"Catering to 5% of your player base will leave you with 5% of your player base"

[Beefhammer]

If two million people left and two million new players joined in the same quarter, the subscriber graph would stay steady. That is definitely not a "plateau" which is why looking at subscriber numbers and deriving any kind of conclusion is faulty. We simply have no idea how these numbers were derived without knowing either how many players the game lost or how many new players the game gained.

Moreover, two years of roughly the same subscription numbers is a pretty good indication of market saturation. You see this same phenomena in other subscription services like cable television where certain providers will simply stop marketing in areas once they've reached the theoretical maximum number of subscribers.

And WoW had 4 years of solid growth with is far more impressive, and why I say more successful than WotLK, because from day 1 through MoP, which is when that comment about people leaving at the same rate happened, they were steadily losing the same amount of players for like 10 years straight.

[Deventh]

This announcement talked nothing of either instanced PvE or PvP.

If anything this is one of the most casual friendly expansion announcements in recent times as everything announced can be enjoyed by all players alike.

You don't understand the point. The game is just not casual friendly in general, it has nothing to do with what they showcased during Dragonflight's reveal.

[BeepBoo]

You don't understand the point. The game is just not casual friendly in general, it has nothing to do with what they showcased during Dragonflight's reveal.

What does the game need to be more casual friendly, though?

What are casuals who don't want to actually group up interested in?
Getting the best gear?
Completing the game's hardest difficulty?

Etc.

What exactly are casuals interested in that the game doesn't already give them?

[Deventh]

What does the game need to be more casual friendly, though?

What are casuals who don't want to actually group up interested in?
Getting the best gear?
Completing the game's hardest difficulty?

Etc.

What exactly are casuals interested in that the game doesn't already give them?

Best gear? Are you serious? They can't even get the LFR literal dogshit starter gear. The game is just not casual friendly and people need to understand that fact and it needs to change, otherwise the game does not have a bright future ahead.

[Relapses]

And WoW had 4 years of solid growth with is far more impressive, and why I say more successful than WotLK, because from day 1 through MoP, which is when that comment about people leaving at the same rate happened, they were steadily losing the same amount of players for like 10 years straight.

Starting at 12 million (assuming market saturation was reached) and staying at 12 million for the entirety of the expansion is, imo, a feat far more worthy of measuring the concept of success. I don't even like WotLK that much, I just dislike weird arguments which imply that the extreme growth WoW experienced in its first two expansions was somehow stopped by an expansion which represented the peak of the game's popularity.

[Trumpcat]

They only spoke about talents, professions dragon riding and the zones. If that is the 5% catering, then the other 95% are spamming pvp, m+ and raids, which they didn't talk about. So I think it's alright.

[Osmeric]

So while yes, you can't really infer anything from the release, there's no reason to think they're going to change direction at all.

And moreover, given that they regressed back to favoring the better players after the failure of Cataclysm, there's no reason you SHOULD think they're going to change direction. They're serial offenders on this issue.

[Razorice]

I really don't get what a casual or a solo player wants from an announcement? You want more pets to farm or quests to do? because there will be that for sure

[Jastall]

Best gear? Are you serious? They can't even get the LFR literal dogshit starter gear. The game is just not casual friendly and people need to understand that fact and it needs to change, otherwise the game does not have a bright future ahead.

You can get random BGs or WQ gear to Normal raid ilvl and over time convert some into tier gear. It's a very similar setup to Wrath, the of called casual heaven. What more is required?

[Celement]

And moreover, given that they regressed back to favoring the better players after the failure of Cataclysm, there's no reason you SHOULD think they're going to change direction. They're serial offenders on this issue.

Favoring how...?

Why is it people just ignore everything between mythic and lfr?

[AcidicSyn]

What does the game need to be more casual friendly, though?

What are casuals who don't want to actually group up interested in?
Getting the best gear?
Completing the game's hardest difficulty?

Etc.

What exactly are casuals interested in that the game doesn't already give them?

I'd personally love more challenging solo content. I'd also love an end to anything time-gated.

I'm the kind of casual who sometimes can't play for a few days or weeks. Sometimes when I get to play, it's only for a few hours. But sometimes, SOMETIMES, the stars and planets align and I find myself playing for 6 hours on a sunday. One time not long ago, I was looking at a guide that had some suggestions on a specific memory I needed in order to play more efficiently. It was acquired in a specific torghast area. That specific area just, coincidentally, never happened to be active the days I was able to play, it was frustrating as hell.

It feels incredibly shitty to get blocked by a time gate when those magical days come. More often than not, I just play something else. I don't give a shit if the "hardcore" "more dedicated" or whatever the hell you want to call them finish everything months before I do. When I'm able to play, let me fuckin play.

And if I am seriously honest with myself? This kind of shit is probably part of why I want solo content to begin with. My schedules wonky and when I can get on I just want to be able to play and progress my character without some artificial wall in the way that says nope! sorry, come back thursday! Couple that with really having no great way to find like-minded players, it's hit or miss.

I put the word dedicated in quotes before because there are a lot of people who don't think "casual dedicated players" can even exist. I may not get to play often but when I am playing I'm doing everything I can not only to play at my best level, but also to improve that level. The number of guilds I have joined that are filled with one extreme or the other is exhausting. Some tools other than the forums for finding guilds with compatible philosophies would be great, I'd absolutely move servers for that, once I found such a guild.

So why gravitate toward solo content? Because what else is there? I can hardly blame the players that play at my level but also have the time to play far more often than I do can I? The majority of them I've met would love to take me along, but my gear falls behind and eventually it would just turn into them carrying me; that's not fun for either of us. Better to look for content that doesn't care if i take 4 months to finish it than force my burden onto the friends I make in game.

[God Save The King]

Looking back on Legion through SL, I'd say they focused on their larger, if silent, playerbase.

Population sizes: Mythic < Heroic < Normal < LFR (according to logs). Not sure how big the non-raiding population is. Not sure how big the dungeon-only crowd is.

Fair to say that the majority of players are casual. They want something to do outside queueing for LFR once a week and smashing it out. Something to do between queue times. I think AP, keystones, pet battles, transmog, achievements, random pvp, and more are almost all designed for this group of players. I'm in a high end mythic guild (world top 100, hall of famers). Been raiding at the top more or less since WotLK. With few exceptions, no one in that community really cares for activities outside of progression raiding. We accept that it's a means to an end. Even farming the raids isn't that much fun since the bosses just fall over after first (sometimes second) kills.

My ideal WoW would be pretty simple. Drop a new raid tier whenever they can. We can collect a currency, like badges, from each boss kill. Exchange badges for mythic ilvl loot. No random drops. The items are locked behind a certain boss, you want to buy your tier tokens? You need to have killed the right boss. Removes the RNG, makes for a clear progression system, keeps players farming the content. Make it take ~10 full clears to get your BiS. For lowerend guilds it might take ~5-6 months for BiS. If you need to extend the content, toss in a valor-esque system to titanforge our pieces, with increasing ilvl caps until the next bit of content is out. Everything outside that is basically worthless to me.

I will dabble in alts and occasionally do other things, but those are always fleeting fancies. If the game was really made for us top percenters, it would look radically different. We don't need constant engagement systems to keep playing. Just good raids with good loot we can kill with good friends while challenging ourselves.

New race? New class? New zones? New levels? Talent rework? UI rework? Dragonriding? Renown? Mythic+ rotations? Profession revamp? PvP changes? Nah none of that is for us. Most of that just makes our lives harder. Sounds like a lot of people in the minmax community will, once again, have to rework everything. I contribute a lot to tank theorycrafting, so having to parse through all the new talents and evoker healing resources doesn't sound exciting to me. Each patch having to redo mythic+ theorycrafting is also bleh.


And to be fair, I am perfectly understanding that Blizzard needs to appeal to the broader playerbase. I understand that it is the wide-appeal and support that enables blizzard to invest a small portion of their team and resources in developing and tuning mythic raiding. I understand raiding would likely be all but dead if not for LFR/Flex. So I am not overly annoyed by it. But I do like it when they cater to casuals in a way that doesn't require me to farm MoS+2 for an expansion, or clear WQs daily, or farm rep for my second legendary (granted they did fix that fairly well).

[ellieg]

I'd personally love more challenging solo content. I'd also love an end to anything time-gated.

I'm the kind of casual who sometimes can't play for a few days or weeks. Sometimes when I get to play, it's only for a few hours. But sometimes, SOMETIMES, the stars and planets align and I find myself playing for 6 hours on a sunday. One time not long ago, I was looking at a guide that had some suggestions on a specific memory I needed in order to play more efficiently. It was acquired in a specific torghast area. That specific area just, coincidentally, never happened to be active the days I was able to play, it was frustrating as hell.

It feels incredibly shitty to get blocked by a time gate when those magical days come. More often than not, I just play something else. I don't give a shit if the "hardcore" "more dedicated" or whatever the hell you want to call them finish everything months before I do. When I'm able to play, let me fuckin play.

And if I am seriously honest with myself? This kind of shit is probably part of why I want solo content to begin with. My schedules wonky and when I can get on I just want to be able to play and progress my character without some artificial wall in the way that says nope! sorry, come back thursday! Couple that with really having no great way to find like-minded players, it's hit or miss.

I put the word dedicated in quotes before because there are a lot of people who don't think "casual dedicated players" can even exist. I may not get to play often but when I am playing I'm doing everything I can not only to play at my best level, but also to improve that level. The number of guilds I have joined that are filled with one extreme or the other is exhausting. Some tools other than the forums for finding guilds with compatible philosophies would be great, I'd absolutely move servers for that, once I found such a guild.

So why gravitate toward solo content? Because what else is there? I can hardly blame the players that play at my level but also have the time to play far more often than I do can I? The majority of them I've met would love to take me along, but my gear falls behind and eventually it would just turn into them carrying me; that's not fun for either of us. Better to look for content that doesn't care if i take 4 months to finish it than force my burden onto the friends I make in game.

Hey idk what point in time your torghast issue happened but I believe shadowlands was released nov 23 2020, and twisting corridors was released jan 5 2021. So assuming it wasn't in that 1.5 month window, you could have gotten the memory from twisting corridors

[Celement]

Hey idk what point in time your torghast issue happened but I believe shadowlands was released nov 23 2020, and twisting corridors was released jan 5 2021. So assuming it wasn't in that 1.5 month window, you could have gotten the memory from twisting corridors

Twisting didn't initially drop memories.

[ellieg]

Twisting didn't initially drop memories.

Google is showing the opposite. Just required it to be level 3 or higher

[Celement]

Google is showing the opposite. Just required it to be level 3 or higher

It was patched in. Damned if I can recall when I was lucky done that garbage by then.

[BobJohn]

Catering to the 5% is what originally made WoW such a success.

[ellieg]

It was patched in. Damned if I can recall when I was lucky done that garbage by then.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/torghas...ny-week-320477

Dated 1/14/21 so 1 week later.

[Aydinx2]

I'm very disappointed with whole announcement. No single world about casual and solo players.
Imo Ion again will focus on raiders and make ppl quit fast.

This is such a fake complain. What you think casual players are and what they really are aren't the same thing.
Also, solo players in an MMO? Go play Skyrim. They already made plenty of ways for people to do content while pretending the other players are NPC's (dungeon/raid finder).

Not being able to do Mythic raids does not mean the game is against casuals. It just means you're not good.

[AcidicSyn]

Hey idk what point in time your torghast issue happened but I believe shadowlands was released nov 23 2020, and twisting corridors was released jan 5 2021. So assuming it wasn't in that 1.5 month window, you could have gotten the memory from twisting corridors

I don't remember the specifics, have since been unsubbed. But at the time, there was a specific memory I needed to play what folks considered optimally and every time I'd get on to play, that hallway or portal or whatever wasn't one of the three available. As far as the timing, I can say it was during whatever patch had Korthia in it if that helps. I had resubbed to see what was up and because I'd heard Korthia had great catch up mechanics, and I remember being pissed about them cutting the story quests to rescue Thrall and Jaina.

Don't see why all of the portals couldn't be active at all times though =\