WoW Dev Outlines The Challenges of Catering to a Diverse Community

[Cryselle]

FF

5.5 million? Damn. So FF14 will very likely be the biggest sub based MMO by the end of the year. They were at 5 million last August and were only growing from there.

While FF14 does have some of the same issues that Vanilla WoW players don't like, its still the only other MMO to remain sub based in a longer damn time so kudos to Square Enix. Especially with cross platform play and the large amount of free expansions helps too.

You know the funny thing? FF actually releases significantly less content than Blizzard, but they do it in a way that feels better. If you look at the top end raiding scene, FF releases 4 bosses every 6 months. Blizzard has more bosses in single raids than the entire expansion's top end in FF. But because of FF's schedule, where they release a top end raid tier, then a more casual catchup raid, then another top end, with a few other small boosts in between the major releases, it always /feels/ like there is something in the pipes that you can look forward to.

Blizzard objectively has tons and tons of content, but the huge end-of-expansion droughts in particular feel pretty terrible.

 

[Xannieros]

Honestly they really do not get it. About the high price of items.. THEY made that problem, not the players. What is currently happening is that they made the expansion player hub "Garrisons" an easy way to make money. Now every player who maybe sat this expansion out or didn't take advantage of it will be seriously behind in terms of gold. As an example me sitting at about 50k gold. I sat out of it and people are complaining that the gold cap (999,999g) is too low (although it is changing to 9,999,999g in the next expansion). To top it all off they will be removing much of the gold making from the Garrisons. So 2 million gold priced items will be beyond reach for new players and most of the playerbase.

They can say cant please anyone but they have ruined almost every aspect of the game. PvP is a stunlock and crowd control nightmare. I refuse to PvP anymore, and I know a lot of people have complained. They also have removed any uniqueness in each class. Professions have all but become useless and locked behind a daily routine. Reputations have turned into an only terrible grinding experience with some factions having no alternatives. They gave us flying mounts but are reluctant to let us use them in new expansions. The story and lore have turned into cringe worthy garbage, with the occasional death of an important character for shock value alone. Also much of the story is in the books not the game now. Leaving people not knowing why we are doing any of the things we do.. Raid quality has gone up but that's the only plus I see.

If they're trying to please someone, I can hardly tell who.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

5.5 million? Damn. So FF14 will very likely be the biggest sub based MMO by the end of the year. They were at 5 million last August and were only growing from there.

I'm not entirely sure about that. The numbers for WoW have been dropping, but there's also a major expansion coming out at the end of August. That's going to sharply boost the subscription numbers before the end of the year. When Warlords of Draenor launched the subscription numbers jumped from 7.4 million players (Q3 2014) to 10 million players (Q4 2014). We may not know, though. It'll depend on whether Blizzard remains committed to keeping subscription numbers private, or if they decide to brag about their short-term gains for the sake of a cheap PR opportunity.

I don't expect the launch boost for Legion to be quite as drastic as it was for Warlords of Draenor, though. I think Warlords did kind of a lot to damage the IP (at least, the MMORPG aspect of it) for a lot of people. A lot of the people I used to raid with have taken an "I'll wait for the reviews before I buy it" stance toward this one, which they've never done before with Blizzard. The boost is also unlikely to be sustained for more than a few months. Of course, that's assuming that Legion is of comparable quality to Warlords of Draenor. Who knows. Maybe Blizzard will knock it out of the park with Legion, word-of-mouth will boost sales, and the game won't bleed more subscriptions than the launch gained within a matter a months. I certainly hope Legion turns out to be great, because it'd be pigheaded to want a game to do poorly... I just wouldn't bet on it being great.

It's cool to see FFXIV doing so well, though. I've never really been a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, but I played it for a couple months to try it out, and it seemed like a pretty solid game. I got the impression that its developers are actually pretty active with the community. It's not really my cup of tea though, but I appreciate the variety existing.

 

[LordLundar]

You know the funny thing? FF actually releases significantly less content than Blizzard, but they do it in a way that feels better. If you look at the top end raiding scene, FF releases 4 bosses every 6 months. Blizzard has more bosses in single raids than the entire expansion's top end in FF. But because of FF's schedule, where they release a top end raid tier, then a more casual catchup raid, then another top end, with a few other small boosts in between the major releases, it always /feels/ like there is something in the pipes that you can look forward to.

(The below is not meant to be taken as a personal attack to anyone, I just quoted this as it was pertinent)

I'll just point this out as probably the dominant failing for WoW as opposed to FF14. For WoW, the only thing that matters since I would say late Lich King is the end raid. Dungeons are a push over, the world questing is the same stuff since vanilla, the characters have no real depth or development (Yrel, a recent character introduced in Warlords is really the only character since Wrath that I would say had any real effort in those areas) and the story is rehashed from prior stuff that the player feels less a part of it and more dragged along. Unless you're doing the end raid you're not really a part of anything in the game. The raid is all that matters.

By contrast, FF14 does not center around the top tier raid as being the only game in town at all. The dungeons are always interesting and varied (unlike with WoW, where a higher difficulty is just higher stats, a higher difficulty dungeon or trial in 14 is a wholly different experience) with a respectable challenge for each. New quests and chains are introduced with each major patch, the characters are interesting (remember what I said about Yrel in WoW? That is average for FF14 instead of being a stand out) and the player is a part of the story because the story centers around the player. You're not just a nameless traveler who is in the background while the NPC stars take all the credit. OF anything, top tier raiding is one of the weaker aspects of the game but the game is handled in such a manner that it's more of an asset than a drawback.

To put it simply, if end game raiding is the only thing that matters to you, then WoW is the superior game. But FF14 brings so much more than end game raiding than WoW does so while yes, WoW raids have more bosses, FF14 has more content overall coming out at a more steady pace than WoW ever had because for FF14, end raids are not he only thing that matters.

 

[elvor0]

I think they've still got 7 million people subscribed.

Likely fewer than that, actually. The last time they reported being above 7 million was Q1 2015. It was down to 5.5 million by Q3 2015, and that was when Blizzard announced that they'd stop publicly reporting the number.

5.5 million? Damn. So FF14 will very likely be the biggest sub based MMO by the end of the year. They were at 5 million last August and were only growing from there.

Actually, Square said they had 5.5 million /registered/ users. Afaik We don't know for sure how many active users they have.(although if something has occured to correct that, correct me.)

That is a misleading title if I've ever seen one.

No it isn't. They used the word exactly right, it covers the content of the article perfectly. There are lots of different kinds players in the WoW playerbase and it's hard to keep them all happy.

That is a misleading title if I've ever seen one.

No, it's quite possibly one of the most accurate titles.

I think everyone here thought of a very specific kind of diversity when they first read the title, only to see that the article talks about something else entirely. In that sense, yes, it was misleading since the word has certain connotations that can't be avoided, even if it is technically correct.

By "everyone" you mean "I thought of a very specific kind of diversity". It's not misleading. If you thought of a specific kind of diversity that's fine, but don't call the article misleading when it clearly isn't. If you want to attach specific connotations to the word diverse before you discover the context, that's your problem, not the articles, It's not technically correct, it is correct.