Blizz said the majority wanted flight

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I also believe you yourself would not necessarily quit if flying were added today…

Correct. I dont mind Pathfinder, as I have said over and over again, the one year timegate is what stuck in my craw.

But for the vast majority of players, I believe the issue lies with engaging content (or lack of it).

Addressing BOTH is , I agree, necessary. To go back to my previous point, you have a list of things to fix. Some more high priority than others, again, agreed.

Fix the small stuff first. THEN go after the big fish. You have to start SOMEWHERE.

I am less than certain how much work it would take. I have seen previous examples of Blizzard’s code that lead me to believe it could be messy.

None, else why have a Pathfinder 2 later? The areas are flight ready now.

I found it made quite a bit of sense

No, it didnt, the guy is an idiot

Example, he whined about how the warfronts cant be lost (they can) and either doesnt know or IGNORED the fact that they are DESIGNED to shift one side to the other. Its a no brainer.

OF COURSE each side gets to have access.

Let me rack my brains here… Gee, why is it a bad idea to have one side control the warfronts for months?

DERP.

I found the rest of his diatribe just as bad, and inaccurate.

Another was his idiocy on “you pay for the content but you dont get to complete it” - the fact that a player faced with this issue repeatedly will STOP PAYING for content they never see.

Why should they? Why would anyone?

Then lets not of course discuss the HUGE financial costs of raids etc and the stupidity in spending millions on content for a tiny percentage of people….which is not a viable commercial position.

THAT is why LFR was created.

Money, Resources. Staff time.

“You do not buy a single player game to go straight to fighting the end boss”

Yeah, I do and I have. A single player game is not an MMO, and a single player game is pay once and play forever. WOW is a pay to play MMO with a monthly cost attached.

“Keep raiding and heroic and mythic dungeons for the more hardcore and invested playeres, you cant have it all”

Hey thats a GREAT idea, lets reserve a lot of content for a tiny amount of people and have the rest pay for them.

Wildstar tried that

And then theres

“So theres a compromise would be to make content like levelling and goldmaking, normal dungeons and reputations, dailies etc viable for progressing your character, this would make the casual players , especially the unentitled ones, get something out of the game ( heres the key phrase and his total disconnect with reality ) without sacrificing higher level content like raidng and heroic dungeons on the altar of accessibility”

That is literally word for word.

So, unless you are “invested” you are locked out of

Raids.
Heroic dungeons.
Any and all mythic dungeons…

Right.

Thats a good way to keep people paying.

No. It isnt

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In his defense, I do not understand how a warfront can be lost ether. I am fairly certain it would require 90% of the group to afk.

I played on a Horde dominated server in WotLK, as Alliance, and I still loved Wintergrasp. I was disappointed sometimes when we lost ofc, but we won our fair share of games too! I mention this because Wintergrasp had a handicap mechanic that would gradually buff the losing side after each lose, only resetting when they won.

He is certainly right when he says warfronts had a lot of potential.

You pay for the chance to progress through the content, not to complete it-- That is to say completing it is not a god given right. I do not believe that is an unfair stance.

I know you have been playing video games since the 80s, and as such I am certain you have encountered “harder” games than WoW. There are games on my Sega Genesis (which I still have) that I never beat, but that does not mean they were not fun. Like-wise, there are also games that I did beat, but after many hours of practice… I do not believe those games would have been so fun had there been no challenge.

Can you give me a source for this? In the time since we last spoke, I was not able to find anything on the financial breakdown of how much $$ goes into what part of WoW.

Cost aside, raiding has always been WoW’s endgame. I only killed Illidan after Sunwell came out, but that doesn’t mean Black Temple went to waste.

I do not know how to reply to this, because I cannot conceive of why I would do this. I mean, I still have my free boost from WoD because I have no use for it… If I am going to play the game, I AM going to play the game.

I do not see how WoW being subscription based matters in this context.

I am inclined to point out that the mythic+ audience alone turned out to be so large, Blizzard themselves confessed at the end of Legion’s first season that they had not anticipated such a turn out (which is why they changed how keystones worked).

What this proved was that rewarding game play, and possibly some prestige, was enough to entice record numbers of players to participate. M+, being the successor to CM dungeons, saw such a vast increase because investing time actually meant you were rewarded for that time (as opposed to with a 1-time xmog).

I have never looked at Wildstar… at all. I would have to conclude there’s was more a failure of marketing than anything.

Invested in this sense is proportionate to what you are looking for with regard to activity. Eg: A heroic dungeon does not really require any significant investment at present. I am certain you yourself do fine in them regardless of what alt you are playing on.

If you were intent on mythic raiding, I think it is fair to say, you might need to get your heart up to the point where you could at least use the traits on the gear that drops.

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I do not see how WoW being subscription based matters in this context.

Easy.

I can buy say a Serious Sam game, pay say $30.00 ONCE, and then play it for years at no extra cost.

WOW is a subscription model with an ongoing financial cost .

Thats the difference.

If you were intent on mythic raiding,

He said MYTHIC DUNGEONS not mythic raids. I transcribed his exact words.

On this

Can you give me a source for this? In the time since we last spoke, I was not able to find anything on the financial breakdown of how much $$ goes into what part of WoW.

A conservative estimate, say a team of 30 or more, software, systems, music, art, QA, programming, producers, directors, writers, editors,…you are looking at a minimum of 5 million.

A startup co I worked on with 4 staff had a cost of 3 million in a year alone.

WOW in its first 4 years of upkeep was 200 million.

World of Warcraft - $US200 million - In a September 2008 analyst conference call, [Blizzard disclosed that the cost of four years of post-launch upkeep on the blockbuster MMO was $US200 million.

So call it 4 - 6 million for one raid. Thats not of course factoring in EBITDA, staff salaries, consultants, licensing, marketing…

I only killed Illidan after Sunwell came out, but that doesn’t mean Black Temple went to waste.

Cost vs risk vs viability.

Spending millions to develop content seen by a tiny percentage, is not viable, and cannot be justified.

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You could also purchase Escape From Tarkov for $35.99, but I still do not see how the cost of the game affects game play standards (beyond expecting Blizzard to update content).

I am aware, I was simply giving an example to illustrate the disparity between how much time you have invested, and what might be reasonable investment before attempting mentioned content.

You based this off of your own experience… I see.

I never saw the final level of Ghouls N’ Ghosts (outside of an emulator), and i doubt most people did for that matter, but that does not mean the final level was unjustified. I’ll grant you that WoW likely had more money to spend in that regard, but I do not think it changes the principle.

Also, as I am sure you are aware, people still run BT today, in raid format no less.

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You could also purchase Escape From Tarkov for $35.99, but I still do not see how the cost of the game affects game play standards (beyond expecting Blizzard to update content)

The expectations and parameters of gaming, especially when there is an ongoing financial cost (read that as a drain) is diametrically different to a ONE TIME cost.

I can play Fallout 3 or 4 however I like and skip to end boss (speed runs anybody?) and do whatever I damned well please…it doesnt matter.

The game has NO ADDITIONAL cost to it.

When an activity has a financial cost attached to it as an ongoing factor, what you expect out of that game is massively different.

One is a one time expense.

The other is ongoing and continual, which leads to the feeling “why am I paying for this”. You mention investment.

Money IS an investment.…and what you want to get out of that investment is vastly different to what you get out of a game you can dump on a shelf and get back to whenever you feel like it…because it wont cost you any more than it already HAS.

When you are PAYING for a game month to month and are not satisfied…any consumer will think long and hard as to where that money can be better spent elsewhere and get more satisfaction out of it.

Corollary

You have a mobile phone with a 40 a month fee and the service sucks.

So you take your money elsewhere. Dont you?

It comes down to this:

More than once, a company has been brought up short when their customers voted with their wallets. All of a sudden your cash slows to a trickle.

Conversely, a new MMO that offers better than what is on offer will see their monthly revenue INCREASE massively.

Any company anywhere, lives or dies on cash flow and what is called “goodwill”, the repeat business or existing customer base that make it a going concern.

A newsagent down the road from me changed hands five years ago. What was the most valuable item of that sale?

Goodwill.

Intangible? Yes. Proof that the company wont be a white elephant (read that as a black hole)

YES.

It meant the business was a going concern and would give a return ON that investment.

When you whack a company in the hip pocket, THAT is a message to lift your game, loud and clear.

When your COMPETITOR is busy welcoming the people who were YOUR customers…I will leave you to wiork out what message that sends.

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BTW my figures are rough estimates at best, their accuracy cannot be gauranteed or confirmed. I am working with what I know.

I fully accept I may be wrong to some extent…but from my own experience, they would be called reasonable projections.

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“You do not buy a single player game to go straight to fighting the end boss”

Yes you do

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This is called a speedrun and are done after multiple casual slow runs to understand the game enough and decide if you like it enough to speedrun.

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This is called a speedrun and are done after multiple casual slow runs to understand the game enough and decide if you like it enough to speedrun.

Yes I know what it is.

These guides are made by people who then show others how do these speedruns. Theres a demand for them, Thats their content and their target market.

People who love speedruns.

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But flight isn’t “service”, to use your cell phone analogy. The “service” works almost exactly the same with or without flight.

Also, products are made to fit a certain, target audience. This ever expanding “we must get all people” notion that I’ve seen a lot on this board is a total fantasy. Yes, companies want more customers, but they won’t ruin the product or brand to get them (such as a $15,000 Ferrari) , Or they make it very obvious that they are ruining the product to try to maximize sales (deciding to sell your clothes at WalMart).

And, and this has also been said before, flight isn’t the biggest issue WoW has. It’s not even in the top 10. If the GAME was good, people wouldn’t leave over something as trivial as a mode of transportation. However, the game currently sucks pretty hard so all bets are off.

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I have never played Fallout, but no one does a speed run their first time playing through a game (unless maybe it’s really easy), going for speed records takes commitment.

Money is an investment of a different kind… Maybe I am oversimplifying what you are saying here, but I do not believe WoW should be pay to win. You should not be able to pay Blizzard a cover price and go straight to mythic Argus/Archimond/whoever.

In the most general sense, I would say it means you should focus on what made your product stand out, and attractive to begin with, and then focus on improving/promoting that.

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Wasn’t flying the original source of the “You think you do, but you don’t?” meme?

Either way that’s how Blizz sees it. They know players want flight. They just think that the feeling of being annoyed by not being able to fly is actually more fun than being able to fly but for some reason players just haven’t realized this yet.

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You should not be able to pay Blizzard a cover price and go straight to mythic Argus/Archimond/whoever.

No one is.

Note what I said earlier

“Which is why LFR was created”

But flight isn’t “service”, to use your cell phone analogy. The “service” works almost exactly the same with or without flight.

I had a customer cancel a service worth $4000 annually because we were late with ONE of his bills.

You are either being obtuse or ignoring my point.

If a product you are paying for on a monthly basis does not give you want or expect, then you take your money elsewhere.

I am out of WOW in May and joining FF14 and giving THEM my money for the sole reason that FF14 DOES NOT have the endless and arbitrary timegates WOW does

In FF14, you do a series of required unlocks and find aether currents then you fly, there and then.

In WOW we do one achieve in Sept 2018 then wait a YEAR for the rest of the content to unlock flight.

I was happy to wait the same amount of time as we had in Legion.

Not a year.

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That achievement was only to have faster mount speed.
Part 2 is for flying.

I’m all for flying earlier but don’t mix things up. The achievement isn’t called : I fly now.

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Don’t lie its not becoming.

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Classic servers were.

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Part 2 is for flying.

Which is…when, exactly?

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Beats me…

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Beats me…

Precisely.

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:man_shrugging: i’d rather they keep us in the dark until is ready. you know the forums would be up in flame if a date was announced and it wasn’t met.

and not only regarding flying itself.