As much as I enjoy content, I have to agree--if I could choose between content and friends, I would choose friends every time. And if having easier content means my friends will stick around, then I would certainly be in favor of it.

I agree that cataclysm is harder, but even than, it's not THAT harder. No casual raiders probably wont be downing heroics or even nefarian and sure bosses do have a steep learning curve where small mistakes easily wipe the raid but the small mistakes are very easy to avoid. Some of my friends are very casual raiders and they only raid around one night a week but they make sure they know what they are doing and learn the fights before hand and they are easily 9/12 pushing to do the final bosses. I think that the game is not to hard people just do not wish to give the effort that the game now requires. Some people may say that "it is just a game, it should not require effort" but raiding has still been much more geared for casuals than in lets say vanilla. People just have gotten lazier over the years.

Well said. I imagine that Blizzard's people are going to look at these numbers, look at the content, and draw some conclusions about what caused people to not want to play WoW anymore. Then they'll see what they can do differently to keep that from happening again.

Granted, I don't have any real idea how they work over there in Irvine. But from what I've read from the developers and all that, I get the impression that they'd do something like this.

I completely agree with this snarkygoldfish chap

I don't think it's how easy the content IS or not, it's how the player-base PERCEIVES the difficulty of the content to be. With the change in philosophy for heroics switching to CC and not AoE mowing--a concept unheard of to players who came around in Wrath--the heroic dungeon content (content they previously were able to roll over with their eyes closed) could seem daunting to players. Indeed, players who were already familiar with such mechanics would be plain rusty after not having to use them for an entire expansion--it's no wonder a lot of the raiders from Wrath have suddenly backed off in Cataclysm. It's not that they can't do the content, it's that a lot of them just fear it because of just how hard it COULD be.
Fear is powerful.

Wotlk was easy. You could do heroic dungeons with your eyes closed and the speakers turned off, still with no wipe. That defines easy to me.

Well said Snarky, I agree completely. To be honest, I think that they made the mistake of reading way too much into certain segments of the population. In the lead-up to Cata, GC referenced emails he was receiving from players and forum tone for Blizz's philosophical shift. Call me crazy, but it's not much of a logical leap to assume that it would be elite players from high-end guilds emailing him and gaining his ear, not Xxjcizzlex who logs in twice a week for his PuG raid.

As I said elsewhere, I'm completely fine with them devoting more content to these players. However, it should have also included content for the type players who liked raiding ICC with a 30% buff. Harder heroics, longer heroics, harder raids, less normals, and a boring new profession didn't seem like a smart idea to me at the time, and even less so once I started playing Cata (eventually forcing me to quit).

The lack of diverse difficulty/length content for their player-base is what's siphoning players from WoW, not content delivery. Heck, most data seems to indicate there were more players playing after 8 months of straight ICC than there are after 4 months of Cata, so I'm not sure how you can cite that argument.

"I really hope they can find a better balance. Playing with awesome people is super important to me, and seeing the awesome people wander off because they feel like they don't have a place in the game is just...saddening."

It's interesting that WoW's popularity is exactly what has given rise to the current conundrum. Previous MMOs like Everquest skewed towards the "hardcore, big time investment" model, but they didn't gather the following that Blizzard has. WoW started off very much like this and somehow it's playerbase got very large. Now they are attempting to balance multiple different playstyles and ideals. Don't kid yourself, there are more than two playstyles here. More than just "casual and hardcore."

Take me for example. I'm not really into the hard mode fights. Little bit TOO intense for my tastes. Yet, easily puggable instances tend to be too easy for me and end up quite boring. I'm in the middle. The current normal mode raids are actually very well tuned for my own playstyle. I don't want them nerfed because then my choice is between "easy and boring" or "hard and mind-numbing." Such is my opinion on the matter. :)

Other games come with more than one difficulty level. Starcraft II comes with 4 difficulties for single player mode. You could even consider online multiplayer a fifth and very different difficulty level. For current content in WoW, there is essentially only one difficulty level. Then when you beat that content, you unlock a harder mode. There's not a knob you can adjust before you play, like Starcraft or other games. The knob is only adjusted after you win or over time due to nerfs, gear increases and so on.

It's a very tricky situation to be in. I hope Blizzard can figure it out.

it's hard with the current gear level, when 4.2 drops BWD, BoT and ToFW will become extremely pugable because you'll be able to farm 359 ilvl gear with justice points and firelands gear will make everything easier

also raiding guilds will be going to firelands now, so raiders will be puging for a last upgrade from last tier or to help friends

the current content will be open to everyone, it will be interesting to see how pugable the firelands are with t11 widely available, my guess is it will be more tan the current raids, but to get it back to icc levels it will have to be the last tier and have the icc buff equivalent

Cata is such a weird expansion for me.

I love the raiding changes. Each boss feels like a real challenge and a real accomplishment once we down them. On the other hand, there's absolutely nothing entertaining to do outside of raiding in the game anymore, so I rarely log in for anything but.

I think the problem isn't with the harder raids at the top. If they made them easier than there would be even less for end game raiders to do and even more drop subs. The problem is that they didn't have a single "handholding" starter raid like they did in LK (with Sarth and Naxx) and BC (with Kara). If you'll remember, the world firsters cleared Naxx the first week with half of their group wearing Sunwell gear. It took most casual guilds 3-4 months to clear that content completely.

And I think some of this is a result of the revamp where they didn't have enough devs to design new content and redo the vanilla zones. The only bright side is that they can build up the gear a bit and do some nerfs and the first tier raids in this expac might become easy enough to at least clear even if most of the big raiding guilds have moved on to firelands. They had guilds who were stuck in Tier 4-5 throughout BC and it still worked fairly well as a model.