An impassioned plea from a WoW member, A lesson for FFXIV.

[Deceptus]

The following was a massively upvoted thread in reddit's /r/wow forum. It speaks to the level of discontent that many current World of Warcraft players are feeling about the latest expansion, Battle for Azeroth. While it is a competitor's MMO, the developers of FFXIV can learn some important lessons from the post. I honestly think this should be required reading for any developer on the FFXIV team.

Mainly:

1) Put gameplay and fun first.

This is something that FFXIV seems to be going away from. Content is quickly becoming stale because it seems that the developers have found a delivery schedule that works and don't deviate much from it. The few times they have deviated from it, the content wasn't well received. FFXIV isn't owed our appreciation, they should strive to achieve it.

2) You no longer see me as a player, but instead, as a payer.

This is becoming far more evident with all of the things going straight to the cash shop. Putting things being two or three layers of RNG in order to pad out content and playtime.. Massive grinds in order to pad out content and playtime.. Gated content in order to pad out content and playtime.

3) Don't let the marketers and sales people make the decisions.

Basically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614

[Deceptus]

The Thread in question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...entertainment/

Dear Blizzard Entertainment,

Gameplay first.

​Those are your words. Your founding words. And you have abandoned them.

I'm a grumpy 41-year old male. I'm cynical and skeptical. I work in marketing, and I hate the business. It's full of bollocks and bullshit. At the core of all that is the ridiculous idea that customers want to engage with companies and have conversations and relationships and other such nonsense. I don't care a thing for the companies whose products I buy. I don't want a relationship with Coke. I don't visit fan forums for Tide. And I will never pay any amount of money to watch or attend a Levi's convention. I just want good products, at reasonable prices.

I'm not a fan of corporations the way that I'm a fan of the Denver Broncos. I don't yell at the TV when I see a stupid McDonald's commercial like I do when Case Keenum throws another interception. I'm not emotionally invested in Nike or Google. I don't want whoever runs those companies to be fired when things go poorly the same way I think Vance Joseph should be fired from the Broncos.

And why is that? Because I'm emotionally attached to the Broncos. I love that team. I cried when they won Superbowl 50. It's irrational, I know. The win-loss record of a sports team has no effect on my personal life. And yet... I cheer and jeer.

Thankfully, I don't invest myself into commodity corporations the same way.

Except, that I do.

For more than 20 years Blizzard, you have made games that I love to play. Even the games I was terrible at, I still played. I knew they'd be the best that that genre had to offer. I wasn't any good at the Starcraft games. But I played them anyway. I could only just scrape through the story campaigns in the Warcraft series. But I played it anyway. I loved Diablo, but never played in Hardcore mode or pushed high-level rifts. Why did I play those games? Because they were fun. I also made some good friends along the way - friends that I still play Blizzard games with. But I didn't truly love Blizzard until 2004, when I first stepped foot into Dun Morogh.

I'll never forget traipsing through the snow and climbing the hill to see Ironforge for the first time. I've loved World of Warcraft (and you, Blizzard) ever since.

A canvas poster of the original World of Warcraft box hangs on my wall. A little figure of Arthas guards my desk. In my closet, Blizzard branded t-shirts hang next to my Broncos gear. I'm not just a guy who buys Blizzard's products like I buy other stuff. I'm a Blizzard fan. I pay to watch BlizzCon. I root for the company to succeed like I do the Broncos. But now, when I see that poster or wear one of my Blizzard shirts, I feel a bit like I do when I watch a Broncos game. I'm cheering for a team that used to be great but just isn't anymore. I keep watching though, because that's what loyal fans do. And I keep hoping for better days.

In the Blizzard Retrospective documentary published in 2011, Bob Davidson said: "it wasn't hard to let Blizzard do it's thing... as long as it was working."

Blizzard, the things you are doing now are not working.

Maybe you know this. Maybe it's causing internal power struggles at the office. And maybe you are too deep to see that you are no longer the company that prided itself on "gameplay first." The only reason Blizzard gamers exist at all is because of great gameplay. But great gameplay is hard. It takes years of testing and iteration to get right. And it's expensive. You were always known for taking your sweet development time. "Soon," we were told. "It'll be done soon." And we knew that you were creating something beautiful and amazing that was, despite any flaws that might exist, going to be fun. "Soon" was almost always worth the wait. But you don't make those kinds of games anymore. And I wonder if you ever will again.

Do you know why I logged onto World of Warcraft day after day those first few years? It wasn't because 15-minute corpse runs were fun. It wasn't so I could wait for the warlock to farm soul shards or for the hunter to travel all the way back to a village to buy arrows before we could finally spend the next 5 hours being lost in Dire Maul. It wasn't to craft copper bars or gather runecloth so I could buy a cross-racial mount. Though, I did all of those things, and many, many more.

I wasn't logging on to earn or buy loot boxes. I didn't finish a dungeon and hope that whatever the final boss dropped would not only be the thing I wanted, but also titanforge into a super-powered version of the thing I wanted. I didn't log on so I could fill a bar - though there were plenty of bars to fill. I didn't play so I could gather some random source of power that would inevitably fade into irrelevance as soon as some goblin miner discovered a new random source of power. I didn't show up to race through dungeons or to replace pieces of gear every other day with gear that was marginally better (or worse) than what I was wearing.

In fact, I think I wore the same robe for 2 years during classic WoW. I only replaced it after The Burning Crusade released. I didn't log on just so I could tab-out to third-party websites because they were the only way to find out if I had the right talents, the right gear, or to simulate numbers with the gear I did have. I didn't pay $15 a month to earn a score from a third-party so I could participate in the game with other people who valued my random score over my experience playing the game.

I played World of Warcraft because just being in Azeroth with a few friends was good enough. I wasn't worried about leveling up quickly so I could "play the real game" like people are today. If I set out to do some quests, but got distracted by PvP (corpse runs) or a dungeon (corpse runs), or exploring a zone that was full of monsters just a bit too powerful for my level (more corpse runs), then that was all right. Because exploring Azeroth - an enormous world full of amazing creatures and hidden things - was a lot of fun.

You're deluding yourself if you think that classic World of Warcraft will bring that all back. It won't. It can't. That experience can't be replicated any more than returning to Disneyland as an adult can recreate the first time I visited when I was 10 years old. Those days, and that game are gone. The game that we play today is not a game at all. Instead, World of Warcraft is a data-gathering index of daily user actions and patterns. It's a research tool to help scummy marketing people decide what to put on sale, how much to charge for a fox mount, or which adverts to fill the game launcher with. You no longer see me as a player, but instead, as a payer.

New features in WoW are gated behind reputation bars, time, or just not in the game at all yet. Zandalari trolls were among the first features of Battle for Azeroth that were introduced to us. Zandalari trolls aren't in the game. But they will be... "soon". You've tried to hide that exclusion behind storytelling, but it's a thin mask. Patch 8.1 launched on December 11th. The Battle for Dazar'alor (a cumbersome name) won't launch until January 22nd - conveniently just a little bit more than 30 days after someone who might have re-upped for 8.1 started paying for your game again.

Arguably, there is more stuff to do in WoW than ever before, and yet I don't log on as often as I used to. And worse yet, I don't look forward to playing like I used to. Mostly, I log on to see if any of my friends are playing and that if maybe, just maybe, we can get a few of us together to go earn a loot box or race through a dungeon and pretend that we are having fun again.

You stopped making an MMORPG years ago. Instead, you turned WoW into an elaborate fantasy-themed casino replicator. It's a third-person looter-shooter designed to string players out like addicts looking for a fix. Your other titles are just animated shopping carts that feature mini-games people can play in between opening loot boxes.

And that's really sad because all of Blizzard's games are beautiful. Your artists are still the best in the industry. It's a shame that their work is being ruined by shady business practices and shoddy gameplay design.

Why is Ion Hazzikostas still the World of Warcraft game director? He bumbles through Q&As saying words but nothing else. Under his (and J. Allen Brack's) direction, the game has become progressively worse. Ion's sidekick, Josh "Lore" Allen - the man you hired to be the public face of World of Warcraft - called us "dickbags" and is far more interested in building his personal brand than he is in doing the job you pay him to do.

I can't tell if these men are being held hostage by a company that has broken their spirits, or if they are burned out, or if they have true contempt for both WoW and its players. Are the creative, passionate people that you are so well known for allowed to work on the design direction of World of Warcraft? Or is the game being designed by algorithms and data-driven stat-padding horseshit? People can tell if something is fun. Computers can't.

We are not your enemy Blizzard. We are your loyal supporters. The luke-warm, fair-weather fans are gone and they are not coming back. We are all you have left. And frankly, when it comes to MMORPGs, you are all we have. Please stop ruining World of Warcraft. Please stop designing it around KPIs, MAUs, and other marketing bullshit. I'll play the game if it's fun. And right now, it's not fun. The people designing and developing the game look tired. Maybe it's time for them to "move to other unannounced projects". Or maybe you just need to let them remember what "gameplay first" means.

I don't know what's happening at Blizzard. I don't know if Activision is flexing its management muscles. I don't know why Mike Morhaime left. I don't know if company morale is low. I don't know why you think it's a good idea to put talented developers to work on mobile projects - games that your audience doesn't bother playing because we are middle-aged adults who, just like your founders, were raised on PC games. I don't know anything about the inner workings of this company that I have supported for almost half of my life.

But I do know Blizzard games. And I know that whatever it is you are producing recently, are not Blizzard games.

I hope that whatever it is that is wrong with you, Blizzard, can be fixed. And fixed "soon."

For Azeroth,

Lightcap, the Patient

Illidan - US

[Sylve]

WoW is in an interesting position.
For many years, it was a labor of love for the devs. It succeeded for so long and did so incredibly well because they did exactly what you're asking XIV to do: Learn from competitors (And steal addons to improve the default UI, lol).

The problem WoW has right now is Activision. Blizzard always had creative freedom in the past, even under the Activision merger. However, with Morheim being replaced by a bog standard corporate executive from Activision HQ, all of Blizzards games flipped into "Pure profit mode". Blizzard isn't in change anymore and it shows. HotS is a prime example.
Last Blizzcon revealed they dragged all their 'best' talent away to work on mobile games (Cheap, nasty, profit cash cows) and leaving the other games to be as saturated as possible with microtransactions (Or for Destiny's case, where they outright said they're trying to milk whats left of the playerbase).
In WoWs case, This means grindier gameplay with fewer rewards per time spent.
The exact same path Free to Play MMOs have taken over the years. WoW is dying, And its Activisions dagger in its back.


As for XIV, I think as long as Yoshi-P remains in charge, we can have hope.
If you've not read it, this interview is a good example of why I think XIV will avoid the fate of WoW, at least in the near term.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...shida_summary/

One line particular caught my attention, though it refers specifically to Blue Mage, it shows to me that the devs are treating XIV as a game first and a product second. That line is:

Rather than never implementing it because of stubborn reasons, we decided to base our challenge around "how fun the game play" is.

While some may argue as to whose definition is fun is the correct one, that sentiment from the developers shows that they want the game to be something you log into and enjoy your time on, rather than trying to leech as much money as possible from its playerbase by stretching everything out to breaking point.

TL;DR, I think Yoshi-P and his team are already doing as you suggest. Building a game they can enjoy and hope that we enjoy also.
They may not always please everyone, but I'd rather they try and fail with a brand new concept than to never try in the first place for fear of failure. The mere fact that they can experiment like they have with Eureka and Blue Mage speaks volumes for the creative freedoms SE seems to given Yoshi-P.

[Yurenai]

And its Activisions dagger in its back.

This is how I feel about anything Activision touches. I can't believe gamers, as a whole, allow this company to thrive on our blood. It's disgusting. They turn everything into "money-first." They buy up all my favorite game companies (even successful ones) and then start to dictate how the games should be or what content it should or shouldn't have. These people are not gamers! They don't know what gamers want! And they sure as hell aren't treating us properly!

[Deceptus]

WoW is in an interesting position.
For many years, it was a labor of love for the devs. It succeeded for so long and did so incredibly well because they did exactly what you're asking XIV to do: Learn from competitors (And steal addons to improve the default UI, lol). .

WoW basically brought in Jeff Kaplan, one of their early designers, because he was critiquing Everquest's systems on their forums. They saw this potential and his value and brought him in.

Last Blizzcon revealed they dragged all their 'best' talent away to work on mobile games (Cheap, nasty, profit cash cows) and leaving the other games to be as saturated as possible with microtransactions (Or for Destiny's case, where they outright said they're trying to milk whats left of the playerbase).

What kills me about that situation is they've decided to work with a company that was actively ripping off their WoW and Diablo assets in their Crusader of Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=41XpjeCRrsk game

The mere fact that they can experiment like they have with Eureka and Blue Mage speaks volumes for the creative freedoms SE seems to given Yoshi-P.

My issue with that statement is the developers punished the players in Pagos who didn't play Eureka Anemos the way they wanted it played. It was pretty blatant.

[Adrestia]

WoW basically brought in Jeff Kaplan, one of their early designers, because he was critiquing Everquest's systems on their forums. They saw this potential and his value and brought him in.

Exactly the same story with Alex Afrasiabi, aka Furor Planedefiler. Good old Furor was a loudmouth impassioned ragemonster about problems with EverQuest, but that's because he loved the game and pushed the envelope in every way possible. He went from a very important but not-at-all-game-development career to a long career on WoW because the old Blizzard knew they needed people who "got it," not sterile public relations.

The new angle is basically "make the game lukewarm for everyone, because a larger audience means more potential cash shop buyers." They know they lose some people to attrition, boredom, and outrage, but they keep a lot more by not rocking the boat in ways that most people notice.

But cash shops run by companies we love are great and we should love them and support them and thank them for emptying our wallets.

[DrWho2010]

ah the whole content is stale argument again. just because something comes to us on a predictable cycle doesn't mean it's stale. it means we can measure out what we can expect on a regular basis instead of being left in the dark for like 3-6-9 months with no word from devs.

[Deceptus]

ah the whole content is stale argument again. just because something comes to us on a predictable cycle doesn't mean it's stale. it means we can measure out what we can expect on a regular basis instead of being left in the dark for like 3-6-9 months with no word from devs.

I didn't say it was stale, I said it was becoming stale. The same thing over and over again gets repetitive and boring.

The arguments against the Mog Station are deceptive, too. Most of the items added there are rewards from previous seasonal events and items brought over from the Korean and Chinese servers by popular request. They're designed specifically for the Mog Station in those regions, so getting them for free here wouldn't make much sense.

There are multiple mounts (white and red magitek armors, whale), emotes (the new sidestep and box step, powerup, megaflare), and items that are only available for real world currency. Many of them aren't from past events.

[Theodric]

There are multiple mounts (white and red magitek armors, whale), emotes (the new sidestep and box step, powerup, megaflare), and items that are only available for real world currency. Many of them aren't from past events.

At least some of those emotes and mounts are also from the Chinese/Korean servers.

Others - such as the Shiva and Odin emote - are specifically tied to merchandise as an added bonus and incentive to purchase them. A common business practice in general.

Those that aren't tied to the Chinese/Korean servers are simply targeted at players with a disposable income. It's little different to how most supermarkets sell luxury products for those with extra coin to spend.

[Adrestia]

I too pay $13/mo for the privilege of walking in the doors of Safeway.