So, I realize that, for the most part, I’m a bit late to the game here. Content being released to push that ilevel up in the middle of an expansion has been the name of the game for years now. After all, you can’t just have players running Emerald Nightmare to get competitive gear when they should have been running Antorus, right?
Right?
But why?
Starting tomorrow, two things are going to happen; Running Uldir will no longer get you the necessary gear levels to be “competitive,” nor will doing the Arathi Warfront. Content that is less than a few months old will, effectively, be rendered irrelevant in the push towards end-game gearing.
And honestly this mentality has always been confusing to me. Why must new raids completely erase any reason to complete old raids within the same expansion? Why is this design now being applied to warfronts, a major expansion feature?
BFA is an expansion that is already being criticized for having little to no enjoyable content. Why are we effectively losing a raid and a warfront in the next patch? How does this help the overall health of the game?
Bottom line, if you’re a player that prefers Uldir over Dazar’alor, or Arathi over Darkshore, you’re technically not playing the right way according to ilevel standards and you’re pretty much out of luck until the next major content update… which, similarly, will remain “fresh” for only a few months before it, too, becomes outdated.
If you fall into that category, I can see why someone would find it difficult to retain enjoyment in the content currently on the table, and may very well even unsub. I personally wouldn’t, but I could see why someone else would.
Here’s an old classic that explains the work ethic involved in creating content that loses your company 100’s of millions in subscription revenue and now billions in stock value.
!2 million x 15 dollars per month vs. less than a million subscriptions x 15 bucks a month. A stock value over 80 bucks on millions of shares down to 40 something bucks a month per share.
Gear progression. That’s the essence of why people have been incentivized to raid since Classic, the previous raid tier prepares you for the next. Of course, it’s kind of moot now since Mythic-tier gear is now awarded for participating in weekly’s. You can argue running Uldir was already unnecessary.
But still, it’d be stupid if they started scaling all raids to remain ‘relevant’.
Little numbers become bigger numbers. It has worked so far. Yeah it is silly. Also some guys who competitive would just run current content then steam roll world first.
Catering to the 1% has been a Blizzard philosophy since day 1
No blizzard content and the lack of interest in modern wow affects the stock value. Check the financial reports that insiders have to submit when they buy or sell stocks in a company they are an ‘insider’ in. You’ll see many major players in actiblizz have completed massive ‘sell offs’.
This has been going on since Vanilla. Nothing new about this at all and it isn’t BfA’s doing. Vanilla WoW, ZG gear was obsolete with MC. MC gear was obsolete to BWL gear etc. BC, Kara gear was obsolete when SSC and TK came out. SSC and TK gear was obsolete when BT opened. BT gear was obsolete when Sunwell came out. Wrath. Naxx25/10, OS and Maly gear was obsolete when Ulduar came out. Ulduar gear was obsolete when ToGC came and then ICC made ToGC gear obsolete. Same with all the expansion after that.
People get burned out of the same raid in the same expansion. It is fine if no one wants to do them because the gear is too low. If you are joining late in an expansion then you can still do LFR or find groups who still do them. For those of us who have been here at the start of expansions, the same raid you have been doing for months gets you burnt out on that place.
Over time they made the game more accessible, easier, and added different lower level difficulties to cater to casuals. Heroic is the difficulty equivalent or regular raids back from Vanilla. They all added pet battles which gets more attention and updates than PvP. On top of tons of toys.
Casuals get most of the development time and resources.