[MUD-Dev2] Re: Activity Duration in MMOs (was: Spore andMMOs)

[Michael Hartman]

Mike Sellers wrote:
>
> On one hand, I agree with you: I find very little "fun" in raiding as
> constructed in WoW.
>
> OTOH, clearly many others disagree, as shown by their behavior

But that is the thing. There are not "many" others that disagree. The
population of WoW that participates in raids is extremely small as a
percentage.

And of those that do raid, a very significant percentage do it because
that is ALL they can do at that level. It is the ONLY way to advance and
enhance their character.

So you have a very small percentage of people who raid at all. And of
those people, you have another percentage of people who actually enjoy
it.

The final result is an absolutely miniscule percentage of people who
truly ENJOY WoW style raiding.

WoW succeeds in spite of its raid content, and because most people are
doing other things and never even get to the point where raiding is all
that is left.

> This may seem ridiculous to you or me, but before we go declaring things to
> be "not fun," it might be a good idea to see if others, by their behavior,
> might be showing how subjective such an assessment really is.  

Blizzard has admitted that the percentage of people with even a single
level capped character is small. I don't recall it off hand, but it was
the minority with even ONE character at cap.

Someone else in the discussion already posted some interesting
population/zone data analysis showing that even at peak times only about
10% of the population is in a raid dungeon. Most of the time, the raid
dungeons are empty.

So the available data shows that raiding is NOT popular in WoW, and yet
for some reason the majority of their new content is raid oriented. This
really boggles my mind.

I am loathe to criticise the way Blizzard runs WoW, since they are a
gigantic financial success. Also, they have brought more people to the
MMO genre than any other company, and for that I am appreciative. But
being hugely successful does not mean you are not doing things wrong
(perhaps many things, and perhaps very wrong). AOL and MSFT are two
examples of that.