World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

[Shougun]

There is a hint of truth to this.

I had a wall of text typed out, but honestly I've rambled about it all enough times and there's no point. I love the game, it has enjoyable raids, a great story and the devs avoid things like endless treadmills and FOMO. Other games fail at this, so it's worth the sub for now. But it feels like every expansion an activity I used to enjoy is torn apart and handed over to people who didn't even like it for "accessibility" and it's frustrating. It also feels like the short term effects of handing things over to people on a plate and recent success of the game after WoW fell apart has caused a touch of arrogance to creep in and I'm seeing more of a dismissive "we know what's best" attitude.

I'm a little tired of how crafting is worthless, the DoH forums are a ghost town, Healers are rioting and told to be quiet, botting is rampant and unchecked, Hunts are an utter mess that the devs ignore and a source of player conflict, housing is a mess, class design is more watered down but they keep pumping new classes out, they keep trimming content but pour resources into other things that are just 10 minutes and done and so on.

Could be worse, but it's not perfect.

I'm not sure all of that is due to necessarily having to cater to a casual audience however.

Or at least all because of, for example DoH also have a lot of botting issues that were expanding with the popularity of the game. Some of the changes they made were to make it accessible in a way that I think is entirely fair and some problems crafters are having is because originally it was more obtuse, in which case now there is a greater market. It of course causes a disruption from expectation but... I think.. to an extent ... that sucks but also too bad / it's better.. To an extent. Because a lot of the great wealth was simply due to an unnesccary barrier to entry (imo), it's not bad that people can easily level crafting (not that I'm claiming that is exclusively the issue). There are lots of elements at play here of course.

An easy cherry in your list would be housing, that'd be relatively easy one to say "if they did this instead" you'd have loads of casuals clamoring for the second coming of lord and savior... Godbert (cherry as in I don't have to argue much lol, healers for example we could have whole blog posts on ... ).

[hydralus]

Aside from the trolling, 8+ years seems like a pretty good run before a game dies.

[Ronduwil]

Square Enix is on the same trajectory as Blizzard. The sad thing is that the playerbase refuses to see this because of all the blind hype, and this same thing happened in WoW - people couldn't fathom the thought that WoW could be getting worse.

I completely disagree. This is what killed WoW:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...in-wow/1181215

SE is not falling into that trap. You're right that the majority of the playerbase is midcore, but I think your definition of midcore is skewed. Midcore players don't look up rotation guides on discord. Midcore players don't install addons to track their DPS, so they really have no idea how much damage everyone else is doing. Midcore players don't demand that their healers even DPS, so they don't care that there are a couple of healing jobs that have two-button DPS rotations. Midcore players are casual. If you really feel that WoW is catering to casual players, then either you haven't played since WotLK or your perception of what is and isn't casual is way off. Blizzard has been giving casuals the middle finger since 2011.

[TMW001]

This MMO is designed so players can take breaks and return and not feel like they fell behind there's no carrot on a stick or treadmill like WOW its as casual as it can get it. Have you seen WOW's gearing scene grind after grind after grind you could pass it off a s mobile game if you described it to anyone.

[Y2K21]

This MMO is designed so players can take breaks and return and not feel like they fell behind there's no carrot on a stick or treadmill like WOW its as casual as it can get it. Have you seen WOW's gearing scene grind after grind after grind you could pass it off a s mobile game if you described it to anyone.

I dont know -- theres no infinite grind treadmill like the past two expacs. The only thing that you would treadmill is gear, but then again all that would requires is a badge system to fix.

[Roflcopter]

I completely disagree. This is what killed WoW:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...in-wow/1181215

SE is not falling into that trap. You're right that the majority of the playerbase is midcore, but I think your definition of midcore is skewed. Midcore players don't look up rotation guides on discord. Midcore players don't install addons to track their DPS, so they really have no idea how much damage everyone else is doing. Midcore players don't demand that their healers even DPS, so they don't care that there are a couple of healing jobs that have two-button DPS rotations. Midcore players are casual. If you really feel that WoW is catering to casual players, then either you haven't played since WotLK or your perception of what is and isn't casual is way off. Blizzard has been giving casuals the middle finger since 2011.

I’d argue MoP and Legion were casual friendly. Maybe not as much as Wrath, but they were and the player numbers of those 2 expansions reflected that. Blizzard used to have a more casual and higher quality expansion after ever steaming pile of “hardcore” garbage expansion. They missed with Shadowlands as BfA was also a steaming pile.

Blizzard was like the Star Trek movie franchise. Every other one was a smoldering trash pile.

[Y2K21]

I’d argue Legion were casual friendly.

I wouldnt know about that. Legion was very bad early for casual players in terms of systems that Blizz had to patch-in catchup mechanics because if you got behind on AP, you were essentially doing less than other players. Also the RNG legendary system. Also spec locked progression with artifacts. Also the expansion wasnt alt-friendly.

Legion literally has been the format for how the BFA/SL have been worked.

[Roflcopter]

I wouldnt know about that. Legion was very back early for casual players in terms of systems that Blizz had to patch-in catchup mechanics because if you got behind on AP, you were essentially doing less than other players. Also the RNG legendary system. Also spec locked progression with artifacts. Also the expansion wasnt alt-friendly.

Legion literally has been the format for how the BFA/SL have been worked.

I wouldn’t say I’m hardcore by any stretch, but Legion was pretty easy to progress and keep multiple alts. I cleared every tier regularly with 3 classes normal and heroic (DH, warlock, Paladin) and had some other reasonably geared alts. Clearing heroic was doable by pug. Unlocking flying wasn’t an ordeal like some other expansions. That is another thing that has been hurting WoW also. Stupidly locking flying forever and behind an insane grind like they did in WoD. Legendaries in Legion weren’t all that hard to come by really.

[Kolaina]

Midcore players don't demand that their healers even DPS.

When heavensward was released, developers said content was designed with healer dps in mind.

I believe you are confusing mid core with casual or trying to convince yourself that you’re on a higher tier than you are.

[MaxCarnage]

I think your definition of midcore is skewed. Midcore players don't look up rotation guides on discord. Midcore players don't install addons to track their DPS, so they really have no idea how much damage everyone else is doing. Midcore players don't demand that their healers even DPS, so they don't care that there are a couple of healing jobs that have two-button DPS rotations. Midcore players are casual.

I think your definition of Midcore is skewed. While you are correct that Midcore players are casual in the sense that they are not usually raiders, what you described are complete casuals. No effort required casuals.