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The Changing Face of World of Warcraft
Back in March Blizzard released patch 2.4 and significantly altered a good portion of the overall gameplay and provided a much more casual experience. Since then Blizzard has continued to make the game more approachable through new dungeons and removing attunements and other restrictions throughout the game. While this may open up a lot of new content to the masses and help the game's overall appeal, does this continuing trend promise to alienate the high-end players who thrive on new challenges? Should Blizzard care?
does this continuing trend promise to alienate the high-end players who thrive on new challenges?
The high-end players got to be high-end players through thousands of hours of grinding. They don't thrive on new challenges, they thrive on the same old ones.
They released the Sunwell at the same time, a 25-man highest end raiding dungeon. I'd hardly call that something for any but the most hardcore pve players.
The latest patch has been great for me. I'm more of a casual player and now I'm able to level up with just a couple hours of gameplay. Before it would take me a good couple days to increase just one level, which got increasingly frustrating and became the main reason why I canceled my subscription last year. I'm also a big fan of soloing and now I'm able to do that in more areas of the game (I usually do the party quests and dungeons during the weekends when all my friends are able to connect at the same time).
Overall I think it was a good move for players like me. I don't know what the "old-timers" would think about it, though...
Yay!
I hate the idea of funding the development of content that only 5% of the player base is intended to enjoy.
Sorry, but I want them to spend their development $$s making content I can get into with my wife and a few friends.
cc
-GiH
It seems to me that they make more money off Casual players since they require less server time and their subscription ends up bringing in the same dollars as hardcore users that are online 24/7.
MABASPLOOM!
Full disclosure: I play Warcraft in a raiding guild.
Anybody who cites the removal of attunement from a high-level raid instance as a reason to give up raiding is a complete and total idiot. The fact that you can set foot into a raid does not in any way mean you can beat it. The only thing attunement gives is a way for raiding guilds to weed out the complete and total idiots. Honestly.
For those of you that don't grasp this, here's how it was before the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot, and complete a quest while you're doing that. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.
And here's how it is after the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.
Guess what. It doesn't matter if there's no attunement. Everybody still had to spend the identical amount of time and effort getting better loot to even survive stepping in the front door of Illidan's house.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Given the very high (and still growing) number of people who play these games, I think game companies are already giving the gamers what they want.
Why do we expect that one game should be everything to everybody? Blizzard should cater WoW specifically to the audience of people who like fantasy grinding MMO's. Nothing more, nothing less.
People who play these games don't seem to mind the "mindless hours of grinding and crafting." I would venture a guess that many of them take solace in the high number of relatively low-stress challenges with a steady stream of rewards that are valuable into the future of their gaming experience. It offers a nice change of pace from the real world, where things get much more hasslesome and the rewards are much less predictable.
Grinding isn't for everyone. It never will be. Why stick extra rewards on it to try and make it be for everyone?
You are a marketing genius. I tip my hat to you sir.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Blizzard are considering the future and managing their resources based upon that. Some of the profit from WoW goes to maintenance, some to developing new patches and content; and some undoubtedly goes to future projects (World of Starcraft/The New World of Warcraft, or whatever they have up their sleeve). Also they are considering how to keep the larges majority of their players from changing to Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Generic New RPG/FPS/RTS/BIG-BROTHER-STYLE - MMO. New products will continue to hit the market and as they learn and improve in quality serious challengers to the dominance of Blizzard will arrive.
I think Blizzard are willing to risk alienating one group of their players if it means holding upon another; if indeed those are mutually exclusive. Whatever happens I am sure in the end serious competition will force Blizzard to improve or die.
The Long Now Foundation
The problem with this is thinking of it in terms of how much time you've spent at it. Did you play the game and have fun during all those hours? If so, great, "mission accomplished." If not, maybe you should reconsider what you're doing.
If you're playing for fun, the memories of the good times you've had shouldn't be diminished just because somebody else now gets to see that content. You still got there first, anyway.
...and I blame the dailies, mostly. The actual content they provided wasn't fun. At all. If not for the competition issues, you had to content with serious burn-out problems from doing the same EXACT thing over and over again, day after day. The problem with skipping this grind lies in the massive gold inflation caused by them. Your gold pieces were getting smaller by the day.
Of course, you didn't have to grind away on dailies. You could always grind badges instead. Or grind PvP by getting your weekly beatings in the arena.
The point was made up above, but I'll reiterate it: Play has changed to a combination of the best gear and a complete mastery of the metagame.
And frankly, if you're lacking in either of those areas, this really sucks the fun right out of it - ESPECIALLY when mindless repetition is your only way out of the deficit you're facing.
Oh, and when that next patch hits, you're now even further behind. Gratz!
about making a game that keeps making them money. The vast majority (something like 86%) of their player populace considers themselves "casual" which basically means that they will play the game as long as it's still fun to them. 8% of players (that's the last number I heard, anyway) are involved in regular runs of end-game raiding. Clearly, they do not represent a significant portion of World of Warcraft income; yet, their voices have had a significantly inordinate impact on game play for much of the life of World of Warcraft. The remain ~6% are "hardcore PvPers" who went through their own (shorter) period of inordinate influence over gameplay; yet, again, we can see that they are not a major source of income for the game. Blizzard is now starting to recognize that they can reduce their overall churn rate by conctrating on that 86% of players who want to play for fun and comradery and do it in the 2-10 hours a week that they wish to set aside to play. And if you play 40 hours a week? Well, you should probably go hit the gym because you are probably raising the rest of our health insurance rates.
Why, so some Chinese farmers could grab them all up?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
not quite. first 15-20% at the start, yes. rest, tedious.
Why not quit after that first 15-20%?
I think anger at Blizzard for making the part of the game that you admitted wasn't fun for you more fun for other people is misdirected.
I'm a bit split on this, but mostly agree with you. I've been in guilds, but I don't have the time to sit for hours for a raid on a friday or saturday night. So I never get a chance to really play that side of the game. It's hard enough to get 5 people to run an instance, let alone split the loot that you get, let alone 30 or more people, with complex raid counting systems to determine who has what % chance to try and receive the loot (including stats from how many raids you've help in before).
Give me new areas that I can explore on my own or with a friend or two. New quests outside of killing 10 more of those things or gather 20 more flowers.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
It sounds like you're basically saying that you're upset because you want others to have to suffer as you did; i.e. classic Sophomore Syndrome.
If you're still playing, I'd suggest that you definitely want to quit before the next expansion, since nothing you're doing now will matter in 5 levels.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Burning Crusade expansion was already the beginning of the end for the 'serious' raiders. When they decided to not introduce more 40-man instances they killed a lot of raiding guilds, including mine. The day they announced that fact people I knew started leaving in droves. I stuck around for a couple months after TBC came out, but I just couldn't do it.
By forcing smaller groups, they caused both an increase in smaller, tighter cliques of players, alienating many on the outside, as well as limiting the likelyhood of non-cookie-cutter classes and builds from getting into raids. This further alienated even more players.
If they ever release a lot more 40-man content I *might* consider re-subscribing, though a high price for buying the expansion will likely stop that. There's also the whole issue of "I already have a job, I don't want to play like I have two," which was a large factor in me quitting.
WoW has been doing this since the game began. As they release new content they make the older content more accessible. If they didn't do this, new players starting the game would have to spend incredibly long periods of time in order to catch up to people who started before them. It is a structured and planned out process designed to keep pulling new players into the game and to help advance Blizzards #1 goal which is profit.
The end of the line instances aren't just there to accommodate the 5% of players that actually can have a shot in there.
It's also implemented to still have a carrot ready for the raiders that have a lower pace.
Everything in WoW is build around the philosophy that no matter what you do, how hard you try, how much time you invest. There is always some reward or instance just out of reach for you.
They will give you the idea that if you just try a tad harder you might reach it. That is, until a new patch with more/newer/harder content is released.
With many guilds now in BT and MH there was a need for a even harder instance so that players would continue coughing up money so they might get there someday.
The bottom line of playing WoW is that you're always chasing a carrot on a stick (no pun intended) and when you think you've finnaly got the damn carrot Blizzard makes sure you don't.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Factitious answers aside, you're vastly oversimplifying matters.
Throwing a ball into the air not a challenge. I think we can agree on this fact. It's not hard to get a ball, and throwing it vertically is equally easy.
Throwing a ball to a particular spot isn't a challenge either. Initial accuracy will vary, but generally people can be reasonably close to the target.
Catching a ball can be somewhat trickier, but so long as the initial throw was accurate and there aren't any mitigating factors this is also relatively easy.
Combine those three simple actions and we can now play catch with ourselves, not very difficult at all. However, multiply that two or four times and now we're juggling.
Juggling isn't difficult with practice, though it takes some time to get the hang of. However, it is a challenge until you nail it down.
In order to make it more challenging, we'll add some odd shaped objects; bowling pins, flaming torches, coke bottles, knives, and maybe a gerbil. It takes more work to get used to juggling any of these individually, but with some effort you can get used to juggling just about any combination of items, although there's always a warming up period before you get your groove going.
Finally, let's add another person in. Team juggling is a challenge, because if one person is out of sync with the other the whole thing comes crashing down. Again, with time, patience, and practice the challenge is overcome.
But wait, "the challenge is overcome"? Where'd the challenge come from?
None of the components of what is being done, taken individually, is challenging. It's not a challenge to catch, throw, or find a ball. It's not hard to get another person involved. It's not hard to find three balls. Every individual component of the complex action is simple and easy. However, added together you end up with a complicated function that is, indeed, challenging.
WoW may or may not be as complicated or challenging as multi-person juggling, but the same principle still applies. Raiding is more than just right clicking, pressing movement keys, and hitting buttons. It's more than just knowing a strategy, your role, and the current situation. Raiding is a complex function of many simple tasks that, in aggregate, make a challenge.
One could continually pull out specific elements and decry them as unchallenging, but I don't believe doing so is particularly honest or helpful in this case.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
It's really rather hard to say, but I'd be willing to bet that the casual gamers bring more money in. However, it does depend on their economic situation. I'm a casual player of WoW and spend maybe a few hours here and there during the week/weekends, but I pay largely so that I have the game available as an entertainment fallback in the event I grow bored of other hobbies. If my guild is any indication of this demographic, we have a large number of working professionals who keep their accounts active solely for the purpose of having it available. I've been a paying customer since release and have never once cancelled, but then again, I haven't played nearly as much as some of my friends who are hardcore raiders.
I think much of the development effort goes into the hardcore segments simply because they are the most vocal. It's also possible that they receive more of the attention because casual gamers might look to them for the "next big thing." Failure to keep the hardcore gamers entertained well enough, and they are much more likely to dump the game for something else that comes available on the market. I recall that many of the hardcore sort from my realm dropped WoW as soon as LotR Online was released. Some of them dropped LotR Online within a few months and returned--others, well, I assume the remaining segment for which no rumors persisted must have grown up and gotten jobs or went off to university.
But, this is all contemplation based upon anecdotes. It certainly is possible that Blizzard develops most of their content for the hardcore segment because they might bring in the most steady amount of revenue (the 80/20 rule might apply here: 20% of the customer base brings in 80% of the revenue). On the other hand, it's also possibly a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. The market segment which is most noisy is the one that a) consumes the most resources (bandwidth, server time, etc) and b) requires the most development time. Thus, I really don't see how the casual gamer market would necessarily be a losing battle--if they pay for time and bandwidth they never use, it's at least 90% profit for Blizzard.
Looking back on it, I think it might be more applicable to compare WoW to ISPs (usage patterns do depend on the demographic and communities served, however). There's a significant number of users--although I'd wager it's less than 30-40%--who may pay for the lowest tier connection they can get away with but they use it only for e-mail and seeing pictures of the grandkids. Are casual gamers the "grandparents" of WoW who just log in periodically for a brief fix? It's hard to say, and I'm sure Blizzard would be wise to keep such numbers a closely guarded secret. Thus, one can only conclude either (or both) of the following: a) hardcore gamers bring in the most revenue, thus content is developed with a focus on them or b) casual gamers bring in a fairly significant chunk of cash and require the least amount of development time, therefore it is prudent to develop some content within easy reach of the casual gamer.
Keeping this in mind, think about some of the recent announcements regarding WotLK. It is rumors that even the Arthas encounter is going to be a 10-man instance with an option for better loot and a 25-man raid. I'm wondering if this change is intended to help casual gamers or smaller groups of an expected dwindling hardcore population? Regardless of which of these might be true, Blizzard is probably very well aware that its audience isn't getting much younger. My realm is a good example of this: Most players are working people and professionals now, whereas when it started, most of us were either just starting university or graduating high school. Now, however, most people are starting to move on in their adult lives and have little extra time to deal with (some are also going into graduate student programs). While this is only representative of my realm, I'd imagine it's a general trend across the entire playerbase. If Blizzard doesn't appeal to casual gamers, it's going to lose them to games that do.
He who has no
WoW isn't a job where you are "putting in effort", it's a game. I'm not hardcore about playing, but I have had fun raiding. That's the point. If I'm raiding and enjoying myself and learning the fights and feeling some accomplishment, what difference does it make if someone else gets loot in a different way? I still have the accomplishment. I've run a couple of marathons... the fact that many thousands of other people have run faster than me doesn't invalidate what I did.
Relax and enjoy the game. At the end of the day, unless you are a serious pvp'er, it doesn't matter what gear someone else has, it's whether you had fun playing.
Yes, I'm sure when Blizzard shuts down their servers some day, they will have to wipe their tears with their giant piles of money.
Who says anything will or should last forever? WoW has been an objective massive success by catering to the more casual mmo subscribers. The fact that one theoretical day WoW may shut down or limp along with only as many subscribers as UO and Everquest do now doesn't change that fact one tiny bit.
While I understand what you're saying I must say I wouldn't be playing WoW if not for the five and ten man content. It can be a lot of fun just trying to beat one of those encounters and getting a group of people working together and getting it right. So that content is absolutely vital to some players in the game. Others have more fun doing the ordinary quests. (but you can't do that for more than a year or two, at least I can't)
The press and lots of players often seem to portray this as the "casual gamer" vs. the "hardcore raider", two stereotypes with mystical powers it seems. In reality there's an entire continuum of players. There are those that never seem to get any of their characters above lvl 50 (although little of those nowadays), those that get up to the level cap and just stick with the quests and some grinding, those that do the instances but never get into heroics etc, those that do the heroics and the occasional pug to kara, those that raid now and then, maybe once or twice a week, those that raid all week and those that never sleep. Oh and then there's chinese gold farmers, of course.
I think blizzard really understands this about their players and they have been actively trying to keep the game fun for all those different play styles. That was mostly the lesson they tried to bring to the expansion (TBC) from the original WoW since all too often that did devolve in casual vs raider. (anyone remember the borefest that was MC?)