Why do long time players play the game so differently?

[Kes13a]

There have been quiet a few, unironically.

There was the 2012 to 2014 era for Mists of Pandaria which, between pandas as a playable race and the long content drought at the end of the last patch which lasted 14 months, created a slow loss of players but we are talking going from like 8 million to 6.4 million players.

Then there was the 2014 to 2016 era one known was Warlords of Draenor, which the only things you could really praise was the dungeons and raiding experience, everything else was barebones. The playerbase briefly shot up from 6.4 million to 10 million players and then the following month lost about as many players, then kept sinking down till it went below 5 million in which Blizzard stopped posting the sub count. Take with a grain of salt from mmo-population, but it dipped well below 1 million. So fastforward for WoW, with Shadowlands, a similar trend happened based on its peaks and valleys and ravines for player count, but it also featured a long content drought from its 9.0 to its 9.1 patch.

fair enough, but they are trying to come across as a "new" player that came with the wave last year...

which zero facts back up. so, basically, just a displaced troll if anything

[Nethereal]

There have been quiet a few, unironically.

There was the 2012 to 2014 era for Mists of Pandaria which, between pandas as a playable race and the long content drought at the end of the last patch which lasted 14 months, created a slow loss of players but we are talking going from like 8 million to 6.4 million players.

Then there was the 2014 to 2016 era one known was Warlords of Draenor, which the only things you could really praise was the dungeons and raiding experience, everything else was barebones. The playerbase briefly shot up from 6.4 million to 10 million players and then the following month lost about as many players, then kept sinking down till it went below 5 million in which Blizzard stopped posting the sub count. Take with a grain of salt from mmo-population, but it dipped well below 1 million. So fastforward for WoW, with Shadowlands, a similar trend happened based on its peaks and valleys and ravines for player count, but it also featured a long content drought from its 9.0 to its 9.1 patch.

I always found that to be such a funny situation.

Blizzard with 10-13 million active subscribers: We're better than you, believe it.
Blizzard below 5 million active subscribers and still decreasing: We don't feel like active subscriber count properly portrays the successfulness of our games.

[Missbone]

SeiyaSoiya

I started playing this game recently...

Join Date: Apr 2016

Stop lying. As a longtimer player yourself, i guess you should be already able to answer the question.

[SeiyaSoiya]

SeiyaSoiya

Join Date: Apr 2016

Stop lying. As a longtimer player yourself, i guess you should be already able to answer the question.

2016 is not old, it's already way too late to have enjoyed the game at its prime (HW DRK)

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

2016 is not old, it's already way too late to have enjoyed the game at its prime (HW DRK)

HW DRK didn't end until summer 2017.

[technole]

Game is huge, large player base that OP shouldn't make such generalizations. A lot of people clear end-game raids and savages while on-content. In-fact most players who don't know the statistics are wrong about ultimate clear rates too, especially when JP servers always have double digit clear rates, and savage is 30% average clears versus 15% on a good raiding NA server. A lot of people do the latest and greatest, new and old alike.

As for gil, you have to be constantly poor to ever worry about gil in this game. If you made a lot of gil you have no emotional attachment to 'play' the market board, which is why many offer cut-throat prices, you know who is the one scraping by versus this is just another hobby.

[Ariabeth]

What do you base this off of? How big is your sample pool, and where did you get the players in your sample pool from?

If it's just your friend group, then your sample pool is biased to what your friend group aims towards.
Let's say they were hardcore Ultimate/Savage raiders, then your post would be quite different.
If you got your results from Limsa, you would get entirely different results than from Radz At Han.

But none of this matters.
I don't see why you should care where other players in this game set their goalpost at.

Ask yourself the question: Do I want to hit gold parses in every savage?
If the answer is no; What do I want to do in this game?

But seeing you call yourself a new player with a join date of 6 years ago,
I am not sure if anyone can take you serious if you can't take your own post serious.

[FlareVyzar]

For #1, because most of us who parse are doing it to see improvement, and have reached the point where we have sufficient/deep knowledge about the job. To be able to self optimize during week 1 or world prog without having to "ask" around on what is best from others. Once you have the skill to beat the game at it's peak difficulty, you don't need to care about getting high numbers. Because they don't matter anymore. And once you master any job and acquire the knowledge about the game, everything else pretty much plays the same way, because the core of the game is the same and it is extremely easy to learn.

Tldr, not caring anymore about parsing because we are already good enough to clear any content with ease, at its peak difficulty.

Now for those who parse to compete on fflogs, that is another thing. That is the drive for competition only, you will occasionally see those players compete every now and then again and take a break.

For #2
I believe it was boredom and repetition. Before a hardcore raider, i was a hardcore crafter back then and used to do it for many hours. It was fun playing the marketboard and all. Making gil felt good. But nowadays, gil does not really feel like it is spent on anything in the game. I used to grind it to spend on houses. But then found myself being forced to sub to keep my house and now i don't really bother.

Both #1 & #2 can say it's kinda like "don't care much anymore"

#3 every now and then complete things that we may have missed or still enjoy. Like mount farming. Some do it for nostalgia. Don't really do old contents as much though, since i do it on content but i have seen people do it depending on their availability to play at any given point.

[Izar_Chillen]

2016 is not old, it's already way too late to have enjoyed the game at its prime (HW DRK)

its 6 years ago , in terms of an MMO especially its is far from new as you make yourself out to be

Way to label a vast group of people based on your limited contact with some veterans

[ZephyrMenodora]

2016 is not old, it's already way too late to have enjoyed the game at its prime (HW DRK)

Its prime? It has record playerbase with Endwalker.

I guess it depends on your opinion.

Anyway, this is finally a situation where "difference in playstyles" is a legitimate response. Really odd to have a "why doesn't everyone care about what I care about" post.