Are you bored of WoD yet?

Neri over at Mama needs Mana put a survey up on her blog because she had noticed a lot of people saying that they were bored with this latest WoW expansion.

To be honest, that doesn't surprise me.  Curiosity brought a lot of people back to the expansion, and though the excitement of a new game would be enough to hold them for a few weeks, like most games.  However, the things that keep people interested in a game are really only the sorts of things that long term players actually enjoy.

There is one thing in WoD that I have a love-hate relationship with, and that is my Garrison.

Honestly, it's a timesink and there is always something that needs doing. I honestly LOATHE having to do my mine every day.  Yes, I know I don't have to do it every day, but every time someone visits my Garrison (and I get visitors every day for reasons such as using my bank, my enchanter building, invasions or grouping up) they will comment about how I haven't done my mine, the dots are bugging them, I haven't done my herb garden... blah blah blah.

Also, I spend a lot of time trying to jiggle missions and followers. If a mission is about to finish in 10 minutes, I don't really want to go out of the garrison and do something because I want to send those followers out on more missions.  So what do I do for 10 minutes?  I sit around in my garrison chatting in guild chat to guildies or bnet friends as I wait for my missions to tick over.

Another thing that was slow, was the release of raids. I suppose it was because Blizzard thought that with the 10th anniversary stuff that people would be busy, doing those things.  However, the two LFRs (Molten Core and Highmaul) couldn't have been more vastly different.  Molten Core took somewhere to 2-3 hours, whereas Highmaul was faster than a random dungeon - 15 to 25 minutes TOPS. So people got to see raid content and found it was fast and easy and then maybe weren't interested in doing the harder mechanics in normal and heroic raids (which are obviously much longer than that).  And if they're casual players they probably would get bored.

There are however a ton of achievements if you're into that sort of thing.  Collections too.  Mounts, toys, pets... so many things to get! It is this which keeps me still hooked into WoD - for each of the garrison dailies/campaigns there are a set of achievements associated with it that can only be done on those days - so it's fun to see a new daily and think OOH I need to go and get my achievements there!

And of course, there is a PvP season to do.  You can't quit in the middle of a season if you're PvPing! And I have a lot of PvP to do still!  There's conquest to earn, arena games to win, if I want to get my vicious Saddle...

You can see the lethargy in guild also.  From the many that logged on early in the expansion, they have dwindled away and even the raid team has shrunk too - probably a good thing, really, and also it was predicted.

I think there aren't that many games that hold people for more than a month, really. WoW has always had good staying power for a certain set of people, and for the others - well WoW is just like any other game.

If I was Blizzard and I wanted to improve the retention of players, I think that more reputations to grind would have been one of those things.  There are only 5 reputations that we can grind in WoD, one of which is a REAL DRAG (Laughing Skull), and without the dailies to help us grind rep, killing mobs seems to be just mindless farming which I don't enjoy (because, it doesn't make much gold, unlike quests which at least make some gold).

Another thing that would be good for retention is some staggered content lore release. Raids are already being staggered out, but some lore storyline or questline that gets released every month or so keeps people interested.  Especially when you add little flavour rewards like toys or pets or fun thing.

World events with new items is another thing that might keep people a little interested - Winter Veil is now over and the only new thing was the toys on Boxing day.  Love is in the Air is coming and so is Lunar Festival and I know both have new things to collect so there may be a mini resurgence during those times.

But if you're one of those people who are feeling a little "stale" with WoW - take a break! There isn't really much to do if you're not into raiding, PvP or achievement farming, so hopefully you'll be back in February with the release of Blackrock Foundry.

Comments

  1. I was talking with an acquaintance at a local (board and RPG) game store, who I knew played. She came back for the WoD expac, and she's gone down to logging in once a week, doing some dailies, and doing LFR. She's been thinking about getting into a more progression raid oriented guild, and she's thinking of doing it soon before people really start dropping and guilds start having major gaps in their raid teams. We talked a bit about when the sub loss would really start to kick in, and we figured it'd be sometime in March.

    And no more than a day after that discussion, you've got a similarly oriented post. I wonder if the people who love Garrisons are the same people who loved doing the dailies, and whether Blizz has data on that (or not).

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    1. I feel a bit silly saying I enjoyed dailies, but at least I made money from them. Garrison "dailies" are not quite the same. However, I have to say this about Garrisons - it makes me login more and just bum around online because I'm checking missions. That kinda eats into my blog time - I haven't been exactly posting daily like I used to (and I still have this backlog of half finished posts!).

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  2. I'm peeved about the requirement for silver proving grounds for doing heroic dungeons. This is for each toon as well, which means I won't be doing any none too soon. I keep getting stuck at the mystic waves as I generally miss my interrupt or am a millisecond too slow and bam, I miss that wave. It is really frustrating and I cannot fathom why I need this. A dungeon is done with 4 others (5 in total) and don't generally need an interrupt or a really tight time constraint, so I cannot understand why Blizzard put this requirement in. I hope that they remove this soon, as I want to do heroics but can't.

    Ayelena

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    1. I wish I could help you with them - though I was no expert on DPS (because I had difficulty in MoP) so I am probably not the best one to ask. I had a suggestion with Xyn and maybe he will chat to you about a solution!

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  3. It's a classic case of the three monther -- there is always a subset of the player base that get caught up in the hype of a release and then taper off when things start to settle down. I have seen it so much during other MMO releases, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see it here, too. The only difference here is that the tourists won't kill WoW when they decide to wander off to greener pastures.

    Thanks for sharing the survey! :)

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    1. I would like to see the more stable numbers of players who decide to stay. It may be down, it may not. I have the overall feeling that WoD has more returning power, and with new content release, some of the bored people will come back for a look see as opposed to those in Pandaria who did not return at all.

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    2. Yeah, I think you're right. I even know that for myself that if I were to cancel, it wouldn't be for long and I'd be reactivating the second 6.1 had a release date!

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I hope these comments work! Not sure why people can't comment lately, it makes me sad :(