Yes it is, raiding is garbage.
You can take issue with its design / implementation if you want, but the point was an M+ like system has been introduced in another MMO and is considered to be part of the endgame.
Unless yāall want to move the goalpost again and claim GW2 is not a successful MMOā¦ 
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you can complain about raid gear when you stop selling it for gold. What good is an exclusive title that half the people with it payed for it? Same with the mount.
scaled content aināt new if that was the point and is pretty much just what M+ is overall. But it was always seen as lazy way to do content.
It was to counter Drunneās claime that an M+ system has never existed in a successful MMO, and therefore, is not a successful pillar of content, except to brain-dead forum dwelling M+ players.
By whom? 
M+ most definitely addressed one of my biggest problems (I had) with Wrath:
- something to do outside of raid that is fun
- not having dungeons become faceroll tedious midway through the expansion (especially considering you had to do the daily dungeon to maximize your current tier raid tokens per week)
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Doing the same dungeons for the whole expan / doing recycled dungeons is still a pretty lazy way to do content. Making people do 20+ levels of the same dungeons is also a pretty lazy way to do content. They could literally have 4 levels of M+ and it would be a better way for 99% of people. Why not have only +5/+10/+15/+20 difficulties, why split the playerbase in all those levels ? Just seems like most of the goal is to waste your time doing the same thing xd
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it wasnt so bad until the vault came into play once they added the stupid vault system and nerfed the loot drops in raids its made raiding time vs reward absolute garbage and the fact you have to kill 2 bosses for 1 vault item while you only need to compelte 1 mythic is a jokeā¦ That being said yes M+ is ruining raiding and tbh its been ruining end game overall, it makes the other pillars of end game look like trash reward wise, but on the flip side its not a very accessible pillar, unless you have a good guild or a good access to friends, mythics + gets so toxic and so meta hyper focused it makes it difficult for a lot of players, and you can waste a lot of time sitting in the group finder as a dps.
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Well now you have to do 18ās to get a mythic vault, for the people who could do 16ās before the 2 levels jump is quite doable for the overwhelming majority of the mythic plus population who were doing 16ās before.
So in that aspect nothing changed except it became more annoying to do a lot of content for a single piece of weekly loot. Itās the same mindset in filling up the vault for raiding. When they increased the number it made everything nothing except more tedious.
And the people who wanted changes werenāt going to be satisfied regardless of what was done. So in the end itās usually the more moderately skilled players who make up a fat chunk of the population who get punished the most.
There are always outliers and different levels. I personally still consider Tomb of Sargeras the most absurd tier in multiple expansions, I never played Sepulcher but also heard it was ridiculously absurd on mythic to the point that even top guilds were struggling on earlier bosses.
Personally with Amirdrassil I think Blizzard is finally leaning on the side of trying to make raiding more accessible TO EVERYONE instead of worrying too much about providing an extreme challenge to the top of the top.
This is just not a defensible statement in the slightest. There are groups that can time a +11 that can barely complete a +13. Having this granular of difficulty levels allows for literally all skill and gear of players to participate in the game mode, something basically no other endgame mode WoW has ever had can claim.
To be clear, there are problems with having this many difficulty levels, such as the quagmire that is trying to adequately reward effort for the difficulty, without a doubt. But to try to claim this structure is worse for the majority of the player base, most of whom wonāt care about the relative difficulty of M+ versus raid, is completely absurd.
This is certainly down to personal experience so I wonāt try to claim you havenāt had a poor experience. But honestly this is so different from my experience in M+ that I have serious doubts if this claim is universal across the entire player base.
Iāve only had a consistent group for keys in one season since I first started playing M+ in BFA. Every other season the majority of my keys have have been PUGs, and since SL S1 Iāve gotten KSH every season. Iāve rarely had problems with PUGs being toxic, and Iāve certainly never felt like I couldnāt accomplish my seasonal goals. I genuinely wonder how people are carrying themselves when they walk into keys if the toxicity they experience in PUGs is THIS bad.
Sure, and that almost supports my point. The claim was that M+ is harder than mythic raid full stop because the poster had PUGed some number of bosses in mythic Nyāalotha, which was deemed as one of the easier tiers to PUG in recent memory due to corruption being one of the larger power spikes weāve seen throughout the season. I mean even my guild was 3/12 mythic in Nyāalotha, and we usually donāt even get AOTC until the final month of the season.
Absolutely. But like I said, my comment was specifically in response to a position comparing the difficulty of M+ to mythic raid. I wasnāt trying to engage in a general discussion about how raid difficulty has evolved over time.
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And the difference* of rewards for a +11 or a +13 are not relevant in the slightest, itās useless progression. Worth some imaginary points to feed the machine. I do hope that a content with more than 20 difficulties tries to include more people but normal/heroic dungeons did as well because the problem with content is not the highest difficulty toward people but the lowest xd
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The reward isnāt all that matters in games, though. The challenge it presents is important for a lot of players as well. Being able to dial in on the exact level appropriate for your group is something very few games are able to offer. A lot of games have this phenomenon where difficulty A is boring yet difficulty B is harder than they enjoy, and those players donāt really have a good way to find a satisfying gameplay experience until they improve to the point where difficulty B is a challenge but not overly frustrating.
Like I said, Iāll grant you that the reward structure has issues in part because of this granular scaling. But the overall gameplay experience for players who find themselves in that limbo between difficulty levels will be better.
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Thatās a good joke when talking about M+.
Maybe to you thatās all that matters. There are tens of thousands of keys run every season beyond where in-game rewards stop but well shy of title contention. If the only reason players ran M+ was for the reward, those keys would not be run.
I know it may be hard to believe, but I actually do enjoy M+ as a game mode unto itself. I wouldnāt care about the rewards it gives except as a means to further progress in M+. If M+ gave normalized gear when you started the key and thus you didnāt need to get gear in order to progress, Iād run it just as much as I do today.
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M+ is based on the arpg gameplay. Imagine thinking people would play diablo without loot drops.
Less than 5% of players push reasonably higher than max gear rewards.
Thereās arguably more people getting CE depending of seasons than people that actually push key for the titles, thatās just how small the top of M+ is.
People like that M+ is an easy and quick way to get loot, remove one of those and it would drop a lot in participation.
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I can believe this as I can absolutely be similar, but Iām also aware that people like this are in a very small minority when it comes to the content.
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but strangely, aside from WoD that killed flying and added gold on the cash shop, all of those had much higher subs and player retention than anything since M+ was added
i guess a crazy ton of players liked wow more when M+ didnāt even exist and somehow were even more entertained
and the classic servers often have larger pops than retail - also no M+
hmm, go figure
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Youāre moving the goal posts here. I never said anything about pushing for title; for those players there actually does exist a reward to keep going. I specifically talked about the players who have no realistic shot to get title but still run any keys beyond +20. There are more players who fit that bucket than get CE.
But even analyzing your argument youāre leaving out a key factor. Pushing for title is easier for players who have access to mythic raid gear than those who do not. Itās actually one of my main gripes with the loot structure when comparing raid and M+, but that discussion is for a different thread. There is a pretty large barrier to entry for anyone who isnāt already mythic raiding to be able to reach title contention. Itās not impossible to reach title without mythic raid gear every season, but itās significantly harder. This will greatly reduce the number of participants with a realistic shot of title to mostly include those who have CE anyway.
But thatās not the only reason why some people like M+. You pretend to speak for everyone who run M+, but you do not. I make no assertion to know how large the population of players who do enjoy M+ for M+'s sake, but neither do you.
And if you removed loot from raid, its participation would also drop a lot. A key element of RPGs is progressing your character. The primary way to do that in WoW is from gear. Iāve never attempted to claim that gear isnāt a factor driving people to do M+. Just that there is a contingent of players who enjoy M+ as a mode and they view gear merely as a means to an end for pushing higher in M+.
For sure, and I am not trying to claim otherwise. But even with a janky rewards structure, a game mode doesnāt have to strictly be either-or that youāre either running for gear or the enjoyment of the mode. Gaining player power, which means gear in the case of WoW, is vital for any game mode to be repeatable by a large population. If M+ offered nothing but intangible rewards and raid was the only source of player power, Iām sure M+ participation would plummet and raid participation would soar (relative to the player population; Iām certain sub counts would drop significantly as well).
My larger point though was on the benefits of how granular the difficulty curve of keys are, even with a janky rewards structure accompanying it. I would guess there are a lot of players who choose to fire up M+ in the low to medium key range in part because they can get relevant rewards at a difficulty appropriate for their group. Players who can faceroll a +5 but would be a bit over their heads in a +10 can throw in a +7. Yes, the reward structure could probably be more cohesive if the only options were +5 or a +10, but I suspect that would also reduce participation from players in those levels of keys because for some groups, neither difficulty would be appropriate to offer a challenge that doesnāt feel impossible.
The reality is none of us know why sub numbers rise or fall. The largest confirmed population drop in the gameās history happened before M+ was added to the game. Iām certain the poor decisions of WoD contributed to that fall, but nobody knows how much of it was that versus the model where raid is the only PVE endgame no longer capturing player attention.
Citation needed on the populations. There are over 80 US servers that are high or full on retail and 72 total classic servers across all 3 modes + wrath. And among the classic servers, 2 are high and 4 are full; the rest are no higher than medium population.
I find it very hard to believe that if classic were anywhere near more popular than retail that the server counts would be so skewed toward retail.
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Just for last season less than 1200 characters pushed past +25s when the max keys where +33s. This season is more easy so expecting more people to push higher, thatās why Iām saying that it also depends on the season. Thereās always some people that will push but a lot will stop once they feel like a wall exist and that rewards arenāt coming in. I managed to time +23s without trying much this season for example.
If you do all content you get more loot that is part of current balance and like Iāve said before good luck finding a guild that doesnāt do M+ and get CE, always open to split them up as for me that is the best solution. Sure thereās UI problems to have multiple gear sets but that can easily be fixed.
So now youāre speaking for other people too? I just find funny you accuse me of doing that and would do it right next after. Laughable.
If anything there aināt much reason to raid for loot and people still do it a lot. Raiding in wow is the best content they do, I always find it funny because of that when people say that itās old or dead, etc. Raiding is the star jewel of the game which has kept wow running. Without raiders no gold would flow on servers as theyāre the one making the economy run by spending on consumables, bigger servers are often the bigger servers because raiding guilds go there.
But sure loot is great and important, but how you give it still need to make sense and current balance doesnāt. Itās a bit better since they added the upgrade system but still not comparable. M+ we all know work because of the loot shower, even if you kept some progression in it if you made it way more slow or hard people would probably quit. In itself M+ cannibalize other content because it needs to be far ahead of other content to work.
And it has worked without needing +20 difficulties before. Moreover with the upgrade system the reason to grind smaller upgrades makes even less sense. You just grind the best level for the upgrades you want.
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M+ is way more time consuming.
This is what I donāt understand about these M+ players that hate raiding. They talk trash on this content all the time, but truth is, this is what WoW was, a raid focused MMO.
Look at Classic right now in SoD, the new level 25 10 man raid is widely popular, people are running that raid every reset.
Blizzard just made raiding in retail too hard and catered this content to wrong player. There should only be 2 difficulties or max of 3 with LFR.
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