Cater to group A. a dedicated few, making content that is elite, restricted, complex and involves external research, keeping in mind that these players often don’t pay real money but rely on selling things to earn in game gold so that paying players can support their subs.
Or do you cater to B. the majority, making content that is fun for the individual, customizable, replayable, inclusive, has all the tools in game to enjoy and doesn’t need external websites or experts to sort out, keeping in mind that these “casual” and “solo” players are ready and willing to spend real cash for a fun experience
Well, if you are Blizzard, the answer seems to be A.
So, when other games come along and strip away the paying subs, and eventually leave the WOW pond filled with salty, bitter, stingy, elitists that can no longer support new content and the game withers and dies, you will know why it happened.
Wait, you don’t want to pay money to play a game where the cream of the crop hoards power and treats you like garbage and simultaneously wants you to pay for them to do so?
Vanilla AKA Classic, had a beefy start because of the nostalgia it is not sustainable, and nothing you listed caused any negative effects, LFR only pisses off the people who never liked casual players in the first place. Flying pisses off??? No one! The things that have tanked the game are refusing to listen to the masses, not the loudest voices. Systems that are basically a re-hash of every ability in vanilla tossed up in the air swirled around and reassigned to a new class/spec
We are how many ever months in to SL and I still cannot fly, so already wrong. Secondly, nothing is being added to the game experience for me to have to run to world bosses, except annoyance. I understand some people love to run around in the open world and I think they should never ever using their flying mounts. Have at it. But I’ve ran around the daggum zones enough now. I’m ready to fly.
Only just barely ready in my opinion. I think a 6-month wait to fly in the starter zones is a good length. Until you’ve really plumbed the absolute depths of the content and are just totally done with it, you shouldn’t have it. Flying should never “make the game easier” in a truly meaningful way. I view flying like I view heirlooms for older leveling content - it only comes after you’ve been there and done that and the difference in having it or not does nothing to your experience except maybe save you a bit of time. It should never be trivializing actual content that current patch players are playing.
Yes, it’s a game we pay to play. So I’d rather Blizzard not trivialize the content by enabling a path of least resistance until it is content that most of us don’t care to play anymore.
The current model has worked for Blizzard for almost 17 years now. The game has always catered content to the elite. They get the best prizes. The only real difference these days is the existence of the WOW token. If you sell these on the auction house, you willingly subsidize the game.
I feel like the option should be available for those that want it. If the option was there, and you could still choose to not fly, would you take that choice? And do you think it would bother you if others chose to fly?
I am used to Pathfinder/holding off on flying by now and for the most part it doesn’t bother me to be grounded for some time. But if I had the option I would choose flying. Not to trivialize content, but because I value my own time.
Not to mention, some of my favorite mounts were not meant to be grounded, dammit.
if you’re part of that “us” then you are in the super minority, most players who play this game now and since the beginning have been looking for a good time not the worlds most gated, challenging, exclusive, must read external content to get the whole story game.
FFXIV is going to end this argument for everyone still arguing against the solo players, more and more people are leaving to this game which caters to the solo players
WOW could make tons of money and get tons more players if they just made it all fun and available. People complaining now would leave, and be replaced by 10-20 more willing to pay for cosmetics and other things
Let’s not be disingenuously biased with the phrasing here and phrase it as it is.
A. Appeal to a specific target audience.
Or B. Appeal to a majority audience.
You worded this in a way is saying that A is the wrong answer here, as in, nobody would find being hardcore fun, and yet casual is all about the fun. And fun is subjective. And speaking of the profitability, i mean it goes either way, all it really comes down to is how well you did the execution. There’s plenty of games that appeals to a majority that are good, there’s plenty of games that appeal to specific audience that are good, and vice versa with the bad ones.
Also…
You’re forgetting that they will get an extra $5 for each token bought, so when you add up, that’s a lot more profit they are getting then just subs.
Well if you actually have played retail, you would kept going on, now would you?
Oh you’re going to love this one he said awhile back.
I wish. I really wish we had “Heroic World Quests” or some kind of equivalent to make these things more meaningful and engaging.
It’s one of the things that I’m looking forward to with Torghast 2.0. Challenging solo content is so massively underrated for what it provides for players. If this content could be put out into the world, that would be so cool.
