Getting WoW back in shape for the f2p release..

Lord.Bachus

So i have been Wowing the ladt 2 weeks, and been having quite some fun, i enjoyed the solo questchains, the lore and the dungeons... there are still a lot things to enjoy in the game, tough its sad to come to a conclusion that Blizzard never found a way to keep all that content atractive for top level players...

 

so what would need to change to pull everyone back in...

 

Actually its quite simple.. 

Make the current content a bit more challenging, this can be done in many different ways,  but it would be easiest to put gearcaps on dungeons ..  And just remove the  mechanisme that disallows people from playing quests above their level.  And the just make mobs a little tougher..

 

Character development is totally linear.. Almost no choices, they need to add a system at max level that allows people to differentiate their characters, an AA system would be great for this..

 

make instances from all areas, where the content is boosted to level 80, and use these areas for the AA system.. Giving AA XP... This would add so much content to the game, we could do Onyxia again and molten core, and even get something from it (AA) 

 

The next step is adding weekly epic quests, that give people a reason to travel back trough the old lands, solo, or grouped if they prefer.  So basically this would give people a seccond type of pve endgame, raids for gear and solo exploration and quests for AA.. And if they start adding more dynamic content to the old zones in combination with the epic quests you would have a relatively fresh system..

 

 

 

next to that they should give character graphics ( faces) an overhaul) they difinately need more details...  And maybe a new classes, maybe even hero class.

 

 

anyway, its just a matter of time before WoW goes f2p with a sub option, but if they really want people comming back, they need to facilitate to more different types of players, currently the game is build to get ne characters as fast as possible to the endgame phase, rendering 8 years of content nearly useless.... Personally i know that there are more people playing mmos to enjoy the journey, and not to reach the goal....

 

 

 

wizyy

I don't see why they couldn't do both.

Free-to-play servers with a cash shop

and

regular servers with a subscription.

 

WoW is likely the game that could do this VERY successfully.

Poachinator

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

So i have been Wowing the ladt 2 weeks, and been having quite some fun, i enjoyed the solo questchains, the lore and the dungeons... there are still a lot things to enjoy in the game, tough its sad to come to a conclusion that Blizzard never found a way to keep all that content atractive for top level players...

 

so what would need to change to pull everyone back in...

 

Actually its quite simple.. 

Make the current content a bit more challenging, this can be done in many different ways,  but it would be easiest to put gearcaps on dungeons ..  And just remove the  mechanisme that disallows people from playing quests above their level.  And the just make mobs a little tougher..

 

Character development is totally linear.. Almost no choices, they need to add a system at max level that allows people to differentiate their characters, an AA system would be great for this..

 

make instances from all areas, where the content is boosted to level 80, and use these areas for the AA system.. Giving AA XP... This would add so much content to the game, we could do Onyxia again and molten core, and even get something from it (AA) 

 

The next step is adding weekly epic quests, that give people a reason to travel back trough the old lands, solo, or grouped if they prefer.  So basically this would give people a seccond type of pve endgame, raids for gear and solo exploration and quests for AA.. And if they start adding more dynamic content to the old zones in combination with the epic quests you would have a relatively fresh system..

 

 

 

next to that they should give character graphics ( faces) an overhaul) they difinately need more details...  And maybe a new classes, maybe even hero class.

 

 

anyway, its just a matter of time before WoW goes f2p with a sub option, but if they really want people comming back, they need to facilitate to more different types of players, currently the game is build to get ne characters as fast as possible to the endgame phase, rendering 8 years of content nearly useless.... Personally i know that there are more people playing mmos to enjoy the journey, and not to reach the goal....

 

 

 

I agree, and also make Raid content from vanilla on up scale from 10 to 20. That plus level lock would introduce progression guilds that could start with Black Rock Spire and run up through whatever new raid zones are in the game now.

IntheShadows

Yes OP! This is one of my biggest complaints about WoW. They have all this amazing content sitting there that hardly anyone does anymore. I've never understood why Blizz doesn't do something to reward people for going back and doing old dungeons and raids (besides transmog of course). Surely a down leveling system like in Rift or GW2 can't be that hard to implement. 

icculus2112

wait, make content more *challenging* for the f2p release?  Does not compute.

 

WoW certainly needs more challenging group content (on average the heroic raids are the best tuned in the industry...very difficult but not cheap difficult for the most part.

 

They tried for something with the challenge mode dungeons but speed modes =/= fun.  Still not a bad option to have, they just need to add a tier above heroic for the people that want a BC level of dungeon difficulty.

 

But Ive never heard of the f2p crowd wanting difficult content.   A crowd that has no monetary commitment is more likely to turn their heads and run at adversity.

 

We are still a few years away from WoW F2P, and thats only if the next expansion isnt a hit (and with the new focus on non-quest oriented content as well as the fact its likely to deal with burning legion its quite possible the expansion is a hit).

 

I could see them offering an unlimited trial to Vanilla + BC though.

Bladestrom

Your wrong, I play private vanillas servers because of the difficulty and lack of scaling issues. I would gladly pay blizzard again (they have had £1000 from me to date) if they actually invested in making old content hard again through scaling. But no, they need their several billion profits from this game to fund the 5 new levels every 2 years.

icculus2112

Originally posted by Bladestrom
Your wrong, I play private vanillas servers because of the difficulty and lack of scaling issues. I would gladly pay blizzard again (they have had £1000 from me to date) if they actually invested in making old content hard again through scaling. But no, they need their several billion profits from this game to fund the 5 new levels every 2 years.

right, making the group content challenging again would increase subs.  It wouldnt help f2p at all.  the people not playing because of the lack of challenge in all non-raid content would generally be more than willing to pay if the difficulty went back to BC days.

alterfenix

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

So i have been Wowing the ladt 2 weeks, and been having quite some fun, i enjoyed the solo questchains, the lore and the dungeons... there are still a lot things to enjoy in the game, tough its sad to come to a conclusion that Blizzard never found a way to keep all that content atractive for top level players...

 

so what would need to change to pull everyone back in...

 

Actually its quite simple.. 

Make the current content a bit more challenging, this can be done in many different ways,  but it would be easiest to put gearcaps on dungeons ..  And just remove the  mechanisme that disallows people from playing quests above their level.  And the just make mobs a little tougher..

Actually the bigger problem is to level up so quickly that you out level zone in no time and skip content for that reason. As for level 80+ content it's the same if using dungeon finder.

Character development is totally linear.. Almost no choices, they need to add a system at max level that allows people to differentiate their characters, an AA system would be great for this..

Agreed. To be fair even old talent system despite it's flaws could help a little bit with that but then with every decision that Blizzard made regarding character development they seem to just be scared of differences.

make instances from all areas, where the content is boosted to level 80, and use these areas for the AA system.. Giving AA XP... This would add so much content to the game, we could do Onyxia again and molten core, and even get something from it (AA) 

Well it doesn't have to be boosted to level 80. Why not to expand LFR to lower levels too and i.e. allow first three tiers for all characters level 60-69, all tbc tiers for 70-79, wotlk 80-84 and finally allow LFR version of Dragon Soul to characters of level 85-89? Doing previous expansion content is not about challenge after all so that would unlikely be a big problem.

The next step is adding weekly epic quests, that give people a reason to travel back trough the old lands, solo, or grouped if they prefer.  So basically this would give people a seccond type of pve endgame, raids for gear and solo exploration and quests for AA.. And if they start adding more dynamic content to the old zones in combination with the epic quests you would have a relatively fresh system..

That's why I liked original vanilla quests - could take through multiple zones, travel back to low level zones from time to time too, class quests and so on. Then they removed all of that step by step calling it an improvement. 

 

 

next to that they should give character graphics ( faces) an overhaul) they difinately need more details...  And maybe a new classes, maybe even hero class.

Only if no more panda stuff:-)

 

anyway, its just a matter of time before WoW goes f2p with a sub option, but if they really want people comming back, they need to facilitate to more different types of players, currently the game is build to get ne characters as fast as possible to the endgame phase, rendering 8 years of content nearly useless.... Personally i know that there are more people playing mmos to enjoy the journey, and not to reach the goal....

Funny as WoW back in time was so much about journey and much less than now about how this journey ends. 

 

Yuujakumi

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

 

 

anyway, its just a matter of time before WoW goes f2p with a sub option, but if they really want people comming back

 

 

 

Who says they want people coming back and to keep the game going?  Even tho Titan is on delay, WoW still has about 2 or 3 years before it's in real bad shape(yes i said 2 years, i'm no emo wishing for it's death saying oh it's dead game over).  

Sure they will lose a lot more players down the road, but with and xpack here and there they have a good few years. Enough time for titan and other games to gear up and take over.   This way they can let WoW die with out wasting money on it.  They do the same things with the FPS games, it is how AV does it with their games. 

Most of this is just the suits using the decline of the game to save money.  WoW wont come out with anything new and grand to keep players, they will let it pass on so they can move on to other things. 

Psion33

Oh sure, prop open the sewer gates and let in the F2P.

 

Are you flipping mad?

Rockniss

Those players you want to pull back in wont come back for anything. They have simply moved on from gaming. Blizzard should not tailor the game for that group because that group is gone for good. F2p is bad imo but I dont play anymore so I could care less about the model.

Myria

Originally posted by Rockniss
Those players you want to pull back in wont come back for anything. They have simply moved on from gaming. Blizzard should not tailor the game for that group because that group is gone for good.

I don't know about 'gone for good', but it is telling that WoW has lost many millions of subs and yet other games have not picked up anything remotely like that many players in aggregate.

 

Where ever those WoW subs are going, they do appear to mostly be bleeding out of the MMO pool entirely, and not just WoW.

 

I've found it kind of odd that this is something that really doesn't seem to get discussed.

itchmon

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus..

 

Character development is totally linear.. Almost no choices, they need to add a system at max level that allows people to differentiate their characters, an AA system would be great for this..

 

you nailed it.

 

the above is the EXACT reason I left WoW... they had just begun their change, and eventual near-removal, of the talent trees.  Choice in your character's progression was such an important and fun part of the game.  for wow it even spawned its own new word- Theorycrafting.  I remember long nights talking shop with the other 2 rogues in my guild.  going over different talents, and how to gear and gem up to make the talents work the best for us.  they are some of my fondest memories of wow.

tawess

Originally posted by Myria

Originally posted by Rockniss
Those players you want to pull back in wont come back for anything. They have simply moved on from gaming. Blizzard should not tailor the game for that group because that group is gone for good.

I don't know about 'gone for good', but it is telling that WoW has lost many millions of subs and yet other games have not picked up anything remotely like that many players in aggregate.

 

Where ever those WoW subs are going, they do appear to mostly be bleeding out of the MMO pool entirely, and not just WoW.

 

I've found it kind of odd that this is something that really doesn't seem to get discussed.

It could also be that they disperse over such a larger number of games that they actually just become a part of the churn. We have what... 10-15 big MMO´s and more online games then you can shake a stick at. That is a very big market to sustain on a not overly big consumer group.

mrrshann618

*Disclaimer I have not played wow since Burning Crusade release except for a tiny stint on my wives cataclysm release so locations/skill names/ and events will more than likey be wrong*

 

I enjoyed WoW at release. Yeah it was still, for the most part, a single person game but it was more challenging as a single person. I LOVED the fact that you had to quest to get to to the artifact trainer in one of the dungeons. I Loved that in the dwarven area near the big lake was a large community of silver elites roaming the world. I loved those areas that made it just a tad bit more difficult to do things solo, but not SOOO difficult that you needed a full group to do anything. Hanging around with a friend or two and being able to actually do something really appealed to me.

 

 

And then came the dumbdown process, and there I went, sub gone. What attracted me to the game was the fact that in order to do something I did not need a WHOLE party. I could do something more than kill boars in Goldshire forest by myself.

 

IF it went f2p I "may" take a peak back, but the easy button is why I left.

I LIKE that most f2p gimp your progression as I like things more difficult, it is the one redeeming feature in the f2p arsenal to me. However even if it went f2p I'd only really go back if my small cadre of friends were still there/going back

Mahavishnu

Challenging content in WoW? That is a paradox.

Jyiiga

One of the reasons I go back to WOW time and time again... is because it is NOT f2p. Between the terrible money grab Neverwinter shop, the horrible SWTOR f2p and the pricey GW2 shop... I am MORE than happy to pay the paltry 15 dollars a month for a WOW sub. Not every game in the world needs to be F2P and I am happy to see that ESO will not be F2P.

ray12k

Originally posted by tawess

Originally posted by Myria

Originally posted by Rockniss
Those players you want to pull back in wont come back for anything. They have simply moved on from gaming. Blizzard should not tailor the game for that group because that group is gone for good.

I don't know about 'gone for good', but it is telling that WoW has lost many millions of subs and yet other games have not picked up anything remotely like that many players in aggregate.

 

Where ever those WoW subs are going, they do appear to mostly be bleeding out of the MMO pool entirely, and not just WoW.

 

I've found it kind of odd that this is something that really doesn't seem to get discussed.

It could also be that they disperse over such a larger number of games that they actually just become a part of the churn. We have what... 10-15 big MMO´s and more online games then you can shake a stick at. That is a very big market to sustain on a not overly big consumer group.

With most mmorpgs losing customers its more likely jesus came and took them to the promise land....

squalleonaha

well, i dont see any reason for WOW going F2P except for us want to play it for cheap and  free.

with 6-7mil sub, its still one of success mmo compare to any new MMO release this year. GW2 sold 3mil box and around 300-500k online. FF14 is 344k online( they shown on TOKyO gameshow). even wildstar and ESO arent that attractive for a $15 sub. its still a solid income with 6-7mil sub rather than running a cash shop.

so the only reason for WOW going F2P is either the sub drop to 1mil or their new project TITAN is complete and become their main cash -cow. but those thing not gonna happen in next 2-3 year. 

so yeah, they might go F2P with a cash shop in next.....2-3 year. maybe.

also, i dont like F2P. it'll attract many people from the east and screw the game up with their behavior. i rather play WOW offline before touching F2P.