Since I don’t work for blizzard I’d rather have a good game with fewer players than a mediocre AAA title that’s accessible/appealing to everyone with a pulse.
I don’t care how many players CoD and the likes have. Nobody will call them good games.
Game development is a business, it doesn’t matter how “Good” (Quite a subjective criteria, BTW) a game is, if it doesn’t attract enough players, it’s a bad idea to make it.
The “I don’t care how many players CoD and the likes have, nobody will call them good games”-argument is flawed too, if nobody thinks they’re good games, why do those games shift enough copies to keep sequels being made?
For the same reason WoW does. They’re “Okay” games that people “somewhat” enjoy so it’s better than watching grass grow. AAA titles don’t care what people say about them, they have enough media presence to not have to rely on players promoting the game.
There was a time when WoW needed this, and funnily enough that was during it’s rise before WotLK, when the game was a million times less accessible and catered than today.
It became a business, but I can assure you in the old days no serious game dev thought of themselves as a corporate entity creating a consumer product.
Sure thing bro, you’re so in denial. Go check non hardcore classic servers. Massive amounts of players are playing classic era atm. And population still increasing as we speaking. As Nixxiom said, “classic servers may have more active subscribers than retail now, or at least it seems that way”
Anyway, my point was we should be afraid of death in wow. Because you know, its death. Just being a spirit for 30 seconds its dull and feels like the world is too safe.
Not really That casual if a player nor a solo guy but I agree 100%.
Solo content is just: spend x amount of time and get x. There’s no r we p gameplay involved at all almost. It feels like a desktop game sometimes.
Regarding toxicity, people are toxic when they can have the option to be. It’s sad but it’s really true. If they know something can be soloed they’ll be obnoxious little c****s because there’s no repercussions. Some people are just like that.
The moment they realise that to get x they have to be nice to others, they’ll be nice. Some still won’t, true, but then they simply won’t acquire it and eventually quit or modify their behaviour.
If a game isn’t accessible or drawing A LOT of new people in because it is too difficult to get into, it would end up with a tiny minority of ever diminishing veteran players.
A proportion of new players won’t stay even if the game is good for many reasons. So you need a LOT to make up for that.
Long queue times for some content, and cancelled raids because it is harder to find a replacement for the raid leader having a hip replacement and two healers who are on holiday.
Subs would have to go up quite a bit to replace the missing income or new content cut to reduce costs.
Less content = nothing to stay subbed for.
Expensive = There are already a lot of start up costs for newcomers with expansions AND subs.
The toxic hardcore get ‘even better or get out’ mindset would rise and start affecting more PUG players, making their experience even worse, push them to other games, which means less players available to fill gaps in guild rosters and subs ofc.
At the top skill end, boosting income would either disappear or move to those higher up the skill ladder. Boosters take a break = less subs from them. Less players = less token sales.
An empty game world!
Regardless of skill or preferred content, players often like to see others around them to make the game world seem more ‘alive’.
The game world is too big for fewer players.
It is all connected, the Cycle of Wealth !
Which is why I think we need a variety of players and content for them.
exactly. the only end-game pve options are the ones that consume so much time and requires grouping up on discord everytime you want to do some content while other games have actual chill activities that you can do and have fun.
But they won’t do that, players that request harder mobs want to inflict it on EVERYONE. Otherwise their superior gear and skill wouldn’t make a difference and give them an edge over everyone with less.
There could always be an optional achievement or title as a reward for those who give this challenge a go to acknowledge their efforts.
Tbh there is already plenty of rewards in game aimed at players who enjoy challenging content.
its not like I’m asking to lose level or items or anything if you die. I’m just asking to be a bit more punishing. So we dont feel like if we die it doesn’t matter. My ideea with a debuff for a few minutes after we resurrect seems decent.
Especially in warmode it needs to get more punishing. Killing someone in the open world just so he will be alive and full hp 10 seconds after is dumb and makes it pointless.
Easy games have neither appeal or longevity unless they’re artificially gated to extend sub times (which imo is garbage design from companies who can’t make good games).
Issue exists even today and has nothing to do with the total number of players. I know you’re smart enough to know this.
90% of players play 10% of content. If the game would lose the players I don’t play with, who run content I’m not interested in, then from my perspective nothing would change.
If you replaced every player with a bot except one, it would take him a month to realize he’s the last human because there’s zero interaction between players in both cities or open world.
Animals and humans started forming packs to overcome greater challenges together, so in case you’re wondering what killed the social aspect of WoW’s open world, this is it.
Really?..
The number of servers, the amount of shards, the number of phases etc. allow blizz to manage the number of people you see around you.
I’ve been on private servers with 400 online where queue times were 10 minutes and met people while leveling. Then on retail some are complaining about never seeing another player or sitting in a queue for 2 hours.
It’s not about player count. It’s about game structure and incentives.
Wildstar doesn’t have fewer players. Wildstar has NO players. To quote Monty:
‘E’s not pinin’ forthe fjords! 'E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E’s expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
'E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed 'im to the perch 'e’d be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E’s off the twig!
'E’s kicked the bucket, 'e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
And Wildstar was not mourned. (Unlike, say, Asheron’s Call.)
I just did a quick Google. LOTS of people call the CoD series good games. Apparently, CoD has different games, as WoW has different expansions, and there are any number of rankings of them on the net. When people obsessively rank their favourites, you know they think them good. You may not. I may not. But lots of people do.
So you mean that they really dont want the content to be harder for themself, just to overcome something diffcult. What they really want is the content to be hard so they can gloat that they really could do it an you couldnt… I see… So typical WoW…
Oh this sounds lovely. I wish it was a thing now too! I’ve always loved this part about games, seeing areas you can’t quit deal with right now - take a few levels and then you’re good to go.