Pretty good video summary of the current situation. The reality is WoW’s dev team isn’t making the game for the regular joes of the world anymore. They’re making the game for the top 5% of the player base, and players who maybe spend 30 mins a week playing.
The balance is gone. The scale of things to do feels small. The game punishes you for playing for fun versus playing for efficiency. This in turn leads players to start more aggressive means of gatekeeping which is what the community suffers from the most.
WoW should really really do some type of market research into regular players otherwise we’re going to get the same convoluted systemscraft again where the systems are designed to hinder the top 5% of players at the expense of the rest of the 95% of players.
EDIT: Just waiting on the White Knights to mark this as “Spam” even though it’s just trying to foster a conversation on the current state of casual play, which is pretty awful. Even the steps in the right direction feel like it’s something Blizz devs feel forced to do versus something they want to do. I feel like they want to make a game for the top 5% but have to design bad systems to slow them down because of metrics and game played.
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Raid participation took a nosedive too, at all levels. That could be because of multiple factors though, with the entire Tier thing being a major contributor affecting balance/tuning.
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This isn’t just a problem where Ion is sitting back like Mr.Burns saying “Good Good screw the Casual player”.
No it’s bigger than that, they want to make a game for hardcore players, but time played is a metric for them so they design a slow down mechanic for them. Which in turns leads to aggressive gatekeeping from the community.
WoW just isn’t a fun game it wants you to be efficient.
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I’ve been a casual player since around mid Legion and don’t mind the game as it is right now. Do i think it’s perfect or even great? No, but i don’t think it is bad at all. Maybe that’s because i don’t really care about gear or performance. So all the stress people experience about gearing doesn’t apply to me.
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My guess is people get tired of killing bosses for 1/4th the loot drops.
Nothing feels worse than putting in the time/effort and get absolutely nothing for it.
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loot drops. raiding dived due to loot drops, most teams out gear the raid loot drops in mythic plus due to how much of it doesnt drop in raid teams. therefor, people that raid are doing it because they want to down it, nothing else.
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WOW is the only game where their casual care about stat weight, class/spec performance in 99th percentile, tier set, often time even more passionate about that stuff than the literal world first raiders themselves.
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How do you define a casual player? Is it someone who collects transmog, pets and mounts and socializes with other players? I have seen this case presented several times, but I’m always lost as to what a casual player is, and what it is they want
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Could someone tell me how the WoW elite are getting geared and clearing high level content by playing 30 minutes/week? I need to get in on that.
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I’d say I’m pretty casual! We have it good. Can get two sets (glad/lfr) from just playing.
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As someone who raid logs once a week I would consider myself a casual player and this is the best expansion of the last 3 easily as I’m not punished for not logging on every day to farm ap. I can log on once a week for raid night kill some mythic bosses do a mplus after raid and cya next week. No need to farm islands, ap, visions or anything this is as casual friendly as it gets
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It’s a good video. I think there are some points to be made though. I don’t think having addons and caring about your spec and optimizing your class is hardcore anymore. It takes little to no time to do a search for “resto shaman best build” and find a guide that you just have to look at some pictures and put in the build. For a new player maybe but not someone who has been playing WoW casually for years. The hardcore player would be the one that reads every ability and the in depth guide on how every ability works together and about up time on abilities etc.
I think Blizzards problem is the definition of a casual. I think that Blizzard thinks that the bottom of the barrel LFR raider who is the idk/idc is the casual player. I don’t think they understand that the in-between the bottom and top is the casual. The casuals are in guilds that are clearing normals/heroics maybe getting the first 3 bosses on mythic, doing up to about 10+ keys in mythic dungeons. The casuals are on rated bg teams, doing decent in arena, probably not the top tier. They have addons and they have an idea of how to spec and gear their character. What they don’t have is the time that Blizzard wants it to take for you to get to the part of the game that casual player want to play, end game. They have to jump through hoops that take too long for them to get there for, like the video said, the ability of the top 5% end gamers to have content slowed down for them. This is why people leave the game. When they get rid of the time gating for the top 5% and realize that the top bottom 5% aren’t the casuals then they may get somewhere.
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maybe google what a bell curve is then you might understand what the OP was saying
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Going the way of Wildstar I guess lmao.
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It’s simple.
They do NOT trust the customer to stay subscribed if the customer acquires all the power. They do not believe in their game to actually be fun enough to hold player’s attention span more than 1 month.
They do trust the player who is willing to BUY wow tokens for carries/boosting/worldfirst/glad.
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Blizzard killing their own game by doubling down on a design philosophy which is constantly showing a downward trend in player participation & burn out. But who cares when that new Store Mount more then made up for that loss?
This whole situation is comical…
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That’s not a conjunction. The video says it’s for the top 10% raiding for gear and the lowest level player doing 30 minutes a week put in the “I don’t know and I don’t care” category.
It argues, for the millionth time, that people outside the top 10% putting in top tier effort and the bottom 10% putting in 30 minutes a week, are not what the game is for.
Doesn’t say the bottom tier is getting gear or clearing content, quite the contrary, that they’re having their time wasted with grindy stuff and long cinematics and prep sessions. Like a maw intro.
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WoW should stop trying to please everyone
Pick your core audience and stick with them. Let others go
This game cannot be for everyone…blizzard should stop trying to do it.
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It’s not a game for people that don’t like MMORPGs.
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their design goals aren’t focused on ‘player value’ or ‘fun’
this team isn’t very much in touch with what draws players, they are stewards and trying to extract metrics from a blob of players
metrics that drive the cash shop as the cash shop is the only number they can change, having given up completely on retaining subs
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