STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[Tziva]

If this was true, I would agree. However, I think it's faaaar from accurate. I believe there are a lot of aspects of WoW that are worthy of criticism, but this isn't one of them. WoW does a great job -- and it gets better every expansion in this respect -- of catering to a huge variety of players at all difficulty levels.

There's four different difficulty levels of raiding, a near infinite scale of 5man content ranging from normal dungeons all the way up to high keystones, many levels of Torghast, and ample world content, plus activities like PvP. Further, even that content ends up being tuned based on how the general community encounters with it go, with regular nerfs, especially early on. A raid boss that might be super hard on patch date usually gets nerfed once "regular" players hit a wall on it. This is true for all content levels, from smoothing over speedbumps for normal raiders all the way up to tuning for those "average" mythic raiders who, while still part of a minority of higher skilled players, are more representative of the typical player than those participating in world firsts.

I agree a game shouldn't design a game entirely around an extreme minority of players, but I think it's extremely disingenuous to say this is the case for WoW. One of the few things WoW excels at is being a game that can offer something for everyone from the most casual to world first skilled.

[VMSmith]

The best things from MOST games come from the hardest content, why would wow be any different?

First, I disagree with this assertion. Outside of WoW and SWTOR I have played no other game in nearly 50 years that gives better things for higher difficulty. It's typically been the reality that higher difficulty means you get less to make it more challenging and the reward is overcoming the challenge ... not shinies.

Second, I find the entire concept pernicious in that it makes our entertainment into just another avenue for work, voiding the entire purpose of the medium. This entire way of thinking should be despised, not celebrated.

[arkanon]

First, I disagree with this assertion. Outside of WoW and SWTOR I have played no other game in nearly 50 years that gives better things for higher difficulty. It's typically been the reality that higher difficulty means you get less to make it more challenging and the reward is overcoming the challenge ... not shinies.

Second, I find the entire concept pernicious in that it makes our entertainment into just another avenue for work, voiding the entire purpose of the medium. This entire way of thinking should be despised, not celebrated.

What? so the cheapest cars in GT are.........the most exotic and fastest? The highest upgrades are...........the cheapest? And more difficult races reward LESS money? What on earth are you talking about?

As for your second point, thats absolutely 100% a YOU problem - if you find yourself thinking about a game as a job, thats on you. If you are not enjoying it, dont do it - its really that simple.

[Sorshen]

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

If you're taking your opinions from a guy that needs to be carried thru normal by his stream... I'm not surprised you managed to write so much that's just wrong.

[WowIsDead64]

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

Yeah, back in WotLK Blizzard had their "We don't care, what you do (so you can even kiss your squirrels), if you pay your sub fee anyway". Something has changed in Legion. Wow's design constantly suffers from pendulum swings. After trying ultra-casual-friendly WOD and failing, Blizzard decided that their game have to be ultra-hardcore instead and their new motto is "F**K SUB NUMBERS - WE CARE ABOUT INVOLVEMENT ONLY!!!!!". But they don't understand, that Wildstar 2.0 isn't viable, because nobody needs Wildstar. This game became popular back in 2004 exactly because it was casual-friendly in comparison with that day's MMOs. And it was casual-friendly, when it was on it's peak back in WotLK.

For me this game is currently way too hardcore. It causes too much FOMO, that causes playing too much, and suffering too much in content with exceeding difficulty. As result - burning out too quickly and being able to bear such content for week only, while sub fee has month quantum. So, I'm unsubbed now.

[Sorshen]

I would guess that when people claim the game is catered to the "top XX%", what they are really getting at is that the content for that portion is the only rewarding content in the game. And this is true, to a degree.

Unless you participate in high-level organized raiding, high M+, or Rated PvP ... the rewards are just pretty miserable. And not just in terms of power level, but also aesthetics. Look at every coloration for an LFR tier set pretty much since the inception of the difficulty, they're nearly all garbage colored. Questing sets and dungeon sets are abysmally bad, without fail. Mounts attainable from non-organized content tend to be lackluster, with a few exceptions. The only time since MoP that the game has given non-organized players nice-looking aesthetics were the Mage Tower.

Casual/Solo content exists, but it's all either unfun or unrewarding. And usually, the reasons for this are to not step on the provinces of the "Top XX%" because any time this content is made worthwhile the wails of anguish about being "forced" to do things they don't want to do will emanate from that group, who will then happily turn around and demand that the casual/solo players be "forced" to do organized content if they want to have any fun.

It's just a balance that can't be met in WoW: providing casual content that feels fun and rewarding yet not "required" for organized players. So they half-ass it and piss off both groups.

You get normal mode raid equivalent gear just by flying and opening chests and killing a few mobs in zereth mortis my dude...

[Enthris]

Unless you participate in high-level organized raiding, high M+, or Rated PvP ... the rewards are just pretty miserable. And not just in terms of power level, but also aesthetics. Look at every coloration for an LFR tier set pretty much since the inception of the difficulty, they're nearly all garbage colored. Questing sets and dungeon sets are abysmally bad, without fail. Mounts attainable from non-organized content tend to be lackluster, with a few exceptions.

That's a matter of personal preference. You can't say "x" colour is bad because you don't like it. I'm pretty sure there are people who like the LFR colour more than the Mythic colour

- - - Updated - - -

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

I used to be 26 when i was doing the same things, now i'm 40 and i feel that my reflexes, attention and so on are way lower than back then. I'm not good enough now to do mythic raiding, maybe heroic and that's it.
You're also 14 years older than back then so maybe you're not as good as you were either in which case you shouldn't ask for the game to change based on your gaming level.

[Celement]

Why is it people who dont play mythic put such a emphasis on mythic and not their own content?

I don't think anyone disagrees that the content for top end players is pitifully small amounting to little more a new phase during a boss fight or one or two new abilities ( the rest is tweaking numbers or rehashed content like mage tower).

The real question is how do we address the blind envy of the community that refuses to acknowledge any content that does drop the most powerful gear?

[Shakzor]

Why is it people who dont play mythic put such a emphasis on mythic and not their own content?

I don't think anyone disagrees that the content for top end players is pitifully small amounting to little more a new phase during a boss fight or one or two new abilities ( the rest is tweaking numbers or rehashed content like mage tower).

The real question is how do we address the blind envy of the community that refuses to acknowledge any content that does drop the most powerful gear?

These sorts of people will always complain. They want a challenge, but the challenge should be as easy as login in. There's no way to "address" them other than ignoring their whining.
When they insist that Blizzard balances and tunes WoW around the top 0.1% world first racers, rather than internal testing, stats and what the masses use/do, they won't listen to reason anyways.

[Deventh]

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

Everyone should watch this to understand OP's point of view. And I 100% agree with all said.

[Asrialol]

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

If you're going to argue that they need to cater to the majority of the playerbase, then you'll have to leave out raiding completely - as the majority doesn't participate in raiding, even on a LFR level. Thus; not sure why you're talking about raiding at all.

[Deventh]

If you're going to argue that they need to cater to the majority of the playerbase, then you'll have to leave out raiding completely - as the majority doesn't participate in raiding, even on a LFR level. Thus; not sure why you're talking about raiding at all.

They don't participate because the barrier of entry is too high, and LFR is a shitshow where you are more likely to wipe than succeed.

[potis]

Everyone should watch this to understand OP's point of view. And I 100% agree with all said.

Bullshit video, prying on the same bullshit the bad players claim is the problem.

But i will give him 1 point for the fact he used a term correctly and thats "dedicated players".

Thats what players dont understand and keep crying about and there is no magical fix.

WoW after a certain point requires you to not be an egotistical selfish human garbage and realize you cant go further without the others cause its an actual MMO.

There are multiple new players that start and become decent after a few months, it takes some actual dedication and will to learn.

But no, "BUT IN FIFA AND COD MY CREDIT CARD WAS CHARGED 50$ AND I WAS GIVEN SHINY THINGS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN LEARN NEW THINGS, IS THIS A JOB?" mentality.

[Rainingblood]

Game is 100 percent designed around a tiny fraction of the playervase.

1) Hardly any new dungeons in Dragonflight. When we do get dungeons now, they are assembly line dungeons, that can't be creative because they have to conform to a failed esport. This was Activision influence form the top down. Bobby Kotick thought he could be the next NFL and partnered with people like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on projects.

2) Mythic raiding put before all else in the game, making everything else useless. It's obvious at this point that this is done to have two playerbases that stick around. Mythic raiders that are used as cheap slave labor and whale token buyers, who use minimal bandwidth to maximize profit and who pay to win.

3) A PvP lead who still thinks arena matters and is what PvP should be designed around, when the only time people do it is when a gun is held to their head and they are forced to participate, so they can do other things in the game they enjoy. Keep in mind the original designers of WoW called Arena a Mistake in gaming articles back in TBC, because it forced changes to game design for everything else.

4) Delusional designers (and influencers who help sell the lie) who think factions are in any way balanced or work for "world pvp", who add more and more idiotic pets and spawned pets to classes, so that the game now can't perform as well as it did in 2004. You have Battlegrounds now in the game that don't even work. The game is a broken product because the designers don't even play their own game or participate in things they break. Creativity is stifled due to game design. Keep in mind that the original game could only leverage one CPU core, while the modern game is on DX 12 and hampered by the designers and not the game engine. When you consider CPU's and internet infrastructure are hundreds to thousands of times faster it becomes an even bigger joke.

5) A company that sunsets expansions instead of fixing them and that thinks we should trust them on their next project. Please tell me why things like gear disparity have to wait until the next expansion for things like Battlegrounds. This is something an intern could fix and you just let a game be broken for another year? Why should anyone trust you?

The echochamber of people that still play. They are at the two opposite ends of the spectrum like I said. They either don't want to play a MMO and use no bandwidth other than buying tokens and barely interacting with the game or they are the very small playerbase that is catered to and that is used as either cheap slave labor to sell token carries or unethical influencers who are now attacking the playerbase for moving on to games that cater to the majority of the players.

How Blizzard could prove me wrong.
1) Show me that crafting won't be useless as soon as Ion's mythic raiding echochamber clear their first mythic raid. Show me that crafting isn't tied to mythic raiding to be useful at all. I don't even care about crafting, but I remember some really nice people who were in guilds who contributed to the guild that way and were valued assets.
2) Show me content that isn't just grinding the same world quests for gear that doesn't even matter, other than to make doing the fake content world quests slightly faster. Examples? Races, jumping puzzles that aren't a quick afterthought put in the game.
3) Show me attempts at a solution to faction balance or making factions not matter in world pvp, because Blizzard's inaction for a decade has broken things beyond repair.
4) Show me that you are working on fixing broken content, broken BG's due to too many pets or CPU particle hit (I'm sure the Onxia flyover will perform GREAT /s) so that an artist and their boss who barely interact with the game, can pat themselves on the back for an effect that further breaks the game.
5) State that you will design pvp around more than a failed esport. Say you are taking a serious look at CC, Healing and designing around more than a failed esport and CC chains by two fotm classes by the top players in the world who hate MMO's so much they pay other people to level their character.
6) Show me creativity in Dungeons a focus on exploration instead of a failed esport.
7) Show me that this isn't just going to be another game to sell tokens to a profit maximized, SMALL playerbase. Do that with talks about gear disparity and apologize for the lunacy of having people with 2x3 times the health of other players, when the vanilla game was never close to this bad and that iteration of the game is used as an example of the "haves and have nots" in MMO history. Ion blew that out of the water.
8) Show me a serious attempt to fix the community (compare it something like Final Fantasy), which you are mostly to blame for. Why? Because you have designed the game around the most toxic players in the game and made them the gatekeepers with token sales and gear disparity.

Otherwise only a fool would preorder this game other than a Mythic Raider or a token whale.

[czarek]

HC and Myth is ok. Its for specific player base but the normal is hard yes. I mean Sepulcher on normal is quite hard compared to Castle or Sanctum. I do remember Nzoth on BFA and that was terrible. Nzoth was pretty hard to kill even on LFR! I think it was done deliberately as this is the last raid in this exp.

[Celement]

They don't participate because the barrier of entry is too high, and LFR is a shitshow where you are more likely to wipe than succeed.

Make a mode for people who don't care and just wanna press buttons... complain the people in it dont care and just press buttons.

Truely investing anytime into this group is a waste.

[Stormwolf64]

I read this that he's jealous mythic gives bonuses like mounts, not really the content. Call me a people person.

[stutt-]

Everyone should watch this to understand OP's point of view. And I 100% agree with all said.

Couldn't agree more with this video.

[Relapses]

Everyone should watch this to understand OP's point of view. And I 100% agree with all said.

This entire video's thesis is that he disagrees with Blizzard's own data on what players in their game engage with. What a clown.

[Aydinx2]

...

If you still can't pug normal then the problem is 100% on you buddy. In between nerfs and how easy it is to get set gear + double lego you shouldn't have any issue with it.

Also, why is it a problem you can't beat the raid on normal? Just do LFR then?
If you're not raiding for the story but for the difficulty, then the game is only being fair by making you work for it.

And if Asmongold agrees with you then you know you're wrong. That clown gets carried through normal/heroic by his fans. If Asmongold came out with a video on why drinking battery acid is bad for you, I'd instantly start chugging it.