Hiring People from the Elitist Jerks site was a mistake.

[Kithelle]

They should had hired from casual communities like pet/mount collectors and stuff so they keep the game more user friendly to new players and absolute newbies so it grows organically and not by keeping hard core players that were already getting old.

I liked the Elitist Jerks website because I wanted to be optimal at raiding but those people banned you for the slightest excuse so it was a huge mistake respecting that for a game that first became successful for being "user friendly Everquest".

I don't know if hiring casuals would be the answer, but I agree with not hiring elitest jerks...the entire game focus is pretty much on raiding and that is disappointing.

[Glorious Leader]

Privilege means special right or advantage.

Having a developer who would do everything in their power to maintain raiding as endgame is a special right or advantage for raiders. Raiding is by no means a mainstay or a staple or a law. Its a choice on the part of the developers as is lfr. Because raids without lfr look like togc. I'd be fine with that personally because they could shift the emphasis and resources to other content.

[rhorle]

I don't know if hiring casuals would be the answer, but I agree with not hiring elitest jerks...the entire game focus is pretty much on raiding and that is disappointing.

I always find this weird because it really isn't true at all. With Shadowlands the focus is not really on raiding. Even casual players can easily out gear LFR the raid mode designed for them to see the story. Each expansion has slowly been taking the focus off of raiding. It is still the biggest end game activity but that is also because it is popular among a lot of players. Mythic+ has taken some of that.

Islands, Warfronts, the zone make overs were all attempts to give content that was non-raiding. Has Blizzard been successful? Not always and sometimes they were close but didn't want to go the rest of the way. And it is clear that the Pandemic has stopped a lot of that effort Blizzard was building on over the years because of the constraints it put on development.

[epigramx]

I always find this weird because it really isn't true at all. With Shadowlands the focus is not really on raiding. Even casual players can easily out gear LFR the raid mode designed for them to see the story. Each expansion has slowly been taking the focus off of raiding. It is still the biggest end game activity but that is also because it is popular among a lot of players. Mythic+ has taken some of that.

Islands, Warfronts, the zone make overs were all attempts to give content that was non-raiding. Has Blizzard been successful? Not always and sometimes they were close but didn't want to go the rest of the way. And it is clear that the Pandemic has stopped a lot of that effort Blizzard was building on over the years because of the constraints it put on development.

The notion that LFR is there for a gigantic pool of players that only do LFR is a myth that was never true. I bet 90% of players that complete LFR do normal and heroic or strive to do normal and heroic every patch and a lot of them even dream to do mythic (if it's easy enough to them).

In fact the irony is when LFR was first released (in DS if I recall correctly) it was pretty clear that the FIRST players doing LFR were the extreme hard core to get even more items (those people were making premades and ninja looting gear from the casuals which was possible back then).

[rhorle]

The notion that LFR is there for a gigantic pool of players that only do LFR is a myth that was never true. I bet 90% of players that complete LFR do normal and heroic or strive to do normal and heroic every patch and a lot of them even dream to do mythic (if it's easy enough to them).

Who has ever said it is only for casuals? That is silly. The game at different points in the past still gave reasons to do it lower content. Those reasons are smaller then they have ever been though so there isn't much reason for a person that regularly does Normal, Heroic, or Mythic to do LFR.

[Glorious Leader]

The notion that LFR is there for a gigantic pool of players that only do LFR is a myth that was never true. I bet 90% of players that complete LFR do normal and heroic or strive to do normal and heroic every patch and a lot of them even dream to do mythic (if it's easy enough to them).

In fact the irony is when LFR was first released (in DS if I recall correctly) it was pretty clear that the FIRST players doing LFR were the extreme hard core to get even more items (those people were making premades and ninja looting gear from the casuals which was possible back then).

The irony here was that Blizzards response was to slowly gut lfr of any decent rewards. Now its basically useless other than literally as a pretext for making raids.

[Elestia]

Honestly the conversation ended with the introduction of mythic raiding. Up until then having a guild meant clearing content in reasonable time. Could bring your friends, low ilvl etc no problem. Big utility could single handedly save fights…

There isn’t the same grassroots community of people online anymore b/c Blizz made a hamster wheel for the ‘good players’ and the actual good players that made the game fun got left behind, quit or now play lfr for content because there’s no point in doing hard content other than burning time which they would rather use for other fun elements of the game. Its just harder to do and not as meaningful or fun when top players log in to run the hamster wheel and aren’t available to make friends.

This coming from a hamster wheel runner for the last 13 years.

[Triceron]

Having a developer who would do everything in their power to maintain raiding as endgame is a special right or advantage for raiders. Raiding is by no means a mainstay or a staple or a law. Its a choice on the part of the developers as is lfr. Because raids without lfr look like togc. I'd be fine with that personally because they could shift the emphasis and resources to other content.

Raiders can also play old Raid content from classic. And considering that there is no real end game alternative to Raiding end game content, how is ot anything other than a mainstay?

It's actually be better if raiding wasn't a staple or a law or a mainstay. The game would be better off if it were more story focused as FF14 is designed. The raid focus is q big reason why subs dip every expansion release and only spike up when a new expansion comes along. Story content is arguably much more valued.

The problem is Blizzard doesn't make a majority of their profit off subs any more. It's off the whales. That lends the developers freedom to make whatever end game content focus they please regardless of retaining longterm subs.

So what you call a privilege is in truth the only way the devs know how to design the game, while the majority of profit actually comes from microtransactions.

[epigramx]

Honestly the conversation ended with the introduction of mythic raiding. Up until then having a guild meant clearing content in reasonable time. Could bring your friends, low ilvl etc no problem. Big utility could single handedly save fights…

There isn’t the same grassroots community of people online anymore b/c Blizz made a hamster wheel for the ‘good players’ and the actual good players that made the game fun got left behind, quit or now play lfr for content because there’s no point in doing hard content other than burning time which they would rather use for other fun elements of the game. Its just harder to do and not as meaningful or fun when top players log in to run the hamster wheel and aren’t available to make friends.

This coming from a hamster wheel runner for the last 13 years.

Absolutely not. Before mythic: Ulduar had hard modes which were the best "mythic" version ever conceived: you had to manually turn on the hardest mode by doing something meaningful in the story of the encounter itself (they ditched it in later raids because they found it hard to be done well because 'dev dumb'/it's not as easy as "use button on UI").

When Yogg Saron 0 keepers and Algalon the Observer were done for the first time: it wasn't easy core: and it was just another extremely hard core race.

[Fathr]

To me atleast the game went downhill from tbc/wotlk. Its like a rollercoaster you start out withe the highestest peak and its mostly down hill from there with a few whirls and some hills afterwards. Id have liked for them to have kept with the class design of tbc. Today everyone can aoe, everyone is viable for everything within their roles and we have colours flying everywhere from abilities going left and right. Its like a finale firework show. What has allways kept wow going was comeradery and community so that should be their focus, not this crossrealm thing where most are strangers and noone cares.

[netherflame]

Well who else to blame, when the game is raid or die. Like what PvE endgame do you have beside mythic + and raiding? You can't say the game was designed for casuals, can you?

Explain why you think its raid or die?

[Raisei]

We used to live in caves and eat things raw. Why bother having a house?

Casuals have ruined every game that catered to them (SWTOR, TSW to name just a few) because their interests are so varied that it is a lot harder to give each and every one of them something to play with every time you deliver new content and Casuals are also the most likely to just unsub and leave when their specific wishes are not met, since they have no strong ties in the game.

WoW has chosen a different route. They focus on Raiders and Dungeoneers, because those spend several months every time they get a new Raid. It's a clear and predictable interest. On top of that most Raiders join a guild and form ties which makes them more unlikely to just pack up and leave.

This model has kept WoW in buisness for 16 years, subs go up and down, but there is always interest in the new group content coming out and there are always thousands of groups running the new Raids and Dungeons.

Of course, as I said before, the militant Casuals here do not care. They want all games to conform to their demands, if this ruins the games then so be it. Your comment makes it sound like this would be some kind of natural evolution, but it is not and Final Fantasy will soon learn that noone is a more disloyal customer then a Casual.

WoW's content draught has led to a spike in subs there, otherwise it would never have had a chance. We will see how long it's content can really keep people playing.

[Crimson Spears]

I'm just wondering, but if this is what raiders truly want then why haven't more of them moved over to FFXIV, which doesn't require all that busywork and grinding bullshit to raid? It's likely the same thing that kept me playing WoW well past it's expiration date ... the addiction and comfort of something familiar.

I played both games final fantasy most of shadowbringers and while you will get a different answer from everyone for me it came down to difficulty and combat mechanics.

Final fantasy is a far slower far easier game then wow. I would say final fantasy caps out around mid heroic in terms of wow difficulty with the hardest mini raids being roughly a +12 mythic plus.

I like the systems of final fantasy far more then wow ( for example if a mount drops from a boss the boss will give you a currency ensuring you get the mount eventually rather then rng along with a far better gear system. (in my opinion) ).

I feel that final fantasy respects its players time a lot more then wow and offers a better story... the thing that keeps me playing wow though is the gameplay. I enjoy the faster and harder combat of mythic + 20s and CE. Its just a game of attrition of blizzard trying to put just enough obstacles in front of me that i don't quite trying to get to that content.

Still this is just my opinion raiders are hardly one block speaking in a single voice.

[Addiena]

It's kind of ironic in a way as WoW initially hired a bunch of hardcore EQ players. However, those players had the fore site to see that making the game a niche hardcore game was not the way to go. They ended up making the best casual mmo anyone had ever seen at the time.

It could have worked here, but they just got the wrong guy. Listening to Ion talk tells you all you need to know about his direction for this game. His overly convoluted vernacular translates directly into how the last few expansions have gone. People who think they can quantify fun with metrics and charts usually fall flat on their faces doing so.

He is both a lawyer and a Hardcore Theory crafter/Raider, its really all he knows .. how to say as little as possible with the most words possible which also translates back to how he runs the dev team .. they make as many convoluted, irritating and boring systems as they can using as many different currencies, stats, abilities and RNG as they can all of which do exactly fuck all for game play but serve their metrics perfectly.

Afterall Blizzard is in the business of making money and driving up player retention and play time, making games is simply a means to an end for them now.

[Kralljin]

And considering that there is no real end game alternative to Raiding end game content, how is ot anything other than a mainstay?

M+?
PvP?

It's actually be better if raiding wasn't a staple or a law or a mainstay. The game would be better off if it were more story focused as FF14 is designed. The raid focus is q big reason why subs dip every expansion release and only spike up when a new expansion comes along.

First off, looking at the current writer team and saying "it should be more story focused" is pretty much a monkey's paw.
If you like the current story, more power to you, but the current lore team isn't the team that should have more power in my opinion.

Second, citing raiding as the "big reason" why subs dip is pretty much a case of confirmation bias.
WoW has become a more seasonal game, this isn't just "because of raiding" but actually because to cater towards more casual players that aren't constantly subscribed and don't play the game on a regular basis.

Whether this a case of "game adapting to the player or "player adapting to the game" is another story, but saying "because of raiding, WoW has become more seasonal!" is just plain BS.
Vanilla had lots of raids and wasn't seasonal, TBC had lots of raids and wasn't seasonal, either.

These things don't go hand in hand, it depends on how you design the rest of the game.

[Triceron]

First off, looking at the current writer team and saying "it should be more story focused"

I didn't say by the current writing team either.

If we're talking about having things shaken up, that involves a massive change in direction and within the team. I'm not talking about having story centric design be handled by devs who only know how to make raids as end-game content and treat story little more than a means to an end to fight more bosses. A major shift in the team is probably the only way this will happen.

Similar things happened with Diablo 3 for the better, when people like Jay Wilson were pulled off the team while Josh Mosqueira was given the reins, and the whole Loot 2.0 turned the game entirely around. No more 'Inferno' difficulty and RMAH, replaced by Rifts/Greater Rifts and Seasons instead.

M+?
PvP?

You understand the context of my reply was in context to someone inferring end game content updates as being a privilege to the players, right?

PVP and Mythic Plus generally don't get a whole lot of updated content throughout an expansion, they're highly repetitive content that requires little update to anything more than the loot tables.

[Better]

Well who else to blame, when the game is raid or die. Like what PvE endgame do you have beside mythic + and raiding? You can't say the game was designed for casuals, can you?

Collection farming (Mounts, transmog, toys, pets)
Pet battle dungeons
LFR
Weekly Events
Korthia research/rep farming (currently)
Achievements
And Maxing out lego crafting.

Decently varied types of PvE endgame for casuals honestly.

[Kralljin]

I mean if I said the game should be more story focused, should we be assuming we're looking at the current dev team that only focuses on raids too? No, I'm talking about a massive shakeup and that means shifting the team around.

That, however, has nothing to do with WoW being more seasonal due to its focus on raids.

Similar things happened with Diablo 3 for the better, when people like Jay Wilson were pulled off the team while Josh Mosqueira was given the reins, and the whole Loot 2.0 turned the game entirely around.

You are forgetting that
(1) Diablo 3 is not a 16 year old game, and it's a game that was especially panned by the core Diablo audience.
When i look at WoW, i consider the raiding audience the "core audience", you are naturally not making any friends with that audience by heavily shifting away from raiding.

(2) Does the WoW audience actually enjoy a very story focused game?
The story was quite frankly not much more than a backdrop in WoW for most of its lifespan, i think most people have accepted this and a lot of people that play WoW don't give a fuck about the story, you will also alienate those people by putting a bigger emphasis on the story.

(3) WoW is pretty much the only game besides Hearthstone bringing in any revenue for Blizzard at this point, with what is frankly a soft reboot, you are playing with fire because when the result backfires, Blizzard has a massive problem.
I don't think that the higher ups at Blizzard would approve of any massive shakeups within the team or a huge shift in WoW's design, because it has the potential to very much give WoW and even quicker death.
Let's not forget that Blizzard currently doesn't seem to be in the most stable situation, rebuilding their biggest team and recalibrating their biggest product is one massive gamble - and large corporations hate gambles.

PVP and Mythic Plus generally don't get a whole lot of updated content throughout an expansion, they're highly repetitive content that requires little update to anything more than the loot tables.

I mean, they are still producing new outdoor zones, completely disregarding those is pretty dishonest, unless you are one of those people that are bothered that they don't get Mythic Ilvl items by killing nonelites in an outdoor zone.

[Kithelle]

I always find this weird because it really isn't true at all. With Shadowlands the focus is not really on raiding. Even casual players can easily out gear LFR the raid mode designed for them to see the story. Each expansion has slowly been taking the focus off of raiding. It is still the biggest end game activity but that is also because it is popular among a lot of players. Mythic+ has taken some of that.

Islands, Warfronts, the zone make overs were all attempts to give content that was non-raiding. Has Blizzard been successful? Not always and sometimes they were close but didn't want to go the rest of the way. And it is clear that the Pandemic has stopped a lot of that effort Blizzard was building on over the years because of the constraints it put on development.

I'm a pvper, they've virtually ignored pvp for numerous expansions....no new bgs...and some of the last ones we've got were relatively similar to past ones. I mean I'm not expecting a new bg like every season but you know more than a few every 5+ years would be great.

No matter what you say they still do a lot of focus on raiding...just because they've opened up a few more things doesn't negate that fact

[Triceron]

You are forgetting that
(1) Diablo 3 is not a 16 year old game, and it's a game that was especially panned by the core Diablo audience.
When i look at WoW, i consider the raiding audience the "core audience", you are naturally not making any friends with that audience by heavily shifting away from raiding.

majority of WoW players don't stick around to raid. They sub at the start and drop off till new expansions come. The majority are casual players who do not raid. The core audience is the one Blizzard chooses to appeal to, and they're not very casual focused.

(2) Does the WoW audience actually enjoy a very story focused game?

Won't know if they never try.

But I can tell you that the majority of WC3 players were people who bought the game to play singleplayer and never even touched multiplayer. Multiplayer accounted for a very small percentage of sales. Most players treated Warcraft 3 like typical 10-hour games that they play once or twice to go through the story, like an RPG.

WoW is the same for many people, only that they have little reason to stick around after questing content is done. This is why we see groundbreaking sub numbers at the start of an expansion, but those numbers easily halve and halve again over the course of the game.

On the contrary, FF14 retains players very well without having raiding be end game focus. I stead it plays on social features like guild housing, or end game crafting that actually matters. When was the last time crafting ever mattered in WoW end game? It's always been a stepping stone for raids or for making consumable enchantments and raid buffs.

(3) WoW is pretty much the only game besides Hearthstone bringing in any revenue for Blizzard at this point,

Yes, and the majority of that WoW money is from MTX qnd store sales and wow token purchases. They don't profit heavily off subs, and the current devs don't develop content that appeals to retaining casuals. They focus on raiding because that is what they consider core, all the while feeding off the whales who then feed off the gold sale community.

It's not shaken up because it works, but it's also obvious they will continue to lose long-term fans as other games like FF14 become more and more appealing.

The WoW killer is WoW itself.