Mists of Pandaria discussion

[LochnarITB]

Loch, they do care. They're bleeding subs left and right. Why do you think they're giving people 4 months of WoW if they buy the CE of D3 or that they're giving people D3 if they sign up for the year sub to WoW. Blizzard does care. And the whole reason they're bleeding subs is because the quality has gone way down with this new team.

Of course they care about subs. What I said is they don't care about your sub, as a hard core player. You have hard core players - players who want classes balanced, instances/raids to be challenging but not impossible, gear to be accomplishment not grind, who analyze how well tuned the game is. You have casual players - players who want to have fun playing and killing stuff, gear because they spent time in game, instances they can grab a group for and beat with limited thought or skill. For drawing new players, the pool of hard core has always been much smaller than the casuals. They have burned through much of the hard core pool and would naturally have lost much more as new viable contenders for time hit. They are adjusting the game to draw more from the far larger pool of the casuals. They probably did stumble with Cata, losing more than expected sooner than expecred, but I doubt they are worried. They made the D3 offer just as would any other business when trying to retain income flow from customers that would naturally otherwise be moving on, through no fault of the business.

Warm and fuzzy toons, the Pandas, will draw a new segment of the casuals. The ease leveling will cater to those that don't want to think too much about it. Having been there done that, we see content being skipped leveling (my 20th slot went to a goblin and I'm skipping easily 1-2 bread crumb zones for each zone I level through). New casuals they draw in won't even realize how much is being skipped over. In fact, it might even be seen as a positive. When they do pick up another race/class, now they have at least one or two other "paths" they can level through.

Blizzard is a gaming business. They are good at it. I would bet that they have charted their course well but even they didn't expect the run that WoW has had, and will still continue to have. I am also sure that most of us here would never have expected to have been so wrapped up in this game for so long and all the complaints over the progression are a lament for the love lost. It had to happen. The divorce has come. We can choose to remain friends (continued sub playing casually) or sever all ties and let them keep the kids.