Maybe the two type you describe exist, but that’s not it. I’ll illustrate a 3rd.
Has 15-25 hours of free time to sink into a game, but in smaller increments here and there throughout the week. Anyone with gaming as their main hobby has this kind of free time, with or without kids.
May only be able to spend 1-3 hours total in a row at any given time. Anyone with young children knows what I’m talking about.
Now let me illustrate how a developer caters to this group, and make no mistake, several single-player and MMO developers do.
Their longest activity in game takes no longer than 1-1.5 hours to complete. FF14, ESO, GW2, SWTOR immediately come to mind
Their content is queuable. Most modern MMOs puts their content in a group finder. WOW only does this for very easy content.
No FOMO. WOW is bad about deleting content out of the game once the expansion ends. I’m not even including mounts and cosmetics.
Nothing that boosts your power is gated behind time waster activities.
Save points are frequent enough that you never have to wait long before you reach one and can log off if need be when something IRL comes up. Even Fromsoft makes games like this and they’re notorious for being challenging games.
The reason why is because everyone is playing console…and Nintendo switch…pc games are very archaic and non revelent to the new generation of players they want a start middle and end …the average console game only takes like 2-3 months then it’s over… everyone has a d d or ahd they have the attention spand if a tick…and can’t stand still in one place long enough…to play world of Warcraft.
WoW has pushed e-sports pretty hard and traditionally (legion+) had an excessive amount of chores.
I sincerely hope DF fixes that. Although, they did just change the new catalyst to require a weekly quest per toon.
Which…ugh… I mean I guess it is better than 80 renown, or daily rep grinds for about a month, but it is still something I would rather not do. It’s only saving grace is that you only need 4 weeks to make the set. This is still annoying though. Especially considering that the “smart” play is to cycle through as many toons as you intend to play in a season, so that they aren’t time-gated by the time you get around to playing them in earnest.
Why can’t they attract new players? Because the new players are busy playing games that are quick pace and good for streaming. WoW mythic dungeons are not that interesting to watch.
No, we can’t attract new players and get them to stay because of piss poor attitudes and poor community management. People treat new players and ones that don’t understand the game like crap so people quit after being treated like crap.
It’s not fun and why pay and play a game you’re up up set when playing and treated like crap. The gone items are nothing.
Hi, no they aren’t, back towards the end of B4A I entered in a few comunity ‘costume contests’ on my shaman. The kind where you also use mounts and/or pets. I got asked quite a few times about my Primal Flame Saber by newer players and ‘how can I get the lava cat’. It really sucks telling some one “Oh, this was part of a one week cross game promotion with Heroes of the Storm when Ragnaros was added, and you can’t get it any more” and just getting an ‘oh…’ in response. It is painful.
The reason you can’t attract new players is because Blizzard got lazy and began to rest on their laurels. WoW is no longer the gamechanger it was, it doesn’t carry the genre with as commanding of a lead, hell it isn’t even the lead anymore depending on who you ask, it’s no longer the game that literally every company creating an MMO is blindly mimicking with their own coat of paint on every step for a quick cash grab. Other games caught up, found their specific niches and focused on them. WoW is still trying to be the Jack of All Trades, Master of None. Some MMOs have made just solely doing professions a satisfying gameplay experience. WoW makes them feel more soulless and unimportant outside of maybe 4 weeks an expansion tops.
As for why you’re not retaining the new players you do get, community is a big one, the fact players get booted for not intimately knowing a dungeon on a game they just started playing and dared to vocalize that fact is a major cause for this. Getting into PvP is a steep barrier of entry that alienates more people than it brings in due to the amount of things you need to be able to perform to have any decent progress. The amount of external tools necessary to play the game is a huge barrier.
Then the other thing is players come into the game with a great starting experience and decent feeling combat. They get a very good first impression, but the endgame NEVER lives up to the hype they set for themselves so when they see this massive world they’re questing in and learning and seeing so much things, them realizing at the end all that awaits is a queue simulator and daily chores, it really puts them off because there is seldom a benefit to just immersing and enjoying the game how you want. That alone is the single biggest reason why retention fails.
Or to quote a streamer from FF14 who did the opposite of the trend last year and decided to try WoW for a month and got to max level and was doing PvE at a fairly decent level- “Wait, this is literally f-ing it? This is all there is to do?!”
What nonsense answer is this? What has this to do with anything so far?
Why don’t you switch over to FF14, if you can’t take feedback from the community?
Hahah too funny how i proved my point. NEW Players (even returning players) don’t about this. But yeah since you main ffxiv it is easy for you. Maybe stop thinking as a regular and think from a new players prospective. FFXIV is no where near the same level as WoW when it comes to a new player experience. Basically, if you can’t figure out WoW then you won’t figure out any mmos.
Always cracks me up when ffxiv fanbois like this think their precious is soo user friendly.
Ohh side note… Your FFXIV feels like a single player mmo. No one talks in chat. If you ask for help no one responds. WoW even if people think the chat is… welll… lame… at least it makes you know you are playing with other people. FFXIV you seriously feel like you are playing a solo mmo. I kept trying to engage in chat, ask for help when needed etc. and no one would respond. And no one chatted. Heck… i’ll even take Barrens chat vs 0 chat like FFXIV.
Ohhhh fyi, I did one of the last “dungeons” in FFXIV where you get like a mech to fly… guess how that was? 95% all RP. You literally got to actually play and do stuff in that dungeon only 5% of it. The rest was all RP and you couldn’t skip it. Not only that it was like 20+ mins. Soooo you did 5 mins of combat the whole place. LMAO pathetic mmo. WoW, SWTOR, New World, Rift, STO, LOTR, TSW, etc. are still so much better.
This community is a toxic hellhole the likes of which nuclear waste wouldn’t be dumped in.
The game is incredibly punishing to new players because of the sheer amount of mechanics as well as the fact that the endgame revolves around outside programs to ease the mental load of raids and encounters for players, and THOSE require additional setup.
The Battle Royale genre is just an MMO without the wait time of leveling; you get the part you want almost immediately, so there’s very little downtime and ‘leveling an alt’ is as easy as entering a new queue and matching up. This is the biggest reason why WoW’s lunch is getting eaten by Fortnite and PUBG on a regular basis.
agree the community is not what wow started with, blizz is part of the problem, before you have unlimited time to do a dungeon you needed to plan your pull, CC certain characters, and make sure you interrupt was more plan and coordination, now is just go go go as fast as you can.
today generation of people with time to play the game, they are for instant gratification, log in, do a dungeon get loot, log out and leave to any other life activities.
with life so fast since now everything is real time, twitter, face book etc. no one have time to wait for another player to learn and be good. i fit in here, you do a m+10 you except people to know what to do, since they had all the other levels 1 to 9 to learn… and is super disrespectful to the party to just want to be carry.
WOW is no longer for players, is for pro-players and streamers, their revenue comes from media and tournaments.
they DONT really listen to the players, “we listen to your feedback” is just … a lie. between people are tired of the lies, not getting loot at a good time rate. keep you gated in pvp from players that got a tier higher than you since they play all day the first 2 weeks.
they haven’t updated the engine of the game, and for today’s standard look BAD!
Sunday is family day for us, so I’m always with the wife and kiddos