The Changing Face of World of Warcraft 328
Back in March Blizzard released patch 2.4 and significantly altered a good portion of the overall gameplay and provided a much more casual experience. Since then Blizzard has continued to make the game more approachable through new dungeons and removing attunements and other restrictions throughout the game. While this may open up a lot of new content to the masses and help the game's overall appeal, does this continuing trend promise to alienate the high-end players who thrive on new challenges? Should Blizzard care?
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The high-end players got to be high-end players through thousands of hours of grinding. They don't thrive on new challenges, they thrive on the same old ones.
How does this alienate the high-end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall I think it was a good move for players like me. I don't know what the "old-timers" would think about it, though...
Re:iIt has done so already. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate the idea of funding the development of content that only 5% of the player base is intended to enjoy.
Sorry, but I want them to spend their development $$s making content I can get into with my wife and a few friends.
cc
-GiH
More Money in Casual players (Score:5, Insightful)
Morons (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who cites the removal of attunement from a high-level raid instance as a reason to give up raiding is a complete and total idiot. The fact that you can set foot into a raid does not in any way mean you can beat it. The only thing attunement gives is a way for raiding guilds to weed out the complete and total idiots. Honestly.
For those of you that don't grasp this, here's how it was before the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot, and complete a quest while you're doing that. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.
And here's how it is after the patch:
Level to 70. Replace gear with low-level dungeon loot. Raid one thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Raid the next thing and get better loot. Hooray, you beat the game, go outside.
Guess what. It doesn't matter if there's no attunement. Everybody still had to spend the identical amount of time and effort getting better loot to even survive stepping in the front door of Illidan's house.
Why do they need to do that? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do we expect that one game should be everything to everybody? Blizzard should cater WoW specifically to the audience of people who like fantasy grinding MMO's. Nothing more, nothing less.
People who play these games don't seem to mind the "mindless hours of grinding and crafting." I would venture a guess that many of them take solace in the high number of relatively low-stress challenges with a steady stream of rewards that are valuable into the future of their gaming experience. It offers a nice change of pace from the real world, where things get much more hasslesome and the rewards are much less predictable.
Grinding isn't for everyone. It never will be. Why stick extra rewards on it to try and make it be for everyone?
Re:Mega Million (Score:2, Insightful)
You are a marketing genius. I tip my hat to you sir.
The Future (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Blizzard are willing to risk alienating one group of their players if it means holding upon another; if indeed those are mutually exclusive. Whatever happens I am sure in the end serious competition will force Blizzard to improve or die.
Re:Does it alienate players ? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're playing for fun, the memories of the good times you've had shouldn't be diminished just because somebody else now gets to see that content. You still got there first, anyway.
In my opinion, 2.4 sucked a lot of fun out of it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, you didn't have to grind away on dailies. You could always grind badges instead. Or grind PvP by getting your weekly beatings in the arena.
The point was made up above, but I'll reiterate it: Play has changed to a combination of the best gear and a complete mastery of the metagame.
And frankly, if you're lacking in either of those areas, this really sucks the fun right out of it - ESPECIALLY when mindless repetition is your only way out of the deficit you're facing.
Oh, and when that next patch hits, you're now even further behind. Gratz!
Blizzard should care (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I find grinding the least favorite part of MMO's. Leveling in itself is fun for the first few times but after playing MMO's and plenty of other single player games that are based almost solely around leveling (hell even pokemon is based on leveling your pets), the process has gotten old for most people and the need to come up with some other gameplay is needed.
One thing most people are rumbling about in WAR (Warhammer Online) is that there will be horizontal progression rather than vertical progression with a hard cap at 40 for levels and the end game is the Realm versus Realm (like DAoC).
Most people agree that increasing level caps will alienate casual players who will be at a disadvantage to hardcore players because it is PvP in a sense and even if they separate higher levels from lower, increasing the Cap simply for the sake of keeping the players playing the game will only cause the player base to be separated even further.
The idea of horizontal progression is that once you reach level 40, new content will be added for a second tier of leveling which means any expansions that add new spells, gear, and content will be equal to that already added by on a second scale completely separate from the levels gained from 1 through 40. They will be balanced so that these new features don't actually make the old ones obsolete. They WAR devs haven't really gone into exactly how this will work especially since they haven't released the very first part of the game, but the idea of horizontal progression at a certain point actually makes more sense to me, because you don't have to grind to experience new content but to use some other scale (I think there is something called realm pride etc) to which the end game can be progressed without simply raising the level cap.
The idea is interesting to me because I could care less about leveling another character ever again and would rather focus on another way of advancing a character through a game. I think Ultima Online had it right, but no one seems to want to copy them
Re:Mega Million (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does it alienate players ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not quit after that first 15-20%?
I think anger at Blizzard for making the part of the game that you admitted wasn't fun for you more fun for other people is misdirected.
Re:iIt has done so already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me new areas that I can explore on my own or with a friend or two. New quests outside of killing 10 more of those things or gather 20 more flowers.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does it alienate players ? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're still playing, I'd suggest that you definitely want to quit before the next expansion, since nothing you're doing now will matter in 5 levels.
Already lost them... (Score:3, Insightful)
By forcing smaller groups, they caused both an increase in smaller, tighter cliques of players, alienating many on the outside, as well as limiting the likelyhood of non-cookie-cutter classes and builds from getting into raids. This further alienated even more players.
If they ever release a lot more 40-man content I *might* consider re-subscribing, though a high price for buying the expansion will likely stop that. There's also the whole issue of "I already have a job, I don't want to play like I have two," which was a large factor in me quitting.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does this alienate the high-end? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end this is the fate of nearly all raiding guilds. The focus is on pushing content, and getting loot. There is basically no loyalty, and the second the grass looks greener on the other side people jump ship. When everything is going good, it looks fine on the outside but basically rots from within. It's sort of strange that people think of MMORPGs as being unique in this way. Crime organizations often go the same way - ala drug cartels, the mob, etc. Didn't anyone learn anything from scarface?
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, no doubt. But you eventually beat the encounter, didn't you?
Then you did it again the next week.
And the next week.
And again.
And again.
And no you're not even close to getting all the gear out of the raid yet (why won't [insert item here] drop?!), so you do it again.
And then again.
And I've only typed out a month and a half of "agains", and I'm not even close to how many times most raiders have repeated the same content, am I?
My raiding experience is limited, ZG in the old world, Kara and Gruul in the new one, but in both cases it's months and months and months of beating the same bosses over and over to get the gear because you have to contend with the RNG and 10-25 people needing gear. Sure in the first month you're getting to new bosses you haven't beat before, but the everything you do up to the new boss is repetition of previous attempts, and from thereafter it's doing the same thing over and over and over to try to get everyone in the raid geared up.
OP was spot on. WoW end game is about doing the same content over and over. They occasionally add something new, which is great, but especially for the "bleeding edge guilds" that you clearly consider yourself part of, that doesn't last for long and you know it.
WoW has always done this. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:iIt has done so already. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also implemented to still have a carrot ready for the raiders that have a lower pace.
Everything in WoW is build around the philosophy that no matter what you do, how hard you try, how much time you invest. There is always some reward or instance just out of reach for you.
They will give you the idea that if you just try a tad harder you might reach it. That is, until a new patch with more/newer/harder content is released.
With many guilds now in BT and MH there was a need for a even harder instance so that players would continue coughing up money so they might get there someday.
The bottom line of playing WoW is that you're always chasing a carrot on a stick (no pun intended) and when you think you've finnaly got the damn carrot Blizzard makes sure you don't.
Re:Does it alienate players ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Factitious answers aside, you're vastly oversimplifying matters.
Throwing a ball into the air not a challenge. I think we can agree on this fact. It's not hard to get a ball, and throwing it vertically is equally easy.
Throwing a ball to a particular spot isn't a challenge either. Initial accuracy will vary, but generally people can be reasonably close to the target.
Catching a ball can be somewhat trickier, but so long as the initial throw was accurate and there aren't any mitigating factors this is also relatively easy.
Combine those three simple actions and we can now play catch with ourselves, not very difficult at all. However, multiply that two or four times and now we're juggling.
Juggling isn't difficult with practice, though it takes some time to get the hang of. However, it is a challenge until you nail it down.
In order to make it more challenging, we'll add some odd shaped objects; bowling pins, flaming torches, coke bottles, knives, and maybe a gerbil. It takes more work to get used to juggling any of these individually, but with some effort you can get used to juggling just about any combination of items, although there's always a warming up period before you get your groove going.
Finally, let's add another person in. Team juggling is a challenge, because if one person is out of sync with the other the whole thing comes crashing down. Again, with time, patience, and practice the challenge is overcome.
But wait, "the challenge is overcome"? Where'd the challenge come from?
None of the components of what is being done, taken individually, is challenging. It's not a challenge to catch, throw, or find a ball. It's not hard to get another person involved. It's not hard to find three balls. Every individual component of the complex action is simple and easy. However, added together you end up with a complicated function that is, indeed, challenging.
WoW may or may not be as complicated or challenging as multi-person juggling, but the same principle still applies. Raiding is more than just right clicking, pressing movement keys, and hitting buttons. It's more than just knowing a strategy, your role, and the current situation. Raiding is a complex function of many simple tasks that, in aggregate, make a challenge.
One could continually pull out specific elements and decry them as unchallenging, but I don't believe doing so is particularly honest or helpful in this case.
I Agree with GP (Score:3, Insightful)
I think much of the development effort goes into the hardcore segments simply because they are the most vocal. It's also possible that they receive more of the attention because casual gamers might look to them for the "next big thing." Failure to keep the hardcore gamers entertained well enough, and they are much more likely to dump the game for something else that comes available on the market. I recall that many of the hardcore sort from my realm dropped WoW as soon as LotR Online was released. Some of them dropped LotR Online within a few months and returned--others, well, I assume the remaining segment for which no rumors persisted must have grown up and gotten jobs or went off to university.
But, this is all contemplation based upon anecdotes. It certainly is possible that Blizzard develops most of their content for the hardcore segment because they might bring in the most steady amount of revenue (the 80/20 rule might apply here: 20% of the customer base brings in 80% of the revenue). On the other hand, it's also possibly a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. The market segment which is most noisy is the one that a) consumes the most resources (bandwidth, server time, etc) and b) requires the most development time. Thus, I really don't see how the casual gamer market would necessarily be a losing battle--if they pay for time and bandwidth they never use, it's at least 90% profit for Blizzard.
Looking back on it, I think it might be more applicable to compare WoW to ISPs (usage patterns do depend on the demographic and communities served, however). There's a significant number of users--although I'd wager it's less than 30-40%--who may pay for the lowest tier connection they can get away with but they use it only for e-mail and seeing pictures of the grandkids. Are casual gamers the "grandparents" of WoW who just log in periodically for a brief fix? It's hard to say, and I'm sure Blizzard would be wise to keep such numbers a closely guarded secret. Thus, one can only conclude either (or both) of the following: a) hardcore gamers bring in the most revenue, thus content is developed with a focus on them or b) casual gamers bring in a fairly significant chunk of cash and require the least amount of development time, therefore it is prudent to develop some content within easy reach of the casual gamer.
Keeping this in mind, think about some of the recent announcements regarding WotLK. It is rumors that even the Arthas encounter is going to be a 10-man instance with an option for better loot and a 25-man raid. I'm wondering if this change is intended to help casual gamers or smaller groups of an expected dwindling hardcore population? Regardless of which of these might be true, Blizzard is probably very well aware that its audience isn't getting much younger. My realm is a good example of this: Most players are working people and professionals now, whereas when it started, most of us were either just starting university or graduating high school. Now, however, most people are starting to move on in their adult lives and have little extra time to deal with (some are also going into graduate student programs). While this is only representative of my realm, I'd imagine it's a general trend across the entire playerbase. If Blizzard doesn't appeal to casual gamers, it's going to lose them to games that do.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the gaming is obviously a draw, but, at least for me, and for most of the folks I play with, it's not the biggest part.
Re:Killing Raiding (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW isn't a job where you are "putting in effort", it's a game. I'm not hardcore about playing, but I have had fun raiding. That's the point. If I'm raiding and enjoying myself and learning the fights and feeling some accomplishment, what difference does it make if someone else gets loot in a different way? I still have the accomplishment. I've run a couple of marathons... the fact that many thousands of other people have run faster than me doesn't invalidate what I did.
Relax and enjoy the game. At the end of the day, unless you are a serious pvp'er, it doesn't matter what gear someone else has, it's whether you had fun playing.
Re:Churn (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says anything will or should last forever? WoW has been an objective massive success by catering to the more casual mmo subscribers. The fact that one theoretical day WoW may shut down or limp along with only as many subscribers as UO and Everquest do now doesn't change that fact one tiny bit.
Re:Churn (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iIt has done so already. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I understand what you're saying I must say I wouldn't be playing WoW if not for the five and ten man content. It can be a lot of fun just trying to beat one of those encounters and getting a group of people working together and getting it right. So that content is absolutely vital to some players in the game. Others have more fun doing the ordinary quests. (but you can't do that for more than a year or two, at least I can't)
The press and lots of players often seem to portray this as the "casual gamer" vs. the "hardcore raider", two stereotypes with mystical powers it seems. In reality there's an entire continuum of players. There are those that never seem to get any of their characters above lvl 50 (although little of those nowadays), those that get up to the level cap and just stick with the quests and some grinding, those that do the instances but never get into heroics etc, those that do the heroics and the occasional pug to kara, those that raid now and then, maybe once or twice a week, those that raid all week and those that never sleep. Oh and then there's chinese gold farmers, of course.
I think blizzard really understands this about their players and they have been actively trying to keep the game fun for all those different play styles. That was mostly the lesson they tried to bring to the expansion (TBC) from the original WoW since all too often that did devolve in casual vs raider. (anyone remember the borefest that was MC?)