The dumbest/worst argument in the history of MMORPGS.

[rabbimojo]

so what is looking for loot for then?

Mr. 2-Post, the bulk of Blizzard's periodic content releases is raids. Blizzard wants the bulk of their effort to also be something accessible to the bulk of their subscribers, as this is how they maximize the subscription value for those subscribers (and thereby keep them subbing).

LFR exists because many subscribers do not have the time or interest to raid within the traditional style.

Going further, player skill (and raid skill) can be expected to follow the normal distribution (bell curve). Blizzard chooses three points on this curve as target difficulties for the raids. LFR is far to the left of the center, meaning even terrible players can have success there. Normal is generally near the middle of the curve, these days, probably left of the peak. Heroic is far to the right of the peak. Essentially, these three points define an expected success rate for the content.

However, tuning difficulty is a tricky thing, and sometimes Blizz finds they actually put the points farther right or left than they meant to. They then move those points to the left via mild tweaks like the one just announced. This means that both normal and heroic raid success rates will go up. This has nothing to do with turning Normal into LFR, it's just there to provide progression content for a certain set of players.

It is Blizzard's job to ensure that subscribers have something to do. This is them doing that.

---------- Post added 2012-01-19 at 03:30 PM ----------

The blue post that was quoted at the beginning of this thread shows a very original (at least) conception of games.Not only of MMO games,but of games in general.I've personally bought a lot of games over the course of the past years,and i've seen my friends buy a lot of games,and they were both console and pc games.

Now what we were paying for,and what people buying games generally pay for,is,obviously,the game.The game,and not the results within the game.
The results within a game are something that a player generally achieves over-time.He can be a casual player,a hardcore player,it doesn't matter.

Probably not every player will be able to reach the same results,to see all the different "modes" a game has to offer,or to complete it 100%,but this is only normal.There are different players,who play for different amounts of time,who reach different levels of skill,and who accordingly reach different results.

The players must adapt to the games.With Blizzard,we see the games adapting to the players.And it's not because they actually care about you,it's just because they want to keep their subscribers,and right now the easy&fast way to do it is this.Nerfing the good old redundant 8 bosses,which are the only reasonable thing players can do PvE-wise,and which will become obsolete and forgotten when the next tier of content comes out.

I apologize for the long post,and for eventual english mistakes,since english is not my native language (italian here).

It just seems original because it's masked so well, usually. In truth, any game designer that has ever tuned difficulty has thought about this.

Blizzard's mistake this expansion has been carelessness. They have made it so we can see them doing this tweaking, this tuning, and are now even just straight-up telling us they're doing it. It ruins the illusion that our effort is the critical factor in our success, when in truth it is (and always has been) where exactly the developer placed the difficulty lever.

Frankly, I think this (more than anything) is what is causing sub loss: We can see behind the curtain and it makes the game feel artificial.

[minro]

Mr. 2-Post.

We were all at 2 posts at one point in time. This would have been better if I would have created another account just to say this, but....

[Drilnos]

Right, and the solution we were given was to treat cancer with AIDS, for better or worse.

Again, I have no intention of getting into an argument about the usefulness of LFR, but I can certainly see it having a negative impact on the community (regardless of how shit it was beforehand).

The community is us. We are the community. Blizzard can change the game all they want, but the community remains our responsibility, not theirs. It is awful because we as players are collectively awful. You have a bad experience because of a player, it is the player's fault. You have a good experience because of a player, it is the player who facilitated it. A player doesn't say a word during a run, that right there is his call to make.

It is moronic to suggest that anything Blizzard does or can conceivably do short of operating door-to-door lobotomy vans will have any effect on people being people.

[minro]

Nerd Preaching Against Casuals:
Blizzard designs a business model to comply with the wishes of 5,000 people (hard-core e-dragon slayers) who will continue to subscribe indefinitely while 9,995,000 cancel their subscriptions due to lack of growth of the casual player base. World of Warcraft fails. The end.

Reality:
Blizzard designs a business model that allows every player, whether they be a hard-core nerd or an adult who casually wishes to "kill" pixels for 2 hours every other day, to access content. Blizzard keeps 10,000,000 active subscriptions and continues to prosper.

You, sir, just got logic'd. This topic is far beyond having any real sense of discussion. People who think they're baws-hog clearing 7/7 H or 7/8 H think they're entitled to being the only ones doing so through means of pressing buttons better. Logically and realistically, $15 is $15 and one persons $15 is entitled to the same thing as another persons $15. It's a game. It's not real life nor will it ever be. If you want true recognition for being good at something, go play a sport and send us a link to a live stream of you winning the Gold at the next World Olympics. Until then, shut the fuck up.

This just got added to my sig. Epic quote

[Deleted]

Frankly, I think this (more than anything) is what is causing sub loss: We can see behind the curtain and it makes the game feel artificial.

This is a very interesting concept.But i also think that we are extremely focused on those "curtains" right now,and this is because all the PvE players of this game are only concentrated on this last raid,on Dragon Soul,just like in september they were focused only on the Firelands.I am frankly tired of this "disposable raids" of which they get rid of when a new tier comes out.

While i am right now an hard-mode raider,during TBC,when i started playing,i was obviously much "worse" as a player.But even if the last tier was out,i didn't mind going to Kara,or to Zul'Aman,or to SSC,simply because they still felt fun and rewarding,as they where my source of fun,raiding experience,and equipment.

Right now what is the player's source of fun,experience,and gear,aside from Dragon Soul?The new faceroll heroics?

[BaP]

In bold for you. This argument has done more to destroy the culture of mmorpgs than any lack luster content patch ever has (IMO). Incredible, there is no faster way to kill a game than to give everything away. It's hard to believe the "I pay 15$ a month! I want to "see" everthing!" argument has officially won.

In bold for you, what I see as "The dumbest/worst argument in the history of MMORPGS." There is that fringe element of masochist who loves to hit their head against a wall till it bleeds, but most people that pay for games want to see the WHOLE game and are turned off and will look for another game to play if its just to hard for them.

[bas]

I agree,

suppose you pay 15$ / month to gain unlimited access to a gym, however you only train once every week; so it does not have any effect. Your friend pays the same amount, he trains four times every week and gets a muscled body.
Now you can't say: "Hey I pay the same amount as my friend does, so I am entitled the same amount of muscle he does"

It is obvious that someone that invests more time into something is able to experience more than someone who doesn't invest a lot of time. Someone that plays the game 40 hours a week should come further than someone that plays the game only 5 hours a week. Besides, they already created LFR so that everyone can experience everything

[Thage]

Awesome. Turn off the buff and keep enjoying the content at its most difficult, problem solved.

[Atrea]

Nah. We all know the dumbest/worst argument is "if Blizzard had listened to me"

No kidding.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks they know what is best for WoW. That THEIR NEEDS and THEIR WANTS are what Blizzard should aim to please, even if they are completely alone in the matter.

[Deleted]

No kidding.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks they know what is best for WoW. That THEIR NEEDS and THEIR WANTS are what Blizzard should aim to please, even if they are completely alone in the matter.

It's not about pleasing people.It's about a clumsy attempt by Blizzard to cope with a flawed engame PvE system.With every patch,there is a single raid on which every player,from the "casual" to the "hardcore" (if we want to call them so) must concentrate.If you gather extremely different players and you put them in the same raid environment,well you're gonna have problems.

If Blizzard managed to create raids that were still rewarding and interesting,even after they were "surpassed" by a new tier,there would be no need at all for nerfs,QQ,constant tweaking and two,three,and who knows one day maybe four or five,raiding difficulties.

Right now we have old raids becoming istantly obsolete by the release of the latest one.And you can't replace them with three funny 5m heroics.

[ryuke09]

god this is getting ridiculous..

There ENTIRE POINT of the 3 different difficulty levels is so the game CAN cater to 3 skill levels of players. why the hell to other players have this BS entitlement complex. Normal/LFR shows the exact same story and bosses as HM, there's literally zero point to this.

whats the point of difficulty setting at all now exactly?

[Illuminance]

I agree with the OP.

What a mess this game is becoming. They are catering to a sense of entitlement, which isn't really in the spirit of good game design IMO.

[Deleted]

nerfs are bs. Go lfr if u want to see 8/8 and cant do normal/hc modes

[Gahiji]

well... it kinda stupid yes, and consider that people pay for that game... in the time between 4.2 and 4.3, they got at least 750.000.000 dollars in subscription fee, that's ofcus ignoring every cost to employee and servers (servers are lol cheap btw)... was 4.3 worth 750 million ? hardly... but i guess creating shit content for 750 million that everyone can experience, cause they pay the same amount (although they put in no effort), is better than creating quality content.


think about it... between 4.2 and 4.3, they got 750 million in subscription fee... and DS is what we get... lol :3

Not sure I agree or disagree with the OP...but from a cost stand point... consider this...

Cost of Hardware maintenance for the "servers" per realm is high. Considering everytime you have a load screen you are loading on another "server". Consider that # of instances. In old games like EQ it was estimated at 9-10 physical servers per realm. Most estimates have it at 30-35 servers per WOW Realm...x 250 Realms= 750. And sorry folks...Electricity isn't free. Neither is the building space to house the servers.

Duplication of hardware in the event of a failure.

Approximately 8000 Blizzard employees that still expect a paycheck...I would assume they want to still get paid...

Bandwidth... I don't think people really understand how much bandwidth Blizzard must use and have available.

"Bandwidth usage varies significantly in World of Warcraft depending on what your character is currently doing in game.

While Idle, the game will typically use between 1 and 7 KB/sec Downstream (depending on how busy the area is) and less than 1 KB/sec Upstream.

While being more active, bandwidth usage is typically between 10 and 20 KB/sec Downstream and 1 or 2 KB/sec Upstream.

As a rough guide, an hour of typical play will result in around 40MB of data being Downloaded, and 4MB being Uploaded. These numbers will be higher if the hour was spent in busier group activities such as Battlegrounds or Raids.

Additionally, if your game client is currently streaming additional game data (as indicated by the streaming icon in the top centre of the screen) your Downstream bandwidth will be dramatically larger. This increase in usage is due to the game downloading missing game data and is only temporary; when the game client is fully up to date and all required data has been downloaded, the streaming will stop and bandwidth usage will return to normal.

It should also be noted that the use of UI Modifications or Addons will increase the game's bandwidth usage significantly."

40 mb /per hour/per subscriber..... How many hours per week do you play? Most people I know play at least 10-20 hours....Hardcore peeps probably ALOT more...

Would it be unreasonable to assume 40mb X 20 hours x 10,000,000 subscribers? I'm guessing a bit here on avg hours per week per user...

Still it comes out to something like 8,000,000GB per week or 32,000,000 GB per month on the low end.

Or if you prefer 8,000 Terabytes a week

Or 8 Petabytes.




Advertising, marketing to attract new subs...attrition for mature MMO's is very costly. There is a net cost to keeping a sub. Cost of producing a commercial can easily run $50-100k. ONE Spot for ONE single 60 second commercial on a national campaign for a SINGLE TV Station starts at $50,0000, depending on the show, the # of markets, time slot, etc that price can run into the $100,000's or even AKA the Superbowl at millions of dollars per spot. (I've never seena Warcraft ad on during the Superbowl, just saying...). If you look at a media release calendar companies will do things like have a "campaign" where they are saturating the market....3 spots per hour on the major networks in prime time from 7pm-10pm. Do the math....even at 4 Major Networks x 3 hours per night x 3 spots per hour x 4 nights per week x $50k per spot = $7,200,000. 1 Network would be $1,800,000. And that's for one week... (Granted a company like Ford did $128 BILLION in Sales last year....Blizzard Activision did about $4.5 Billion...)

I've seen advertising budgets for TV Spot Campaigns run into the $100 million range for companies that are doing heavy consistent campaigns. IE- Car Manufacturers for example.

Think of a game like Diablo 3. In development since 2001... It's gone through 3 major revisions...and is YET to be released. Thats called R&D folks. It costs money and some times NEVER turns a profit. Although at some point Diablo 3 will provide an income stream.



I find it funny when you compare a game like WOW at $15 per month to other entertainment forms... I could watch about 4 hours of movies per month sans Popcorn and Soda for what 1 MONTHS worth of a MMO Sub costs. For the same $15 I can get hundreds of hours of play time.

I don't belabor a company from making a healthy profit. I want them to make a healthy profit. If they do...they stay in business...they can develop more content and OTHER games that I will like...which means I new stuff to play.

Just some stuff to think about.

[Mad_Murdock]

I agree,

suppose you pay 15$ / month to gain unlimited access to a gym, however you only train once every week; so it does not have any effect. Your friend pays the same amount, he trains four times every week and gets a muscled body.
Now you can't say: "Hey I pay the same amount as my friend does, so I am entitled the same amount of muscle he does"

The problem with your analogy is the gym can't give you a muscle body. But using your analogy, Gyms sell memberships and they don't care if you come once a week or once a month. The Gym rats stance is, since I only work out once a week, I should only be allowed to work out on the circuit equipment and The Pro body builders should be the only ones allowed to use the Free weights.

Guess what, the Gym would love to have 4000 people who never show up or show up once a week, instead of 40 people who show up 6 days a week, especially since they are constantly complaining about about the 90lb weakling using their free weights. Their goal is to get subs\memberships and to "keep" said memberships. So they will have open house, free guest passes, free 1hr of personal trainers, free tanning sessions whatever gets you to renew that membership. And I'll get access to the whole gym, just like the Pro Bodybuilders. You might not like how the business model works, but that's how it is.

And guess what, you still have the muscled body

[Trassk]

Perhaps op you should read the other half of the post you seemed to ignore and think about that:

How is it good for the game to have 1% of players parading around for months and months and a 99% sitting around with nothing to do because they're sick and tired of wiping?

I agree with this totally. Blizzard knows there game, they check the statistics and see how many numbers of people actully down the bosses in raiding, and if they have discovered such a low percentage of players actully downing the bosses, why shouldn't they do something about it.

Sounds to me like the special snowflake thing again, someone clearly wants to think his raiding experience is the only thing that matters and tough luck to anyone elese below them. Thankfully blizzard is paying attention to the stats and have even admitted they didn't like the fact just a tiny percentage of players got Ragnaros down on heroic mode.

[namelessone]

Not going to bother commenting on the rest of this, but I would like to see your argument on how 25 people, from different servers, not even talking except to argue over loot and DPS is anything like a healthy community.

Go on.

Well, I'm going to give you the same answer I always get when I ask how spamming general with LFG for hours is "good community". Here's the answer: " "

[ShimmerSwirl]

It blows me away that people cannot see how the casual-oriented direction the game has taken is completely unsustainable. Even in the face of blatant signs of decline, like 2 million people quitting in the last few months, people still claim that its good for Blizzard to do the things they are doing.

What more of sign do you need that these changes are bad for the game then the huge number of people quitting?

[Wewlad]

Video games have their hardcore players who believe newer, newbie players don't belong in 'their' game.

Music has those people who listened to a band before it became became famous and believe people just beginning to listen are pathetic.

Television shows also have people who watched them before they entered mainstream, and believe they're better for finding the 'jewel' before other people.

Movies are an exception for the most part unless it is a series where the first movie did moderately okay yet the later movies were box-office hits.

Whatever medium you find, you'll always have the 'hardcore' people and the 'casual' or 'new' people in some shape or form.

[DetectiveJohnKimble]

It blows me away that people cannot see how the casual-oriented direction the game has taken is completely unsustainable. Even in the face of blatant signs of decline, like 2 million people quitting in the last few months, people still claim that its good for Blizzard to do the things they are doing.

What more of sign do you need that these changes are bad for the game then the huge number of people quitting?

Excellent job in associating sub decline numbers with an assertion that content has become too easy. By the way, a substantial number of that 2 million came from release/t11 when people felt the game was too hard, particularly in 5-man dungeons. Ghostcrawler even wrote that blog post awhile back which got a lot of attention concerning this.