I’ve never seen a gaming company so determined to lower participation.
M+ was too easy, better put up the walls and really distinguish the tops from the bottoms - disincentivization.
Amirdrassil was too easy up until Tindral/Fyrakk? Better create some broodtwisters and princesses to really put some mid-raid walls in - disincentivization.
Tank and healer engagement is through the roof? Better nerf them into the ground so nobody wants to play them - disincentivization.
A spec is overperforming? Should we buff others to match? Nah. Gut the overperforming class - disincentivization
Also Blizz: why is retail engagment dropping and everyone is going to play the 20 year old version of the game instead???
Because not having your effort respected and being put in weekly loot timeout isn’t meaningful to play, and thus no incentive to play hard content when it’s all about your weekly timeout. That’s why m+ flopped extra this season.
Because infinite leveling in classic respects your effort and isn’t a weekly timegate meme. People enjoyed classic more when it was about quests/leveling/doing regular dungeons, as you didn’t run into the timegate doing those.
We love challenging content, just not when it’s a weekly timegate.
That isn’t their intent… or at least I don’t think they’re that crazy.
The problem is that Blizz thinks they know what players want.
Blizz reads the metrics, all the time, and they see behaviours of players doing stuff they don’t want to see. Performing too well, advancing too quickly for the expected consumption levels, and so on. They they make their adjustments to bring player behaviors to be more in-line with what they want them to be. Often by changing downstream details like tweaking the balance numbers.
But, when you really get down to it, players are doing what they want. Some want to progress the game, others just want to have fun, and some just don’t want to do the type of content Blizz keep trying to add to the game.
So Blizz keep misreading the signals, often because they refuse to believe their idea of what players want is wrong.
They also don’t want to admit some long standing systems that involve timegate are trash and making the game a worthless experience. It’s the infinite double down, as the devs are stuck with their existing easy button.
I read the season 2 patch notes and quit at the start of 11.0.7. I’m not interested in participating in a game the developers actively troll and are antagonistic to. Remove weekly login lootbox vault, and weekly raid lockouts. My offramp this month was seeing them double down on these.