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[PepperedHam]

ESO actually has been on a pretty consistent schedule of new content since they released Imperial City over the Summer. Orsinium followed it a few months later and now Thieves Guild comes out next month, with Dark Brotherhood likely hitting beginning of the Summer (just a guess but would make sense).

 

[Azzurri]

ESO actually has been on a pretty consistent schedule of new content since they released Imperial City over the Summer. Orsinium followed it a few months later and now Thieves Guild comes out next month, with Dark Brotherhood likely hitting beginning of the Summer (just a guess but would make sense).

Yea. ESO has been on a roll. It's done quite well after the b2p model change.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

From where I'm sitting as an avid but more casual FF14 player, it makes me wonder what the player population really looks like. Is it a tiny, but vocal, minority that's blitzing the content of a new patch in the first week and then declaring that there's nothing to do? I know in my case I'm still working through content that other players finished months ago. There's all kinds of stuff in the game I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of. I'm also pacing myself, having social experiences, enjoying the story and lore, and generally not treating the whole experience into a speedrun... Am I the exception?

When you finally hit the end, there just isn't content; it's a trickle of encounters that are either faceroll clears within an hour even for a casual player (Alex Normal, Void Ark) or massively overtuned encounters that mostly rely on you memorizing a 30 phase script (Alex Savage, Thordan Ex).

The journey there is fantastic, however.

Vanilla WoW was great. You actually interacted with people and used the world because of NO LFG tools. I remember running to Molten Core and Blackrock Mountain and having to PvP my way through the raid, it was so much fun.

You can say this, but you're looking at things with rose colored glasses. LFG sucks, but spamming General for "LFG Heroic Shadow Labs" for an hour also sucked, as well as being a BRD in FFXI and sitting in Jueno for four hours waiting for a group just so you could kill the same crab over and over again.

LFG solved a very real problem. It just solved it too far in the other direction.

 

[Parfait]

I tend to not play MMOs for endgame raiding or the like. The content I go for is usually the following:

1: Exploration. I like seeing what the world is like, if there's any little things added, getting as high as possible, etc. I love seeing an entire area that someone planned out and made, whether it's a themepark mmo or a more sandboxy./open world mmo.

2: dressup: gotta look cute

3: If applicable, housing: I hella love to own a house in a mmo for some reason, customize and make it how I want and later show it off to friends.

4: Other classes/altitis: I had every class in FFXIV at 50 before Heavensward, I have 10 level 100s in WoW and I plan to add at least three more before legion, 6 70s in Tera, 7 80s in Guild Wars 2, and I'm working on my last 2 45s in Blade and Soul. I fucking love playing a new class and seeing the game from a different perspective and having a different playstyle available. I feel like I can't pick a 'main' class unless I try most/all of them out first, and there's practically no MMO where the class plays the same at a low, 'try it out' level and the max level.


Once I quit hardcore-style raiding and focused on these, I enjoyed MMOs a whole lot more. Really looking forward to Black Desert Online. I'll still raid once in a while, but wiping to bosses over and over- and god forbid if it's the king of fight where if one guy makes a mistake, everything's fucked- just isn't my style anymore.

 

[Murder. She Wrote]

Theme park mmos will always struggle with content draught because it's impossible to make enough content fast enough. That's why they need more sandbox content, player driven content, to keep players happy and engaged.

 

[Altered Juice]

From where I'm sitting as an avid but more casual FF14 player, it makes me wonder what the player population really looks like. Is it a tiny, but vocal, minority that's blitzing the content of a new patch in the first week and then declaring that there's nothing to do? I know in my case I'm still working through content that other players finished months ago. There's all kinds of stuff in the game I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of. I'm also pacing myself, having social experiences, enjoying the story and lore, and generally not treating the whole experience into a speedrun... Am I the exception?

Been apart of the game since 2.0 and every content patch they've thrown out can be toured within the same day except for the hard raids.

2.1 Patch had more content than the ones that came after it.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

FFXIV really blew it with HW. During the ARR period it was amazing.

I do feel sorry for Yoshi and his team though, it's obvious they are being starved for the resources they need to keep pounding out new content.

Theme park mmos will always struggle with content draught because it's impossible to make enough content fast enough. That's why they need more sandbox content, player driven content, to keep players happy and engaged.

The problem is that you can't just throw up a zone and be like "ok players now kill each other for fun" because most players don't find it fun. The sandbox is a notoriously hard thing to create, which is why the only notable sandbox with a large player base today is EVE.

 

[hotpants2k]

Indoctrinated, ok now.
WoW was a LIGHT YEAR ahead of prior games,

Using your starcraft money to make what was marketed as a pretty game in order to flip cherry picked player retention mechanisms is not what i'd consider light years ahead


Blizzard was an American company that enjoyed a native proximity to it's player base.
They used a recognizable IP

A fat pocketed infrastructural advantage

And had the partnership of thousands of American and European businesses to promote and make their product widely available

A shallow concept of what the massively multi-player role playing game market was before WoW is exactly why it's in the beleaguered state it is today

 

[jax]

I think FFXIV needs to add more platformery type stuff involving speed and perhaps flying mounts... Like a newer take on Castrum Meridium, a big outdoor dungeon/raid.

 

[Palculator]

Say no to MMOs.

 

[Quicknock]

Theme park mmos will always struggle with content draught because it's impossible to make enough content fast enough. That's why they need more sandbox content, player driven content, to keep players happy and engaged.

Like I said, look at Warframe. Yes, it's not an MMORPG, but it's a great example of a game that has really, really, ridiculously long legs. I think that's a game you can point at for an example of how to maintain a game over a long period of time.

 

[TheYanger]

Using your starcraft money to make what was marketed as a pretty game in order to flip cherry picked player retention mechanisms is not what i'd consider light years ahead


Blizzard was an American company that enjoyed a native proximity to it's player base.
They used a recognizable IP

A fat pocketed infrastructural advantage

And had the partnership of thousands of American and European businesses to promote and make their product widely available

A shallow concept of what the massively multi-player role playing game market was before WoW is exactly why it's in the beleaguered state it is today

So in other words, you live in a fantasy world where the MMOs that existed before wow were something different than what they were. Gotcha. Any pre-wow mmo that launched today would be seen for the skinner box grinds they were, they had lots of upside, don't get me wrong, but to act like they had unlimited content is just ridiculous, they had GRINDY content, they didn't have more. Even the most sandboxy of those games got tiring without frequent updates, because just saying "Players will just stick with it if you give meaningful pvp" is a lot easier than pretending people don't get bored of doing the same thing over and over again in those games either.

 

[ZehDon]

Yea. ESO has been on a roll. It's done quite well after the b2p model change.

Yep, it's my current MMO of choice.

 

[WolvenOne]

Just going to add 2 cents on FFXIV.

The situation right now isn't horrible, but it definitely isn't as good as A Realm Reborn was at the same time. 2.1 of a Realm Reborn added a total of five trials, a story trial, a Hard Mode version of the main campaign end-boss, and extra tough versions of three previous bosses. Even the hardest of these trials were generally speaking not THAT unreasonable to beat for mid-level players that put in a decent amount of effort. Similarly there was a twenty four man raid that was reasonably challenging for the average casual player, and the eight man raid from 2.0 that while tough was still reasonably approachable for players.

Fast forward to 3.1, and you it's a different story. 3.1 added one new trial, and it's been a very well received trial for the most part, but it was also intentionally made to be somewhere between an average Extreme Trial, and the last half of the Savage raid introduced in 3.1. Well the problem turned out to be that while the games raiders generally loved this trial, most of them still made fairly short work of it and farmed everything they wanted after a few weeks. Conversely, it was still just a bit too tough for the average player. Basically, this one trial may has well not existed for most people, same thing with the Savage raid introduced in 3.0. Even the most hard-core raider by this point seems to have concurred that they just scaled things a bit too difficult for more casual players.

Now, none of this would've been a problem if there was a ton of other stuff added, but the devs made mis-steps there as well. They split their resources between too many new projects and as a result didn't get any of them quite as polished up as they needed to be before introduction.

That said, the twenty four man raid is reasonably fun, the Savage raid can be fun even as unforgiving as it is. What few lvl60 trials introduced in 3.0 and 3.1 are pretty good, and there's plenty to indicate that the devs won't be making future content quite as difficult. So ultimately, at this point what they really need to do, at least in the short term, is add more content. More raids, trials, dungeons, etc. Fixing the Diadem would help a lot too, but they seem to be treating that as more of a long term project at the moment.

I'm crossing my fingers that the next couple patches deliver and round out the experience a bit. Thankfully I won't have to wait too long to get a feel for whether that'll pan out or not. Patch 3.2 hits on the 23rd, so we'll find out soon enough soon(tm).

 

[Candescence]

The need for constant new content is a major flaw of theme park MMOs and inexplicable focus on 'raids' as the be-all and end-all of MMO content, and even then, the really hardcore fans will burn through it in no time and start complaining again. Devs simply can't win as a result.

On the flipside, making a compelling sandbox game, especially one that doesn't devolve into a frustrating gank-fest is also difficult.

But I think more MMOs really need to move away from a focus on being completely reliant on content, and instead provide more interest and more lasting ways to allow players to actually keep playing. Stuff like No Man's Sky or Crowfall or even the somewhat in-limbo Everquest NEXT. Or even go back and take a page from The Matrix Online's book, with events being shaped by GM-hosted but player-driven interactive narratives, or even ARGs. There's a lot of things devs can do to enrich player experiences. Hell, Sylas mentioned back on page 2 about Revival from Illfonic having a subscription servers with a live storyteller.

I think moving away from the WoW formula, focusing less on content-based experiences and not treating raids as a sacred cow will be greatly beneficial for MMOs.


And I'm gonna also come out saying that Warframe has a reasonable balance for content longevity. They literally just added an event assassination mission that's a fun puzzle boss. Oh, Nef, you idiot conman, you.

 

[Melubas]

I have said this many times and I stand by it (regarding WoW mostly):

Stop making everything so accessible. An MMO should have hard as shit enemies that barely anyone will ever beat, it should have raids that only a few ever see, and it should have super rare items that makes people flock to the lucky guy/girl that managed to get a hold of one. Why? Because it makes it feel like a world instead of a minigame-hub.

There should only be one difficulty for raids and dungeons. Do away with the mentality that everyone should get to see all the content, make things take time but at the same time make sure there are things to do for people that don't aspire to be the best. Being able to jump into LFR and see the last boss get murdered by a barely organized raid detracts so much from the immersion.

Stop simplifying things. Talent trees should have alot of options. It doesn't matter if there are cookie cutter specs or if five talents only gives 5% more damage. There is a choice there and that is the important part. If I want to make a gimmicky reckoning build I should be able to, if I want to try out some wacky hybrid build I should be able to (in some cases like PVP it actually can be pretty effective). Stop taking away choices just for convenience. Players are not stupid, they adapt.

Make leveling take time again, don't make everything about the end-game. Leveling is fun if it is handled as a part of the game rather than a bump you have to get over to start playing for real. Put group-quests back in. It doesn't matter if not everyone can complete them, they can ignore them and go back later to take them on. Make the world dangerous again. Taking on a few mobs should not be a cake-walk. The player shouldn't feel like a god, they should just be a part of the world, a lowly soldier that might some day become something great, but he/she shouldn't be that right away.

And regarding story: don't make the players the heroes. It takes away from the immersion when everyone is running around as the "chosen one", getting audiences with the king and whatnot. The player should be a soldier in a great big world, a part of it but not the center of it. That should be reserved for NPCs.

This is what I would like MMOs to become again.

 

[Evolution of Metal]

And I'm gonna also come out saying that Warframe has a reasonable balance for content longevity. They literally just added an event assassination mission that's a fun puzzle boss. Oh, Nef, you idiot conman, you.

Warframe needs to rebalance/redo end-game content. The game is fine until you reach the T4 void. After that, it is an endless grind with shameless bulletsponges. Level design does nothing for the parkour system.

Also they got $70m+ Chinese over a year ago money and still no dedicated servers.

 

[Pendas]

I hate when people compare WoW to FFXIV when it comes to patch cycles. Yes, FFXIV has more frequent content updates, but the amount of content in a FFXIV update is nothing compared to WoW. Hell the entire 2.0 - 3.0 cycle introduced as much Raid content as ONE WoW Patch (13 Bosses). FFXIV has more frequent but smaller updates, while WoW has less frequent but bigger updates. Although, when you add it all up together WoW creates a lot more content throughout an expansion than FFXIV.

On Topic: The problem with MMOs is simple: Obsolete Content from leveling too fast.

Modern MMO's have massive game worlds that take years to design, and the average end-game player spends less than 1% of their total game time experiencing that content. 99% of an MMO players time is spent doing activities at the end-game level, and a large portion of the game world is left empty unless it benefits those players in some way.

Remember the old days when it took 6 months to reach max level? The world felt ALIVE because everyone had a reason for using every corner of the game world. Leveling was an experience and it was part of playing the game. Now that leveling takes less than a week in most modern MMO's (or instant if you have cash), it means a massive portion of development time was spent for a week of content that players will never use again.

My opinion on how to make MMOs great again.. you need to put the RPG back in MMORPG. The leveling process needs to massively slow down so it takes time for characters to hit max level. Leveling should be the content, not endgame You also need to sprinkle other types of activities within the leveling experience across the world so characters feel the need to explore, (Notorious Monsters, Crafting, Dungeons, Mount Hunting, Storyline Quests, etc.) Quests should also be about quality over quantity. I'd rather do an epic 2 hour quest that sends me around the game world seeing new places (and dying a few times) than spend 2 hours on 15 quests where I run around and kill crabs in the same forest before moving on and doing the same in the ice land.

You can say this, but you're looking at things with rose colored glasses. LFG sucks, but spamming General for "LFG Heroic Shadow Labs" for an hour also sucked, as well as being a BRD in FFXI and sitting in Jueno for four hours waiting for a group just so you could kill the same crab over and over again.

You've clearly never played FFXI if you think it took a BRD four hours to find a group...

 

[Alvarez]

I just wanted to pop in and point out that I was beta testing Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry in April of 2014. All of the bosses were completed--the only thing that was particularly buggy was the doors in the raid (which inexplicably kept opening and closing over and over). The next raid, Hellfire Citadel, was released in June of the next year... 14 months later.

It takes the Blizzard Entertainment 14 months to create one raid.

But don't get me started on Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, which featured a whopping two entire endgame (4-man) dungeons at launch. I think it's been a year? since the expansion launched and it now features... three endgame dungeons.

EDIT: Oh, and OP claims the XIV situation isn't "awful", but virtually all of XIV's top raid guilds have disbanded, so I think that's pretty telling.

 

[TheYanger]

I just wanted to pop in and point out that I was beta testing Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry in April of 2014. All of the bosses were completed--the only thing that was particularly buggy was the doors in the raid (which inexplicably kept opening and closing over and over). The next raid, Hellfire Citadel, was released in June of the next year... 14 months later.

It takes the Blizzard Entertainment 14 months to create one raid.

But don't get me started on Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, which featured a whopping two entire endgame (4-man) dungeons at launch. I think it's been a year? since the expansion launched and it now features... three endgame dungeons.

EDIT: Oh, and OP claims the XIV situation isn't "awful", but virtually all of XIV's top raid guilds have disbanded, so I think that's pretty telling.

To be fair, it doesn't take 14 months, when you say you played the old test version 14 months prior to release of HFC, you're talking about two very different states of the zone. The release dates of things are the most relevant point, like they could finish 3 raids in 2 months and it would do no good to release them that quickly (as we saw in Burning Crusade, where they cranked out many quickly and then they sat there for a year). I really think it's the pacing of it that is the issue. FF raid content has been bad since it launched, but any time I bring that up it turns into an argument. Pre-Heavensward was just as bad though.

 

[Candescence]

Warframe needs to rebalance/redo end-game content. The game is fine until you reach the T4 void. After that, it is an endless grind with shameless bulletsponges. Level design does nothing for the parkour system.

Also they got $70m+ Chinese over a year ago money and still no dedicated servers.

Well, I don't think the game needs dedicated servers, it's a 4-player co-op title, for pete's sake. And while the level design could be better (though the spy missions make really good use of the parkour, the best ways to sneak around those sections involve looking for hidden routes via parkour) and the higher-level stuff (sorties mainly) can get bullet-spongey, that's nothing a properly-modded Tonkor and a decently balanced squad can't fix. It's really only grindy if you make it so. I prefer to mainly just drop in, do sorties, maybe a few other things, and then stop.

I absolutely have my own beefs with the game and I think there's a lot of potential being squandered, but it's still a fun game.

 

[erawsd]

Personally, Ive made my peace with the WoW release schedule.

Following an expansion Blizzard reliably gets a new patch out every 3-4 months for ~year until the final raid tier. Firelands was an exception but we know that had to be delayed. At that point I get my fill of the final raid, I unsub for 8-10 months and come back for the expansion probably more invigorated thanks to the break.

 

[Alvarez]

I have said this many times and I stand by it (regarding WoW mostly):

Stop making everything so accessible. An MMO should have hard as shit enemies that barely anyone will ever beat, it should have raids that only a few ever see, and it should have super rare items that makes people flock to the lucky guy/girl that managed to get a hold of one. Why? Because it makes it feel like a world instead of a minigame-hub

Let me stop you right there and tell you that both Wildstar and Final Fantasy XIV have tried this. It killed Wildstar 1.0 outright and it's currently killing XIV. So your grand theory is, uh, wrong.

 

[Melubas]

Let me stop you right there and tell you that both Wildstar and Final Fantasy XIV have tried this. It killed Wildstar 1.0 outright and it's currently killing XIV. So your grand theory is, uh, wrong.

Wrong in regards to what? They weren't popular sure but I still feel that this is the direction MMOs should be taking and I know many people that feel the same. Basically everyone I know that used to enjoy these types of games stopped playing because they feel that everything is too accessible. Vanilla WoW had this formula and it was immensely popular but ultimately succumbed to the minigame-hub factor.

 

[Milly Osworth]

I'm paying for Wow without anything interesting to do ;_;

 

[Alvarez]

Vanilla WoW had this formula and it was immensely popular but ultimately succumbed to the minigame-hub factor.

Are you talking about ZG and AQ20, the raids created to specifically assist people through the harder content? Or are you talking about the grindable frost and nature resist gear and potions that could allow less skilled raids to just completely ignore mechanics in AQ40 and Naxx?

Maybe you're talking about the most exclusive, important weapon in the game residing in the deeps of the easiest raid in the game?

Vanilla WoW was one of the most accessible MMOs ever, so I'm not sure where you're going with this.

 

[Felessan]

I don't really understand the opinion over FF14. Raiding is a minority (a small one) in this game. And don't be mistaken - there are some people who play lord of verminion. The game itself geared heavily towards casuals and non-achievers, and those do just fine with all coming content.

It just went from ARR 6-7 month cycle schedule (3+3) to HW 8 month schedule (4+4), all the rest is exactly the same.
We still got "raid patch" which contains one new 8 man raid (4 bosses) every even patch, one casual 24 man raid every odd patch (together with catch-up adjustments), some casual stuff every now and than every patch one 8 man trial that have difficulty somewhat below raid. And of course every now and than we got the favorite part of mindless grind - next stage of relic weapon. The only visible reduction in a amount of content delivered is that we got only 2 dungeons per patch instead of 3 (not that it matters significantly anyway).

And it was so for 2 years already.

and it's currently killing XIV

This is really exagerrated. I have a rather casual guild - and we see huge influx on newbie players for past 2 months (Steam sale for HW really had as impact on this)
Yes, some people tired of "all the same" and left. Some downshifting from raids to casual time-spending. But it was so for every MMO out there for decades.

 

[kuroshiki]

I don't really understand the opinion over FF14. Raiding is a minority (a small one) in this game. And don't be mistaken - there are some people who play lord of verminion. The game itself geared heavily towards casuals and non-achievers, and those do just fine with all coming content.

It just went from ARR 6-7 month cycle schedule (3+3) to HW 8 month schedule (4+4), all the rest is exactly the same.
We still got "raid patch" which contains one new 8 man raid (4 bosses) every even patch, one casual 24 man raid every odd patch (together with catch-up adjustments), some casual stuff every now and than every patch one 8 man trial that have difficulty somewhat below raid. And of course every now and than we got the favorite part of mindless grind - next stage of relic weapon. The only visible reduction in a amount of content delivered is that we got only 2 dungeons per patch instead of 3 (not that it matters significantly anyway).

And it was so for 2 years already.


This is really exagerrated. I have a rather casual guild - and we see huge influx on newbie players for past 2 months (Steam sale for HW really had as impact on this)
Yes, some people tired of "all the same" and left. Some downshifting from raids to casual time-spending. But it was so for every MMO out there for decades.

It is no secret a lot of players quit post HW. You dont have to be so defensive about it. Yoshi and his team fucked up bad.

 

[wapplew]

Consuming content always faster then creating them?

 

[Felessan]

It is no secret a lot of players quit post HW. You dont have to be so defensive about it. Yoshi and his team fucked up bad.

No secret for whom? "General observation" of some random semi-raiding people means nothing. Where did you get hard (and unbiased) data to make this statement?

There was some (significant) outflow from semi-hardcore community, because A3S-A4S really broke a lot of spines. But this is just a portion of total playerbase and a very small one. Casuals are just fine with current pace of content. Hardcore and ultra-hardcore more or less too, for them nothing changed except they spent a little bit more of their time to actually clear A4S.

Just an example - at the beginning of 3.0 we haf about 5 statics, and now only 2 remains (they cleared A4S after some pain and struggle). 90% of people that were in broken statics left the game. Does that mean that there is less players? No, the guild itself grew from 150 people to 350 in a year. The majority though are newbies, casuals and people not suitable for raids at all at least for some time until they matured as MMO players.

 

[Alvarez]

I have a rather casual guild - and we see huge influx on newbie players for past 2 months (Steam sale for HW really had as impact on this)

When a Steam sale has a greater population impact than a game's patches, that's a huge sign that players are quitting and not coming back. That's a huge sign that the game is temporarily gaining a few mildly interested ("I'm only buying it because it's on sale") players--most of whom will not become persistent players--and losing a lot of experienced players.

Why is it bad to lose the interest of experienced players? Because all players inevitably become experienced!

It's great that you're on Gilgamesh or Behemoth or whatever server that people have desperately migrated to because they don't like their game experience to be that of a ghost town. That's great that you're seeing a player influx--but it doesn't reflect the state of the game's dwindling population.

 

[Melubas]

Are you talking about ZG and AQ20, the raids created to specifically assist people through the harder content? Or are you talking about the grindable frost and nature resist gear and potions that could allow less skilled raids to just completely ignore mechanics in AQ40 and Naxx?

Maybe you're talking about the most exclusive, important weapon in the game residing in the deeps of the easiest raid in the game?

Vanilla WoW was one of the most accessible MMOs ever, so I'm not sure where you're going with this.

Yet WoW today is much more accessible to the point of severely dumbing down nearly everything in the game. You can't really compare ZG and AQ20 to LFR for example, LFR is way too easy and as I said before makes it so that the magic is completely removed from seeing a new, challenging instance since everyone has already seen it in easy-mode. Raid difficulties is one of the worst things to ever be implemented as far as I'm concerned.

Regarding Sulfuras / Thunderfury (if that is what you're referring to) not many people had those. It took time and was costly to get them, and that was what mattered.

 

[Lucifon]

ESO actually has been on a pretty consistent schedule of new content since they released Imperial City over the Summer. Orsinium followed it a few months later and now Thieves Guild comes out next month, with Dark Brotherhood likely hitting beginning of the Summer (just a guess but would make sense).

Agreed. Their content schedule seems pretty great, and the quality of that content is good too. They seem to be fairly consistent with the updates. The game seems like a silent hit, the servers are busy on both consoles from what I've seen. Me and my buddies love playing it casually.

 

[erawsd]

Wrong in regards to what? They weren't popular sure but I still feel that this is the direction MMOs should be taking and I know many people that feel the same. Basically everyone I know that used to enjoy these types of games stopped playing because they feel that everything is too accessible. Vanilla WoW had this formula and it was immensely popular but ultimately succumbed to the minigame-hub factor.

I agree with you. I dont think doing things exactly like vanilla is the answer but I do think that there is a better middle ground between that and what we have today. For instance, I dont think they need to instantly push everyone into the brand new raid every patch. Back in vanilla I never set foot in Naxx and that never bothered me because it was something that I had to look forward to. These days all you have to look forward to is the same raid with a few tweaks, which diminishes the motivation to keep going.

 

[Felessan]

When a Steam sale has a greater population impact than a game's patches, that's a huge sign that players are quitting and not coming back. That's a huge sign that the game is temporarily gaining a few mildly interested ("I'm only buying it because it's on sale") players--most of whom will not become persistent players--and losing a lot of experienced players.

Patches are much larger than steam sales in terms of concurring players. Main patch weeks are always a mess and queues and lags and "waiting for reservation" dungeons.
Steam sales just bring a lot of new faces (and they do it over prolonged period of time)

Why is it bad to lose the interest of experienced players? Because all players inevitably become experienced!

Experienced players leave all the time. Core of my FF11 LS left the game in 2 years and in 4 years people I never met broke that LS in a huge drama. After 3 years passed I had not played WoW I have no idea who was 80% of my guild roster and 80% people I played with in WoW - already left it.
Actually it's number of newbies that are more important that number of experienced players - because as you said inevitable that all will become experienced players and newbies brings new blood. And experienced players at some point of time will leave anyway, because not everything depends on person's whim - there are other things in life that might prevent to continue playing (work, family etc)

It's great that you're on Gilgamesh or Behemoth or whatever server that people have desperately migrated to because they don't like their game experience to be that of a ghost town. That's great that you're seeing a player influx--but it doesn't reflect the state of the game's dwindling population.

I'm in language-based society, it does not affected by server migration, and clearly show change in popultaion (although for this language group).

 

[Veldin]

Let me stop you right there and tell you that both Wildstar and Final Fantasy XIV have tried this. It killed Wildstar 1.0 outright and it's currently killing XIV. So your grand theory is, uh, wrong.

Actually I think both Wildstar and FFXIV are considerably accessible games, even more than old school WoW in many ways, and the perceived inaccessibility is because of a severe lack of content to maintain widespread interest, alongside certain design problems. In FFXIV's case, implementing a poorly tuned and terribly small 4 boss raid as your one and only top-end content is a kiss of death. And I agree especially about the dungeons, where they're somehow incapable of having more than two max level dungeons at a time. Why they can't repurpose the six leveling dungeons as endgame ones without wasting time giving them the whole "Hard" revamp is beyond me.

When there's enough endgame to keep the average player progressing through a wealth of different bosses and environments (and satisfactory PvP), the community sticks around. That's why an expansion like Burning Crusade is remembered so fondly even though there was somewhat of a drought for the most dogged and top-tier guilds. Despite the fact that they weren't all released at the same time, there were plenty of dungeons and a lot of raids to do in a given week and they stayed relevant for quite a while too. It's true that most of the playerbase never saw the end of Serpentshrine or Tempest Keep and so on, but they had plenty of opportunity and incentive to do so. Speaking personally as a raider during that time our guild rarely reached the stopgap "highest item level" before another big raid came along, and it always felt like there was another set of encounters to take on. In a game like FFXIV, that miserable halt in progression inevitably occurred months and months before the end of a content cycle from 2.0 to 3.0 and beyond.

 

[TheYanger]

Regarding Sulfuras / Thunderfury (if that is what you're referring to) not many people had those. It took time and was costly to get them, and that was what mattered.

You misspelled luck.

 

[Renekton]

Are you talking about ZG and AQ20, the raids created to specifically assist people through the harder content? Or are you talking about the grindable frost and nature resist gear and potions that could allow less skilled raids to just completely ignore mechanics in AQ40 and Naxx?

Erm... have you grinded Maraudon to wipe at Huhuran and also cleared Sapphiron during vanilla?

 

[Meia]

Why did Ulduar not get a full 6 to 8 months if we knew there was going to be a long fucking time with ICC? Why rush out ToC? Ulduar until November, TOC until early March, ICC until early December. Would have been much better and it's a crime we didn't get more time to enjoy Ulduar before it was swept under the rug.

If this was answered in the four pages after this, forgive the repeat. Ulduar wasn't given more time simply because most guilds were not able to complete it. Most thought the ultimate boss of that raid(0 watcher Yogg) was mathematically impossible to kill. If memory serves one guild was eventually able to do it, but Blizz decided to add another 0.5 raid tier after Ulduar so the new influx of gear could help clear the zone currently up. Not to mention the ToC tier added a new 5 man, as well a pretty big daily quest hub.



Honestly, a large part of what made Warlords so bad was heavy handed design, something Blizzard has been very guilty of for the last couple of years now. People wanted more stuff to do, so Mists of Pandaria launched with a LOT of daily quests. People complained that there were too many to do(because enchants were locked behind them, another poor decision), so instead of not repeating that in Warlords, they decided to have absolutely no daily quests in Warlords at all.


It takes time to develop new raid content. I don't think that should come as a shock to anyone who's played the genre extensively. The problem lies when that's the ONLY content you try developing. Alternate forms of advancement, giving players things that are equally time consuming to work for while being fun to do, these are the failings these games have had lately. In the new expansion Legion, it looks like they're banking on the idea of an "upgradeable legendary" will be something to always build for, so we'll see.


Blizzard themselves have already said that they're ok with the idea of players leaving when there's nothing to do, and coming back when there is. This is also something new they've done, and it's a massive negative in any game that depends on a steady community to keep player interest. I like to think this is a pretty big reason why they lost half their subscribers with Warlords, and why they're too afraid to even say publicly what their subs are at now.

 

[ZenaxPure]

Yet WoW today is much more accessible to the point of severely dumbing down nearly everything in the game. You can't really compare ZG and AQ20 to LFR for example, LFR is way too easy and as I said before makes it so that the magic is completely removed from seeing a new, challenging instance since everyone has already seen it in easy-mode. Raid difficulties is one of the worst things to ever be implemented as far as I'm concerned.

Problem with your argument is you're living in a fantasy world, either that or you are incredibly selfish. Raid content takes by and far the most time for Blizz to create, huge environments, more complicated bosses, multiple unique armor sets + weapons, etc. and no one was participating in it during vanilla. Blizzard gave us the stats years ago, by the time TBC came out only a few thousand people had cleared Naxx 40 man. So over the course of 6 months about 0.5% of the player base actually bothered to go through the raid they made. That is the definition of a waste of development resources.

It's ironic really, you moan on and on about how adding multiple difficulties dumbs down the game (which is factually untrue, all it does it make it harder) when the reality is those extra difficulties are the only reason they can justify spending so much time making the raids as good as they are. You seem to think that if there was still only 1 difficulty we'd be getting the same quality of raids we are now when anyone with half a brain can tell you they'd either stop making them completely or scale back the development so much that every raid was essentially Dragon Soul (90% reused assets with only a handful of bosses).

You're attributing correlation to causation where it doesn't exist - Vanilla WoW was popular but not because the raid model it had. It was popular because it was a super accessible game to get into where anyone regardless of age, time, experience, etc. could progress to level 60. It was less of a time commitment than the MMOs before it. The raid model didn't match that at all, it was super grindy and required a huge time commitment, which is why most people never saw that stuff.

 

[mclem]

I mean, Molten Core in World of Warcraft was literally made within a week, and if you actually take the time to judge the production values with the quality of the scripted events and voice acting and everything, it comes across as quite laughable. Yet somehow the playerbase at the time didn't really deem those elements that important, and this content was enough to keep players engaged and satisfied for quite a while. I think that provides a pretty clear contrast to just how much development priorities have shifted.

I would suggest that the playerbase has shifted, and dev priorities have adjusted to suit.

Molten Core is ridiculously simple compared to modern raids. I'm not talking production values there, there's very few bosses with particularly interesting mechanics. The fights would be learnt by any experienced team - not the bleeding edge world first guilds - in a week. The only challenge to players with modern experience would come through tuning the numbers, pure rotational/reaction skill.

Molten Core worked because it was - to many people - new, required adapting to new tactics, new methods of co-operation, working as a team. That's not new any more.

 

[Dictator93]

This seems to be an issue with themepark ride MMOs and IMO, is one reason why they suffer in comparison to free form sandbox ones.

If you can engage in meaningful story creating and action via community created scenario and content, then you have nearly limitless potential regardless if a new dungeon is added or not.

 

[Renekton]

I would suggest that the playerbase has shifted, and dev priorities have adjusted to suit.

Molten Core is ridiculously simple compared to modern raids. I'm not talking production values there, there's very few bosses with particularly interesting mechanics. The fights would be learnt by any experienced team - not the bleeding edge world first guilds - in a week. The only challenge to players with modern experience would come through tuning the numbers, pure rotational/reaction skill.

Molten Core worked because it was - to many people - new, required adapting to new tactics, new methods of co-operation, working as a team. That's not new any more.

Still, any modern raid with satisfying and emergent mechanics but vanilla-MC graphics will be disastrous.

 

[mclem]

WoW's problem is something that it created itself, basically as soon as new content comes out all the old stuff is obsolete and meaningless.

So when expansion 3 comes out everything from expansion 2 has no more value then when patch 2 of expansion 3 comes out there is some dungeon or mechanic that fast tracks everyone to patch 2 content.

So they keep making all their old stuff worthless, basically making people not climb a ladder constantly at their own pace but always bumping them up to the last couple steps as the ladder gets taller.

The trouble is the alternative: If you don't do that, the people who come in at the bottom of the ladder have a ton of content - but the people halfway up the ladder don't have new blood refreshing them any more. You're still going to lose members of your guild, your squad, your raid team, whatever over time due to natural attrition - where are replacements going to come from?

 

[Baleoce]

I logged in to sell my house and FC. Apparently that may or may not be against TOS since even the mods don't know. Management over there is all over at this moment in time.

I think the implementation of FC houses in this game and how it relates to your subscription is a pretty dirty tactic on their behalf.

 

[Frozenprince]

lol No. They haven't gotten a new raid since December 2014 and there are no plans for a new one at this time. They have completely switched gears to standard bioware single player storyline.

The game LAUNCHED with no raids.

 

[mclem]

Still, any modern raid with satisfying and emergent mechanics but vanilla-MC graphics will be disastrous.

Oh, yes. But I was more trying to indicate that the visible production values weren't really much of a source of the slowdown in content delivery; sure, those things take time, and they've been producing more in recent years - but it's also the iteration, testing, and refinement of complex boss fights that's been introduced since Vanilla that's taking its toll.


I don't tend to do the whole Test Realm stuff for WoW, but I'm curious: When they're going through the (lengthy) process of testing out the new encounters, what's the surrounding environment like? Are the production values - independently of the mechanics - looking fairly final?

 

[mclem]

The vocal part of the community is very entitled and whiny. So as a result all the interesting content gets nerfed or adjusted. i remember the very first innovate boss fight they introduced called "Steps of Faiths" where you have to use artillery to prevent a large ass dragon from reaching the building.

Players in matchmaking couldn't work together so instead of a 8-10 minute epic fight to save the land of coerthas, it was changed to a 3 minute wack fight. Boss dies before he can reach the 1st mechanic.

We will never get an interesting boss fight like that again.

From the WoW front, that's basically the entire point of WoW's scaling difficulty levels. Doesn't FF14 have something similar?

 

[Felessan]

You're attributing correlation to causation where it doesn't exist - Vanilla WoW was popular but not because the raid model it had. It was popular because it was a super accessible game to get into where anyone regardless of age, time, experience, etc. could progress to level 60. It was less of a time commitment than the MMOs before it. The raid model didn't match that at all, it was super grindy and required a huge time commitment, which is why most people never saw that stuff.

A lot of people seems to not know this. And how other MMO looks like back in 2004. When you had to sit for 3-4 hours on one place hiting the same 3-4 buttons for 3-6 months to get to cap and bosses was just zergfest with chain-rezzing, the elegancy and involvement and user-friendliness of WoW levelling and dungeons was unmatched.
There are was still some artefacts of grinding (and they later was remove/replaced by something more involving/actual skill-based), but it was night and day compared to other MMO of that time. But today even Vanilla WoW looks archaic and many things feel just out of place.

It's like a flappy bird is not mainstream anymore.

 

[mclem]

The problem is that you can't just throw up a zone and be like "ok players now kill each other for fun" because most players don't find it fun. The sandbox is a notoriously hard thing to create, which is why the only notable sandbox with a large player base today is EVE.

I would go a little stage further:

I think, to make an effective sandbox MMO, you need a playerbase that embraces the PvP mentality. I don't really mean "everything should be PvP", as such, but the overall way you get player-driven content is by pitting a player character against another player, either in the role of another character or (effectively) as a GM. Which is fine in its own right, but that very design choice is anathema to a number of PvE players.