The game was one way, and over 7 years amassed 13 million unique accounts.
Now it’s another way and has had trouble retaining 1/5 of the former player count.
Care to explain your reasoning?
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The game is down players because the actual gameplay is trash lately, and completely disregards that their rapidly maturing playerbase doesn’t have time for their slowdown and fussy rules-lawyer shenanigans trying to maximize #engagement metrics. Torghast’s design was wrongheaded, the raid-or-die mentality has infected every level of game design, and details have been falling by the wayside for years. Corners have been cut, their internal QA process is a joke, and the head designers got the notion into their heads that they were unimpeachable rockstars instead of making a product for the players that they had (who they resented like heck), not the ones that they wanted to have.
I am 100% certain that an outflow of dudes who are huffy that the game, along with much of the world, no longer exclusively caters to their preferences is a negligible amount of their ongoing player loss, just like I’m 100% sure that an outflow of women because they saw a piece of art on the wall with prominent cleavage was not more than a negligible amount. Especially since their subscribers have been slowly cratering for years, but this rush of changes to minor things to limit their liability when one of the three cases against them (so far) goes to court is recent.
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Nobody is really complaining about the raids. People are complaining about the world content and the PvP imbalance which exists because the dev team is more concerned with the love rocket than PvP balance.
Their priorities are all wrong and have been wrong for years. So you’re partially correct. But incorrect about the impact it has had on their playerbase. It’s all connected really.
It’s a bunch of things but it all boils down to the same reality that west coast has lost touch with reality. From the loathing they appear to have for middle America to the way they spend their time is just asking the question why those 6 million who left should ever care to come back. As if renaming the love rocket will manage to do anything but push them away.
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This doesn’t explain the steady decline for 9 years.
When the game started to be easier over all, it inticed players who have a mentality that isn’t cohesive with the genre of game.
World of Warcraft was and is a fantasy land. When you add players who want an experience more suited to single player experience, devoid of any “harmful” material, where their offense can end by turning the power button off. This is the outcome.
Those players never had any intention of fitting in with the players who were already veterans at the game. No, they had to constantly complain to Blizzard that the game was too hard, and too toxic.
The ruins of WoW, where we stand today is a direct reflection of the poor choices made over the last 9 years. These poor choices were forced into being by people who should have stayed as far away from the game as possible.
Now they are the majority and Blizzard can’t seem to find a way out of the nose dive they face. And it is too late to get rid of the people who lit the fire, burning down the house. Instead they roast marshmallows and blame those who came before them so their conscience is clear.
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Yes. It was a long process full of bad and wrongheaded choices. I’m not sure what that has to do with the content of this particular discussion, though, where it’s being asserted that:
A) There’s no reason for Blizzard to not design content that primarily appeals to males for WoW
B) The recent changes over the last handful of months to change achievement titles, mount names, and background graphics are primarily responsible for the decline in subscribers, despite the fact that subscriber loss has been going on for years and these changes only just happened
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I’ve had an account since 2005 and I probably wouldn’t still be playing the game if the developers were totally indifferent to the preferences of people who aren’t straight white guys like the original poster apparently wants them to be
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My assertion is, the content was made for everyone at first. Each side, both male and female had their own established “eye candy” and dark humor. It wasn’t until the crowd of constant oppression was given a home in Azeroth that we saw the flawed changes, that led us to where we are now.
This is the camels back breaking. The last 8 years were the loads of straw being added. Year 9 the camel could no longer hold the straw. Blizzard is now losing players because of the current crisis, but the crisis that is current, isn’t solely responsible for the situation. It took a long time to get where we are now. But it’s not just Blizzard changing names and repainting artwork that is removing players. It’s the long road they traveled, continually alienating the people who came first, to replace them with people who are not worthy in the slightest.
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It’s less of a pancake than that. There is nuance. Always is.
Boys like a game where they can fight and trash talk each other. It’s no different than their work lives. You make it a female space and we want out. You can look at the trajectory of the game over the past decade like he’s saying and see the markers of how they moved from a predominately male audience to a mix of a far smaller number of fans.
Take your pick really. From the time they started to step on chat to the weird takes on harassing other players it all makes sense in hindsight. At least it does to me.
You could even see where they added LFR and LFD and other systems like this to accommodate people who didn’t have the character traits for “toxic frat boy” groups. You can’t honestly tell me the original WoW player base wanted this crap.
It isn’t to say boys can’t enjoy one or more of these things but when adding up the sum it’s just not to our liking.
Too early for negative feedback here but you can be sure it’s coming. We are the canary in the coalmine.
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Stop making accusations without any founding whatsoever. Absolutely nothing I’ve said or proposed makes me sexist in any way shape or form, or an incel. Your reply is so far from the mark on both that its insulting, I am happily married for 14 years and my wife used to play this game back when it apparently catered to men and found no issue with it.
I said they do not need to rewrite every male character into a spineless puddle of pudding as they have with many, and that likewise, they do not need to raise up every female support character and make her the Captain America of the faction, simply because she is female. If anyone thinks “that” is proper, then “they” are the ones that are sexist.
Regardless of whether you like the current state of the game or not, you making accusations the way you are, especially as there is nothing in any of the words I have written to support it, is really immature. Not to mention, verbally assaulting people with different view points is in breach of the code of conduct, not that you’ll have to worry because I am not a snitch, and the forum moderators are bias in your favor anyway. Nonetheless, if you cannot disagree without making accusations and name calling then don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
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Long-winded crying over the removal of sexual innuendo in a video game. Gotcha.
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Apparently you cannot say that is crying because people feel offended about THAT.
Figures.