and whats the participating rate as compared to the people who did dragonflight season 1 mythic plus ?
I dont know about those numbers at all. The whole key-system/affixes is changes since too.
But i do know it is perfectly fine to play BM hunter when that is your desired spec. Unless you maybe want to push for 0.1% top-players title and end up in +17 keys.
What? Thatās not entirely how it works. One can argue that itās close to the opposite: the longer you are subbed and participate in certain content, the less reason there is to adjust the game to that player. Why? That player plays anyways.
Itās much more profitable to aim for the ones who currently do not participate in certain content, or are not subscribed for longer periods at once. Those can push the numbers. Pushed up numbers ā happy investors ā profit.
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Why is flying still in the game?
They removed it in WoD and the players left. So they put it back in.
Same with Conduits in SL, Bliz had to change the game to allow for easier swapping. Because players started leaving.
They had to add LFR to the game because so few players were completing raids that it didnāt feel worth the effort to build raids.
Back in TBC around 2% of players did Sunwell.
If they build the game for the playerbase t hey want to have instead of the players they actually have then they end up with no players.
Iām sure Ion would love a game with no LFR, no flying, no WQs (he got rid of Dailies as he thought it was pointless content) and he would get the kind of playerbase he wants but it would be tiny.
Eh, one can say the same if you build the game for the playerbase they have now. Because there is zero guarantee that the playerbase will be the same in a year or two.
I mean, one of the factors to bring an official Classic version of the game was also not just to please the players who enjoyed retail. It was also to pull the pirate-players back into their sub-numbersā¦
Iād argue that every commercial company also aims for the customers they currently donāt have. Only focussing on the customers you do have will eventually end up in a drain as well.
It seems like Ion wants a game where thereās no levelling, no open world, where you pick a class and a raid / dungeon and you run it. Something like the MDI realms.
As he excels at raid design, itās not crazy that he loves that aspect of the game, but that makes him a better raid designer than lead designer.
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There are some bold presumptions being made about what Ion does or does not want in the game.
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I agree with you.
I remember an interview with Ion back late MOP or early WoD where he was puzzled by players killed gulp frogs on Timeless Isle for currency and players who as he put it āDestroyed t he same 7 cannons every day for repā.
He didnāt like doing dailies for rep and couldnāt understand players who did. So WoD had no more dailies.
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Not at the cost of the ones you currently have.
Sure, widening your customer base is a a desirable thing for all business. But you keep your current customers happy first.
Classic is a good example. This widened the appeal of the game without risking current players.
Had they decied to ditch Retail and only focus on Classic it would have been a terrible move.
How M+ is now is good for some players but not good for a lot of players. How do they make it good for more players without losing too many current ones? Not sure theyāre thinking too hard about it as Ion likes how it works now and he doesnāt seem to care about the players for whom it is not in a good place.
Iām low-key impressed by how well people know Ion, including what he exactly does, thinks and how much influence he has within a multi billion dollar company.
His own personal preferenceā¦direction of WoWā¦I doubt itās connected much, if at all.
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Well, Iāve been seeing interviews with him since around MOP.
He used to do those little chats with Lore that were kind of interesting. Not sure why he stopped those, probably poor feedback.
Iāve never met but he has said quite a lot in public and this is enough to have some (even if quite limited) understanding of his position on certain areas of the game.
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Basically the only people still playing are the one that are burn out with wow and cannot find an alternative and because of that they want everything being easyā¦gearā¦flying ā¦everything on a gold plate 
.
Despide like you said the raiding pop like tbc ~sunwell was 2% , the numbers only increased in wotlk .
Adding Lfr was the worse decision since they destroyed the raiding population+ recruitment and we had the worse decision when they made 10-man =25-man ( even me , this expansion i have done 11 bosses on Lfr and i wonāt do any raiding ā¦thatās all to see )
Imagine i created 6 alts at max lvl and did within 1 season ā¦11 bosses on LFR . (Even if you pay me now i wonāt do any boss in Lfr )
In Tbc i had rogue main and a shaman healer. I was having always something to do either raiding from Kara-zul t5 and many more ( Right now i have 1 raid per season with multiple difficulties while the previous raid-tier you cannot do anymore since it lack upgrades )
My guild during Sunwell was still doing t5/grull and even magtheridon and was totally fine ā¦that was the skill our guild had and thatās what we could do ā¦we werenāt feeling sad or anything since we had fun .
Right now every season the progress stops .
Imagine there are like 600 guilds with 7/8 and once the new season comes ā¦all of them will stop since thatās how seasonal games works.
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I havenāt done LFR since Legion. I donāt think itās fit-for-purpose any longer. Not sure if itās the playerbase or LFR itself that has made it so. I tried one in DF just to see if I was missing out on anything. I wasnāt. It was a mess.
I think the Follower system could have been used to do a story mode of the raids, so players could see the story there. No raid loot obviously.
Not sure Heroic is fit-for-purpose either (but this is based purely on comments Iāve seen on the forums). It seems to be too easy for dedicated raiders but Mythic is too logistically difficult.
That is what the whole article questions and thread is about .the participation level has gone down .thats the crux of the matter .now blizzard wont release the exact numbers as they have not released the subscription numbers .
You are seeing good numbers on raider io clearance because most people have not even bothered to do any mythic plus at all . That is a worrying sign not only for health of the game but also for less healers and tanks in general .
Nerfing tanks and healers so even fewer players want to play those roles, is blizzards fault.
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Iāll be as forthright as I can be:
I hate the classes.
Itās all just a bunch of meaningless noise mixed in with a bunch of random 1-shots that I canāt see because I have 5 orbs on the target.
And PvP is the same.
And raids lag like crazy.
Guess why? Yeah, same reason.
Blue and red and green sparkles flying in every direction, writhing around, creating complete pandemonium on the scene. The only way I can tell what the hell is going on is UI mod upon UI mod upon UI mod. I have completely lost my connection to Azeroth as a game world.
I feel like I might as well get an epileptic fit just staring at my screen at this point. (Yes, I have epilepsy, I have a pass! Please allow me to seize this opportunity to make a joke so bad itāll make you shake)
And then thereās the outrageous difficulty spikes and the intense gatekeeping at +10 and +12.
The fact that the story is dreadful isnāt helping. Honestly, Iām not really sure that Iām quitting M+. I just cba in general.
I just canāt be bothered anymore. Iām pretty much done. I didnāt make any effort to quit - it just sort of happened.
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Did him saying āif people who have really enjoyed M+ gameplay in the past are feeling frustrated today, we agree thatās a problem.ā give you that notion?
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I like m+ even though havent played them since bfa, m+ is fun idea and good limitless content for the game beside mythic raiding. Enjoyed raiding aswell but not the scheduling and being tied to specific times with guild so found m+ the most fun way for me to find limitless challenge and something to do from the game, the devs just have no clue what they are doing with tanks or healers or even class balance wise in the game.
I find the exact tremendous balance issues in PvP which is my sole content nowdays. They need more and better ppl and pay them real salaries worth their talent and mind and more say on things for different departments on their specific fields.
Cutting corners or not paying enough salaries or laying off ppl may seem like profit and pleasing for share holders but it isnt good for the game and I am not sorry If my interest is only about the game that Ive spent last 20 years of my life playing, you need passionate people who see the games and fantasy as more than a job or just money. Milking money with store purchases for mounts and mogs is creativity wise a lazy way of making content.
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For me the main reason why I stopped playing m+ was change to healing. I liked playing a healer but also being able to do a significant amount of group damage (risk vs reward).
I tried few keys this season, and I could barely hit few %, because I do no damage and I need to heal so much, itās just borring. Risk vs reward is what really drives me.
And I was always playing alt tank, but since now I am so heavily reliant on healers to stay alive, this type of gameplay is also not interesting. Again, being reliant on a healer I canāt do bigger, riskier pulls.
So these were 2 main reasons why I stopped playing m+.
Tragic that this season just exacerbates all the issues we predicted and pointed out in DF season 1. Even worse people try to compare this season to DF S1 to argue the season isnt actually performing poorly. When S1 of DF was also complete garbage.
We all know why M+ sucks currently. It isnĀ“t fun. I want to play M+, then I see the terrible dungeons, remember how unrewarding it is and I cant even be bothered to sign up for a dungeon.