Well I’m Gunna be honest I’ve never had any toxicity when I was tanking Constantly as a paladin but I only did it in timewalkings because I really wanted that stinkin infinite time reaver. Maybe I did a good job but then again if you do the same dungeon over and over it just sticks to you. I did not one not two but three consecutive timewalkings weeks and clocked in 1468 boss kills until I got my very own infinite timereaver. It’s something I wanted ever since WoD. I would always look out for my team as much as possible and show them shortcuts and try to grab as many mobs I could just to make the runs faster. I’ll admit, I was afraid of playing a tank for the reason of this title. So when I first started tanking I would open the combat window only not the party chat window. I’d avoid talking and the only time I’d check chat is if I messed up and knew it. I shut myself in, but the more confident I played as a tank the more sociable and open as a tank. At that point I felt comfortable. Over the course I was getting better and honestly I can confidently say I was a really good tank. Why don’t I play a tank more often? Well to put it short and blunt, there is no rewards to playing a tank or healer, not as impactful as in FFXIV where if you play a tank or healer, you eventually get mounts. It takes a bit not going to lie but it keeps you occupied. There’s no legitimacy in rewards for tanking really. Well, not in my interest anyways. I just wish they had exclusive tank and healer mounts and I promise you I’d play a tank more than possible. Edit: I don’t want to leave on a bad note on Blizzards part but they have been doing a bit better at tank and healer rewards. Especially in classic. Now if you play as a tank or healer you can get a chance at the end of your dungeon run a raven lord, white hawkstrider and something else (correct me if I’m wrong ) I believe that’s definitely in the right direction absolutely but I hope they can push the envelope further in Dragonflight.
WoW and Final Fantasy are 2 really different games, I see so many posts on here and think to myself “Why don’t these people play FF14?” It’s more casual friendly, the dungeons and raids are easier and trade skills are done better. WoW offers vastly better PvP, dungeons and raids. If your not into those 3 things you really are playing the wrong game 
-edit- WoW has better questing also
As much as FFXIV is a good game I have to agree pvp in FFXIV is just like… Eh a neutered pvp experience…
i would assume new players dont stay cuz outside of the big 3 the game sucks.
I say good riddance to people that want to put up barriers for new players.
no these forum trolls only like to create complaining threads on days that end with y
I don’t think they care about getting new players anymore. The sub rate continues to decline.
I say the exact same thing. A lot of people are invested in this game and like it despite its quirks. I play both ff14 and WoW so I can enjoy all the casualness of ff14 and then come to WoW and start looking at my logs and parses
Well,
with online gaming in general, a lot of people I brought in, left due toxicity. They wanted to chill and relax, but were harassed.
I remember my first days at LOL; it was the same and I left that game and never looked back. When you are new somewhere, feeling welcome is crucial.
You have to realize, probably only 50% of the enjoyment for a lot of people playing MMOs are actually from the gameplay.
The other 50% of the enjoyment is from feeling superior to other players. In fact in a game like WoW that’s more toxic than your average MMO, the break down might even be 25/75%.
Blizzard knows this, that’s why PvP templates are not a thing, PvP gear involves letting yourself get farmed by “gladiators” at 1500 MMR and exclusive time gated items are all over the place.
Essentially Blizzard is not just selling the gameplay experience, they’re selling the power fantasy a lot of people want, but obviously don’t have in RL.
They should atleast bring back items that have a use like the panda leyend gems and 3 gem slot SoO artifact weapons just for the old raids level 50. They could bring back old legendarys like panda cape and the ring from BfA. They could bring back the corupted ashbringer just for transmog purposes. Sell them in the shop itself or on the black market althogh the black market is insanely expensive. I still want the death wing drake that i missed out on.
You can still get legion legendarys the 3 slot belt mail gloves and necklace still serve in timewalking.
I feel sorry for new people coming to wow now, there is no story or structure, if i started playing wow now i would not stay its the same with ff it has no structure so i dident like it even though half my guild left wow to play it, and then seeing all the things i cant have because i am a new player sheesh, glad i was here in the first days of wow when it was great
Actual new players don’t care about that in the literal world of items and content in WoW. There are a host of ACTUAL problems with the new player experience and retention, but limited-time items aren’t anywhere in that mix.
Everu ff14 limited time item either comes back every year or so or is moved to the shop. Even pvp rewards are being added as new rewards in their new pvp system.
No, the player-base who began playing MMORPGs in their infancy are now 40+. Gaming is our hobby, the same way watching sports or reality tv is for other adults.
Most of us in this age group have made common life choices, such as furthering our career and starting families. Doing this responsibly requires sacrificing time with a hobby like gaming. Therefore, to retain the player-base who launched the careers of all these MMO developing companies, requires developers to create less time wasting content and more high quality content.
So creating content to retain older players and attract newer players is one and the same. Those in the middle who have chosen to prioritize a video game over real life accomplishments should not, and are not, the target demographic anymore for most developers.
I hate to break it to you OP but your pet peeve isn’t why new players aren’t flocking to wow
Just my opinion
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Toxic community - doesn’t matter where you go be it in game or the forums or what content you do be it casual dungeons, raiding, M+, PvP community is fairly toxic and that alone is off putting; you got to remember people play video games to unwind from work and bs irl people deal with their own issues and not always the same. why should they choose to deal with toxicity irl and then in this game as well? devs do very little to combat this as well
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Lack of linear story- game tends to push new/older players into doing newest content while all the old content that pretty much builds onto the story is swept under the rug for these players. there is a LOT to the story as well it’s not like say FF14 it forces you to play through the expacs and easy to understand the story that way but it doesn’t necessarily hold you back in actually progressing where as with WoW it does. either you play the newest expac or pretty much get left behind because the older content people rarely do unless they are farming for stuff like mounts or mog and even then people try to wait until they are able to solo since it’s just faster compared to finding a group.
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too much to take in - some feel overwhelmed when trying to learn the game there is a lot to take into consideration like rotation, mechanics, what gear to take, etc… the game itself doesn’t do anything to really teach you. the leveling system is fairly fast even for new players, mobs die fairly quickly, etc… tons of guides yes but guides don’t help unless physically doing. it’s like me saying you should know how to drive once you watch a 15minute video and have 0 time clocked on actually stepping into a car.
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Price - $15 a month + expac fee’s of at least $50 to me personally that is kind of too much. almost the cost of a Triple A game but not always seen as good as one to define the price point ontop of a monthly sub. then you got people stating they can just buy it with gold; true yes but in order to start farming for gold you need to first purchase a sub ontop of knowing how tf to make gold. can watch guides and what not but those are not always helpful imo; been there done that it can be time consuming depending how you choose to farm gold. me idc for farming i rather play the game. not to mention you already got a lot of games that are already f2p that are fairly decent/good and has a reputation like say LoL if your into RTS.
WoW isn’t also appealing to every single gamer as well. i like WoW over ff14 for how WoW plays. doesn’t feel as slow and community i guess i like the more raunchy type of players where as FF14 i like i guess everything else give or take the story. more or less though i feel the only reason i still play WoW is because of friends if not for them i’d quit for good already.
in the end there are pro’s and con’s to all games it doesn’t attract new players but i personally dont think it attracts as much as it should for it’s lifespan. most of the people i see that are “new” are either older players that quit and coming back for the newest expac or current players friends/family/kids. i feel like people just tend to treat this game as what they want out of it in the sense a free ride imo. taught a lot of new players via friends who introduced them to the game. by the time they hit max level they would complain the game was too easy despite we carried them through all the content then when doing harder content they get salty and quit. i guess you can say they expect the game to be vertical driven where it’s more horizontal in that sense?
I think if WoW took a few lessons fr other games, the new player experience would be fine. The core gameplay and loop is pretty solid in WoW.
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Similar to SWTOR, separate main quest from side quest icons and boost the experience of main quests to make side questing optional. Have the questing path seamless through each expansion and make it linear. Not Chromie time. A new player will then not be lost in the story.
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Create a new player channel that new players are assigned to automatically with mentors.
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Create dungeon grouping tutorials the way FF14 has to train each player in their group role.
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Stop taking out systems in the game tied to the story. MOP cloak storyline, Warlords ring storyline, Legions artifact weapon powers and legendaries, and so on.
None of this will happen and new players who aren’t grand fathered in by real life friends family are better off going with modern games
That is a hyper saturated market. Chasing a demographic that doesn’t actually invest themselves in games, as a video game company, is always going to be a dumb move.
Your demographic can be broken into two groups, the ones that will buy the expansion and play for a week, before doing the same thing two years later, a ritual to chase nostalgia that never quite works. This half doesn’t need to be catered to at all, blizzard could slap them, and they’d still get their money.
The other half will never be satisfied, the ones whose life no longer has room for video games, so they insist that the video games be made less time consuming to cater to them. In an MMO, the game simply can’t be reduced to the 10 minute a day experience that they demand.