Why do we see less players playing the end game? (long text, sorry)

Community General Discussion
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Hello there! I hope everyone is doing great.

I play this game for a loong time and I know that we have some cycles in life, specially in gaming where we play a game for a time, then quit, then comeback and quit, etc. But looking now, with some knowledge of gaming design that I aquire, at the state of Wow, looking at guilds trying to achiev Cutting Edge or looking at people trying to get that juicy M+ score, we can feel that less and less players are enjoying the game, long queues for healers, friends stop playing, players getting frustrated thanks to hard rng based drops.

You know, nowadays it is hard to see new players joining our fronts in WoW, maybe some old gamer fellow that played some expansions ago but never a new fresh soul. Gamers nowadays like things that respect their time, something you can play and enjoy after a long day at school or after a hard day at work. In RPG you wanna see your character getting stronger, every time you spent you want to be sure that you are progressing. That isnt happening in WoW, cause the whole end game system is made for like a dozen of guild raiders and its kinda crazy cause this is an MMO. Imagine you as myself, a brazilian player that already have the community hate for being br, playing with a latency of 160ms, trying to achiev the end game goals, playing with a class that is not meta and being behind dps cause my class is balanced based on a legendary and a very very rare trinket… What are the chances for me to achieve my goals in game (i know its possible, but its not like I have 80% of success right?), now imagine a new player trying to do all this, without having a friend, trying to learn the game from scratch… probably he wont last till max level.

Class balances behind a super rare drop are a very very poor design choice, Im main warrior and I have 15 kills on Fyrakk on HC, I saw that rare trinket drop 1 time lol and still I dont have the leggo, this is kinda lame. I dont blame people quitting the game after getting frustrated thanks to this rng drop chance, week after week you kill a boss and needs to be luck to roll for a trinket that almost never drops. The excuses are “its hard to get, but when you get it you will feel very very happy” and we know in game design that we cant just give the item for free, the player needs a journey to achiev that but in WoW the journey became longer and longer just to keep people logged in, cause in-game time are a thing for the shareholders.

Blizzard needs to revamp their whole system of itemization and challenge for end game content, they need more people at class balance cause everyone have a favorite class and they want it to shine. I know there will be always a meta, but make the non meta classes more viable is what we always want to see (hey look at the ret pallies now XD).

TLDR: This games need a better way to get gear to reduce the rng around item drop, a better balance team for each class and devs that really play the game.

Sorry for my text messy structure and for my english, its kinda rusty. This text is not meant to hurt anyone or to cry on this forum, is to invite you for a reflection.

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They messed professions , too much grinding ,they mocked players with their stupid bad luck protection etc etc etc.

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I can maybe answer this one if you mean M+. Healing keys in pugs especially sucks right now in the cc/survivability meta. Healing a bad 23 pug, you might have to do as much hps as what healers are doing in 30s except it is less predictable. Fail damage is way too high, if not oneshot, also unrelated but hpriest has too much nonsense now I want 4 less cooldowns. Good for people who do it for fun you’re better than I.

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I think it’s simply because slow progression MMOs aren’t popular these days. There are so many games to play online today. Old time players also get slowly burnt out as well. Some leave for the slower paced classic.

If it were up to me, I would focus WoW towards no strings attached anonymous solo/duo queue content as much as possible. PvP already does that to some success. M+ has all facilities to do the same by rio rating.

I’m convicted that very few people game to socialise these days and mostly just to have personal fun in the crowd of other players. There’s too much human interaction online already.

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I’m not reading the decently spaced wall because I already know the answer…it is because the end game is both hyper exclusionary to new/late comers and the fact we’re at the tail end of the patch/season.

The worst sin you can ever commit in this game, if you don’t have folks willing to take you in and carry you and thus have to rely on the pug scene to go beyond queue content, is falling behind the curve with the curve being IO score and public raid progression. That’s just the reality of pug life. At this stage in the game, why would I consider taking someone who isn’t 480+ for my vault fill runs or someone whose IO score isn’t purple? When I setup my weekly heroic Fyrakk kill group for my peeps who don’t have their axe, why would I not take people who have at least 5+ fyrakk I can instantly see at a glance? It’s absolutely true that the concent doesn’t need a 480+ ilvl, 2500+ IO, 5+ Fyrakk kill player to complete…but it also isn’t my problem you don’t have those basic qualifications this late into the patch/season.

Again, if you care at all about even decent progression and don’t have that network of people to run with and you let yourself fall behind the generally accepted pug curve…you’re in for a hellish time digging yourself out of that hole. It’s doable and your best advantage is running your own stuff and being the decider of who gets to come vs hoping to snag one of the available slots against a list of people all likely more qualified and capable than you…but still a grind nonetheless.

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Always funny when someone tries to scapegoat people at the top for anything.
You think people at the top like insane rng?
If anything a lot of them at the very top would rather have strict templates and gear not be a thing.

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Honestly, to me the end game is just way too formulaic, since BFA I’ve been doing this thing where I no life the first Patch, raid a bunch, etc, then my hype dies down, I quit for a few months, usually get removed from whatever guild I was then, come back, have a hard time joining a new guild mid progression of the new raid and seeing as I don’t particularly enjoy pugging so I avoid it then suddenly Raiding is a no-go until a new expansion comes around.

M+ is just… I don’t know, I don’t really get any dopamine from it, you know what I mean? Most runs I don’t get any upgrades, just doesn’t justify the stress of putting up a group, waiting like 15-20 mins to fill the group as DPS then hope a single mistake from any of the 5 players doesn’t cause everyone to quit.
As for the Raider IO score, It’s kinda like grinding Rank in League, when I was 16 it was fun as hell, I wanted to try going as far as I could, but nowadays I just find hard to care about it. In other words, M+ for me is all stick, no carrot, therefore it feels like a waste of time.

So to summarize, Raiding is fun at the beginning then you clear it and it becomes routine, causing me to quit the game for a few months to play something more fun, then I get gkicked for inactivity, then I come back and have a hard time joining a guild mid progression, which has me relying on pugs. Pugs however are hell on earth for both raiding and M+ so I tend to avoid it, therefore making the end game null for me after the first patch.

Also, yes, I would definitely agree that both the game design and it’s community is EXTREMELY unfriendly to new players, so it is no surprise that you see more vets returning than new players showing interest.

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I made a confusion in my thoughts during my writing. I was intending to write about how the best pve gear lies behind Mythic Raids, with no cross-server till hall of fame ends, even when they open to cross-faction the system simply doesnt allow you to join different pugs cause it locks you with a group for that week. Pugging any content is a hell even in heroic raid, imagine trying to do it at mythic difficulty.
You can say thats not for everyone, but if you sum it with all other lackluster issues in the game like class balance based on your optimized gear it feels depressing. Thats why most people feel that the game is unbalanced, all balances comes to the minority that have skills, time and IQ to complete the late game. Just compare other game class balances to WoW and you will find some issues.

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okay, honestly, in nearly six years I’ve done ‘end game content’ maybe three times, in classic wrath, and never in retail. Why? There is plenty to do in Wow without putting up with what is argueably one of the more toxic kinds of players day in and day out. I’m old-ish, suffer from CTS and perhaps more than a little CGAS. I’m older, competent, can’t be bothered to run the same dungeon umpty ump times for one solitary BIS drop because the return is never ever worth the investment for me. At this point I’m on the downside of how many heartbeats I still have and I’m not wasting them on someone whose response is ‘git gud nub’ when I make even a tiny mistake. Thanks, I’ll do it my way, y’all have fun.

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The problem is that in some cases the progress depends on a item that’s not even certain to drop for you during the season if you are unlucky. The slow pace progress is fine cause you know that you get there one day and you know thats not gonna be at the end of the season like the current state of WoW.

Imagine you trying to get to a end game guild or pugging some high end game, people gonna see your logs, raider io and etc but you can push key higher because you are not optmized (in a multi-way context, counting gear, latency, friends, classes you play n etc) or can have that sweet orange color log.

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It’s stifling compared to the dopamine you can get playing other games.

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A large part of why I stopped playing

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there is a hard break between solo or queueable content and group by invite content.

the rewards are hard partitioned and every opportunity to make better rewards available to solo or queueable customers is eliminated with extreme prejudice.

its a hard block that a lot of customers find tiresome.

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