Cataclysm

[Rokal]

And you're still assuming that the majority of people quit for reasons other than content and difficulty. People say shit all the time, and they act for different reasons altogether. Nobody is making posts when they quit saying, "The game is too hard, I'm constantly in the fire, and I'm done." No, they blame all kinds of other stuff when the reality is they just sucked or were tired of others sucking. If people played as good as they think they do, Cataclysm wouldn't have caused as much sub loss. And, if the world drove as well as they say they do, we'd have no car accidents.

Actually, I'm not assuming that. I admit I don't know why everybody quit. I'm not even sure Blizzard has an accurate metric (like you said, people might fill out X on an exit survey even if the reason was Y), but they're probably as close as anyone to knowing why this expansion didn't retain subscribers. The difference between me and you is that I don't try to claim I know why everybody quit. I've only provided anecdotal evidence from the perspectives of people I know and suggested different possibilities.

There are plenty of different reasons to quit during Cata. Here is a short list:

1. burnt out
2. too hard (group content)
3. too easy (leveling content is a joke)
4. not enough raid content at 85
5. not enough non-raid content at 85
6. not enough dungeon content at 85
7. not enough non-dungeon content at 85
8. not enough 80+ solo content
9. no new classes
10. new profession sucks
11. recycled content
12. Blizzard slept with my mom

I was referring to the number of times you've said it just in this thread.  And yet haven't actually quit.

This would be the first time I've said it in this thread.

Rogue legendary dagger incoming

FML

[Rokal]

Bigger details from that interview:

Raid finder will be 25-man only. Difficulty for raid-finger will be lower than normal mode. It'll also give lower level loot and will have a separate set of achievements. I guess this is how they are implementing 'easy mode'.

Still seems like a really shitty way to experience the content.

If they're implementing easy-mode, why nerf T12 :p

[Tannhauser]

Who knew catering to the hardcore would be a bad business model?  Seriously, fuck the hardcore.  They will keep playing no matter what you do.  And if they cancel, fuck 'em.  I'd rather lose that 2% than the 98% casual.

Everyone chases the hardcore.  Why? They are a small segment of the MMO population.  Bioware has the right idea; 8 solo progression storyline.  Oh and if you want to dip your toe in raiding, they got that.  PvP?  They got that.  But re-roll is the endgame for most.

[Merusk]

Many reasons they chase it, the primary is always Because devs themselves are hardcore.  They speak that language and understand the mindset far more than "i just want to get in and fuck around for a few hours on my own."

[Ingmar]

I don't think what Blizzard actually set out to do was placate the hardcore. I think what they mistakenly thought they could do was take the tons of new people who got into raiding in WotLK, and turn them hardcore.

[luckton]

If TOR doesn't pan out, I would come back for the random raid tool.  No joke.  I don't care about the achieves...but to see the content and get loots?  Yeeeeessssssss.....  

[Paelos]

I don't think what Blizzard actually set out to do was placate the hardcore. I think what they mistakenly thought they could do was take the tons of new people who got into raiding in WotLK, and turn them hardcore.

Yep, that's a big part of it. They believed that because everyone started raiding in Wrath, they could just turn up the volume and they would follow right along.

[Paelos]

There are plenty of different reasons to quit during Cata. Here is a short list:

Pretty much everything on that list would have been ignored (and was ignored in previous expacs) if people had access to the content at the time it was released and could do it with their friends.

With the exception of "too easy" and "your mom"

[Rokal]

If TOR doesn't pan out, I would come back for the random raid tool.  No joke.  I don't care about the achieves...but to see the content and get loots?  Yeeeeessssssss.....  

How is this even a little appealing?

You're going to do an easy version of the raid where you ignore most of the mechanics (boring).

You're going to do this with 24 other people that you have never met, who will drop group at the drop of a hat, and will generally try to be as awful as possible. Proud members of the WoW community, in a nutshell. (frustrating)

This is an improvement over doing challenging content with friends and guild-mates?

I could see how this tool would actually be useful if you just wanted to raid 'for the story'. But most raids have no story. T11 had about 1-2 lines of text that were plot development. T12 doesn't really have any. This isn't really a change from past raids either. Wrath did the best job having 'story' integrated into raids, but even that was pretty slim

Pretty much everything on that list would have been ignored (and was ignored in previous expacs) if people had access to the content at the time it was released and could do it with their friends.

With the exception of "too easy" and "your mom"

I don't think the lack of 5-man, raid content, or leveling content was something people would overlook even if 5-man/raid content was easy. They would overlook it *slightly longer*, but they'd still run out of things to do pretty fast unless they wanted to level alts from scratch.

[Paelos]

If TOR doesn't pan out, I would come back for the random raid tool.  No joke.  I don't care about the achieves...but to see the content and get loots?  Yeeeeessssssss.....  

How is this even a little appealing?
You're going to do an easy version of the raid where you ignore most of the mechanics (boring).
You're going to do this with 24 other people that you have never met, who will drop group at the drop of a hat, and will generally try to be as awful as possible. Proud members of the WoW community, in a nutshell. (frustrating)
This is an improvement over doing challenging content with friends and guild-mates?

Here's the hilarious part. The devs assumed the exact same thing. They assumed that it wouldn't be appealing for their players to do easier stuff with randoms. They assumed that the players wanted to be challenged and put together large groups of friends to conquer content.

How horrifying it must have been when they found out that their players don't really want a challenge. They wanted to surf around the game with their friends pulling the loot lever and chatting away with new people in pugs.

[Simond]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112981-WoW-Producer-Discusses-Killing-Deathwing-Raid-Finder-and-Everything-Patch-4-3

Rogue legendary dagger incoming

That got pulled quite quickly. I'm guessing that it wasn't supposed to be released yet.
Anyway: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2450-Rogue-Legendary-Dagger-and-Patch-4.3-Interviews-Comics

[Fordel]

That's something I would agree with, Blizzard DRASTICALLY underestimated just how many raiders were actually 'making their living' off of PuG raids.

[Rokal]

Here's the hilarious part. The devs assumed the exact same thing. They assumed that it wouldn't be appealing for their players to do easier stuff with randoms. They assumed that the players wanted to be challenged and put together large groups of friends to conquer content.

How horrifying it must have been when they found out that their players don't really want a challenge. They wanted to surf around the game with their friends pulling the loot lever and chatting away with new people in pugs.

Glorified chat room > video game?

[Lantyssa]

With the exception of "too easy" and "your mom"

I totally did your mom with some friends!

[Ingmar]

More like fun > serious business gaming for most people. Why this comes as a surprise to you is beyond me.

[Rokal]

I don't see what is fun about doing boring content with people you don't know from an awful community.

[Ingmar]

No, you wouldn't.

I'm sure people would love to be able to do the nerfed level of content with non-randoms even more, but baby steps.

[Fabricated]

I like how Blizzard thinks nerfing the shit out of old content will make mediocre or worse guilds want to run it to gear up so they can do the new hotness.

No. They won't. A Million+ people didn't WANT to do that. They want to do the current shit. Make the current shit easier. Sorry.

[Rokal]

There is nothing stopping you from using LFR with non-randoms (I assume), just like LFD, but you'd need to have 25 people before you queued so... unlikely.

It surprises me that they aren't allowing 10-man "LFR" difficulty. On the one hand, it makes sense. 25-mans have a bit more room for error. 2-3 people being afk or awful isn't going to destroy your raid. Most of the 25-man guilds at this point seem to be 'legacy guilds' that are interesting in hard-mode content, so they probably won't feel conflicted to run "easy mode" first. 10-man guilds also won't feel like they need to do easy mode first in order to move to normal mode. This also gives Blizzard more 'bang for their buck' with 25-man developement.

On the other hand, this makes 'easy mode' less of an option for 10-man guilds that just want to play together but think normal mode is too hard. It also means "LFR" difficulty won't be a great 'learning tool' for most of the population, because most people will be in 10-man guilds and the 25-man LFR difficulty will be even more different.

I like how Blizzard thinks nerfing the shit out of old content will make mediocre or worse guilds want to run it to gear up so they can do the new hotness.

No. They won't. A Million+ people didn't WANT to do that. They want to do the current shit. Make the current shit easier. Sorry.

Your reading comprehension needs work.

[Sjofn]

They just need more fucking content basically.

YES

[caladein]

That said, I'm curious what everyone else's impression is, because I'm not sure how closely they stick by the "nerf when people stop progressing" rule. They nerfed 4.1 when 4.2 came out, which is suspicious timing.  Unless they had a previous round of nerfs I'm forgetting.

You are forgetting.  There were plenty of nerfs to T11 before 4.2 came out, especially to Heroics.

I like how Blizzard thinks nerfing the shit out of old content will make mediocre or worse guilds want to run it to gear up so they can do the new hotness.

No. They won't. A Million+ people didn't WANT to do that. They want to do the current shit. Make the current shit easier. Sorry.

That's why they're nerfing Firelands now, while it's still current.  Whether this strategy continues in a post-Raid Finder world as well, they'll just have to see how it goes I guess.

[Sjofn]

Also, people who long for the days of TBC make my head hurt.

[Fordel]

TBC was amazing... RELATIVE to Vanilla.

[Rokal]

I think it was their most content-heavy expansion. When you got to 70 you still had 2-3 huge zones left to clear. It had more 5-mans in it than any other expansion in the game. It had a huge amount of raid content, and most of it was pretty good. Above all, I liked the art direction, which really made the game feel fresh again. Plenty to love about TBC.

[Fordel]

TBC's content wasn't actually 'content' for the majority of the playerbase till 2-3 patches in and a bunch of nerfs later.

[Lantyssa]

TBC was my shortest stint in WoW, where I lasted only a month.  Cataclysm made it a week longer, since I got the seven day trial out of it.

[Sjofn]

Whoa whoa whoa there, Rokal. It had tons of raid content if you did 25's. Guilds like mine that could scrape together 10 were stuck in the Karazhan ghetto. And I did love Kharazhan, but still. Even when they added Zul'Aman, it wasn't balanced for the losers like us. It was balanced for the "real" raiders. So naturally my guild was kinda shitty at it, which resulted in that raid - especially since we only raided twice a week, period - not being a fun time. And the heroics were fucking ridiculous, some of them you just didn't do because the reward for clawing through them was not worth it in the least.

Were WotLK heroics a little too face-roll? Maybe. But they were worth the effort. And there was a fuckton more raid content for my guild - and the many, many guilds like mine - to do. Then Cataclysm went "hahaha, you weren't REALLY having fun, let us stomp on your nuts for a while" and they all left.


Fake edit: I am a lot more verbose than Fordel or Lantyssa. :P

[Nevermore]

TBC's content wasn't actually 'content' for the majority of the playerbase till 2-3 patches in and a bunch of nerfs later.

I'm beginning to see why he loved it so much..

[Rokal]

Whoa whoa whoa there, Rokal. It had tons of raid content if you did 25's. Guilds like mine that could scrape together 10 were stuck in the Karazhan ghetto. And I did love Kharazhan, but still. Even when they added Zul'Aman, it wasn't balanced for the losers like us. It was balanced for the "real" raiders. So naturally my guild was kinda shitty at it, which resulted in that raid - especially since we only raided twice a week, period - not being a fun time. And the heroics were fucking ridiculous, some of them you just didn't do because the reward for clawing through them was not worth it in the least.

Were WotLK heroics a little too face-roll? Maybe. But they were worth the effort. And there was a fuckton more raid content for my guild - and the many, many guilds like mine - to do. Then Cataclysm went "hahaha, you weren't REALLY having fun, let us stomp on your nuts for a while" and they all left.

I didn't say it was without problems, or was a wacky "all content for everyone" festival. I said it was content heavy. My point was that regardless of what you did in the game, there was a lot of content (compared to other expansions). Even if you hated raiding or grouping in general, it still had a lot of stuff to do. Leveling in Wrath didn't last as long, there weren't as many 5-mans (and they were much shorter), and there were less raids overall. TBC also had some pretty decent daily quest hubs before they got totally stale (Netherwing, Ogrila (sp)).

Even if you liked the raid content (like me) in Cata, when you look back on this expansion in a few years you'd think "man, there wasn't anything to do". TBC feels like an expansion that Blizzard spent a lot more time/money on and it shows.

TBC's content wasn't actually 'content' for the majority of the playerbase till 2-3 patches in and a bunch of nerfs later.

I'm beginning to see why he loved it so much..

I'm sure you'll find my 'you scrubs don't deserve content' rants right alongside all the hundreds of times I said I was quitting in this thread.

[Lakov_Sanite]

They really did try and sell people on the idea that 5 levels of content could equal 10.

[Evildrider]

They really did try and sell people on the idea that 5 levels of content could equal 10.

Meh, all another 5 levels would have given us is another 1-2 days of grinding.  Then we'd be in the same situation we are now.

[Rokal]

They really did try and sell people on the idea that 5 levels of content could equal 10.

Meh, all another 5 levels would have given us is another 1-2 days of grinding.  Then we'd be in the same situation we are now.

I think it took me a week or two to get to the cap in TBC. Wrath was about 1 week. In Cata it was like 3-4 days. Sure, we're only talking about another week and a half of content, but there was also more quest content to finish at the level cap in Wrath/TBC. Additionally, that was another 1-1.5 weeks of content per character that you got to the level cap. Redoing 60-70 on alts (or 70-80) was less tedious than redoing 80-85 on alts, imo, because the alternative leveling paths really kept the content from getting boring so quickly. In Cata you have a choice between starter zones (80-81), but after that every character takes the same path. I got tired of leveling alts much faster in Cata than in any other expansion. I actually resorted to herbalism, archaelogy, and watching TV to finish leveling my priest because I didn't want to do Deepholm or Uldum again.

[Sjofn]

WotLK had way more to do for me. Like not even close. And even so, WotLK's quality of shit to do was, in my opinion, higher. Long-ass dungeons do not equal better dungeons. Miles of trash between bosses do not equal better dungeons. The fact I could earn rep for a chosen faction in any fucking dungeon I wanted instead of one or two that I'd already done to death but Oh God I'm still only fucking REVERED made a huge difference, too. There may have been more dungeons in TBC, but a lot of them might as well have not existed, because no one I knew did them. Heroic Mana Tombs, for example. Or heroic Auch Crypts. Fuck, NORMAL Auch Crypts barely existed because of that one "ha ha fuck you healers that aren't a druid" boss.

WotLK also paced its shit better for the non-catasses. Nearly every content patch in TBC was "welp, still nothing for me to do, good thing I enjoy Karazhan." WotLK, because of the 10 man raiding shit, which you are underestimating so badly in "adding shit to do," had something every patch for my guild, plus they added more five mans than TBC did.



fake edit: Also I have never understood people who do extra zones after hitting cap. I know people do it but. Nngh. Unless there's some sort of really awesome quest arc to see that no one can shut up about, I don't bother. I can't be alone in this.

That said, the lack of alternate paths to level up those five levels in Cataclysm is a huge goddamn mistake, and easily my biggest problem with Cataclysm. The giant stomp on the nuts of my less-skilled guildies and friends, causing a lot of them to flee the scene, is second place.

[Rokal]

WotLK also paced its shit better for the non-catasses. Nearly every content patch in TBC was "welp, still nothing for me to do, good thing I enjoy Karazhan." WotLK, because of the 10 man raiding shit, which you are underestimating so badly in "adding shit to do," had something every patch for my guild, plus they added more five mans than TBC did.



fake edit: Also I have never understood people who do extra zones after hitting cap. I know people do it but. Nngh. Unless there's some sort of really awesome quest arc to see that no one can shut up about, I don't bother. I can't be alone in this.

That said, the lack of alternate paths to level up those five levels in Cataclysm is a huge goddamn mistake, and easily my biggest problem with Cataclysm. The giant stomp on the nuts of my less-skilled guildies and friends, causing a lot of them to flee the scene, is second place.

TBC's content was very front-loaded. True, they only added one 5-man over the life of the expansion, but they launched with 15 5-mans. There was an awful lot of raid content available day 1, and only a few patches for new raid content. Going back to what I was saying, TBC felt fresh. There was no re-used content. Wrath re-used Naxx and the art style wasn't quite as interesting/new, Cata re-used.. well... everything. I'm not even talking about SFK/DM/ZA/ZG, but the art direction, the main bosses, so many elements of the expansion.

I did all of the quests in the TBC zones on at least 3 characters. There were some okay upgrades to be had, and gold via questing at level cap was a big deal at the time too. It was also a useful way to get rep. Meanwhile I never touched Icecrown on any of my characters, but that's mostly because I didn't spend much time playing Wrath.

I'd be very curious to know what the completion rate was for Icecrown (the quest hub) though. Blizzard might have also come to the conclusion that level-cap quest zones were a waste of resources.

[Ingmar]

There was an awful lot of raid content available day 1

Not for us. And Naxx was not re-used content for more than about 5% of the user base.