There is no continued growth after it launched. There was a minor pre-expansion bump and then subs declined. If RDF was so great, subs would have continued to rise (in Cata, people found out how terrible it was to randomly get assigned unknown people when heroics had a bit more difficulty than people were used to in WotLK).
Additionally, patch 3.3 (the one that included RDF) was released in Q4 2009. Since that number didn’t increase from the launch of the expansion, and Blizzard, who liked to claim all of their new “all-time high record subscribers” numbers, didn’t put out anything until a year later right before Cata’s launch, I can only assume RDF did not draw in any new players–or at worst actually turned many off, and not even ICC could save it.
You’re arguing with trolls. Subs went up after RDF. That’s a fact, but they’ll try to spin it any way they please.
And it’s also irrelevant. No one will ever prove why subs went up or down. It’s just trolls trying to distract and change the subject because they have no real argument against RDF.
Definitely not an insult, but given the trajectory of WoW of when it started catering to the casual and its current state, being a “casual” definitely has negative connotations to it.
A lot of games are like that actually. Fighting games, RTS, etc.
Things being gated or that have a high skill floor that shuts people out are a natural part of multi player games. Frankly, casual players who want to feel “big and strong” similar to those who put in more effort, in my book come across as self entitled.
WoW catered to casuals since November 2004. I’d say it stopped catering to casuals in Cata and beyond when it took the entire game down the e-sport path.
But who cares. I just wanted an authentic Wrath. Instead Blizz is designing it with the Retail mindset, and that’s disappointing.
Casual players like to enjoy playing the game without feeling like it has to take over or become a 2nd job for them to reach a certain level of success.
You’ll note that the more casual the game, the larger a playerbase it accrues.
Dark Souls 1-3 sold 27 million combined. Elden Ring has sold over 17 million alone, and given it won GotY will probably end up selling more than the rest of the Souls series.
Fighting games like SF5 sold ~6 million copies, where as SSB is just shy of 30 million.
Even with games like MTG, it’s commonly accepted that casual kitchen table players vastly outnumber the number of nerds even just attending FNMs.
My point, of course, is that if you’re caring about population size (which is what all this RDF chatter is about right now), casuals carry the games health. If you don’t cater at least some to the casual market, they will never stick with the game. And then when you’re left with a few dozen players on your server, you can proudly beat your chest and proclaim “there are no more casuals!”
I agree with you. I’m not denying that casuals is where the money is. It’s more about why casual has a negative connotation to it that I was addressing.
I mean, SF3 players snubbed their noses at SF4, and then SF5 - don’t get me started with making the combo system easier. Just like “real” fighting game players laugh at Smash players because all their moves take one button. But to be fair Brawl was by enlarge a flop. People got hyped because Melee was such an amazing game and it was the next title. Nintendo took everything that made Melee great - technicality, hit stun, speed, combo system, etc and made it very bland when they created Brawl.
But I’d also argue that the less casual players do more for the longevity of the game than the casuals do. You can buy the game, but that doesn’t mean you’ll play it for more than a month.
Tanks reserved items and charged because it was so hard to find a tank before rdf was added. After it was added tanks couldn’t reserve items. We’d just kick them if they tried and be first in line for the next tank.
The big thing for casual retention is making sure the loop stays enjoyable.
If not that, then there needs to be very regular updates with new shiny things, that don’t needlessly complicate or wall them off.
I think my biggest issue with the population decline argument, though, is insisting that WoW could, or even should, have kept growing beyond 12 million players. Those are already obscene numbers for an MMO, and there’s no chance in hell that Blizzard of all companies is going to ever see it happen again for WoW. I’m honestly surprised we even broke 600k for Classic.
rdf did not kill wow. bad server management and bad game mechanics did
no mechanics to make old content relevant. This leads people to get to max level and have nothing to do but endgame dungeons and raids. FF14 solved this by rewarding max lvls with tokens good towards the purchase of end game gear if they do old content. This means new players always have someone to play with and old dungeons stay alive
factions split server pops up when they are already hurting for active players. they were a horrible idea that didnt even work well in vanilla. ya i know you have rose colored nostalgia glasses on and dont remember, but over half the servers in vanilla were completely dead because entire factions quit the game and blizzard opened way too many servers, spreading the community thin as paper.
Too many servers, too much neglect to make sure they stay healthy.
bad class design. nerfing talent trees so it didnt even feel like an rpg anymore