I know WoD has been my least-played (and subscribed) expansion by far.
It's also the first expansion I didn't even bother getting at release (got it a month later). Then I only played for a few weeks before canceling my subscription (and so far haven't seen a reason to come back beyond wanting to chat with some of my old guildmates).
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
This has been my most-played expansion since WotLK, but I can understand why people are dissatisfied. Even I am playing the game far less than I did a month ago. And it's very noticeable in my guild; I rarely see other people online outside of raid nights, and we've had at least two regular raiders quit. And the people in the guild who haven't done raiding with us have been tapering off over the last few months.
Still hoping we can take down Blackhand in normal mode before it's too late.
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Yea, raiding's been nice but...There's really nothing to do outside of that.
Seriously though, dailies at least gave me a rep grind and gold generation that required me to do things rather than send three people away on a mission that requires no input from me.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
There's nothing to do because they made everything trivial by giving out absurd amounts of gear.
In TBC and WotLK I ran heroics all the time, even as a t5/t6 (TBC) or Ulduar geared tank, because it was worthwhile! Now I run a heroic every so often just for the fun of it, but outside of that it's pointless.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
That's a little disappointing - I haven't been subscribed since Wrath, but I've heard enough about the expansion to think that what they've done so far this XPac is a big step in the right direction. It might not hold people's attention for as long, but I honestly don't see that as a bad thing except for business. We're being honest this time, guys! You're free! The game is really over for now! Endgame actually means the end of the game, again! Go play something else for a while!
I just hope that Blizzard doesn't take the wrong impression. The game is ten years old, after all. Good time for trying new things - the worst time for them to regress. Maybe about the right time for a sequel, though - as superficial as that sounds for an MMO, it'd be a new engine, an opportunity to revise some of the regressive systems in place that are integral to the game at this point, an effective reset button for new progress while keeping existing stuff intact (don't like WoW2? Well, WoW1 is still around!), and an opportunity for a whole new Azeroth without destroying the existing world like they did in Cataclysm... and best of all they have other extensions of the brand active right now (HotS, Hearthstone, a friggin' movie) to keep it in the public while they set up for it.
But then they can just do that with the existing game as well without cannibalizing their existing base. Eh, MMOs are weird.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
They cant really change the current game all that much though. Especially a game that was likely coded on a codebase that had to be extremely limiting compared to nowadays.
They find creative ways around it, but to drastically 'update' the gameplay would be way more work than it is worth.
Also there is the fact they really had planned on doing just that with Titan and it never made it out the door. What direction would they take WoW in? MMOs as a WoW model are starting to die in general. That's why blizz has begun experimenting with other genres in order to sustain themselves on something else big. Which Hearthstone appears to have done. Then just keep throwing bones out there with new ones (their DOTA take and the remnants of Titan) hoping yet another one takes off.
Basically their only hope is to keep dumbing down WoW hoping to get older players back who don't have the time for it. When you think about it, selling an expansion at $60 + $15 at that increased player base more than made up for that drop off. Just do it again next expansion with more stuff that is awesome at first then sucks after a few months, and repeat.
Also now whatever % of players is playing on Token Time is a 33% increase in sub income. It seems like that % is pretty high in america at least.
I'm definitely one of the players at the WoD crevasse right now. My guys are all geared up with 655/660, my garrison is fully loaded and followers are all 675. I've never been interested in structured raiding due to time constraints, and I'm not even all that psyched about mic'ing up for a normal PUG via group finder (though custom group is the best thing they've offered in a LONG time). And when I am, it's a crapshoot - quality normal pugs are hella rare in my experience. If you get lucky and get a partial guild run there's a little chance at having some fun.
I'm not complaining so much as just noting that I think a lot of people are in that limbo I'm in after WoD.
They cant really change the current game all that much though. Especially a game that was likely coded on a codebase that had to be extremely limiting compared to nowadays.
They find creative ways around it, but to drastically 'update' the gameplay would be way more work than it is worth.
Also there is the fact they really had planned on doing just that with Titan and it never made it out the door. What direction would they take WoW in? MMOs as a WoW model are starting to die in general. That's why blizz has begun experimenting with other genres in order to sustain themselves on something else big. Which Hearthstone appears to have done. Then just keep throwing bones out there with new ones (their DOTA take and the remnants of Titan) hoping yet another one takes off.
Basically their only hope is to keep dumbing down WoW hoping to get older players back who don't have the time for it. When you think about it, selling an expansion at $60 + $15 at that increased player base more than made up for that drop off. Just do it again next expansion with more stuff that is awesome at first then sucks after a few months, and repeat.
Also now whatever % of players is playing on Token Time is a 33% increase in sub income. It seems like that % is pretty high in america at least.
Ah yeah, it's super unlikely after the Titan fail. Also considering Destiny's outcome relative to the initial predicted proceedings outlined by Bungie's contract, Activision may be sour on promoting anything along those lines going forward.
That said, the "MMO as a WoW model" may be exactly what they can fix with a sequel. The WoW-style MMO may be on its way out, but MMOs as a whole are still going strong. Blizzard just needs to figure out where they can fit with that.
Or skip it and give us WarCraft 4 already.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Once again, I'm amused by the headline: "Down to 7.1 Million !!". Yes, we are down to the population of Serbia paying us a subscription every month to play our game. The end is near.
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
Eh, I can't really speak for myself since I haven't been a dedicated raider for some years now, but at least based on the most active posters in this thread and on other forums I visit, the only people actively playing are either primarily raiding or solely raiding and doing nothing else. There's certainly some precedent for that since the devs have deliberately designed the vast majority of non-raiding activities to either be handled within the Garrison (eg. tradeskills) or just gotten rid of them entirely (eg. dailies, scenarios, arguably dungeons and archaeology via no-flight among others).
We've all beaten the topic to death but it basically seems to boil down to: 'Do I primarily derive my enjoyment of this game from raiding? If yes, WoD = Good (or at least enjoyable enough to continue paying the subscription). If no, WoD = Bad'. Essentially if a player was someone who played through most/all of the 14 months of SSO trying to down Garrosh for the Nth time or keeping him on farm for loot, more than likely they're still subbed to WoD.
Personally I found the design direction for this expansion pretty distasteful as they've removed or neutered enough of the content I preferred in previous expansions such that I don't find the game worth it (even for free with the gold I have stockpiled). I'm still keeping tabs on it because history has shown that whatever direction they choose for an expansion, however controversial, they always seem to jerk the wheel in the opposite direction for the next one, for better or worse.
That alone makes me very interested in this year's Blizzcon, as they're almost definitely announcing the new expansion this year. And if they buck their usual M.O. and just stay the course of WoD's design, that's fine too. I'm satisfied enough with what I've accomplished in my time with the game that I won't feel compelled to return.
Once again, I'm amused by the headline: "Down to 7.1 Million !!". Yes, we are down to the population of Serbia paying us a subscription every month to play our game. The end is near.
Everything in context. Compared to other games or the population of some countries sure it's not a big deal. Compared to itself and it's past however is a different beast. In that respect, yeah it's very much a noteworthy event and something they should be concerned about given that the numbers have dropped so sharply after the "big" expansion, so much so that they are now below the levels they had going into it.
In the context of the game that is a pretty big deal. Not quite "The end is near" yet for sure, but a very bad trend. Given how recent the expansion is I would expect it to keep falling for some time until the next big thing hits to inject players once more. Whether that is the next expansion or some other content in the meantime remains to be seen. I would wager they had hoped the expansion would boost the subs for a longer period of time though.
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Honestly the expansion was great at release, but then it just stagnated. Even something like the Krasarang patch would have been great.
These days i log on for my Sunday raid where we clear Heroic in 2 hours and work on Blackhand for like 4 pulls then call it a night. And every once in a while do Garrison upkeep but even that is like once or twice per week. I used to char achievements (got over 21k points iirc), but only ones that remain to me to get are
- locked behind mythic, which i don't do
- locked behind pvp which i have not enjoyed some pre-mop
- locked behind tedium for little to no points (mop archeology, timeless isle collectathon, pet battle stuff)
- straight up buggy and uncompletable
Edit: at this point i count my wow sub as a general blizzard sub for wow/d3/sc/hs/hots, and that should be a model they do too if they ever put out another actual subscription game (get "free" wow with your subscription to Wharglwbargle)
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
There's nothing to do because they made everything trivial by giving out absurd amounts of gear.
In TBC and WotLK I ran heroics all the time, even as a t5/t6 (TBC) or Ulduar geared tank, because it was worthwhile! Now I run a heroic every so often just for the fun of it, but outside of that it's pointless.
Eh, I don't feel that the gear this expac is coming any faster than prior expacs. Honestly I geared much faster in WotLK than I did in WoD.
I raided in TBC and ran heroics all the time, but that was usually because I was a tank (paladin) and everybody and their mom wanted me to help them get their attunements done (Shattered Halls timed run anyone?). When I wasn't raiding or running heroics I had several sets of dailies I could do.
I raided in WotLK, and ran heroics all the time because badges (and then VP) could be used to get tier gear for offspec sets, PVP gear, heirlooms, and pets and mounts as well as using tabards to get rep for the various factions. When I wasn't raiding or running heroics I had the Argent Tournament dailies which got me marks I could use for more heirlooms, and what, 14 mounts and 6 pets? There was also Wintergrasp which had its issues but was fun towards the end.
I raided in Cata, and ran heroics all the time because of VP which I could, again use for heirlooms and some tier gear, PVP gear, etc as well as tabards for rep and two dungeons dropped a rare mount. There were several sets of dailies around the world I could do as well, and there was also (yech) Tol Barad for some occasional PVP fun.
I raided in MoP, and I ran heroics occasionally for the once a day bonus rep and to fill out VPs. There were plenty of dailies to run, the farm was low maintenance (enough where I had 6 farms rolling at one point). There were occasional "fun" things scattered around like the Warbringers, some Timeless Isle stuff, and Isle of Giants, and we still had some dailies.
I stopped raiding for WoD. There is no reason for me to run heroics because they drop nothing I'm interested in. The "VP" in this expac comes from non-dungeon sources, and none of the dungeons need to be run more than once after you've been fully equipped from them (unless you are missing the two followers or something). Your "out of raids" activities are Ashran (yawn), Battlegrounds and Arenas (same crap, different levels), pet battles (yawn), Garrisons (which require a ton of babysitting if you want to maximize them), and the daily area attack quests which are your main source of Apexis and rep (low rep per kill of course).
Honestly the expansion was great at release, but then it just stagnated. Even something like the Krasarang patch would have been great.
These days i log on for my Sunday raid where we clear Heroic in 2 hours and work on Blackhand for like 4 pulls then call it a night.
You will never get Blackhand raiding that way. You should clear 9/10, call it a night, then extend the lockout and get a full night on him.
I think the plan is to do that one everyone has the skip to him quest done. Also misty of us don't care since we already got the kill while running with the main raid (that has the mythic 10/10 on farm) on one of their off night "gear the alts, retireds, and recruits" runs.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Edit: at this point i count my wow sub as a general blizzard sub for wow/d3/sc/hs/hots, and that should be a model they do too if they ever put out another actual subscription game (get "free" wow with your subscription to Wharglwbargle)
Excellent point, and this cannot be emphasized enough. Viewing WOW's subscription numbers in a vacuum is a mistake; viewing them as the entry point to draw people in Blizzard.net's web of game products is the right way to look at it. And viewed thusly, WOW has been and still is extraordinarily successful.
HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure anyone is doubting WoW's success; it was and still remains the king of the hill of its genre, but losing roughly 1/3 of your subscriber base less than one year into your expansion and not even into your second (and if the rumors are true, final) content patch is nothing to sneeze at and will certainly give the shareholders something to grumble about.
It's no coincidence that the WoW Token was introduced when it was - we'll very likely see some impact (possibly even a slight increase) during next quarter's notes given the introduction of the token and (likely) the launch of 6.2 in Q2.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
Eh, I can't really speak for myself since I haven't been a dedicated raider for some years now, but at least based on the most active posters in this thread and on other forums I visit, the only people actively playing are either primarily raiding or solely raiding and doing nothing else.
See, thats a popular misconception. WoWs huge ass numbers have been and still are largely the product of casuals who do not raid much if at all. People who do not have the TIME to get burnt out but could justify spending 15 a month to play it. The altaholics, the collectors, the explorers. These people make up the vast gamut of people.
The people who raid seriously like you state ARE the most active posters peroid. I know the vocal minority gets thrown around a lot, but the kind of people who raid also talk the most online about it. They are also the people who state "where is my content" and "this is boring now I am done" multiple times an expansion. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is what you see the most. The large % of the game however doesn't want to be bothered with the community around it and certainly has no interest in speaking out about it for the internet to see.
Also the "oh its ONLY 7 mil" arguement is flawed like others said. Its the HARSH dropoff that is noted. Its not like you just loose 3 million people then it stops there. Usually a drop off like that continues unless something stops the bleeding. A new expansion announcement that really gets the hype going yet again would bandage that up nicely.
Finally, with regards to MMOs, I do not see them as going strong. They are fine, but the good ones are thinking outside the box. Well, this might not be entirely true - I still do not understand why but FF14 manages huge numbers by regressing MMOs. I guess its just because its the only MMO to get as much love and time/money put into it as Blizzard could with WoW. If it wasn't for FF14 I would say the MMO genre was going to end soon though. The next biggest MMO believe it or not is prolly GW2. At least over here, I dunno if there is something huge outside of the US.
I know I've been having a dilemma in regards to what to do with alts. I know I've been mostly just raiding on my priest (because I am insane apparently and love having to work twice as hard for half the deeps), and everything else just has been gearing up via LFR... and once I no longer have gear to get from LFR, there's just this lack of content to do.
I'd love it if there were generally more activities to do. Timewalking is definitely a step in the right direction, since I always liked running dungeons but they stop being worth doing way too quickly. I'd love it if they finally grew some stones and gave PvP some actual love and massive reworks/balance pass that'd get people playing because it was fun to play. (Finally completely removing gear's effects in PvP and rebalancing damage/abilities around that could be huge.)
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Edit: at this point i count my wow sub as a general blizzard sub for wow/d3/sc/hs/hots, and that should be a model they do too if they ever put out another actual subscription game (get "free" wow with your subscription to Wharglwbargle)
Excellent point, and this cannot be emphasized enough. Viewing WOW's subscription numbers in a vacuum is a mistake; viewing them as the entry point to draw people in Blizzard.net's web of game products is the right way to look at it. And viewed thusly, WOW has been and still is extraordinarily successful.
How is that an excellent point? Paying for a WoW sub gives you nothing in any other game of theirs. Buying boosters in HS gives you nothing in WoW or any other game. Ditto with HotS. D3 and SC2 don't even have any sort of in game monetization anyway to have them included in a "Blizzard Sub" umbrella.
How is it a mistake to view WoWs sub numbers in a vacuum when they are precisely that? Nothing about any of their titles provides any incentives for playing any of their other games. At all. And the player populations of each of their games is so disparate that there's no reason to assume or believe that one gives any meaningful visibility to the others. If anything their launcher is what is providing visibility, not any specific game; but even then, each game is so distinct in its genre that nothing about any one game would encourage playing another. Like SC2? Try WoW! No. Not any more than playing Total War provides any visibility to Sonic the Hedgehog. SC2 and D3 didn't need WoW for visibility, as both they, and their precursors were more successful than WoW, on an individual unit/player sales basis. HS certainly uses the WC setting, but surpassed WoW's player numbers so fast that it'd be difficult to argue that WoW was key to its success. Reality was the name Blizzard was, not an individual game. HotS draws from all of their IP's but has more links to WC3 and is more known due to its genre, than any meaningful bearing WoW has on it. WoW didn't create the Blizzard reputation and it sure as shit hasn't improved said reputation from where it was prior to WoW.
WoW actually has the highest barrier of entry to any of their games, and is far and away the least likely to influence visibility of any others from a pure numbers perspective. No longer having an active sub in WoW has absolutely zero bearing on my ability to play any of their other games; and since it provided absolutely zero benefit to any of their other games, there is nothing lost there either.
That is the precise opposite as providing an entry point to their "web of game products", and if someone is maintaining a WoW sub under the auspices of it being a "general blizzard sub", they are pissing their money away for absolutely nothing.
And given the vastly different types of monetization in each of their games, I don't see a way they could provide such a subscription that would both provide players with enough incentive to pay for it, and provide Blizzard with enough money to offset what would normally be individual spending in individual games that would be reduced because of it.
Anyway, there's a vast difference between pointing out the reality of losing almost 3 million players in a quarter being a pretty fucking gigantically huge deal; and taking the leap into the 'WoW is dead' territory. It's not dead, but there isn't any rational way to dismiss that big of a loss, that quickly, as no big deal. The idea that it's normal post expansion attrition, as they themselves tried to claim, is hilariously and painfully obviously false. And trying to paint WoW as the driving force behind Blizzards success is profoundly disingenuous. WoWs success is a byproduct of what Blizzard produced before, the reputation they earned, and trust players have/had in them as a company. Not the other way around. Financially, WoW has unquestionably been the biggest deal for Blizzard as a corporate entity, but past that, one would be hard pressed to argue that financial success has translated into objectively better results for gamers themselves. In a world where WoW never existed, Blizzard still would have been extremely successful, well known, and well liked. None of their current games hinge on WoWs existence, nor are any of them actually improved by its existence.
It is the very nature of a vacuum; the mistake would be in giving it credit for something it never actually earned.
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
Eh, I can't really speak for myself since I haven't been a dedicated raider for some years now, but at least based on the most active posters in this thread and on other forums I visit, the only people actively playing are either primarily raiding or solely raiding and doing nothing else.
See, thats a popular misconception. WoWs huge ass numbers have been and still are largely the product of casuals who do not raid much if at all. People who do not have the TIME to get burnt out but could justify spending 15 a month to play it. The altaholics, the collectors, the explorers. These people make up the vast gamut of people.
The people who raid seriously like you state ARE the most active posters peroid. I know the vocal minority gets thrown around a lot, but the kind of people who raid also talk the most online about it. They are also the people who state "where is my content" and "this is boring now I am done" multiple times an expansion. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is what you see the most. The large % of the game however doesn't want to be bothered with the community around it and certainly has no interest in speaking out about it for the internet to see.
Before WoD, heck until about three months or so ago, I absolutely understood and agreed with that. The casual player bolstered the subscriber base and the hardcore/raider fostered much of the community passion of the game. But these days, especially given WoD's general absence of things to do outside of raiding, I have a hard time believing there are that many non-raiders throwing down subs on the game. I mean I'm sure there are some, don't get me wrong, but I'd be extremely surprised if it were anywhere near the majority percentage it used to be even, two or three years ago.
I think, of those 7.1 million subs still left (not accounting for the players with multiple accounts, or bots, or whatever other factors will muddy that number somewhat), the majority are likely:
-Doing at least Normal mode raiding content via the Group Finder tool/guild raids
-Pet battles
-PvP via BG/Arena
-Spending the balance of their time in their garrison/leveling alts to do the same
There really isn't much else to do that is comprised of current content. You can farm old raids for transmog gear or chase after old achievements but apart from that, the 'to do' list gets pretty sparse. I just have a hard time thinking that your average casual WoW player who doesn't raid or PvP is willing to drop $15 a month on Pet Battles. But maybe I'm off base.
In any case, even if 6.2 is the last major content patch of WoD, we're at least looking at this expansion lasting through Christmas (since the target timeframe for content patches is about six months according to the devs) and that's a long time to go on even what this new patch is bringing to the table. I really have to wonder how well they figure Tanaan Jungle (Timeless Isle 2.0) will hold players over.
Then again, there were still people farming frogs on TI up until WoD released, so it's pretty clear some people have a different idea of 'fun' than I do.
I'm not sure anyone is doubting WoW's success; it was and still remains the king of the hill of its genre, but losing roughly 1/3 of your subscriber base less than one year into your expansion and not even into your second (and if the rumors are true, final) content patch is nothing to sneeze at and will certainly give the shareholders something to grumble about.
It's no coincidence that the WoW Token was introduced when it was - we'll very likely see some impact (possibly even a slight increase) during next quarter's notes given the introduction of the token and (likely) the launch of 6.2 in Q2.
I doubt the tokens are going to have that big of an effect. People paying real money for the tokens is going to be balanced out by people buying them in-game with gold and not paying for an active subscription. Yes, there is the price premium over a normal subscription, but at best that will barely offset a small amount of the loss in subs, even assuming that this past quarter was an anomaly and future quarters go back into 'normal' sub loss rates. Besides that, really, the market for the things is still going to be relatively small, at least in comparison to 7 million subscribers. I have enough gold to buy a lot of tokens, but why bother when I don't want to play anyway?
And there's no real reason to expect 6.2 to have any meaningful effect on subs, in a positive way at least. SoO was the only major, non expansion, patch since...well...ICC, to actually increase subs over previous quarters; and even then it was a relatively minor bump that certainly didn't sustain itself.
As you said, there's still no question of WoWs financial success. But boy howdy is there no real way to casually explain away losing in one quarter the amount of players that the past two expansions each lost over their entire lifetimes individually.
Assuming the rest of WoD is more in line with historical sub bleed, there's virtually no way they're getting out of WoD with more than 5 millions active subscribers.
Still a lot? Absolutely. But such an absurdly large loss in such a short timeframe that it can't be brushed off as just par for the course, or normal expectations of an aging game. "It's a decade old and players are getting bored of it" is plainly insufficient as a reasoning for such a stark and quick decline.
And from my perspective the worst case scenario is that Blizzard themselves look at it as such; because they would just absolve themselves of the fact that maybe, just maybe, they made some really fucking shitty choices with WoD and maybe that had a large bearing on it. I predicted this precise thing happening prior to WoD being launched, simply by virtue of what were already obviously terrible design decisions that were blatantly anti player, and stupidly antagonistic against the bread and butter subscribers who weren't going to be corralled into 'real' raiding like Blizzard had convinced themselves they could. And I'm not patting myself on the back here; I'd much prefer they didn't do such stupid shit. And then double down on it; after being so painfully cocky that they were happy to release a completely content-less content patch. :rotate:
As it relates to my previous post, if this is the visibility to other Blizzard IP's WoW is providing...it's not exactly what I'm sure they're wanting.
It seems to be a very popular expansion for people who primarily/only raid with their time in-game. I always wondered how sustainable such a playerbase would be - I suppose we're going to find out.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
Eh, I can't really speak for myself since I haven't been a dedicated raider for some years now, but at least based on the most active posters in this thread and on other forums I visit, the only people actively playing are either primarily raiding or solely raiding and doing nothing else.
See, thats a popular misconception. WoWs huge ass numbers have been and still are largely the product of casuals who do not raid much if at all. People who do not have the TIME to get burnt out but could justify spending 15 a month to play it. The altaholics, the collectors, the explorers. These people make up the vast gamut of people.
The people who raid seriously like you state ARE the most active posters peroid. I know the vocal minority gets thrown around a lot, but the kind of people who raid also talk the most online about it. They are also the people who state "where is my content" and "this is boring now I am done" multiple times an expansion. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is what you see the most. The large % of the game however doesn't want to be bothered with the community around it and certainly has no interest in speaking out about it for the internet to see.
Before WoD, heck until about three months or so ago, I absolutely understood and agreed with that. The casual player bolstered the subscriber base and the hardcore/raider fostered much of the community passion of the game. But these days, especially given WoD's general absence of things to do outside of raiding, I have a hard time believing there are that many non-raiders throwing down subs on the game. I mean I'm sure there are some, don't get me wrong, but I'd be extremely surprised if it were anywhere near the majority percentage it used to be even, two or three years ago.
I think, of those 7.1 million subs still left (not accounting for the players with multiple accounts, or bots, or whatever other factors will muddy that number somewhat), the majority are likely:
-Doing at least Normal mode raiding content via the Group Finder tool/guild raids
-Pet battles
-PvP via BG/Arena
-Spending the balance of their time in their garrison/leveling alts to do the same
There really isn't much else to do that is comprised of current content. You can farm old raids for transmog gear or chase after old achievements but apart from that, the 'to do' list gets pretty sparse. I just have a hard time thinking that your average casual WoW player who doesn't raid or PvP is willing to drop $15 a month on Pet Battles. But maybe I'm off base.
In any case, even if 6.2 is the last major content patch of WoD, we're at least looking at this expansion lasting through Christmas (since the target timeframe for content patches is about six months according to the devs) and that's a long time to go on even what this new patch is bringing to the table. I really have to wonder how well they figure Tanaan Jungle (Timeless Isle 2.0) will hold players over.
You are still viewing this from the point of view of your type ofplayer.
You list those things to do. You state it like they are practically nothing. Sure, if you play at a rate and efficiency someone like us does. That is not the case. There are people out there that normal dungeons can take months for them to master. These are the majority.
I mean come on, what you states basically sounds like all the sudden the 5-7 million that never reached a point where raiding was a thing for them suddenly just stepped up and became more hardcore players just like that? The numbers don't just shift out of nowhere just because WOD made LFR more braindead.
Those people are willing to drop that money because for the limited time they have, and at the VERY slow rate they consume it (due to either incompetence or just not having the inclination to do it quickly and efficiently) even the simplest things will keep them occupied a very long time.
Then again, there were still people farming frogs on TI up until WoD released, so it's pretty clear some people have a different idea of 'fun' than I do.
Yes, you have begun moving on to some personal growth. Thats the whole point I was making really. You kind of need to be able to look beyond your viewpoint here.
I started scanning posts. I find it monumentally entertaining that we still have a subscription numbers debate every ~4 months.
Solid progress on Heroic Blackhand last night. Phase 1 is a no-brainer, but we're still having issues getting cleanly through Phase 2. We had two attempts where we got him to sub-20% in Phase 3. At the end of the night, we swapped it to Normal and killed him (three(!) INT trinkets dropped). I think we will have the kill next week. And hopefully I can get Heroic tier pants by that point, so I can swap in the Mythic offset shoulders I got from a cache.
I think most of the issues with Phase 2 are healer related right now. Also I have a suspicion that there are some issues with Ranged properly moving so the spears hit the tank/siegebreaker/whateverthefuckitscalled. Otherwise, we got some much-needed experience with our "core" crew.
It seems I'm the only person enjoying this expansion There always seems to be something to do for me - grinding up the perfect follower rotation, pets, transmog runs, alts etc. I like the way you can throw some gold or crafting time at an alt and get some decent pieces of gear for them virtually instantly. Tokens are a good idea, I'm playing for "free" now and I like that. LFR is a bit blah, the ring grind for a second time I could do without, and stripping out the interesting LFR gear was a boneheaded decision. The farmvilleness of it has got me sucked well in. I really like seeing my pets and followers wandering around the garrison. And I'm looking forward to ships, even if they're really just followers 2.0
The second ring grind sucks. Getting the tablets is incredibly slow, and you seem to only get 4 extra fragments per boss, including Blackhand, so it still takes at 6-7 weeks of farming all of BRF (slightly less if you complete all the missions)... it should probably take like 4 weeks, tops. The bonus is nice, but really only shaves off 2 weeks, and it's much more likely that you will miss a week or wing of raiding/LFR with an alt.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I am still enjoying things but I enjoy pvp more than I should. And do not have the time to burn out on it.
I am also one of the aforementioned altaholics and am already thinking of leveling yet another char through arenas for fun. Having just finished getting a rogue to 100 like 1 and a half weeks ago?
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
It seems I'm the only person enjoying this expansion
You aren't allowed to though! Didn't you hear? WoW is doomed and will be again in a few months and has been since 2008!
I'm much more interested in seeing post-token financials. A lot of people seem to forget that WoW's playerbase is very much not just poor nerds with lots of free time like a lot of other MMOs.
Also I really like this expansion too and I'm pretty excited to see what they announce for the next one (please be AU Azeroth).
I would love to see a mechanism with the ring where you can just pay a "high" amount of gold and get sub-level rings on alts. So for example, you get the ~691 version for 10,000g; or the ~665 version for 6,500g (I don't remember what the ilvls actually are). Then if you want to level the ring to the current level, you have to do the current quest.
You could even set it up so only your main could buy the rings, but they are BOA.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
The whole ring thing kind of irks me though. By making it a ring, you pretty much make it NOTHING but a required stat stick as it is always one step ahead of the current raid its for. Unlike other legendaries where their stats were still the best but usually the huge lure was the visuals. There are no visuals for the ring outside of the proc. And unlike other legendaries you might still whip out to look badass once you get that ring finally to max level you will only use it for maybe the rest of HFC then sell it forever for the next expansion because the proc prolly wont work at 101 and there is zero visual reason to have it.
Thinking all this, makes me always balk at doing these obnoxious quests just to get 1 slot an ilvl boost.
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
I think their stated intention is that they don't want you to bother with legendaries on all your alts. No idea how they thought that particular pipe dream was going to work out like that.
Maybe if they didn't slap you in the face with the legendary chain as soon as you hit the appropriate level on all your toons people would feel less compelled to do it?
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edited May 2015
The Ring has good value, My Precious, when you first hit 100 when its Ilevel is so high that it gives you a good stat boost towards reaching the 615 average needed to enter LFR. After that, not so much, because, it's a ring, nasssty hobbitses. If it had a neat secondary effect that would be different, and that may happen yet. Remember that the Legendary Cloak's utility did not become apparent until the Timeless Izzle arrived.
I don't like how in the last Exp for the legendary to do PVP in a very poorly designed battleground. and then grind some more.
SO in this one it's grind raid grind but no pvp
I don't raid as I have better things to do with my time and I really find raiding boring
I raided or soft raided in Vanilla since the guild I was in had about 20-30 people so if we did not raid off to pvp
IN tbc most of them ran off to one of the server transfers that was offered SO I pugged raided again.
In Wrath that weekly did help people make pug raids and everyone knew each other to the point they knew who was bad or an ass {I just was disappointed they took this one healer because he was a healer not the fact he got high all the time or was a asshole}
In Cata this all came crashing down for me since this was the era of the MEGA guild There was not much to do outside of raiding since the dailies were really shitty.
In Mists I did do the gated dailies since you needed a gear level to raid which I thought was kind of dumb considered heroics did not really help this out.
In wod I don't like the garrison
Why should I leave it?
O you want me to go find 2 more people to kill this mob naw
O it's Saurfang again you want me to do a heroic? cant Want me to raid a boss, don't feel like waiting 40 minutes
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Ouch, huh?
It's also the first expansion I didn't even bother getting at release (got it a month later). Then I only played for a few weeks before canceling my subscription (and so far haven't seen a reason to come back beyond wanting to chat with some of my old guildmates).
Still hoping we can take down Blackhand in normal mode before it's too late.
Seriously though, dailies at least gave me a rep grind and gold generation that required me to do things rather than send three people away on a mission that requires no input from me.
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In TBC and WotLK I ran heroics all the time, even as a t5/t6 (TBC) or Ulduar geared tank, because it was worthwhile! Now I run a heroic every so often just for the fun of it, but outside of that it's pointless.
honestly it really isn't.
people still stay subbed and they still keep raiding, because raiding is and always has been fun, but LFR is total dogshit and there's nothign else to log in for, so I log in on raid nights only, really. I do tend to log in once a day to do a mission cycle on my garrisons, but sometimes I miss that and still don't give a fuck
I just hope that Blizzard doesn't take the wrong impression. The game is ten years old, after all. Good time for trying new things - the worst time for them to regress. Maybe about the right time for a sequel, though - as superficial as that sounds for an MMO, it'd be a new engine, an opportunity to revise some of the regressive systems in place that are integral to the game at this point, an effective reset button for new progress while keeping existing stuff intact (don't like WoW2? Well, WoW1 is still around!), and an opportunity for a whole new Azeroth without destroying the existing world like they did in Cataclysm... and best of all they have other extensions of the brand active right now (HotS, Hearthstone, a friggin' movie) to keep it in the public while they set up for it.
But then they can just do that with the existing game as well without cannibalizing their existing base. Eh, MMOs are weird.
They find creative ways around it, but to drastically 'update' the gameplay would be way more work than it is worth.
Also there is the fact they really had planned on doing just that with Titan and it never made it out the door. What direction would they take WoW in? MMOs as a WoW model are starting to die in general. That's why blizz has begun experimenting with other genres in order to sustain themselves on something else big. Which Hearthstone appears to have done. Then just keep throwing bones out there with new ones (their DOTA take and the remnants of Titan) hoping yet another one takes off.
Basically their only hope is to keep dumbing down WoW hoping to get older players back who don't have the time for it. When you think about it, selling an expansion at $60 + $15 at that increased player base more than made up for that drop off. Just do it again next expansion with more stuff that is awesome at first then sucks after a few months, and repeat.
Also now whatever % of players is playing on Token Time is a 33% increase in sub income. It seems like that % is pretty high in america at least.
I'm not complaining so much as just noting that I think a lot of people are in that limbo I'm in after WoD.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Ah yeah, it's super unlikely after the Titan fail. Also considering Destiny's outcome relative to the initial predicted proceedings outlined by Bungie's contract, Activision may be sour on promoting anything along those lines going forward.
That said, the "MMO as a WoW model" may be exactly what they can fix with a sequel. The WoW-style MMO may be on its way out, but MMOs as a whole are still going strong. Blizzard just needs to figure out where they can fit with that.
Or skip it and give us WarCraft 4 already.
Eh, I can't really speak for myself since I haven't been a dedicated raider for some years now, but at least based on the most active posters in this thread and on other forums I visit, the only people actively playing are either primarily raiding or solely raiding and doing nothing else. There's certainly some precedent for that since the devs have deliberately designed the vast majority of non-raiding activities to either be handled within the Garrison (eg. tradeskills) or just gotten rid of them entirely (eg. dailies, scenarios, arguably dungeons and archaeology via no-flight among others).
We've all beaten the topic to death but it basically seems to boil down to: 'Do I primarily derive my enjoyment of this game from raiding? If yes, WoD = Good (or at least enjoyable enough to continue paying the subscription). If no, WoD = Bad'. Essentially if a player was someone who played through most/all of the 14 months of SSO trying to down Garrosh for the Nth time or keeping him on farm for loot, more than likely they're still subbed to WoD.
Personally I found the design direction for this expansion pretty distasteful as they've removed or neutered enough of the content I preferred in previous expansions such that I don't find the game worth it (even for free with the gold I have stockpiled). I'm still keeping tabs on it because history has shown that whatever direction they choose for an expansion, however controversial, they always seem to jerk the wheel in the opposite direction for the next one, for better or worse.
That alone makes me very interested in this year's Blizzcon, as they're almost definitely announcing the new expansion this year. And if they buck their usual M.O. and just stay the course of WoD's design, that's fine too. I'm satisfied enough with what I've accomplished in my time with the game that I won't feel compelled to return.
Everything in context. Compared to other games or the population of some countries sure it's not a big deal. Compared to itself and it's past however is a different beast. In that respect, yeah it's very much a noteworthy event and something they should be concerned about given that the numbers have dropped so sharply after the "big" expansion, so much so that they are now below the levels they had going into it.
In the context of the game that is a pretty big deal. Not quite "The end is near" yet for sure, but a very bad trend. Given how recent the expansion is I would expect it to keep falling for some time until the next big thing hits to inject players once more. Whether that is the next expansion or some other content in the meantime remains to be seen. I would wager they had hoped the expansion would boost the subs for a longer period of time though.
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These days i log on for my Sunday raid where we clear Heroic in 2 hours and work on Blackhand for like 4 pulls then call it a night. And every once in a while do Garrison upkeep but even that is like once or twice per week. I used to char achievements (got over 21k points iirc), but only ones that remain to me to get are
- locked behind mythic, which i don't do
- locked behind pvp which i have not enjoyed some pre-mop
- locked behind tedium for little to no points (mop archeology, timeless isle collectathon, pet battle stuff)
- straight up buggy and uncompletable
Edit: at this point i count my wow sub as a general blizzard sub for wow/d3/sc/hs/hots, and that should be a model they do too if they ever put out another actual subscription game (get "free" wow with your subscription to Wharglwbargle)
You will never get Blackhand raiding that way. You should clear 9/10, call it a night, then extend the lockout and get a full night on him.
Eh, I don't feel that the gear this expac is coming any faster than prior expacs. Honestly I geared much faster in WotLK than I did in WoD.
I raided in TBC and ran heroics all the time, but that was usually because I was a tank (paladin) and everybody and their mom wanted me to help them get their attunements done (Shattered Halls timed run anyone?). When I wasn't raiding or running heroics I had several sets of dailies I could do.
I raided in WotLK, and ran heroics all the time because badges (and then VP) could be used to get tier gear for offspec sets, PVP gear, heirlooms, and pets and mounts as well as using tabards to get rep for the various factions. When I wasn't raiding or running heroics I had the Argent Tournament dailies which got me marks I could use for more heirlooms, and what, 14 mounts and 6 pets? There was also Wintergrasp which had its issues but was fun towards the end.
I raided in Cata, and ran heroics all the time because of VP which I could, again use for heirlooms and some tier gear, PVP gear, etc as well as tabards for rep and two dungeons dropped a rare mount. There were several sets of dailies around the world I could do as well, and there was also (yech) Tol Barad for some occasional PVP fun.
I raided in MoP, and I ran heroics occasionally for the once a day bonus rep and to fill out VPs. There were plenty of dailies to run, the farm was low maintenance (enough where I had 6 farms rolling at one point). There were occasional "fun" things scattered around like the Warbringers, some Timeless Isle stuff, and Isle of Giants, and we still had some dailies.
I stopped raiding for WoD. There is no reason for me to run heroics because they drop nothing I'm interested in. The "VP" in this expac comes from non-dungeon sources, and none of the dungeons need to be run more than once after you've been fully equipped from them (unless you are missing the two followers or something). Your "out of raids" activities are Ashran (yawn), Battlegrounds and Arenas (same crap, different levels), pet battles (yawn), Garrisons (which require a ton of babysitting if you want to maximize them), and the daily area attack quests which are your main source of Apexis and rep (low rep per kill of course).
I think the plan is to do that one everyone has the skip to him quest done. Also misty of us don't care since we already got the kill while running with the main raid (that has the mythic 10/10 on farm) on one of their off night "gear the alts, retireds, and recruits" runs.
Excellent point, and this cannot be emphasized enough. Viewing WOW's subscription numbers in a vacuum is a mistake; viewing them as the entry point to draw people in Blizzard.net's web of game products is the right way to look at it. And viewed thusly, WOW has been and still is extraordinarily successful.
It's no coincidence that the WoW Token was introduced when it was - we'll very likely see some impact (possibly even a slight increase) during next quarter's notes given the introduction of the token and (likely) the launch of 6.2 in Q2.
See, thats a popular misconception. WoWs huge ass numbers have been and still are largely the product of casuals who do not raid much if at all. People who do not have the TIME to get burnt out but could justify spending 15 a month to play it. The altaholics, the collectors, the explorers. These people make up the vast gamut of people.
The people who raid seriously like you state ARE the most active posters peroid. I know the vocal minority gets thrown around a lot, but the kind of people who raid also talk the most online about it. They are also the people who state "where is my content" and "this is boring now I am done" multiple times an expansion. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is what you see the most. The large % of the game however doesn't want to be bothered with the community around it and certainly has no interest in speaking out about it for the internet to see.
Also the "oh its ONLY 7 mil" arguement is flawed like others said. Its the HARSH dropoff that is noted. Its not like you just loose 3 million people then it stops there. Usually a drop off like that continues unless something stops the bleeding. A new expansion announcement that really gets the hype going yet again would bandage that up nicely.
Finally, with regards to MMOs, I do not see them as going strong. They are fine, but the good ones are thinking outside the box. Well, this might not be entirely true - I still do not understand why but FF14 manages huge numbers by regressing MMOs. I guess its just because its the only MMO to get as much love and time/money put into it as Blizzard could with WoW. If it wasn't for FF14 I would say the MMO genre was going to end soon though. The next biggest MMO believe it or not is prolly GW2. At least over here, I dunno if there is something huge outside of the US.
I'd love it if there were generally more activities to do. Timewalking is definitely a step in the right direction, since I always liked running dungeons but they stop being worth doing way too quickly. I'd love it if they finally grew some stones and gave PvP some actual love and massive reworks/balance pass that'd get people playing because it was fun to play. (Finally completely removing gear's effects in PvP and rebalancing damage/abilities around that could be huge.)
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How is that an excellent point? Paying for a WoW sub gives you nothing in any other game of theirs. Buying boosters in HS gives you nothing in WoW or any other game. Ditto with HotS. D3 and SC2 don't even have any sort of in game monetization anyway to have them included in a "Blizzard Sub" umbrella.
How is it a mistake to view WoWs sub numbers in a vacuum when they are precisely that? Nothing about any of their titles provides any incentives for playing any of their other games. At all. And the player populations of each of their games is so disparate that there's no reason to assume or believe that one gives any meaningful visibility to the others. If anything their launcher is what is providing visibility, not any specific game; but even then, each game is so distinct in its genre that nothing about any one game would encourage playing another. Like SC2? Try WoW! No. Not any more than playing Total War provides any visibility to Sonic the Hedgehog. SC2 and D3 didn't need WoW for visibility, as both they, and their precursors were more successful than WoW, on an individual unit/player sales basis. HS certainly uses the WC setting, but surpassed WoW's player numbers so fast that it'd be difficult to argue that WoW was key to its success. Reality was the name Blizzard was, not an individual game. HotS draws from all of their IP's but has more links to WC3 and is more known due to its genre, than any meaningful bearing WoW has on it. WoW didn't create the Blizzard reputation and it sure as shit hasn't improved said reputation from where it was prior to WoW.
WoW actually has the highest barrier of entry to any of their games, and is far and away the least likely to influence visibility of any others from a pure numbers perspective. No longer having an active sub in WoW has absolutely zero bearing on my ability to play any of their other games; and since it provided absolutely zero benefit to any of their other games, there is nothing lost there either.
That is the precise opposite as providing an entry point to their "web of game products", and if someone is maintaining a WoW sub under the auspices of it being a "general blizzard sub", they are pissing their money away for absolutely nothing.
And given the vastly different types of monetization in each of their games, I don't see a way they could provide such a subscription that would both provide players with enough incentive to pay for it, and provide Blizzard with enough money to offset what would normally be individual spending in individual games that would be reduced because of it.
Anyway, there's a vast difference between pointing out the reality of losing almost 3 million players in a quarter being a pretty fucking gigantically huge deal; and taking the leap into the 'WoW is dead' territory. It's not dead, but there isn't any rational way to dismiss that big of a loss, that quickly, as no big deal. The idea that it's normal post expansion attrition, as they themselves tried to claim, is hilariously and painfully obviously false. And trying to paint WoW as the driving force behind Blizzards success is profoundly disingenuous. WoWs success is a byproduct of what Blizzard produced before, the reputation they earned, and trust players have/had in them as a company. Not the other way around. Financially, WoW has unquestionably been the biggest deal for Blizzard as a corporate entity, but past that, one would be hard pressed to argue that financial success has translated into objectively better results for gamers themselves. In a world where WoW never existed, Blizzard still would have been extremely successful, well known, and well liked. None of their current games hinge on WoWs existence, nor are any of them actually improved by its existence.
It is the very nature of a vacuum; the mistake would be in giving it credit for something it never actually earned.
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I think, of those 7.1 million subs still left (not accounting for the players with multiple accounts, or bots, or whatever other factors will muddy that number somewhat), the majority are likely:
-Doing at least Normal mode raiding content via the Group Finder tool/guild raids
-Pet battles
-PvP via BG/Arena
-Spending the balance of their time in their garrison/leveling alts to do the same
There really isn't much else to do that is comprised of current content. You can farm old raids for transmog gear or chase after old achievements but apart from that, the 'to do' list gets pretty sparse. I just have a hard time thinking that your average casual WoW player who doesn't raid or PvP is willing to drop $15 a month on Pet Battles. But maybe I'm off base.
In any case, even if 6.2 is the last major content patch of WoD, we're at least looking at this expansion lasting through Christmas (since the target timeframe for content patches is about six months according to the devs) and that's a long time to go on even what this new patch is bringing to the table. I really have to wonder how well they figure Tanaan Jungle (Timeless Isle 2.0) will hold players over.
Then again, there were still people farming frogs on TI up until WoD released, so it's pretty clear some people have a different idea of 'fun' than I do.
I doubt the tokens are going to have that big of an effect. People paying real money for the tokens is going to be balanced out by people buying them in-game with gold and not paying for an active subscription. Yes, there is the price premium over a normal subscription, but at best that will barely offset a small amount of the loss in subs, even assuming that this past quarter was an anomaly and future quarters go back into 'normal' sub loss rates. Besides that, really, the market for the things is still going to be relatively small, at least in comparison to 7 million subscribers. I have enough gold to buy a lot of tokens, but why bother when I don't want to play anyway?
And there's no real reason to expect 6.2 to have any meaningful effect on subs, in a positive way at least. SoO was the only major, non expansion, patch since...well...ICC, to actually increase subs over previous quarters; and even then it was a relatively minor bump that certainly didn't sustain itself.
As you said, there's still no question of WoWs financial success. But boy howdy is there no real way to casually explain away losing in one quarter the amount of players that the past two expansions each lost over their entire lifetimes individually.
Assuming the rest of WoD is more in line with historical sub bleed, there's virtually no way they're getting out of WoD with more than 5 millions active subscribers.
Still a lot? Absolutely. But such an absurdly large loss in such a short timeframe that it can't be brushed off as just par for the course, or normal expectations of an aging game. "It's a decade old and players are getting bored of it" is plainly insufficient as a reasoning for such a stark and quick decline.
And from my perspective the worst case scenario is that Blizzard themselves look at it as such; because they would just absolve themselves of the fact that maybe, just maybe, they made some really fucking shitty choices with WoD and maybe that had a large bearing on it. I predicted this precise thing happening prior to WoD being launched, simply by virtue of what were already obviously terrible design decisions that were blatantly anti player, and stupidly antagonistic against the bread and butter subscribers who weren't going to be corralled into 'real' raiding like Blizzard had convinced themselves they could. And I'm not patting myself on the back here; I'd much prefer they didn't do such stupid shit. And then double down on it; after being so painfully cocky that they were happy to release a completely content-less content patch. :rotate:
As it relates to my previous post, if this is the visibility to other Blizzard IP's WoW is providing...it's not exactly what I'm sure they're wanting.
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Most expensive expansion with the least content. I still can't believe they had the balls to charge $10 more for less content than ever.
You are still viewing this from the point of view of your type ofplayer.
You list those things to do. You state it like they are practically nothing. Sure, if you play at a rate and efficiency someone like us does. That is not the case. There are people out there that normal dungeons can take months for them to master. These are the majority.
I mean come on, what you states basically sounds like all the sudden the 5-7 million that never reached a point where raiding was a thing for them suddenly just stepped up and became more hardcore players just like that? The numbers don't just shift out of nowhere just because WOD made LFR more braindead.
Those people are willing to drop that money because for the limited time they have, and at the VERY slow rate they consume it (due to either incompetence or just not having the inclination to do it quickly and efficiently) even the simplest things will keep them occupied a very long time.
Oh, I missed this
Yes, you have begun moving on to some personal growth. Thats the whole point I was making really. You kind of need to be able to look beyond your viewpoint here.
Solid progress on Heroic Blackhand last night. Phase 1 is a no-brainer, but we're still having issues getting cleanly through Phase 2. We had two attempts where we got him to sub-20% in Phase 3. At the end of the night, we swapped it to Normal and killed him (three(!) INT trinkets dropped). I think we will have the kill next week. And hopefully I can get Heroic tier pants by that point, so I can swap in the Mythic offset shoulders I got from a cache.
I think most of the issues with Phase 2 are healer related right now. Also I have a suspicion that there are some issues with Ranged properly moving so the spears hit the tank/siegebreaker/whateverthefuckitscalled. Otherwise, we got some much-needed experience with our "core" crew.
I am also one of the aforementioned altaholics and am already thinking of leveling yet another char through arenas for fun. Having just finished getting a rogue to 100 like 1 and a half weeks ago?
You aren't allowed to though! Didn't you hear? WoW is doomed and will be again in a few months and has been since 2008!
I'm much more interested in seeing post-token financials. A lot of people seem to forget that WoW's playerbase is very much not just poor nerds with lots of free time like a lot of other MMOs.
Also I really like this expansion too and I'm pretty excited to see what they announce for the next one (please be AU Azeroth).
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
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You could even set it up so only your main could buy the rings, but they are BOA.
Thinking all this, makes me always balk at doing these obnoxious quests just to get 1 slot an ilvl boost.
Maybe if they didn't slap you in the face with the legendary chain as soon as you hit the appropriate level on all your toons people would feel less compelled to do it?
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
SO in this one it's grind raid grind but no pvp
I don't raid as I have better things to do with my time and I really find raiding boring
I raided or soft raided in Vanilla since the guild I was in had about 20-30 people so if we did not raid off to pvp
IN tbc most of them ran off to one of the server transfers that was offered SO I pugged raided again.
In Wrath that weekly did help people make pug raids and everyone knew each other to the point they knew who was bad or an ass {I just was disappointed they took this one healer because he was a healer not the fact he got high all the time or was a asshole}
In Cata this all came crashing down for me since this was the era of the MEGA guild There was not much to do outside of raiding since the dailies were really shitty.
In Mists I did do the gated dailies since you needed a gear level to raid which I thought was kind of dumb considered heroics did not really help this out.
In wod I don't like the garrison
Why should I leave it?
O you want me to go find 2 more people to kill this mob naw
O it's Saurfang again you want me to do a heroic? cant Want me to raid a boss, don't feel like waiting 40 minutes