Why I think World of Warcraft Legion will probably end up failing.

[Gryz]

When WoW released, it was made by a team that knew what they were doing. Vanilla WoW had a lot of short-comings. Lots of small things that could be improved. And the main problem was that for the average player, there was nothing to do after UBRS. You had to get in a huge guild that did 40 man raiding. Which was often very painful.

TBC and WLK improved upon the original WoW. Both in small practical things. Like e.g. the fact you can exchange BoP gear for 2 hours. Heroic dungeons, gears you can buy with badges, more reputations and good gear from rep. 10 man dungeons. There was something to do for everyone: total newbs, the clueless average player, the decent average player and the hardcore players. Raider, non-raider. Bad, mediocre, good. Casual and hardcore.

Something changed half-way WotLK. Tigole left the game. He was main one resposible for PvE after the original crew left, shortly after vanilla release. The second reason was probably the fact that Activision took over control. The third reason might be that before vanilla's release, Blizzard had already planned TBC and WLK. When WLK was released, they didn't have any plans on what to do next. They hadn't expected the long-term success of WoW.

Someone at Activision must have been looking at Farmville at the time. WoW had 10-12 million players. Farmville had 100 million. In stead of being happy with what you got, they only wanted what Farmville had. More players. So the focus of WoW shifted from catering to the people who played the game, to all the rest of the people in the world who *didn't* play WoW. This might seem crazy, but for me, this shift in focus must have been the root cause of why the game changed so drastically.

So what have we had since ? We have had 2 types of content. The first type is the true hardcore content. Mythic raids. High-end arenas. That content was good, and will stay good for the hardcore top-end players. Because inside WoW there are "champions" for that. Employees who will fight and make sure that the hardcore raiding is top-notch.

The other type of content is for everybody else. And to make sure those 100 million Farmville players could still move over to WoW, all of that content needs to be accessible. Super-accessible. And in the eyes of Blizzard, that means: super easy, super rewarding, low weekly time investment (but potentially requiring many weeks of play), not complicated, doesn't require planning, doesn't require cooperation, doesn't require anything. Blizzard has realized that they can keep their current playerbase more happy by throwing them free epic gear, than throwing them new content.

The result is: there is no content for the middle ground of players. Nothing. It's either super easy, or very hard. Like mythic raids. Which also require very strict organizing. And thus is doubly non-accessible.

Imho the largest group of players in vanilla/tbc/wlk was that middle ground of players. Also, lots of new players will move to that group within a year of playing. I can't understand why Blizzard doesn't see that. Why they don't create more content for that middle group. That is where the money is. Where the growth is. On the other hand, it seems Blizzard (or rather Activision) seems dead set on minimizing investment in WoW. You can increase profit either by raising your revenue, e.g. by getting more players. Or by decreasing your costs, e.g. creating less content. Since Cata it seems Blizzard has always chosen for the 2nd strategy, investing less and less money in the game.

I don't think they'll ever figure out how to go back to an upwards path.

 

[HumblePie]

I'd say WoW started a trend that has ruined MMORPG's in general. It's possible that trend made them some money, but has ruined the genre doing it. That is, they changed the formula from being primarily a group game, to being a solo game with occasional grouping for raids.

Burning Crusades was a good expansion, that created a lot of good dungeon crawl experience that required a coordinated group. Then WotLK came out, and made it so pretty much anyone could take a nap through any of their group dungeons with random people from other servers. That made it so the people you group with had no chance of becoming friends due to being on another server, and not really caring because the dungeons were way too easy.

I stopped playing after that, and did not find another MMO that did not go into the same direction of making group play close to obsolete. MMO's are at their best when played in groups that are stronger together than as individuals.

Going to have to disagree with you on this massively. Several things you are forgetting.

Punishment as a way of having fun style design on MMO's has mostly died out. The vast majority of consumers do not like it. EQ and UO are both prime examples of this. The casual player is punished for even attempting to play the game and only those with tons of time to dedicate to playing with plenty of friends with the same time dedication have any hope of making progress in the game. This killed and kept both numbers down. While many pvpers lament UO's change to pve friendlier servers with Tamriel, that actually boosted sales and sub numbers for a long time. When EQ lightened up a bit on their masochistic punishment style of gameplay, there were spikes in subscriber numbers.

When wow came out it catered to friendly casual gameplay. There was no hardcore raiding. No massive grinds for reputation or anything. People jumped shipped from EQ, UO, and other games like it because WoW offered what those games didn't have. Which was casual gameplay progression, better graphics, and more overall content. The problem that was WoW was that those with tons of time to dedicate to the game could rush through all the vanilla content in a month and had nothing left to do. Of which early on there was a ton of high level guilds that were bored and demanding Blizzard for hardcore raids and challenges. From that we got the original MC to be following by BWL and Naxx. All cluster fucks of design forcing 40 man raids and tons of time dedication that frankly the vast majority of Blizzards paying customer base could never access.

Granted that those that were able to do the content felt extra special. There is a certain appeal in being one of the rare few on a server that is literally better than everyone else on that server. It does fuel the achievers and to an extent the pvp players of the game by stroking their ego. When that happened Blizzard started losing active subs from casual gamers. Which is why the punishing and hardcore aspects from the game were removed.

Back in the day I had tons of time to dedicate to MMOS. I could easily spend 8+ hours a day playing. I had friends and people my age that could as well. We could get things done. The problem was that even attempting that content, even for a well oiled group of friends, still took planning and prep time. When my play time dropped for various reasons and I wasn't with that same group of people, the time it took to even form a group to even attempt the harder content of WoW always exceeded the time I could allot to playing the game on any given day. Sitting around for hours in the main city hubs of the game looking for a good enough and big enough group to attempt hard content was very boring. Not just for me, but many others. Again it caused sub numbers to dip.

The main reason WoW had huge amounts of sub numbers though was strictly from the gold farmers. It was estimated to be between 60% to 80% of their subs were gold farmer accounts. Which to a degree still bolster their sub numbers to this day. Although much of those gold farmers went away when Blizzard decided to finally take a few clues from other big name games in the industry for selling those services themselves for cash.


The problem with wow now isn't that it caters to casual players, it is that it is old. Graphics are dated. They still make massive sweeping game play mechanic changes every few months that just shakes of balanced way too much without proper testing. The market is also saturated with MMOs as well. Last but not least that is wrong with the game is that it is still way too item centric for progression. It leads to min/maxing, item loot grinding, and things like "best in slot" which in turn leads to unbalanced flavor of the month crap all the time. That later aspect hasn't changed about the game all. Once you reach the pinnacle of whatever the late game is in WoW, you are just like every other person that picked the race/class combo you took. There is no real differentiation.

I personally came back to WoW after not playing for 6 years just to give it a look see again since some friends I know are playing it. I am not sure I intend to stick around. I was really hoping the graphics and animations would have been improved, but they still look like graphics from the late 90's. They looked slightly dated in 2005 when the game came out (design decision to keep graphics down to allow people with lesser machines to still sub and have good enough gameplay experience), but in 2016 those graphics are just horrid.

 

[ewdotson]

No massive grinds for reputation or anything.

As much as I agree with your overall point (and I really do), I just have to say - original version Timbermaw rep. Ugh. No, seriously. Ugh.