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

[GreenJesus]

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.

There's a difference between hard-mode dungeons where your group dies if a sheep breaks and mobs dying if you look at them funny. But yes, having a good story is 10x more important than the tuning of some mobs.

[Ehrenpanzer]

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

It'll be fine. Its just a reskin of Crusaders of Light with some control and skills tweaking.

[GreenJesus]

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.

*If* Immortal launches. The whole point of immortal was to get into the chinese mobile market, but china banned any new video games from being approved.

[Ehrenpanzer]

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.

It wasnt the fact they were launching Diablo: Crusaders of.. I mean.. Immortal, its that they hyped the ever loving SHIT out of the Diablo announcement FULLY AWARE the community expected to hear something about D4. They could have announced mobile Diablo and just given a 20 or so second teaser trailer for D4 and everything would have been fine, but since Blizzard are run by incompetent idiots, they didnt.

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There's a difference between hard-mode dungeons where your group dies if a sheep breaks and mobs dying if you look at them funny. But yes, having a good story is 10x more important than the tuning of some mobs.

This. Levelling content doesn't need to be Mythic +20 difficulty, but when you sneeze in the general vicinity of mobs and they keel over and throw blues at you, it MIGHT be a bit too easy.

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*If* Immortal launches. The whole point of immortal was to get into the chinese mobile market, but china banned any new video games from being approved.

It'll launch. This is Activision we are talking about, They'll milk it for whatever they can get in every other market to at least try and recoup the 20 dollars they spent redoing art assets.

[Isilrien]

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.

That is probably true as far as meeting mostly 16-21 year-olds for a lot of people. I was 10+ years older at launch, as were all my friends, my partner, and the guildmates who came over from EverQuest.

I still play and am not in my 30s but I agree that after playing since closed beta in the summer of 2004 (wow, that's almost 18 years), I'm rather tired of playing. I still play occasionally because it's familiar and comfortable and I like some of the classes a great deal. Have you stopped playing, then? Or still playing but not really wanting to?

[Lolites]

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.

back in 2008, when i was 16 and played for some 3 years i got into a guild with one player everyone called "dad" because vast majority of guild were people 20-30, there were some younger, some older, but he was 54 at the time, i wonder if he still play

[Dellis0991]

This game is not even on the radar for young gamers anymore like that, most of the young gamers are playing FPSs and Fortnite. Of course your gonna get a small population of younger player who will come to WoW but the majority of young gamers simply just don't fuck with WoW like that anymore. WoW ain't hitting like it used to be.

[Kokolums]

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.

that is a terrible implementation. If you can't see that I don't know what to tell you.

[Mysterymask]

This game is not even on the radar for young gamers anymore like that, most of the young gamers are playing FPSs and Fortnite. Of course your gonna get a small population of younger player who will come to WoW but the majority of young gamers simply just don't fuck with WoW like that anymore. WoW ain't hitting like it used to be.

Tbf I think we'd rather have more people who actually want to play wow over tourists who sit around outside org shit posting and dueling anyone they see

[Cosmic Janitor]

This game is not even on the radar for young gamers anymore like that, most of the young gamers are playing FPSs and Fortnite. Of course your gonna get a small population of younger player who will come to WoW but the majority of young gamers simply just don't fuck with WoW like that anymore. WoW ain't hitting like it used to be.

I think the only young people I've met in recent years mostly got into the game because of family members, usually their parents or uncles. Not just a few of them having been raised as farm bots of dipshit parents tbh.

[OrangeJuice]

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 don't care about new players or young players or even old players. I don't care about anyone other than myself tbh. People grow up, people die, noobs eventually l2p. Spending development resources and research into these people is such a huge waste of everything.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Let's be honest the game and company has been pushing away a good chunk of even its core fan base for a while. Hard to expect new people to come in and be like.. damn.. I can play this game for 20 years and eventually get dumped on like that.

[Le Conceptuel]

I don't care about new players or young players or even old players. I don't care about anyone other than myself tbh. People grow up, people die, noobs eventually l2p. Spending development resources and research into these people is such a huge waste of everything.

Youch. Edge much?

Then again, I suppose with the intellectual tendencies of this forum, such a lack of understanding of ethics and whathaveyou is not unexpected. Perhaps it is only due to certain variables on your part which you surely do not choose for you to have such a poor grasp of ethics.

[Dellis0991]

Oh boy looking at these comments I must say....some of you are some old grumpy asses. I mean you better hope blizz do something to get the young gamers to come and play because some of you fuckers are just as toxic as the folks some of you complain about on here and if that's the case I'll run from WoW too.

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I don't care about new players or young players or even old players. I don't care about anyone other than myself tbh. People grow up, people die, noobs eventually l2p. Spending development resources and research into these people is such a huge waste of everything.

You remind me of oh boy from scrubs

[Mysterymask]

To be honest it's not that I dont want young people in I just feel wow would be better off like other MMOs and catering to the niche. Make it so the people who play wow are just the people who wanna play wow. Eve survived this long doing that, LoTro survived this long doing that, EverQuest and SWOTOR same way.

Cater to the niche keep them happy wow will end up a better game problems always arise when you try to please everyone and people who dont fall into said niches will leave like they were probably going to do anyway

[Tojara]

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.

I've never really liked Legion, for a lot of different reasons. My whole point whether you like M+ or not as a feature, is that it's the last real 'big' feature that has endured multiple expansions and became a staple of the game. Basically, I'd like to think that Blizzard comes up with something that has similar impact to how people play the game with each expansion.

[cozzri]

Kids don’t want to play this game with their grandpa; that’s just the reality of how time works. If you played WoW at 20 years old when it came out, you’re pushing 40; you had your kids, made your 5 year old farm gold for you in wrath. You have grandkids now, your kid moved on from the game, doing college chasing the opposite sex, etc.

The game is suffering from generational attrition. Core groups are fracturing, and blizzards poor design decisions just compound the issue. But hey, as long as the cash shop shores up the numbers for investors, no one is caring to look at the real issues going on with the game, because why put work into something when you can spend that time on the yacht fishing. If it were up to the investors, WoW wouldn’t even be a game, cut out all the overhead of running the studio and servers and just sell pictures of sparkle ponies and tokens; because why not? The demand is there, and the game keeps shrinking more and more every update in terms of developed content.

The only thing that will attract kids to the game is to be a brand new game they can experience with friends without dealing with grandpa and dad bitching about how grinding to fly sucks because back in my day this game wasn’t shit etc..

[Niwes]

Kids don’t want to play this game with their grandpa; that’s just the reality of how time works. If you played WoW at 20 years old when it came out, you’re pushing 40; you had your kids, made your 5 year old farm gold for you in wrath. You have grandkids now, your kid moved on from the game, doing college chasing the opposite sex, etc.

The game is suffering from generational attrition. Core groups are fracturing, and blizzards poor design decisions just compound the issue. But hey, as long as the cash shop shores up the numbers for investors, no one is caring to look at the real issues going on with the game, because why put work into something when you can spend that time on the yacht fishing. If it were up to the investors, WoW wouldn’t even be a game, cut out all the overhead of running the studio and servers and just sell pictures of sparkle ponies and tokens; because why not? The demand is there, and the game keeps shrinking more and more every update in terms of developed content.

The only thing that will attract kids to the game is to be a brand new game they can experience with friends without dealing with grandpa and dad bitching about how grinding to fly sucks because back in my day this game wasn’t shit etc..

since i said something same related some posts above, i dont disagree. but: a 40 year old grandpa ? come ooooon

i mean:
you get a child with 15 ? your child get a child with 15 ? and now grandpa tries to play wow with a 10 year old kid ?

whaaaaat ?

[Miffinat0r]

To be honest it's not that I dont want young people in I just feel wow would be better off like other MMOs and catering to the niche. Make it so the people who play wow are just the people who wanna play wow. Eve survived this long doing that, LoTro survived this long doing that, EverQuest and SWOTOR same way.

Cater to the niche keep them happy wow will end up a better game problems always arise when you try to please everyone and people who dont fall into said niches will leave like they were probably going to do anyway

This is honestly the only compelling argument I've seen on making the game more hardcore. Said before if tomorrow they publicly said this, I'd drop these arguments, but they (the devs) want it both ways, and honestly that's not working.

[L3fty]

Have you stopped playing, then? Or still playing but not really wanting to?

I have stopped for now ye. A lot of what kept me around for so long are the similar aspects you mentioned too - familiarity, being comfortable and so on. Yet with Shadowlands, after perhaps the first 4 months, I had to acknowledge that I was playing more out of habit than enjoyment. I'm in a big guild that's been around since 2005 and there are maybe 2 people still playing. It's a really low point in the games history. We're mostly all 30+ and 40+ and with lots of free time in the evenings in general, but WoW just doesn't provide a home for us anymore.

I used to get hyped for the WF race, play the mythic raids for CE, try to push m+ and so on, but I just don't care anymore. It's like the game has just lost its way.

Hoping the next expansion will /cast revival, but I don't know how many friends will ever return.