Removing all AP was a nice experiment and I am glad Blizzard tried it since it’s something the vocal part of the playerbase asked for, but I hope they realize just how detrimental it’s been to the game.
More and more people are slowly starting to realize this after seeing just how empty their guilds & friends list are. People aren’t logging on because there is no good & rewarding casual/solo-content. Dragonflight feels more like playing schedule-simulator than playing a game.
All 3rd party data shows participation as being super low. Even content creators like Taliesin, who is generally extremely positive towards wow, has acknowledged the low participation. It’s not a coincidence. AP & Titanforging were amazing for casual players as it offered ways to progress our characters & get gear that didn’t involve raiding or mythic+
This expansion, just like Warlords of Draenor, has been exclusively made for raidloggers and those who spam Mythic+. It has left casual players in the dirt with virtually no content to play. Dragonflight has a very good patch cadence and yet somehow it genuinely feels like we’re in the middle of a content-drought.
I doubt we’ll see it re-introduced for DF, but I hope it’s not too late for blizzard to correct the course in regards to next expansion. I don’t see wow surviving another xpac made for raidloggers.
Erm, personally… no it was not detrimental.
What your describing there (people not being online) is a lack of any real content outside of raid and M+ (until your geared).
Additionally it feels worse because a lot of healers are not enjoying things right now, and so people get fed up trying to form groups for long periods and log off and try something else.
Personally I am happier in game now than I was during any AP grind expac, with the exception of needing to grind the damn bow in first patch.
There are some people like you, but the participation numbers speak for themself. The majority of players don’t enjoy this current state.
The problem is that no matter what they add, if it has inadequate rewards players wont do it. Wow is an extremely gear + playerpower oriented game. Without AP you can’t offer that to solo & casual players.
Casual is not the player that avoid endgame content. There are people that play low hours and still do only endgame.
Also no thank you. I don’t want a reason to login daily. I like to login 2-3 a week and do my keys.
Blizzard changed world quests from daily to twice a week because people didn’t want to login daily what do you mean? I like that wow is not like the daily chores. I like that you can accumulate transmute charges while being offline so i can login only 2-3 days a week.
AP was also present in BFA, but that did not make it compelling for the casual player.
Legion was nice for the casual player not because it had AP, but because it had lots of content and things to do.
Casual players did the dailies WQs cause they gave the legendaries, they played alts cause they had the order hall campaign/mounts and artifact skins to unlock.
AP grind was something that was irrelevant cause casual players did not care for it cause of catchup, and hardcore players had to grind it non stop for a boring proc increase. People played the game cause of the things they wanted to unlock and the content it had.
Yes, this is why they put all their eggs in one basket (gear), and managed to fail it by making gearing way too easy (finished with BiS in the first 1 months), so now players only raid log, play alts or just quit.
AP won’t fix this problem, atleast not by itself. The main driver is content/rewards, and at the moment there is little to nothing to work towards in DF.
I think (but have no proof other than the level of noise I witnessed on the forums, twitch, youtube at the time) that a good majority despised the AP grind. I mean really do you see 90AP here, 145AP there slowly taking towards a new level that gives you (the average joe) and extra 3 dps at best, and the more serious pushers it gave more as they were able to utilise it more but were being burnt out because they “HAD TO DO IT” instead of it being content they “Enjoyed doing”.
AP is most definitely not an adequate reward. Not to mention your citing participation numbers on the back of an expac that saw one of the biggest player losses I can remember.
Fact is ‘A LOT’ has changed since BFA and now, and people leaving for a host of other reasons cannot be attributed to participation figures because of a lack of AP either.
Fact remains neither you nor I will know what is and is not causing things or helping. All we can do is blindly go stabbing in the dark trying to convince people we hit the nail on its head when in reality the chances are really low, and even if we did, we would never know.
The removal of “make people log in and hate every minute” things is the best thing that happened to DF.
Advocating bringing them back under the usual “save wow!!!” banner
People come for new content and leave when they’ve had their fill. This is normal. At least now they aren’t coerced into staying and resent coming back
Maybe it is because of paid membership to play in 2023, there are tons of games which are free to play. Unfortunatelly majority of people dont want to pay, game should be free to play, i think blizzard made enough money out of wow. Why diablo is one time payment but wow is monthly payment ? Unfair.
There is absolutelly nothing to do in the game. There are a lot of content but they are all dead. Old raids and dungeons should reward people, and they should be scaled ( as an option selected by user) to current patch. I would love to queue for molten core ( provided new mogs and mounts ).
Well…
Wow is constantly being worked on and being developed. New patches every however many weeks, new raid tiers every 8 months, new tid bits of content in between.
If the game went free to play, this would die out very quickly, and things like
your gear is 1/8 buy a whelpling crest fragment for £2.99 now, or buy all 10 for £24.99 to upgrade your gear to 2/8 .
Want to instantly get to 8/8 ? Just buy this £99.99 accumulator pack (total 4 packs) and boom your earning great rewards…
There are other ways of making money than selling items in game. They could sell mounts, skins. They could open donation, they could accept sponsorship and advertisements. Blizz made enough money out of wow, even if it would be free to play for the next 20 years, they could still pay for server costs and wages.
But they are a business and would look to find a solution which replaces the revenue loss 1:1 as a minimum or exceed it. And selling mounts, skins etc simply is not it. Lets face it, while bobby is in charge still, bobby signs off on what buys bobby another yacht the quickest.
Also there must be an end point for new things. Adding new gear in each 3-4 months does not provide good, if you play constantly you need to spend time to upgrade your gear. Whatever you do in season 2 for example going to be garbage in season 3, and it is npt logical game design. Instead of bringing new gear they can provide new dungeons or new pvp zones
The work and effort needed to make new encounters and zones frequently is far beyond that of gear. And while I do not agree with bringing AP back, the OP has a point in that increasing your power is what gets people juices flowing (on top of new encounters).
Removing getting new gear and simply having a new dungeon would have people questioning “Why bother after the first run?”
EG the new mega dungeon, has no upgrades for my tank, never did since it launched. But I did it 3x, why to help friends and push hard mode. Thats it, its done now, so why bother ?
I dont know how to make people in new content except for gear but there are ways. For example adding token system which gives 1 token after each successfull dungeon finish and rewards you with a fancy mount on 200x tokens. If you finish early you get 2 tokens instead of 1, and if you finish higher level of the same dungeon you get 3, 4, 5, 10 tokens. This thing can apply for many things rather than mounts, such as transmogs, dungeon teleports, reaching new races, new zones or many more. But loosing all your gear at the end of a season is not fun and it is frustrating.
yes it is true, you cannot find something which makes everyone happy. But in my opinion, grinding too much for a number on an item is pointless and most of the people bored from it. Majority of people above 30, and they simply have no time to raid or spam M+ dungeons 100 times for gearing up. there must be a way to keep their efforts valuable. First season max gear was around 421 ilvl and now it is around 450ilvl, difference is too much, if it was 425 ilvl, people who invented their times on first season and don’t having time to grind right now could use their old gears to do some content.
Pretty much. Also don’t forget it’s summertime (many people are on holiday) and D4 also released early June, to take away even more people.
And then we have the fact most WoW players are mid-age to my knowledge, with jobs, families, frens, whatever.
Why do the same 8 dungeons or 1 raid for all summer when you have other things to care about? During this brief sub there were times I wasn’t even on for days. I got the July and August TP rewards and tender, I unlocked Scholo and Naxx of old, now just waiting for next week’s TW so I can grab the TBC dragonhawk. Then off I go for like 2 months at least, I guess.
I don’t like the loot pinata nor the weekly casino. And I’m not a raider anymore, I don’t enjoy it nor I have the time, patience, and focus.
