Wow being in the worst state it’s ever been in is all the proof I need. You wouldn’t understand though, you’ve buried your head and are in denial.
It’s not what I think. It’s literally how Blizzard designs the game. Casual players get scraps while people who push M+ and raids get infinitely loads more focus as endgame content. Again, missing the point.
If we’re going to consider games outside the MMORPG genre, then I could easily throw in Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Counter-Strike, Starcraft, GTA IV, and again, probably loads more that aren’t coming to mind.
Do you think how a game looks matters? CSGO and Minecraft are routinely some of the most played games and highest viewed games on Twitch. League of Legends sits at #1 virtually all the time, and it’s 14 years old. GTA V is a PS3 game that still sits in the Top 10 for most sold units frequently. None of these games tout superb graphics. Great art styles, much like WoW’s, but nothing outstanding.
The amount of competition hasn’t changed. These were all vying for player attention and WoW still came out on top. WoW has changed for the worse and is struggling to keep up. Once again, you remain ignorant to the broader picture.
League of Legends and Fortnite both have insanely high skill ceilings and are hardly friendly to new users. The communities are exceptionally toxic, and the amount of time you need to put into the game to be competitive or good is comparable to endgame grinds in WoW. You don’t need to be good to have fun, but most people playing these games are likely turned away by the skill ceilings.
The lower entry cost is irrelevant because it’s not money people have an issue spending. Do you think Riot became a multi-billion dollar corporation by their game being free? These people who play the game spend hundreds, if not thousands, on hero skins and emotes.
It’s literally losing subscribers as we speak lol
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You know stating your opinion as a fact doesn’t make it a fact, right?
I disagree. There is more for casual players now than there used to be. Could there be more? Sure.
It’s still not quite the same. You also have to factor in that mmorpgs have fallen out of favor over the years. Outside of ff14 and WoW, most other mmos have to get by with a fraction of the player base. Going back to new world, they had a peak of over 900k players after launch and barely over two months later they struggle to break 100k a day now. They lost 90% of their players in under 3 months. From a game that is buy to play with no subscription.
With as many players as both games have, only a small percentage are playing high end competition like that. The majority are just picking it up in their spare time to mess around and have some fun.
And when 9.2 hits, they’ll get a bunch back. And after a while they’ll lose them again. Then 10.0 will come out and they’ll get way more back and then slowly lose them over time. And then 10.1…and so on and on
Not my opinion. The game has bleed subs throughout SL. That’s a fact.
Such as? A couple three hour campaigns, a few new mounts to farm, and a couple activities that take less than twenty minutes to do is not my idea of having more for casual players.
Casual players need reasons to stay engaged, too.
How is that not the same? Is it somehow not the same simply because it counters your argument?
You said MMORPGs aren’t the only competition. I provided a handful of multiplayer games that were equally popular and relevant when WoW was at its peak in subscription numbers. What’s not the same here?
So have MOBAs. Do you see any relevant MOBAs outside of Dota 2 and League of Legends? These games have unyielding legacies, much like WoW, and that has carried them. Except where League and Dota have honored their legacy and even recognized it, WoW has trampled its legacy into the ground and seemingly forgot what made it so great to begin with.
Okay, so you acknowledge that a casual base is what keeps a game healthy and relevant, and that appealing to that crowd is just important as those who push harder content/higher ranks.
Now apply that to WoW.
This is not sustainable and you know it. With each and every expansion, we get less and less people coming back to the game. It has been that trend for quite some time. When MoP released, subscription numbers shot back up to 10 million, down 2.5 from WoW’s peak. When WoD came out, the subscription spike was even less, and the same trend continued with Legion, BfA, etc. There will come a point where an expansion is released (assuming this game hasn’t hit that point yet), and the recurring cyclical players won’t be enough to keep this game afloat.
WoW is not and should not be a cyclical game.
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They just need to separate pve and pvp. Which should have been done expansions ago.
Even with this vid I am not seeing Blizz change at all.
“You need to see this”
Actually, I don’t.
Those are only part of it. You are leaving out the expansion long progression systems they’ve been putting in since legion to keep players engaged. These things give casual players ways to keep working on their character after hitting level cap. Without them, the players would quickly grow bored and quit. The problem isn’t the systems, the problem is with their implementation.
But you are wrong. It’s been this way since MoP so it is obviously sustainable. WoD also saw a spike to 10 million players at the start of the expansion as well. The last several expansions set personal records for copies sold at launch. You might not like it, but you can’t argue reality, which is WoW is a cyclical game and has been for years, and they are still profitable. The truth is the game has a stable floor of players that is enough to keep the game going in between content patches and expansions where population spikes and dwindles over time and it is enough to keep it going for years to come. All your doomsaying is false.
This is especially clear in pve/leveling
I’m pretty sure Blizzard just accepted that new players aren’t a thing these days and just went to retaining the addicted players instead.
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Exactly this. I got more enjoyment trying out Classic WoW and I came here late TBC so it’s not even a nostalgia rush. I’ll take the simple, no systems beyond gearing over covenants/conduits/legendaries/etc or legendary cloak/necklace/azertie gear/essences/etc.
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And as many people have pointed out in this and many other threads, these progression systems are not meaningful in any way if you’re someone not pushing M+ keys and raid logging because they only matter at this level of play. These systems are designed around harder content, which casual players clearly have no interest in playing, otherwise they wouldn’t be called casual players.
But more to the point, it doesn’t serve a purpose outside of extending your play time. It shouldn’t be considered “content” when all it is is the same grind we’ve done since 2004, except now it’s infinitely grindier. Additionally, it’s not “casual” content if you haven’t been keeping up with the game since its release. To put it into some perspective:
You have to grind 80 levels of renown
You have to max out your item level in Torghast (you can obtain a maximum of 1040 Soul Ash a week, the first level costs 1250)
You have to grind all your conduits
You currently have to grind out your gem sockets, and in the next patch your “cyphers”
Is this your idea of casual play? You said it yourself that the majority players in games like League of Legends stick around because of how easy it is to pick up and put down. Do you think any casual or new player is going to stick this grind out once they realize just how big it is or that it’s completely irrelevant as content if they aren’t doing the content it’s designed around?
There are MMOs that have died for less (see Tera and Wildstar). The only reason why WoW has stuck around is, again, because of its legacy and the amount of time put into the game by players, but this sort of thing can only last for so long before it backfires on even the most dedicated players.
Blizzard needs to find ways to design its game better, and I don’t mean stacking grinds on top of grinds. It needs to find ways to keep existing players engaged without alienating its growth through new and casual players. There needs to be more nuance, and it needs to be friendlier to jump back into, because this isn’t working.
Players are already bored and are already quitting. I don’t know why you’re incapable of seeing that. This is not par for the course.
Which, again, I said has become less and less with each expansion. Are you reading what I’m saying or not?
Since when has copies sold been the deciding factor for an MMO/live service game’s success? You know well enough that the success of these games is not decided by how much they sell at their launch. It is solely dependent on how many players it keeps engaged and if it can sustain any growth. WoW is failing on both of these fronts and you know it.
Don’t play dumb.
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Wrong!
This attitude is what’s wrong with the game… make everything easier/dumb it down to account for the laziest of the lazy.
If you’re going to boost your very first character, the simple solution is to take 30 mins to read up on the expansion and then take 30 mins to read up on the class you’re playing.
And ffs don’t expect to boost and be able to be competitive in your very first bgs. This isn’t a mobile game. You do have to put in some actual time and effort even with blizzard putting in catch up items like the lv40 renown boost, lv200 conduit boost, etc.
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You don’t HAVE to do anything. If you want to be on the cutting edge, you are going to have to put in more effort, that is how it has always been, but you can also just enjoy the game at your own pace. I think you really don’t get other perspectives from your own. Leveling up covenants wasn’t a grind, it was just something I did as I played naturally. You could only get 3 levels a week until the catch up anyway but you are calling it a grind. Same thing with soul ash. These things had anti grind mechanics on purpose so people couldn’t no life through them in the first couple of weeks. Calling it grindier is absurd. It is casual content. I log in, do some callings, my covenant stuff, korthia, torghast if I feel like it.
You are trying to frame these things as grinds and not content when they are the opposite.
Wildstar died for focusing almost exclusively on the hardcore crowd, I never played tera so I can’t comment on that one, but acting like legacy or momentum is the only thing keeping WoW going is silly. The game is still profitable, that is why it is still going, but I’m sure the whole thing will backfire and blow up in their face in the next decade or so.
There is always room for improvement, but having endgame progression systems not tied to instanced content is what keeps casual players engaged after level cap. You just call it a grind because you don’t want to do it but it wasn’t a grind for me. I got my 80 renown be just playing normally. I got my soul ash and legendary by playing normally. I got my conduits by playing normally. The game has only gotten more forgiving and easier to jump back into.
That has more to do with blizzards release cadence being fubar. We went way too long before 9.1, we’ve been waiting for 9.2 for too long, and 9.2 isn’t going to have enough content to keep people around for the 10-12 months before 10.0 drops. I think we’re all well aware of this. Not sure what they can do about it, but as people get bored, they drop off and play other stuff until there is new stuff to do. The same as it has been for years now. Is it a problem for you? Sure seems that way. Is it a problem for blizzard? Apparently not. By the way, I’m not defending them for the length of time between content patches but that has more of an impact of people leaving than people not liking the covenant system or the story.
If blizzard ever manages to get back to a quicker turn around time on releasing content, those are non issues.
Another wanna be TheActMan YT channel. Yea can tell from the thumbnail that this guy is trying to be him. I wont click. Cant fool me.
My point being that there is no reward for grinding out these systems for casuals because they will never do the content where they actually matter, and if they do and haven’t been spending time with the game, then they have to play catch-up until they can actually do it. This is content specifically designed for higher skill play. It’s not casual content.
If you’re casual, then doing these grinds are pointless. If you’re not, doing these grinds is a chore and alienates you from playing the game.
Saying “play the game at your own pace” is such an out-of-touch take because everything about this game is funneled towards doing endgame content like M+ and raids. It instills such a sense of FOMO for the average player.
I’m not even talking about cutting edge. Meta dominates this game to the degree that most people won’t accept you into a group for anything unless you’ve completed these grinds to an acceptable level.
Which is exactly what WoW is doing.
Shadowlands lost 40% of its playerbase two months after the game launched. Do you think there was a content draught then?
You are a Blizzard shill to the highest degree.
And I think you’re incapable of separating your feelings about the game from reality.
Am I repeatedly doing the same tasks over and over and over to reach a certain point?
Then it’s a grind.
You’re clueless and I refuse to argue with someone as incapable of critical thinking as yourself any further.
Have fun burying your head in the sand. I bet you’ll feel super justified about your opinion when this game gets booted to the wayside because it chased everyone away. Literal high-profile WoW content creators are leaving this game in droves, virtually all content creators speak poorly about the state of the game, subscriptions and player retainment are at all all time low.
But sure, it’s the “content draught” that’s the problem here.
Bye.
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Systems don’t make the game difficult. They make it obnoxious and annoying and needlessly gated. For everyone.
You missed the point of my posts in here.
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You really don’t get it. It doesn’t matter if they never do the content “where is actually matters” they are doing it for their own sense of progression. I can upgrade my gear by myself without having to go in a raid. That is the definition of casual content. What does it matter what I use it for or if I need it or not? It’s something I can work on, on my own, on my own time.
Pointless to you.
More players do not raid and do not do M+ than players who do. Your idea of the average player is way off.
Good thing there are ways to play the game where you don’t have to worry about the meta and being accepted into the right group.
If WoW was only catering to the hardcore crowd, none of this extra stuff would exist and all progression would be tied to instanced content.
Source?
That is such a broad definition as to make the word almost meaningless. Like, you’ve just described almost any video game ever made. It’s difficult to take you seriously anymore.
Yes, some of you have been waiting for the game to die for 17 years now. I’m sure it’s just right around the corner.
I can only like what people on the internet tell me to like. If they stop liking something I have to stop liking it too. lolz
Source?
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Or let it, it might knock some sense into you.
Classic example of how systems on top of systems ruined the game, time sink for metrics, turning WOW into a business plan that no one wants. This current dev team needs to go and move Ion back to some other crappy task as he is not right man for lead or job.
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Likewise.
Nooooo but it’s the new way to design games! If we let players have fun, how will the game thrive?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!
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Really looking forward to the day I can come back to comments like this and just laugh at people who thought WoW was incapable of dying.
Starcraft was once untouchable, too. Now look where it’s at.
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