How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

[Yeldir]

Here's an unpleasant truth: To want, motivates efforts to gain. To have, inspires no action.

I see an ominous parallel between Cataclysm and Heavensward. WoW Cata is generally regarded as the first moment WoW slipped up badly enough to precipitate a mass exodus - everybody knows that bit, already. Have you asked yourself why?

Plenty of players will tell you "oh, yeah, I quit at Cata, it sucked", but they'll seldom have concrete reasons behind it. They know it sucked, but lack the words to describe how the game ceased to be compelling for them. This isn't because they don't know a good game from a bad one - it's because Cataclysm did right when it should have done wrong.

Cataclysm streamlined the raid environments to an extreme degree, and ensured that absolutely everyone could experience everything the game had to offer without great investment in one's character or the server's raiding community. It gave players everything it had on a silver platter, and they didn't need to work for what they got. This was met with satisfaction, on the surface. It seemed good, at first.

And then, having been carried up the mountain, the player base found itself with nothing to motivate them to climb. Higher numbers is a meaningless and shallow motivator - real excitement from getting a piece of equipment comes from knowing that it can help you on your journey to see and do greater things. So, having seen all there is to see, players quit en masse, confused and disenfranchised by the hollowness of their journey.

Cataclysm gave players what they thought they wanted, and that was how it dealt the first mortal wound to WoW.

Now, let's talk about Heavensward - having outlined the above, I can keep this part of my post brief. Heavensward has undergone an uncannily similar metamorphosis - developers, concerned that the majority of the player base hasn't scaled the mountains that were set before them, gave the players the opportunity to have a ride up.

Look at this story, and look at the forums. Now look back at the story, and again, back at the forums. Look at the confusion on the forums. Look at the disagreement. Why is it there, now that this game caters to all play-styles? Ask yourself, does this look like a group of people who know what they want, collectively?

Does this look right to you? I never cleared 40-man Naxx, and that fact never pushed me from vanilla WoW. It was always hanging overhead: the promise of further adventure.

[RiceisNice]

Raiding in Catacylsm didn't get streamlined with easy-mode difficulty until the end of it's cycle (a formula which would then be carried over into MoP). My biggest gripe with Cata is still similiar to that of HW, there's not much to be done after you sit at level cap past the first 2 months or so. The amount of content it brought to the table was less of that of the two previous expansions, the dungeons weren't terribly interesting and it honestly felt monotonous with the BGM and environments.

As in heavensward, there's not a lot of dungeons or trials outside of raids to keep you interested, Alexander still fails to hit the middle ground as far as difficulty is concerned (Alexander is normal is much easier than echo'd FCoB) along with some kinks that result from latency on some boss fights (looking at you, drainage tethers) and the crafting scene has become a circle-jerk joke where crafters only craft for other crafters (and not even gatherers!).

As much as Catacylsm started the decline of WoW and me being there, you aren't exactly hitting the nail on the head on why it was bad.

Ironically, the time they started making raids more accessible was at the beginning of WotLK when they did away with both hard-attunement requirements (every single player hard to do long-quest chains, which required dungeons to be cleared, ones that have no meaningful dungeon drops aside from said quest objectives...They also one person which required a key that also came from a very long-quest chain), extreme vertical progression (with no tomestones mind you, so you always had to gear up from the previous tier of raid, starting from the bottom up which required dungeon tier gear). On top of that, they had an entire continent of Northrend, crafting profession and class, and a very engaging atmosphere (I can easily say I spent more time wandering around in dalaran than I ever did Foundation). It was during WotLK where they had peaked and maintained their subs.

[Berethos]

Raiding in Catacylsm didn't get streamlined with easy-mode difficulty until the end of it's cycle...[/I][/B]

I wish I could like this a dozen more times.

The start of Cataclysm was actually marked by an *increase* in difficulty of getting things done, particularly when it came to heroic dungeons (compared to the much easier Wrath iteration). Getting into and completing raids used the same difficulty approach that had been seen previously, except that you now had to choose between sizes (10 or 25, not both). Streamlining of raid content during Cata came with LFR during Dragon Soul - the last raid/content patch, and after the subscriber numbers had already started to decrease.

[Khalithar]

The start of Cataclysm was actually marked by an *increase* in difficulty of getting things done, particularly when it came to heroic dungeons (compared to the much easier Wrath iteration). Getting into and completing raids used the same difficulty approach that had been seen previously, except that you now had to choose between sizes (10 or 25, not both). Streamlining of raid content during Cata came with LFR during Dragon Soul - the last raid/content patch, and after the subscriber numbers had already started to decrease.

Very much this. Wrath's raids were very approachable and were fairly regularly pugged (except for Ulduar, but I digress) and at the end of the Wrath cycle the final raid gave everyone a 30% buff to pretty much all of their stats. As a result when players got in to the Cata raids after being used to that, most of them got curbstomped as a result. The dungeons were harder and would destroy you in seconds if your group didn't play perfectly and the wrath way of doing dungeons (pull 5-6 groups and aoe them down) resulted in a very fast death requiring a slower more tactical approach. Until people got geared out from the raids eventually that is, but that's fine, as far as I'm concerned once you have the gear you should be able to ignore mechanics and just brute force things down. Plus the ones that actually had the best gear were players that had been forced to step up and play well, again until Dragon Soul and LFR came out.

I actually enjoyed Cata for actually requiring me to step up and get better at my class if I wanted to do the content. Then Dragon Soul came out with LFR and to me the game went downhill from there, I got my deathwing kill in normal mode (I refused to touch watered down boring LFR stuff) and then I quit the game as I didn't like the direction the game was going in or the changes they made to pld in MoP.

[Magis]

Funny, Cataclysm also killed FFXIV 1.0 in a way: SE released it prematurely to try to beat Cata's release leaving it bug ridden and missing 70% of it's content.

[Saccharin]

Dragon Soul Killed Cataclysm. They recouped players with the pre-WoD hype but then failed to deliver with only raids and have lost almost half of them, even though it's expected that some will leave after the launch as they always do.

SE and Blizzard have very different philosophy. SE have been very cautious with 2.x and continue with 3.x and have deviated very little with Heavensward.

Blizzard on the other hand are bi-polar in their design; they either make things too hard or too easy; too much or nothing.


Back on the days MMOs were very niche and thanks to WoW they brought them closer to the main stream. Most people these days don't want to grind for a month to get their dungeon set, grind for a further month to get reps up etc. Blizzard stated that those that ran Molten Core, Naxx etc were a very small percentage, close to 1%, of the actual player base. Spending large amounts of resources on one percent of your customer base is frankly dumb so they opened up raid content to everyone, if they feel like it. Time moves on and so do their player base.

The guy who raided Molten Core may have been in his late teens, early twenties but now he's thirty, or almost thirty, has a family, a full time job and just can't justify spending that amount of time in front of a computer. If he still plays. While MMOs have massive turn over, most never expect to finish the starter zone, so the trickle of players is much smaller so proportionally the veteran is much more common among the player base. Blizzard stated that most of their player base is in their twenties so that 12 year old troll in chat is most likely an adult.

SE I believe understand this and that's why coil was a lot more casual than it was hard core. I've said this many times FF14 is not a raiding game. In HW we got two raid difficulties because just like WoW you can't spend those precious resources on a small percent of your player base so story mode was developed, a much better idea than nerfing the so-called savage mode.

Let's not forget that SE add a significant amount of stuff every three months, and a fair amount every month so it's ill-timed to judge HW when we haven't even received a proper content patch. I do however think that fiver moths is too long to wait for a content patch. It's of no concern of mine that they took a break after the expansion released. This should have been planned while HW was being developed, poor planning by those in charge. For me a casual player just last night I decided to do Alex 1-4 normal so it affects me little.

[Magis]

The guy who raided Molten Core may have been in his late teens, early twenties but now he's thirty, or almost thirty, has a family, a full time job and just can't justify spending that amount of time in front of a computer. If he still plays. While MMOs have massive turn over, most never expect to finish the starter zone, so the trickle of players is much smaller so proportionally the veteran is much more common among the player base. Blizzard stated that most of their player base is in their twenties so that 12 year old troll in chat is most likely an adult.

This is said over and over, but it's wrong. I was in a raid guild that had leaders and members in their 30-50's, and many members in their 20s-30s. Sure there were younger people under 20 (me included at the time) but saying "oh it's cause people were in their teens" is blatantly false. Older people played MMOs back then just as younger did. Hell, the WoW dev team were high end EQ raiders and I don't think Blizzard would be hiring teens to game design their first MMO. It's as much a stereotype as the excuse that "people could raid because they didn't have time to play 12h a day" as if that was ever the case. It was all about time management, if you could set aside time to progress X amount, you'd be able to do it.

This was during Vanilla, when raids required 40 people to do. We had officers for every class type, a raid leader, and a guild leader (hence I say "leaders").

[Saccharin]

This is said over and over, but it's wrong. I was in a raid guild that had leaders and members in their 30-50's, and many members in their 20s-30s. Sure there were younger people under 20 (me included at the time) but saying "oh it's cause people were in their teens" is blatantly false. Older people played MMOs back then just as younger did. Hell, the WoW dev team were high end EQ raiders and I don't think Blizzard would be hiring teens to game design their first MMO. It's as much a stereotype as the excuse that "people could raid because they didn't have time to play 12h a day" as if that was ever the case. It was all about time management, if you could set aside time to progress X amount, you'd be able to do it.

This was during Vanilla, when raids required 40 people to do. We had officers for every class type, a raid leader, and a guild leader (hence I say "leaders").

Did I say every player was in their teens or twenties no of course I didn't but even those 50 year olds got older!

Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

[Magis]

Did I say every player was in their teens or twenties no of course I didn't but even those 50 year olds got older! Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Of course "not every", but we are talking about generalizations here and that is exactly what you are doing, you are generalizing it as "Molten Core people were in their teens and early twenties", when that wasn't the case. And so what if the 50 year olds got older? If a person can do high level raiding at 20, 30, 40, or 50 it doesn't matter what their age is. It just depends on their lifestyle and time. If anything, people end up with more free time as they get older cause the kids move out and they (like one FC mate who grinded three relics) retire.

Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

It's hard to create 40 man teams when the game is redesigned to not support them. Before TBC people were still jumping into and/or creating raid guilds. You can't make the comparison after 40mans were phased out. Also, maybe afking happened in the first dungeon MC, but anything after would just mean you'd wipe the raid.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Changing the raids from 40 to 20 man had nothing to do with making it easier, in fact early Karazhan was quite difficult until people cried for nerfs (like people always do). It was to make the player count requirement easier to beat, but the content itself didn't become easier.

[Hyrist]

There is plenty to desire in the game, even with gear and other achievements as obtainable as they are.

Direct from one of my favorite novels - Wizards first Rule:

'People are stupid. They will believe whatever it is they desire or fear. Regardless of the fact.'

So let's look at the facts.

FFXIV has been in an upward trend since the release of Heavensward. Until our typical indeendant servey source states otherwise, there's no need to raise alarm that the content has, at all, damaged our activity. As it is, according to said sources, by the beginning of august, less than half of our active characters were in Heavensward. And of that percentage, only two thirds had gone through Alexander Normal.

We're coming to the end of September now and speculatively those numbers have since shifted more towards completion of Heavensward. Likely, we will see a dip in active subscriptions due to the increase development length of 3.1. However the resource parses patch cycles so we're likely to see the net result of the full cycle when it comes around.

In the end. Similar arguments were made about ARR and the Echo Buff. Those arguments fell flat on their face. You cannot directly reference the history of one game and assume a direct repeat of said history. It's circular reasoning to start with the idea that Heavensward is Cataclysm in terms of subscription numbers and then try to prove it.

And the basis of the argument 'To want, motivates effort to gain.' Still applies to Savage.

This is a bait and switch, trying to locking components that have been speculated to severely drop subscription rates by denying players base functions of what attracts them to the game, behind the curve of difficulty that falls outside their audience preference. You don't keep fans of Final Fantasy by locking Final Fantasy story behind the game of Dark Souls. That does not work in today's society. They'll go to forums, videos, or anywhere on the internet they can find, watch the videos, and then unsubscribe.

It's just terrible reasoning to try to justify super-niche gameplay that winds itself to becoming impractical to even attempt to the majority of the players. Alexander Normal was a wild success. Savage is being considered as a failure by a vocal minority of the players (most others just ignore it). Savage is the content that should be looked at, not gross generalization of the game's direction.