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  1. #1

    What caused the sudden "boom" in everybody wanting to raid?

    Hello MMO-Champion community;

    I have been playing WoW since 2 months after the release of vanilla, I have enjoyed my time from start to finish, and although had my moments where I felt disappointed in the quality of the patch or expansion, I still continued to play

    Now my main question is why the sudden "boom" in players everywhere demanding to see all the raid content at once. I am NOT COMPLAINING here, I am simply curious as to where all the sudden demands and complaints etc... came from. I do remember my times from vanilla, and I also remember how it was only a minority of the players who were able to experience raids, but I do also remember that at this time a large population of the game didn't seem to care that much, and were fine with themselves not being able to complete raids.

    Which surprises me because in recent times I am starting to see more and more posts with people demanding to be able to experience the raids and complete it at their own skill levels. Although I am perfectly fine with that (me being one of those people who use LFR on a weekly basis), am quite saddened by the fact that now PvE scales with player skill, and not the other way around, but I see Blizzards reasons and accept that.

    But what I don't understand is what caused this sudden uprising in the players demanding to experience the content. Because if my memory still holds, I remember in Vanilla (and I think TBC) there wasn't much demand for raids to scale down.

    I think that it's because of the increase in the player population or the increase in forums usage etc... But either way, when or what do you guys believe caused this sudden "boom"?
    \

  2. #2
    Deathbringer's Will
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  3. #3
    Titan Frozenbeef's Avatar
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    People in vanilla/ tbc wanted to raid too it's just they were not able to do so without a dedicated raiding guild, which meant they were forced to do 5mans/ grind gold/ mats/alts / pvp for hours everyday

    also there was less games out their so it was basically just deal with it where as now if you can't experience everything in the game you like 10 other options to choose form :P
    Last edited by Frozenbeef; 2012-12-04 at 01:24 PM.

  4. #4
    I did. Everyone wanted to be more like me. Sorry if that annoyed any of you guys.

  5. #5
    Dreadlord
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    More people playing and Blizzard realizing that in order to maintain a larger playerbase, they had to make raids easier as well as the game in general. That's why wow is still the most popular mmo out there because they've improved on the grindfest. Also I think that the game has developed to a certain point where it's more about the mechanics/interesting fight than it is about pure difficulty. They decided it was a better model to put fire on the ground than make people farm buttloads of NR gear.

    Edit- And what the guy says below me. I didn't start playing til the very very end of BC and I know that I did not understand the concept of raiding at all until 1-2 months after finally maxing a character. I ground out gold for epic flying before I hit 80 because I thought the game was over and you'd won when you got to max -_-
    Last edited by parkerlynne; 2012-12-04 at 01:24 PM.
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  6. #6
    I guess back in Vanilla the world seem a LOT bigger and fully of mystery. So players weren't rushing to max level.
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  7. #7
    I am Murloc!
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    I think a lot of it started with WotLK and Naxx 2.0.

    Prior to that, you had many casual 10m guilds that were more than happy to simply do KZ and ZG. There wasn't much for a push to go beyond that, but there was also some serious gating that prevented people from even thinking of moving up the raiding ladder. Consistently, we would have to go back and do attunements for new recruits in our 25m guild.

    WotLK and Naxx 2.0 really changed that. It introduced 10/25 content that was easy enough that nearly everyone could go in there and knock it out consistently. From that point on, at least in my opinion, you have a larger percentage of the population that wants to raid, see the content, and have it be geared towards them.

    ToC is really evidence of Blizzard's reaction to the raiding boom. There was a lot more people who wanted to raid, but didn't want the trash. The reaction was ToC. Personally, any serious raider that I knew hated the idea before they had even seen it. It was pretty easy to figure out what was going to happen before it did.
    Last edited by Dakia; 2012-12-04 at 01:31 PM.

  8. #8
    There always was a demand to be able to experience content. Nobody was happy not having anything to do for over a year in Vanilla. I noticed that today's players tend to romanticize a false perception/memory of the Vanilla days - the golden era where casuals were content with the little they had and weren't so entitled, enjoyed the "journey", yaddayadda. You're fooling yourself. It never was that way. And people did whine about not having content and no ways of character progression, ALL the time.

    Blizzard launched a sort of a test balloon in BC by doing Karazhan as a 10man raid to see if more people would get into raiding if the whole thing was more accessible. There's a reason why Karazhan is still one of the most popular raids to this day.

    The idea was obviously very well received so Blizzard took the next step in WotLK by offering two raid sizes for every raid instance. LFR is just a consequent continuation of trying to provide a way to experience content to an even broader audience.

    There never was a "sudden boom" where everyone wanted to raid all of a sudden. Players always wanted to see and do stuff. It's just that a lot of people didn't consider raiding as content that is made "for them" the way it was in Vanilla - very exclusively hardcore-tailored. When they saw that Blizzard was willing to smoothen the access, of course people became more vocal about it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dakia View Post
    I think a lot of it started with WotLK and Naxx 2.0.

    Prior to that, you had casual 10m guilds that were more than happy to simply do KZ and ZG.
    Not true. We were the first 10-man-guild on our server back then in BC and of course we were very happy about Kara and ZG. But would I've loved to see ALL the BC raids as 10-man versions? Did we find it a little bit thin that we only got two raids throughout the whole expansion cycle? You bet.
    Last edited by Pull My Finger; 2012-12-04 at 01:28 PM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    People in vanilla/ tbc wanted to raid too it's just they were not able to do so without a dedicated raiding guild, which meant they were forced to do 5mans/ grind gold/ mats/alts / pvp for hours everyday
    But even that, I barely saw those people complaining on the forums or threatening to quit, as we see a lot these days xD
    \

  10. #10
    Stood in the Fire Halabash's Avatar
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    I think the main reason is that blizzard could not see the long term effect of heavy gating into the raiding end game. This produced a environment where raids were happy and content until a person got bored and quit, where the raiding guild has to fill the spot becomes extremely difficult the further the guild has progressed from the rest of the players. Missing a key person like a tank or healer exacerbated the "gamble" of raiding regularly with 25-40 people. The result of this many times over is that once the guild lost a person, the group blamed the raid leaders and often it imploded leaving more people on the outside looking in if they didn't network and ultimately quit.

    in Wrath raids became very easy for most of the encounters, gear became much more accessible and Blizzard took that a step forward with Cata reintroducing the LFR, now gearing up is the norm, raiding guilds have a much easier time, comparatively speaking, acquiring new talent or find fillers and there is less pressure on top players to commit to every raiding moment at the expense of RL, so its basically about retention through a paradigm shift in the culture of work to rewards and life balance.

  11. #11
    Raiding boom? No clue what you're talking about. I haven't seen any sign of your alleged "boom".

    Also keep in mind that "players using a forum" already is a fairly small minority.

  12. #12
    The greed of the company caused it. Blizzard decided that creating content for each group of people was not profitable so they shoe horned every player in every aspect of the game.

    People who were fine with doing heroics and grinding Sha'tari skyguard/Tournament mounts were told by GC that they HAVE to raid. At 7:10 he explains that he wanted "everyone to see the raid content"



    Everyone has to do a tedious leveling, grind dungeons (less and less every expansion), grind dailies, grind raid gear and now grind valor to upgrade it. So they keep their subs active.. but it's backfiring.
    Last edited by Cybran; 2012-12-04 at 01:38 PM.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Wollveren View Post
    Hello MMO-Champion community;

    I have been playing WoW since 2 months after the release of vanilla, I have enjoyed my time from start to finish, and although had my moments where I felt disappointed in the quality of the patch or expansion, I still continued to play

    Now my main question is why the sudden "boom" in players everywhere demanding to see all the raid content at once. I am NOT COMPLAINING here, I am simply curious as to where all the sudden demands and complaints etc... came from. I do remember my times from vanilla, and I also remember how it was only a minority of the players who were able to experience raids, but I do also remember that at this time a large population of the game didn't seem to care that much, and were fine with themselves not being able to complete raids.

    Which surprises me because in recent times I am starting to see more and more posts with people demanding to be able to experience the raids and complete it at their own skill levels. Although I am perfectly fine with that (me being one of those people who use LFR on a weekly basis), am quite saddened by the fact that now PvE scales with player skill, and not the other way around, but I see Blizzards reasons and accept that.

    But what I don't understand is what caused this sudden uprising in the players demanding to experience the content. Because if my memory still holds, I remember in Vanilla (and I think TBC) there wasn't much demand for raids to scale down.

    I think that it's because of the increase in the player population or the increase in forums usage etc... But either way, when or what do you guys believe caused this sudden "boom"?
    Blizzard did. There was no uprising, no mass posts, nothing that would lead anyone to believe that this is what the people wanted except for Blizzard saying this is what people wanted. They say "We've looked at the data and this is what people want". Blizzard were the ones who said they didn't want to develop content that only a small percentage sees, so their solution was to make easy modes.

    Nobody is to blame but Blizzard.

  14. #14
    Bloodsail Admiral hiragana's Avatar
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    People probably got bored? Back when the game was fresh there would be plenty to do, even dicking around probably seemed interesting, but when players know that the majority of their sub money is being spent on raids, yeh i guess they would want to see that content.

  15. #15
    LFR. more people got to taste raiding, and they liked it. so now they want more.
    Warlorcs of Draenorc made me quit. You can't have my stuff.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    The greed of the company caused it. Blizzard decided that creating content for each group of people was not profitable so they shoe horned every player in every aspect of the game.

    People who were fine with doing heroics and grinding Sha'tari skyguard/Tournament mounts were told by GC that they HAVE to raid.
    Such an evil schemer, this GC guy. Glad there are still real heroic individuals like yourself that can see through the smokescreen of deception, wretchedness and greed. You might just save the world, one of these days ...

  17. #17
    I think WCM / Youtube had a part to play in this. Alot more people able to see videos of the raid bosses, etc, Whereas in Classic / TBC video footage was rare afaik.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    I don't understand this. Explain thsi, please? What greed? A non raider, a pvper, a raider, an altoholic, they all pay 15 dollars a month. Making raids more accessible doesn't make anyone pay more. So now you say giving people additional goals to strife for makes them cancel subs? Amazing what convoluted arguments you cook up to explain your dislike for some design decisions.
    He's just being the WoW version of a typical conspiracy theory nut. Corporations are all bad, Blizzard is controlling how we play.

    On top of them all paying the same $15 a month, the altaholic non raider who has six level 86s because he still just can't decide which he wants to get to 90 first is far less likely to care about game balance, complain about things on the forums, they play less so they cost Blizzard less money and are less likely to ragequit because one of their abilities got nerfed. The last thing a company like Blizzard wants to do is turn the easiest money they make into a player they have to try to cater to and appease.

  19. #19
    "By looking at actual stats, actual progression, time spent playing, where, and to what extent, ... so yes, we absolutely are able to tell without a doubt that the plan we're enacting is actually what players playing the game want and need, and are not just listening to people on the forums."

    Stats can be interpreted in about as many was as ghostcrawler attempts to justify his moronic ideas, not to mention you skew the stats by being in control of the data and molding it to your likeing. In reality when you say the above statement it has no worth or meaning, just pay attention to the stats that matter most to you, PROFIT cause its short lived, you slowly will break the community and continue to destroy the brand name. I wont buy Call of duty because Blizzard bought Infinity ward, your mouth and actions and stupidity costs your company more money then it gains. Everyone is just waiting and desires for someone to come along and make a game that actually pushes content out that the community desires. Anyone else Bored of beta testing since vanilla wow, "hotfix" HAHAHAH sometimes i wonder if some of the shit you put into this game was found in your trash bin with the emails of people messaging you telling you that your existence in blizzard hurts the game.

    Being that i've seen this game from the start id say your "evolution" of concepts and ideas are as delusional as the Tea party/Evangelicals.... If this post is to hard... to bad it's time for someone to tell you how it is and not bullshit.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    I don't understand this. Explain thsi, please? What greed? A non raider, a pvper, a raider, an altoholic, they all pay 15 dollars a month. Making raids more accessible doesn't make anyone pay more. So now you say giving people additional goals to strife for makes them cancel subs? Amazing what convoluted arguments you cook up to explain your dislike for some design decisions.
    A casual will join the game level a few chars do something in game, get turned off by the hard raids and maybe quit. This is a risk for their investment so they need to make sure EVERY SINGLE form of content they make is done by most people.

    This is why we got achievements. They are goals in game to show us what content to do.

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