It's nearly ten years old and nothing lasts forever.
There's always a drop in subs over summer.
There's other MMOs on the market.
The rise of other microtransaction games might be taking some revenue away.
Are some examples.
As has been asked before... do you even read the replies to your posts....?
Railven is that 10 or 25 man?
I don't even know your argument anymore. Grinding in an MMORPG is unfriendly to EVERYONE. All tiers have to grind. No one is exempted.
"Massive time investment?" Really? One hour a day, 4 days a week, LFR is done.
For the record, anyone who still plays this game in this thread, and run a guild (or have officer status) look into Flex raiding.
My "casuals" were devastated with the difficulty level of ToT and ended up abandoning progression (out of frustration.) ToT was so difficult it only took 2 people screwing up a mechanic to wipe you (gone were the days of carrying that baddie that was a guild friend.)
Anyways, with Flex we're bringing in the super baddies (40K DPS on first boss) and with the our super elities, we're stomping through content at a decent pace (3 attempts for first guy, 5 attempts for second, 4 attempts for 3, 2 shotted fourth guy) and this is with two or three DPS <60K.
It feels good to not have to tell people "sorry you can't join the raid roster." We're all goofing off in vent, guild morale seems so high after the ToT fiasco.
I had taken two months off and I'm glad to be back.
Nope. Wasn't true in vanilla. You have to "grind" to get up to par in gear in the first place, but once you were there you didn't have to constantly grind through trivial content just to stay average, no way.
Ah, I see where you are coming from.
Someone who raids on a 4 days per week schedule is not a casual, haha. What kind of skewed reality do you live in?
The whole damn point was that in vanilla, you could gear up, and then if you missed a month or two you could come back and your gear was still worth something. Any example you come up with that includes doing LFR weekly just to stay average is not going to work.
I also find your numbers unrealistic. It might only take 4 hours in the raid total to finish it, but trying to do that an hour a day over 4 days? You will sit in queue waiting to enter the raid, you will get into raids that are killing the boss you already killed, you will get into raids with afk tanks.
meh. 40k on first boss? not exactly super baddie bad. depending on class. i hate it. far to much running.
Did flex last night (joined a buddy of mines guild who needed more dps). knocked out the first wing. Yes its harder then LFR but we went faster.
the first and second boss suck. i hate running around. the last 2 i was in the to 3 for dps and my set sucks.
Ok at this point I'm curious. Flex and LFG are easier than normal? What do they do to make it easier? How few can you run with flex? At some point it's just gotta get silly if you try to 3 man a raid.
Ok at this point I'm curious. Flex and LFG are easier than normal? What do they do to make it easier? How few can you run with flex? At some point it's just gotta get silly if you try to 3 man a raid.
I think we both have different concepts of what "grind" means. Clearing new content to me is "grinding."
The context to me is the same, grind a new tier, grind a a new toon, grind a new faction - work with varying levels of difficulty that is nothing but reptition and memorization.
Skewed reality? You do know LFR isn't the traditional concept of "raiding" and is on par with running a 5-man dungeon. If you really thinkg LFR is "raiding" I believe you have the skewed concept of reality.
Depending on the success of your guild, this varies. Some of us weren't lucky enough to get into the top raiding guilds during Vanilla/BC for our servers. Some of us never got pass Molten Core.
During Vanilla/TBC if you didn't quit, you were constantly playing catch up. With today's WoW you don't have to dedicate the giant time sinks for progression raiding, you still get a handful of "epics" and you can stay with the 'average' person with minimal effort.
40k was decent at level 85.
I assumed you were using that definition. You didn't have to do new content, grind, or do anything else to remain "average" once you invested a certain baseline of time and effort into getting geared. NOTHING. In vanilla.
I agree largely. The point I am trying to make clear is that in vanilla, once you had a baseline of decent gear, you could quit all of that. You could even take a 6 month break from the game, when you come back if you were geared to raid before your break, you were still geared and ready to raid after.
Casual to mean you might not play at all one week, or when you do play you want to do whatever it is you enjoy doing. Any form of mandatory anything just to tread water and remain "average" is not compatible with having fun as a casual player.
In vanilla just being in Molten Core put you above the average. The handing out of cheap/easy epics in LFR makes it MANDATORY that you collect them, or better. The lack of such in vanilla meant that the baseline was lower, and just by collecting a couple nice ZG blues or Molten Core drops put you way above the average, and once you were there you didn't need to constantly spend 4 hours+ a week just to maintain your position.
I greatly disagree. In vanilla, you get a few epics and you are above average. You can play 5 minutes a week for a year after that and you will STILL be above average. In modern WoW, if you don't immediately start running LFR (or harder real raids) after a content patch you will be behind the curve in a matter of weeks.
I did 40k at 80... I am baffled it has been 2 expansions and people still are barely out DPSing me...
Then PvP died. So, yeah, I do not think they could have killed it quicker, almost like they wanted it to die and chase off people.
Are you serious? Are you saying that Blizzard has given up on PvP and can now focus on PvE exclusively without worrying about stupid PvP balance?
If it's true maybe it's time that I come back!
You are greatly underestimating the time/investment required to even raid during Vanilla. It wasn't just "ding 60! invite me to MC!" Yet, with MoP, I can hit level 90 through Insect Land (forgot zone's name), get enough ilvl items to jump straight into heroics and be 2-3 RNG wins away from LFR.
It seems more the complaint is content is coming out faster than you can handle, thus this notion that you have to "keep up." Which is partially true, but that is only subjective to you.
So, your problem is too much new content with better gear. Somebody call the Waaaaaaaahmbulance.You keep on missing the point so badly I just don't want to even try to explain it anymore.
Anything I earned in Cataclysm is useless now, agreed? Anything I earned in the release of MoP is also useless now, agreed? Anything earned in 5.1 is useless now as well. Anything earned in 5.3 is nearly useless, unless I was hard core enough to collect and fully optimize heroic level gear.
For most players, not in a heroic level guild, 5.4 LFR raid gear is better than anything they have, and any effort they spent prior to 5.4 in gearing out there character if effectively erased.
Your past effort isn't erased with any patch. Guess what, I still have gear and mounts nobody else has (I even had an Ashes of Al'ar on my paladin!) None of my progress, even after being gone for years, has been erased. I still did content 90% of the player base couldn't do now. And, Blizzard doesn't want content where only a very small percentage of the population enjoys. That makes very little sense financially.Now, go back to vanilla.
If you earn a ZG or MC epic, and quit playing entirely for a year, and then come back, you STILL have something that the average player doesn't. Your past effort is *not* erased. Even if it's just one little piece of gear that doesn't drop in a 5 man, it's still something, unlike a casual walking into patch 5.2 and realizing every single thing they worked for is garbage now.
If player A is smart, the logical conclusion is that spending time on content is a HUGE waste of time, because the next patch LFR raid will be better anyway. Why waste hundreds of hours when you can just walk into LFR without any of that gear and get better upgrades?
Of course, the logical conclusion after that is why play WoW at all? It's just a huge treadmill, and canceled subscriptions start occurring. IMO, this is why there was a 54% drop in revenue.
nobody did 40k at 80. don't be silly.
nobody did 40k at 80. don't be silly.
You keep on missing the point so badly I just don't want to even try to explain it anymore.
Anything I earned in Cataclysm is useless now, agreed? Anything I earned in the release of MoP is also useless now, agreed? Anything earned in 5.1 is useless now as well. Anything earned in 5.3 is nearly useless, unless I was hard core enough to collect and fully optimize heroic level gear.
For most players, not in a heroic level guild, 5.4 LFR raid gear is better than anything they have, and any effort they spent prior to 5.4 in gearing out there character if effectively erased.
Now, go back to vanilla.
If you earn a ZG or MC epic, and quit playing entirely for a year, and then come back, you STILL have something that the average player doesn't. Your past effort is *not* erased. Even if it's just one little piece of gear that doesn't drop in a 5 man, it's still something, unlike a casual walking into patch 5.2 and realizing every single thing they worked for is garbage now.
I'm not sure how you could possibly think that, are you not reading anything I write? I don't care one bit about new content I can't do. What I care about is old content I already did that is now rendered completely obsolete.
Hypothetical situation time.
Player A is in a raiding guild, but not a super good one. During patch 5.1 he spends a lot of time raiding normal mode, and doing LFR on the side, and collects a nice assortment of gear. Overall, he spends 20 hours a week doing this, for 10 weeks, 200 hours total.
Player B does none of that, messes around trolling trade chat all day.
Patch 5.2 released.
Player A's guild falls apart, so he starts running the new LFR raids.
Player B also runs the new LFR raids.
Player A questions why he spent 200 hours of his life collecting gear when some lazy slacker can step into the exact same content and earn the exact same gear at a fraction of the time commitment.
If player A is smart, the logical conclusion is that spending time on content is a HUGE waste of time, because the next patch LFR raid will be better anyway. Why waste hundreds of hours when you can just walk into LFR without any of that gear and get better upgrades?
Of course, the logical conclusion after that is why play WoW at all? It's just a huge treadmill, and canceled subscriptions start occurring. IMO, this is why there was a 54% drop in revenue.
So, your problem is too much new content with better gear. Somebody call the Waaaaaaaahmbulance.
Your past effort isn't erased with any patch. Guess what, I still have gear and mounts nobody else has (I even had an Ashes of Al'ar on my paladin!) None of my progress, even after being gone for years, has been erased. I still did content 90% of the player base couldn't do now.
And, Blizzard doesn't want content where only a very small percentage of the population enjoys. That makes very little sense financially.
WoW was always a gear treadmill. Time spent doing ANYTHING is a waste. Doing content is never for long term gear and it never was, because even if you have 100% best of the best, a patch will bump you down, not matter what else is introduced.
Your entire argument is that you feel entitled to be special because you do a harder level of content than others.
I swear, Blizzard games have the biggest bunch of crybabies I've ever seen in a game community.