Yeah we’ve all heard Blizzard use this phrase. And it sounds good in theory, but it’s actually very harmful and exacerbates problems already existing in WoW. Once upon a time, Blizzard released sub count. That’s a pretty fair metric. You want more players coming in than there are leaving, if not an equal amount.
Then we started losing subs, and more subs, and more subs. So subs became too embarrassing to show shareholders. In response, Blizz abandoned that metric and started using “player engagement”. What ends up happening is that the game’s design is not so much about gaining players, but to string the existing players along to keep “engaging”. This is very bad.
The game feels devoid of meaningful tasks that attract people, yet full of little chores that we gotta muddle through. I log in feeling like there’s both nothing to do and too much to do.
And if you decide you don’t want to do any of it and unsub? Well, you’re no longer a player whose “engagement” is being recorded, so the average “player engagement” won’t go down.
I don’t know why we keep going in circles with this. The game is 15 years old. There is no magic “fix” that is going to have 12 million people playing again.
Just like in the past when there were less options for things to watch on tv, some shows would get tens of millions of people to watch. Now if your show gets a million viewers that is good. Same thing with WoW. There is just so much more stuff out there now to play than there was fifteen years ago that they are able to still chug along at a steady pace is impressive to me.
Also, I know it’s popular to use corporate buzzwords as a boogeyman around here but them trying to come up with more ways to engage the players isn’t a bad thing. Chores have always been a thing. I don’t understand this line of thinking lately that makes it seem like blizzard just started doing this stuff when it’s been here the whole time. It’s not worse now than it was before, it could be that you’ve just changed as a person. I don’t play this game the same way I used to 15 years ago. I think if some of you adjusted your play style you might be less perpetually unhappy with seemingly everything blizzard tries to do.
They can get us on track to gaining subs instead of losing subs. If the game had gone unchanged for 15 years, you’d have a point, but WoW gets so much added to it we could very well call it WoW 2. Everything from the models to class design to gameplay systems; it’s effectively a different game. The idea that the game’s just old is a poor excuse for bad dev decisions.
Yeah they should break it down by game, because it’s pretty useless information when we don’t know which games are doing well and which games are getting their MAUs carried.
I think it is the fact that the devs continually update things that has kept the game as popular as it is for as long as it is but at the end of the day the game is old and with as much competition as there is now from other games, there is not going to be a return to some long lost glory days.
At this point in the games lifespan, I’d say there is a baseline number of players that doesn’t change much and then when they release a new content patch or new expansion, sub numbers spike for a brief time and then drop back down to where it was.
It’s worse than useless information to shareholders. There’s no way to interpret what is actually raising or lowering MAUs. Unless Blizzard decides to credit a specific product for why MAUs went up, it’s anyone’s guess. This gives Blizz a lot of power to present the data in a positive light, without any of it being lying or misleading technically.
Yeah, I don’t get the “engagement/mau/metrics/whatever” thing.
It makes no sense, in a game where you pay for a monthly sub.
They are applying Fortnite type stuff, to a monthly sub game. When a game doesn’t have a monthly sub, that makes sense.
When Frontier Pursuits dropped, around Oct 12 for Red Dead Online on the Xbox One (others too), I disappeared from Wow for about a month. But my sub was still active. So if I were them, I’d call that “a win”; But they would seem to see it as me not being a Monthly Active user.
It’s possible and they could get back in the competition again. Just look at wow classic it brought in a flood of new players. It’s not a “15 year old engine” holding them back it’s the current game design. Also content creators help bring in subs as well, and at the moment a lot of them if not all of them hate BFA.
I personally can’t stand the game play loop that is in place right now. Instead of meaningful content updates each patch, we basically just get a new affix for M+ , a new raid (which most casual players don’t even touch) and a few land masses (if we are lucky) that are full of reputation grinds.
I know MMO content us tough to develop, but current level of recycled content that is being passed off as new content is just awful for how big this game touts itself.
I personally think all grinding and time gated content is trying to mask over the lack of resources that WoW is getting now.
I’m also kind of upset this push the last few years to introduce “hard” content into the game. I personally think this game was at it’s best when the game didn’t cater to hardcore players at all.
I loath systems like M+ and Mythic raiding because it attracts players to the game that just breed toxicity. M+ is probably one of the most toxic and seriously one of the worse systems I have ever seen introduced into an MMO, but hey it is great for player engagement right!
Thousands of players now have been duped into grinding the same 10 dungeons now for 2+ years and they love it too lol.
I personally think that WoW isn’t an MMO anymore. It is some kind of weird Action Rpg/E-sport trying to pass itself as the old MMO it used to be.
Please show me 5 examples of “chores” that existed in Pre Cata that were in the game that were required for your character to be viable in the end game.
I’m guessing, note I said guessing, The MAU works very well because of the way the game is played/payed for in China. I’m also guessing that’s a very large portion of where the money comes from, in WOW. Looking at the way the current game is setup, it would be great for milking the pay by the hour players.
When WoD released there were 10 million players all clambering to play a game that the devs had hyped as “getting back to its roots.” If that expansion had been a success, if the devs had been committed to creating a brilliant game like they had been in the past, then those players would have kept playing. And not only would Blizzard have retained those players, but the reputation of the game would have spread and it isn’t a stretch to think more people wouldn’t have joined in as well.
I agree it will never get there again. To become the king of MMOs once again the entire team from top to bottom would have to be committed and motivated to make it just that.
I’m not sure if classic brought in a flood of “new” players exactly, but there is no doubt a lot of people came back to try it out.
The problem with the current game design is they are trying to retrofit modern game design into an old game system. What I mean is that the most popular games now are ones where you can just drop in, play for a bit and drop out. You aren’t required to make a big time investment. Whereas MMOs traditionally have required massive time investments. So WoW is trying to have it both ways basically. They are trying to make it easy to drop into but also trying to keep people around for a bit when they do. Everyone thinks they know the best way to do that and it usually has something to do with their personal pet cause they like or do not like.