With all the systems in place, that were blatantly put there to have us invest a lot of time into each character. What do they gain by having us play 100 hours a week, instead of 5? I have tried to think on this from several angles, and came up with nothing. So, I welcome your theories.
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I’m with OP on this.
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Because this is an mmorpg, it requires an investment of time. If you’d rather play a game that requires only 5 hours per week then this game is a bad choice for you.
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I dunno, makes the game look better for the investors?
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i dont mind putting time in just not the kind of content they been designing last 3 expansions totally not enjoyable.
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That doesn’t make business sense, as long as we are happy with the product, and keep buying it, they gain nothing by drawing out the time investment needed.
People who play more hours/month are more likely to keep playing. If you only play an hour or two a week it’s pretty easy to go “ehh, its not really worth the $15” and go do something else. On the opposite hand, if you’re playing ~160 hours a month (40/week roughly), the logic becomes “its only 9c an hour; worth it”.
Plus, the longer people play per day, the busier the game becomes. A key part of MMOs is the social aspect; if there’s no-one to play with, it’s a glorified single player game.
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It’s called mudwimping. There’s only one way to play the game right. If you’re playing the game wrong, you need to be forced to play it right. It’s a moral imperative for them. It’s more important than real life that everybody be forced to play the game right.
And nobody would ever quit over this.
This is a game. It’s not supposed to be fun. If you’re playing the game for fun you’re playing for the wrong reasons. The only right reason to play is to show off your moral superiority to people who are playing it wrong.
http://www.memorableplaces.com/mudwimping.html
They have spreadsheets that prove that a 43 minute play session = “fun”. How dare you doubt their wisdom?
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It does, as explained by Karat above.
I agree with all your points. And I thought of most of these, but so many decisions have been made to “force” play time. At the end of the day, this is a customer retention based business. Seems like a no brainer to design it to be fun first, then people will keep playing, for….fun.
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But how? To prove people play? Wouldnt sub numbers do this? No one has fully explained (including blizzard) why we should play so gatedly.
Only thing i can think of is it would keep more ppl subbed and lose gate-haters vs ppl zooming and getting bored and unsubbing. Like a which would be lesser of 2 evils
Trying to make every genre appeal to every gamer for the all mighty dollar I mean “accessibility” is murdering the hobby.
Yeah, I agree. To me, it would be a healthier business model to have the game become more “episodic”. Like, you enjoy the crap out of it for 3 months. Then wait for the next batch of content, rinse and repeat. That seems to be a lot better than to have a huge chunk quit permanently.
nice metrics for the shareholders, no one wants to invest in a dead game, they need a reason to keep us around. If we dont keep logging in we may play something else.
Fun without commitment is fickle. That works fine for games that you just pay up front for; they just have to keep you interested long enough so Steam will deny your refund.
MMOs have to take a long view though; they want you to pay every month. Obviously people having fun is good but they also want to ensure you stick around when the novelty of the latest patch wears off; they don’t want you killing the latest BBG and then unsubbing as soon as the cutscene is over.
This is the only thought I could land on also. But, the main cheese should see the trend on how the most important numbers are trending, and stepped in. “Dear shareholders, you can see on this graph, the remaining 30% of subscribers play an average of 3 hours a day on one character!!” Shareholders: “Sell, sell, sell”
Addiction is great for business.
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I think it all boils down to its their way to impress the shareholders. Management & shareholders LOVE statistics that prove the product is being used regularly, there’s probably also industry data that shows the more hours a customer plays the game, the more addicted they become, which means they spend more money. I’m just guessing thats the reason but it makes sense. Think of a popular soft drink, if they get people addicted to the stuff then the consumer buy more and more, and profits soar. Its the same with games - addiction means more profits.
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What metrics would you suggest using to determine if people are enjoying the game?
Average subscriptions over a year period.