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

[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.

[Roflcopter]

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.

I’d say midcore in the WoW sense was people that cleared normal and heroic raids weekly either pug or guild, cleared mythic 10 for the loot box and kept an alt that cleared at least normal and some mythic+. The spectrum probably ranged from guys who cleared normal and some low mythic+ only to people that may dabble in mythic raid progression. Non raiders and LFR only are firmly casual players.

[Ronduwil]

I’d say midcore in the WoW sense was people that cleared normal and heroic raids weekly either pug or guild, cleared mythic 10 for the loot box and kept an alt that cleared at least normal and some mythic+.

The fact that I was in the most casual guild you can imagine and yet they still expected us to be clearing a mythic 10 every week is the very thing that prompted me to unsub from WoW. I'm sorry, but when a game considers that level of effort as the bare minimum for entry, it's gone too far off the rails. If FFXIV were to go that route, I would stop playing it, too. Thankfully YoshiP is a reasonable man.

[IdowhatIwant]

The fact that I was in the most casual guild you can imagine and yet they still expected us to be clearing a mythic 10 every week is the very thing that prompted me to unsub from WoW. I'm sorry, but when a game considers that level of effort as the bare minimum for entry, it's gone too far off the rails. If FFXIV were to go that route, I would stop playing it, too. Thankfully YoshiP is a reasonable man.

So you had to clear mythic 10 every week to remain a member of this casual guild? I smell some bs some where. Probably the fact that about 95% of players in WoW do not touch mythic raids at all so a casual guild wanting everyone to clear what only about 5% of the players are even doing sounds off.

[Ronduwil]

So you had to clear mythic 10 every week to remain a member of this casual guild? I smell some bs some where. Probably the fact that about 95% of players in WoW do not touch mythic raids at all so a casual guild wanting everyone to clear what only about 5% of the players are even doing sounds off.

No. I had to clear Mythic 10 to participate in the weekly raid, which is pretty much all there is to do in WoW. If you don't raid or M+, there's no prorgression for you. Also, what does M10 have to do with Mythic raiding? M10 means a Mythic dungeon with a key level of 10. To put it in context, imagine that tomestone gear item level went no higher than 550, which is even worse than the gear you buy in old Sharlayan for finishing the MSQ. If you wanted anything higher than 560, you'd have to run Savage or Ultimate raids. There is no Mythic keystone in FFXIV, so there's nothing I can compare that to, but imagine that they cut the timers for all the roulettes to about 1/4 of what they are and they downscaled your rewards if you failed them. That was pretty much WoW's state when I let my sub lapse.

[Roflcopter]

So you had to clear mythic 10 every week to remain a member of this casual guild? I smell some bs some where. Probably the fact that about 95% of players in WoW do not touch mythic raids at all so a casual guild wanting everyone to clear what only about 5% of the players are even doing sounds off.

Mythic 10 is dungeon content and reasonably puggable. It gives you a piece of heroic level raid gear every week so most players will clear it. Going beyond 10 is usually more serious players. I’d say the majority of players in WoW cleared mythic+ 10 every week.

[Ronduwil]

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.

I think that your perception of a game's purpose is skewed. I put in effort at my job. If I wanted to put in more effort, I would be logging out of the game and back into work. Most players don't play a game because they feel like they need to put in more of an effort. They do it because it's an effortless activity that they can perform at the end of a long day's/week's worth of effort. Call me a boomer (even though I'm technically Gen X), but the idea that the average player should be expected to do extra curricular research outside of the game, download third party addons (against TOS, mind you), and baby sit every other player in their party is ridiculous to me. The average player in your static is in no way representative of the average player game-wide. I have no problems with players who set these insane expectations in their FC/static, but I get really irritated when they try to claim that the game would be better if it were imposed on everyone else. Contrary to the OP's claim, this is the mentality that brought WoW into decline.

[VerdeLuck]

What killed WoW for a lot of people I know was the fact that a large portion of the game was unplayable if you weren't in an active guild on horde specifically. As long as SE allows players to experience most if not all of the content without needing a static or large active FC, then they'll keep doing fine.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Like the population of most MMOs in the genre in general, and particularly in older ones like WoW and FFXIV - a lot of the playerbase has aged into full time careers and families. A large number may have an hour a day, or sometimes no time at all to play the game at times. I mean my nephew who used to play WoW as like an actual child is now post-college aged and working full time.

There are probably massive numbers of people like this who are very casual at this point, and probably the largest number of subscribers if you were to really categorize them. I think there is content for all types of players but it's bizarre to think a company should not create content that would appeal to a large part of the playerbase.

[Gethard]

The OP's take on WoW's decline couldn't be more wrong. There are many reason people have left WoW; broken, unbalanced class mechanics; borrowed power systems that take agency away from the player; increasingly bad storytelling, starting with Cataclysm; a community that has become toxic and intolerant of newcomers. WoW isn't casual friendly at all anymore. Add in a lead designer in Ion that really only cares about mythic dungeons and mythic raids, and has made clear his disdain for anyone that doesn't enjoy them.

Crafting armor/weapons is a joke; PvP remains gear dependent and unbalanced; a game world that is designed to frustrate and annoy (Torghast, The Maw); and then you find out the devs are complete jerks and it should come as no surprise that WoW died from all these self-inflicted wounds.

My first few weeks in Eorzea have been a like a breath of fresh air. The differences in the two games are clear and obvious to me now. I enjoy being around friendly folks that have fun playing a game, rather that the miserable sods that, while not being entirely representative of the WoW community, have more than enough presence there to make you want to give up online gaming for good.

It's the casuals in WoW that kept it afloat this long, and the latest developments were the last straw for me. I'm never going back.