Strategy of splitting WOW players into different game versions

Community General Discussion
1

The final season of Dragonflight has just started. However, it does not contain any innovations regarding in-game events.This definitely has an impact on the dramatic decline in player numbers.

However, I think this is exactly the strategy of the game makers!

Because instead of keeping the current game alive and making efforts for innovations and developments, all effort and advertising budgets are spent on strange games such as the Cata version of 12 years ago, the MOP version of 8 years ago, and Plunderstorm.
In this case, the length of the waiting time in in-game events for players who already have a short time in Retail causes it to decrease even more.

To give a concrete example; Due to these strategies, it became so difficult to find game friends to do rated PVP events in Retail that many people came to the point of quitting the game for this reason.

In response, Blizzard produced smart solo rated solutions that would eliminate the need to search for a partner, and this was effective.
But immediately afterwards, the same Blizzard started to divide the players again with many old and strange models from 15 years ago, such as the Lich King, plunderstorm…etc.

Thus, the waiting times for rated solo activities, which can be done by one person, increased from an average of 7 minutes to an average of 30 minutes.
Of course, the players abandoned the game again because the 30-minute waiting time was not reasonable for a 5-minute playing time.

The new season started cleanly, while the activity was very high and positive, suddenly the MOP version patch was introduced in a ridiculous way!
As if that were not enough, player interest was again directed to many different branches with Classic Cata and some official event announcements there.
In all the update notes about MOP and Bags, game makers seem to have completely given up on retail.

Of course, this is a professional decision they make, but I think there is an important point that they do not take into consideration.

If versions like Cata or Mop were good enough, later versions wouldn’t have to come. Change and development are mandatory. It tastes good like nostalgia. Total nostalgia is just going back and disappearing.

Personally, I can play games that I played 10 - 15 years ago for a few days just for nostalgia. In the retail version, it seems healthy to try different games as Blizzard does not leave the players and pulls them to other parties and I will not be able to find a gamemate to play the game with, and the waiting times for solo rated activities also reach 30 minutes.

I hope Blizzard, which finished Retail less than a month ago with its own wishes and strategies, will not regret it and achieve its goals.

3 Likes
2

Neither Plunderstorm or Classic Era is the big reason for long que times…
Its the lack of healers, and if you actually read what the healers, be it on forums, streams, twitter, etc. its not “Omg I play Plunderstorm too much to que SS!”

Healing in SS has felt super punishing for a lot of people. For concrete examples, I believe you can scroll back on Lontars X account and see him posting several tweets about this.

Of course SS started with a low que time, it was new, it was hyped… But then people started to feel the punishment and gave up.

The one major thing you aren’t mentioning and taking into consideration is… It’s season 4, for PVP there is no “real” rewards, no new elite set, so why would “casual” players play?
There is different Discord communities, and guilds that advertise finding players to play with… I’ve seen multiple in LFG.

You can’t expect a season that is basically just a “Relax, here reset content” to be filled with people. People of course uses this time to play other games. take a break, go for MoP remix, try Cata (Some for the first time).

If you really wanted to find partners to play with, why haven’t you for the past 3 seasons?

EDIT: Sorry I see you do mention season 4… but you seem to have missed the memo of it being a fated season… It was clear that there wasn’t going to be anything “new” it was the same in SL.

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The alternative to a Fated S4 was not more content (the expansion is nearly over, we get TWW in a few months). The alternative is what we used to get back in Cata or MOP day. A long drought at the end of an expansion.

I didn’t mind these droughts. In cata I took a break and in MOP I did achievements and mog farms (I farmed this set then, before legacy buff so Naxx was still quite hard).

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4

So sick of Blizzard’s own thought process and corporate sweet-talk being used as justification for why things are as they are.

They could have a bigger team and put more time and money into the game, you know that right?

That either-or-mindset is so sad to see.

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5

Realistically though is it even possible for them to revive wow? Retail has been bad for 3 expansions in a row now. How do you convince people to come back? Instead they can milk those who still play the game and call it a day.

6

Subjective…

Let’s say instead “streamers said they were bad and people followed”.
I agree on one thing though… why were they bad? Why after Legion the game has lost popularity?
Was it borrowed power? Perhaps.
Pointless systems? Quite Possibly.
Forced scenarios? Most likely…

But I think they were less accepted by players because of M+
Yes it is great and lot of fun and I only do M+ but it has become a sweaty game now. Time challenge brought to the light the worst in us. People being toxic, leaving, grieving, etc…

Before that yes there were elitists and toxicity but everything was toned down.
When dungeons were chill people were also more chill.
I think the game got worse with the addition of E-Sport in the form of M+ and MDI and the meta game.

How can you make it better?
Enforce rules for those sweaty modes.
And don’t split the playerbase into 3 different games or you’ll end up with people not happy in neither of those because there are not enough players to play.

2 Likes
7

Wow pvp is just a dead game mode and I honestly dont think it has anything to with the segmented community. It has more to do with the fact that it fails to capture new players and over time the number of people who queue for pvp has shrunk to the point where it takes 30mins to get a game.

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8

because legion brought a lot of innovation and every expansion after legion has been recycled garbage.

9

Pretend that dynamic flying isn’t innovative

10

It’s not innovation it’s just copied from guild wars 2

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11

It’s innovative to the game. A much needed improvement. Your point?

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12

The strategy is catering this way to many different groups without having your game to be the Eierlegende Wollmilchsau.
Because by a german interview stated Holly Longdale, that WoW has enough players for all content versions.
Source: https://www.buffed.de/World-of-Warcraft-Spiel-42971/News/Wow-classic-dragonflight-the-war-within-blizzard-1445627/

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they’re alternating retail content with classic/experimental content. it’s easier for them to re-release old expansions with a new twist than it is for them to make new retail content.

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So where’s your proof of this? Do you have any ACTUAL numbers?

15

Two things.

  1. We’d have to pay more for this, either more Real Money Transactions in game or high sub fees.
  2. There is a limit to how many people can work on a software platform. Too many cooks spoil the broth and all that. They struggle to test and launch the content as it is. The number of bugs has been considerably higher in recent years.

I think DF had enough quantity of content but I do think it wasn’t always good enough quality of content. It had too short a shelf life, it relied too heavily on timers and groups and it had too much RNG. It was too focused on Events and not enough on story.

Also as I said above, I don’t think down time is a bad thing in a game such as this. We can’t have constant action 24/7. Having time to go and finish achievement and farm a set from Nighthold or hang out with friends doing whatever is good.
Boredom drives imagination. I fear for the future as kids today are never bored, they have their phones and tablets constantly shiffling through whatever.

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16

You’re Wrong

17

thank you for your meaningful feedback little billy

18

I think im going to open a grass distributing empire.

19

You want me to explain why I enjoyed those 3 expacs?
Bfa the horde vs alliance stuff was mostly fun. Zandalar was an awesome continent the raids were ok. The dungeons were fun.
Sl I enjoyed the themes and raids and dungeons. The only real issues imo were content pacing and forced covanants. Necrolord was the most intresting but I spent most of the expac as kyrian.
Df combines all the best parts of those expacs and removes any forced grinds. Except for the infinite rune which was doable in like 2 weeks. Easily my favourite expac.
Sl is overhated cos of the state of blizz at the time and bfa is overhated cos of questionable story but overall enjoyable expacs imo
Personal ranking of the expacs since legion
1.df
2. Legion
3. Shadowlands
4. Bfa
Wouldnt call any of them outright bad tho

20

Oh they could.

But here’s what I find sad, that people don’t realize how wow is a business, their goal is to make the most money, with the least amount of effort. The same as everyone else.

And rest assured, they know very well how to do that. You can be certain, that they’ve had this conversation ages ago, where they talked about the price of making this extra bit of content, and what they would earn from it. And they’ve concluded it would not be beneficial, else they would already do it.

1 Like