There needs to be more single player content

[Caiphon]

About how much Hazzikostas may decide the design, also from the president of Blizzard entertainment:



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As you see from Qwiks post, Ion decides. It is up to the game director to decide the fate of the game. Which includes game philosophy and which components they focus on.

That is literally just the president directing WoW related inquiries to Hazzikostas, who is much better suited to answer such questions as a game designer as opposed to executive staff. That doesn't mean Ion is free to decide by himself the business model of the game and who it caters to, especially if it's at the expense of profit as you keep insisting. If internal data shows that the design of an upcoming expansion is detrimental to making money the president will be informed, and let's just say his 'input' will carry much, much more weight than uninformed internet randos like you or I.

It is honestly quite laughable that one can think a lead designer for Blizzard can blatantly put his own little fetishes above profit and get away with it. Everyone from Ion to Greg to whoever was in charge before Greg designed expansions with profit as the top priority, it's just how corporations operate above the indie level. They just didn't know that stuff like borrowed power, mission tables etc. would be received poorly by the community.

[WowIsDead64]

My dream casual solo content is exactly the same, as it was:
1) It's instanced location
2) So, no forced competition, playing with friends is optional
3) It isn't built with mandatory challenge in mind, i.e. player can play there any way he wants, including flying enabled at release
4) It should be highly replayable, i.e. not tedious or annoying - so no famous "dung fly" design
5) No artificial overstretching for players, who love grind just for sake of grind - it should be completable within 1-2 months
6) No RNG-gating, no virtual casino, no AFK-RNG-spawn-camping, no "dopamine isle" design - progression path should be guaranteed
7) There should be "active" non-time-gated part there, like some sort of campaign
8) It should be alt-friendly: if player wants more content - he should play the same content on alts, but at the same time such playstyle shouldn't be forced by FOMO
9) Both short-term and long-term motivations do play content. Long-term motivation shouldn't cause FOMO, so it should be: a) Account-wide b) Passive (like mission table for example)
10) The best motivations to do things: a) Gear set b) Mount c) May be pets, but I personally don't like them
11) It's shouldn't be stretched to be xpack-wide - it should get updates in content patches

[Caiphon]

What about "He decides on WoW with his team" don't you understand?

I mean.. when you showed me i made a mistake i openly admitted it. Can't you do the same?

I mean it says in the last line of that very tweet that he gives his input. Ponder on the kind of input that an executive would give, and how that would affect the game. Did you really expect a president to say something in the lines of 'Ion is my faithful pawn and will obey every command'? Talk about PR disasters.

Being the leader of the WoW team doesn't mean one can use the project as his personal plaything. Corporations always operate with profit as the default mantra and WoW accounts for a substantial part of Blizzard's sales. Making sure each project works to maximise profits is literally Ybarra's job description - if he's truly letting Hazzikostas sacrifice subscriptions to fulfil personal tastes he's not doing what he's paid (quite well) to do and will likely be removed quickly.

As a universal rule you don't get to chase your personal dreams and aspirations when the work is paid for by someone else. I don't understand how you could possibly think Ion could just go 'subscriptions be damned THIS is the type of game I want to make' when even Renaissance masters didn't have that kind of liberty. Heck Morhaime himself wouldn't have had that level of authority after the Activison acquisition.

[Caiphon]

Ok, so you cannot admit making a mistake. Well, thanks for the discussion, tho. I hope you have a nice day.

I've made plenty of mistakes this month but this isn't one mate. 'He decides on WoW with his team' doesn't mean he's free to override making money, nobody is. Your conspiracy theory will never float because most people (yes, even WoW players) possess a basic understanding of how companies are run.

[Caiphon]

Now lets take a look at one of the most successfull components in shadowlands:

Torghast.



Even while it did not offer any gearing progression, many at least played it a few times.

And still a majority completed it on lowest difficulty:



Even if it had no ongoing gearing progression.

So. Yeah. Solo player gameplay seems quite successfull.

How anyone at this point could use 'Torghast' and 'successful' in the same phrase is truly a mystery of our time. Torghast was required for crafting and upgrading legendaries which you HAD to make no matter which endgame content you were shooting for. By this logic artifact power is an even bigger success.

[Tyris Flare]

As far as I can tell, here is the basic premise:

1) WoW has been bad since Ion took over, so about ~8 years
2) it is bad because he designs the game a certain way
3) the game could retain far more players and make far more money by designing it a much different way.


So, the implicit follow-up to this is that Activision is so incompetent that they haven't bothered to replace the person who is single-handedly responsible for the game's decline in 8 years. Now, I suppose you could argue that Ion is one of those people who is just so charming he's hoodwinked everyone in corporate, but since we've all seen him talk I think it's pretty obvious this isn't true. You could also perhaps argue that he's just incredibly difficult to replace, but I don't think anyone seriously believes that no one else would want or take this position over such a long period of time. So what are some alternative conclusions?

1) These mythical "play for a month" players actually aren't worth chasing, because there is no realistic scenario that keeps them in the game (since it is their lives and personality that take them away, not the game.
2) That wow is doing well at maintaining and monetizing its core audience
3) The game does some good and some bad things, because that is how life works and nothing is ever perfect, it's just flawed people trying to do their best

[Cynical Asshole]

many words

You are describing people who shouldn't be playing MMOs in the first place because they either don't have the time to commit to an MMO because they have 2 jobs, 3 wives, and 7 kids, or they simply don't like playing MMOs because MMOs don't offer the mechanics and features of single player MMOs nor can they.

To play an MMO only for the leveling content, the story which is at at the same level as the story of a porn movie, and whatever end-game single player content that doesn't require any commitment, is just pathetic.

And indeed, Blizzard should not be chasing these people. They are like locusts: they jump in, they play a tiny part of the game that doesn't require commitment nor effort, and then they fuck off, and maybe come back the next major content patch to play for a couple of hours to see the new story chapter, and then they fuck off again.

These are the mega casuals, and perhaps super casual MMOs would work better for them. I suggest Elder Scrolls Online. That game is basically a single player MMO, there is no rush, there is no fomo, and dungeon mechanics are for kindergartners.

[Coldkil]

Well, M+ has turned into the most effective way to get gear when it comes to challenge and time used.... It just math, that made sense for most players xD

It's not just that. M+ you can easily pug your way up to max gear rewards = no schedule and you can play the game fully solo at your pace. You don't have to deal with people as m+ require minimal communication (talking about low levels). And if you find bad players who cares, you won't see them anymore the next run.

[Lolites]

So. Yeah. Solo player gameplay seems quite successfull.

torghast was REQUIRED due to legendary mats and done in groups...
its possible to do it solo, but without knowing how many people did that its not really "solo content"...
but thats besides point anyway as at begining of expansion it was the only way to get legendaries, so pretty much everybody did it...

meanwhile, the gauntlet, that wasnt necesary - 26% on first, EASIEST level, only 11% reached 4th for mount...

[Coldkil]

WoW isn't a single player game at end game... I doubt people are interested in it becoming one. Why not honestly fuck off to a single player game instead of turning every game genre into the same one?

The great majority of the players play exactly like this, thanks to the m+ system. You don't need a guild or any actual interaction, just queue for your dungeon and do it with the equivalent of AI controlled npcs.

That's one of the reasesons why it's so successful (even if just around 30% manages to do "basic" stuff like ksm).

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torghast was REQUIRED due to legendary mats and done in groups...
its possible to do it solo, but without knowing how many people did that its not really "solo content"...
but thats besides point anyway as at begining of expansion it was the only way to get legendaries, so pretty much everybody did it...

The problem with thorghast other than being mandatory is that solo content in wow isn't balanced at all. Some specs breeze through it and others just have an hard time.

The only true solo content that works is mage tower because is specifically tailored towards specific specs. And i hooe they put more of this.

[Biomega]

It could do much better. It could adress millions instead of thousands.

Contrary to what people may naively assume, the goal is not to have the maximum amount of players.

The goal is to maximize PROFIT. Now, of course more players paying generates more profit, but that's not a simple exchange. You don't just GET players - you have to ATTRACT them, and KEEP them. And doing that requires effort, which where the simple equation of more players=more profit breaks down.

They're entirely fine with some people quitting. People they could, in theory, retain - if it didn't cost more than they're worth.

"Good enough" becomes a real business goal as time goes on, because the cost of new content tends to go up. You need more and more and newer and newer stuff to get/keep players, and that runs into diminishing returns. At some point, it's worth more to just cater to established players who aren't that demanding than try and chase people who'd need a ton of shit to either come onboard or stay.

To the outside, that often looks irrational. Why are they doing X when it's clearly alienating people? Why not do Y, which would clearly attract new people?

Of course there's mistakes and miscalculation in there, too, but a lot of the time the answer is simply: it's the economically most feasible thing to do.

Content doesn't magically pop into existence. Always remember that.

Well, it is not really about Activisions incompetence, but about the developers incompetence. They simply do not know how to do it right.

I suspect that's FAR less the case than people like to think. To them, it's all fairly one-sided - they only see the player perspective, and it's easy to recognize what you'd like if you're... you. But you don't see the internal workings of a for-profit company, and you don't see the data on who they're really after/who they're more after than others.

Again, that's not to say they don't make mistakes and get things wrong. Absolutely they do. But a lot of it isn't incompetence at all, it's them following business directives through their design. You simply aren't privy to those, and they may, in fact, INTENTIONALLY make the game appear "worse" to certain people in order to maximize gains elsewhere. You look at it and call it incompetence, but it's not.

My guess is that blizzard knows their game is at its end of its lifecycle. And that they will melk it as much as their game directors allow it.

Pretty much. WoW has had a phenomenal run. To monetize this much for this long, that's a rare thing. They're squeezing, hard. Because they know they'll lose people at this point pretty much no matter the quality of their content, simply because of the game's age. Business dynamics call for different tactics now than they did 15 years ago.

[Nymrohd]

The problem with thorghast other than being mandatory is that solo content in wow isn't balanced at all. Some specs breeze through it and others just have an hard time.

The only true solo content that works is mage tower because is specifically tailored towards specific specs. And i hooe they put more of this.

They could in theory balance things up a bit by making some solo mode that worked like War Mode (opt in) and gave you some passive to boost weak solo specs up. Or by working on improving the bodyguard system (perhaps with bodyguards gets talent trees like Chromie)

[lllll]

The only true solo content that works is mage tower because is specifically tailored towards specific specs. And i hooe they put more of this.

That doesn't work.

I play high mythic plus as resto druid but I can't complete the resto druid mage tower, if people played as bad as my npcs in there in mythic plus I would leave the group because they are in over their head or are throwing.

I did the guardian druid mage tower on 3 tries but I can't tank m+ even if my life depended on it.

[Coldkil]

That doesn't work.

I play high mythic plus as resto druid but I can't complete the resto druid mage tower, if people played as bad as my npcs in there in mythic plus I would leave the group because they are in over their head or are throwing.

I did the guardian druid mage tower on 3 tries but I can't tank m+ even if my life depended on it.

It's true, but fights living in a bubble where they can be tuned for each spec more or less is a way better scenario than a single setup with random powers that can make or break your run (or more probably make it so long it hurts).

[Biomega]

Oh i love how much people talk who know nothing.

It helps if you quote the rest of what I said. Or... understand it.

Think before you rant, next time. If you can't properly parse someone's comments, you don't need to engage with them.

You have way more profit with millions of loyal players rather than thousands of loyal players.

This is what I mean by "simple exchange". You aren't thinking about what you're saying here.

If just having millions of players was the goal, they'd give their stuff away for free. And make no money. Clearly that ISN'T the goal, making money is. More players mean more money, but also more investment required to GET those players. There's a point where those things no longer scale the same.

These are absolute basics of business dynamics, if you have no clue about how this works, why do you feel a need to comment on it in an underinformed manner?

[Caiphon]

The only true solo content that works is mage tower because is specifically tailored towards specific specs. And i hooe they put more of this.

The irony here is that casual players hated mage tower because it was supposedly 'elitist'... folks go on and on about how casuals want solo content but Legion showed that isn't necessarily the case.

[Biomega]

All it needs is endgame for many. That is it.

Read my original post again.

You're displaying exactly the kind of myopic behavior I pointed out there. Content doesn't just magically appear. It costs money. And at some point, it costs more money than it would bring in from attracting new players. What business would deliberately invest into a money loser?

[Celement]

They could in theory balance things up a bit by making some solo mode that worked like War Mode (opt in) and gave you some passive to boost weak solo specs up. Or by working on improving the bodyguard system (perhaps with bodyguards gets talent trees like Chromie)

That seems like a lotta work for little gain.

[Drench]

And not just world quests and dailies, but rather, meaningful and challenging content that can progress your character through out the entirety of a season.

I envision a solo end game content experience, much like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls/Elden Ring.

As it stands, there is currently very little reason to log on, outside your weekly m+/raid times. There is just nothing to do.

Go play another game. If you are addicted to singleplayer gameplay in a mmo. You arn't a mmo player you are just addicted.

[Caiphon]

All it needs is endgame for many. That is it. And developers who create it right. We do not have that in WoW nowadays. And really, even if i would not take away gameplay from anyone, i would rather focus on many than bind all resources to a few high end players.

So the implementation of a that new component that will adress millions costs a raid tier?

Great! Fuck that raid tier and make that game suitable for many.

Dungeons and raids are the endgame for many. In case you haven't noticed there are 4 raid difficulties and some 20 dungeon difficulties, one does not have to be a world first raider to enjoy WoW. And considering the number of subscribers this game had in TBC where raids were 25-man by default and had a single difficulty that sat somewhere between heroic and mythic, 'suitable for many' does not mean what you think it means.