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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Are players becoming too entitled?
by Matthew Krotzer 
Nov 17th 2011 at 8:00AM
WoW has been around for quite a while. We've seen years of advancements and improvements to the game, from abilities and talent overhauls and quest and encounter design improvements, to vast quality-of-life improvements like the Dungeon Finder, Real ID chat and the Mobile Guild Chat and Mobile Auction House. With all these added features, more and more players seem to take them for granted.
With ongoing requests for the removal of the raid group restriction for low-level raids, suggestions of various ways and means of using the Dungeon Finder to access outleveled dungeons, and even the complaints about "easy mode" versions of raids in the upcoming Raid Finder not providing achievements and legendary weapon quest items, more and more players seem to want more from Blizzard while expending less effort on their end.
Perhaps the playerbase has undergone a major shift, just as Azeroth has in Cataclysm. Maybe I've just never fully adjusted to the new paradigm since I began to play during vanilla WoW -- or maybe you darn kids should get off of mah lawn!
Has it gone too far? Is Azeroth as a whole nothing but a staging area from which we should expect to be instantly transported to wherever we wish to go, or are we still willing to enjoy the journey to our destinations? Is a modicum of human interaction too heady a task to enjoy raid content, no matter its level?
It's hard to say. What are your thoughts?
Filed under: Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 8)
Borick Nov 17th 2011 12:24PM
I'll bite.
I don't like raiding, but I do like that you can have that content and enjoy it. The world is a better place when all of my fellow humans have an option to thrive. I do not want to take from you those rewards that you've earned, any more than I want to raid.
The problem is that EVERYTHING is graded against the raiding scale. I don't want 'raid' gear, I want crafted gear that obtain through a test of patience or social interaction (trade). I'd like to be able to thrive in my own way through exploration or roleplay or building without those rewards being balanced entirely by the constraints of YOUR raid game.
Raiders have always been a minority, and a healthy raid game has ALWAYS required legions of have-nots who are exploited to serve a system that they don't wish to participate in. Until the casual masses have some incentive beyond daily quests and mini-games, there will be resentment against the raiding elite.
Sarabande Nov 18th 2011 8:06AM
I agree with much of the above posts. Those of us who don't raid (and this might surprise the raiding community but a majority of the player base do NOT raid . . . raiders are just very vocal in the game, on the forums and places like this . . .) still like to progress and feel like we are accomplishing and earning nice things.
While some raiders may have resented the WotLK model (making tier gear accessible by running dungeons and getting emblems) it gave us something to strive for. It was the first time I'd had ANY tier gear and at that time, I got 4 piece sets!!! It was nice. It took longer than it did for raids but then, it should. I do think raiders should get nicer rewards, or at least, get them sooner (plus they get the raid drops which are superior anyway) but I don't get why they get bent out of shape that we have ACCESS - it just takes more time. For the raiders who say "I love the epic feel of raids" or "It's not the gear, it's about seeing the content," I have to wonder (and I'm not really saying this about the original poster asking the question) if it isn't just feeling like they are better than others? Not all raiders mind you - I know plenty of great players who raid who never resented that I got a whole tier 10 set - they were HAPPY for me and encourage me to get the best pieces I could. We ran heroics every day and I had a good reason to. None of this takes away from you having epic experiences or seeing the content. If I get the tier set two months after you do, it doesn't take away the feeling of euphoria you got when you downed that difficult boss with your guild. It doesn't take away from your ranking at GuildOx. But it might help me be a better contributor the next time I get into a 5 man instance with you.
Also, people judge you by your gear. Why do you think the gear score addons and so popular? And the dps meter? Even if all you do is run dungeons, if you lag behind the raiders in their latest tier gear they will resent you again because they they are "carrying" the person. You can't win, can you? They don't want you to get the gear you didn't "earn" by raiding and yet if you don't have good gear, they don't like you because you're not doing your share of the dps. Sometimes they vote-kick the lowest dps (which isn't always a gear problem but it could be).
What would happen if the casuals that so many seem to resent got bored and stopped playing not long after reaching level cap, returning only if a new patch or expansion offered them new and rewarding things to do? I think developing new content, including raid content, isn't cheap. Keeping the casuals happy and striving for nice things (and keeping them playing the game) is good for Blizzard, and believe it or not, for raiders who want to see new content. Should they make it easy? No. We like to feel like we've accomplished something too, and that we've earned good rewards.
But I'd like to see more options, such as crafting. I loved the great BoP gear you got from crafting in TBC, but they had to take that away because it made it seem like raiders "had" to take up crafting. They don't really - if they keep raiding, they're going to get better gear. It was a nice thing to do and I worked really hard to get my tailoring to max and then farmed the mats like crazy. I'd love it if maybe they made Bind to Account gear that required some Bind to Account mats (so you can't just buy gold and then buy up the mats). Since most of the advanced crafted items require elemental items (primals, eternals, volatiles), maybe the special BtA mats could be found in places where you'd find elemental items (like, elemental mobs, ore nodes, herb nodes, fish schools . . . ) and would be available to a person who had at least one toon that had a recipe that called for it. I'm sure this would be much more complicated to implement than it sounds, but this way, you wouldn't have to change your profession to get the item if you were willing to have another toon on the server who could make it and gather the mats.
I'm not looking to make it easy, like they just hand you something (though I suspect sometimes they do that to move people along more quickly toward gearing FOR raids, especially for alts or those coming late to level cap) but I do want options. If I have nothing to do, nothing to strive for and nothing to earn, why play?
Revnah Nov 17th 2011 8:18AM
Yes, I do think players are feeling too entitled. What they don't realise is that getting things handed on a plate doesn't make them fun.
Imho, Blizzard manages to strike a pretty-damn-near-perfect balance there, as with the example you mentioned: Raids are becoming more accessible (raid finder) but special rewards still require a good and dedicated guild group (legendaries, high-level epics).
Nice topic, Matt, really worth thinking about!
Cheb Nov 17th 2011 8:33AM
"What they don't realise is that getting things handed on a plate doesn't make them fun." I would also add that it doesn't make things feel valuable either. If you have to work really hard for something (pet, mount, raid drop, boes, to use in game examples), it's usually going to mean more to you once you get it than if you just yawn and get it handed over.
Darky Nov 17th 2011 10:22AM
TL;DR: blizzard has yet to flesh out the "casual" parts of WoW which is a decent amount of peoples past time (definitely more than there are hard core progression raids).
OK, let me tell you the difference between working hard and inaccesable to your current play style, with mounts (my personal poison).
These are the ways to get current gen mounts.
A: A new expac comes out with reputation, daily and gold sink mounts (so after a patch us collectors have not much left to do).
B: (The most prominent way) raiding in a decent tightly knit group.
C: Mid expansion daily grind, i.e. molten front/ToC/Netherwing.
D: super lucky drops (too many to list but my least favourite being the AQ bug mount from arch).
E: Be a really good PVPer (get in the top %10 of the arena teams, or win 100
F: Spend real money
I don't mind A,C,D and can do those, hell I even bought the sparkle lion and my friend bought me the pony as a bday present.
But the real problem here is that the majority of the best art work mounts go to B. B is a group of people who play WoW to raid, me I literately play for mount collecting and alt levelling, but I have tried both B and E in that I min maxed and honed my skills to be the best raider I could, and the best arena partner I could. But even with what I would consider a lot of hard work for a hobby (I don't even spend that much time and effort on being a decent artist, and that is my hobby above gaming). And yet I didn't get CLOSE to getting a mount in raiding, nor arena. I downed the lich king before 4.0, with a casual bunch of raiders. I basically did nothing but pvp for about 2 months before I burned out, Now to some of you I do realise this isn't much. But you can't argue I spent a lot of time and effort in to both of these and the elusive mounts stayed well beyond my reach.
Now I'm not saying I didn't enjoy raiding and pvp at the time, but mount collecting is a big meta game, there are a lot of people like me who do it. Why aren't we rewarded with the very best the art team can offer in even a reskin, with a long grind? The raiders go in there to down the bosses, get better gear and mostly so they can look back and realise how well they've done. They don't go in JUST for the purpose of getting mounts. I can understand raid specific mounts but a lot of the very best mounts are used by raiders as proof of their accomplishments, whereas us mount collectors sit in org/sw and stare wistfully at them as they hover over the mailbox whilst waiting for their queue to pop or even just being AFK.
Now look at the mount collectors we get two exclusives one is boring (albino drake) and the other has a better model out there available for everyone who did the ToC 5man a lot in wrath (which was a lot of people), the red dragonhawk. Why didn't we at least get something as special as the frost wyrm or the new fire hawk mounts? I mean we jump through soooo many dailies, rare drops, grinds, to get our 100 mounts, yet still we get a half done model as our reward.
Sorry about that rant but maybe its because I'm not really a pet collector (only have about 75) and they are getting a HUGE amount of love in MoP and yet us mount collectors don't squat. (Not even account wide mounts).
Lishalacey Nov 17th 2011 11:19AM
Clearly you all do not know how frustrating it is to be stuck in the UGLY UGLY troll heroic helm when the rest of your set is beautiful, shining "raid" gear. I could care less that it's a tier of gear; my priority is that I look good. Aesthetics matter to me.
I may be a casual player, but honestly, why do they make some of the gear so incredibly ugly? I have been stuck in http://www.wowhead.com/item=69579#comments since about two weeks after 4.1 (I got lucky- it dropped rather quickly for me). I don't particularly like looking like a troll.
Now, I'm sure some of you might think I seem like an entitled prig, but, as a casual player, my goal is to get as much as I can out of a small amount of play time. The most valuable thing to me is being viable for at least *some* of the raiding content in the expansion- I certainly don't expect to walk into Firelands and have a breeze of a time (I'm actually terrified of the place). Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I was viable enough to join a BWD pug and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/59467 dropped, matching the rest of my VP set. You see where my priorities lie. ;)
My husband and I have been playing together since we started dating back in 2005. Life has changed a lot since then- marriage, college graduation, and 2 kids have altered our play style drastically. Priorities change, and I think Blizzard is smart to offer rewards to the casual players like me. Otherwise, what is the point of logging in at all?
Shebazz Nov 17th 2011 8:19AM
I've been playing wow since just before Burning Crusade and I still enjoy it. But i get really tired of hearing how everyone misses "vanilla" wow I mean really jeez why do you think everyone calls it vanilla.
downesy93 Nov 17th 2011 9:03AM
Vanilla ice-cream is darn near perfect.
MattKrotzer Nov 17th 2011 9:34AM
To be honest, I don't miss "Vanilla" WoW. I was just using it as a reference point for the changes I've seen and the experience I've had. However, I really did think that things were pretty good in Burning Crusade, in terms of advancement pacing.
I wasn't a "raider" then, but when I did get good gear (through hours and hours of saving up the points) I felt accomplished. I knew that if/when I did step into a raid, I would be able to be competitive, and that the "hardcore" bunch would recognize that this "RPer" had busted his hump to be able to hang with them.
I had no delusions that I should have access to the current tier of content. I was happy to get stuff that was slightly better than Karazhan-level, and to aspire towards working hard at getting "real" raid gear. And I did. My guild (and several other small RP guilds) formed a raiding alliance and began to explore the raiding content. We got through most of Tier 5 before Wrath came out. It was an incredible feeling, because we knew we'd worked hard and done something nobody expected we would.
Now, everyone can farm Heroics to get gear at or comparable to the top raid tier... and it just doesn't seem like an accomplishment, to me. It doesn't motivate me to gear my alts or to try hard. It just seems like getting a "participation" trophy.
If you can do Heroics and get top-level gear, but don't raid... what did you achieve? You're now going to be doing Heroics in gear that makes the content ridiculously uninteresting, which isn't going to motivate you to try, learn or improve in the slightest. All it means is you were patient. Is patience something that deserves to be rewarded?
Eternauta Nov 17th 2011 10:34AM
@Matt: There's a reason why tiered content changed in WotLK.
Suppose a fresh new 85 wants to participate in the only relevant endgame activity (aside from PvP): Raiding. This can be an alt or a genuine new player.
If they had to do every tier to get to the current raiding content, they might as well quit WoW, since nobody raids old stuff except to farm badges/emblems/points.
This happened to me when I got to lvl 70 on my first character in TBC, two or three months before the release of WotLK. I never got beyond Karazhan farm runs with my guild, who were reluctant to bring me there in the first place because I wasn't even ready for heroics (since nobody runned normals anymore).
If I understand correctly, in MoP there won't be normals, so one can start doing heroics the moment one hits the level cap. And through justice/valor points
Mattimus Nov 17th 2011 10:47AM
@MattKrotzer
People treat non-raiders as though their game ends at Patch x.0. Sure, you don't need stellar gear to do dailies (although I remember the Tol Barad dailies being a huge pain on my fresh 85), but Blizz does still release new 5-mans. They don't present the same challenge or have the same high profile as raid dungeons, but for non-raiders, those sequential new 5-mans are their progression.
Lots of folk had a tough time with the Heroic Icecrown dungeons when they were first released, especially Halls of Reflection. It's not that bizarre for non-raiders to want to scrape together what gear they can to be as prepared as possible.
MattKrotzer Nov 17th 2011 12:54PM
"Lots of folk had a tough time with the Heroic Icecrown dungeons when they were first released, especially Halls of Reflection. It's not that bizarre for non-raiders to want to scrape together what gear they can to be as prepared as possible."
There's being prepared, and there's being overgeared. If you trade in your valor points, you're getting gear that is better than the content you're facing in your example. Utilizing Valor Point gear to complete the Zul'Agains strikes me as moving backwards. You don't need the gear you'll be getting, and the challenge of completing it will be largely negated.
It becomes a situation where you're basically just farming for enchanting materials.
Mattimus Nov 17th 2011 2:10PM
Yeah, 5-mans are not as challenging as raids, but it's still disingenuous to say, "everyone can farm Heroics to get gear at or comparable to the top raid tier". First of all, weapon slots -- main hand, two-handers, and shields -- are not available at all from point vendors (except for the i346 blues). As far as I know, and I could be mistaken, this isn't changing in 4.3; I won't be getting an i373 shield for my tank from Valor points.
Second of all, the top raid tier is always the Heroic version of a raid, which is itemized higher than the Normal version. No amount of 5-man dungeon runs can ever get anyone something with the same ilvl as a Heroic raid, and this is as it should be. Raids are bigger and more challenging, and this is why raiders will always get better gear, faster than non-raiders. If you raid, and are content to stick to raiding at a Normal level, then that's fine... you just want to see the dungeons and the bosses, and you're happy with what you get from that gear. But please, don't go complaining that non-raiders can get gear with the same ilvl as you if you don't want to step up to Heroic raids.
Non-raiders deserve some form of progression, and I for one think that Blizz has hit it pretty damn close to the mark here. If you're serious enough about raiding to complain about non-raiders getting higher level gear, then you should be hitting Heroic Raids before a non-raider has more than one or two pieces of Valor point gear... in which case, you've already surpassed them, and really should have no complaint. If you're content to stay at a Normal level, but want your normal-level gear to still be super l33t and awesome... then answer me, who is actually the entitled one?
MattKrotzer Nov 17th 2011 3:47PM
"Second of all, the top raid tier is always the Heroic version of a raid, which is itemized higher than the Normal version. "
You're really splitting hairs on that one. I think it's pretty apparent that I meant Tier 12, as compared to Tier 11. Nobody refers to Heroic version gear as Tier 14 (if Cata's initial raids were T11 & 12, Firelands would be T13 & 14).
Unowitz Nov 17th 2011 8:25AM
Too a point we are entitled....we pay to play a "game".
I like most, if not all, of the new quality of life improvements.
They let me get the most out of my limited playing time.
I don't think anyone misses the days of spamming in trade chat for a 5 man...and then having to fly for 5 minutes to get to the portal.
I can definetely see some concern if we keep getting too many "improvements", because there is a fine line between challenging=fun...and too easy=not fun.
But then again, if you want to form up your own pug group you still can. If you want to do hard mode raids, you still can. If you want to fly for 5 minutes and use a summoning stone...you still can.
Schadenfreude Nov 17th 2011 8:52AM
This is my feeling as well. It's a game, it can be satisfyingly challenging at times, but if they can do anything to polish away some of the grinding boring stuff, making the GAME more FUN, that's what I want to see.
Sunaseni Nov 17th 2011 11:52AM
Indeed, you pay to play a game, but consider, a game is a work of art like a movie. A movie full of action, beginning to end, without a break, just ends up feeling too busy and each action feels less important. There has to be downtime to appreciate the good bits even more; it's called pacing.
You can argue that some of the forced pauses such as group forming was good for the game. (I certainly wouldn't; spending 5 hours to do Sunken Temple with 3 hours of that being group forming wasn't fun.) You can also arguing that removing the need to fly to the dungeons was necessary. But taking out 100% of these pauses leads to the game feeling very mundane. When "chain running" heroics becomes normal, each heroic doesn't feel, well, "heroic". As an example, when one 5-man dungeon took an entire evening (Sunken Temple, Blackrock Depths), they felt special, even if they were Hell and a half to even get a group for. Dungeons you crank out in 15 minutes feel boring and mundane. It's hard to marry "able to be consumed on a limited budget (of time, skill, etc.)" and "epic".
The point where "streamlining" starts damaging the feel of the game is different for other people, but I think many people can agree that not having to explore the world and only needing to stay within the capital cities to do all of your business didn't do much to make the world (of warcraft) feel alive. Streamlining is good, but Blizzard has to be conscious of just how much "streamlining" they are doing, and what it does to the game, and players need to understand the same.
Unowitz Nov 17th 2011 8:26AM
I was promised cake....
Amaxe Nov 17th 2011 2:25PM
That's a lie!
/duck
Thomas Higgins Nov 21st 2011 6:20AM
This was a triumph.