Is enthusiasm for WoW dwindling?

[jazen]

Dailies killed my enjoyment of the game.

I dont like how Blizzard is trying to sheep us all into such a bland system.

No one forced you to do dailies. If your guild requires it, it is still up to you. Don't pretend to be hardcore and complain about what is required.

[Wildmoon]

Using the buzz word , accessible, as some kind of excuse for deliberately making shallow game play. Spoken with all the objectivity of a truly brand loyal customer.

I want you to try and tell me with your own words why you think game play and depth needs to be sacrificed in order for a game to be "more accessible" since that seems to be what you believe.

The game has more depth now that it had in its old day with Heroic mode. The game is just as hard if not harder than before at it high end. All the depth are still there. They just made the entry barrier not as high as before. What gameplay depth that you talked about anyway?

[Eadoin]

@UnifiedDivide: Look at your server population and then look at the server list during peak hours and tell me that they are not lower than before. WAY lower. Also, ive see several people in game just talk about how stale its getting and how loggin in to raid is just a burden now. You never saw that during TBC.

Because all the people back then were generally raiders of some sort, and most raiding guilds raided 16 hours a week, with another 5-6 hours required farming up the materials to prepare for those 16 hour weeks. It was no more artificial than dailies are now. The only difference is maybe a 4th of the playerbase still raids at the standard they did in TBC. Doesn't help that you can't carry players who can't pull their own weight anymore like you could in TBC, those are the players I've seen quit the most. The ones not good enough to get into the guilds that still raid 16+ hours a week, but they're still good enough to not get stuck with the extremely casual 4-5 hours a week guilds, so they quit.

The 8-12 hour guild is just too hard to find anymore, because people either want to play casually (4-6) or hardcore (16+). The difference before you could be not-as-good and still get into a 16+ hour guild.

[Chaochamp]

No one forced you to do dailies. If your guild requires it, it is still up to you. Don't pretend to be hardcore and complain about what is required.

When requisites change so drastically over a single expansion I don't see a reason not to complain.

[Jaylock]

Using the buzz word , accessible, as some kind of excuse for deliberately making shallow game play. Spoken with all the objectivity of a truly brand loyal customer.

I want you to try and tell me with your own words why you think game play and depth needs to be sacrificed in order for a game to be "more accessible" since that seems to be what you believe.

I agree with everything you have said in this thread.

I just think that blizz has caved (some people call it catering) to the vocal minority claiming "oh hey herpa derp, we pay $15 a month like the hardcores, we should see all the content too!!!", caved for the sake of making $$$ rather than making compelling gameplay.

I can imagine a typical Blizzard meeting:

Lead Developer: "what should we work on for this next tier?"

Developer A: "Well a vocal minority on our forums and the mmo-c forums want to get all the phat lewts that we have created for 25 player content"

Developer B: "I have an idea! Lets only do 1 raid every tier, combine 10 and 25 man to that 1 raid, make it drop the same gear, and make the boss fights slightly harder for a hard mode version"

Lead Developer: "Developer B! You are a genius! it allows us to do less work developing content, and gives the casuals free loot as well"

Lead Developer: "Great job everybody, you all can work from home for the next 2 months, just have something on my desk 2 months from now and we will push it to the PTR"

[Wildmoon]

I agree with everything you have said in this thread.

I just think that blizz has caved (some people call it catering) to the vocal minority claiming "oh hey herpa derp, we pay $15 a month like the hardcores, we should see all the content too!!!", caved for the sake of making $$$ rather than making compelling gameplay.

I can imagine a typical Blizzard meeting:

Lead Developer: "what should we work on for this next tier?"

Developer A: "Well a vocal minority on our forums and the mmo-c forums want to get all the phat lewts that we have created for 25 player content"

Developer B: "I have an idea! Lets only do 1 raid every tier, combine 10 and 25 man to that 1 raid, make it drop the same gear, and make the boss fights slightly harder for a hard mode version"

Lead Developer: "Developer B! You are a genius! it allows us to do less work developing content, and gives the casuals free loot as well"

Lead Developer: "Great job everybody, you all can work from home for the next 2 months, just have something on my desk 2 months from now and we will push it to the PTR"

yes, trying to make both mode equally difficult is less work. lol

[Jaylock]

yes, trying to make both mode equally difficult is less work. lol

Um.. because they're not equally difficult?

10 man is much easier than 25.

[Kraenen]

Well, personally, I find Hellfire's color scheme to be very hard on the eyes. I'm not sure I could pinpoint exactly why, but it's hard to look at for very long. (It was also pretty rough on my computer back in BC. For whatever reason, it had trouble rendering large amounts of red, and oh boy does Hellfire have large amounts of red.)

I did enjoy questing in Blade's Edge (I made sure to go there after Nagrand on each character in BC), but it's a very bleak landscape. :/

I love bleak landscapes

[isadorr]

Yup, most of the long term players have left.

I know that alot of friends I played with stopped playing because recruiting was getting harder. We weren't a top 10 guild but a top 200 guild isn't bad for 3 days a week. It seems as blizzard dumbs down content adding more bosses instead of making difficult bosses the player's are becoming worse and worse. They add more bosses that are easy to make content look difficult when most of the heroic bosses are a 1-2 shot for progression raiding guilds.

That is just my opinion but we had a mage with all kinds of gear from another guild that didnt know expertise gave him spell hit. He didn't know about breakpoints in stats and was actually mad talking crap in trade because he wasn't invited to the guild. This happens quite a bit but we are changing servers so I think that will help quite a bit.

[Wildmoon]

Um.. because they're not equally difficult?

10 man is much easier than 25.

Some encounters are harder on 10 man and That's why it's hard to do? They are trying to do it but they haven't achieved it yet and may never will. How is that less work?

[Deleted]

I'm sorry, but i'm going to have to disagree with you, how can you say:

Content is now less varied, and comes out slower than before, and they call major content patches (5.1) content. Not much content there if you ask me.

When never before in the history of World of Warcraft have we had so much to do. Never before has content come out this fast. 5.1 was NOT a major content patch, it was a minor one, 5.2 will be the first major, releasing a new raid the size of which has not been seen since Wrath, New Scenarios, Warlock Quest chain (Not all will experience this, but for us Warlocks its a good'un!, 2 new world bosses, extension to the Legendary questline + more that i'm forgetting. Mists of Pandaria has taken a giant dump on what Blizzards plans for Catacylsm were. (Fast, regular content) Heck, 4.1 only gave us two new heroics that raiders didn't even need gear from. What did 5.1 give us? A new dalies faction with a brilliant quest line running through it, Brawlers Guild and a few new scenarios as well. Ok, it's not exactly a tier raid but don't forget it was announced after MoP has only been out 1 month. That's the fastest content we've ever seen in the games history.

[Lomak]

yes, trying to make both mode equally difficult is less work. lol

Blizzard doesn't work under that though. They don't have to bother being as meticulous with planning bosses and encounters anymore because they work under this caveat of "well if not enough people beat it we're just going to nerf it anyways". They are not worrying about spending all that energy creating a good encounter that will really test the limits of what is capable within the games defined parameters.

Here's one more point for you.

People LOOOOOOVE to throw this "accessibility" term around so much, well heres my 2 cents on the subject.

The game play of a game determines how much I enjoyed it. I don't measure how much % of content I've seen from all the game's I've played as some measuring stick to how good it was.

So yea, I may play a game and see and do everything it had to offer......but everything it had to offer was shit.

Juxtaposed against a game that maybe I didn't beat, maybe I didn't even see HALF of what it had to offer, yet I loved every fucking second of it.

So yea, this "accessibility" ignorant buzzword nonsense should of been ignored for the stupid argument that it is. Instead it seems to be defining blizzard's development philosophy and their games are showing the effects of it.

[Darksoldierr]

Omfg do we really need threads like this every frickin hour?

[Deleted]

There's a full list of low pops server. That sure wasn't the case during Wrath.
I would be hard pressed though to tell wether or not it's worth than Cata just by looking at the realm list.

Interestingly enough almost all low pops eu server are PVP ones.
But, but, I thought world PVP was really popular?!

[bionics]

Depending on how long you've been playing, I think the biggest contributing factor in continuing to play the game comes with having a close friend or close network of friends that will still play the game with you on a regular basis.

I've seen people become bored and walk away only to be lured back by friends looking to rekindle the fun that comes with PVPing together, unlocking content in raids or simply shooting the shit in guild chat or Skype.

[isadorr]

For you making the game more accessible=bad. For many people it's not. You opinion is not fact. ICC on normal was ridiculuosly easy with 10%+ buff yet people still remember H LK to be one of the best encounter Blizzard ever created. This proved that letting more people raiding doesn't really take anything away from how epic a boss could be.

I think this tier was affected though, I have been raiding for 6 years and our guild has never walked through heroic content like this. 1-2 shotting heroic bosses because they are so tuned down for the depleted player base. I think all heroic bosses should scale and be really hard then let the nerf's compensate for the other player's wanting to clear heroic content. My Signature says a lot imo. People used to be ok with not being able to clear content because it was difficult, they accepted their limitations and tried to get better. Now instead of getting better they are bad and just wait for the nerfs.

[Priority]

Mal'Ganis horde side is as packed as ever.

I'm on Mal'ganis and that's not true. Still busy but not "packed". Not this weekend anyway.

[Jaylock]

Depending on how long you've been playing, I think the biggest contributing factor in continuing to play the game comes with having a close friend or close network of friends that will still play the game with you on a regular basis.

I've seen people become bored and walk away only to be lured back by friends looking to rekindle the fun that comes with PVPing together, unlocking content in raids or simply shooting the shit in guild chat or Skype.

1) I can "shoot the shit" in skype for free.

2) Raids are no longer unlocked, they are available and within pissing distance

3) You can PvP much better in an FPS like Call of Duty.

[isadorr]

Some encounters are harder on 10 man and That's why it's hard to do? They are trying to do it but they haven't achieved it yet and may never will. How is that less work?

Encounter's aren't harder you just can't carry as many people as in 25man. If you have a solid 10man with good player's you can walk through 90% of normal and heroic content. Good player's dont mean someone who is nice and makes cupcakes for everyone and shows up every week, fyi. I see a lot of people get that confused with a good player lol.

[rhorle]

2) Raids are no longer unlocked, they are available and within pissing distance

You can't do terrace of the endless springs until you finish heart of fear. Raids are unlocked.