WoWs become a niche game

Community General Discussion
1

Doomsayers will say WoW is dead while blizz fanatics will say everything is amazing.

Both are wrong.

WoW has just adapted into a specific niche instead of just being a well rounded mmorpg.

That niche being high end pve content. Mythic+ dungeons and mythic raiding is the main focus of development. In order for this to be maintained the developer have added systems to give those players something to do instead of raid logging.

The boosting is also a byproduct of this this end game focused game. This is reinforced with tokens making it safer to buy boosts from players due to no risk in account ban or hack (as well as no risk of credit card fraud as that was an issue in the “black market” gold/boost sellers)

For those who have always been into pve content the game feels more or less the same, maybe a few more boosts ads in trade chat but you can get by doing what you do with no problem.

However with WoW focusing on a certain type of players the other types of content start lacking. Pvp for example has become an even bigger pain to progress in and enjoy on a casual level. Random bgs are filled with overgeared boosters/mythic raiders ones shotting everyone.

Casual players also have to put up with a ton of systems in order to enjoy the basic content. Rp players don’t get much at all as their is no player housing, gear dying, or a ton of customization options.

At one point WoW had a little of everything.

Endgame pve content

Good pvp with a path for everyone to gear, even casuals.

A large open world for casual players to enjoy

A ton of races as a way for rpers to express themselves. (WoWs diverting was a huge selling point not many mmos had a lot of races like wow did. But now with modern customization options sliders and massive color wheels wows customization is showing it’s age. Which is why I think allied races where an important step. WoWs engine can’t support sliders and the advance customization that other mmos and video games have now. All it can do is continue adding new races to make up for it)

WoW isn’t going anywhere, it’s just a niche game. Just like how black desert, Archage, and new world have their communities WoW just gonna have theirs

20 Likes
2

People tend to forget that before WOTLK, MMOs were a niche genre for meganerds. However WoW is not a good niche game currently. It needs a lot of work.

9 Likes
3

If anything Chris kaleiki said is true after he left then the team is disorganized and understaffed which could very well mean that you only need a handful of pro E-sports devs in there to make changes that work for them and not the majority.

2 Likes
4

I’d disagree here.

If your a mythic raider or someone with money to blow this games just fine

4 Likes
5

I agree, but would like you to change the use of shill to fan. Shill indicates, to me, that the person with that view has a connection to the company.

MMO’s in general have always been a “niche” game though, most players in other games seek a end game, a win condition. MMO’s never end, and never have that true “Win”.

7 Likes
6

There’s actually a very large amount of open world casual content in Shadowlands, although it’s not focused on the gear hamster-wheel. Plenty of rare encounters, difficult-to-acquire treasures, Sanctum content that is significantly different for each covenant, and so on. However, I do wish that learning what all this content is was a bit more user-intuitive in the game without the need to download an addon to track it.

Plus, of course, the usual hunting for transmogs/achievements/pets/mounts, etc.

Yes, there is a finite amount of this content. But there’s a lot more than I think most people realize.

You may not enjoy or care about this content and that’s a perfectly legitimate position. But it is there.

1 Like
7

Casuals can completely ignore 90% of the systems, though. I make the legendaries for my alts that seem fun, conduits might as well not exist to me, I got my first domination shard last week when I killed Sylvanas for the first time in LFR. I ain’t stressin’ over systems lol

2 Likes
8

I meet ya half way and changed it to fanatics. Shill might’ve been too harsh but everyone on the forums is a wow fan of sort some fans don’t like the way the game is atm. So fanatics is a better term I think

9

WoW was always a niche game to a degree. What was once the hottest news on the street corner is now yesterday’s headlines with the newer generation of game player. The modern player looks for fast pace games. Many adrenalin junkie style of feeling where it is won or loss in a matter of just a few minutes. Where is WoW has been and always will be open ended.

You also have to keep to mind that the huge story line which for years was WoW lead to WotLK. Many of player felt that the story ended there at Ice Crown. And no matter what story line that proceeded would never match what had been. It’s hard to compete when you once had a lot of stars, VIP’s and general a huge gaming population screaming the heralds of your game. To suddenly start to bleed off and shut up about it.

Now all you hear is complaints or outright nagging about every aspect of the game. Which even a person who is enjoying the game will start to withdraw and move away from the game if they listen to it one end. It also has a direct effect of the designers and what they produce. Now days we see each time something is successful one xpac it will be reused over and over again in xpac until the player base is totally sick of it. A copy n paste effect. Very simply if it was a method that kept the player base happy and busy for an xpac, expect it to be reused. This leads to nothing new to being added entertainment wise in the next xpac, it feels like you’re not moving into a new xpac but simply playing an extended version of the past one.

So in saying all this MMORPG’s have always been niche group of player. But WoWs current state, is an issue that could use a lot of work by both the design team by putting out something new and refreshing and for the player themselves to simply stop being Debbie Downers about everything WoW and stop hanging on every word of a streamer who is only looking for money and clicks.

1 Like
10

You left out FF14. The art style, slow combat system, and forced story telling definitely creates a niche.

Although…by its exclusion I assume your are implying that it is well rounded

2 Likes
11

Yeah, it will continue to shrink.

This will have to expand as WoW continues to shrink.

1 Like
12

MMOs are, have, and always will be niche.

Even at the highest point in wow it still paled in comparison to other games.

The same time wow had 12 million subs (2008-2010) CoD was selling 15-25 million copies of yearly release games.

WoW is making more now than it did then thanks to MTX and it STILL is dwarfed any time Activision releases a CoD. Even if that CoD isn’t super well received.

2 Likes
13

I wouldn’t say well rounded but I don’t think it’s specific enough for a niche

Ffxiv has extreme raiding, rp content, and casual pve. While it does have pvp I’d say that’s severely lacking and would put it as a selling point.

If an mmo has 2 out of the 3 main pillars (pve, rp, pvp) then i don’t consider it niche, but I also don’t consider it well rounded. Just average.

Black desert as crafting and pvp but no endgame pve or rp therefore being niche

Archeage is pvp and crafting as well so a niche as well

Guild wars 2 has pve and pvp content as well as a lot of customization so I’d consider that one a well rounded mmo, even if endgame progression isn’t really a thing since everything is horizontal.

Eso has good casual content, decent pvp, and high rp customization options. I’d rank that well rounded too.

New world is…… niche it’s another crafting pvp mmo. No pve content except for lvling.

14

There does seem to be a lot to do with absolutely no reason to do it. Or if it has a reason to do it, it usually involves some low chance RNG.

That’s likely where the vibe of there not being any casual content comes from. The complete lack of meaningful things to work on. The closest things we really have to a casual progression system are the mission table and the horrendous climb to Codex rank 6.

Everything else is just an obvious time-waster, which doesn’t feel so good in a RPG. We know we’re wasting time on things, but it’s such a different experience when it’s met with no feeling of gaining anything.

5 Likes
15

WoW is salvageable if they’d get their head out of the rears and realize they are not gods, that their design is failing.

2 Likes
16

I don’t ever see the subscriptions ever rising again, but maybe the can slow the decent.

17

Subs rise every expansion launch, the problem is lately they have problems keeping people around and getting them to come back during patches.

Look at 9.1.5, what is there to come back for? 2 weeks of TW?

1 Like
18

I don’t agree the trend is a continual loss of subs overall. This is the reason they switched to reporting MAU’s to investors.

They even recently tried to inflate MAU’s by making one sub play 3 games: WoW, Classic and BC Classic.

1 Like
19

“Meaningful content” is going to have different definitions for different people. Me, I find farming mounts/mogs/achievements to be much more meaningful than running the same old dungeons over and over and over again to get the same gear just with a different ilvl than what I already had. But I do realize that many folks do find meaning in the gear treadmill and that’s fine if that’s what they enjoy.

I am not sure that many people realize how much “casual content” (again, a term with different meanings for different people) is truly present. For me, as an example, I recently downloaded Handy Notes to help me track down spawn locations for Maelie the Wanderer in Korthia. When I did, I was blown away with the amount of rare chests, additional mounts, etc, just in Korthia that I had no idea existed. Or treasure chests with different steps to open them. And then I started looking over the maps for the rest of the Maw and the other SL zones and I was blown away by all the stuff I didn’t know about. Most of which involves no RNG whatsoever. I’m having a blast tracking all that stuff down. But I played for nearly a year without even knowing it existed.

3 Likes
20

MAUs are blizzard wide, “inflating” them by putting all those on one sub is meaningless.

There is no specific “wow” mau, it’s blizzard maus

1 Like