Definitely. Developers obviously took feedback from the hardcore players in Wrath saying that the game and gearing was too easy, and Cata dungeons ended up being way too hardcore in terms of both mechanics and numerical tuning.
Heroic dungeons went from being my main endgame activity in Wrath to something I just ended up ignoring in Cata. And I know I was not the only one.
Despite the high number of Cata box sales, WoW sub numbers starting dropping for the first time in the history of the game because the game starting moving in the hardcore direction. Shadowlands shows a similar pattern as we transitioned away from BfA.
I personally know multiple people who quit WoW over the flying debacle in WoD and never came back. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but WoW devs continually underestimate how important the open world experience is to the general audience.
Yes, once players leave a game, they often never come back because the habit or addiction is broken, and they start to see the flaws of that game or the game’s developers very clearly.
I have let my subscription lapse before, but have never been gone for more than a few months because in the end I am attached to the world and class design. I don’t secretly love the “friction” of having to form groups and struggle through content (the goal of current WoW design), and am happiest when there is enjoyable content outside of that. If I am not here for Dragonflight, I will most likely be gone for good. It’s too hard or impossible to catch up on rewards you have missed in this game, and coming back to the gearing elitism is always a shock after seeing how other games handle gearing.
Developers already know what the top competitive players want and give it to them every time eventually, but it is likely that about half of the playerbase will have anything special to do other than LFR in Season 4, unless developers have already realized their vision that they only need to release content for hardcore players, because that is the only small audience that they have left.
you should change this stance. those achievements should remain for the rest of the expansion. you guys made one of the hardest raids ever, as evidenced by the massive nerfs you implemented, and then made it the shortest final raid season in recent memory. you implemented the nerfs far too late, a lot of guilds are still progressing but will never get their CE because of this decision to remove it
Trying to correlate sub count, growth, and decline doesn’t make a lot of sense considering TBC, which was much harder than Wrath, saw a much larger amount of sub growth than Wrath.
Wrath was when growth stagnated and the plateau was reached.
And tbh I don’t feel the game design of either had that much to do with it.
People seem to think no one quit during WOLTK. The stagnation in grow was more of a reflection that new players coming in were not coming in faster than players leaving.
Once the thrill of WOTLK ended and new players stopped coming in altogether, you saw the damage that occurred when there weren’t a flow of new players to offset those who were continually leaving.
I hated TOGC. Doing the same raid 4 times a week… . Especially after the glory that was Ulduar, going from one of the best raids ever seen at that point to the worst raid in this game’s history… .
I can’t express how bad TOGC was. Maybe another puke emoji?
That’s the funny thing. You get these guys who say they “just want to see the fight”… but the fight isn’t going anywhere. Our furry Vulpera friend on these forums talks about just wanting to do the Jailer fight and having the time to do it, but the fight is still there. I mean its nerfed so in a sense the previous version isn’t there, but it is still there in a form if you want to finish out your progression. You just won’t get rewarded with a title for it.
The badge system already “feels” amazing just knowing that it’s coming. It’s also going to feel more inviting to play alts and getting them into raids instead of just M+.
I would be interested in knowing if this great system is staying through Dragonflight.
Super overpowered / dumb items like OWS and Gavel only work because like 5 people have the Mythic ilvl version early enough in the season for it to matter. Season 4 is the Oprah Winfrey to keep raiders occupied during a period of time where there is no AOTC/CE to keep them hooked otherwise.
Then again, Blizzard had done stupid stuff before so it isn’t impossible they surprise me.
It would be stupid because it breaks the balance of the game.
Blizzard would probably stop having to design cool, blatantly overpowered loot if any plebian could get it via killing the first 3-4 bosses for a few months. The balance between M+ and Raiding only works because a lot of the good loot from Mythic Raiding that breaks the game is simply not out in the wild to a meaningful degree.
Many players still use heroic gavel, heroic OWS, etc, and that keeps those items under control.
I mean after a few months there’s usually enough power creep in the systems to not have a 1-2 items be able to throw anything off “balance”.
I mean people still can’t even clear prior tier mythic raids with inflated ilvl gear due to lack of skill - seems like there’s plenty of balance in terms of required mechanics where raw power doesn’t matter even on old content.
Fact of the matter is, Blizzard creates some piece of OP loot under the assumption that most people won’t have access to them, so they can be fun and kind of bonkers. If everyone could get OWS or Gavel easily, Blizzard would probably stop making items like that so strong. I’m kind of just repeating myself, but I guess that’s because you’re seemingly not understanding what is being said.
If Blizzard brings back something like Dinars, they probably won’t be able to design loot like this, or will probably need to heavily nerf it.
I understand that the AOTC and CE titles are closing on August 2nd with the start of Season 4. Will the Aalmanacs-Echo quest item still drop from The Jailer in Heroic difficulty for season 4? (This is the item that gives you the quest to get the AOTC mount).
In BFA, even if the AOTC title was closed, N’Zoth still dropped the Spawn of Vexiona item to get the mount until Shadowlands launched.
Yeah I don’t get the “balance” that you’re referring to.
Raw character power “balance” won’t be thrown off, especially for a raid and especially when the game requires more than just raw throughput power (this was what my comment about prior tiers being unclearable by many players was referring to).
Are you talking about some subjective and arbitrary aspect of power related to character gear progression?
without a way to farm Avoidance. 2 months is not really long enough to build a good avoidance set.
. Especially after the glory that was Ulduar, going from one of the best raids ever seen at that point to the worst raid in this game’s history…