Originally Posted by
Toppy
Yeah MMO history in general has shown many times over, in many different MMO, that catering to the "hardcore" crowd is a universally bad idea. They are both an extreme minority, and also the least loyal of any group.
Anyone who states otherwise is speaking from a position of extreme ignorance or simply lying to themselves.
Take WotLK : It was casual as hell. The most casual expansion so far. It had the most casual raiding scene the games ever had, hands down. And it was the most popular time of WoW. TBC and vanilla were also super casual with raiders making a minority. Most players didn't go past dungeons.
Making "hardcore" raids is enough for raiders. They dont need to be huge, involved, or have the game designed around them. Their gear doesn't need to be leaps and bounds ahead of anyone elses gear. Again, we know this from experience with other MMO and WoW's own history: the size of the gear difference doesnt matter, all that matters is that in some small way there is one. Likewise you dont need to make these gigantic super raids where half your patch budget is oging to just doing a raid; raiders just care about the encounter and time and time again bitch about the size and trash of raids. You dont even need a dozen encounters, a few yes, but not a massive amount. Again, this just leads to bloat and more complaints about the "Easy" fights.
Should raids exist? Yes. For sure. Should they take a lot of the dev time? Every. Single. Sign. Points to no. There is no argument in favor of hardcore raiding having a focus that can stand on it own. Every argument for it is either outright lying, or appealing to emotion or "common sense" in some stupid way.
- - - Updated - - -
You would be absolutly wrong. Its no secret that "hardcore raiders" are a minority, and always have been. The only time they had significant numbers was in WotLK, which had the easiest raiding ever. Their numbers also go up when the barrier to entry is low (so when we had for example, valor gear).
Casual make up a SIGNIFIANTLY larger proportion of the player base than hardcore raiders. You can tell that just from looking at raid statistics, which, are very widely available.