World of Warcraft Needs "Casual-Centric Features" To Survive

[Steven Bogos]

World of Warcraft Needs "Casual-Centric Features" To Survive

World of Warcraft's Tom Chilton says Blizzard is no longer opposed to the free-to-play model.

For those of you subscribing to the conspiracy that Blizzard have been "dumbing down" World of Warcraft for the casual market, well, it may not be such a conspiracy after all, as World of Warcraft's lead designer Tom Chilton has admitted that "casual-centric" features introduced in Mists of Pandaria have proven to be very successful, and are necessary for the game's survival.

"We would have been in bad shape had we not done that," said Chilton, referring to Pandaria's casual focus. He then tried to appease his hardcore fanbase by explaining that keeping things the same as the golden days of vanilla WoW wouldn't have been a good move. "People who played vanilla always say 'if it had stayed the same, I would have the same fun now as I did then.' But that's not true. Audiences always evolve."

He did acknowledge a lack of "new experiences for the hardcore audience," stating it's something that will be focused on at a later date and is likely something that will be introduced through future expansions. But hardcore audiences are a fickle folk, so by shunning them with Pandaria, Blizzard may have lost them forever.

For now, it seems that Blizzard is no longer opposed to re-inventing World of Warcraft as a free-to-play title, with Chilton telling us that "For Blizzard it makes sense [to go free-to-play] at some point. But a lot of the risk is in making that transition. You hear stories about developers going free-to-play and getting double the number of players, but you don't always know it works out that way and how long it stays that way. We really don't know what the rate is before people drop off and lose interest."

What do you guys think? Has World of Warcraft's recent casual focus brought you back into the game, or turned you off it? Would switching to a free-to-play model get you back in?

Source: Polygon [http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/23/4650246/world-of-warcraft-would-be-in-bad-shape-without-embracing-the-casual]

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[anthony87]

[link]http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/30/tom-chilton-discusses-free-to-play-wow/[/link]

From three years ago. This dude really like his free to play it seems.

 

[Nexxis]

I was turned off of the game back in Cata, but MoP hasn't brought me back. It's mostly because of the subscription fee and the community. If they drop it and rework their prices for the game + expansions, then maybe I'll have a look at it, again. Otherwise, I just watch it from a distance. GW2 has spoiled me.

 

[Colt47]

If it's working, why are they still losing players in droves? If anything the inclusion of LFR splintered the end game scene to the point where a ton of players just up and left. I'm not sure what is working, but their strategy isn't.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

As opposed to what, becoming a niche game that can still hold value with current and future players as it ages?

...Really, what's wrong with aiming for a smaller/more niche audience in a MMO? I've felt like I've said this too many times, but please, please developers, get rid of the mindset that the word "massive" in MMO is supposed to refer to the number of players that's supposed to be playing your game. Let it instead define the kind of experience the player may have, or the size of the world, the amount of social interaction, or god forbid the level of depth within the game!

Stop playing the "grab the most people" game, and as a result past MMO players might once again take the genre seriously enough to revisit it.

 

[Nexxis]

As opposed to what, becoming a niche game that can still hold value with current and future players as it ages?

...Really, what's wrong with aiming for a smaller/more niche audience in a MMO? I've felt like I've said this too many times, but please, please developers, get rid of the mindset that the word "massive" in MMO is supposed to refer to the number of players that's supposed to be playing your game. Let it instead define the kind of experience the player may have, or the size of the world, the amount of social interaction, or god forbid the level of depth within the game!

Stop playing the "grab the most people" game, and as a result past MMO players might once again take the genre seriously enough to revisit it.

I think it's because they were riding high and getting a lot of money when they had more people. Being a small niche title probably doesn't sound appealing to them after being on top of the MMO world for so long.

 

[Vault Citizen]

If WOW did go free to playi think they could win over long term players by giving rewards to players who have had subscriptions of certain length.

 

[freaper]

Their only salvation: introduce a cat-race and add hats.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

That's fine, as long as the quality of the game content (quests, etc) have absolutely no connection to the free-to-play model (I'm referring to the stereotype that free-to-play games are generally inferior to play), then I'm happy.

I don't play WoW anymore, mind you, but I am considering playing again on a more limited basis regardless of whether it's gone free-to-play.

 

[Sectan]

What really killed it for me was the depth that the world lost with the new expansions. Mounts at 20 so you just run past everything to get to the next quest. Flyers at 60 so you just fly in straight lines to get to the next quest. LFG so you can run in straight lines to the next quest while also being matched up to a group in which you run in straight lines to the next mob and completely destroy enemies while not saying a single fucking word to the other players in your party. What's that? You're not having fun? Here, let's remove many of the interesting class quests and remove the need for you to ever party with another player outside of LFG again! WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING?!

Also: Let's give guild XP bonuses to players stacked on top of BoA gear xp bonuses! Damn, why are people getting so burned out on endgame? It couldn't be the fact that we're almost dragging them to 90 could it?

I'm not saying the game shouldn't be accessible to new players. I'm just saying that when you turn an MMO from a multiplayer community focused game into a solo quest grind fest and strip away any exploration and discovery people are going to get burned out pretty fast.

 

[Sku1c]

Moved to a private server ages ago, haven't looked back.

Don't play all that often anymore though, i'm waiting for Wildstar.

 

[Max_imus]

What Blizzard fails to see is that "casual-centric" does not have to mean "give every player, regardless of time commitment and concentration capacity (really, that is all there is to being able to raid: concentrating for 2 or 3 hours) every bit of content available".
See, if you let me put on me little rose-tinted goggles, in good old Burning Crusade times, there were challenges for all types of players. My Prot Pally would not get taken to raids much, but whatever, there were heroic dungeons that actually were challenging throughout the expansion. So you could be perfectly fine just finding groups, running heroics and going through the occasional Karazhan, dreaming of that one day you might get taken to Tempest Keep as a standin. This level of play has been completely removed from the game. The only way to gear up for raids is to run LFR endlessly or grinding through heroics that have not been added to since the start of the expansion. And don't even get me started on "Heroic" scenarios....
So by the time you have the gear for the current raiding tier, what is there to see? Nothing you haven't ground through a hundred times already.

Of course Blizzard is losing players, they are actively discouraging people from finding raid teams and the social ties that come with them. Without my raid team, I wouldn't have lasted three months in MoP.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

We already know that they are completely redesigning Titan, in no small part due to it shifting towards F2P, so I say go consistent with WoW as long as they can until they run it into the ground. It's like driving/buying a car: why try to get comfortable with a new one when the oldsmobile you're driving has another good 50,000 miles on it. It may never be as good as the old days, but it still works.

 

[Nilanius]

Nope, wont bring me back. The reason is because quite frankly Wrath of the Lich King was the last good expansion they had. Story telling up till that expansion was mostly original story telling. Cataclysm became 90% easter eggs and in some cases outright Plagiarism. As bad as that expansion was, it didn't lose subscribers as badly as Mists of Pandaria.

Mists of Pandaria brought with it more plagiarism, and a feature that destroyed communities and game stability. The feature called Cross Realm Zones. Crossing zone boarders was locking my system up for a few seconds and ending with my character busting out in a flash of light that was giving me headaches. It made my invested passenger mounts a wasted investment. And it also invalidated my server transfers, as I transfered off a server to get away from a couple of drama queens. CRZ put me back with them people I paid $125 to get away from. My server's community became trapped either in stormwind or pandaria.

So what was Blizzard's response to these issues? "If you dislike CRZ for any reason, then you just want a single player game and should go play skyrim". Blizzard since being bought and integrated into Activision, has become a toxic brand name. Going free to play says only one thing in the wake of their Quarterly reports showing subscription numbers going down faster than 2 years of cataclysm. It shows that the numbers have gone down so drastically now that they are forced to consider free to play. I estimated that if they kept losing 600k to 1 million subscribers a quarter they'd be down to 5 million by december. But the fact that they are now seeming like they are in panic mode and trying to justify going free to play, the numbers may well be well below that estimate.

Me, I will give my $14.99 to a company that respects its players, and that company is Square Enix. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is going to be my investment from here on. I had invested 19 years in Blizzard, 8 years in WoW. And in 1 year Blizzard lost all respect from me, completely alienating a loyal customer. I hope they do crash and burn, they deserve it.

 

[RJ 17]

I was with WoW up until the end of Burning Crusade. I ended up leaving due to guild drama breaking up a pretty successful raiding guild that I was a part of and no longer being able to justify paying a subscription fee for having a chance at a chance to get the gear needed. After graduating from college, my playtime boiled down to almost exclusively just showing up for raids 3 times a week. On those raids I'd have to hope for the gear I needed to drop, and if it did drop I'd have to compete with the other people that needed/wanted it. I still had fun on the raids for the social aspect, but that guild drama that I mentioned was even beginning to rob me of that. So I went ahead and bailed out, hearing from a friend of mine that the guild ended up dissolving completely about 2 weeks later.

So I don't know what's become of WoW in recent days, though from looking through the other comments it seems like it's been watered down so much that I'd find it completely unrecognizable were I to try and get back into it. I remember when it first came out, getting that super lvl 10 Paladin hammer was a journey in itself, the reward of which really paid off for all the effort you put into it. And getting my warlock's Epic Mount and the ability to cast Ritual of Doom were lots of fun for the challenge they presented. If they're just giving these things away now, I can definitely see how/why veteran players are feeling jaded by the whole deal. I'd say that switching to F2P would make me likely want to check it out again...but on the other hand it's like I said: I'd probably find it completely unrecognizable from my days playing it and would likely end up losing interest pretty quickly.

 

[Baldr]

What do you guys think? Has World of Warcraft's recent casual focus brought you back into the game, or turned you off it? Would switching to a free-to-play model get you back in?

Um, I never left. Though going free-to-play would probably drive me away from the game. I'm not going to pay more than my fair share of the game, just so it can pick up some freeloaders.

 

[alj]

They do know that the game became popular during Burning Crusade right and while dialed down a bit in complexity form the 40 man days of classic it was the least "accessible" raiding and end game that they have ever had. And you now what it made people play the game. The problem now is they think everyone wants instant gratification and will lose interest if they are not getting upgrades or access to new stuff or achievements popping up every second.

What keeps people playing is content where you have to progress over time and work up to things it instills a seance of accomplishment when you finally do get there and keeps people engaged when they are aiming for it, its also cheaper as you don't have to keep making more and more and more content that people burn through in less than a week.

But they don't think for themselves they look at focus groups that say " i want to raid " " i want to get gear" etc, and we all know about the problems of bias in focus groups where people say what they think makes them look good in fount of others and not what they themselves want.

Seriously i am almost past caring about this game the game i loved was gone long ago, well i enjoyed playing until after ulduar ( the best raid they have ever made) but i think i hit my peak in BC. I had hope there for a bit with ulduar but ahh well. I have the secret world and the old republic that enjoy quite a bit (especially the secret world) but i only play them on and off now.

I don't know why they don't make the new titan thing into there "casual MMO" and rewind the clock on Warcraft a bit. You then have two products that cover both ends of the market and well they will overlap in the middle and may people will play both. Win Win