoW will make enough gold through boosts to buy tokens.... Do you even read the thread you reply to?

did you read what i said?we had 2 people start in wod,and by the start of hellfire they were raiding mythic and boosting,yes not all players will do that,but its not imposible,i also knew plenty of people in mop who made plenty of gold just by farming world content,dunno how profitable that is these days however

[Aresk]

There's a newcomer chat!? Are old players allowed or do we have to sign up for something

Newcomer chat is available for new players (up to level 50) and guides. If you're not new to the game, then the only way to join is to become a guide. There's an NPC outside the respective faction embassy that can allow veteran players to sign up to be guides; I don't know what the current prerequisites are, but when I did it, one needed three of five particular achievements. I think right now it's just the 3000 quest achievement, but I could be mistaken on that one.

[Kokolums]

Newcomer chat is available for new players (up to level 50) and guides. If you're not new to the game, then the only way to join is to become a guide. There's an NPC outside the respective faction embassy that can allow veteran players to sign up to be guides; I don't know what the current prerequisites are, but when I did it, one needed three of five particular achievements. I think right now it's just the 3000 quest achievement, but I could be mistaken on that one.

Yeah, that's horrible implementation. Make it free to join and bugle out the fact it exists. Idiots. No one will know it exists when you do it like that. It just blows my mind how dumb Blizz is.

Blizz: people interacting and socializing and helping others? Let's gate it, hide it, not talk about it, so no-one knows about it nor uses it!!!!!!

[AcidicSyn]

Newcomer chat is available for new players (up to level 50) and guides. If you're not new to the game, then the only way to join is to become a guide. There's an NPC outside the respective faction embassy that can allow veteran players to sign up to be guides; I don't know what the current prerequisites are, but when I did it, one needed three of five particular achievements. I think right now it's just the 3000 quest achievement, but I could be mistaken on that one.

Interesting. I just resubbed a few days ago, already ignoring general and trade chat but looking for some steady folks, I wouldn't mind playing with newbies, I could probably answer most of their questions not specific to SL. I'll check that out, tyty.

[m4xc4v413r4]

Young people do not use Facebook.

Source: your ass...

[MoanaLisa]

And yet I see people on facebook groups posting every single day that they just started playing WoW and asking for help and advice. Seems like your entire thread just went down the drain just from that.

Facebook is largely sneered at here but it's a fact that I belong to two Facebook WoW private groups for older players that both number in excess of 12,000 members while this site rarely has more than a couple of hundred people logged on and posting to all forums at any one time. There are other FB WoW groups that number in the dozens and dozens of thousands.

[Venziir]

Source: your ass...

Eh... Compared to the other large SoMe platforms, Facebook isn't really used by teens as much as by adults. Teens prefer TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

[username993720]

It's already Disneyfied beyond Disney+. How is it not for toddlers?

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

It's also poorly optimized and takes a toll on the CPU.

[Aresk]

Yeah, that's horrible implementation. Make it free to join and bugle out the fact it exists. Idiots. No one will know it exists when you do it like that. It just blows my mind how dumb Blizz is.

Blizz: people interacting and socializing and helping others? Let's gate it, hide it, not talk about it, so no-one knows about it nor uses it!!!!!!

Blizzard announced the feature when it came out. It was also covered by Icy Veins, Wowhead, and other sites. All newcomers are automatically placed in the chat. They don't want people who don't know the game giving bad information, and they don't want spammers going in to flood it with boosting services, so there's a requirement to be a guide. This is the same type of system enforced in other games. I'm not sure why you think no one knows it exists when there are lots of people already using it.

[Sucralose]

Blizzard announced the feature when it came out. It was also covered by Icy Veins, Wowhead, and other sites. All newcomers are automatically placed in the chat. They don't want people who don't know the game giving bad information, and they don't want spammers going in to flood it with boosting services, so there's a requirement to be a guide. This is the same type of system enforced in other games. I'm not sure why you think no one knows it exists when there are lots of people already using it.

Most guides shouldn't be in the chat to be honest. They set the bar absurdly low. Ive seen people trying to trick new or returning players onto dead servers in it near constantly and the chat rages about any questions relating to end game above lfr.

Should of made it one or more of the following, CE, Glad, Full mythic 20s.

[Khaza-R]

I think if any MMO has a chance to appealing to a younger demographic, its probably Riot's future title. I anticipate it will probably be pretty unconventional for the genre.

But even then, that game is probably 5-6 years out from release so probably still marketing to Gen Z rather than Alphas at that point

[Djuntas]

Agreed with all the OP says. Gaming has only gotten 10x more popular since 2010 wow peak, but wow has died off.

[Isilrien]

The majority of WoW gamers are stuck playing it from a long time ago. It has a very high median age, and I would say it's as high as 30+ years old...

Good thing you put the + in there or you'd have been off because 30 is not "high." I know people in their 50s and 60s who play the game and have since launch, and even older.

[L3fty]

Good thing you put the + in there or you'd have been off because 30 is not "high." I know people in their 50s and 60s who play the game and have since launch, and even older.

This is true. That being said, I wonder what the most common age bracket is nowadays. I'd hazard a guess it's between 29 - 35. When the game launched it felt like pretty much everyone you'd meet was between 16 - 21yrs (with a small number of 21+). There was so much hype surrounding it with college and uni age brackets.

I really don't get the impression that demographic has been replenished and now the ones of us left are those mid 30's gamers. Think it's a problem for the future player numbers, but even more so that those of us in our 30's that have played for 16 or more years don't even want to play anymore.

[Ehrenpanzer]

The majority of WoW gamers are stuck playing it from a long time ago. It has a very high median age, and I would say it's as high as 30+ years old. It's pretty basic math that the game needs to recruit new gamers to grow. It's not now, its caitering to veteran WoW gamers.

Getting new young gamers will not only make the game more popular, it will make the game way more fun for all of us. We will have people actually leveling in the world, we will have players that do dungeons and don't demand to speedrun it the first time they run it. Even if you are a "I hate zoomers" guy, you can also kill them in World PvP while they try to level.

Young gamers has no interest in playing WoW. Why?

My opinion:
* The game costs too much to get into. Game + expansion AND a monthly fee? Also the free trial is not a good representation of the game.
* The game does an absolutly terrible job of showing people the strength of an MMORPG, the social aspect. I believe the most common feedback from new players will be "it's lonely".
* The game is way too easy. I don't know why Blizzard thought gamers hate challenges, and made the game this easy. My 7 year old niece plays phone games all the time and she tends to enjoy games that are actually a challenge, like Geometry Dash. If the game is a snoozefest easymode you lose interest fast. Especially new recruits that are not invested in the game yet, they have so many other choices.
EDIT: I want to clearify the game is easy the way the game guides you for the first 30 hours. The leveling, the leveling dungeons, the quests... I think the argument "Mythic raiding? M+? rank 1 arenas?" is an absurd argument because the players that get bored of how easy it is drop the game way before they can do these things.
* The marketing department seem to not have much of an interest in recruiting young gamers. I don't know much about marketing but they must not try to hit young gamers at all, or they do a really poor job at it.
* Young gamers are not as interested in PC gaming. They prefer phone games in a much higher degree.

What do you think, can WoW keep going in the path it is, ignoring recruiting young gamers?

I'll go through it point by point:
1. You dont pay for the game+expansion, you havent for years. If you are a new player, you just buy Shadowlands and you get everything. Not to mention the monthly sub model is better then the freemieum model of other games. The trial experience, while better then before, still does need polish.
2. There IS no social aspect to this game anymore unless you are in a guild of old friends from back in the day when you actually had to communicate with other people to do anything. Retail WoW is a slot machine on rails, if people want a community, they go to Classic
3. Thats the current (and has been for years) design of the game. Speed faceroll your way to max level where the "real" game is
4. MMOs are a niche market in North America, current generation is generally more attracted to games like Call of Duty where its fast paced non stop action in a simplistic control system. The complete lack of advertising for the game is also a problem
5. They are *interested* in PC gaming, its just much much cheaper to play on a device they are already going to have anyways, rather then shelling out 1000-2000 for a decent gaming rig.

I dont think, with Blizzards current game design philosophies that they CAN appeal to young gamers beyond a handful here and there...