0.23% of Players Defeated Heroic Garrosh

[Deleted]

so what u say ur spending half of play time on pet battles ? cause expet for that there was nothing else added in pve contnet - and ont bss me with hc scenarios - what hurt mop most was no new harder dungeons through tiers - in previous expansions dungeons were the out of raid pve content - now there is none zero nada nothing to do exept flex/normals on alts -_-

Sigh ... anyway this is what I can think of (likely I've forgotten some stuff).

MoP "casual" endgame:

5.0:
- Pet battles
- Dailies
- Farm
- Challenge modes (possibly the most difficult 5man content ever?)
- Scenarios
- Dungeons

5.1:
- New dailies
- New scenarios
- Brawlers guild

5.2:
- Thunder Island (inc. new dailies etc.)
- Legendary pet battles

5.3:
- New scenarios
- Heroic scenarios
- Barrens event
- New brawl bosses

5.4:
- Proving grounds
- Timeless isle (inc. new dailies, weeklies, pet battle tournament etc.)

[Heldamon]

The real question is "what would be the % of players that defeated Heroic or Normal Garrosh if LFR didn't exist?"

Maybe more maybe less!

[Raiju]

The past two expansions have cut the number of dungeons they have also made it much harder to obtain gear without committing to raiding. Blizzard have even said that sub losses were related to failure to engage with the casual audience but, yeah, your perception of what is happening is mostly likely correct?!?

In cata they cut 2 raids out and did 5 dungeons, along with revamping 1-60 which took most of their time.

Did it engage casuals? not really.
Was it time put towards casual content? Yes.

In Mop we had 2 non raid patches, new features such as pet battles, scenarios (each non raid patch), brawlers guild, proving grounds, etc.

Yes, a lot of time has gone towards non-raid casual content. This is nothing to do with perception.

@Osmeric i agree, the casual content they release is by and large not very long-lasting.

[Osmeric]

The real question is "what would be the % of players that defeated Heroic or Normal Garrosh if LFR didn't exist?"

Maybe more maybe less!

Probably a higher percentage, but that would be because the denominator of the ratio would decrease.

[Duridi]

Uhm, no I don't but I do think it is the primary motivator and the fact you seem so intent on proving me wrong suggests that I have hit a nerve.

Yes, you hit a nerve.

I react on posts where people claim there is only one way for everyone to view, experience or feel things. Gets me every time. I just cannot accept that people can't understand that there is not one thing in this world we'll all have the same reaction to.

I am not arguing that a lot of people might feel gear is a prime motivator, but I am telling you there is also a lot of people who do not.

I see plenty of posts and threads from raiders who are happy for other players to either have their reason for running content removed (see the LFR should not drop loot threads/posts), should be made too difficult for them to complete or removed altogether. Why is acceptable when it is not your demographic affected

Blizzard have repeatedly told us they only have resources to create a certain amount of content, where are the resources for the extra content for non-raiders going to come from? The game is in bad shape, it cannot continue to lose subs at the current rate, and it makes little sense for Blizzard to continue to plough their resources making content for such a small group of players.

First paragraph here, if I understand you correctly(I am having a little trouble understand what you are trying to say), I agree with you. Nobody should be requesting other players content to be removed.

Second paragraph - We don't know why players are leaving. I've been one of the leavers. I had my own reasons. I've had most of my friends and family leaving. They all had their own reasons.

More non-raid content - Well, they'll need to figure out what those 99%(?) non-raiders want to do. They've been putting a lot more effort into it since MoP I'd say. I am a non-raider, and have plenty of content at my hands, and think WoD will offer me even more. I have a feeling any non-raid related content they add, will be just as niche as raiding unless they find some kind of golden ore in what the playerbase want. Can you suggest something you'd think maybe 30% would want? Non-raid related...

[Bakis]

It sounds about right. As long as it is current content no more than 0,5-0,6% should ever beat the last boss on heroic.

[Pann]

There are other MMOs that tried to come with other formulas to raiding, and honestly, they failed. See the comments about GW2 endgame, for instance. And GW2 is free (well, actually, you pay just once). Or SWTOR endgame. Or any PVP focused MMO.

Who said they failed? I wouldn't take MMO-C's WOW forums as any authourity on the success or lack of of any MMO including WOW. I have read many comments that GW2 is busy and doing well, EA reported an almost $50 million like for like increase 12 month sub income to $393 million compare this to WOW that had an income of $181 million last quarter which would give an income of $724 million over the course of a year. I do not think that an income of just over half that of WOW could be considered a failure.

I believe WoW is already casual friendly enough... But anyhow, there is a place for plenty of casual friendly content in F2P.

If it is casual friendly, you finish it quickly enough if you don't play it casually. Who would pay a sub if you finish the content really quickly?

Why would someone pay a sub for content they have no interest in finishing?

[Osmeric]

@Osmeric i agree, the casual content they release is by and large not very long-lasting.

I think the deemphasis of VP gear has been a major mistake. That was the casual gearing mechanism, something that provided gated (by the weekly VP cap) content for non-raiders.

[Pann]

Second paragraph - We don't know why players are leaving. I've been one of the leavers. I had my own reasons. I've had most of my friends and family leaving. They all had their own reasons.

It is a fair guess to say that the majority feel the content on offer is not worth paying for.

[Deleted]

is that a % of people trying for Garrosh Heroic or Everyone trying or not ? to say whether its too many or not enough you'd have to have a % of people trying it.

if people are never going to try it they shouldn't be included.

[Firebert]

The real question is "what would be the % of players that defeated Heroic or Normal Garrosh if LFR didn't exist?"

Probably higher because then SoO would be an eight boss raid, not a fourteen boss raid.

[Normie]

I think normal is fine, but flex didn't pick up too fantastically it seems. It should be better next expansion when flex is renamed normal and flex/normal have the same scaling mechanic.

There seemed to be a prevailing thought among the community that Flex would attract people who abandoned casual organized raiding after two tiers (and also much of Cataclysm) where normal tuning was just out of whack for groups with mixed skill levels.

I don't see any sign that has happened to any real extent. While it's true that Flex has become popular, it doesn't seem to have attracted the group that it is actually designed for -- the "friends and family"/"beer league"/etc casual organized raiders who were running Karazhan back in the day.

Instead it seems to have attracted two different crowds:

(1) Hardcore raiders who need/want something from the instance and just want to be able to farm it fast (and not deal with LFR)
(2) Wrath-style PuGs

Is there anything that can bring casual organized raiding back to life in WoW? I'm not sure. At the moment Magic 8 Ball says "Unlikely."

And just to be clear, by "casual organized raiding" I mean raids in which everybody who wants to go, goes, more or less regardless of skill, and progression is entirely a secondary concern.

[turboether]

The entirety of parts 3 and 4 is not the last boss, it's nearly half the instance.

It makes more sense when you look at it in the way way Thok and Garrosh are most likely the two hardest bosses for a flex-progression-level groups in SoO, which need to be defeated to complete 3 and 4.

What it tells us is that groups that progress on flex and dabble in the easier normals probably have a lot of trouble with those two fights in particular and less of a problem making the jump to killing a normal boss that they have on farm in flex, considering the only difference is that of numbers tuning, which is not a terrible thing in and of itself.

It is fine that there is some overlap with flex and normal, IMO. You can imagine the same kind of thing happening if normals and heroics were released at the same time, where the very easy heroics could be progressed on and cleared by some normal/heroic progression groups leading to less overall normal kills, but since you need to clear normals to do heroics this overlap can't happen.

[Madruga]

Who said they failed? I wouldn't take MMO-C's WOW forums as any authourity on the success or lack of of any MMO including WOW. I have read many comments that GW2 is busy and doing well, EA reported an almost $50 million like for like increase 12 month sub income to $393 million compare this to WOW that had an income of $181 million last quarter which would give an income of $724 million over the course of a year. I do not think that an income of just over half that of WOW could be considered a failure.

GW2 and SWTOR are doing well, but it doesn't mean their formula for endgame is good. It doesn't really matter too much for their F2P model... Whether people play endgame or not in GW2, they already paid before... SWTOR has their raid-content gated behind a sub, but I don't believe endgame is what is bringing them money.

WoW has a different business model, they have to retain people through endgame content. GW2 and SWTOR do not. And to this day raiding is still the most effective endgame content, supported by endgame PVP.

Maybe somebody can bring another type of lasting content for endgame, but no other formula worked so far.

Why would someone pay a sub for content they have no interest in finishing?

Why would people still pay for a sub after they finished all the content?

[Pann]

GW2 and SWTOR are doing well, but it doesn't mean their formula for endgame is good. It doesn't really matter too much for their F2P model... Whether people play endgame or not in GW2, they already paid before... SWTOR has their raid-content gated behind a sub, but I don't believe endgame is what is bringing them money.

WoW has a different business model, they have to retain people through endgame content. GW2 and SWTOR do not. And to this day raiding is still the most effective endgame content, supported by endgame PVP.

Maybe somebody can bring another type of lasting content for endgame, but no other formula worked so far.

What does it matter whether it is endgame or not that is keeping players in either game? The fact of the matter is that neither of them, despite what is claimed here, can be considered failures.

The two and half million players lost during MOP cannot give a clearer indication that the endgame content is failing to retain players.

Why would people still pay for a sub after they finished all the content?

It is likely they will not if the new content is a long way off but they will pay a sub whilst they complete the content and then resub when new content is released. Compare that to someone who does not like the content they will pay for one month, find out they do not enjoy the content and then leave and it is unlikely they will return for new content.

[Raiju]

What does it matter whether it is endgame or not that is keeping players in either game? The fact of the matter is that neither of them, despite what is claimed here, can be considered failures.

SWTOR's budget points to it being a failure. With only $393 million has it evened out it's creation and running costs yet?

The two and half million players lost during MOP cannot give a clearer indication that the endgame content is failing to retain players.

I Could just as easily say its due to blizzard wasting their time on casual content. After all TBC and wrath had the largest growth and peak and were 99% raiding focused.

[Pann]

SWTOR's budget points to it being a failure. With only $393 million has it evened out it's creation and running costs yet?

I believe it was rumoured to have cost have cost $200 million to produce.

I Could just as easily say its due to blizzard wasting their time on casual content. After all TBC and wrath had the largest growth and peak and were 99% raiding focused.

You could easily say that but the ease of typing something is not proportionate to its accuracy. And if you were to say something like that your sig would be apt reply.

[Raiju]

I believe it was rumoured to have cost have cost $200 million to produce.

And then we include associated costs post release..

You could easily say that but the ease of typing something is not proportionate to its accuracy. And if you were to say something like that your sig would be apt reply.

Well, the timing of the sub drop fits. The expansion they focused on revamping casual content and cutting raids is the expansion where subs started dropping. As more casual content was introduced more subs were lost.

[Jiigeri]

Is there paragraphs for earlier tiers for this expansion?

Back to topic: I think it's more or less where it should be. It's not supposed to be easy.

[Pann]

And then we include associated costs post release..

"Speaking in a conference call to investors, EA CEO John Riccitiello said that the game would become profitable at around 500k users, but that 'anything north of one million subscribers is a very profitable business'." They claimed to have had 500k subscribers when they became F2P so it is reasonable to assume they are profitable. But it has nothing to do with the thread so it will be the last I say on the matter.

Well, the timing of the sub drop fits. The expansion they focused on revamping casual content and cutting raids is the expansion where subs started dropping. As more casual content was introduced more subs were lost.

...which is kind of like saying "of COURSE you can't see the unicorns, unicorns are invisible, silly."