Thread: Blizzard Conducted A WoW Former Player Study. Here Are the Questions Asked

I liked what they did with Karazhan personally.

Vitality_sl said:

I liked what they did with Karazhan personally.

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Best raid dungeon ever created IMO.

Utnayan_sl said:

It doesn't take 15 surveys of random players to point out the obvious in which this barely scratches the surface on. It isn't the time commitment, it isn't the subscription, it isn't the fun factor or creativity. It's that they release content so fucking slow that you can easily look at what you are getting for your subscription dollar and realize the majority of your money is going towards access to the game and not content to complete. With the money they rake in they should be able to double down on expansions and keep content fresh. And along with that, a decent .1, .2, .3, .4 patch cycle in where one isn't waiting 5 fucking months for a small content addition with a few gimmicks.

It's pretty simple.

CREATE AND DEPLOY CONTENT FASTER THAN THE TIME IT TAKES A TURTLE TO REACH THE MOON.

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The problem isn't the rate of content creation: the problem is that the every expansion guts the previous expansions content and achievements. Which means that all the energy you spent getting that purple item in Vanilla or TBC or X is absolutely pointless as soon as TBC or WotlK or X+1 expansion is released. Blizzard does not understand the importance of a consistent Risk/Reward. Moreover, IIRC, many expansions completely revamp classes, talent trees and the way you play your character.

The rate of content creation would not matter nearly as much if (as in EQ) the previous expansions content was still useful to a greater (the immediate prior expansion's high end content/raid zones) or lesser extent (the further back you go in the expansion timeline). However when the only content that matters is the current expansion then that's all you do and boredom sets in quickly as well as that old why the fuck am I doing this again feeling.

Vitality_sl said:

I liked what they did with Karazhan personally.

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Every time I run Karazhan looking for the last pet I need from there I wonder why there aren't more raids like this.

I don't always agree with Tad but he's spot on here. The fact that everything is "current expansion" content makes the game very casual and "jump in" friendly but it really hamstrings the amount of content available and the feeling of character progression. The only reason for old content in WoW right now is all purely cosmetic.

Yea I agree with Tad as well. IMO EQ1 did the best job of handling loot itemization and its resulting impact on raid progression. Because the boss mob was permacamped, it took me forever to acquire a SSoY in the original EQ1. Its been so long since I've played I don't remember all the details but I think that weapon lasted me until the PoP expansion when I was finally able to get my bard epic.

I was newly married with an infant when EQ1 was released so I was never able to do any consistent raiding until PoP came out. While the hardcore raid guilds like FOH were doing PoP progression raising, my casual guild was focusing on getting everyone their class epics. Three expansions after Kunark the Kunark raid content was still relevant and a source of upgrades for a large part of the player base.

I liked WoW but their design decision to give out loot upgrades like candy and make previous expansions irrelevant was not a good idea IMO.

Elsebet_sl said:

Every time I run Karazhan looking for the last pet I need from there I wonder why there aren't more raids like this.

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The raid (or dugeon originally ?) was designed for vanilla, but since they delayed it for TBC, they could apply all the lessons they learned I guess. I don't think any other piece of content was sitting around for so long before being used.

Ulduar was the best for me, but admittedly I stopped raiding actively after that.

Kara, like most raids, had too much trash clearing between bosses. I probably still be raiding but the trash clearing between fights was soul sapping for me. I tried to find ways to tolerate by playing other games during clearing but that just pissed off the guildmates and it lead to the game being less fun.

I also didn't care for "1 person dies and you're fucked" boss encounters. Shit hitting the fan and how you deal with it is what makes fights fun. Hyjal was the pinnacle of boring (stationary 30 minute trash clears YAY) but one of the fights we made a fucked up pull and rather then slog through that bullshit again decided to just fucking go for it despite half the raid being dead. We managed to win and that was quite possibly the most fun I had in that zone.

That's why Heigan was so fun too. You expected people to die and the fun of the fight was figuring out how to deal with that. I quit during Blackwing Lair simply because of the "Welp, one person died...wipe and reset guys!" bullshit. That's what I missed about old WoW and even EQ raids for that matter. People were going to get killed and you just had to find a way to cope with it and still win. The modern DDR just takes all the heart out of raiding.

Did Blizzard recruit you directly for this project or was there a outsourced company doing all the recruiting / scheduling ?

Zehn - Vhex_sl said:

Kara, like most raids, had too much trash clearing between bosses. I probably still be raiding but the trash clearing between fights was soul sapping for me. I tried to find ways to tolerate by playing other games during clearing but that just pissed off the guildmates and it lead to the game being less fun.

I also didn't care for "1 person dies and you're fucked" boss encounters. Shit hitting the fan and how you deal with it is what makes fights fun. Hyjal was the pinnacle of boring (stationary 30 minute trash clears YAY) but one of the fights we made a fucked up pull and rather then slog through that bullshit again decided to just fucking go for it despite half the raid being dead. We managed to win and that was quite possibly the most fun I had in that zone.

That's why Heigan was so fun too. You expected people to die and the fun of the fight was figuring out how to deal with that. I quit during Blackwing Lair simply because of the "Welp, one person died...wipe and reset guys!" bullshit. That's what I missed about old WoW and even EQ raids for that matter. People were going to get killed and you just had to find a way to cope with it and still win. The modern DDR just takes all the heart out of raiding.

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You sound fundamentally incredibly hard to please.

Elsebet_sl said:

Every time I run Karazhan looking for the last pet I need from there I wonder why there aren't more raids like this.

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Dungeons had a purpose and a goal that everyone wanted to get, which was LOOT. The lockout timer was like 7 days? Which was a bummer because it was only there to slow people down from getting loot too quickly. The encounters themselves were fun because they were different and there was a theme to the dungeon itself.

And honestly what made EQ fucking fun was that there weren't spoilers to how to kill bosses. The internet broke that so instead of people actually making strategies, they would just copy people. EQ was also the time where people didn't have raid encounter mods, so people just had to KNOW what to do.

If WoW had content that could auto-tune loot based on the levels of the characters nothing would be stale, but it would break the game. If the encounters could scale with your party's levels, and the drops would scale in stats and damage, I think it would break people's minds. A la Diablo 3 style of Grifts, kinda, but not really.

The issue I think is WoW loot is static, so once you've got it, you don't need to replace it unless something else is better. 99% of the time you can't replace a best in slot until the new expansion. And THAT'S why content gets boring and people quit, but return before expansions.

Morphyous_sl said:

If WoW had content that could auto-tune loot based on the levels of the characters nothing would be stale, but it would break the game. If the encounters could scale with your party's levels, and the drops would scale in stats and damage, I think it would break people's minds. A la Diablo 3 style of Grifts, kinda, but not really.

The issue I think is WoW loot is static, so once you've got it, you don't need to replace it unless something else is better. 99% of the time you can't replace a best in slot until the new expansion. And THAT'S why content gets boring and people quit, but return before expansions.

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Oh you mean like the Account Bound Heirloom items that completely trivialized itemization to the point where everything that dropped was just vendored at levels 1-95 in WoW?

Or like in TESO where you could go to Cyrodiil and fight in a cave for 49 levels and never leave (because xp was fastest there and scaled gear/xprate to your level?) effectively rendering the rest of the world trivial?

Diablo 3 grifts are just regurgitated content force fed to players in order to keep them on a treadmill. Look at Path of exile maps for a better version of this.

Blizzard is herding sheep.

I enjoyed the foundry in NWN and the player made missions in CoH. I'd like to see that be a bigger focus. Let the community sort out what's shit and what isn't.

I think that's one of the biggest things Blizzard fucked up with SC2 as well. They fucked the mapmaking scene hardcore and focused on ladder when if you look at what made BW so popular it was the UMS. iCCup was barely a blip on the radar for 99% of people. Yet everybody spent all day doing BGH, evolves, and so forth.

Can you imagine the sort of monster WoW would be if players could make their own content? Sure 99% of it would be utter shit filled with dick tentacles and whatnot but then every so often you get DOTA or Tower Defense.

Rescorla_sl said:

Best raid dungeon ever created IMO.

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You can always tell the people who quit before Ulduar.

My issue with MMO's of late is that every single thing you do is designed and scripted to the max. They can overlay player foot steps from place to place and its almost all straight lines. They can probably predict within a few mobs exactly what monsters you will attack and kill as you progress, when that will happen and even the TTK. I'm not saying all of that is bad but when your entire game is nothing but a series of lines to generic hubs you lose something.

I wish things were not so sterile, so planned and boring. The +1 gear, lazy race development, lack of true options, the lack of creativity in world POI's and the general lack of off the beaten path content is just so boring. Not too mention over done.

Frankly these companies need to put this sterile, over balanced and over tuned world on the back burner and get back to making cool zones with cool shit to kill that can drop awesome loot. Stop trying to script our motions through the world, give us the world to explore and make it our own. Give us some really good world factions (EQ) that actually mean something other than in some level 50 zone. I long for some real starting options with meaning.

Hopefully the sand box trend of late takes off and we see more games focus on exploring awesome worlds, without levels and make acquisition of gear and abilities the focus. Shit, I'm a huge PVP fan but I think the genre is due for a PVE game. Same on the other end, give us a PvP game without the prerequisite bullshit 50 level PVE tutorial.

Zehn - Vhex_sl said:

I enjoyed the foundry in NWN and the player made missions in CoH. I'd like to see that be a bigger focus. Let the community sort out what's shit and what isn't.

I think that's one of the biggest things Blizzard fucked up with SC2 as well. They fucked the mapmaking scene hardcore and focused on ladder when if you look at what made BW so popular it was the UMS. iCCup was barely a blip on the radar for 99% of people. Yet everybody spent all day doing BGH, evolves, and so forth.

Can you imagine the sort of monster WoW would be if players could make their own content? Sure 99% of it would be utter shit filled with dick tentacles and whatnot but then every so often you get DOTA or Tower Defense.

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I think SC2 released into completely different environment, sure the custom games sucked balls, but there was also a billion F2P games fighting for your attention compared to when BW/WC3 released

Someone get on the phone with Blizzard world HQ, stat! Maybe they will take a break from counting their tens of millions in monthly sub revenue to read what's wrong with their business/content/itemization model.

Wanna make an actual next gen MMO?

Dynamic world.

tad10_sl said:

The problem isn't the rate of content creation: the problem is that the every expansion guts the previous expansions content and achievements. Which means that all the energy you spent getting that purple item in Vanilla or TBC or X is absolutely pointless as soon as TBC or WotlK or X+1 expansion is released. Blizzard does not understand the importance of a consistent Risk/Reward. Moreover, IIRC, many expansions completely revamp classes, talent trees and the way you play your character.

The rate of content creation would not matter nearly as much if (as in EQ) the previous expansions content was still useful to a greater (the immediate prior expansion's high end content/raid zones) or lesser extent (the further back you go in the expansion timeline). However when the only content that matters is the current expansion then that's all you do and boredom sets in quickly as well as that old why the fuck am I doing this again feeling.

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This honestly seems like the worst fucking idea. It would greatly reduce player acquisition after 10+ years and slightly increase retention.

Sounds to me like you just want to be more "important" in the game than you are because you were there from day 1.