Cataclysm

[sinij]

Go work for the Blizzard PR department.

He already does.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Back to the Sinestra thing. Is it bad if only .11% of your playerbase does this encounter? Yes, yes it very well fucking is bad. Oh right it's the PINNACLE of wow, it should be rare! Rare, sure.....but .11% rare? come the fuck on that is what, 20 guilds out of 11million(probably less now) people?

[Paelos]

Back to the Sinestra thing. Is it bad if only .11% of your playerbase does this encounter? Yes, yes it very well fucking is bad. Oh right it's the PINNACLE of wow, it should be rare! Rare, sure.....but .11% rare? come the fuck on that is what, 20 guilds out of 11million(probably less now) people?

174 guilds. Probably less than 5000 people.

[Azuredream]

I don't like the Algalon/Sinestra model. One of the draws of ICC (for me) was that even if I just cleared the place on normal, I have essentially seen the whole thing and if I cleared it on heroic I'd get much better loot, but all the bosses are still the same at least in name. With these "heroic only" bosses you get the feeling that there's a part of content you are never going to see and it might be really cool but too bad.

[caladein]

154 guilds with 25m kills, 24 with 10m kills.  That does work out to about 5000 people right now, which probably isn't too far off what would have been Yogg+0-25 pace (ToC would have come out a month ago ).

[Ingmar]

Back to the Sinestra thing. Is it bad if only .11% of your playerbase does this encounter? Yes, yes it very well fucking is bad. Oh right it's the PINNACLE of wow, it should be rare! Rare, sure.....but .11% rare? come the fuck on that is what, 20 guilds out of 11million(probably less now) people?

Bleh, it's one encounter, thrown out as a bone to their old core hardcore raider people, I don't have any problem with it.

[Paelos]

I don't like the Algalon/Sinestra model. One of the draws of ICC (for me) was that even if I just cleared the place on normal, I have essentially seen the whole thing and if I cleared it on heroic I'd get much better loot, but all the bosses are still the same at least in name. With these "heroic only" bosses you get the feeling that there's a part of content you are never going to see and it might be really cool but too bad.

I actually don't mind it as much because it provides those who want it that extra bit of spice to the game for being the most successful. It's not tied to any major lore characters, it's not really going to provide legendary weapons or game-breaking gear. It's a nice title and a good achievement thing as long as it's just one more boss at the top.

[Rokal]

I think my guild will be capable of checking out Sinestra once we overgear T1 by quite a bit. Probably once we are deep into Firelands or maybe the raid cluster after that. They are trying something different with Ragnaros in Firelands heroic though, by giving heroic mode an additional phase that normal mode doesn't have instead of an additional boss (from what I read). I don't really have a problem with the heroic-only optional bosses. There have been plenty of normal mode bosses for my guild to work through, and the last boss of each dungeon on normal mode feels appropriately like the last boss. It's not like we are killing some lackey of Cho'gal as the last boss of normal mode, but Cho'gal is reserved for heroics.

With the Sinestra and Algalon raids, you at least feel like you defeated the enemy you came there to conquer (Cho'gal, Yogg), even if you never did either of those optional fights.

[Rendakor]

Halfus and Conclave of Wind are 'dick-slamming' hard? Yeah, okay.

Magmaw probably could have been a little easier to get the ball rolling for most guilds, but there are some damn easy fights for your guild to start on.

Maybe we're weird, but my guild had much more trouble with Halfus than Magmaw (or Conclave/Omnitron for that matter).

[Lantyssa]

If your guild did Uldaur and ICC pre-nerfs and had fun, they shouldn't have gripes with the difficult of Cata raid content which is roughly the same. If they did most of that content months later when it had been nerfed, that part hasn't happened yet for Cata but it will eventually. If they had fun with that level of difficult for pre-nerf ICC, but are not enjoying the same exact difficulty for pre-nerf Cata T1, then something has changed in them, not the game. Burn-out.

Yes.  Entire servers worth of guilds all got burn-out.  At the exact same time.  And it just happened to be soon after a major expansion despite having lots of fun right up until that point.  That's not burn-out.

You've got WUA and Sinij agreeing, and Ingmar coming around to my point of view.  It's like cats and dogs living together.  These things are not supposed to happen.  It's a sign of a big misstep.

[Sjofn]

You keep comparing wow to actual activities and real world achievements. You know it's a video game right?  Protip: if you can explain your accomplishments without feeling like a loser, it's a real world achievement, if you can't its not something you should be proud of.

What if I simply feel like a dork, rather than a loser?

[Paelos]

What if I simply feel like a dork, rather than a loser?

That's normal. We're posting on a message board for games. Feeling like a dork is a given! 

[Rokal]

Yes.  Entire servers worth of guilds all got burn-out.  At the exact same time.  And it just happened to be soon after a major expansion despite having lots of fun right up until that point.  That's not burn-out.

Your anecdotal evidence about entire servers quitting the game is an over-exaggeration unsupported by any actual data, and I'm not sure where you're witnessing this considering you apparently don't even play the game. Internet forums for any MMO would have you believe that the servers were going to close in a month because a mass exodus is always impeding.

Every expansion has turn-over. Rather than re-typing this...

Expansions usually bring huge changes to the game, so if you are unhappy with the game (in a broad sense), you hope that the expansion will change things you don't like or refresh the game for you. Of course, the expansion never manages to be the magical panacea you were hoping for, and WoW is still WoW. I think the people raging about the difficulty of the expansion are mostly just people who are burnt out and are looking for someone or something to blame for why they aren't enjoying WoW anymore. I think for most people, even if the content that was delivered was exactly what they wanted, they would still be looking at WoW and wondering "Why isn't this fun anymore?"

It's not like everyone was having the time of their life playing WoW on August 7th 2010, and then Cataclysm rolled around four months later and ruined the game for them. People were bored of Wrath/WoW long before Cataclysm came out. I think a lot of those people were hoping Cataclysm would completely refresh a game that had gotten stale for them, but ultimately it was still just more WoW.

[Merusk]

[Malakili]

The best part about this thread is that I spend more time in it than actually playing WoW.  An exaggeration, but probably not by as much as I'd like.

[Fabricated]

Yes.  Entire servers worth of guilds all got burn-out.  At the exact same time.  And it just happened to be soon after a major expansion despite having lots of fun right up until that point.  That's not burn-out.

Your anecdotal evidence about entire servers quitting the game is an over-exaggeration unsupported by any actual data, and I'm not sure where you're witnessing this considering you apparently don't even play the game. Internet forums for any MMO would have you believe that the servers were going to close in a month because a mass exodus is always impeding.

Every expansion has turn-over. Rather than re-typing this...

Expansions usually bring huge changes to the game, so if you are unhappy with the game (in a broad sense), you hope that the expansion will change things you don't like or refresh the game for you. Of course, the expansion never manages to be the magical panacea you were hoping for, and WoW is still WoW. I think the people raging about the difficulty of the expansion are mostly just people who are burnt out and are looking for someone or something to blame for why they aren't enjoying WoW anymore. I think for most people, even if the content that was delivered was exactly what they wanted, they would still be looking at WoW and wondering "Why isn't this fun anymore?"

It's not like everyone was having the time of their life playing WoW on August 7th 2010, and then Cataclysm rolled around four months later and ruined the game for them. People were bored of Wrath/WoW long before Cataclysm came out. I think a lot of those people were hoping Cataclysm would completely refresh a game that had gotten stale for them, but ultimately it was still just more WoW.

I'm not sure how many "anecdotes" you need but my release-day guild was broken by cata because no one wanted to deal with the raids or even the 5-man heroics, it's about to break the formerly 12/12 HM25 ICC guild (30% buff for heroic, pre-30% on normal) some of my friends went to, it pretty much killed the release-day guild alliance me and Paelos were in that had like 20 fucking guilds in it.

All but one of my real-life friends quit WoW, nearly all of my online friends quit WoW. People doing in-game census with mod tools found that active characters and guilds have been declining for the last 2-3 months steadily.

Blizzard itself is nerfing the shit out of heroic 5-mans, begging people to tank/heal them, nerfing raids, giving out epics again in 5-mans after saying that 5-mans wouldn't ever do that again back during the early press of Cata. This is after they took a hardline stance at the beginning of the expansion, literally posting a big blog entry from some doucherocket marine biologist turned game designer that amounted to, "Learn to play, you faggots."

But nah, every single one is burn out. Blizzard didn't really fuck up to the point where people were quitting in droves for mediocre shitpiles like RIFT.

[Lantyssa]

Your anecdotal evidence about entire servers quitting the game is an over-exaggeration unsupported by any actual data, and I'm not sure where you're witnessing this considering you apparently don't even play the game. Internet forums for any MMO would have you believe that the servers were going to close in a month because a mass exodus is always impeding.

I had a couple of trials, game cards, and talk with my guildies in IRC every day (half a dozen of which are posters here), Inspector Clouseau.  I also like to follow games which have a significant impact on the market.  Just because I don't know the real names of the devs doesn't mean I'm not paying attention.

When I say servers worth I mean in total.  Those are spread out.  WoW has a ton of servers.  I don't think the game is going to collapse overnight, and there is still time to correct their mistakes.  That doesn't change the fact that entire guilds are going dormant though.  Guilds that have had constant participation, regardless of the ebb and flow of specific members.  MMOs depend upon those social ties to keep people in game, so it's a definite warning sign.

[Margalis]

Rokal definitely suffers from SWG dev syndrome.

"Everything is working as intended and if you see something wrong the problem is with you!"

[Rokal]

I know plenty of guilds that imploded or had huge exoduses when TBC and Wrath came out too. It's all anecdotal. You say you know a ton of people that have quit the game, including lots of real life friends. I have personally seen less in-game friends or guildies quit this expansion than I saw friends and guildies quit when TBC and Wrath launched. In fact, most of the people in my guild that quit recently actually quit months before Cata came out because they were bored of the game. They either didn't come back or they came back, got to 85, and then quit a few weeks later saying "nope, still boring". I also know more friends and co-workers that are playing WoW right now than ever before. Anecdotal evidence is almost completely worthless. TBC and Wrath saw similar drops in playtime on those community-based (and likely inaccurate) population tools after the 'newness' of an expansion had faded, the question is whether drops in playtime correspond to equivalent drops in subscription numbers, and whether that number is greater than it was 4 months into TBC or Wrath.

Blizzard always had problems getting people to tank, not just in Cata. It's always been the role people were least willing to do in WoW, or any MMO for that matter, because it usually means you are responsible for the group. You can look at all the recent nerfs and changes to the LFD tool as Blizzard saying "oh shit oh shit oh shit", or you can look at those changes as them hearing the complaints of some of the community and trying to address those complaints just as they've always tried to do with their MMO that caters to everyone. It doesn't mean that WoW is sinking, or that the development team or even the moneyhats at Blizzard think the difficulty of the expansion was a mistake. They've always slowly nerfed end-game content, they've always had problems with getting people to tank. It really seems like business as usual from my perspective.

[Sjofn]

What if I simply feel like a dork, rather than a loser?

That's normal. We're posting on a message board for games. Feeling like a dork is a given!  

Then I will totally brag right here in this thread that I totally beat Ingmar at D&D minis multiple times. I think my lifetime record in tournament situations was 4-1 or something. \o/


As for the OMG DID THEY MESS UP, for me I think I was going to go dormant on the raiding front either way. Tanking for the merry band of semi-competent people in WotLK made my tiny black heart shrivel even further, although the fact that it's harder than WotLK was is not exactly a selling point for me. I'm sort of like Ingmar. I like the challenge if I get to handpick exactly who is in my group or raid. But that has social consequences I don't like. I don't want to be a bigger bitch to the people I don't think are very good than I already am, you know?

[Nevermore]

[Rasix]

I was just about to post that.  Damn, you!

[Lantyssa]

Hahaha.

[Fordel]

What ever happened to that guy?

[Rokal]

Just sayin' 

[Simond]

Shouldn't you be telling the coders to hurry up with the patch containing all those heroic nerfs that weren't needed, Greg? 

[Merusk]

What ever happened to that guy?

Apparently he surrendered to the US, did an interview for 200k t hen moved to the UAE to live quietly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf

[Sheepherder]

It's not like everyone was having the time of their life playing WoW on August 7th 2010, and then Cataclysm rolled around four months later and ruined the game for them.

Blizzard announced 12 million subs shortly before the Cataclysm launch.

[Merusk]

The fun part is it's a public company, so anecdotal evidence doesn't have to be used. You can just wait until the Q1 2011 report gets released and see if it's better or worse than Q4 2010.

We're just past Q1, and Cataclysm set the record for Day1 PC sales, beating WOTLK which was the previous record holder.  That means player pops should have only gone up, as there was much excitement.  Each previous expansion sold more than the one before it as well.  This trend can be seen in Blizzard's quarterly statements.

However, if you want slightly subjective data. There's always the Warcraft Realms census.  It shows player activity dipping beneath average WOTLK lows, and nearing the "end of expansion Doldrum" levels.  You know, the weeks where everyone said, "Fuck it, Cata's coming and I'll just level up and beat this asshole then. Time to do other things for a bit."
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyactivity.php?serverid=-1&factionid=3

[Paelos]

It's all anecdotal.

Warcraftrealms census numbers of active player tracking is not anecdotal. Players being tracked where only 25% have killed anything and 5% have completed regular raids are not anecdotal. These are hard numbers that for some reason you keep ignoring. Over the next two financial releases, when they put out the MMO financial numbers for the quarter, your argument is going to fall apart. That's the last piece of the puzzle.

But yeah, anecdotal haterade. I was only joking before when I was saying you should work for Blizzard PR. Now I'm starting to suspect you're a mole/troll.

[Selby]

As much as everyone is hating on Rokal, I agree with him based on what I've seen for in-game guilds and friends on my servers.  People were quitting because they were bored back in the August\September\October timeframe before the expansion.  Then maybe half came back for Cata, got to 85, and then quit playing again for various reasons.  I've never seen Stormrage or Hellscream so active in trade or guilds recruiting.  I have no doubt people quit because of Cata, but most of the people I know personally who quit were mostly just bored with the game before Cata or RL got in the way (alot of these friends were in college and graduated to the real world).

As far as raiding goes, I don't consider this to be any more of a chore than any other expansion.  My guild is 11/12 and not in the slightest bit hardcore.  Heroics still make me roll my eyes because of how fail so many people are or how quick they are to quit after 1 wipe or call you a fagot and kick you over the slightest perceived failure.

[Paelos]

Explain that graph to me then. It's not like people logged in for a month, said fuck this, and left. That would be explained. This is a sharp decline over 4 months to numbers lower than the previous year.

[sinij]

Shouldn't you be telling the coders to hurry up with the patch containing all those heroic nerfs that weren't needed, Greg?  

I think he should try posting L2P blogs couple more times, maybe that will help?

[Merusk]

I've never seen Stormrage or Hellscream so active in trade or guilds recruiting.  

As someone who's been in raiding guilds since '04, let me say that recruiting is not a sign of activity, but INactivity.  You recruit when you don't have enough players to field a raid, or if you have just enough, "but only if everyone signs up" (which never happens.)

When things are going good and there's a lot of activity, you don't have to recruit unless you're just forming.  Guilds with reputations for getting things done naturally attract players or your own players have friends that really want in.  You only go hunting when those wells dry up or if you need a specific role.  When the #4 guild on my server started up in trade chat, I knew shit was going bad and that was nearly 3 months ago now.

[Shrike]

Holy cats, those shaman numbers are low!

You hear stuff like that, but seeing those numbers...heh. I had a helluva time finding a guild that wanted an enhance shaman. You'd think with so few we'd be more in demand. Course, there's a lot of stupid shit posted on the shaman O-fficial forums, so that might have something to do with percieved necessity of having one. Still...not many of us. I blame dwarves. Yep, it's the dwarves.