WoW has to be inviting for young gamers - but it's not

[VideoGamePlayer]

MAU-milking like actually having to level and gear up your characters?

You're being disingenuous here.

Funny the guy a few above you is saying the problem is the removal of RPG elements while you say it's the opposite: that the characters don't come fully equipped and ready to play at competitive levels.

You're putting words in my mouth. The PvP gearing system we had from cata through WoD was satisfactory to players that wanted gear progression as well as competitive PvPers.

[melzas]

did you read what i said?we had 2 people start in wod,and by the start of hellfire they were raiding mythic and boosting,yes not all players will do that,but its not imposible,i also knew plenty of people in mop who made plenty of gold just by farming world content,dunno how profitable that is these days however

Notion that WoW's price isn't bad for newcomers because they can eventually pay for it with boost gold is one of the most idiotic arguments I've read on this site. Congratulations.

"Hey, I don't mind paying so much for this game, because if I play it at almost professional level I can eventually pay for it with in-game currency" said no one ever.

[loras]

Young people dont wanna work for things anymore, they just wanna buy it with daddy's CC.
That's why gaming is being ruined with micro transactions (etc) nowadays.

I think it's less about young people's wishes and more about companies not willing to take risks anymore.
Why risk failure if you can milk endlessly with minimal effort and risk?

Though i'm also unsure if you're talking about genuine laziness or people simply seeing the absurdity in involving tediousness and time wasting in entertainment.
I mean i get that people like being rewarded, but you must understand that both the labor and the reward in videogames are fake, they lack any inherent worth. Valueing them overly much is like a dog valueing a trivial nonsensical task for its association with a reward, hardly something virtuous.
So being unwilling to waste your time is hardly lazy in the real sense of the word, rather it's being realistic.

[Gaidax]

I think it's less about young people's wishes and more about companies not willing to take risks anymore.
Why risk failure if you can milk endlessly with minimal effort and risk?

Though i'm also unsure if you're talking about genuine laziness or people simply seeing the absurdity in involving tediousness and time wasting in entertainment.
I mean i get that people like being rewarded, but you must understand that both the labor and the reward in videogames are fake, they lack any inherent worth. Valueing them overly much is like a dog valueing a trivial nonsensical task for its association with a reward, hardly something virtuous.
So being unwilling to waste your time is hardly lazy in the real sense of the word, rather it's being realistic.

I mean, every expansion WoW introduces some new mode that clearly takes a ton of effort to do and so far only M+ truly delivered.

If you think that dumping ungodly development time and effort into Islands, Warfronts and Torghast was "minimal effort" - you're out of whack.

And many would argue that is even where the problem is - for example, what if all that effort they dumped into Torghast would instead go into base game, areas, questing, dungeons, raid and meatier patch content?

That's a valid concern there and the answer is unclear, on one hand new stuff is cool and all, but if it does not pan out and old stuff is what people want - then should they really keep trying to reinvent the bicycle every expansion?

[WowIsDead64]

After playing Exiles' Reach for the first time (had been preferring original locations before that) I realized, that, yeah, whole problem boils down to difficulty of this game. Because Exiles' Reach has the same quality, as WOD content. I.e. everything is well designed. But... I guess, it's considered to be noobs' content. And "real" endgame should be much harder. But is it right? I liked Exiles' Reach. How about you? How can you enjoy badly designed and overtuned content, like Maw? May be ultimate solution would be to add difficulty level to outdoor content, so players would be able to switch to higher difficulty, only when THEY would think, that they're ready for it, not when devs would decide it on behalf of them?

[Isilrien]

I have for stopped for now ye. A lot of what kept me around for so long are the similar aspects you mentioned too - familiarity, being comfortable and so on. Yet with Shadowlands, after perhaps the first 4 months, I had to acknowledge that I was playing more out of habit than enjoyment. I'm in a big guild that's been around since 2005 and there are maybe 2 people still playing. It's a really low point in the games history. We're mostly all 30+ and 40+ and with lots of free time in the evenings in general, but WoW just doesn't provide a home for us anymore.

I used to get hyped for the WF race, play the mythic raids for CE, try to push m+ and so on, but I just don't care anymore. It's like the game has just lost its way.

Hoping the next expansion will /cast revival, but I don't know how many friends will ever return.

Yeah, I hear you on the state of the game. It's kinda my experience, too. And thanks for replying!

[Lady Atia]

So how will you turn the Battle Pass model kids like into MMO monetization?
WoW is terribly toxic and antisocial to everyone, new and old alike. Hell, with the newcomer chat genuine new players have more pleasant experience than average player.
Sure it would be nice to see them make levelling content interesting and more challenging, but it seems that Blizz has two difficulty modes: piss easy (Heroic and below) and balls-to-the-walls hard (Mythic raids and M+ above 16 or so).
Who do they even market at? At most I have seen bland generic ads that are either basic as fuck (Orc versus Humans, RAWR ((BFA)) or tied to latest expansion stuff that is unexplainable and uninteresting to people outside of the game (Shadowlands, arguably Legion).
And there's the fact: kids are a lost demographic for anything PC. They can't even use computers, you expect them to install and play games on them?

- - - Updated - - -



The thread was about getting new young players into the game.

Young people do not use Facebook.

The answer is easy - just do what Hearthstone did and finally give us a battlepass system full of cosmetics. We are in 2022, not 2012 anymore lol.

[ek0zu]

With ffxiv i did what most people do when playing a new MMO, buy the game and try it out for the first sub-free month. I did not like it back then and i dropped it, but a little while before Shadowbringers launched i had the itch to play ffxiv and re-opened my account, i had to buy at full price or close to full price all expansions in order to play but i was in the mood to spend and i said that i have to commit (pay moneyz and sub) therefore i bought a 6month subscription together with all the expansions.

I had a good time up until the first patch of Shadowbringers that i played, i really liked the story but i did not like many other things, i even joined a guild (FC) but we did not do anything together, therefore i could not see the Raids or the hardest content, but anyway after a year that it took me from lvl 1 to 60 i was burned out to even consider finding a new FC and experience the hard content. Eventually, I will surely return but not yet. In between ffxiv i re-opened my pretty old gw2 account and it clicked more to me, a lot more fast paced combat and i could participate in very good pve & pvp content from the get go, by paying only a few euros for the two expansions.

My point is that, FFXIV is wayyyy more expensive than WoW to get into and i think all other MMOs are wayyyy more expansive compared to WoW, SWTOR, ESO and ofc the "free" ones.

I strongly believe that cost is not the issue that WoW is not attracting younger customers, because on one hand they already pay lots and lots elsewhere (i think both xbox live, psn and w/e require monthly subscription to be able to play) and on the other hand they already pay lots and lots for skins and stuff in games like gta, lol, fortnite, fifa, 2k, etc, all these games are astronomically successful in terms of money making and all these are mainly played by younger people, therefore cost is not an issue imo.

Probably WoW cannot attract younger people in masses is that it requires a core of people to be played at its finest. You have to dedicate a lot of time to make connections and start building your reputation up via arena ranking and/or RIO. Judging from my experience, in BFA where i tried to get into hardcore WoW again by doing mythic raiding and i really really wanted to get into rated PVP, arenas and bgs, i simply did not have the time to do so. We only raided twice per week and still the preparation needed to do so was insane, to get vantus runes, be up to speed with azerite traits, gold for repairs & consumables, w/e. I could acknowledge the fact that it was way more casual that my naxx times or even BT times, a hundred years ago but my 30+ self could not keep up with those.

I fucking love all aspects of the good WoW and i am sure that everyone does and the younger people would do as well if they had the chance to participate but the barriers to entry and stay in the "competitive scene" are very high. The good WoW (by good i mean the mythic dungeons-raids and rated pvp) is fucking brutal to progress into and the l2p curve is huge, but by the time either a new player or a returning player reaches the base of that curve and the l2p process starts to kick in you are already burned out, same as it was with my ffxiv experience.

I am at the point where i think that if WoW is separated into two games, the one being the open world MMO (without the loading screens that imo is the best selling point compared to the competition) where it is more casual friendly, to collect things, craft & built, have some open pvp like it was during the vanilla-era and some nice world events like AQ gates the nightmare dragons, tight servers community, etc and the other being a lobby based dungeon - raids and rated bgs - arenas where you go all out and kill stuff without the unnecessary farming or grinding, both games will be very successful and attract new and returning players altogether.

[Rucati]

I'd imagine there's basically no kids who want to play MMOs period. The genre is incredibly unappealing compared to something like Call of Duty or DotA or CSGO where you can just turn on the game press "Find Match" and be playing instantly. MMOs have a lot of grind, a lot of tedious grind at that, and the fun doesn't start for like 20+ hours of gameplay. Plus they require a much larger time commitment and in the case of raiding they even require a schedule, something most younger gamers (college and younger) don't want to or can't commit to.

Single player games have the benefit of a story and tight gameplay, regular multiplayer games have the benefit of being quick and easy to pick up and play, MMOs have basically no benefits lol.

[Sucralose]

After playing Exiles' Reach for the first time (had been preferring original locations before that) I realized, that, yeah, whole problem boils down to difficulty of this game. Because Exiles' Reach has the same quality, as WOD content. I.e. everything is well designed. But... I guess, it's considered to be noobs' content. And "real" endgame should be much harder. But is it right? I liked Exiles' Reach. How about you? How can you enjoy badly designed and overtuned content, like Maw? May be ultimate solution would be to add difficulty level to outdoor content, so players would be able to switch to higher difficulty, only when THEY would think, that they're ready for it, not when devs would decide it on behalf of them?

No one enjoyed the maw not because it was overtuned but because it was tedious and blizzard hasn't respected the "no mobs on roads" rule for a while now.

I just think its near impossible to sell players on the idea a game wont get fun until you are done sixty hours of mindless content and then your gonna be spammed with boosting ads. Least from the perspective of someone good at video games.

[loras]

I mean, every expansion WoW introduces some new mode that clearly takes a ton of effort to do and so far only M+ truly delivered.

If you think that dumping ungodly development time and effort into Islands, Warfronts and Torghast was "minimal effort" - you're out of whack.

And many would argue that is even where the problem is - for example, what if all that effort they dumped into Torghast would instead go into base game, areas, questing, dungeons, raid and meatier patch content?

That's a valid concern there and the answer is unclear, on one hand new stuff is cool and all, but if it does not pan out and old stuff is what people want - then should they really keep trying to reinvent the bicycle every expansion?

All of those are additions that are, effectively, tacked on. And they can be taken off similatly easily.
Hardly a risky thing to do, though i do see your point about spending resources on them and thus "risking".

In WoW's context risk would look more like something structural, i.e. the way they added knockback effects for player classes in TBC, or the way they seemed intent on integrating mounted combat into the common activity of WoW.

While i agree that reinventing the wheel is wasteful i'd argue they keep on trying to reinvent the wheel exactly because they fear risks; rather than add structural changes they keep to expansion-only stuff because it makes the risk limited in scope; no chance to lose everyone if the core remains completely unaltered, there will always be someone willing to collect 12 bear asses for a reward as we know by now.

Now imagine if they added i.e. a full fledged racegame mode that integrated with your gear and mounts? It'd be a massive risk, half the playerbase would have a nervous breakdown.
But if it genuinely worked they could add it for years to come.

Also i would argue that mythic+ is just a rehash of heroics as done in tbc: An attempt to make small group content equal to raid content.

[Raidlogger]

I'd imagine there's basically no kids who want to play MMOs period. The genre is incredibly unappealing compared to something like Call of Duty or DotA or CSGO where you can just turn on the game press "Find Match" and be playing instantly. MMOs have a lot of grind, a lot of tedious grind at that, and the fun doesn't start for like 20+ hours of gameplay. Plus they require a much larger time commitment and in the case of raiding they even require a schedule, something most younger gamers (college and younger) don't want to or can't commit to.

Single player games have the benefit of a story and tight gameplay, regular multiplayer games have the benefit of being quick and easy to pick up and play, MMOs have basically no benefits lol.

Singleplayer games are also almost entirely dead outside of certain big names like Zelda and Bethesda games.

[Miffinat0r]

Singleplayer games are also almost entirely dead outside of certain big names like Zelda and Bethesda games.

Minecraft wants a word.

[Ersula]

Young people will never care about that weird grandpa game some of their teachers play. Non of my students has the slightest interest in a complex game like WoW.

Pokemon is more complex than wow & that's almost 30 years old. Minecraft too.

[Adamas102]

Why would young people care about a hotbar mmo from 18 years ago in significant numbers. 3 years ago was there a massive influx of tweens into Everquest?

I realise WoW has a strange subset of "this is the forevergame and will literally exist and be evergreen, bringing in new players forever who play nothing else like me" customers but WoW is over the hill in this regard. Its had its day, its been a global phenomenon but its been aged out. Thats natural. A near flatline of new users in significant numbers while maintaining a small but diehard lifer contingent is the endstate of any mmorpg not put into outright maintenance mode.

This pretty much sums it up. WoW will never regain its widespread appeal. It’s great that Blizzard can keep churning out expansions for their die hard fans, but that’s all anyone should hope for from an almost 20 year old game.

[Lahis]

Minecraft wants a word.

Multiplayer has always been the bigger thing for it.

[Adamas102]

Pokemon is more complex than wow & that's almost 30 years old. Minecraft too.

Yeah, WoW is hardly a complex game. It’s just a sprawling game made up of a handful of simple systems. Mostly just reaction and repetition with a VERY limited toolset for interacting with the game world and trivial consequences for bad play. Definitely not a “thinking man’s” game.

[Soon-TM]

Also i would argue that mythic+ is just a rehash of heroics as done in tbc: An attempt to make small group content equal to raid content.

M+ are just D3 Greater Rifts crudely inserted into WoW. They work in D3, but required a lot of fiddling to get more or less "right" in WoW, in order for them not to overshadow their precious raids. And even if they've nerfed them twice in a row (Legion into BfA, and BfA into SL), they STILL are the primary gearing avenue for your average player.

[Venziir]

Singleplayer games are also almost entirely dead outside of certain big names like Zelda and Bethesda games.

Pure nonsense.

[Alkizon]

In my experience, most new gamers still fall under heading "impatient"/"fast player", and (often not because it's their fault, rather) since discussed system itself 1) "gameplay" not only fails to show how/in which way good could be "slow" game (because all good that was in it was drained down toilet in favor of "acceleration" and "we want all and different/more subscribers", but it didn't become "fast"), but also 2) "reputation" former/current subscription base itself, which company shamelessly mocks for so many years, speaks about game, to put it mildly, in two ways (but, as for me, rather emphasized negatively) ⇒ so that "fast" players, by nature, will have no desire to even try (waste time) on this product.

It's funny, friends painted this trend little less than 10 years ago in a very short and laconic way on old forum, but discussion didn't have much progress (it was exactly about reputation's formation and destruction). Something like "lost what they had, and didn't get what they wanted". It seems that there was comparison with heavy classic brand and light modern craft - they say each to its audience and its purpose. Which is quite simple and understandable, but goes against actions/ideology of change/marketing of you know who, right?

Using word "reputation" I don't mean general public (so-called political and not only trends; like people whose opinions majority of "adult" internet community in general and gaming community in particular have never taken into account/felt solidarity with), I'm talking about local point not biased opinions and impressions of specific participants - players. Since it's they who make final decision to play or not to play, they are end-user. By the way, difference between them is very easy to trace within communication zone - on specialized forums, rather than in "widely accessible" social networks, huh.