Does the average WoW player enjoy wow's content?

[Mojo03]

It's anecdotal, but not really in my experience.

All the friends I've had that played it, didn't usually play much beyond the first week or two of a new patch.

The vast majority of people I've played that I can remember, whom I got a sense of their mood (they were talking) don't seem happy or in a good mood. It was something I actually always noticed through the years.

Even the most active people often seemed more like they "have" to do things they didn't want to do. They'd setup groups and be super petty with who they brought in, in an effort to make things go as fast as possible.

It's like why the F$#% are you playing something you aren't enjoying that makes you miserable?

That's WoW community for you.

[Raven]

Very hard to answer since such a tiny amount of the players visits Mmo-champion, and even less use the forums.

[melzas]

The sad truth is that people who play a game (that requires monthly sub on top of that) they do not enjoy is straight up instance of addiction. It's quite sad actually but it's the same mechanism that works with every other "common" addiction like alcoholics who realise they don't want or enjoy drinking but still do it regardless.

It's especially easy to notice among "PvP players". This season I pushed a bit higher than usual and started to play with people who only play this game for PvP and damn they are mostly really sad people who only play wow for that little endorphin kick and illusion of superiority they get when they win in arena/rbg. They constantly complain about the game - horrible balance, boring chores, awful leveling, torggast, maw, dailies, don't care about lore, don't care about aesthetics, hate the meta, dont enjoy anything that's actual content and so on. And still they log everyday doing arenas and rbgs for hours...

[Lochton]

Most casual players don't even go on or post on Reddit much less the living fossil that is a forum.

To be honest. I've played since the launch of the game, and I've been in every raid tier to highest difficulty up until Legion, and I've never posted on Reddit's WoW section.

I do not see myself as the average player, far from me, but I do see myself as casual nowadays. I don't log on every day now as a hardcore player would do but I used to.

[tikcol]

Nope that's why they don't stick around for long

[Lochton]

If you "played since the launch of the game, and I've been in every raid tier to highest difficulty up until Legion" - you never were the average player. Not even the average raider

Yeah, didn't think so either. Well. My fuel is to explore. I've been in the raiding scene, roleplay, and PvP of many MMOs. I enjoy it. It was just difficult to get more time once becoming a parent. Hehe.

And yeah...never posted on reddit myself. Was on a nice Diablo(2) forum before coming here though.

Used to be part of some other forums before MMO-champion as well, one of them being for roleplaying in general. I browse Reddit, yes, but I do hardly ever comment there, and if I do, it is like, 1-5 comments pr. 6 months.

[Accendor]

Click bait title I know... but the question has been growing on my mind for quite from time on both these forums and the official ones. The more I interact with posters I notice the same trend over and over again.

More.. "hardcore" as much as I find the term inaccurate when they put forth the point they want to make they often build their arguments around the content in the game. They draw exact examples of what they want and why they want it or why they don't. You might not agree with them but it is almost always easy to see where they are coming from.

Then comes the casual/average player or at least the self identifying ones. Every point they seem to make, every argument they put forth has to do about rewards. I don't think I have actually seen this type of player ever comment on what they actively enjoy in game beyond the rewards the most damning example being.



I am starting to believe that the lion's share of wow players are so driven by rewards that they actively don't care what the content of the game is so long as it keeps giving them tasks to advance through for power.

The progression quest joke made manifest if you would.
http://progressquest.com/

Am I way off base with this? I want to believe I am but I am honestly no longer certain.

Hi mate, I am what you most likely would call a "hardcore player" and I 100% agree with that statement: Content without reward is no content, as can be seen in WoD and right now.

[Echo of Soul]

Chess is a 1 on 1 pvp game versus WoW which is a majority team cooperative pve and team pvp game, comparing Chess to WoW is like comparing playing solitaire to owning a casino.

Replace it with whatever you want. Bridge or something. I'm not comparing a game with another. I'm comparing an activity where you can group with others with another activity where you can get grouped with others.

Maybe I should've explained it in simpler terms

[justandulas]

I enjoy mythic raid with my friends/guildies. That's it. I don't enjoy pretty much any other content in retail WoW currently. I'm just not a fan of the modern seasonal aspect of WoW that devalues everything to the extreme in favor of everyone getting a piece of the pie.

Just my 2 cents. For what it's worth, the mythic raids are usually enough to keep me raid logging but i feel like that's diminished over the seasonal aspect of modern wow to the point where i really just log in for chill time with the boys

[Demithio]

Click bait title I know... but the question has been growing on my mind for quite from time on both these forums and the official ones. The more I interact with posters I notice the same trend over and over again.

More.. "hardcore" as much as I find the term inaccurate when they put forth the point they want to make they often build their arguments around the content in the game. They draw exact examples of what they want and why they want it or why they don't. You might not agree with them but it is almost always easy to see where they are coming from.

Then comes the casual/average player or at least the self identifying ones. Every point they seem to make, every argument they put forth has to do about rewards. I don't think I have actually seen this type of player ever comment on what they actively enjoy in game beyond the rewards the most damning example being.



I am starting to believe that the lion's share of wow players are so driven by rewards that they actively don't care what the content of the game is so long as it keeps giving them tasks to advance through for power.

The progression quest joke made manifest if you would.
http://progressquest.com/

Am I way off base with this? I want to believe I am but I am honestly no longer certain.

I witnessed WoW become this long ago, and have seen the same argument over and over. WoW is a rewards based game. Its not the adventure type of MMO with a 'work hard and get your reward system' as it was in the past. This argument has been going on for years now. Blizzard has long since (by long since I mean many years ago) stopped any meaningful development in relative terms as compared to the first few years of it's life, and has mostly developed WoW into a reward dispenser. Quality of content, or I should say, quality of game experience, has become largely irrelevant. This is nothing new, in fact its very old news.

As far as WoW as a game on its current standing: Its an OK game, that some people can still enjoy. The word "hardcore" no longer really applies to WoW. You really wont find many people logging in for several hours a day like in the past, or foaming at the mouth to log in. Its simply designed to be an OK game designed for casual players on a limited time level. I don't criticize anyone for playing it, no more than I would criticize someone for playing call of duty or battlefield.

[FFLover]

Click bait title I know... but the question has been growing on my mind for quite from time on both these forums and the official ones. The more I interact with posters I notice the same trend over and over again.

More.. "hardcore" as much as I find the term inaccurate when they put forth the point they want to make they often build their arguments around the content in the game. They draw exact examples of what they want and why they want it or why they don't. You might not agree with them but it is almost always easy to see where they are coming from.

Then comes the casual/average player or at least the self identifying ones. Every point they seem to make, every argument they put forth has to do about rewards. I don't think I have actually seen this type of player ever comment on what they actively enjoy in game beyond the rewards the most damning example being.



I am starting to believe that the lion's share of wow players are so driven by rewards that they actively don't care what the content of the game is so long as it keeps giving them tasks to advance through for power.

The progression quest joke made manifest if you would.
http://progressquest.com/

Am I way off base with this? I want to believe I am but I am honestly no longer certain.

You're definitely right... Currently I'm fairly casual doing just m+12-15, but let me tell you this... Blizzard could create the most beautiful, engaging, awesome content anyone ever made in MMO, but if they won't stick into in high level (preferably mythic raid level gear) gear or at least collectibles like mounts, pets, toys or titles, I'll simply never touch it. It has zero value for me. And I love WoW...got 600 /played days on my main, nearly 30k achievement points... It's just that I see anything without reward as an useless piece of content that's actually taking from my enjoyment... case in point - I find Torghast most fun feature ever added to WoW in its history, yet I've run it only until I got enough soul ash for my one BiS legendary and achievements, after that, I didn't visit it for almost 3 months now...There's just no point

[Rappy28]

Well, naturally I play for the rewards. The social interaction is (more like can be) fun as well, but it's a bonus. If there is no reward, I won't bother. I don't think I even set foot in Emerald Nightmare LFR when it was current, whereas I loved running LFRs in MoP and also ran them in WoD for the legendary quest.

I'm always amused by the raiders who claim they play only for the challenge and the experience and the power of love and friendship etc etc. while simultaneously acting baffled by the "casual"/average players unsubbing because we hit a gear wall so soon.

Again mythic raiding currently rewards the best gear so let's take that away.

That would be an interesting social experiment huh?

[Crimson Spears]

Reward structures are a part of the content. Trying to separate the two is the first major mistake people with claims like these make. Without the same reward system, a piece of content is no longer the same thing. Asking "well would you do that without a reward" and then feeling accomplished and proven right when someone says "no, of course not" is pure stupidity. Appropriate distribution of rewarding loot/items/collectibles is what can sometimes make or brake the content. If you suddenly rip out the reward structure out of an existing piece of content, the experience of the core activity will not remain the same, and there's nothing weird about it.



This is a pretty funny juxtaposition. LFR is a casual raid mode for people who play 1 hour a week to see the raid bosses, farming anima for collectibles is an incredibly hardcore activity that only the most avid collectors partake in. And yes, I have thoroughly enjoyed the latter, and just like I described above, not because I enjoy doing the same WQs 30 times, but because of the satisfying reward structure that rewards dedication, regularity and hard work. My red venthyr covenant recolor set I bought with anima is probably thing that I'm most proud about getting in SL so far, and I got a mountain of SL collectibles already.

What I am trying to get across is I think for a significant portion the reward has become the content. The act itself isn't something they enjoy but rather seeing numbers increase at the end of it.

The content itself is irrelevant so long as its completable.

- - - Updated - - -

The sad truth is that people who play a game (that requires monthly sub on top of that) they do not enjoy is straight up instance of addiction. It's quite sad actually but it's the same mechanism that works with every other "common" addiction like alcoholics who realise they don't want or enjoy drinking but still do it regardless.

It's especially easy to notice among "PvP players". This season I pushed a bit higher than usual and started to play with people who only play this game for PvP and damn they are mostly really sad people who only play wow for that little endorphin kick and illusion of superiority they get when they win in arena/rbg. They constantly complain about the game - horrible balance, boring chores, awful leveling, torggast, maw, dailies, don't care about lore, don't care about aesthetics, hate the meta, dont enjoy anything that's actual content and so on. And still they log everyday doing arenas and rbgs for hours...

This I can at least understand. I can get doing content you don't enjoy to get to do content you do. To an extent it isn't even a negative its when your doing content you don't enjoy to do other content you don't enjoy or sometimes just more of the same content that confuses me.

[rayvio]

considering they're spending time and/or money on the game I'd hope they find something in it to enjoy because otherwise they have a very serious problem

[Doffen]

Content > reward for my part. If the content isnt fun, then I dont care if I miss out on the reward.

However if the content is fun, the reward is more important. I dont know if its some psychological thing, but thats how it feels like.

To be rewarded with something while doing stuff you enjoy is just nice I guess. I wouldnt pay/play WoW if it was zero fun.

One fun thing to do is good enough in any game. If you like to play with the economics in WoW and only that, you'll get that feeling of joy anyway. If thats what you love to do(and pay sub with gold anyway) its straight up worth it.

[unlockedz]

wow has kinda always been the same for me be it the ring grind on draenor, legendaries/ap grind on legion (by far the worst and i was playing only 1 class), ap grind on bfa and stygia grind (i did too much...i have 50k left) on SL.
i mostly do things that empower me on that patch, as raiding/m+ are the only things i care about.
so i really don't feel that much has changed for me, there's always a thing to farm.
but SL has me raidlogging almost like i did on draenor which i enjoy.
i've seen so many comments with "chorelands". really? lets take the worst one first, legion.
i had to farm 3 months for 1legendary/week till i got my bis. that meant LFR/NORMAL/HC on emerald nightmare/trial/nighthold plus emissaries and farming m+ after. i didn't do them all, just till it dropped but there were at least 3 weeks where i was very close. by far the worst experience in wow, i don't know what possesed me to do that crap.
bfa was ~1hr of daily wq's with twitch/whatever opened.
draenor from what i remember was do some quests for ring and basically raidlog after.
sl is do 1/4/10 m+ and raidlog + 20-30min both torghasts if needed. imo it's in a better spot grindwise now than it was in bfa/legion.
gearing is a bitch though but we all get there eventually, or close to it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Since I'm not a raving idiot, I don't play what I do not enjoy. So yes, when I do play, it's because I enjoy doing so.

[Glorious Leader]

Well, naturally I play for the rewards. The social interaction is (more like can be) fun as well, but it's a bonus. If there is no reward, I won't bother. I don't think I even set foot in Emerald Nightmare LFR when it was current, whereas I loved running LFRs in MoP and also ran them in WoD for the legendary quest.

I'm always amused by the raiders who claim they play only for the challenge and the experience and the power of love and friendship etc etc. while simultaneously acting baffled by the "casual"/average players unsubbing because we hit a gear wall so soon.



That would be an interesting social experiment huh?

well again it's very easy to be blase about the reward engineering of content you don't want to participate in anyway. Let them eat cake.

[Azerate]

Its only funny because you seem to trouble to understand that someone still can play 1 hour a week and only do WQ for cosmetics and anima

Someone can play 1 hour a week and still do mythic raiding. They just (probably) won't be able to finish the progression. Or maybe they will - just after a couple more weeks/months. Someone can play 1 hour of arena and still become a gladiator at the end of the season.

The original anima grind (pre-sanctum level increases) required you to do 1-2 hours of anima grinding a day for about 2-3 months (for the recolors). As this is arguably more than mythic raid progression takes for many players, this is actually a more hardcore activity following that logic. There's absolutely nothing casual about it.

[Mysterymask]

Different strokes for different folks

My little brother plays Bus Simulator...a lot

If you think wows WQs and anima is tedious this is literally a game about driving a city bus through a route...he paid $20 for something they make that much an hour for.

I don't understand it but I also don't have to...he likes it, they make yearly installments (which makes Christmas for him super easy), they have a mod scene, and a semi decent sized community. That is the average wow player if there's a good chunk of people who enjoy a game about driving a bus in a circle....there's a good chunk of people who play wow