Cracks starting to show?

[Merusk]

That's what I'm seeing as well.  There's now only 4 guilds participating in 25s on my server and only about 5 additional 10-man dedicated guilds showed up.  I don't know how many of the former 10s are running 2 or more 10's.  (I dobut it's more than 2 10s, either.) 

There seem to be a lot of casual guilds spamming to attempt to put together 10's and still a lot of "will begin running heroics as soon as we have our core."   I saw plenty of spam for old raids like Ulduar and ICC but nothing for things outside of TB.

Then again, I just checked the realm forums to see if I was totally off base.  Turns out some "Hardcores" are getting annoyed with 10s and turning to 25s instead.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965572120

[Xanthippe]

I just spent a few minutes looking at the WoW forums.  Good lord, they're bad.  I mean, they've never been great but they're just awful now.  Signal to noise ratio is lower than ever.  Full of upset people quitting countered by fanboys saying good riddance.  21-page thread entitled Ghostcrawler F U C K You, 6 hours old.  People complaining about CMs being so heavy with the banstick they are afraid to post a complaint.  (A bit of a contradiction there).

[Hawkbit]

I suspect things are in a bit of damage control right now.  They're likely starting to see the wheels come off the bus with sub numbers now and everyone is in meetings on how to save their numbers.  Sadly, there's no easy fix.  Those lost are mostly gone for good, or a long time at least.  They'll still retain their hardcore fans but it wouldn't surprise me to see actual, true sub numbers cut in half of what they were a few months ago. 

There's a lot of people quitting right now, or at least saying they are.

[Maledict]

Yeah, they're going to lose 6 million subscribers in the next couple of months...

Honestly, just when I thoguth the hyperbole and drama screaming couldn't get any higher!

[Typhon]

Hyperbole or not, last week and the week before the mods were cracking down pretty heavy with pretty much the usual mix of flippant and professional.  This week they are all professional/solicitous/apologetic. They are bending over backwards to not come off with an attitude.  I was astonished at how long the fuckyou ghostcrawler thread stayed up.

I don't think that on their own the mods spontaneously decided to start being Mary Poppins.  The only other explanation I can think of is that management gave new direction on tone when responding to clients.

[Simond]

I'm still waiting for the inevitable...

Blizz: "Greg Street has been promoted to a new project and here's our new guy!"
New Guy: "Heroics? Nerfed into the fucking ground. Tol Barad? Scrapped and the person responsible promoted alongside Ghostcrawler. Archeology? Now lets you chose which sites you want and all sale prices increased by ten. Again".

...announcement.  

E: I also think that the 4.1 PTR is going to go up pretty quickly. Like, say, the beginning of March.

[Fordel]

I'm pretty sure all the PvP shit is still Kalgans baby, so don't expect any of it to really go away or whatever.

[Paelos]

I actually don't mind the bgs. The arenas are a clusterfuck, and rated bgs simply don't work.

[Ashamanchill]

Yeah, they're going to lose 6 million subscribers in the next couple of months...

Honestly, just when I thoguth the hyperbole and drama screaming couldn't get any higher!

Ya 50% loss might be a bit much. My guess, 5% minimum, 10% max.

Edit: Which is still a lot of people and a lot of money to fly away.

[Paelos]

Yeah, they're going to lose 6 million subscribers in the next couple of months...

Honestly, just when I thoguth the hyperbole and drama screaming couldn't get any higher!

I don't scream on forums, but I actually had a discussion with my other co-leader today how things had really gone sideways since we started. Nobody in our raiding alliance is killing anything on even normal bosses. Interest is low. People that played key classes have quit the game or rolled other toons. Good healers are fed up with the changes and just saying fuck it.

Are we any worse as a group than we were before? No, but we are finding it a hell of a lot more complicated to organize with the lack of good healers. I told my friend that if we can't pull this shit together next Sunday, there's no much point in me maintaining a sub until they figure this shit out. I've never pretended to be hardcore, but I still managed to raid MC up to ICC with mostly clears. This is just frustrating that people are bailing out.

[Threash]

I feel bad playing my dk in pvp now.  Arenas are basically a faceroll affair at this point, dk can't be stopped.  Dk + anything = sure win, unless the other team has a dk also.

[Nevermore]

I feel bad playing my dk in pvp now.  Arenas are basically a faceroll affair at this point, dk can't be stopped.  Dk + anything = sure win, unless the other team has a dk also.

Clearly the solution is to nerf Druids more!

[Hawkbit]

Yeah, they're going to lose 6 million subscribers in the next couple of months...

Honestly, just when I thoguth the hyperbole and drama screaming couldn't get any higher!

I should have specified NA subs, which are what, around 2-3 million of the total?  I would not be surprised to see that by late March there's a 25%-50% drop in subs from WoW's peak NA subs.  They'll lose 100k to RIFT alone, maybe more.  Of course they have full potential to win some folks back, but I don't think that's going to happen until the next xpac.  The next one better be seriously content heavy.

I know two other people IRL that play WoW; all three of us are unsubbed now for lack of interest or unsatisfied game changes.  And that's all three of us that have played from Nov2004 to Feb2011.  I realize that the three of us don't comprise even a drop in the bucket of the 2-3 million subs number, but I have to imagine we're not the only ones feeling this way. 

[WindupAtheist]

I've seen a 20 page "Why did you quit?" thread proceed more or less unopposed by any fanboys, but the mods have been cracking down on that shit hard lately. I dunno what their subscriber numbers are doing, but morale is lower than I've ever seen it. The perception seems to be that droves are quitting.

[Maledict]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I would still say the last 9 months of wrath saw far more people leave the game than any other time in its history, from my perception. It's just they left without screaming or shouting. As gallenite once put it - people screaming on yourforums generally don't quit. They have too much invested, that's why they are screaming. It's when people DON'T post on the forums you have an issue, because they no longer care.

Re Rifts launch date - I wouldn't disagree with you there, although it's going to fuck over their content pacing to do so. Scott was commented that he could make WoW patches appear by magic. For a long time when he was running EQ2 blizzard would push a patch whenever an expansion was coming. Ultimately though, people aren't going to play Rifts because WoW is too hard. Rifts is *much* harder, especially in instances. All those instances we're doing in beta are the equivalent of SM, and they take far longer. I very much doubt there's any game out there at the Wrath difficulty curve.

[Setanta]

I know there's a problem with the game for me when I'm having more fun soloing MC, Kara and AQ20 than I am running Cata heroics.

I'm not sure what screwed up with the game, it's just seriously no-fun.

[WindupAtheist]

stuff

All I see is a hardcore raider who thinks this expansion is just peachy, and doesn't like the fact that it's shaping up to go into the history books as the one where WoW finally jumped the shark.

Mark my words, when we're talking about this game five years from now the way people talk about EQ now, this will be regarded as the end of the game's prime. Wrath will be the expansion where content was accessible to everyone, where everybody had something to do, where the plot that was begun in WC3 was finally concluded, and during which Blizzard had it's final "WoW reaches new high in subscribers!" press releases. Cataclysm will be the beginning of "all that shit that came afterward".

I'd predict Rifts and SWTOR taking a pound of flesh out of the stumbling giant, but I have no faith at all in the rest of the MMO industry being able to exploit this golden opportunity by displaying competence. It's perfectly possible that both will be buggy lame shitfests ground beneath the heels of even a past-prime WoW.

[Maledict]

Apart from the fact I'm no where *near* a hard core raider? I never saw algalon (heck didn't kill mimiron or freya), didn't kill heroic lich king and have only now killed one heroic mode now it's been extremely nerfed. But if it makes you feel better to denigrate my opinions and experiances go ahead.

I do think that with the death of Arthas people will leave the game though. It's the natural end point for folks who started the series with WC3, and 6 years is a HELL of a long time to play a game. EQ saw the same effect with Quarm and Planes of Power - it was a natural end point and left you feeling you had 'beaten' the game. Both games have tried to create new baddies even worse than the last, but you can't just make something like that up in the spate of a year. I do think WoW will see slowly declining subs now - I think that's natural. I just don't think it's 'jumped the shark' or anythig like that - I just think it's time. Even on this forum, which has seen some of the most excessive hyperbole I've read about the game, no-one has adequately yet put their finger on exactly *what* they feel has changed. Whenever it's pointed out that objectively they are wrong (eg difficulty wise this is slightly harder than wrath and vastly easier than vanilla or TBC), folks just respond with name callin or some sort of wierd fetish culture wherebye designers who no longer work on the game are blamed for stuff. I mean, it's as if folks have absolutely no idea what Tigole DOES apart from sitting in a room sacrificing a chicken in an attempt to bring back EQ - despite the fact he was the guy who killed the game off in the first place.

Overall, I think WoWs time is done for many people. That's not a bad thing - we've had years of fun, and rather than leave trying to curse and spit on it and rationalise it just leave on a good note. Nothing lasts forever - heck, 6 months ago I thought I was finished with the game.   

[Merusk]

Mal, your attitude has been akin to one of the hardcore dick raiders.  It's not just WUA who's perceived you that way and I suspect we aren't the only two.

Hyperbole is stock and trade here, so continually getting upset by it is amusing.  It's an internet forum and we're bullshitting, it's all useless mental masturbation in the end.

As for what's changed, there's a people management theory I was once taught that says, start out hard and soften up but know you can never get harder once you go soft.  WOTLK was the soft point, so even if Cata is less hard than BC, it doesn't matter.  The perception is there that things are MUCH harder and for no good reason.  After all, it's a game and nobody's saving the world playing it so it's perceived as just an arbitrary temper-tantrum by the devs that "shit was too easy on the players."  Well, they were the ones who made it so, they should suck it up and deal.

Additionally, it's not any one single thing that's changed, but an amalgam.  There's the talent tree changes, lots of classes had mechanics overhauls, the mana changes, the harder dungeons, the "L2P" attitude from the devs (when the players are just trying to play the game as they had been trained to do for the last 2 years) and yes, the end of a storyline.  Any two or three would have probably been ok, but heaping them all on the players at once has created a lot of dissatisfaction.

People could take harder heroics, for example, if their healers weren't having to learn how to heal again AND running out of mana.  That shit just gets tiresome and frustrating.  It's not just learning how to stick a few new spells into a rotation, or rebalancing your mana consumption but a whole new methodology to healing that makes people wonder why they're bothering.  

The harder heroics mean a shit ton of casuals are really pissed.  We had a 60+ page of bad groups detailing wipes and other bad play at the easiest point in the game.  If it was that bad in Wrath and dungeons are 'endgame' content for a lot of players, why bother paying for something that's going to be even more frustrating now.

We play for entertainment, and losing all the time isn't entertaining.  Particularly after you've been forced to wait 40+ minutes for the privilege of a wasted night of frustration.   The attitude of "well roll a tank/ healer" is just blaming the victim and not helpful.  It's suicide as a business approach.  We're out of Fillet Mignon, have a Big Mac. It's all just meat, right?

Ed: As I looked at the Rifts thread just now, something occurred to me.  This feels like EQ's GoD expansion all over again. 

[Maledict]

It's the fact that for some reason on f13 people refuse to accept there is a middle ground between casual and hardcore - w middle ground that I think covers a *lot* of people. Instead, any deviation just gets stomped with calls of 'hardcore minority stfu'. It is possible to enjoy the game, think the difficulty is fine and not be racing to be first on your server.

Re. Difficulty it also astonished me that folks have already forgotten Loken. For the first 9 months of wrath ther were complaints about his difficulty, it even became an annoying meme. When we were face rolling heroics we were in gear four tiers higher than intended, to start with. I can already say that the current heroics will be just as silly, if not even more so, by the end of the next patch. Groups in guild are already burning through them and AEing everything down and that's without any heroic raiding gear at all. If the new heroics were tunes to be at the same level of difficulty as the heroics in wrath for the final year you would be soloing them after a couple of patches. With blizzards policy of giving ever better gear for casual players over the cours of an expansion you *have* to have periods where the difficulty goes up due to the gear resets between expansions - there is literally no other way to do it. To keep the difficulty at the same level would mean an ever decreasing difficulty curve over expansions and time that resulted in a game my cat could play - and that's bad for retention on so many levels. (except the vital cat figure of course).

Re. GoD I can only assume you weren't actually playing EQ at the time in any way. GoD was a fundamentally *broken* expansion at every level of play that had clearly been churned out too fast. At the same time WoW was getting going and lured a huge number of high profile EQ players and sites over with the promise of a revolutionary better game, both graphically and in terms of how it played.

Not only is cata no where near GoD in any respect (and to compare the two is ludicrous), but rifts is no WoW. It is a nice game that is fun to play, but again I have to say - if you think WoW is currently 'too hard' or too 'anti-casual' you are off your he'D if you think rifts will replace that. It's not even *pretending* to, so whilst it will be great fun to level up in, at the end upu will be faced with exactly the same as WoW. Now, for folks who want a change of scenery but like the model, that will be fine and work well. But if you ate leaving Wow because it's not casual friendly or become too hard you are wastin your time with Rifts - it's just not trying to fill that hole. (heck, the ey nature of the rifts mechanic makes it intrinscly hostile to low playtime casual players  - uninstanced content is never casual friendly, and that's the reason WoW dropped it).

Oh, and archaelogy sucks! Not because it doesn't drop purples, but because it does and doesn't drop enough fun flavour items. Why blizzard have such a hatred of illusions and toys is beyond me.

[Hawkbit]

Ed: As I looked at the Rifts thread just now, something occurred to me.  This feels like EQ's GoD expansion all over again. 

I didn't realize it either, but GoD was when I stopped playing EQ.  Funny that. 

[ghost]

Why does the "WoW killer" have to be another WoW or even an MMO?  WoW is more than capable of eventually driving itself into the ground.  Rift doesn't have to be the next million man MMO to help drive the nail in the coffin. 

[Merusk]

There's some spittle on your chin, Mal.  Better breathe.

[Soulflame]

I... I completely agree with WUA.

And Mal, this is from someone who's done a little bit of hardcore raiding. You're not coming across very politely.

Not that it's necessary to do so, but you're being an extraordinary dick, even by the standards of this community.

[Paelos]

It's the fact that for some reason on f13 people refuse to accept there is a middle ground between casual and hardcore - w middle ground that I think covers a *lot* of people. Instead, any deviation just gets stomped with calls of 'hardcore minority stfu'. It is possible to enjoy the game, think the difficulty is fine and not be racing to be first on your server.

Actually there's a very clear line between what separates a hardcore raider and a casual raider. If you've ever spent considerable time in heroic versions of raids, regardless of success to the end, you are in a very small part of the overall WoW raiding population. If you don't raid at all you're full casual.

So just to clear this up for you:

Don't raid at all - Casual player (unless they are hardcore into pvp)
Raid, but never do heroic raids, and probably didn't get the full clear on regular - Casual raider (ie - the middle ground)
Raid, and do heroic versions of them - Hardcore raider (this is where you are)

Now to clear this up even more, here are the the do's and don'ts for comments in those niches.

Casuals - Don't comment on raids difficulty, do comment on dungeon difficulties including heroic modes
Casual raiders - Do comment on raid difficulty and heroic dungeon difficulty, don't comment on world firsts, heroic raid difficulty, or the lives of hardcore raiders.
Hardcore raiders - Don't comment on heroic dungeons or regular raid difficulty, do comment on heroic versions, tactical decisions and EJ tweaks to classes for balance.

[Malakili]

It's the fact that for some reason on f13 people refuse to accept there is a middle ground between casual and hardcore - w middle ground that I think covers a *lot* of people. Instead, any deviation just gets stomped with calls of 'hardcore minority stfu'. It is possible to enjoy the game, think the difficulty is fine and not be racing to be first on your server.

Actually there's a very clear line between what separates a hardcore raider and a casual raider. If you've ever spent considerable time in heroic versions of raids, regardless of success to the end, you are in a very small part of the overall WoW raiding population. If you don't raid at all you're full casual.

So just to clear this up for you:

Don't raid at all - Casual player (unless they are hardcore into pvp)
Raid, but never do heroic raids, and probably didn't get the full clear on regular - Casual raider (ie - the middle ground)
Raid, and do heroic versions of them - Hardcore raider (this is where you are)

Now to clear this up even more, here are the the do's and don'ts for comments in those niches.

Casuals - Don't comment on raids difficulty, do comment on dungeon difficulties including heroic modes
Casual raiders - Do comment on raid difficulty and heroic dungeon difficulty, don't comment on world firsts, heroic raid difficulty, or the lives of hardcore raiders.
Hardcore raiders - Don't comment on heroic dungeons or regular raid difficulty, do comment on heroic versions, tactical decisions and EJ tweaks to classes for balance.

I think that more or less sums it up.

[ghost]

Actually there's a very clear line between what separates a hardcore raider and a casual raider. If you've ever spent considerable time in heroic versions of raids, regardless of success to the end, you are in a very small part of the overall WoW raiding population. If you don't raid at all you're full casual.

I had someone try to tell me the other day that they were a "20 hour per week casual player".  While I understand the distinctions you are making, casual does not in any way imply playing more than an hour or so per day.  Fuck, 20 hours is half a work week. 

[Nebu]

I had someone try to tell me the other day that they were a "20 hour per week casual player".  While I understand the distinctions you are making, casual does not in any way imply playing more than an hour or so per day.  Fuck, 20 hours is half a work week.  

Tough call.  I consider myself a casual gamer and I play an hour or two a few nights a week, but get up to 20 hrs with marathon weekend sessions.  Hardcore gamers will play 4+ hours daily.  

If you play nearly every day, spend more time reading forums about said game, and even more time working excel spreadsheets to maximize your toon, then you're hardcore (IMO)

[Paelos]

I've always thought actions taken within the game are a better indicator of the hardcore mentality than simply judging by time spent. These are, after all, time sink games. One man plays for 20 hours while watching TV, chatting with guild, and doing quests periodically across 3 alts. Another man plays for 10 hours a week, logs in only for raid nights, and clears all the regular raids while decked out in his full set of tiered gear.

Which one of these people is hardcore?

[caladein]

Bringing up Loken is illustrative of the difference between difficult stuff before this expansion and now.  Classic and BC content was about bringing the right classes, in many cases the only class that could do Job A.  Wrath was more about not bringing the wrong class to wrong place.  Holy Paladins were great in a lot of places, except pre-nerf Loken.  Tanks were in a similar situation, you could ride your "best tank" most of the time except for the fight they were a huge liability on.  You also needed a Shaman of some kind, even if they was worse than someone they would replace.

Cata's different. Non-Heroic Raid content in this expansion isn't about your decision at character select, but your ability to play right now.  That's a perfectly acceptable type of difficulty for me, one where I'm in a lot of control over what and how much I'm able to contribute to the group.  (Similarly, I'm going to think class stacking is just as bullshit now as it was a few years ago, but I haven't cared about relevant Heroic Raid content for a year-and-a-half .)

Add on that, for me, having slightly challenging content at the press of a button is pretty nice, much more so than what is actually a pretty good set of raids this tier, and second only to Goblins.

As for casual/hardcore, I don't think it's a terribly useful (or at least, not very portable) distinction.  So much of it is dependent upon what you like to see yourself as and/or which group you think has the superior claim to the game's direction.  To Nebu's point about metagaming, I think that's even more irrelevant.  I play around with mods and macros and read what people-smarter-than-I think because I have a lot of fun doing so, them making me better at "playing the game" is an infrequent and unintentional side-effect.

Edit: Grammar.

[ghost]

I would say they are both hardcore.  But then again I don't have time to do either, so that's from my viewpoint.  Also think about the amount of time that a "Raider" had to spend to get to that level.  You can't get there very easily with a cruise control raid schedule that a lot of these guys get on because they're already mostly geared.  

And think of this:  if a guy is neglecting friends, family, hygiene, job to play 20 hours per week and all he does is cyber in Goldshire he's still really, really into the game.  It's just in a different manner than raiding.  If your argument is that you have to play at this highest level to be hardcore I would disagree, and would put forth that the distinction should have at least a fair consideration as to how much of your real life you sacrifice to be "in game".  

[Xanthippe]

I've always thought actions taken within the game are a better indicator of the hardcore mentality than simply judging by time spent. These are, after all, time sink games. One man plays for 20 hours while watching TV, chatting with guild, and doing quests periodically across 3 alts. Another man plays for 10 hours a week, logs in only for raid nights, and clears all the regular raids while decked out in his full set of tiered gear.

Which one of these people is hardcore?

Absolutely.  I have often played a great deal more than 20 hours per week but I've hardly ever raided.  I've called myself a hardcore casual, in that I've spent a great deal of time in the game, but without playing endgame.  I just have no interest in raiding (therefore I don't have any comments on it whatsoever).

My fun is all about playing the AH, doing heroics, bgs, crafting and questing.

[Rendakor]

A big issue with the difficulty that Maledict isn't acknowledging is this: never before was the gap between raider and non-raider so visible in non-raid content. In fact, using Paelos's grouping my guild would be Casual Raiders, and the difficulty frequently creates drama. Our guild runs go like you say; we use little CC except on certain awful pulls, rarely wipe on bosses anymore and things are generally smooth. However, we have one tank who only does a daily heroic for VP, one who pretty much only logs in for raid nights, and a few people with tank alts that aren't geared or inclined to do heroics. Despite our tank shortage, we have about 15 or so DPS who all need daily heroics; 3 of them will get to run in our one daily group, but the rest are stuck /LFDing which is still about a 50% success rate.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I refuse to do heroics anymore, even still needing a couple pieces of vp gear it's just not worth my time since I raid and get vp there. Even with a full guild group I just have no desire to slog through a heroic every day to get a handfull of points, it's a poor reward for my time invested.

[Threash]

As soon as my guild started getting a few raid kills i stopped setting foot in heroics.  There's like 3 wortwhile things in the vp vendor, i already have one and I'm on boss kill away from the second.