Why pay a subscription?

[The-Alchemist]

Yes they were.

Rolling in with an army of 40 people feels more epic than prancing in with 8. Period. I played completely casually in vanilla and I didn't have a problem finding a raiding guild. Even though the best guilds were doing Naxx40, we were having an absolute blast doing MC, BWL and AQ40.

Proof is not on your side. New WoW only loses subs. Why? Because Blizzard adopted an ideology similar to yours and applied it in almost all areas of the game.

The small "raid" size in this game is making a ton of these annoying little 8 man guilds that charge people for titan runs.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Yes they will. And the proof is in the pudding: People *did* stick around. Something that can't be said for your ultra-casualized iterations of the game.

You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Except you need to do it to do the other enjoyable things up the ladder, which is the entire reason why people do it even if they don't want to. Game design stonewalls you at some point with gear checks.

You're right, formally, logically, but if it wasn't an enjoyment to some degree, then why do it? Nothing better awaits you in an MMO, it's just grind after grind. The only reason to go through a painful process would be to "clear all the content", in a typical "achiever's" mindset, but admittedly it only concerns a few % of the general population. If one doesn't enjoy playing the game itself, whatever it is they do in it, I see no reason to keep on doing it.

In my personal case, from level 1 onwards when I tried ARR in beta, I just liked combat. It felt good, amusing. I'm not saying all the quests were great, nor that every dungeon is as fun as the next, and obviously your mileage may vary, but all things considered, I'm having more fun fighting in FF XIV than I do in WoW, or GW2, or TOR, or TERA, and countless others for that matter. So, running a day's full of Castrums wasn't a problem for me, it was just... amusing. When I was with friends, or with a very nice and/or coordinated group (I don't mind newbies at all, on the contrary I like to explain and see others get better as they learn, however I strongly dislike self-righteous selfish people, and some of those ruined my pleasure in some DF runs).

If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have done it (actually stopped using the DF at some point, for this exact reason). No matter what was after.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

[Sidious]

You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

So you think it's just sheer coincidence that as soon as they started casualizing parts of the game that didn't need to be casualized, subs began to stagnate and decline?

It's an MMO. They're dumping millions of dollars into reinventing it constantly. The game is completely different than it was before. It can hardly even be considered the same game anymore. So, no, I don't think it's because people "got tired of it". Especially because people are willing to play a game that is, for better or worse, mechanically very similar to it (ARR).

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

By the numbers, it's one of the most successful P2P MMO's of all time. It never had WoW's sheer numbers but it had a very dedicated, stable subscriber base that continues to this day, ~a decade later.

Why? Because XI built on its content until there was a mind-numbingly huge amount of content to participate in. Complexities and depth in the game keep people around.

Casual games are good for some short term fun, and then you burn through it and unsub. Period.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

If you were right FF11 would be rocking right now.. That game was crazy hard. I had friends that played that game and told me it made vanilla WoW look like a walk in the park. They had a very low player base because of it. They know what they are doing. This game is easier for a reason. They have a hard FF MMO. Last I checked FF11 was still running if you want hard mode.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

[Bruiser_Cruiser]

Yeah honestly i dont care about the difficulty of content changing i really just want SE to do something about the bots teleporting around and RTM spammers.

[The-Alchemist]

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

I wouldn't say they have low subs. Everything is low compared to WoW numbers.

[Rikudou-Sennin]

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

You guys do know SE is having financial difficulties right? FF11's hard mode didn't pan out for their wallets. They can't afford to make the same mistake twice. I mean they literally can't afford it.. -_-