Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[Draknalor186]

i dont c why harder content should give better gear? heroic raiders do it for the challange not the gear =p have the same gear for everyone =D?
/end sarcasm

[LeperHerring]

And yet you don't complain when a regular is out and you pug in someone in full LFR gear with practiced knowledge of how to run the attunement disk swirl, completes the whirlwind alley and doesn't step in the purple circle under Garalon and stays in the blue circles while damaging the legs. Not to mention that it now takes far less time to find a pugger that isn't raid locked. They have gear that allows them to help down a boss without having to be carried too. Oh then you don't mind LFR do you?

In all the time I raided in WoW not once would we ever even consider bringing in a pugger. I absolutely mind both LFR and normal, and the 10/25 split. There should be one mode only like in TBC and it should be linear progression with attunements and without gear resets every patch.

[Cthulhu 2020]

As Blizzard said when they implemented LFR, they realized that only ~1% of people were seeing the raid content which they spent so much effort on. And that was all the way up through end bosses, that wasn't even hard modes. Somewhat more were seeing early content, but they felt that so much of their development time went into raiding for so few people to see it, so they wanted to make an easy mode so that everyone who wanted to see that content, could.

On the flip side of that, there are those who believe that the very nature of MMOs is chasing that carrot on the stick. If you allow everyone to catch that carrot, it no longer becomes special. In the LoL dev post, he said that what people want and what they need are two different things. What people "want" is to see all the content, but when it has been seen, the drive to see it in any other capacity is diminished, therefor what people "need" is exclusivity to keep striving for something.

[Tomana]

In all the time I raided in WoW not once would we ever even consider bringing in a pugger. I absolutely mind both LFR and normal, and the 10/25 split. There should be one mode only like in TBC and it should be linear progression with attunements and without gear resets every patch.

And you're not getting it back because that model was not defensible.
So either find a different MMO or deal with it.

[LeperHerring]

And you're not getting it back because that model was not defensible.
So either find a different MMO or deal with it.

It's perfectly defensible, and it worked great. I haven't been playing for a long time since Blizzard is incapable of producing fun and meaningful games these days.

[Tomana]

It's perfectly defensible, and it worked great.

If by great you mean generating a boatload of churn, then yes. Problem is, you can't afford such high churn anymore.

I haven't been playing for a long time since Blizzard is incapable of producing fun and meaningful games these days.

Then why are you on a WoW forum whining about it? Are you that bored?

[LeperHerring]

If by great you mean generating a boatload of churn, then yes. Problem is, you can't afford such high churn anymore.

Well it's true that there is no churn now. There's just people going out, none coming in. I don't really see how you consider that an improvement, but I guess you're entitled to your mistaken opinions.

Then why are you on a WoW forum whining about it? Are you that bored?

If you don't want to read posts from people without active subscriptions I suggest you head over to the official forums.

[khalltusk]

In all the time I raided in WoW not once would we ever even consider bringing in a pugger. I absolutely mind both LFR and normal, and the 10/25 split. There should be one mode only like in TBC and it should be linear progression with attunements and without gear resets every patch.

There were gear resets ever raid patch. (not every patch as a lot of patches were game fixed and non raid features) Attunements can go die in a fire seriously they should. Any raiding guild that had to recruit knows the pain of having go do tier 5 content for black temple recruits to get in. This was before the nerf to those places where you can skip to the last boss.

TBC was lucky in that the first two raid tiers were released with the expansion. With BT and SWP being patched in both of those effectively did a gear reset for players who were ready to clear the content.

As for not bringing in a pugger its hit and miss, a few great players I found from trade chat when we were short a player or two in Cata when we first started 10man on release.

That said an optional attunement quest chain would be cool, where you do the chain and get a reward for doing so (say epic neck item or something) but is entirely optional. I would do it for fun, but when I was a raid leader I _HATED_ attunements. From onyxia right until their removal.

[Tomana]

Well it's true that there is no churn now. There's just people going out, none coming in. I don't really see how you consider that an improvement, but I guess you're entitled to your mistaken opinions.

Maybe because the market is saturated? Nah, can't be that all those F2P MMO (esp. in Asia) influence WoW subs... -_-

If you don't want to read posts from people without active subscriptions I suggest you head over to the official forums.

I don't want to read posts from people who don't display a very good knowledge in VG economy. That's entirely different.

[Raziella]

As for the exclusive mount/title argument, I get that. And, doesn't that exist already? There's mounts and titles for doing achievements and heroic bosses. Sure, they don't go away when the content is outgeared, but who gives a crap during the next xpac? I can't say I'm all that impressed in MoP if someone did H Ulduar ages ago or not.

And why should the people doing LFR WANT to step up to "real" raiding? A lot of us don't.
The simple fact is, much of what there is to do in WoW after leveling is raiding and dailies. And that leveling goes a hell of a lot quicker now than it did in vanilla/TBC.
When I quit my heroic raiding guild, I completely quit WoW until LFR. I didn't feel there was enough to do to justify my money, and it was VERY offputting to know I wasn't going to see the content.

When Blizz is constantly telling us they can't do things like update models or zones without redirecting assets from dungeons and raids, or cutting them altogether, it seems a bit shit that they would dedicate a majority of their time making content that 1% of the paying customers would see, doesn't it?

I couldn't raid 5 days a week and hold down a full time job anymore.

I attempted (and joined) several less hardcore guilds, but found I was stuck between joining one that still raided an unacceptable amount of time, or joining one that suffered complete failure after the first few bosses.
Worse, the fact that I had to actually submit resumes and interview to play a game was something I just couldn't deal with anymore. Not to mention that having people playing a GAME treat you worse than your actual boss at your actual job just isn't always as fun as people want to make it out to be.

If you have friends to raid with, or have a stable guild that you've made friends with, I'm sure it can be great.
For the majority, joining a guild with strangers to be treated as an outsider is not really that "fun."

[billielecter]

It is quite unusual that people who join in WOW can't perceive the same revealed contents which designed to everyone. It is also very unfair for non-hardcore players to be left out in a game which meant to be made to all. I would rather to see heroism than elitism, a community than a private club.
To quote from Bible
"For all I become all"

[Deleted]

On the flip side of that, there are those who believe that the very nature of MMOs is chasing that carrot on the stick. If you allow everyone to catch that carrot, it no longer becomes special. In the LoL dev post, he said that what people want and what they need are two different things. What people "want" is to see all the content, but when it has been seen, the drive to see it in any other capacity is diminished, therefor what people "need" is exclusivity to keep striving for something.

Its not only that people consume the content way too fast... the bigger problem is that you can do it without any kind of social interaction... in fact you can see almost everything without communicating with other players.
People like the Raccoon-Guy may like it but usually other people are the reason to keep your sub running when you are bored...

So its really a matter of want and need.
Peolpe want to see everything, they want it easy, they want as many convenient features as possible, they dont want to be forced to interact with other people.
In short: They want to play WoW like they play a solo/offline-game... but now that they can do that they also treat it like a solo/offline.game.... they finish it and stop playing.

[LeperHerring]

It is also very unfair for non-hardcore players to be left out in a game which meant to be made to all.

It's not about anyone being left out. Everyone's subscription has always gotten them exactly the same thing. Different types of content suit different play styles. If you're a casual that wants to play once in a while, then 5 man content is perfect. Ideally 5 man content that progresses from easier to more difficult and epic (like in vanilla). It shouldn't concern those people at all that someone else wants to schedule more time and takes the game more seriously, and that Blizzard builds raid content for them.

[Vishiz]

I'll explain this the best way I can since for some reason a lot of people on the forums here have a vendetta against HM guilds.

Exclusive content or heroic mode guilds are what keeps this game alive. Now just follow me for a second here...

MY guild Demise raided on Burning Blade for from 2004-2013 till we recently moved to KT. Around the start BB had several "Hardcore" raiding guilds. The economy flourished. Pugs were great, you could do anything you wanted to do from any level of commitment outside of a handful of heroic bosses.

Free realm transfers happened in wrath, a couple top guilds and top pvpers transferred off of alliance side because they didnt want to deal with queue times. The economy got worse and worse over the next year. There was no one buying all those mats people throw up on the AH, so eventually people stopped farming em because the return wasn't worth it. Demise kept going while other guilds kept leaving. We farmed our own mats, and dealt with the crappy economy the best we could on the server we knew as home.

Apps stopped coming in, people either didnt want to raid as alliance or didnt want to deal with a bad economy or the fact that there weren't many pvpers left from the xfer. Constant complaints from members coming in about how there was never anything on the AH. No one could pug anything. People just weren't happy with the overall situation the server was in. A faction imbalance happened. Making alliance side an all you can gank buffet(for lack of better words). Everytime you went to do dailies you were met with 4x as many horde unless you could do them in off hours.

Burning Blade is now a dead server with basically no guilds left. A server that was once one of the best servers in the game. What was the casuals(not saying this in a bad way) role in all of this? Well it's simple, they didn't have one. They just sat there and watched as the server went to hell. Because enough people that were starting to play the game weren't interested in raiding or really even participating on any real level. It crushed the server.

There are very few servers in WoW that flourish without "Hardcore" raiding guilds. Once the guilds leave or die, the server loses its identity, and dies. So whatever little bone we get thrown to us is worth it for everyone in the long run. And it would make the game more enjoyable for everyone if there were more guilds around to make sure the servers economy holds up and activity on the realm stays high. And mind you the amount of content that is there for the hardcore raider is just a tuned set of bosses that would be there anyway. Everything else is meant for the more casual player.

[Deleted]

And you're not getting it back because that model was not defensible.
So either find a different MMO or deal with it.

But maybe it is defensible to replace LFR with flexi-raids when there are giant virtual servers and there are not that many excuses left for the need of LFR.

[khalltusk]

There was no 5man content progression in Vanilla, none.

You had Strat Scholo UBRS/LBRS (later DM) Two of those which were required raid groups to go into them for blue level loot. That was not 5man content far from it. Its a bad example I am afraid. *added some clarity here*

Wrath for example had good casual progression in 5mans with the initial dungeons - heroics then totc 5man/heroic and icc 5man heroics that came out later. Now in mop we had 5man - normal/heroic and no new dungeons, but added in scenarios (some of which I enjoyed). I do feel 5man progression needs to remain or at least brought in to add something else to the table.

If you wish to be like that then leper how about Normal and heroic raiders get content budgets that suit their populations? All of a sudden you have 25man Scenarios. while casuals have multiple dungeons.

[Tomana]

But maybe it is defensible to replace LFR with flexi-raids when there are giant virtual servers and there are not that many excuses left for the need of LFR.

No, because forming pugs for flex will always be a gigantic pain in the booty. Not to mention the prevalence of people who will write something like "LFM Flex SOO must have over 9000 ilvl" or something in that tune. Pugs already suffer from that quite a bit, and flex won't resolve that.

[DeadmanWalking]

It's perfectly defensible, and it worked great FOR ME. I haven't been playing for a long time since Blizzard is incapable of producing fun and meaningful games these days.

Fixed that for ya.

[Tomana]

I'll explain this the best way I can since for some reason a lot of people on the forums here have a vendetta against HM guilds.

No one is on a vendetta against HM guilds. It's just that some people (which may not even be in a HM guild) are on a vendetta against LFR.

Exclusive content or heroic mode guilds are what keeps this game alive. Now just follow me for a second here...

This is not entirely accurate. What keeps a server alive is the population. Without help or even constraint, people flock to the highest population servers available.
Also, there may only be a handful of HM guilds that are really server-defining (like Nihilum was on Mag back in BC days), but other than that, it's just a matter of population. People go to the biggest servers (and then, ironically, whine about the queues on it -_-).

[melodramocracy]

Its not only that people consume the content way too fast... the bigger problem is that you can do it without any kind of social interaction... in fact you can see almost everything without communicating with other players.
People like the Raccoon-Guy may like it but usually other people are the reason to keep your sub running when you are bored...

So its really a matter of want and need.
Peolpe want to see everything, they want it easy, they want as many convenient features as possible, they dont want to be forced to interact with other people.
In short: They want to play WoW like they play a solo/offline-game... but now that they can do that they also treat it like a solo/offline.game.... they finish it and stop playing.

And some of us have been saying for years that added convenience and speed will have no positive benefit on sub numbers. Good MMO's are long hauls by their nature, not short excursions. Short trips are for other game types, which are far better suited to such things.

Trying to make an MMO something appealing to someone who actually isn't looking for an MMO to begin with is a pointless endeavor.