im surprised that 6 hours after this comment has been posted, nobody has made that gif

>>#20 my last point here. Making Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry deadweight with HFC was a pretty big mistake as they were still fun raids, but there's no reason to do them at all aside from the legendary quest, which the shipyard will cover most of anyway. I would prefer to kill the 30 raid bosses the expansion has instead of just wiping on Xhul's ugly face until we're geared enough to access Mythic.

And there's a bit of speculation that Blizzard is trying to move away from LFR again and just make normal difficulty the gateway for new/ultra casual players. I'd hope so, because pugging is still infinitely better than LFR.

Normal difficulty raiding is still very easy to get into if you're just mildly geared and have researched tactics just a bit.

It barely worked. So few people actually got to experience the content because getting to it was a humongous grind with attunements and gear. They're trying to make it accessible for more people while keeping it difficult for the high-end players.

Making an easier mode so people can "experience the content" is fucking dumb. It takes away any sense of achievement you would actually get from beating a boss that is exactly as hard for everyone else. I got way more sense of achievement beating some boss in Tempest Keep back in the day, than from running flex mode with some random strangers who barely talk. And yes i can do Mythic, but it's basically doing the same bosses over and over again.

I remember when this started with Trial of the Crusader, it already blew my mind back then how they could let us do the same shit over and over again in different 'modes', not forgetting we also had alts to play it in. I expected it to go away but now it exists not only for raids (LFR, normal, heroic, mythic) but ALSO for dungeons (normal, heroic, mythic).

The better way, but also the harder way for Blizzard, would have been to do hardmodes like in Ulduar. Certain events triggering harder fights. I guess this was just too much work to do.

Too bad, because it was a great game at one point. I think the merger with Activision also changed alot tbh.

If Activision made Blizzard take the wisest business path, then perhaps. Again, if the game isn't for you anymore, it just isn't. It's changed and so has the audience, and that's how it goes. You probably know Preach from youtube? He used to be an extremely hardcore WoW player, but now he has to settle for the lower commitment because he has a job, a wife and a kid or two. He wouldn't be able to play the game the same way if it'd still been like TBC.
I personally still find it to be great, but they have to fix their poor planning with the amount of content per expansion, because that was awful in WoD.

Game companies focusing solely on profits is never good for the players. Just look at EA with battlefront, or with any of their games tbh (Sim City also comes to mind), or Activision with their CoD iterations. It's just stupid how they so blatantly try to milk these franchises instead of actually making great games. They have the resources for it, but they rather stick to easy cash formulas.

"The game isn't for you anymore". I've also heard this a 1000 times. The fact that the game changed doesn't mean it's actually better. There's a reason Blizzard lost millions of WoW subscribers in the last years. Catering to casuals just because they keep on playing your game never made a game better.

Maybe you've heard it 1000 times because it's true. The game is better in many aspects, and worse in others. People have gotten tired of the game and quit as a result. It's been more casual with MoP, but it still peaked at 10 million right at WoD launch, so people didn't quite just because it was "easy". Maybe if Blizzard hadn't fucked up with their promises, the 10 million would've stayed. Also, MMOs are simply becoming far less popular than they used to be, so people won't really be looking for them as much as they used to.
And I never said Blizzard is focusing solely on profits, but if there's profit to be had in WoW, it means the game is doing okay. With tripleA titles, it's completely different because people buy it once, play for a few hours then quit, while EA and the likes still got their money. WoW is dependent on subscribers, so if the quality is declining, so will the playerbase, and as a result the profits will decrease. See the pattern here?

Well the playerbase IS declining, so by your reasoning the quality is also declining. This is what i've been trying to say.

It peaked at 10 million again exactly because of the hype Blizz created by saying it would be back like the old days. This in fact proves that millions of people prefer that over the new direction the game went in. Also, Blizzard stated a few months ago that they wouldn't be showing subscriber numbers to the press anymore. I'm pretty sure the game is bleeding players, no reason to do this but to protect stocks from dropping because of declining subscriber numbers.

And what I'm trying to say is that there are many other factors that result in the decline, and I've stated them already.

They weren't just hyping about it being like the old days, people judge things by face value and they saw an orc on the cover, not a panda, so they immediately jumped in. It could've just been a rash decision and people realized the game just isn't for them anymore.

I'll say it again: The game is old, the genre is old, the players are old, everything is getting old. The game still has a ton going for it, but no matter what, lost players will stay lost because they have other things to do.

Well let's hope that the future brings innovation in the MMO genre then.

We'll see whether or not the game dies in Legion.

My prediction is that it'll limp on for some years after legion even, but it'll keep on bleeding until they eventually pull the plug.

>>#20 my last point here. Making Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry deadweight with HFC was a pretty big mistake as they were still fun raids, but there's no reason to do them at all aside from the legendary quest, which the shipyard will cover most of anyway. I would prefer to kill the 30 raid bosses the expansion has instead of just wiping on Xhul's ugly face until we're geared enough to access Mythic.

And there's a bit of speculation that Blizzard is trying to move away from LFR again and just make normal difficulty the gateway for new/ultra casual players. I'd hope so, because pugging is still infinitely better than LFR.

Normal difficulty raiding is still very easy to get into if you're just mildly geared and have researched tactics just a bit.

That wouldn't work in practice when looking at how gearing works. What would be the point of it if bosses were always equally tuned?

It barely worked. So few people actually got to experience the content because getting to it was a humongous grind with attunements and gear. They're trying to make it accessible for more people while keeping it difficult for the high-end players.

Making an easier mode so people can "experience the content" is fucking dumb. It takes away any sense of achievement you would actually get from beating a boss that is exactly as hard for everyone else. I got way more sense of achievement beating some boss in Tempest Keep back in the day, than from running flex mode with some random strangers who barely talk. And yes i can do Mythic, but it's basically doing the same bosses over and over again.

I remember when this started with Trial of the Crusader, it already blew my mind back then how they could let us do the same shit over and over again in different 'modes', not forgetting we also had alts to play it in. I expected it to go away but now it exists not only for raids (LFR, normal, heroic, mythic) but ALSO for dungeons (normal, heroic, mythic).

The better way, but also the harder way for Blizzard, would have been to do hardmodes like in Ulduar. Certain events triggering harder fights. I guess this was just too much work to do.

Too bad, because it was a great game at one point. I think the merger with Activision also changed alot tbh.

If Activision made Blizzard take the wisest business path, then perhaps. Again, if the game isn't for you anymore, it just isn't. It's changed and so has the audience, and that's how it goes. You probably know Preach from youtube? He used to be an extremely hardcore WoW player, but now he has to settle for the lower commitment because he has a job, a wife and a kid or two. He wouldn't be able to play the game the same way if it'd still been like TBC.
I personally still find it to be great, but they have to fix their poor planning with the amount of content per expansion, because that was awful in WoD.

Game companies focusing solely on profits is never good for the players. Just look at EA with battlefront, or with any of their games tbh (Sim City also comes to mind), or Activision with their CoD iterations. It's just stupid how they so blatantly try to milk these franchises instead of actually making great games. They have the resources for it, but they rather stick to easy cash formulas.

"The game isn't for you anymore". I've also heard this a 1000 times. The fact that the game changed doesn't mean it's actually better. There's a reason Blizzard lost millions of WoW subscribers in the last years. Catering to casuals just because they keep on playing your game never made a game better.

Maybe you've heard it 1000 times because it's true. The game is better in many aspects, and worse in others. People have gotten tired of the game and quit as a result. It's been more casual with MoP, but it still peaked at 10 million right at WoD launch, so people didn't quite just because it was "easy". Maybe if Blizzard hadn't fucked up with their promises, the 10 million would've stayed. Also, MMOs are simply becoming far less popular than they used to be, so people won't really be looking for them as much as they used to.
And I never said Blizzard is focusing solely on profits, but if there's profit to be had in WoW, it means the game is doing okay. With tripleA titles, it's completely different because people buy it once, play for a few hours then quit, while EA and the likes still got their money. WoW is dependent on subscribers, so if the quality is declining, so will the playerbase, and as a result the profits will decrease. See the pattern here?

Well the playerbase IS declining, so by your reasoning the quality is also declining. This is what i've been trying to say.

It peaked at 10 million again exactly because of the hype Blizz created by saying it would be back like the old days. This in fact proves that millions of people prefer that over the new direction the game went in. Also, Blizzard stated a few months ago that they wouldn't be showing subscriber numbers to the press anymore. I'm pretty sure the game is bleeding players, no reason to do this but to protect stocks from dropping because of declining subscriber numbers.

And what I'm trying to say is that there are many other factors that result in the decline, and I've stated them already.

They weren't just hyping about it being like the old days, people judge things by face value and they saw an orc on the cover, not a panda, so they immediately jumped in. It could've just been a rash decision and people realized the game just isn't for them anymore.

I'll say it again: The game is old, the genre is old, the players are old, everything is getting old. The game still has a ton going for it, but no matter what, lost players will stay lost because they have other things to do.

Well let's hope that the future brings innovation in the MMO genre then.

We'll see whether or not the game dies in Legion.

My prediction is that it'll limp on for some years after legion even, but it'll keep on bleeding until they eventually pull the plug.

>>#20 my last point here. Making Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry deadweight with HFC was a pretty big mistake as they were still fun raids, but there's no reason to do them at all aside from the legendary quest, which the shipyard will cover most of anyway. I would prefer to kill the 30 raid bosses the expansion has instead of just wiping on Xhul's ugly face until we're geared enough to access Mythic.

And there's a bit of speculation that Blizzard is trying to move away from LFR again and just make normal difficulty the gateway for new/ultra casual players. I'd hope so, because pugging is still infinitely better than LFR.

Normal difficulty raiding is still very easy to get into if you're just mildly geared and have researched tactics just a bit.

There's also this masterpiece

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHYwprmWMfY