If m+ has made raiding less appealing for someone, then raiding was never appealing to that person to begin with.
I like raiding, and I like m+. It’s nice to have different challenging content, that dosn’t involve getting 15-25 people together.
You said raids have decreased in quality, I want you to quantify this statement.
The impact of M+ is instead of organizing 20 people to handle new content, just organize 5 people on the same old dungeons for equivalent gear
They literally put the biggest carrot in the entire game on M+ because it reuses the same old dungeons and costs them nothing
Every game in existence can recycle the same content with 20 more difficulties but they don’t because it is stupid boring. So wow put best gear possible on it so players almost have no choice.
Just an extremely low bar for ‘content’
Raiding hurt raiding. Mythic plus is just another way to play the game for players like enjoy wow. Raiders always wanting changes that cater to them sort of hurts the rest of the game a lot of the time.
there is no issue
This might be a shock but the hardest part about raids isint the content, it’s finding a group of consistent 20 people who all happen to have a similar schedule. That’s not fun, it’s partly why I don’t raid in FFXIV which only requires 8 people and it why I do only the minimal raiding I feel blizzard forces on me. You do know my best trinkit drops in the raid? Why is that a thing when I mostly play m+? Goes both ways.
You want to know what really hurts raiding? Its long. It’s boring. It’s full of man babies trying to be edgy cringe lord’s. People don’t have the time or patience for that crap.
i guess you enjoy skimming thru as well. i never said m+ is the only place to get the best gear, nor did i say raiding was. all i simply said was any raider worth spit is compelled to do m+ in order to gear for raiding.
Well WoD was mainly raiding with balanced PvP but it lost a ton of players. Raid or die did not work out for EQ and going back to raid or die in WoW is a bad idea.
You’re totally correct.
I played casually in vanilla, not even hitting 60 by the time BC came out. Even in the first half of BC, the most raiding I did was Kara with some friends and a bunch of bgs. The second half though, I joined what would be my guild for most of all remaining xpacs. I started raiding and haven’t stopped since.
In Legion I did keys casually while mythic raiding. I didn’t see the appeal.
In BFA towards the later half, I quit mythic raiding and went back to the guild I was in from BC, took it over, and some people from back in the day joined. I don’t know what made me try it, but I started to do keys. We were small, about 6 people. I wanted to raid again, but casually so I recruited some people. The ones I recruited turned out to be amazing people and are now amazing friends that I do keys with every day. We did lots of 20s in Shadowlands and we’re only just now pushing back to 20s now. I much prefer keys now over raiding. If it weren’t for the friends that like raiding still, I’d only do keys.
tl;dr as a raider since BC, I prefer keys now over raiding.
I disagree with you as someone who has done cutting edge raiding and high end mythic plus content Mythic plus is objectively harder then raid. The biggest and most important thing is the time limit. The second thing is it is far less forgiving then raiding if a single person screws up it will cost the key at high levels. Even in mythic raiding if a single person screws up guess what there are 19 other people there to cover it. I’ve seen a plethora of mythic kills in my time playing that 3-6 people screw up and the kill still goes flawlessly. You have someone screw up a mechanic in a 26-28 key that boss is a wipe and there goes the timer
Sure the logic is sound if you look at it from the perspective of someone at the end of the season. But does it hold true at the start of the season. An honestly the answer is completely different.
M+ is far easier and more forgiving then the Raid environment at the start to a season. Before the Raids had even dropped people were already running +8’s and up. An were not talking 1 and done, were talking about people who bragged about 45+ runs prior to the Raids. Timers really dont matter, its not like your depleting the rewards or the rewards ilvl, your just getting a lower key which isn’t a big deal. An hey if you hit the timer you get more loot and a better key.
Not to shabby, 385 gear for completing a key with 4 other people with ilvls in the 360’s. Ohh and lets not forget the lovely surprise in the Vault of some 395 gear to pick from.
I have to agree mythic + did ruin raiding ,it was a good idea when it was just mythic but it went too far to be a e-sport gen ,funneled all raiders to it to gear up with and plagued the pvpers. This a problem based on players and devs ,one wishing excitement the other to cash on it making a system design around it and now look what we got for it ,separation in the community fighting for what they believed is the correct way to play.
TBC and Wrath, which saw record player gain and peak subs, were just as much raid or die as WoD in terms of progression.
WoD lacked a daily hub on launch.
TBC brought heroic dungeons which were a huge step forward for dungeon players. Wrath also had a focus on making heroics approachable to many players.
Cata saw a big dip when dungeons alienated players, as the challenge vs reward was not properly adequate.
Coincidence?
Mists continued to see sub loss even though it had a daily hub, multiple daily hubs in fact.
WoW didn’t see a gain in subs for the game until Legion added M+.
I don’t think they are as related as you think.
Casuals were left in trash gear compared to top end raid gear from vanilla-WoD and somehow the game peaked and lost its subscribers during that period.
ICC, peak WoW by subs, had the largest gap in player power from top end to casual for the entire expansion.
That was also the expansion with hardcore rating requirements on PvP gear.
Its less about the gear relative to raid gear and more that people log in and feel their time is worthwhile. Cata didn’t respect their time. MoP didn’t respect their time. WoD didn’t respect their time. Meanwhile, Legion rewarded you for playing. BC and Wrath also rewarded you for playing.
How did TBC respect a casuals time again?
By giving you trash gear from 5 mans and requiring grinding revered with 5 reps on every single character just to even zone into the heroic dungeon? The expansion with the sharpest growth in history?
How is Wrath classic respecting a casual time? By them not really existing in classic because it’s incredibly sweaty? Wrath, the expansion that went the most heavy into PvP rating requirements for gear?
I don’t think the sub count has anything to do with it.
WoD was the expansion that wasted everyone’s time the least. Mats showed up in your garrison to save time. No chores. Easy to get PvP gear with no rating requirements. Just log in and play. It was lacking dailies, that was the secret missing sauce after coming out of an expansion blasted for its dailies.
TBC had badge gear.
You mean those trash epics that were significantly worse than gear from the raids?
Also I assume casuals wouldn’t even be getting any of that gear because you need to manually form a group for it, which seems out of the question for casuals. No clicking apply either, actual talking to other people on your own server. Imagine the nightmare for casuals.