World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
-
Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 17,092
- 13,620
A few issues I see with casual engagement issues:
1) Long DPS queues. Not sure what the work around could be, but let's say 30-60min average queue wait time + 40m-1.5hr LFR clear time means even a casual DPS will have to invest close to 2 hrs of time just to run a single raid.
2) Dailies Overwhelming + rep gating: MoP -really- punished alt leveling/progression by making so many gated reps + valor grinds/valor gear hidden behind too many reps + daily grinds.
1) Long DPS queues. Not sure what the work around could be, but let's say 30-60min average queue wait time + 40m-1.5hr LFR clear time means even a casual DPS will have to invest close to 2 hrs of time just to run a single raid.
2) Dailies Overwhelming + rep gating: MoP -really- punished alt leveling/progression by making so many gated reps + valor grinds/valor gear hidden behind too many reps + daily grinds.
Dalien
Registered Hodor
- 2,197
- 2,042
If they lowered the number of healers from 6 to 4 (or even 3), and lowered the mobs damage accordingly it would help a great deal. At least on my battlegroup, healers are always the bottleneck for LFRs starting up.
Yup, I've been playing since vanilla and always loved questing until MoP at level 90. The sheer number of dailies and reps just burned me out and killed my desire to do them anymore. I can't even bring myself to do the new Isle quests/dailies; it's pretty much only pet battles and occasional LFR keeping me subbed at this point.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
- 5,918
- 4,503
Long DPS queues could be handled similarly to how they handle scenarios, though I don't know how popular it would be. Make 2 versions of LFR, one where healing is required, one where self healing is assumed and unavoidable damage is minimal but avoidable damage is common. I know LFR is not the stomping grounds of players who necessarily appreciate that sort of thing, and at what point is it the same as mailing epix every week, but I think it has the potential to be viable.
spronk
FPS noob
- 23,360
- 27,218
some people are gonna stay subbed no matter what, as long as you don't do anything to actively drive them away (too many changes too often). The question is how do you keep people from hitting that unsub button for 3-12 months at a time, Blizzard seems to be saying that they will try to keep a 3-4 month patch cycle going and that'll do it, but I'm not really sure. I loved MOP but I unsubbed a few weeks ago, I felt like I got 90% of what the xpac was offering and I'd rather just come back for the next xpac, and I can't think of anything they can do in little patches that will make me resub until 6.0.
I do wonder if constantly dumbing down things is helping or whether people just get tired of so many changes and decide to go do something else. I can't honestly say making things harder would make anyone play more, but I don't think the other way is a good answer either.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/activi...200500491.html
Reading between the numbers is pretty interesting. Wow subs are down $23m year over year (look at non-gaap near the bottom). Console sales are higher than wow sub revenues, and even D3/SC2 numbers are almost half of wow sub revenue. Based on the differential in revenue you can predict around 500-600k subs lost in NA/Europe and the rest in Asia. Not too bad, but if this is the midpoint of the xpac those numbers are going to get a lot worse. I wouldn't be suprised to see some sort of Titan-beta-with-wow-annual pass2.0-who-knows-what-else thingie this fall to shore up Blizzards numbers, especially if next gen consoles hit snags.
I do wonder if constantly dumbing down things is helping or whether people just get tired of so many changes and decide to go do something else. I can't honestly say making things harder would make anyone play more, but I don't think the other way is a good answer either.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/activi...200500491.html
Reading between the numbers is pretty interesting. Wow subs are down $23m year over year (look at non-gaap near the bottom). Console sales are higher than wow sub revenues, and even D3/SC2 numbers are almost half of wow sub revenue. Based on the differential in revenue you can predict around 500-600k subs lost in NA/Europe and the rest in Asia. Not too bad, but if this is the midpoint of the xpac those numbers are going to get a lot worse. I wouldn't be suprised to see some sort of Titan-beta-with-wow-annual pass2.0-who-knows-what-else thingie this fall to shore up Blizzards numbers, especially if next gen consoles hit snags.
While there were some really great casual things introduced in MoP such as pet battles, the actual core design of progression in the game became almost twice as slow as the end of Cata which probably caused the burnout of a good number of casual players. Not to mention that the dailies and MoP questing in general were bloody boring formulaic bullshit which made it hard to enjoy despite it being one of the more enjoyed experiences for casuals. There is alsofar more competition in the marketplace for casual oriented players. Tons of F2P games, mobile games etc...
I asked one of my really casual friends what they thought of MoP, and the only thing they could muster was "The scenery is nice" and they're playing probably 20% of the amount of time they put in during LK/Cata.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 8,312
- 10,290
It's not selling that well right now, but itdidsell that well, and no game in the PC category came close to its launch performance. Which is what the "#1" label meant.
Probably faster patch content. They're now trying to alternate non-raid and raid patches, in the hopes of getting a patch out faster, since people tend to resub when enough new content has appeared.
To be fair, how much extra revenue did the free Diablo 3 with a one year sub bring in? I'm not sure they have enough gimmicks to really keep WOWs subs that high, especially since D3 is not as popular as D2 was in it's heyday. All those subs should be ending this month. I'd guess ~80% of their subs are of the Asian variety, but thats just wild speculation based on numbers crunching. WOW has had a great nine year run, but it is fairly long in the tooth.
I don't see Titan arriving anytime soon. I'm amazed we aren't even hearing any comments about it. As transparent as Blizzard were about WOW, the fact they are going the 38S way for Titan is worrisome.
- 568
- 363
I read the MMOChampion thread and the discussion here and what most people stated was
- 8 year old game. MOP is great but people are bored with the overall game design/mechanic
- too many F2P games watering down the player base, social aspect severely lacking for a lot of reasons (fun fact most people mentioned convenient game additions that were added on the request of the playerbase)
- game design caters to every group of the playerbase leaving no one fully satisfied. Everything has been streamlined leaving a player experience
I don't know, playing since launch it's just always the same routine for me no matter the lore and environment. MOP really impressed me but I need a change right now. That's why I really can not get into all these "clones" no matter how amazing they look or what neat ideas they bring. I can't get excited about a new raid if it's just some more arcady fights with new iLvl reward in a different setting.
- 8 year old game. MOP is great but people are bored with the overall game design/mechanic
- too many F2P games watering down the player base, social aspect severely lacking for a lot of reasons (fun fact most people mentioned convenient game additions that were added on the request of the playerbase)
- game design caters to every group of the playerbase leaving no one fully satisfied. Everything has been streamlined leaving a player experience
I don't know, playing since launch it's just always the same routine for me no matter the lore and environment. MOP really impressed me but I need a change right now. That's why I really can not get into all these "clones" no matter how amazing they look or what neat ideas they bring. I can't get excited about a new raid if it's just some more arcady fights with new iLvl reward in a different setting.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 12,594
- 11,937
Expect unveil at blizzcon with probably an annual pass get into beta deal around November.
http://titanfocus.info/_/news/projec...3-and-more-r65
It's on the internet so it must be true. Still a very interesting concept and read on what it could be.
Caeden
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 7,583
- 12,539
At this stage, I'm happy with the game still. My guild is awful seeing as they haven't beaten normal ToT yet. (I only raid at random "help fill in" moments) But we have 10-15 on each night and I like most folks so I'm enjoying the casual side. Playing a lot of lowbie alts I couldn't touch back when I was raiding heroic modes 3-4 nights a week and farming for them in other times. Nice to not have that much commitment.
The only viable alternatives are gw2 or swtor and only swtor had friends playing still.
The only viable alternatives are gw2 or swtor and only swtor had friends playing still.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 38,278
- 15,111
That list says the game will have Tab-Target combat. Terrible decision. They want to create an eSport apparently so why not move to a more action based combat like we're seeing in Tera, GW2, Wildstar, Neverwinter etc.?
Game might be fun, but fucking tab target combat. Fuck.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 12,594
- 11,937
The part about tab targeting puzzled me. It's just a rumor so who knows. Then again maybe they have info that shows more people like tab targeting then a more action based game. I loved not having the trinity in GW2, even though you could recreate it. Not having the trinity turned a lot of people away. Maybe it's the same with action based mmo's.
- 11,221
- 2,367
Well I can see how no tab targetting can turn people away from a pve perspective, not so much from a pvp perspective and especially not from an esport/competitive pvp perspective, but yeah they're probably going to try to please everyone. I guess they could make innovations to the combat system so it's not shit even if it's targetting based, by having more abilities that are actually not targetted. For example considering TERA, which has very action oriented combat, it still has targetting for lock-on spells for example so you can have an hybrid of the system, even wow has plenty of non direct targetted abilities like frost cone, blizzard, arcane explo to take some examples. Anyway it's just a rumor for now, will wait to see. As long as it's not an iphone micro transaction online game with facebook integration, there's still hope.
Was more interested about the bit about the expansions, specifically D3 expansion. While the game was a huge letdown and is completely fucked up now due to the dupe(at least in the US), I'm interested to see what they're going to do with an expansion if they do one. Will they add LAN play, a ladder without rmah and shit like that to try to get some good publicity again, or will they just persist into doing more of the same. Not really the right thread to discuss D3 anyway. Or Titan.
Caeden
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 7,583
- 12,539
I'm shocked people are shocked at the lack of openness of Titan. The Internet had been chock full of negative publicity for Blizz lately. D3 and, at each point, WoW is so trolled. Maybe made them go a bit insular. The viral nature is far worse than 2004 and the neck beards have too much direct access to folks via social media and a distinct lack of decency filter. Fuckings nerds. Why the Internet can't have nice things.
OneofOne
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 6,887
- 8,713
75% of the shit on that Titan "ubber secret haxxor info" is so generic you can say it about any MMO being released and it'd be true. The fact you guys are already bitching about tab targeting... seriously? Fucking L.O.L.
Oh, speaking of nerds, I'm now up to 425 unique pets, and I started this game 7 months ago. Das right mutherfucka!
Oh, speaking of nerds, I'm now up to 425 unique pets, and I started this game 7 months ago. Das right mutherfucka!