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?

Comments

iIt has done so already.

[SYSS Mouse]

one of the oldest guild Death and Taxes disbanded today, citing such change as one of the reason. (http://www.worldofwar.net/n/413578/death-and-taxes-disband)

Re:iIt has done so already.

[GodInHell]

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

Re:iIt has done so already.

[elrous0]

I suspect the real reason was just member burn-out and disinterest, not any recent changes. No MMO lasts forever, and most guilds are even more short-lived.

Re:iIt has done so already.

[Thyamine]

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.

Re:iIt has done so already.

[MBGMorden]

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. Just raid with a guild that doesn't raid on those nights. Seriously, I know where your'e coming from. There's no way I want to spend my Friday or Saturday nights playing a video game either. That's why I got into a guild that raids only on Tuesdays :). (Well, sometimes they'll pull together a spur of the moment Kara on other nights, but I don't attend those).

Re:iIt has done so already.

[mrbooze]

Blizzard has over 10 million subscribers world-wide, their population has been increasing steadily since release.

There is no evidence that Blizzard is suffering from an exodus of casual players. The opposite appears to be true.

Re:iIt has done so already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Crom! What barbarism could cause them to quit on today of all days? If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were alive maybe he could figure out this mystery!

Re:iIt has done so already.

[dtml-try MyNick]

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.

Re:iIt has done so already.

[PastaLover]

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.

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?)

hmm

[nomadic]

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.

Re:hmm

[nomadic]

People like you are the reason Scholo and Strat were allowed to be 10 manable for so long.

I've never had an insult leveled at me that I understood so little as this one. It's like you're talking some moon-man gibberish language.

BUt you probably never spent the time.

Since I've never really played WoW your guess is right.

Re:hmm

[tim_of_war]

Why is the parent modded flamebait? It's spot on accurate, and the grandparent is modded +5 insightful, yet he pretty clearly has no idea what he's talking about, but rather seems to be projecting tired stereotypes of MMOs rather than drawing on any actual experiences. Just to reiterate, while it may take thousands of hours of grinding to reach 70 and acquire the gear necessary to attempt end game encounters, what most/all high-end players thrive on is clearing new content. The sentiment that they "thrive on the same old [encounters]" is simply false.

Re:hmm

[Shiptar]

Perspective I think. Spending 3 years playing four nights a week 6-11 in a computer game, equates to doing the same thing over and over again. Most won't understand the difference between doing MC four nights years ago a week or doing BT or whatever four nights a week now. I recognize the difference, but if you don't play you won't. The person who doesn't recognize the difference is no less of a person than the one who does. Are you a piece of shit because I drive a Jag and you drive a Hyundai? I would never think so. The flamebaiter seems to.

Re:hmm

[Chris Burke]

Encounters when they first come out are HARD.

Oh yeah, no doubt. But you eventually beat the encounter, didn't you?

Then you did it again the next week.

And the next week.

And again.

And again.

And no you're not even close to getting all the gear out of the raid yet (why won't [insert item here] drop?!), so you do it again.

And then again.

And I've only typed out a month and a half of "agains", and I'm not even close to how many times most raiders have repeated the same content, am I?

My raiding experience is limited, ZG in the old world, Kara and Gruul in the new one, but in both cases it's months and months and months of beating the same bosses over and over to get the gear because you have to contend with the RNG and 10-25 people needing gear. Sure in the first month you're getting to new bosses you haven't beat before, but the everything you do up to the new boss is repetition of previous attempts, and from thereafter it's doing the same thing over and over and over to try to get everyone in the raid geared up.

OP was spot on. WoW end game is about doing the same content over and over. They occasionally add something new, which is great, but especially for the "bleeding edge guilds" that you clearly consider yourself part of, that doesn't last for long and you know it.

Re:hmm

[SandwhichMaster]

That's the reason I stopped playing. The only "challenges" I really found were, finding a group, having the patience to eternally grind, the will to ignore my ass falling asleep, etc.

Take it as a flame if you want, but the game felt mindless to me. My mage pretty much used the same 3 or 4 spells over and over and over. I signed up for a world of adventure, not something more boring than my cubicle.

Re:hmm

[thesandtiger]

Jesus, it's like I can hear your 5 chins slapping back and forth in outrage as your Cheeto-stained fingers pound at your keyboard.

Re:hmm

[HardCase]

I'm in a high end guild with a high end character. I don't care about the changes that Bliz made, it really doesn't matter to me. The greater part of the game for me is the social part of it, interacting with people who have come to be my friends over time. We've got members from all over the world and it's really a kick to just have fun.

Yeah, the gaming is obviously a draw, but, at least for me, and for most of the folks I play with, it's not the biggest part.

Re:hmm

[daVinci1980]

"How do you kill that which has no life?"

Re:hmm

[geekoid]

"Have you ever done a bleeding edge encounter? No? "
Strawman

"Then your opinion is completely invalidated. "
I suggest yopu loom up the word 'Opinion'

". If you played WoW, then I bet, even if you were handed top of the line gear when Naxx came out, you wouldn't have even downed Anub'Arak"
Irrelevant to the point.

"Encounters when they first come out are HARD."
And this ties into some sort of point?

"They're hard and imbalanced."
Imbalanced isn't exactly a glowing statment. It is a poor reason for something to be 'Hard'

"Stop being jealous, and l2p. "
Who is Jealous? The poster doesn't even indicate an jealousy.
Stop putting your frustration out on others. l2a( Learn to Argue).

The poster is correct, high-end players do the same thing over and over again. Thinking otherwise means you've never done it, or have deluded yourself into thinking it has value to you.

Yes I play, yes I ahve done high end raids, no not very often and I do it behind the curve. My value in the game isn't doing the same thing over and over again.

I suggest you don't actually know what hard is.
Nothing in th game is 'hard' Difficult at times, but not hard. Getting a group that plays well together is hard.

Re:hmm

[Cl1mh4224rd]

The greater part of the game for me is the social part of it, interacting with people who have come to be my friends over time. We've got members from all over the world and it's really a kick to just have fun.

Yeah, the gaming is obviously a draw, but, at least for me, and for most of the folks I play with, it's not the biggest part. Ahh...

Glorified chat room.
IRC with a 3D interface.
Blah, blah...

I never understood that. Why do people claim the biggest part of their continued stay in a virtual fantasy world is the "social aspect"? Why continue paying for a game you aren't even really playing anymore?

Do these friends you've made just not exist outside of the game? Or is it that these "friendships" are so tenuous that the game is the only thing that keeps you together?

How does this alienate the high-end?

[EvolutionsPeak]

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.

Re:How does this alienate the high-end?

[Llamahand]

Ironically, the issue with Death and Taxes disbanding was the huge lag in time between the major updates. From what I've heard, a large number of their higher-ups were disillusioned by the fact that they were having so much trouble beating Sunwell. "But... But... We're uber! Forget it. I quit!" kind of mentality.

Re:How does this alienate the high-end?

[MeanderingMind]

My understanding was that it wasn't the higher ups but more recent members who'd joined to fill spots left empty by raiders bored of continually farming Illidan. When faced with actual progression, many of the untested players proved to be undisciplined in dealing with the adversity.

Re:How does this alienate the high-end?

[archen]

MeanderingMind has it mostly right. D&T was a high end raiding guild, but had gotten to the point where they were having issues filling slots. So of course recruitment for such a guild is easy... to acquire leeches.

In the end this is the fate of nearly all raiding guilds. The focus is on pushing content, and getting loot. There is basically no loyalty, and the second the grass looks greener on the other side people jump ship. When everything is going good, it looks fine on the outside but basically rots from within. It's sort of strange that people think of MMORPGs as being unique in this way. Crime organizations often go the same way - ala drug cartels, the mob, etc. Didn't anyone learn anything from scarface? :p

Good changes

[rune.w]

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...

Re:Good changes

[Scoth]

I'm in a somewhat interesting position of being able to see both sides. My wife-to-be is a fairly hardcore raider with a couple or three 70s (her group has taken down Vashj a few times, and making progress on Kael'thas in BT) while I'm a much more casual player. I've mostly enjoyed the changes because I can experience more content on different character types without nearly as much grinding away on each one. On the other hand, she's gotten a little frustrated because people are getting to 70 and wanting spots in raids well before being sufficiently geared or skilled with their characters. She's now having to deal with people who stormed to 70 in quest reward greens who want into SSC or BT with blue and green gear.

Re:Good changes

[geekoid]

"My wife-to-be is a fairly hardcore raider ..."

You might want to flee~

Re:Good changes

[vertinox]

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.

Personally I find grinding the least favorite part of MMO's. Leveling in itself is fun for the first few times but after playing MMO's and plenty of other single player games that are based almost solely around leveling (hell even pokemon is based on leveling your pets), the process has gotten old for most people and the need to come up with some other gameplay is needed.

One thing most people are rumbling about in WAR (Warhammer Online) is that there will be horizontal progression rather than vertical progression with a hard cap at 40 for levels and the end game is the Realm versus Realm (like DAoC).

Most people agree that increasing level caps will alienate casual players who will be at a disadvantage to hardcore players because it is PvP in a sense and even if they separate higher levels from lower, increasing the Cap simply for the sake of keeping the players playing the game will only cause the player base to be separated even further.

The idea of horizontal progression is that once you reach level 40, new content will be added for a second tier of leveling which means any expansions that add new spells, gear, and content will be equal to that already added by on a second scale completely separate from the levels gained from 1 through 40. They will be balanced so that these new features don't actually make the old ones obsolete. They WAR devs haven't really gone into exactly how this will work especially since they haven't released the very first part of the game, but the idea of horizontal progression at a certain point actually makes more sense to me, because you don't have to grind to experience new content but to use some other scale (I think there is something called realm pride etc) to which the end game can be progressed without simply raising the level cap.

The idea is interesting to me because I could care less about leveling another character ever again and would rather focus on another way of advancing a character through a game. I think Ultima Online had it right, but no one seems to want to copy them ;)

Re:Good changes

[pezpunk]

yep these changes have been a major boon for me and my guild. we have been around since the game launched, but always approached it pretty casually and minimally-organized.

however, what with the recent changes, we have been able to go into dungeons and down bosses we never thought we'd ever get to see. we're downing bosses in Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern, Black Temple, and Mount Hyjal, and we're plowing through Zul'Aman picking up three of the timed chests on the way. it sure beats farming karazhan over and over and over!

anyway, we're having tons of fun seeing all this year-old content for the first time, and countless guilds across countless realms are probably having the same positive experience.

sure the hardcore will grumble, but so what. it makes absolutely perfect sense for Blizzard to allow the majority of its players in to see teh cotnent they spent the majority of their resources developing! doubly so now that the current expansion is reaching the end of its life cycle.

Wrath of the Lich King will be here soon, and tehn the hardcore will once again be on top by a wide margin.

And i am sure that towards the end of THAT expansion's life cycle, Blizzard will again make the highest-end stuff more attainable for the majority of the players, but not after the hardcore have had their fun in form of 6 months worth of lourding their accomplishments over us casuals.

Mega Million

[hubdawg]

game companies.. need to put some real loot in the game.... gas discount cards, fun tickets to go to the movies or discounts on outdoor activities. At least that would give some players a better reason to log on than mindless hours of grinding and crafting. Sure , that would shoot them in the foot. Not really I say, then you get a player wins a gas card.. they are on the road not logged in but stll are paying 14.99 month for something they do not use. Sounds win-win for the game company.

Re:Mega Million

[elrous0]

Why, so some Chinese farmers could grab them all up?

More Money in Casual players

[neoform]

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.

Re:More Money in Casual players

[Duffy13]

I've been wondering about that myself. It always comes down to who stays subscribed the longest, and unfortunately we have no way to track such a statistic. If my friend's that play the game are any indication, they make more money on the hardcore group because they never cancel their subscription, where as the casuals will cancel a month here or there, or even a few. Of course there are more casuals then hardcore, so the difference might be made up, but I'd still be curious to the actual numbers. Not to mention there is the hardcore burn out factor to consider. Personally, I believe that making a purely casual MMORPG is asking for failure. The hardcore group, while smaller, probably makes up the largest steady portion of your revenue. Not to mention they are the ones most likely to buy your full priced expansions immediately. Again, we lack the hard numbers, but from the trend in WoWs development, I think it's safe to say that the hardcore make up enough to warrant development time along with the casuals. The nice thing about casuals tho, is you can throw them lots of little bones (development time wise) opposed to having to focus on a whole new raid instance to satisfy your hardcore group, however that instance lasts longer for them. It's an interesting trade off. Ultimately the successful game will balance the two. WoW appears to be getting better and better at this, the expansion will be the immediate decider in whether or not they have achieved this goal.

Morons

[geekboy642]

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.

Re:Morons

[bugnuts]

What you said about beating a boss is absolutely true. Gear does make it easier, but a crappy raider is a crappy raider, and you can't expect him to be anything else no matter how much gear you throw at him.

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. Crappy example.

It's now Raid one thing and get better loot. TURN IN BADGES to received from raiding or heroics or daily quests for loot as good as that found in the next two raiding zones.

Removing the attunements makes perfect sense. It's called mudflation which was coined to demonstrate that the demand for gear gets higher and higher. There is no purpose for the powergamer to go after crappy gear in an old raid ... they want bigger numbers on anything with a number and more glowies on things without. Keeping obsolete attunements to force a linear progression when your gear already outgears that found in the dungeons makes no sense... thus they went away.

Imagine if it was required to be exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords (old Molten Core) in order to go to Sunwell plateau. That's why the attunements were removed... they stopped performing the purpose of keeping undergeared groups for exploiting low-hanging fruit of dungeons they have no business even looking at. Those groups are now geared up through badge loot.

Not for casual players

[mseeger]

Hi,

If you want to see new content, you cannot do so as a casual player. I was far beyond a casual player (2 RAIDs a week, several hours of farming) and still noticed, that i was falling behind on the content scale.

New instances were added faster i could complete them. Going through SSC and TK literally took months. The RAID had several crisis meetings, weaker players were encouraged to seek their fortune somewhere else. In the end, we made progress and were inside the black temple, but the fun was left behind. In April i quit after playing my Rogue for more then 2.500 hours.

Quitting hurts... as intended. But there was no choice. You can either do the easy instances again and again or try new content. There you need two things: equip and error-free playing. I loved the game, but it was becoming a second job. No need for that :-(.

The desertion rate is currently high. In the month after i quit, the RAID lost 4 more players with 3+ years under their epic belt. There are still new players coming in (still got 330$ for my Rogue), but WoW is loosing a lot of experienced players currently.

All the things done for casual players considered, the R&D of Bliizzard is still focussed on the power gamer (Nihilum&Co). 90% of all instanced content (SSC and higher) will only be seen by a small minoritry of all players (~15%).

Please don't missunderstand me: The game was fun till the last minute. But to continue and make progress it would have required more time of me, that i was prepared to give. The content for the casual player (daily quests, small isntances, etc) didn't appeal to me.

CU, martin

Re:Not for casual players

[subsoniq]

All the things done for casual players considered, the R&D of Bliizzard is still focussed on the power gamer (Nihilum&Co). 90% of all instanced content (SSC and higher) will only be seen by a small minoritry of all players (~15%)

Actually, many more people see high end raid content than you might think. Wowjutsu is a site that crawls the Armory and compiles stats and progress for guilds and servers, and it also breaks down the percentage of the population that sees raid instances and even specific bosses (it does this by looking at the gear worn by a player when it goes through the Armory). According to the latest run 57.5% of the WoW population has seen The Eye and 62.65% have seen Serpentshrine Caverns, though much less have seen the end bosses Lady Vashj and Kael'Thas. I've noticed that since Blizz removed attunement the percentage of the population that's set foot into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple has increased quite a bit.

Now, it does take a lot of dedication and effort to be successful at raiding and continually progress, at least 20+ hours per week would need to be spent just on raiding itself, not including time spent getting money and consumables. This is what my guild found out after having problems with the new 25 man raiding format when The Burning Crusade came out. We were a raiding guild that had been through AQ40 and were close to being ready for Naxx when TBC came out, but we had a lot of problems making the transition to a 25 man raid and spent a lot of months banging our head against Gruul and Mags. We then instituted new rules and a new guild rank for raiding and our progress took off shortly after that. We went from struggling with Gruul and Mags to whacking away at Illidan himself in 8 months. It may not be the fastest progression but it's enough to make us one of the top 4 horde raiding guilds on our server. On average our hardcore raiders spend 20+ hours a week on raiding, and probably another few hours getting money and consumables for raiding. We have required attendance for raids (3 times a week, but most people raid 5 times a week) and required stats for the different classes/specs. We aren't as hardcore as most successful raiding guilds, we allow non raiders and casual raiders into the guild, we have some class/specs that the hardcore guilds wouldn't think of bringing to a raid, and our stat requirements are probably lower than the other hardcore raiding guilds, but it's been working for us and we're all having a lot of fun.

Basically, if your guild wants to progress through the 25 man raids at a steady pace then you need to have discipline and dedication from 25+ people, and you need to be able to work as a team and not go at each others throats when you hit some adversity.

Re:Not for casual players

[daveywest]

2.4 Patch was the end for me. The game finally became more tedious than work.

I actually think the downfall was the drop to 25-man raids from 40. In MC, you really only had 25 players who where on their game and contributing to the kill. If you don't believe me, think about the the last time you were in there and how many were alive when a boss was at 75%, 50%, 10%?

Those other 15 "raiders" were the real entertainment. They were the ones who kept the game a game and not just a mindless grind.

In the 25 mans, everyone must bring their "A" game or you wipe. There is no room for goofing around anymore.

Re:Not for casual players

[The High Druid]

Actually that's 57.5% of the guilds that the site scans, which is not 100% of the WoW population. If you check the site there are a number of qualifiers a guild has to reach before they are listed. At a rough guess I would say less than one in three guilds on my server are listed on our page on that site.

Re:Not for casual players

[MeanderingMind]

I contest the notion that in order to be entertaining you have to be dead weight. There's plenty of time between wipes and during trash for skilled people to jest, joke, and have a blast.

Besides, most of the dead weight I've seen isn't particulary entertaining.

Re:Not for casual players

[ultranova]

I absolutely love games that have such focus and dedication that players who want to win a dungeon have to have "required stats and builds". Makes you feel like your character is you, and customized just to fit your playstyle

Yeah. Isn't that how it is in real life too - you build up your stats (CV) and gear to get higher-paying jobs (instances), which both build the CV further and drop better gear ? And while you're at it, you need to join a guild (social network) to succeed at those higher-end dungeons. Repeat until you die. Sure sounds like my life, except that I'm stuck at level 1 due to a chicken-and-egg problem ;(.

The only real difference between WoW and Real Life is that in Real Life, you aren't allowed to split the Boss's head with an axe.

The Future

[Narpak]

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.

Re:Does it alienate players ?

[The boojum]

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.

Next Expansion Brings Big Changes

[flattop100]

The OP apparently isn't up to date on the latest about the next WoW expansion (Lich King). ALL raid instances will be playable as both a 10-man and 25-man; the differences will be loot and difficulty. I'm a casual player - I haven't been in a 20-man raid since Burning Crusade came out. I would probably have quit the game soon, except for this news. I enjoy all the stories and quest lines woven into the game, and now, FINALLY, I will be able to participate in "the big ones," even with "only" a 10-man raid.

In my opinion, 2.4 sucked a lot of fun out of it..

[BobMcD]

...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!

WoWs influence outside of WoW

[east coast]

Essentially the surge of WoW players is one of the reasons I think that EQ2 was dumbed down. It's one of the reasons that my interest in EQ2 didn't last long after some changes were made and ultimately the reason that Sony lost a subscriber.

At this point I'm kind of set off by MMORPGs. Just like Hollywood, the gaming industry has a way of creating cookie cutter results. What fun is it going to be for a real gamer if they start to dumb down in order to draw in the casual player? Not that I play 60 hours a week or something but I certainly don't mind a challenge. How many more MMORPGs will be dumbed down to follow WoW's lead?

Also, as a side note; Age of Conan came out today. I took some interest until I found out that it was 50 USD without ever stepping foot in the game and the games website seemed to have little content (not that I spent much time there). Why is it that a gaming company still thinks that we should shell out bucks to buy a game that we need to subscribe to? I'd be much happier and more likely to try it if I could download the content and play for 15 USD a month. I'm a hell of a lot more willing to pay 15 to see if I like a game instead of 50 for a game that I can't play without shelling out another 15 if my interest in it wanes for a few months.

Re:Does it alienate players ?

[geekoid]

This has always been Blizzards style with WoW. The grind is what you pay to get to be some of the first to achieve something.

And no, I ahve never felt I was screwed. No more then I feel I am screwed when the people who get to the theater first have to wait longer for the movie then the person who walks in last.

Fortunatly, I only did the initial grind for a few things, not worth my time. OTOH some people find being one of the first with a Dragon mount worth the extra effort. The players I know that got one knew they would become easier to get latter on but got one anyways. Yes, that's a tiny sample size, but I would be surprised if it didn't reflect what all the Hardcore players know.

Too bad they force you to play~

Blizzard should care

[teflaime]

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.

Re:Does it alienate players ?

[unity100]

Did you play the game and have fun during all those hours? not quite. first 15-20% at the start, yes. rest, tedious.

WoW has "raids", computers have "RAID".

[PseudoThink]

I'm a nitpicking bastard for saying this, but I think you're confusing a World of Warcraft "raid" with RAID, the acronym that means "redundant array of inexpensive disks" to the IT industry and computer users. While it's possible for a person to save screenshots of their WoW raid to their RAID volume, saying you can't wait to join your guild's RAID makes it seem like you're just shouting the word "raid" for some strange reason. :)

Re:WoW has "raids", computers have "RAID".

[PotatoFarmer]

Redundant Array of Introspective Dilettantes?
Really Athletically Inept Dorks?
Ridiculously Armored Interactive Dissemblances?

This is just part of a longer cycle in the game

[icyslush]

We saw this with the last expansion, this is just a refinement. At end-game level before the release of first expansion, you had tons of people at level 60 but with wildly different gear levels. Maybe you were still trying to down the first MC boss or maybe you were uber and were clearing Naxx. You were not equal. Then TBC hit, we went to outland and within 3 levels we had all been equalized by green quest rewards that were better than the best we could get in the old world. It was a great big reset button and everyone got to start over. People complained about working so hard to get their Tier 3 stuff only to DE it at level 63. This time, their giving raiders, casuals and PvPers ways to get roughly equal gear in advance of the new expansion, to cushion the shock, I'd guess. It's the reset button again. We'll race to level 80 from roughly equal footing, the 25 man content will be hard, there'll be new raiding guilds and casuals will be locked out of the best gear again. Until the NEXT expansion, at which point they'll nerf things and hand out epics to equalize everyone once more. It's a reset button. Just consider it the start of Season Three. :)

Re:Does it alienate players ?

[Mongoose Disciple]

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.

Re:Does it alienate players ?

[Chris Burke]

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.

Already lost them...

[Vrallis]

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.

Re:Already lost them...

[WinPimp2K]

"The day they announced that fact people I knew started leaving in droves"

Yes, and what people did you know? Perhaps just the very small percentage of folks who just discovered that their obsession with raiding actually marginalized their value as customers to Blizzard. So those folks left "in droves"? Big Whoop. WoW isn't EQ and Blizz eventually recognized that being held hostage to the demands of "serious raiders" was not a good way to serve the vast majority (90%+) of their customer base.

Be brutally honest and you will recognize that there are probably more Chinese gold farmers in the game than "Serious raiders".

Re:Already lost them...

[Mastadex]

So the huge guilds were broken. Small cliques alienated members. But that most admiring part of it was that you didn't get lost in a guild of 500 members anymore. You had a guild of 20-some members, and you felt like you were an imported cog in a well oiled machine. I lost many friends when it all went down. they formed a clique and excluded some people; friends of mine.

But here is where I think Blizzard made a genius, ground breaking decision. Making more 5-man instances then any other type of instance. Basically having fun in a 5-man was leaps and bounds more attractive then having fun in a 10-man or bigger. I never really enjoyed anything beyond Karazhan, because it was just too big. Too many people talking, too many people to contend with, etc. 5-mans did it for me. Once Heroics were open, the 5-mans were just that much better.

Essentially, I am not the only on that thinks this way. All the people I hung around with were this way, AND we were a hardcore endgame guild (We were at BT when I left). If it was up to me, I would ask blizzard to put in several more 5-man instances, give them all heroics, give them all specialized item sets, etc. 5-man instances felt like you were going out to the bar with your friends; as opposed to with your friends and neighbours and cousins and roommates and everyone else that lives on the block.

Alright, I gotta get back to work before I pop a blood vessel.

Re:In my opinion, 2.4 sucked a lot of fun out of i

[idlemind]

He's saying that in order to do something new or something that you enjoy within the game you are forced to grind first. It would be like if Tetris required you to get 100,000 points in single player everytime you wanted to do multiplayer.

Re:New requirements a slap to raiders

[idlemind]

No. You cannot get a full set of T6 quality gear from badges. You can get maybe 5 pieces that are sub optimal but near T6 quality. 5 pieces out of the 17 you earned doing 25-man raids.

I'm sorry but if you compare a 'lolheroic' person with all badge gear to a full T6 raider it won't even be close.

Re:New requirements a slap to raiders

[MeanderingMind]

This is a common argument, but as a raider I find it dishonest. Yes, casual players can now get T6 level gear. No, this isn't a slap in the face, here's why.

1) You can't get a full set of T6 level gear from badges. Take cloth for example, there are three pieces of healing gear at the T6 iLevel. That's not even half the armor class restricted slots.

2) It isn't easy for casual players to get badges. They don't already have T6 geared people to destroy Heroics with, or to burn through Kara in under 2.5 hours. At the highest end of the casual spectrum, they might be able to muster one upgrade for themselves a month.

3) Experience counts. You can't ebay 25 T6 toons, wowwiki a strat, then waltz into BT and kill Illidan. Skipping progression like that is like skipping grades in school. You're either extremely smart or extremely stupid.

I Agree with GP

[Zancarius]

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.

That's actually what they did.

[Calledor]

In 2.4 Blizzard released the Isle of Quel'dollar. Apparently it is the island where all the gold farmers go when they die, because without an epic mount or even a functional cognitive system you can do quests that give you hordes of gold. These quests range from "kill this type of thing" to "fly on this and bomb that" with an occasion al "zap this, or kill that to get this item". Not saying I expected a lot or wanted it but I wouldn't say this was a huge patch for non-raiders. In fact it was sadly the first added content patch (major one at least) that I can remember that didn't have a significant world event associated with it (Diremaul was met with little fanfair). AQ and the scourage were both rather neat, and I really enjoyed the missions to go out with friends and kill invading NPCs. Now the invading npcs are permanent, but you're only going to encounter them on QD and they aren't particularly threatening. It was basically the Burning Crusade opening all over again with about 1/100th of the effort applied.

Re:Killing Raiding

[murdocj]

Removal of attunments and Badge rewards that are equal to or better than Tier-6 level gear, theres 2 *huge* changes that undermine all the effort the hardcore raiders have put in over the past year.

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.

Re:Churn

[mrbooze]

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.

Re:Churn

[DMUTPeregrine]

They might also work it like EVE: release an "expansion" pack that updates the engine. No WoW2, just an expansion that costs as much as a full game. This would avoid fragmenting the userbase.

Re:Churn

[varcher75]

Most industry insiders report that World of Warcraft has a relatively low churn rate. About 4 to 5% montly. If you started playing at launch on Nov. 2004, you have a 20% chance of still playing.

Re:Churn

[kikito]

Nothing lasts forever. Except Starcraft :).