Patch 3.08

[WindupAtheist]

Falwell was really just griping about Blizzard's rate of content production, but fuck it.

In a magical world where all MMO developers were as good as Blizzard, you'd have three big casual Warcraft type games duking it out for supremacy and one much smaller "Vanguard done right" scampering around their ankles making a tidy little profit provided they planned realistically. The games would be like television networks, and the super "I pwned Sunwell Plateau" poopsock five-percenters would be like people who want to watch undubbed Slovakian arthouse films. At some point you just have to quit running that shit in primetime, even if a tiny minority of your customers are going to stamp their feet and fuck off to watch the International Film Channel.

[Venkman]

I'd actually say EQ2 is the VG in this scenario. It's at least as good an experience in many ways, superior in others. They just got pulverized at launch and from a brand and marketing standpoint have never really recovered.

[Merusk]

You know the funny part about your "If you accept 5, then 8, then 10.... a market unto itself" bit, Darniaq?  5% of Blizzard's current subscriber base already IS a market unto itself.. and more successful than any game since EQ.  5% of 11mil is 550k players. 

If ANY other dev house could get their act together and offer a focused, well-built game catering wholly to that segment they'd be set.  Too bad for them.

[Paelos]

Essentially yes, they accept 5% dissatisfaction because the resources and gameplay time needed to actually satisfy that base is ludicrous. I don't think that the numbers are growing for those people all that much, and I also think the developers know they aren't leaving. So, why listen? It makes no business sense to coddle those people and isolate the other 11 million players.

Granted there is a balance of raiding content barrier to entry. I think they did a good job giving people more of what they wanted with 10 and 25 man versions of fights. People are getting to see it all if they want. You can kill Kel'Thuzad even if you don't have 25 people. That's a big step. I do wish they were slightly faster with their content production, obviously. The idea of an expansion a year was a joke for Blizzard to even suggest such a thing.

[K9]

The other issue with endgame raid design is that, had the entry-level raid in WoTLK been as hard as Sunwell, there would have been both a massive amount of dissapointment and frustration amongst people who aren't willing to put in hours smashing their head against a wall, as well as leaving Blizzard little scope to develop ever harder raids later. I'm sure Ulduar will resolve many of these problems to an extent, although there are some folk (the ones who complain that any raid which doesn't chain-wipe 99% with the first two trash pullsof the populace is worthless) who will never be satisfied I think.

Personally I never got to do Naxx at 60, so I'm enjoying the content. I look forward to Ulduar too, although another (non troll please for the love of all that is holy) ZA-like raid on the side would be nice.

[Merusk]

God yes, no more trolls. I'm sick to death of the fucking trolls.  And, oh hay, surprise they have animal gods who they betrayed and took powers from! 

Hell, I'll even take a full swimming instance where 90% of the raid keeps dying because they forget to ask for a water breathing buff instead of more trolls.

[K9]

I want a raid where I get to kill Taurens and Night Elves.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I want a raid where I get to kill Taurens and Night Elves.

Go to war with cenarion circle and head to silithus.

[Venkman]

You know the funny part about your "If you accept 5, then 8, then 10.... a market unto itself" bit, Darniaq?  5% of Blizzard's current subscriber base...

Is what AoC and WAR were able to hit, both trying specifically for a certain segment (though not the never-pleased argumentative raid endgamers).

They just couldn't keep them 

[Lantyssa]

Essentially yes, they accept 5% dissatisfaction because the resources and gameplay time needed to actually satisfy that base is ludicrous. I don't think that the numbers are growing for those people all that much, and I also think the developers know they aren't leaving. So, why listen? It makes no business sense to coddle those people and isolate the other 11 million players.

Just to further emphasize this, those 5% are going to be bitching regardless of how much content you feed them.  It is impossible to produce it at a rate to satify them, much less be of any use to the other 95% of the player base.  It's not the downfall Darniaq predicts.

[Arinon]

Hell, I'll even take a full swimming instance where 90% of the raid keeps dying because they forget to ask for a water breathing buff instead of more trolls.

Oh man I just remembered Kedge Keep from EQ.  This makes me both smile and cringe at the same time.  I think I'd take more trolls.

[Venkman]

Essentially yes, they accept 5% dissatisfaction because the resources and gameplay time needed to actually satisfy that base is ludicrous. I don't think that the numbers are growing for those people all that much, and I also think the developers know they aren't leaving. So, why listen? It makes no business sense to coddle those people and isolate the other 11 million players.

Just to further emphasize this, those 5% are going to be bitching regardless of how much content you feed them.  It is impossible to produce it at a rate to satify them, much less be of any use to the other 95% of the player base.  It's not the downfall Darniaq predicts.

Not what I predicted though It's not about the 5%. It's about the precedent of ignoring anyway at all. The risk is that once you let go of 5%, it becomes easier to let go of 8%, then 10%, then even more. Those let go become the potential marketplace for competitors.

And to be clear, I am not saying WoW is going to ignore a steadily larger base. And neither is the "5%" even my number, I just extrapolated that from WUA's throwaway number to make the point.

Most companies that dominate an industry or space go through this (and I'd guess all that are publicly traded). You are rewarded for growth, not maintenance. Eventually when you can't grow the usual way (ie, WoW's "usual" way is to activate new accounts), you start looking for ways to offset that lack of growth in other ways. For example, profit. Considering that by some estimates their monthly profit was approaching 45%, how much more growth can they get there? So what else? Content creation maybe?

I like WotLK a lot more than I did BC. I think the overall area if better at funneling people through consistent storylines than the wierd quilt of disjointed and stillborn storylines from BC. And the DK class has definitely been better launched than pretty much any other launch of a new class into an established game. So I don't necessarily share the opinion that this expansion was somehow weak.

All I've been focused on is theorizing why it could be weak.

[Paelos]

Most companies that dominate an industry or space go through this (and I'd guess all that are publicly traded). You are rewarded for growth, not maintenance. Eventually when you can't grow the usual way (ie, WoW's "usual" way is to activate new accounts), you start looking for ways to offset that lack of growth in other ways. For example, profit. Considering that by some estimates their monthly profit was approaching 45%, how much more growth can they get there? So what else? Content creation maybe?

You are rewarded for both actually, which you kind of pointed out. Businesses would like to grow if it's a viable option, and they always have plans to do that, but recently more of the focus has been on better management of business assets. Supply chain management is a great example of this, and how companies are trying to focus inwardly and accross their entire supply lines to generate more total profits. Blizzard doesn't really have the same concerns as a manufacturer, but they can still make more money by expanding and at the same time controlling costs.

Blizzard wants to grow and to maintain accounts through content creation and new features. However, if the growth stopped, it would not be a gigantic problem. I think WoW has gone past the major growth stage, and is firmly in the "expansion" stage of the business life cycle. This is where you make the most money, and it can go on for years. The expansion stage is where they find new markets and expand to different mediums. The TCG is probably a good example of an expansion movement, as are the novels, and a potential feature film in the works.

[Lantyssa]

Not what I predicted though It's not about the 5%. It's about the precedent of ignoring anyway at all. The risk is that once you let go of 5%, it becomes easier to let go of 8%, then 10%, then even more. Those let go become the potential marketplace for competitors.

As opposed to letting 95% go to focus on raids?  They can't win by catering to everyone.  They'll do what they can, it's not like they nixxed raids, but 5% of your population deserves 5% of your resources.  They're lucky if they get that much since a given activity isn't exactly composed of discreet percentages they can dole out at will, and that would be 5% more content that 95% of the population could enjoy as opposed to 5% for 5%.

[Falwell]

WUA has it half right. The point I was making was Blizz's turtle slow content release coupled (this time around) with an extremely thin buffer to give them time to produce said content.

As far as us being hardcore, well, to each their own I suppose. Personally, I don't consider a group that only asks for 6 hours of your time a week to be too damn hardcore. I think that judgement comes solely from what content we cleared rather than time invested. Again, it's completely subjective and I only used my guys as a point of reference, so we'll call it debatable and move on.

[Chimpy]

Because it's different, it's pretty forgiving in it's current state (you can lose half the raid and still win), and you get to laugh at the retards who fail.

That's really the only redeeming quality to the encounter.  As a Holy Priest the fight is basically Prayer of Mending + Abolish Disease and "Oh look, the retards died even with Guardian Spirit."

Although I'm not sure what Fabricated is talking about with changes to Phase 1, we tanked him on his platform as usual Tuesday night.

Well, that is one fight they undertuned quite a bit versus what Naxx was at 60 (and that was probably one of the easiest). They made the 2 middle splash zones wider, and slowed the blast interval down by a good full second, they also took out the eye stalk tunnel part. For those of you that did not see the old Naxx, every 30 seconds of the first phase, 3 raid members (who were not the tank) were ported to the loatheb end of that tunnel, and you had to make it out before the first pulse of the dance phase as the entire tunnel got blasted the first blast.
Oh and the hall before him was a 40 second respawn bat and worm gauntlet too. And he aggro'd as soon as someone set foot in the room.

Not to say I wish it was poopsocktasticly hard now. I think they had a good idea making the first level of gear easily accessible to people and get people used to fights with quirks and how a raid functions together. They may have gone a little too easy on stuff to keep everyone content, but the achievements for doing things differently are a nice incentive.

[Azaroth]

I still see 25 man PUGs fail ridiculously hard at Patchwerk on a regular basis.

[Fordel]

I think the 25 Man Vault Pickups are some of the best 'eye-openers' for both ends of the spectrum.

[Sheepherder]

I've seen Vaults where single pulls of the trash killed more people than the boss.

[Venkman]

They can't win by catering to everyone.  They'll do what they can, it's not like they nixxed raids, but 5% of your population deserves 5% of your resources. 

They have been winning by catering to just about everyone. If they actually did start ignore 5% (reminder: I do not know this nor claim this), then that's a new precedent they're starting.

Also, I disagree on your second sentence there. If 5% of a single-player offline game didn't like it, so what? You got your money. But if 5% of your paying subscribers don't like it, and there's a competent alternative, that's ongoing money you lose. Take the 5%, multiply by the fee, and multiply that by however many years you have left of operating. When you replace the percentage with a hard number of billions unrealized, it's hard to ignore.

It is always a question of bang-for-your-buck. And right now WoW is in a largely unassailable position. Whoever they lose nowadays was going to quit anyway, for reasons beyond greener pastures. Because for the most part, there are no greener pastures. There's just a bunch of weak alternatives that have sparks of brilliance hidden behind a veritable farmland of non-polish.

This is what makes this and coming years so much different from the heydays of EQ1. EQ1 was a mess you could navigate through. Between that and the playerbase being much smaller, you could expect people to drop for garbage like launch-year AO and only-one-realm-complete DAoC or grindfest CoH.

Nowadays though, your Control game is highly polished, very big, broad enough to appeal to a very large base of people with similar interests, and continually done with the kind of money that supports the notion of "Blizzard polish". Every real competitor has tried to win back even just the group of us who experiment in MMOs out of habit and nostalgia, and not done such a good job at it.

But this won't last forever (in theory  ). So all I've been saying is that it becomes risky to even start willingly ignore a base (if they are) because of what can come from it later.

[Kail]

Well, Wintergrasp is pissing me off in 3.08.  Before, it was way harder to defend than to attack, so the zone changed hands most of the matches.  Now, it looks like defenders got a huge buff.  Attackers lose time if their towers are destroyed, siege engines get rooted and go down stupidly fast to storms of AoE (but still don't get Tenacity), walls are tougher, ugh.  So, now, it's generally defense which wins, meaning whoever has the zone keeps it for most of the day, and the other faction gets to fling themselves repeatedly into a wall.

[Paelos]

and there's a competent alternative

There isn't. There won't be in the near future. While I agree with your ideas in a competitive environment, that's the exact opposite of what we have. The rest of the points are moot. You can and SHOULD ignore your outliers when there is no other option for them. They are freaks and deserve none of your attention. Concentrate on the data that matters to make the most money.

[pxib]

There isn't [a competent alternative]. There won't be in the near future. While I agree with your ideas in a competitive environment, that's the exact opposite of what we have. The rest of the points are moot. You can and SHOULD ignore your outliers when there is no other option for them. They are freaks and deserve none of your attention. Concentrate on the data that matters to make the most money.

Indeed. Blizzard has a completely open playingfield. With last year's twin disappointments (AoC and WAR), the idea of a big-money alternative has functionally evaporated. The dream of a choice between competing top-tier online worlds died with it. People who get tired of WoW aren't going to go to leave it for other MMOGs... they're going to take a break from them alltogether. When they do come back, they'll come back to WoW.

There are, and will continue to be, a myriad of low cost niche games. There will be no more gorillas. Even something like another LotRO is unlikely to get a funding greenlight. Compared to the console market, the risk looks too high.

[Trippy]

They can't win by catering to everyone.  They'll do what they can, it's not like they nixxed raids, but 5% of your population deserves 5% of your resources. 

They have been winning by catering to just about everyone. If they actually did start ignore 5% (reminder: I do not know this nor claim this), then that's a new precedent they're starting.

Also, I disagree on your second sentence there. If 5% of a single-player offline game didn't like it, so what? You got your money. But if 5% of your paying subscribers don't like it, and there's a competent alternative, that's ongoing money you lose. Take the 5%, multiply by the fee, and multiply that by however many years you have left of operating. When you replace the percentage with a hard number of billions unrealized, it's hard to ignore.

Your argument only makes sense in a world of infinite resources which, despite what their competitors may think, Blizzard does not have. I'm sure if Blizzard could snap their fingers and magically make enough content appear to satisfy the top 5% of the raiding guilds without sacrificing the content for the other 95% they would do that.

Unfortunately in the real world they have to decide how to allocate scarce resources. For this expansion they decided to cater to the 95%. Time will tell if that was the right decision.

[Azazel]

Indeed. Blizzard has a completely open playingfield. With last year's twin disappointments (AoC and WAR), the idea of a big-money alternative has functionally evaporated. The dream of a choice between competing top-tier online worlds died with it. People who get tired of WoW aren't going to go to leave it for other MMOGs... they're going to take a break from them alltogether. When they do come back, they'll come back to WoW.

There are, and will continue to be, a myriad of low cost niche games. There will be no more gorillas. Even something like another LotRO is unlikely to get a funding greenlight. Compared to the console market, the risk looks too high.

That's an excellent point. WAR had a lot going for it on paper: A relatively strong IP, EA money, people who were experiences in MMO development and had a decent game in their past (DAOC). However in between EA pushing it out the door to make 4th-quarter sales and Jacobs' clear disconnect from reality, it's sunk. Some of the same applies to Conan. And frankly, I can't see SWG2 doing all that much better, either. EA will push it out the door before it's ready, and that will be it's deathknell.

[LK]

Well, Wintergrasp is pissing me off in 3.08.  Before, it was way harder to defend than to attack, so the zone changed hands most of the matches.  Now, it looks like defenders got a huge buff.  Attackers lose time if their towers are destroyed, siege engines get rooted and go down stupidly fast to storms of AoE (but still don't get Tenacity), walls are tougher, ugh.  So, now, it's generally defense which wins, meaning whoever has the zone keeps it for most of the day, and the other faction gets to fling themselves repeatedly into a wall.

Still changes hands on my server. Your side must have competent players.

[kildorn]

As far as I can tell, attackers always win on doomhammer now. Any slight lag and your walls are down before you can blink.

[Soulflame]

I was only in one WG this weekend (yay for putting an Elder inside of the WG fort  ) but we zerged down the walls in almost no time at all.  Yay catapult rush.

Edit:  Also, it somehow reset about 30 minutes later, and became contested again.

[Ingmar]

They already went through this 'hey we are doing our focus wrong' conversation, but it was 2 years ago. WotLK is just an evolution of it. Raid content for the tip top of the elite hasn't really been the main thrust of dev activity for a long time. You can see the bitching if you go look at what the Nihilums of the world have been saying about raid difficulty since the patch where they first nerfed Mag's Lair, if not a bit earlier.

Those people largely still haven't left. I don't think Darniaq's scenario holds much water, personally.

What I do know did happen, is at least a decent number of casual players who were fed up with the overwhelming content focus on 40 man raids in vanilla and quit because of it, came back when they changed their focus. The next frontier for this 'hey maybe we should focus on what most of our players actually want' thing is PVP. They'll eventually catch on that no matter how much they love the system they have, arenas are not the way to get everyone into PVP or to make the majority of PVP-oriented players happy, and things will change there too like they have for PVE.

[kildorn]

Mostly they'll pick up that WoW will never, ever be an esport, and people kind of dug the casual battleground system.

[Nevermore]

What I do know did happen, is at least a decent number of casual players who were fed up with the overwhelming content focus on 40 man raids in vanilla and quit because of it, came back when they changed their focus.

This is one of the reasons I'm giving WoW a try again after a four year hiatus.

[Paelos]

I remember the first big change that Blizzard announced, which sort of started the deathknell of the old raiding style. It was when they made it public that the next iteration of top end raids would be 25 mans, and not 40s. The hardcore raiders were pushing for 80 man raids. They were absolutely pissed at the time, like Ingmar was saying. They fully expected the game to go a certain direction, and Blizzard pulled a 180 on them.

Ingmar's also right, those guilds haven't left. Death and Taxes, Risen, Nihilium, they are all still playing while bitching up a storm.

[Venkman]

and there's a competent alternative

There isn't. There won't be in the near future.

I know that, which is why I keep saying this is all academic.

While Trippy is spot on that Blizzard does not have infinite resources, compared to everyone else who has tried, they a) did get more resources; and, b) were much smarter about applying them.

Blizzard folks are not geniouses by birth. They just know, as a team, how to iterate and eventually cut unworkable features. They did this for all games prior too. For WoW, they marshalled their resources against the game side of the virtual world, and in that process tossed off the table things like PvP mechanics, progressive raids, weather effects, housing, crafting, etc and so on. All time sinks deemed not required for launch-day. Note that all of these are features other developers sunk fewer resources into just to hit launch, and therefore compromised the truly important thing like character movement and that whole combat and balance thing.

Resources are never infinite, but they are subject to scale like anything else.

[Montague]

and there's a competent alternative

There isn't. There won't be in the near future.

I know that, which is why I keep saying this is all academic.

While Trippy is spot on that Blizzard does not have infinite resources, compared to everyone else who has tried, they a) did get more resources; and, b) were much smarter about applying them.

Blizzard folks are not geniouses by birth. They just know, as a team, how to iterate and eventually cut unworkable features.

Amen. Blizzard's advantage is project management, not wizard programmers and designers.

[Triforcer]

Blizzard didn't have "rock star" developers.  If there is anything things like WAR and TR and others have taught me, its that when when you have a rockstar dev in charge, customers should run for the fucking hills.  Rockstar devs, when not brushing lint off their berets, are usually busy completely discounting something necessary to a successful MMO for no other reason than pseudo-philosophic idiosyncratic faggotrousness.