FFXIV better stop doing what WoW's doing, because its losing millions of subs.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Counter Point. Wildstar. It was all about driving the casuals away and look how quickly its crashed and burned

So you point to the other extreme. Then FFXIV 2.0 should have crashed and burned too right? It didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding. I already know there is nothing that I will say that will change people minds on this topic, it's like arguing religion with someone that's religious. They don't care about the facts, only their opinion.

But people will eventually have to confront the fact that the more accessible they make WoW the more subs they lose. Garrisons just compounded a problem that was there for years. 5.6M subs should be a clear indicator that accessibility isn't doing ANYTHING to retain subscribers. If accessability is there to retain subscribers then it is doing the opposite of the effect Blizzard wanted to achieve.

[Averax]

I think a lot of them left because of arrogance of devs. They removed things ppl enjoyed and made comments that ppl don't know how to have fun and only our way is allowed.

It's mostly that.

They stopped listening to the players during the production of WoD, and it turned into a train wreck. All of the feedback from beta testers went on ignored, and they did what they wanted, which involved cutting 90% of the plans revealed at Blizzcon. Features promised to come out at launch turned into "you can have this, or a raid tier", and there were only two raid tiers anyway. That's why everyone's leaving wow.

The next expansion gets announced tomorrow, and everyone is extremely cynical over on the wow forums (and they're right to be). Can't wait to see how that goes.

FFXIV isn't in such a dark a place as that. I can't even say it's in a dark place at all. Where do you think all the people who quit wow are going?

The devs over there don't even visit the forums like the devs do over here. They just relay information to the CMs and use them as riot shields so unhappy players won't damage their precious egos

[Vickii]

I think WoW's problem is attracting new subscribers to an old outdated game more than losing subscribers. People always left WoW and for literally hundreds of different reasons. I wanted to kill illidan because he shouted abuse at me in a TV advert. Once I did that, the game was pretty much over for me. Others left because they met someone, had a kid, their class got nerfed in PVP, they argued with their guild, they got burnt out. Also the gameplay used to be a whole lot more addictive, it was harder to leave and stay gone 5-6 years ago. Where as now, it seems fun enough, but the magic has kinda worn off for a lot of people. But leavers were always replaced, and it doesn't appear to be the case now.

[Verius_Nox]

Part of the reason they are losing subs is from extreme gating of content.
Sounds familiar?

I'd like a fact-check on this because the reason I had quit WoD was because of lack of content, not gating of content. Especially considering there was very little gating at all.

[SecretCrowds]

Ugh. How I hate this topic. WoW losing popularity shouldn't be a surprise. That's how a lot of things work in this world. What's popular won't remain popular forever since newer things will appear.

Look at Friendster. It was the thing back then. Other sites then appeared and Friendster lost it's popularity and Facebook is now in it's place. In the future, the same will probably happen to Facebook.

Look at Backstreet Boys and Westlife. They were the most popular back then. Now it's One Direction.

So, please stop stating all the "mistakes" WoW made. WoW has its good and bad points. Just like every other MMO.

Why is it losing subs? Because nothing stays the most popular forever. That's all there is to it.

[Colorful]

snip

It didn't? What about the Crystal Tower raids, or other content like HM/EX primals? The people after hardcore content are very much in the minority, I think the total amount of players that beat Coil was around 10%, right? Try to build a game around that small niche and you're going to fail. Casuals make up most of the subs, they had very little to do other than garrisons and LFR, and with them removing Tier armour from LFR there was even less reason for them to stay subscribed. Compare it to Wrath with an enormous amount of fun dungeons for the non-raiders to play. A game can appeal to both the hardcore and casual audience, if it only appeals to the hardcore it will fail, and if it only appeals to the casual it'll never be the top MMO. The raids in WoD are incredible, that's not what they're lacking.

[Dree-Elle]

OP: How do you propose they lift the gate? And curb RMT in the new areas? What about the story? Or don't you give a shit about the world and its lore? Oh, and you're a level 1 character in a level 50+ area. Have fun with that.

Old content exists for new characters to get a grip on the game, its world, and how it's played (though that last part could be argued, considering the plethora of threads concerning so-called "bads"). It's not going to go away just because you want it to, or because another company's game is going down the shitter.

[Asierid]

stuff

Except this entire post is opinion with a distinct lack of facts.

XIVs LFR is the CT series. It fills the same niche that LFR does in wow in gearing people for the rest of the end game content. Much easier than the reat of the raids to yet not as mind numbingly boring as they made LFR since you can still die if you don't pay attention and move left two steps.

WoWs numbers actually increased at the release of the LFR. It was only after the decline in releasing content did it start tent fade. They even released the numbers showing that no one really did (or even completed) the raids to begin with.

XIV has gained more people since rhw release of HW, which made quite a bit of things more accessible. Even wildstar retained more numbers then previously after making stuff more accessible. (Retained...as in max level and doing current content).

So no. That is false.

[Averax]

I'd like a fact-check on this because the reason I had quit WoD was because of lack of content, not gating of content. Especially considering there was very little gating at all.

Well, to gate content there actually needs to be content.

[Vandril]

So you point to the other extreme. Then FFXIV 2.0 should have crashed and burned too right? It didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding.

No, it shouldn't have. Because, while it didn't have LFR or easy mode raiding, it did have a metric ton of casual content that non-hardcore raiders had no problems focusing on. Besides that, the hardest of hard raiding content in 2.0 were all made easier every patch due to newer content - some of which were easier than the raids - and the better gear that came with it. Outgearing content will make even hard content easier, and the updates that allowed this to happen came often enough to where more casual players did not grow bored of the more casual content before these previously-difficult raids became available to them. Of course, the Echo buff supplemented this when it was released.

Accessibility does not ruin games, and I can prove it with a concept: a game with infinite unique content would never grow boring and stale, no matter how accessible all of the content is.

Of course, infinite content is impossible, let alone infinite unique content. But this concept outlines the fact that accessibility itself does not cause games to become less interesting, but rather the lack of engaging content does. Realistically, a game that periodically gets updated with new content - such as MMORPGs tend to in order to retain players - must create enough content to keep their players fully engaged until the next release of new content. Accessibility can be defined as the ease with which players can access and complete each piece of content, either individually or as a whole, and has a strong and obvious direct correlation with the speed with which the player base completes and bores with the content.

What we can take away from all of this is that there needs to be a balance between rate of new content and rate of content completion. Since accessibility is so strongly tied to the rate of content completion, you can safely say that a healthy game needs a balance between rate of new content and accessibility. If the rate of new content is too low in comparison to accessibility, which is too high, then the players finish all of the content and grow bored waiting for new content. If accessibility is low when compared to the rate of new content, which is high, then players will either have more content than they can possibly ever complete (which would be a waste of resources on the developer's part, thus lowering profits) or will be unable to access enough content easily enough to the point where the content may not even exist for a majority of the player base, resulting in lost players.

The ideal is a balance between rate of new content and accessibility. If content is accessible enough to where a majority of players can experience it and new content is numerous enough to where players will have little to no downtime between content releases, then the game's player base will remain engaged throughout the life of this balance.

TL;DR - Accessibility does not kill games, no matter how extreme. What kills games in regards to accessibility is a broken "new content:accessibility" balance.