Originally Posted by
Triceron
Anecdotally speaking, the casual players that I have talked to over the years don't really care about game developer politics, they just see this as blanket entertainment, and consume it as it comes. It's like how you treat a movie franchise that you might not be a particular big fan of, but still willing to watch for the sake of entertainment. 'If there's something that interests me I'll check it out'. And frankly, WoW simply does a mediocre job of presenting their progression and end game story in a way that is accessible to most players.
I don't really get the impression that the casual players I've talked to were feeling spited by Blizzard at all for not having content designed in the way they would like the game to be, in the same way most people don't see a director being particularly spiteful to a casual audience for making a mediocre movie, while a hardcore fan might feel differently and take it personally. Like, the hardcore Star Wars fans I know talk about the Star Wars sequels as if Kathleen Kennedy is personally shitting in their cheerios, while most casual Star Wars fans I know tend to give a blanket 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it' response without feeling like they were being disrespected. At its worst, they would just see it as a 'bad movie'.