Why pay a subscription?

[Sidious]

Contrary to what you hardcore players think -- most people aren't hardcore and won't spend their entire waking life trying to raid with 40 people and spending countless hours obtaining gear.

Yes they will. And the proof is in the pudding: People *did* stick around. Something that can't be said for your ultra-casualized iterations of the game.

Vanilla: +5 million subs
TBC: + 6 million (11 million total)
Wotlk: +1 million (12 million total)
Cata: -3 million (9 million total)
MoP: -2 million in less than a year (~7 million total).

These are all official numbers released during Blizzard's investor conference calls. It's all in their archives, feel free to double check.

By your logic, every new casual feature that WoW introduces would send subs skyrocketing. And yet they haven't been able to post a single positive quarter in years. At one point they were even giving D3 away for free if you agreed to sub to WoW, and they STILL had a net loss in subs.

Casual players don't actually want a casual game. They just lack the foresight to know otherwise.

That said, I work a full time job and I play casually. Always have, even in WoW. But I refuse to lump myself in with them because their ideas are cancerous.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Yes they will. And the proof is in the pudding: People *did* stick around. Something that can't be said for your ultra-casualized iterations of the game.

You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

[Sidious]

You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

So you think it's just sheer coincidence that as soon as they started casualizing parts of the game that didn't need to be casualized, subs began to stagnate and decline?

It's an MMO. They're dumping millions of dollars into reinventing it constantly. The game is completely different than it was before. It can hardly even be considered the same game anymore. So, no, I don't think it's because people "got tired of it". Especially because people are willing to play a game that is, for better or worse, mechanically very similar to it (ARR).

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

By the numbers, it's one of the most successful P2P MMO's of all time. It never had WoW's sheer numbers but it had a very dedicated, stable subscriber base that continues to this day, ~a decade later.

Why? Because XI built on its content until there was a mind-numbingly huge amount of content to participate in. Complexities and depth in the game keep people around.

Casual games are good for some short term fun, and then you burn through it and unsub. Period.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

If you were right FF11 would be rocking right now.. That game was crazy hard. I had friends that played that game and told me it made vanilla WoW look like a walk in the park. They had a very low player base because of it. They know what they are doing. This game is easier for a reason. They have a hard FF MMO. Last I checked FF11 was still running if you want hard mode.