So buckle in right now folks, this here is something I've been thinking about for the better part of the year as I've personally gotten more and more into FF14 as the MMO to replace WoW in my life. This post will be long and frankly I don't blame anyone for not reading it or giving up, however I believe my thoughts on this have some interesting value. At the end or in a follow up post there will be a TL;DR if you so wish.
Let's begin:
It's no surprise that World of Warcraft has been struggling to maintain it's playerbase for a long time now. The last six or so years have been frought with lackluster expansions mixed in with some shitty business practices that have put fans off the game. From poorly designed systems, to grinds that make the game feel like a job more than ever before, topped with a sprinkling of developers refusing to listen to any fan feedback. WoW's problems stem from a couple of big issues, the first being that Blizzard thought it was too big of a game to fail and the second issue was the refusal to heed the warnings of players who outcried for ages that the game isn't what it should be.
First let's go back to Blizzard's core ideas and what led to WoW being so successful in the first place. To be perfectly honest, Blizzard was never a great game designer, rather they were really good at copying other people and then adding a little bit of quality of life changes to make the gameplay a smoother experience. Starcraft and Warcraft were RTS games that didn't do much different from Command and Conquer except make them less complex to learn. Ease of access became the golden goose that Blizzard would chase until this very day.
World of Warcraft rose from the core designs of Everquest, with all the player punishments scaled back. When you die you don't lose exp, you just have a little runback which costs time but nothing more. Broken equipment can be repaired instead of having to be replaced. Flight paths allowed for large time saving travsal of bigger chunks of the world. Quests were more detailed and easier to find (even if still needing player mods to totally improve), and the game in general gave you directions. Instead of plopping you into a world and saying, "Alright go get 'em.", Wow had obvious quests and there was a flow to character progression through the many many zones in the game.
Blizzard took Everquest and added quality of life to it to make World of Warcraft so successful. While there were some outside factors to this success as well like the improvements of home internet starting to blossom around the country at this time, I'm not really going to factor outside influences in this just for the sake of focus.
For the next two expansions WoW kept the same cycles of gameplay and progression, and during this time the playerbase grew and grew because it was a formula that worked. Both The Burning Crusade and Wraith of the Lich King Expansion Sets followed the same core gameplay loop. New zones to quest your character up to max level in. Normal dungeons to get starter gear, Heroic dungeons to get geared for raids, then several raid dungeons with each dungeon being a little harder with a little bit better gear each time. They built their expansions like ladders, with clear steps for all the players to follow, and the freedom for players to stop at whatever step on the ladder they were comfortable with.
The Wraith of the Lich King also introduced the Group Finder, an automated tool that would allow players to automatically find groups and run dungeons without having to beg for groups in city chats. Many people use this tool as the signfiying point in which WoW began to "die", stating that this tool removed all reasoning for social interacting in the game and thus without the need for making friends, the players began to leave. I strongly disagree with this, Group Finder and LFR (looking for Raids, basically random grouped raids that are very easy compared to heroic and mythic levels) have almost nothing to do with the drop in playerbase.
Remember at the end of Lich King the playerbase was at an all time high.
Then came the Cataclysm.
Cataclysm is the expansion in which Blizzard broke the cycle with how all previous WoW content had been presented up until now. Remember the ladder I explained a while ago. Well in Cata they threw the ladder away. With player numbers at an all time high, Blizzard decided to completely rebuild the "Vanilla" portion of the game. They Realm Reborned the game before Final Fantasy did it. All for the sake of making the 1-60 leveling experience better for new players. Both previous expansions up to this point focused on building up the players to bigger and better heights from the previous expansion. But in Cataclysm they ignored that, for the sake of trying to bring in even MORE new players. WoW's first sin, Greed. They already had millions upon millions of players (I think it peaked at 25million, maybe more) and still they wanted more. This focus on an entire rebuilding of 1-60 content for new players, meant that there wasn't much new for players to do who were already level capped. In fact Cata was the first expansion to only offer 5 additional levels for players. TBC and LK both offered 10 levels with entire new landmasses to explore. Cata offered 5 levels and 5 new zones scattered randomly around the world. This did not work for players and they began to leave.
With not enough to do for end game players in Cata, Blizzard launched Mists of Pandaria to seemingly return to form. It followed the same basic ladder that TBC and LK had. With an entire country of new zones, new race, and a new class. Plus it added Pokemon into the game, who doesn't love Pokemon!? Hearing the complaints from players in Cata about not enough to do Blizzard desided to remove the daily quest limit. Where before you could only do 20ish daily quests every day, now you could as many as you wanted and Blizzard made sure there was a shitload of dailies to do. Problem was....it was too much. Reputations became a grind and because you could do them ALL everyday, players felt like they HAD to do them all everyday until they were done which took months. Addmittedly this was a player created problem, but also a Blizzard problem. They allowed players to make WoW a second job, while at the same time they did nothing to prepare for players doing this. Blizzard likely expected players to take their time, instead of burning through all the dailies and reputations as fast as possible. Which meant the players finished and were once again left with nothing to do. Blizzard wasn't able to churn out patch content and new raids and new things to do. On top of that the next expansion was a long way off. Leading to one of the longest content droughts in Wow history.
Content Droughts would plauge WoW forever thereafter.
(Word Limit, continued in next post)
Let's begin:
It's no surprise that World of Warcraft has been struggling to maintain it's playerbase for a long time now. The last six or so years have been frought with lackluster expansions mixed in with some shitty business practices that have put fans off the game. From poorly designed systems, to grinds that make the game feel like a job more than ever before, topped with a sprinkling of developers refusing to listen to any fan feedback. WoW's problems stem from a couple of big issues, the first being that Blizzard thought it was too big of a game to fail and the second issue was the refusal to heed the warnings of players who outcried for ages that the game isn't what it should be.
First let's go back to Blizzard's core ideas and what led to WoW being so successful in the first place. To be perfectly honest, Blizzard was never a great game designer, rather they were really good at copying other people and then adding a little bit of quality of life changes to make the gameplay a smoother experience. Starcraft and Warcraft were RTS games that didn't do much different from Command and Conquer except make them less complex to learn. Ease of access became the golden goose that Blizzard would chase until this very day.
World of Warcraft rose from the core designs of Everquest, with all the player punishments scaled back. When you die you don't lose exp, you just have a little runback which costs time but nothing more. Broken equipment can be repaired instead of having to be replaced. Flight paths allowed for large time saving travsal of bigger chunks of the world. Quests were more detailed and easier to find (even if still needing player mods to totally improve), and the game in general gave you directions. Instead of plopping you into a world and saying, "Alright go get 'em.", Wow had obvious quests and there was a flow to character progression through the many many zones in the game.
Blizzard took Everquest and added quality of life to it to make World of Warcraft so successful. While there were some outside factors to this success as well like the improvements of home internet starting to blossom around the country at this time, I'm not really going to factor outside influences in this just for the sake of focus.
For the next two expansions WoW kept the same cycles of gameplay and progression, and during this time the playerbase grew and grew because it was a formula that worked. Both The Burning Crusade and Wraith of the Lich King Expansion Sets followed the same core gameplay loop. New zones to quest your character up to max level in. Normal dungeons to get starter gear, Heroic dungeons to get geared for raids, then several raid dungeons with each dungeon being a little harder with a little bit better gear each time. They built their expansions like ladders, with clear steps for all the players to follow, and the freedom for players to stop at whatever step on the ladder they were comfortable with.
The Wraith of the Lich King also introduced the Group Finder, an automated tool that would allow players to automatically find groups and run dungeons without having to beg for groups in city chats. Many people use this tool as the signfiying point in which WoW began to "die", stating that this tool removed all reasoning for social interacting in the game and thus without the need for making friends, the players began to leave. I strongly disagree with this, Group Finder and LFR (looking for Raids, basically random grouped raids that are very easy compared to heroic and mythic levels) have almost nothing to do with the drop in playerbase.
Remember at the end of Lich King the playerbase was at an all time high.
Then came the Cataclysm.
Cataclysm is the expansion in which Blizzard broke the cycle with how all previous WoW content had been presented up until now. Remember the ladder I explained a while ago. Well in Cata they threw the ladder away. With player numbers at an all time high, Blizzard decided to completely rebuild the "Vanilla" portion of the game. They Realm Reborned the game before Final Fantasy did it. All for the sake of making the 1-60 leveling experience better for new players. Both previous expansions up to this point focused on building up the players to bigger and better heights from the previous expansion. But in Cataclysm they ignored that, for the sake of trying to bring in even MORE new players. WoW's first sin, Greed. They already had millions upon millions of players (I think it peaked at 25million, maybe more) and still they wanted more. This focus on an entire rebuilding of 1-60 content for new players, meant that there wasn't much new for players to do who were already level capped. In fact Cata was the first expansion to only offer 5 additional levels for players. TBC and LK both offered 10 levels with entire new landmasses to explore. Cata offered 5 levels and 5 new zones scattered randomly around the world. This did not work for players and they began to leave.
With not enough to do for end game players in Cata, Blizzard launched Mists of Pandaria to seemingly return to form. It followed the same basic ladder that TBC and LK had. With an entire country of new zones, new race, and a new class. Plus it added Pokemon into the game, who doesn't love Pokemon!? Hearing the complaints from players in Cata about not enough to do Blizzard desided to remove the daily quest limit. Where before you could only do 20ish daily quests every day, now you could as many as you wanted and Blizzard made sure there was a shitload of dailies to do. Problem was....it was too much. Reputations became a grind and because you could do them ALL everyday, players felt like they HAD to do them all everyday until they were done which took months. Addmittedly this was a player created problem, but also a Blizzard problem. They allowed players to make WoW a second job, while at the same time they did nothing to prepare for players doing this. Blizzard likely expected players to take their time, instead of burning through all the dailies and reputations as fast as possible. Which meant the players finished and were once again left with nothing to do. Blizzard wasn't able to churn out patch content and new raids and new things to do. On top of that the next expansion was a long way off. Leading to one of the longest content droughts in Wow history.
Content Droughts would plauge WoW forever thereafter.
(Word Limit, continued in next post)
