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Thunderbro posted:wow is funny because it's a perfect case study on how going hardcore will destroy even the most robust video game population. all it took was two years of bad expansion to go from 11 million subscribers to <5 million! Is this actually the case? I'm not up to date on WoW, but I played a ton of vanilla and it was fairly harsh by modern standards. BC came along and made the game significantly more casual, and then I popped back in for 3 weeks during MoP to find that the game had become super duper casual. Didn't really seem like WoW became -more- hardcore over the years.
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Dec 23, 2015 05:28
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Vargs posted:Is this actually the case? I'm not up to date on WoW, but I played a ton of vanilla and it was fairly harsh by modern standards. BC came along and made the game significantly more casual, and then I popped back in for 3 weeks during MoP to find that the game had become super duper casual. Didn't really seem like WoW became -more- hardcore over the years. BC was still pretty hardcore in comparison to WotLK, which was the first of WoW's 'casual' expansions, featuring dungeons that were just giant zergfests (but at least the raid fights were still cool and fun). Then they went back to being BC/Classic levels of harsh in Cataclysm, which turned away a large part of the casual playerbase they'd attracted in WotLK. So with MoP - and subsequent expansions - they decided to continue being casual.
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Dec 23, 2015 05:42
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Vargs posted:Is this actually the case? I'm not up to date on WoW, but I played a ton of vanilla and it was fairly harsh by modern standards. BC came along and made the game significantly more casual, and then I popped back in for 3 weeks during MoP to find that the game had become super duper casual. Didn't really seem like WoW became -more- hardcore over the years. Well I mean most of it's casual to the point of being mindless; a 5-year-old could get to max level and hit the entirety of Raid Finder (impossible to lose difficulty) while dying only a handful of times. At maximum level all progression paths are insanely grindy or RNG-dependent, like "go grind 2000 world mobs, or do 20 dailies, for one piece of poop gear". The raids are tedious and nastily overtuned, and it takes so long for any new players to not actively impede the group that raid groups are dying en masse. The harder bosses can take groups upwards of 50 attempts just on normal mode, and over 500+ on the hardest mode for the best players in the world. At 10+ minutes per attempt. Oh, and for the entirety of WoD it's statistically been almost impossible to beat any of the end bosses with gear from their own difficulty. Basically every system in the game is broken in some way that stomps on the act of having fun while simultaneously begging and prodding you to log in every single day to do your internet chores. It's like a really fat nerdy guy trying to push Krokodil on you.
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Dec 23, 2015 06:20
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Thunderbro posted:wow is funny because it's a perfect case study on how going hardcore will destroy even the most robust video game population. all it took was two years of bad expansion to go from 11 million subscribers to <5 million! Warlords of Draenor is currently on sale for -65% the regular price. I have never seen a Blizzard product reduced by this much. They must be really desperate.
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Dec 23, 2015 08:25
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I wonder if, when WoW finally mostly peters out, anything like that will even be possible with mmos again. Blizzard was in kind of a unique situation with the mmo market at the time, and when I played it was was just glad to get away from the horrible grind and mechanics in Everquest like losing exp on death and having to run naked back to your corpse, even if it was stuck in a zone that only a wizard could teleport anyone to. Or if it was stuck in a zone that required you to personally farm about a dozen keys to progress, and when you died all those keys were still on your corpse, behind all those doors. (The reason I quit EQ, heh)
Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 08:58
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Mercury_Storm posted:I wonder if, when WoW finally mostly peters out, anything like that will even be possible with mmos again. Doubt it. Companies understand MMOs now, and it seems like the best way to make money is to do B/F2P with a cash shop and try and attract whales.
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Dec 23, 2015 12:38
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Mercury_Storm posted:I wonder if, when WoW finally mostly peters out, anything like that will even be possible with mmos again. Blizzard was in kind of a unique situation with the mmo market at the time, and when I played it was was just glad to get away from the horrible grind and mechanics in Everquest like losing exp on death and having to run naked back to your corpse, even if it was stuck in a zone that only a wizard could teleport anyone to. Or if it was stuck in a zone that required you to personally farm about a dozen keys to progress, and when you died all those keys were still on your corpse, behind all those doors. (The reason I quit EQ, heh) Eh, if FF14 hasn't passed it yet then it certainly will over the course of the next 9 months of no content. I doubt we'll see 10 mil+ again just because now there are far more massively replayable social games that don't demand a box price, $15/mo sub, and 10+ hours of your life per week.
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Dec 23, 2015 12:42
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Except FF14 is awful too, just in other ways. The only reason this game still has traction is 1) final fantasy fans and 2) WoW doing almost everything wrong for 1.5 expansions now (and 3) there not being any viable alternatives for treadmill poopsockers of course). It has a lot of unnecessary RNG and tedious grinds so it's on par with other awful MMOs (ie. all of them), and it's a game that decided, yep, making 100 post-release "story" quests mandatory to even start expansion content is a good idea. It's like GW2 had required us to finish the personal story and all previous living story content to even start HoT stuff. Except worse because 80% of these quests are mindless fetch quests and the other 20% require finishing old dungeons of the previous level cap, complete with item level requirements, so you even get to upgrade your gear in the level 50 treadmill, before you're ever allowed into the new level 50-60 stuff where your old gear is immediately obsolete anyway.
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Dec 23, 2015 13:15
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The problem with most MMOs, especially Warlords of Draenor, is that MMO devs are still really into the "raid or die" mentality. Raids being the primary content focus is an MMO thing that needs to finally die. People like raiding, but they don't want raiding to be the primary focus anymore. WoD being nothing but Raids and meaningless Garrison crap is what finally made me quit WoW after 10 years, and judging by their subs being cut in half in a year, I'm obviously not alone in that. A lot of MMO players are people who were children/teenagers who started with WoW and are now adults who just find of want to log in and gently caress around for a couple hours, and even casual raiding can be a chore. In all honesty, its one thing that HoT did get right for me. Raids are not the primary focus. They are there, but HoT focused way more on the open world events.
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Dec 23, 2015 13:33
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Holy poo poo, I did not know wow's population had tanked. I'm not sure if that stupid "want more end game content? Well, you are poo poo out of luck" expansion after the lich king wasn't the start of it. The main point of wow in the lich king was that you could hit a button and just wait for a BG or, later on, a raid/5 man group, and be in almost instantly. If players have to wait half an hour because there are not enough players then they are going to quit, which makes wait times longer and exasperates the problem. I did kind of wonder why guild wars 2 was doing so well, I waited to play it because I've been burned by being a beta or launch day player only to have the game's population tank as casuals are done with their wow break and go back to it countless times, but GW2 seems to have had a steady growth so I decided to give mmos one more shot. chart because people love a good chart. WOW: http://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-by-quarter/
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Dec 23, 2015 13:36
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Totbot posted:The problem with most MMOs, especially Warlords of Draenor, is that MMO devs are still really into the "raid or die" mentality. Raids being the primary content focus is an MMO thing that needs to finally die. People like raiding, but they don't want raiding to be the primary focus anymore. WoD being nothing but Raids and meaningless Garrison crap is what finally made me quit WoW after 10 years, and judging by their subs being cut in half in a year, I'm obviously not alone in that. A lot of MMO players are people who were children/teenagers who started with WoW and are now adults who just find of want to log in and gently caress around for a couple hours, and even casual raiding can be a chore. I agree 100%. The world events, especially the entire map of Dragon Stand, are raids without the bullshit. It's like the olden days where you got a swarm of 40+ vaguely organized random nerds to go stomp bosses and throwing your commander tag up in DS is exactly like raid leading only it doesn't make you suicidal. The idea that a video game fight with 20+ people needs to be 10 minutes long, everybody needs optimal gear, and each fight will still take 10+ attempts to kill is just so dumb to me. I guess the hardcore lifers willing to put up with all the garbage are going to be your whales but it's hard to understand why a company would spend basically any resources on something only 1% of people will ever bother to try.
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Dec 23, 2015 13:57
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I completed the current mythic wow raid tier, its rewarding and fun, yet like said earlier WoW has shifted the PvE focus solely on raiding. Its terribly boring in that regard and offers no viable substitute to casual players. Going into HoT after not playing GW2 since launch, the game was incredibly refreshing. A game not focused 100% on raids? Count me in. I love that hardcore raiding type of poo poo and I haven't even bothered trying the raid despite being geared for it because I've been having fun in open world and PvP. Thats not to say HoT isn't getting boring fast either. If you've begun the grind for 250 leyline sparks you probably feel this burn more than anyone. I actually wince in pain thinking about trying to farm another 250 of each ascended HoT material without having free alts to complete the story again. Its worrying to think about what the maps are going to look like in 2-3 months, in terms of how active they'll be and how much harder it will be to farm said ascended mats. It almost makes me want to save what I've farmed so far and wait to see what else they got in store, but its like waiting for next best piece of tech to come out, you'll be waiting forever because something else cool is around the corner.
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Dec 23, 2015 14:30
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mike12345 posted:Warlords of Draenor is currently on sale for -65% the regular price. I have never seen a Blizzard product reduced by this much. They must be really desperate. WoW expansion discounts this late in the expansion cycle are not new. The expansion will be included with the base game shortly after the launch of Legion.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:06
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WoW is like 12 years old, there are very very few 12 year old games people still play today. "WoW tanked because pet_reason" claims have very little to do with reality, the game is just old and the fact that it still has many millions of subscribers is a proof of their success not that they screwed up somehow.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:13
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malhavok posted:WoW is like 12 years old, there are very very few 12 year old games people still play today. "WoW tanked because pet_reason" claims have very little to do with reality, the game is just old and the fact that it still has many millions of subscribers is a proof of their success not that they screwed up somehow. Yes this is why it spiked back to nearly its historical high when WoD first came out and then fell off at an insane rate. It is because the game is old and not because it is terrible in new and innovative ways and in a nonstop content drought.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:17
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malhavok posted:WoW is like 12 years old, there are very very few 12 year old games people still play today. "WoW tanked because pet_reason" claims have very little to do with reality, the game is just old and the fact that it still has many millions of subscribers is a proof of their success not that they screwed up somehow. And yet whenever WoD is brought up, people always mention Garrisons and there being nothing to do besides raiding. The age is obviously a big factor in sub drops, but so is the fact that there was nothing to do beside raid. No one is saying WoW isn't successful, but WoD did screw a lot up and lost more subscribers than the game would have if it didn't screw stuff up.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:19
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Thunderbro posted:Yes this is why it spiked back to nearly its historical high when WoD first came out and then fell off at an insane rate. It is because the game is old and not because it is terrible in new and innovative ways and in a nonstop content drought. People come back to old game, realize its still an old game and quit... not sure what part of that is unexpected.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:24
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Is it possible people are just getting bored of the entire idea of theme parks and hotbars? These days it feels like the MMOs most people get excited for are ones either move away from that entirely (Albion Online, Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous somewhat) or offer something unique on top of it (SWTOR's setting and focus on storylines, TERA's active combat system). Not that those are being unqualified successes either. Albion is love-it-or-hate it, Star Citizen barely exists and Elite Dangerous feels like a foundation that somebody might eventually build an actual game on. SWTOR's storyline ends eventually and then it does just turn into a theme park MMO with lightsabers, TERA will last as long you find the combat unique and FF14 started incredibly strong but the expansion is kind of a wet fart. I was going to maybe give HoT a shot because I'm already at peak pretty princess-ness in other MMOs, but from the last few pages it looks like people are already kind of tired of it and bitching about grinding and currencies.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:26
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Thunderbro posted:Yes this is why it spiked back to nearly its historical high when WoD first came out and then fell off at an insane rate. It is because the game is old and not because it is terrible in new and innovative ways and in a nonstop content drought. It is simply ridiculous to claim that a 12 year old game with 5 million subs is "terrible". That can only be seen as an incredible success, not as some kind of proof of how bad they screwed up by not listening to you.
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Dec 23, 2015 15:42
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malhavok posted:It is simply ridiculous to claim that a 12 year old game with 5 million subs is "terrible". That can only be seen as an incredible success, not as some kind of proof of how bad they screwed up by not listening to you. It can be both you know. WoW is clearly a successful game, but WoD was terrible in many ways and screwed stuff up. Kinda like how GW2 is a fairly successful game, but people have problems with HoT so far?
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Dec 23, 2015 15:48
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a gentle reminder that Lineage 1, released in 1998, still brings in US$250 million per year MMO inertia is a terrible loving thing
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Dec 23, 2015 16:07
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Pierson posted:Is it possible people are just getting bored of the entire idea of theme parks and hotbars? These days it feels like the MMOs most people get excited for are ones either move away from that entirely (Albion Online, Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous somewhat) or offer something unique on top of it (SWTOR's setting and focus on storylines, TERA's active combat system). I mean the thing about WoD is that people got super excited about it, all the material they put out looked great, the model they said they were going with (new expansion every year) sounded expensive but worth it if content sped up. That's why there were nearly 11M subs at launch. The leveling and new dungeons were excellent and then everything past launch in WoD never happened. Blizzard either poo poo the bed hard or simply didn't care to make anything else. People are still very excited for theme parks and hotbars but not enough to put up with garbage, recycled, grindy content and Farmville games. Looking at their financial reports they got exactly what they wanted: 11 million boxes sold of WoD and 11 million subscriptions for a couple months. With their new emphasis on Hearthstone and other terrible microtransaction games they're fully on board with the pump and dump model of doing business. malhavok posted:It is simply ridiculous to claim that a 12 year old game with 5 million subs is "terrible". That can only be seen as an incredible success, not as some kind of proof of how bad they screwed up by not listening to you. Thunderbro fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 16:59
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Thunderbro posted:
Less so than claiming its terrible because it didn't keep 11 million subs for over a decade ain't it?
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Dec 23, 2015 17:14
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malhavok posted:Less so than claiming its terrible because it didn't keep 11 million subs for over a decade ain't it? Not remotely, and that's not even close to anything I or anyone else has said in this topic. Learn to read.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:16
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If WoW is the McDonald's of MMOs what fast food restaurant would GW2 be and why
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Dec 23, 2015 17:20
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http://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-by-quarter/ You can see how subs steadily grew and grew up till Cataclysm, there was no jump in subs as people started re-joining for a new expansion as no one had actually left during the Lich King cycle, it really was that good. Subs just went down and down until Warlords of Draenor, when people logged back in to give it a go and then it rapidly tanked again as they didn't like it. That's not the hardcore playerbase, that's casuals getting bored and frustrated with the game. Blizzard is going to have to start all over again to get that lot back with the next expansion and give them more of the same, what casuals want is new worlds, new characters that they dont want to start from level 1 on, a kick arse storyline they can get invested in, purple that you dont have to do raids for and have their crafting items relevant/on a par with at least the basic tier of raiding kit, and profitable.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:25
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Illuyankas posted:If WoW is the McDonald's of MMOs what fast food restaurant would GW2 be and why wendy's: the place you go for a burger and end up getting a glorious apple pecan chicken salad instead
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Dec 23, 2015 17:26
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Illuyankas posted:If WoW is the McDonald's of MMOs what fast food restaurant would GW2 be and why Burger King. Looks nicer on the pictures but you end up with a mess.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:26
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learnincurve posted:That's not the hardcore playerbase, that's casuals getting bored and frustrated with the game. Or its people who got sick of the game after playing for freaking years who came back thinking a new expansion might rekindle that old feeling and instead figured out that nope, its still the same god drat game they have already played to death. It has nothing to do with "too casual" or "too hardcore", the problem is that its still going to be WoW whether it has a little extra grind or not. People are bailing on the WoW expansions nearly instantly for the same exact reason they are bailing on WoW clones nearly instantly, they are already sick of that poo poo.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:29
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Illuyankas posted:If WoW is the McDonald's of MMOs what fast food restaurant would GW2 be and why Taco Bell: Doesn't cost a lot upfront and very enjoyable. However, whether gems or your rear end, there's a good chance you're going to be paying for it later.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:33
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WoWs numbers are a combination of its age and its development direction and probably a lot of other things too. GW2 is like supermarket "finest" food. It looks really nice but its actually kind of hit and miss and never quite matches up to what you're expecting from goose liver and champagne pate. Still a lot better than the value range your idiot neighbour buys.
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Dec 23, 2015 17:36
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Happy 2012 guys. This Guild Wars 2 game is shaping up to be a monster.   I know I can't wait to cancel my World of BOREcraft (lol!) subscription and heal dungeons on.... MY WARRIOR??? 
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Dec 23, 2015 17:40
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Mercury_Storm posted:I wonder if, when WoW finally mostly peters out, anything like that will even be possible with mmos again. Blizzard was in kind of a unique situation with the mmo market at the time, and when I played it was was just glad to get away from the horrible grind and mechanics in Everquest like losing exp on death and having to run naked back to your corpse, even if it was stuck in a zone that only a wizard could teleport anyone to. Or if it was stuck in a zone that required you to personally farm about a dozen keys to progress, and when you died all those keys were still on your corpse, behind all those doors. (The reason I quit EQ, heh) I didn't mind EQ's harsh death penalty because death was so rare in that game if you were careful. It was cool that it kept you on your toes, and I never had one of my copses decay outside of that one time I fell off the Freeport->Kaladim boat at like level 4. I'm a crazy person who loves hardcore MMOs though (raiding aside, never want to do that poo poo again), and I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on classic EQ1/Vanilla WoW private servers. My favorite parts of this game have been dungeons/fractals, SAB, and pretty princess dressup, but Anet doesn't give a poo poo about those first two and I've already got an 80 of every class with a look that I enjoy, so there isn't much for me anymore. An expansion with not much new content aside from raids and mashing 1 during zerg event maps where your contribution means nothing is super unappealing to me. Think someone accidentally wrote in "watch the fight" rather than "watch the particle effect spam".
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Dec 23, 2015 17:52
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/shrugs I'm enjoying this game more than any other MMO I've ever played with my first character in the mid 20s, mostly because I'm not being punished for being a noob and no loving level 80s are able to come into low level areas and kill steal or murder me or the guy I was delivering my rat's tails to. 6 months time who knows but I've only put down £15 for it so if the next expansion is arse and I dont want to play anymore then I will have got my money's worth.
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Dec 23, 2015 18:02
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the saddest part of that "watch the fight" image is that you can finally play fairly well-designed raids in GW2 without the need for add-ons too bad only 0.01% of the playerbase will ever see them
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Dec 23, 2015 18:24
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You don't need addons because things like healing are as complicated as 'spam your glyphs and celestial avatar on cooldown'. Sometimes I'll look at the UI (whoops! bad habit, sorry) and notice our flak shot bait is low on health so I move over to heal them and then get flamewalled dead. Meanwhile: "It sure would be nice if there were a better indication that you have the sapper bombs. Oh yeah World of Warcraft let you make alerts for yourself like that"
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Dec 23, 2015 18:35
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Pierson posted:Is it possible people are just getting bored of the entire idea of theme parks and hotbars? That's likely a big part of it. For me, it's the static, unchanging core of most MMOs that's boring me and driving me away from them. I don't think it's any coincidence that many of the most popular PC games (measured in concurrent players) are either competitive multiplayer games (like Rocket League or League of Legends) or games that emphasize creative play (like Terraria or Minecraft). Both are intended to create new experiences with each play session: competitive multiplayer games, by their very nature of randomized players and intelligent human opponents, promote wildly different experiences every time you play (even if the core of the game remains the same); and creative "sandbox" games allow you to constantly branch off and do something new, emphasizing player choice heavily and providing a theoretically endless landscape to express yourself on. The bog-standard WoW MMO, by comparison, remains stale with every session: Blackrock Depths is always going to be Blackrock Depths, your rotation is always going to have an optimal path to follow, and your opponents have easy-to-read AI patterns with little variation. It's not helped by the massive competition from phone games, either. They're usually scumbag setups that are little more than advanced slot machines, but they make a profit like no one's business and are piss-cheap to produce, so less-profitable "traditional" games like MMOs are feeling the squeeze to increase their profitability through similar methods. The drive for profitability negatively affects the gameplay in various ways: microtransaction F2P/B2P games are encouraged to create gameplay that's just frustrating enough for you to want to reach for your credit card, while subscription-based games are encouraged to create repetitive gameplay that's masked behind the illusion of progress to keep people interested. If someone were to ask me for my "ideal" MMO, I'd actually want something akin to Left 4 Dead with a few additional game modes and PVP of some variety, with a box cost and a reasonable price for mission packs after. If it has a shop, it's cosmetics only, with no "convenience" stuff or crates. I think this would provide enough variety to prevent the core gameplay from being stale, while allowing the game to more-or-less support itself and generate a profit without relying on exploiting compulsive spenders/gamblers to keep itself afloat. Vermain fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 18:42
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learnincurve posted:/shrugs I'm enjoying this game more than any other MMO I've ever played with my first character in the mid 20s, mostly because I'm not being punished for being a noob and no loving level 80s are able to come into low level areas and kill steal or murder me or the guy I was delivering my rat's tails to. 6 months time who knows but I've only put down £15 for it so if the next expansion is arse and I dont want to play anymore then I will have got my money's worth. Levelling to 80, especially your first time, is the 2nd greatest experience this game has to offer. Enjoy.
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Dec 23, 2015 18:53
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Adhesive Gamin posted:Oh yeah World of Warcraft let you make alerts for yourself like that" Back during Molten Core in WoW, the boss Baron Geddon would put a debuff on a random player called Living Bomb that would explode and deal AoE damage to the raid. So whoever got it would need to move away from the raid or it would wipe the raid. Naturally, addons came out that would automatically whisper the people who got the debuff. The one that was used by my guild would whisper "You are the bomb". A real life friend of mine who was also in the guild got the debuff, got that whisper, and responded with "Thanks!" thinking he was being complimented. He then blew up and wiped the raid. This story really has nothing to do with GW2 or the conversation at hand, but I just really like telling it.
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Dec 23, 2015 18:56
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Totbot posted:Back during Molten Core in WoW, the boss Baron Geddon would put a debuff on a random player called Living Bomb that would explode and deal AoE damage to the raid. So whoever got it would need to move away from the raid or it would wipe the raid. Naturally, addons came out that would automatically whisper the people who got the debuff. The one that was used by my guild would whisper "You are the bomb". A real life friend of mine who was also in the guild got the debuff, got that whisper, and responded with "Thanks!" thinking he was being complimented. He then blew up and wiped the raid. A good story
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Dec 23, 2015 19:34
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