"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
So all the guilds that are one boss short from CE aren't Mythic Raiders ? This isn't about how easy/hard the bosses are. If you kill bosses in normal mode, you raid normal (regardless of the amount), if you kill them on heroic : heroic raider, if you kill some on mythic you're a mythic raider. This is like saying "nuh huh you haven't timed a 20 because it was NW and NW20 is free".
I don't bother raiding, at all, but if I were in a guild and we ONLY had the first 3 down, I would consider myself a mythic raider. It's still more than 95% (made up number) of what the playerbase is capable of.
"I'm not gonna bother running because if I can't beat Usain Bolt there's no point". This is what your post sounds like.
I'd definitely argue they need more CHALLENGING content for Solo players - with unique cosmetic rewards - They've even brought the mage towers back because of how popular they are..
But there's so much to do for casuals to progress as much as anyone really needs to progress and so many other activities and achievements available.
Sure you can't get the highest ilvls in the latest patch, but there's no real need for that if you're not even planning on doing any of that content. That's why i feel more transmog for solo difficult challenges would be a good approach.
I actually think there's a large amount of players who don't really want to do anything challenging, and even wouldn't do things like the mage tower - I don't get why or how they feel they should be "progressing" - Even for that market then things like the Cypher gear should be enough surely?
Last edited by rogueMatthias; 2022-05-06 at 11:55 AM.
BASIC CAMPFIRE for WARCHIEF UK Prime Minister!
No, killing multiple bosses is raiding because people progress on the raid. Killing one boss because he is a freeloot "encounter" isn't raiding my dude. Raiding means progressing. And there are normal raiders, heroic raiders, curve raiders, mythic raiders and cutting edge raiders. Oh, and I guess lfr raiders kekW.
And yes, if all you do is clearing heroic and killing the first boss on mythic without trying any other mythic bosses, you are still a curve/heroic raider.
Last edited by Lady Atia; 2022-05-06 at 12:18 PM.
#TEAMGIRAFFE
Asmon one in the beginning he acknowledges that they underserved the quiet majority of players who don't push keys or mythic raid.
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I'm going to reemphasize this post. Your post shows literally a former big name in the WoW Dev team openly saying and disproving that harder content is not what players want.
In my view the only MMO Devs right now worth salt who seem to have a vision for the future of their games are coming from ESO, GW2, and FF14. SWTOR and WoW seem to be very very confused and lost when it comes to everything.
They did stop this, ages ago, when they added casual LFG functions and additional difficulties that were even easier than before, when they dumbed the talent system to oblivion and removed almost all forms of gear management and enhancement.
But sure, "top .001%" is all that gets attention. Live in that delusional bubble.
The major thing is that the very top and very bottom of the players are the ones that's currently in game still playing for the most part. The ones who still very much like the gameplay core and regulry return or stay, and the ones who really don't know any better.
What kind of feedback do you think people like this would give? Also it makes for skewed metrics because while it appears a bigger % of players are maybe successful at true endgame, in fact it's just that the middle ground part went lost in time.
If someone still plays the game and keeps raiding/running m+/pvp, while he may complain in forums he's still playing so from a marketing/revenue standpoint the game has done the right thing.
Everything seems to be actually changing now because the hit in playerbase has been basically the biggest in the story of the game, plus all the external stuff. Suddendly people had options to play and wow wasn't the only game worth their time etc.
Non ti fidar di me se il cuor ti manca.
I take from the fact you haven't answered that you were playing with complete strangers, so the lack of coordination could very well be the actual explanation.
You might also be right, it's been a very long time I haven't played any LFR, but let me say I've my big doubts.
Gamers have so many great games to choose from nowadays that the majority will always play every and any game extremely cyclical, they'll be there when fun content dropped and be gone in a few weeks, that's the "80%", under no circumstances and with no dev. team in the world will we ever see tbc/wotlk levels of retention (and even back then we don't know for sure since retention rates never got released...)
So in a way Shadowlands biggest failing wasn't the dreaded "systems" or ridiculous statements like the thread title, I'm pretty sure it was simply the patch cadence.
Legion was a lot worse system wise in many regards, but why would a casual care about that when by definition they don't interact or try to understand those systems in the first place? It's like the conduit energy uproar, this sucked for only a extremely small amount of players.
What Legion got right though was the insane patch cadence, you don't think too much about bad system design when there's constantly fun shit to do.
Except he wasn't trying to redefine difficult nor was he saying Animal Crossing was difficult. You're putting words in his mouth.
What he said, was that the game had a difficulty curve. And if any part of the game is tougher than another part, he's correct.
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This first paragraph needs to much more emphasis. People like to compare now and then, sub numbers, and such, etc. And it's only part of the picture. If both Wrath and Shadowlands had 200,000 quit in the last quarter, but 250,000 new people tried Wrath but only 50k new people tried Shadowlands of course it's going to look like Shadowlands was worse, even though they both lost just as many people.
The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.
they made leveling easier,but the thing is,i always find it funny when people call vanila wow hard,when in fact at the time it was ridiculed as the casual care bear mmo,having zero of the ''hardcore'' features most of the popular mmo's at the time had like xp loss on death,pvp body looting,before wow i played kalonline,you couldnt level in many outdoor areas without help,a death at a high level could set u back weeks,2 quests per lvl,you didnt have upgrades constantly showering you etc
Its funny people are mentioning the hardcore and ultra casual being the audience for WoW now. I find that to be very true.
As crazy as it sounds I have started playing everquest again as I find it's a better experience than WoW for a gamer like me (somewhere in between hardcore and casual). This is insane and not something I could ever imagine 10 years ago.
WOW Token killed the quality of community in this game.
If you put strangers in BT, they might also struggle. But if you put pugs who easily clear Illidan in current LFR, I'm sure they struggle even more. LFR idiots are still kinda better than casual dad gamers in many cases.
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If the content wasn't so hard, the WoW token wouldn't be needed, as more people could achieve success without paying. And if they ban the token, people just find other ways to pay for boost anyway.