The reason why there’s so much waiting to fill keys on M+ is because more people apply to keys than run their own. You get at least 20-30+ applicants on most keys. On higher keys like 22s+ you’re going to be waiting a while usually for a tank to show up. At that key range you’re more than likely going to search your friends list for people to play with and it’s usually where premade groups start. It’s not really Blizzards fault because it’s literally the top 1% of the playerbase available to apply vs the other 50% at +15s.
So the answer to the problem is people should run their own keys more. I just leveled my new tank and only exclusively ran my own key and hit KSM in 2 weeks @ iLvl 230. The valor upgrade system is incredibly good with getting your iLvl up quickly. You can get to iLvl 245 fast.
You only really need to be iLvl 250+ if you’re pushing high keys or Mythic.
Blizzard makes more money off of WoW with the smaller playerbase than they did during WOTLK because of the 6 month promotions, WoW token, store mounts, etc. It is physically impossible for WoW to get 12 million subscribers again because the market changed between 2008 - now. The playerbase is older (30+ years old) and MMOs don’t attract Generation Z players like other games do.
MMOs used to be around 40% of the gaming market share… now it’s around 10%. Nearly every modern MMO is at their lowest population levels in 10 years with a few exceptions. WoW is simply the king in terms of cash revenue. WoW makes more money in a quarter than the top 3 MMOs do in a year.
I think part of the problem is the reward / content scaling isn’t exactly intuitive or smooth. Casual-semi casual players want to log in and feel like they’re progressing. You eventually hit a point in gear progression that basically requires a big jump in skill (yourself and who you play with) as well as time (vault).
What’s super frustrating about the current systems is that if I play with friends that perform okay on +6-9 range but struggle with some mechanics, 10+ becomes a huge jump for 5 different people. We see it in the pug scene too. It’s remarkable how much my personal dps increases when I get to stop baby sitting mechanics on pug+12-15 keys (interrupts, stuns, grips, amz, orbs, chaining shades, etc.). If my attention goes to the dps meter it makes a difference and helps get me better gear (vault and IO breakpoints).
When I raided we had a pretty big gap in our dps pool, you can check my s1/2 logs and see how the guild was doing. But we had the gear we needed for the content and we were good at mechanics. So we progressed.
This expansion is very mechanic heavy. My wife and I were talking about how our wotlk guild would have quit the game if this is what that xpac was like. The layers of abilities and mechanics on even trash this tier is quite high, honestly.
To further a point, after essentially Aug my gear progression almost came to a stop. It’s awful to have a piece for 6 months (leggo, heroic bis pieces, vault drops) that I’ll not replace until the next major patch. Sure I could wrap up heroic sanctum and maybe pug some mythic sanctum, but at this point that’s my progression path and it’s for maybe 1-2% in character power on sims if I even get the drops? That’s not really meaningful progression.
There are a few things that Blizzard is doing that is hurting WoW. These are in no real order.
Not keeping up with their player base. The wants of players change and for awhile Blizzard was able to keep up with that. They could look at what other MMOs were doing and learn from their mistakes or take what works for WoW. What I see now are Devs that care more about creating a game they want to play than one they players want to play. I know people will say that is what made WoW great but the same Devs that made WoW what is was are not the ones making it what it is.
WoW’s progression model, which is gear based. There is nothing wrong with that but what happens is people want to feel like they are progressing. Well that means doing content you may not like in order to progress. That is just not fun and makes it less likely for people to keep playing.
Lore, not that the story is super bad but that is is stretched across different mediums. Having to read a book or comic to understanding what happening is not good. Leads to feeling disconnected from the story or the xpac. Not everyone cares about the story but for those that do that limits the enjoyment.
Cutting cost and maximizing profits this speaks for itself. The game feels like they are trying to make it for as cheap as possible. This leads to things not being a fleshed out or polished. Also pushing players in content that is easy and cheap to put out.
Community not much to say about that but guilds can help people keep people playing.
I agree that excessive timegating is a bad thing and can push people away. But the solution isn’t “throw the best gear into solo content that people can do at any time”.
It’s not about solo content awarding the best gear, but solo content or random pug content stops offering noticeable upgrades after a certain point.
We tend to view Ilvl as our only source of player power but covenant rank, conduits, and leggo abilities also can offer tangible boosts to survival, power, and rotation. So we go from a rapid change environment to a slow drip of player power after the first month of content.
I can’t stand the domination socket system because it was very frustrating for like 3 weeks and then irrelevant. Look at the forum posts from 9.1 release about it. This is a great example for the slow trickle that you don’t notice in player power if you co to use to upgrade them.
I’m not looking at someone’s conduit levels when I’m filling my m+ groups, or what leggo you have on your profile, or what your covenant rank is, or if you have the right domination keyword, or what level your domination gems are, or if you’re the right covenant for your spec/class…I’m looking at Ilvl and IO. Period. Those are, in the communities eyes, player power. Anything else is discussed by progression minded guilds or 16+ dungeon push groups post KSM.
These systems are also very alt unfriendly. Domination sockets, nathria leggos, and 226+ conduit levels take forever.
Miss me with the korthia rep grind cheese that requires an uninformed player go to YouTube or wowhead to even realize exists.
Yeah tbh all the wait time in MMOs is probably a part of why the genre is on eggshells compared to others. No other genre do I play do I need to sit around and wait to progress my own account/character.
The whole premise of “darn gotta wait till guildies are online” or “darn, cant find a tank so I guess I can’t play” is completely foreign to any other genre with a stable population.
Yeah I think Blizzard doesn’t realize that the balance they have between effort and reward is really unbalanced. I actually think it’d be more fun if we had ways to incrementally upgrade our gear to max level vs the current lottery system. It is very easy to spend a whole day playing and feel like there is nothing to show for it. In an FPS that works a lot better, but in an MMO it just doesn’t.
Yeah I think a really polished game would naturally have a lot fewer issues. Their tuning seems very extreme and last-minute. Buffing/nerfing something by 50% a week before launch doesn’t make any sense. Then in areas like M+ that leads to significant class imbalance. I like classes/specs being different, but it should be hard to quantify if one is overall “better” than another or we run into huge wait times for a lot of content
No, because the “avoid the rocks” blizzard is saying is to “avoid these crap specs in x content” which effectively makes a large chunk of the active population have-nots.
Why is it bad if people can log in and jump straight into doing content? Why is it good if people have to stand in oribos for hours waiting for people to do stuff? Why does it affect you if someone else has the same ilvl as you? In a weird way skill is not valued very much in this game. It’s just about your score, ilvl, spec.
Yeah this is really my point for the solo content bit which was such a small part of this idea. You can do korthia for a couple weeks, get all 233 gear and then what’s the point of logging in for those players? they have no challenge to surmount and no progress to gain. They’re just going to unsub
AND 252 is not max ilvl. 259 is.
This is by design. Blizzard is so insecure that you’ll stop playing that they try to extend how long it takes for you to reach your goals. IMO this manipulation just leads to people stopping caring and burning out on the game. I think if they weren’t so insecure about people leaving they’d have a lot more people returning.
Strong agree here. Someone might only have an hour to play that day. They’re going to pick another game because it takes that long on average to form a single group. Especially with the current player base not being early twenties but rather 30’s and 40’s with children and busy lives
Sometimes it’s not about a player choosing not to do them, but not knowing how to best tackle actually doing achieving the next level. Like where do you start aside from playing for literally 3-4 hour sessions and beating your head against the wall in pugs that may not be able to do the content?
What I don’t get is why do you think people will make content harder for themselves? A horse-drawn carriage can get you from New York to LA, but very rarely will someone choose that method of transportation. Sure you can run Halls without a soothe but why would any skilled player want to?
M+ does not top out. That’s what I like about it – as you get better you can try harder levels
