Fixing Outland population decrease

[Abide]

As many of you probably know, the population (especially alliance side) has been steadily declining lately. While there are many factors that go into this, such as new servers being opened and people flock to those for new content; a large issue has been guilds breaking up/taking breaks from lack of attendance and viable raiders available to them as a community. This is a HUGE issue on alliance side, and I'm sure it's becoming a larger issue on horde side. Like I said, there are many problems that relate to this issue, but I will stick to the ones specific to this server.

As a note before I go into the main reasons why we are losing people and what should be changed; I want to say that I enjoy the higher difficulty presented by the tuning on Outland and don't want that to change or not be applied to future content.

***1.) Tier 4 Content

While this is probably the least of the issues, there are apparently some bugs with Gruul at the moment that make the fight much harder than it should be, causing a "bottleneck" for guilds in their attunements. Again, this isn't that bad as you can play around it and farm other content to brute force through it, but should be fixed none the less.

***2.) T5 attunements

Why are these still in the game? These were removed in patch 2.1.2 by blizzard because of EXACTLY what they are doing on this server, preventing guilds from recruiting easier.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Serpen...ern#Attunement

Hotfix (2007-06-19): "After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward)."

Blizzard themselves knew that attunements were putting too much stress on guilds having to farm far too many raids in a single lockout to keep their raiders up and keep new players flowing into the later tiers of content, so they removed them in a hotfix.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_2.1.2

This was released patch 2.1.2 (check the date, it is not posted here because it was a hotfix maintenance right after the actual patch). If we are about to have ZA released (which is patch 2.3) why can't we have this in place to help remove some of the bottleneck for getting players into T5.

I feel like the warmane staff is trying to put too much value on attunements, when they SHOULD just be letting the increased difficulty from the tuning be the real "gate-keeper". No guild progressing in T4 is going to go full clear T5 if you remove their attunements, it will only help them gear progress and help tier 6 guilds gear/attune new characters faster.

***3.) Increased tuning and difficulty

As I said, I enjoy the increased difficulty and don't want it to be nerfed or changed, especially for sunwell. That being said, it does have a "negative" affect on the T6 raiding guilds. With the content being tuned at a higher difficulty, the amount of effort required to get a new recruit both vials becomes extremely high. Clearing T5, even in T6 guilds, requires a large amount of your main raiders and one or even two raid days to clear, just to get a few people attuned.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_2.4.0

"You may now fight Combat 15 Prince Kael'thas and Combat 15 Lady Vashj without first killing all the other bosses in their respective dungeons."

In patch 2.4 they allowed guilds to skip directly to KT and Vashj without needing to clear all of the other bosses in the raid. While this is not a "blizzlike" feature for our current patch, I feel like having this in place would alleviate MUCH of the pressure on the T6 guilds to get new recruits. These bosses are still VERY difficult, especially for guilds that are not as geared, so the T5 progress guilds will still need to farm T5 and gear up before attempting these last bosses. Warmane, let your increased tuning be the "gates" for fighting these bosses, no guild that is 4/6 or 2/4 in T5 will just go kill these bosses with ease.

***4.) Cash Shop

While I do understand that the server will eventually have all items on the shop for purchase, I feel like this is an issue that should be discussed. As I said, I understand your plans are to have ALL items on the shop eventually, the main concern I have is the speed at which they are released and the 0 requirements for them. Mount Hyjal gear was released within what, 6 weeks of BT release? That is far too soon and adds a large amount of demotivation to people raiding. Why raid when you can just farm gold and buy the gear in a couple months.

Hyjal gear could have been released on the shop with ZA release, and BT gear released when we are closing in on SWP patch; and while it is not possible to do it for gear that is already out on the shop, how about adding a requirement to the gear that you must be attuned to the raid to equip it? At the very least the release timing of the gear should be slowed down, and I really think black temple gear should require black temple attunment (same with sunwell if you plan on doing the custom attunement mentioned before).


At the very least we should have issues #1 & #2 addressed. #3 would help out SOOOO much for guilds in T6 content and I don't feel it will have an impact at all on the T5 progressing guilds. #4 would be nice as well to slow down the pace of gear added a bit and adding attunement required would be perfect (would even go well with you making GETTING attuned easier).

Overall, this server has been very good quality and content wise and it's disappointing to see the population disappear so quickly because of things that are easily addressed.

[Ostlimpa]

There has already been a thread about how the attunaments did more harm than good but apperantly most posters believe it is better to have them in and let the population decline so that their ingame pixels "might" be "worth" more.
Issues 1-3 will be eased somewhat with ZA but will mainly not change until SWP unless something is done.

The cash shop on the other hand is a topic that has been debated over and over but the conclussions around it is:
All gear will eventually come on the store. Legendaries might have certain requirements but nothing is set in stone yet, however the normal epics will most likely not have a requirement in the way you propose it, as it will effectively just mean that donors needs to donate for each tier and do the attunaments for every tier to open up the next gear set on the shop.
The delay on the shop seems to be some months, but you can't stretch it to have it be 4+ months before the gear shows up on the store as it means profits will eventually decline as people can't be arsed to wait 2+ years for their precious endgame gear to come.

Last but not least this is somewhat expected. The combination of a hard catch up system combined with people getting burnt out farming content makes it hard for the population to go down.

[ZpiXDK]

The main reason for people to leave is the weather ;) look outside your window, summer is comming (:

This is the biggest TBC server out there (:

1. Good idea as T4 content is for "new players". But this is mainly people that is bad prepared (no enchants, pots, food, flask and doesn't know tac's)

2. This in not a game that will get a new expantion, this is an old game were you want to have the content still be enjoyable in the long run. If you give the players all end game content at once it will get borring fast (:

It's a pain in the *** to get all your alt's attunted, but there will not come an expantion, so you will have alot of time in the same content (:

3. Why? Then you could just remove the attunment, instead of giving gear away for free (:
Also will guilds be able to boost gear on people, when they just need the boss kill with the guild (:

4. The items shop is here for us to play free.

The only bad thing about the shop is that people get bored alot faster and will end up leaving (they bought all the content, nothing more to do)

[lululululululc]

The main reason for people to leave is the weather ;) look outside your window, summer is comming (:

This is the biggest TBC server out there (:

1. Good idea as T4 content is for "new players". But this is mainly people that is bad prepared (no enchants, pots, food, flask and doesn't know tac's)

2. This in not a game that will get a new expantion, this is an old game were you want to have the content still be enjoyable in the long run. If you give the players all end game content at once it will get borring fast (:

It's a pain in the *** to get all your alt's attunted, but there will not come an expantion, so you will have alot of time in the same content (:

3. Why? Then you could just remove the attunment, instead of giving gear away for free (:
Also will guilds be able to boost gear on people, when they just need the boss kill with the guild (:

4. The items shop is here for us to play free.

The only bad thing about the shop is that people get bored alot faster and will end up leaving (they bought all the content, nothing more to do)

How can you argue with this outside BS lol? 1 year ago Outland had tons of ppl, all throughout the summer we had tons of players.


Attunements + Itemshop just dont work that well together imo. Remove the attunements or maybe revert the PVE LADDER change so guilds actually have a way to compete instead of just mindlessly waiting for new content so they can see how they do compared to others.
This project could be so good, but the staff here slacks when it comes to listening to the community it seems. peope have been posting these things for a while now. Either Warmane Staff starts waking up and making changes, because face it.. ZA alone wont save the PVE scene.. or we are basically f'd.

[cishop]

I think the logical thing to do would be to dumb down the custom increased difficulty for t5 encounters, which seems to be mainly proped up by higher hp values.

1) lower coilfang ambushers damage down so they cant 1 shot players, thus not requiring guilds to take 6 forms of Perma-CC every time you do the encounter.

2) lower Hydross spawns health to post 2.1 levels

3) lower Morogrim murloc adds health

4) lower inner demon health to post 2.1 levels

5) lower solarian's trash pack health and adds down to their 2.1 health (why do they have 3x more then post 2.1?

Really, thats all that should be changed. Nothing game breaking, but it should allow newer guilds easier access, without sacrificing the whiney "muh pixels" crowd.

[cishop]

The main reason for people to leave is the weather ;) look outside your window, summer is comming (:

I swear to wherever you hold holy, people always blame the weather, no matter the season as to why a server fails, or a reason as to why x happens in y virtual environment.

"Oh it summer outside!" Guesz i cant play!
"Oh its fall now! Gotta go back to school!"
"Oh its holiday season, i cant play!"
"Oh winter break, cant play now"
"Oh winter break is over, cant do this,at the moment!
"Spring break is here! What a terrible time to play!"

This is used as an excuse, Every. Single. Time anyone wants to prove their point or why something is badly timed. And let me tell you, Its a ****ty excuse.

[Dragojevic]

There will be changed so much things from the list, when population peak reaches maximally 5k on web :)

[Cornyevo]

Just get rid of the attune. There are so many people who leave simply because they don't want to grind rep. It was a problem in retail and its a problem now. Why continue to let it eat away at numbers?

[Ostlimpa]

Just get rid of the attune. There are so many people who leave simply because they don't want to grind rep. It was a problem in retail and its a problem now. Why continue to let it eat away at numbers?

He's got a good point Warmane. Outland is bleeding players from both PvE and PvP. I personally do not know how to fix the PvP side of things apart from easing the daily BG quests by allowing one to lose 3x BGs in a row to get it done, but the PvE side can be helped by removing attunaments and lowering rep requirements.

[Peregrine]

Personally, I think that attunements cause too much stress and I will not take them undergo that process.
However, for the sake both pvp and pve it should be removed to alleviate stress from players and allow them to experience Bt/Hyal/etc-

[Mesrinex]

I think the logical thing to do would be to dumb down the custom increased difficulty for t5 encounters, which seems to be mainly proped up by higher hp values.

1) lower coilfang ambushers damage down so they cant 1 shot players, thus not requiring guilds to take 6 forms of Perma-CC every time you do the encounter.

2) lower Hydross spawns health to post 2.1 levels

3) lower Morogrim murloc adds health

4) lower inner demon health to post 2.1 levels

5) lower solarian's trash pack health and adds down to their 2.1 health (why do they have 3x more then post 2.1?

Really, thats all that should be changed. Nothing game breaking, but it should allow newer guilds easier access, without sacrificing the whiney "muh pixels" crowd.

Actually Morogrim and Solarian are verry easy boss...

[swantonic]

x5 experience and the cash shop I think harm the server's lifespan. Still potentially a long ride anyway.

[spraynard]

I agree with Abide on pretty much all of his points.

1) Gruul is too hard. Please explain to your devs that if you fix one bug that makes the fight much harder, you need to re-tune the fight accordingly. Gruul used to be a joke on this server. Months ago, my guild killed it wearing blues with 20 people on our very first pull (which is pretty much retail difficulty). Now, this stupid boss is literally killing guilds.

2) T5 attunements (especially the rep grind) should be gone. They will be soon anyway with ZA, I believe.

3) I don't care on this point. I don't think this is why people are leaving, but it would be nice.

4) The Cash shop is the biggest contributing factor for high end raiders with regard to people quitting. Not because it exists. We all knew you would be able to buy all gear on this server before we started here. Like Abide eluded to, the reason it is killing the server is because of the ease of access. Got $20? Okay here's a bis weapon for a fresh 70. Now pvp is ruined. Also PvE raiders raid for a month to get half of their gear and then buy the 3-4 pieces they are missing from the shop - then they enjoy being almost BiS for a week or two and then quit to play a different server. Guilds are being hollowed out left and right by this cancer. I don't think it's even their intention to buy all their gear and then leave. They probably planned to stick around and help their guild progress. But they lose motivation when farm content becomes both boring AND there's nothing for them to gain from it. If it was just boring, then needing gear would give people a reason to keep playing at least.

Attunements should be required to buy gear. (this will absolutely never happen)

Prices should be higher (also will absolutely never happen even though it might even result in more profit)

Shop releases should be delayed to keep content relevant for longer (also will probably never happen, but probably the more likely than the rest)

We shouldn't even talk about the shop tbh or the thread will probably be closed.

I think the logical thing to do would be to dumb down the custom increased difficulty for t5 encounters, which seems to be mainly proped up by higher hp values.

1) lower coilfang ambushers damage down so they cant 1 shot players, thus not requiring guilds to take 6 forms of Perma-CC every time you do the encounter.

2) lower Hydross spawns health to post 2.1 levels

3) lower Morogrim murloc adds health

4) lower inner demon health to post 2.1 levels

5) lower solarian's trash pack health and adds down to their 2.1 health (why do they have 3x more then post 2.1?

Really, thats all that should be changed. Nothing game breaking, but it should allow newer guilds easier access, without sacrificing the whiney "muh pixels" crowd.

This list makes no sense, on many levels.

1) I agree. Lurker is broken.

2) The Hydross spawn health is fine. The hardest thing about this fight is the melee damage output of all of the mobs in this encounter. They do like 2x as much as they should. Forcing you to switch phases a full 1-2 stacks before you normally would on each phase. You are correct that the raid spends too much time killing adds, but it's not because they have too much health, it's because a new set MUST be spawned too soon after the previous one was killed. So you lose a ton of dps time on just the boss alone.

3) Morogrim isn't hard. He's out of place on this list.

4) Inner demon is literally the last thing that wipes anyone on this fight. His enrage timer is what people wipe to. The reason for this is a combination of random deaths to his whirlwind bleed (which is over-tuned) and the fact that he has more health than he did on retail. I can't remember whether the bleed applications didn't stack, or whether the damage was mitigated by armor. But one of these two things was true on retail, and neither are true here.

5) Another easy boss.

I swear to wherever you hold holy, people always blame the weather, no matter the season as to why a server fails, or a reason as to why x happens in y virtual environment.

"Oh it summer outside!" Guesz i cant play!
"Oh its fall now! Gotta go back to school!"
"Oh its holiday season, i cant play!"
"Oh winter break, cant play now"
"Oh winter break is over, cant do this,at the moment!
"Spring break is here! What a terrible time to play!"

This is used as an excuse, Every. Single. Time anyone wants to prove their point or why something is badly timed. And let me tell you, Its a ****ty excuse.

Agreed. Except for legit vacations over the summer, which you lose 2-3 raiders max for a week or two, most people quitting are just burned out and it's totally unrelated to the time of year.

[Ostlimpa]

x5 experience and the cash shop I think harm the server's lifespan. Still potentially a long ride anyway.

Look at Medivh if you wish to know where this road will take you. Soz I forgot, Medivh died.

The Cash shop is the biggest contributing factor for high end raiders with regard to people quitting. Not because it exists.

So the issue is that it is there, yet at the same time that is not the issue? Did I interpret this correctly?

Attunements should be required to buy gear. (this will absolutely never happen)

Indeed it will never happen. Because it would just do more harm than good. Even more so once SWP gear comes on the store as SWP got no attunament.

Prices should be higher (also will absolutely never happen even though it might even result in more profit)

If they want to increase profits they should lower the prices as while you lose gains per item, you sell more items. I suspect that the only reason you do not have Icecrown prices on Outland is because the server is new and with non donors opinions in mind.

Shop releases should be delayed to keep content relevant for longer (also will probably never happen, but probably the more likely than the rest)

You already got around 3 months between the releases, how bloody long do you want them to be? 6 months? A year?

We shouldn't even talk about the shop tbh or the thread will probably be closed.

AFAIK it is nothing wrong with talking about the shop. The question is rather why they should give it much thought? After all the Icecrown model heaves in a lot and Outland will likely end up the same way.
Yet they have already taken heed to complaints about the shop. They delay the gear releases, they increased the prices sharply and they might even do certain requirements for legendaries, what more can one ask for really?

[spraynard]

So the issue is that it is there, yet at the same time that is not the issue? Did I interpret this correctly?

No, you didn't. I said the existence of the cash shop isn't the problem. The way it's been implemented is the problem. That's very clear if you read and digest what I typed.

If they want to increase profits they should lower the prices as while you lose gains per item, you sell more items.

No. Not really. If you double the price of an item, and the same amount of people buy that item, then you've doubled your profits. Do you think that if Cat's edge cost twice as much money as it does now - that less than half the amount of people would buy it? Because I don't. And that's what it would take to be less profitable and still keep the server more healthy than it is now. Pricing is a complicated calculation which requires data points that I'm sure they don't have, and research that I'm sure has not been done. I'm quite sure all the item shop prices are completely arbitrary because it's 100% profit no matter what it costs. Example: blues being 60% of the cost of BiS items. Yea...that makes sense.

You already got around 3 months between the releases, how bloody long do you want them to be? 6 months? A year?

At least.

See either your or my post history for more of my answers to your obtuse questions.

Indeed it will never happen. Because it would just do more harm than good. Even more so once SWP gear comes on the store as SWP got no attunament.

I disagree. Not interested in beating this dead horse.

AFAIK it is nothing wrong with talking about the shop.

I'm pretty sure this thread is getting either closed or locked eventually. Hopefully me predicting it right now will prevent that from happening.

Yet they have already taken heed to complaints about the shop. They delay the gear releases, they increased the prices sharply and they might even do certain requirements for legendaries, what more can one ask for really?

Well this is exactly what I was asking for.... so I can't ask for more than this.

Citation though? I don't think this is true.