Raid Tuning Coming July 5

[Jastall]

I don't see the value of that publicity. The publicity that matters in WoW is word of mouth. It's what you hear (positive or negative) from your friends. People largely aren't attracted to the game by videos of top players; they're attracted by their friend(s) telling them it's fun (or, negatively, kept away by friends telling them it isn't fun.) No youtube videos of elite play is going to outweigh this organic PR generated by fun game play.

Having challenge in a game does have negative effect. Players who can't handle that level of challenge get negative ego reward from its mere presence. They are told by the very structure of the game that they are inferior. The game design must be warped to cater to that elite (we've seen that over and over through the expansions) for example by eliminating or limiting reward that the elite might be tempted to gorge on to stay ahead. Simply saying "the devs want" is no argument that that is actually a good thing from a business point of view. The purpose of the game is to make money, after all, not to cater to the whims of the dev team.

You don't see the value of publicity at all? I daresay the untold billions put into advertisement of any and all stripes the world over disagree with you. Plus, Twitch streams are only a step away from word of mouth itself, the race is organized by fans, not by Blizzard.

And I'd understand your position RE challenge if Mythic was the only game in town, but it really isn't. Now sometimes Blizzard does overtune LFR, Normal and/or Heroic and that's bad, but most of the time it is perfectly accessible in a variety of ways. Since Legion the game really hasn't warped to cater to the elites, since they ceaselessly complain about split runs, systems like AP or Legion legendaries, "mandatory" M+ and other stuff Blizzard put in to satisfy most other players. We're very far away from Cata to WoD style where the elites raidlogged and the rest either did the same or were maybe thrown scraps in between the raids that were the only place to get decent rewards.

Plus, I'd rather the devs make the game they want to make, than just go purely business PoV. Pursuing only the dollar is how you end up with Immortal. In reality of course there's almost always a mix of both but still.

[Osmeric]

You don't see the value of publicity at all? I daresay the untold billions put into advertisement of any and all stripes the world over disagree with you. Plus, Twitch streams are only a step away from word of mouth itself, the race is organized by fans, not by Blizzard.

I don't see evidence that the publicity has any great value. And I don't see evidence that its value is greater than what I see as its negatives. I reject the assumption that the net value is positive, for the reasons I gave.

And I'd understand your position RE challenge if Mythic was the only game in town, but it really isn't.

I already explained why that assumption (that if the lesser players have their own content, then the presence of the hard content is ok) is not necessarily true.

Plus, I'd rather the devs make the game they want to make, than just go purely business PoV. Pursuing only the dollar is how you end up with Immortal. In reality of course there's almost always a mix of both but still.

I'd rather the devs lose their jobs if they put their egos ahead of the interests of their employer.

[Jastall]

I don't see evidence that the publicity has any great value. And I don't see evidence that its value is greater than what I see as its negatives. I reject the assumption that the net value is positive, for the reasons I gave.



I already explained why that assumption (that if the lesser players have their own content, then the presence of the hard content is ok) is not necessarily true.



I'd rather the devs lose their jobs if they put their egos ahead of the interests of their employer.

Have fun with every game in the world being a cash grab if all that should matter is how much money the employer makes out of it then. I'm not sure why you even asked me questions when you've clearly more than made up your mind about all this already.

[Kallisto]

Good, but too late.

This should have happened 2 months ago.

In Dragonflight Mythic needs to be far easier from the start, fuck the Race to world first, no one cares.

People do care. EN was the right level of mythic for huge number of guilds. But because the RWF was over in days people mocked how easy it was.

[Osmeric]

Have fun with every game in the world being a cash grab if all that should matter is how much money the employer makes out of it then.

If a game satisfies more customers it will make more money, all else being equal. I reject the notion that wanting the game to make more money by satisfying more customers means the game is somehow corrupted. Surely there are monetization techniques that are corrupt (witness D:I and the like) but that's not universal, nor will it become universal, as there are players (probably lots of them) that would reject such games entirely. A rational game company will not ignore that market.

[Celement]

If a game satisfies more customers it will make more money, all else being equal. I reject the notion that wanting the game to make more money by satisfying more customers means the game is somehow corrupted. Surely there are monetization techniques that are corrupt (witness D:I and the like) but that's not universal, nor will it become universal, as there are players (probably lots of them) that would reject such games entirely. A rational game company will not ignore that market.

The problem is finding out what the most customers enjoy. If you look at steams most played none of the games are challengless and even taken to extremes like minecraft few people are able to " beat it"

I feel this tier had to many instant wipe mechanics it got to the point that battle rez seemed a pointless spell as one person didn't go down from a failed mechanic but 10.

That being said continously making a product more bland and boring isnt a recipe for success. There needs to be a happy medium.

[Jastall]

If a game satisfies more customers it will make more money, all else being equal. I reject the notion that wanting the game to make more money by satisfying more customers means the game is somehow corrupted. Surely there are monetization techniques that are corrupt (witness D:I and the like) but that's not universal, nor will it become universal, as there are players (probably lots of them) that would reject such games entirely. A rational game company will not ignore that market.

The games that make the most money are all mobile cash grabs, sprinkled with a few juggernaut franchises like Pokémon and GTA. I don't want every game to be that or a clone of that and appeal religiously to the broadest possible audience to satisfy shareholders. That's a recipe for bland games at best and predatory monetization at worst.

Besides which, businesses pay people lots of money to figure out how to make more money. That's their concern. My concern is for the games I play to be fun. Challenge can be part of that fun. It is false to say that games with challenge cannot have a large audience, as Elden Ring for example demonstrated. The key is to make this challenge satisfying, something that WoW sometimes gets and sometimes doesn't at all, which is understandable as it's a hard balance to achieve in a SP format, let alone a gargantuan multiplayer experience. But I'd much, much rather they keep trying than give up and make everything easy because that's the path of least resistance.

[SinR]

i wonder what the reclear rate for Mythic Sepulcher is.

How many guilds got their CE and/or "Famed Slayer Of Jailer... no Zovaal... no Banished One... no Jailer... whatever..." and just stopped.

[Osmeric]

The games that make the most money are all mobile cash grabs, sprinkled with a few juggernaut franchises like Pokémon and GTA.

However, that does not mean that if you make your game a cash grab (in the sense of gatcha games), it will make more money. There are plenty of cash grab games that don't do well. To the extent that being a gatcha game is a money machine, more of those games will be pumped out until the competition ruins that. In that situation, if there's a large underserved market -- say, casual players who refuse to play P2W games -- then that would become favorable to pursue. Of course, that market has to be big enough: a pure hardcore AAA MMO, for example, will likely not fly just because there aren't enough customers like that to support it.