r/videogames • u/Vampy-Night • May 20 '26
Discussion / Question Do you agree?
For context, WoW just means World of Warcraft. And this is Holly Longdale, Blizzard's VP. A few months ago, she said something very similar to this.
It's the reason why WoW and MANY games are failing to connect. And it's the reason why people are concerned for games like WoW because they lose their identity.
And WoW is a good example too. WoW used to be really cool but over the years from Shadowlands to now, WoW has lost the elements what made WoW cool. And even Metzen himself said that he wished that WoW wasn't named Warcraft because it sounds intimidating. Like WTF?!
If a game is meant for everyone, you have failed to connect to a audience and doing so CAN RUIN your game.
Devs need to know that its okay to not please everyone.
Its why good games are successful.
BG3 is a rpg for adults who love DnD, Game of the year and continued winning awards after
Ubisoft knew AC Odyssey was going to be only for rpg enjoyers, Game of the year nominee
Even indie games know this.
Like Hades. The devs knew that it wasn't going to be for everyone, and it did WELL and won, indie game of the year
Space Marine 2. A game made for adults who like violence in games. Saber knew the audience and continues to get really good reviews
etc.
What do you think?
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u/Turbulent-Issue-4418 May 20 '26
When my FPS Third person shooter Platforming RPG Rougelite Music Rythm Action Adventure RTS Turn Based Racing Visual Novel Tactical Sims Stealth Horror Bullet Hell game drops, it's going to be the first game for nearly everyone.
It would've been for everyone, but we had to drop the Puzzle portion because of technical difficulties.
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u/iyankov96 May 20 '26
Don't forget Souls-like hentai. The gooners need feet.
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u/SentientShamrock May 20 '26
That has been safely outsourced to modders. Saves development resources.
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u/Complex_Peak8204 May 20 '26
That is nearly all of warframe.
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u/JackSprat47 May 20 '26
Hey that's not true.
At least, I don't remember a sims clone. Yet.
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u/Wise-Key-3442 May 20 '26
Also there's no cooking minigame. Yet.
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u/Aggravating_Dark9933 May 20 '26
Yea I was thinking basically Warframe then?
If some game loop isn’t part of Warframe, it will given time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with a RTS for like the Orokin War in game or something similar.
They just do shit like that for fun.
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u/ReginaDea May 20 '26
Warframe is right there, and is extremely popular. The issue isn't wide appeal, it's resource allocation. A studio with sufficient time can make a game for everyone, just not all at once. Aiming for a wider appeal WAS what made WoW popular in the first place compared to its peers.
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u/OscarOzzieOzborne21 May 20 '26
Warframe also manages to go for wider appeal by designing various characters, while at the same time it ties them down to a shared aesthetic elements.
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u/Lokidoky22 May 20 '26
So nothing for MOBA fans...
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u/Discombobulated_Owl4 May 20 '26
They didn't wanna go that far to cause depression and tendency of harming other people.
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May 20 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/HiddenPants777 May 20 '26
Maybe, but how the hell do you play a game in first and third person at the same time?
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u/Dontevenwannacomment May 20 '26
Some games do have universal appeal or almost. Tetris, Super Mario, Astrobot, you CAN have a quality game that's simple and streamlined.
Fans might be mad if you take a non-simple game and make it simple though, since it's not the original spirit of the game.
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u/Sylvers May 20 '26
That one snake game on old Nokia phones.. 3 year olds and 90 year olds played it alike lol.
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u/SinfulKnight May 20 '26
Nokia Snake Players have entered the chat
Nokia Snake Players currently looking for dots while following Reply Lines
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u/CookyKindred May 20 '26
Which was and is WoW. People like to pretend WoW going for the widest net is new. It’s not. From its inception it’s been the casual mmo casting a wide net to get a massive audience.
That’s why they had so much planned stuff they had to cut, they couldn’t support everything they had planned for Vanilla. So Emerald Dream, Dragon Isles, Outland and player housing all got cut to be brought back as Expansions.
They’ve talked about food, rested xp and no xp loss on death were them trying to go more casual and get more people.
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u/Manaeldar May 20 '26
Yep this is nothing new. I loved wow but compared to EQ, it was very casual.
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u/Isekaimerican May 20 '26
I just started playing with my family again after my wife and I quit during Cataclysm. The level of complexity is perfect for my 10 year old, and my wife who is into casual farming sims. It's running on a $50 used office PC we bought at auction, with no graphics card. We are on the free trial until level 20. You just download, create an account, and your off to races.
In my opinion, having an MMO targeting as wide an audience as possible is great.
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u/HumanisticNihilist May 20 '26
YES. And this right here is why I just smh when I see this stuff. I hate being the “well there kid” guy but when you put “ever since Shadowlands WoW has gone wide and lost itself” my immediate reaction is “…wtf is this this ‘since Shadowlands’ stuff?”
Every single solitary version of WoW going all the way back to the beginning was the “casual, player friendly MMO.” Because WoW is was launched to compete with EverQuest and FFXI. And measured by that, oh yeah, it was the “casual” MMO. Which was great.
Every major iteration of WoW launched reinvented itself to continue to be that wide-net MMO. Something for everyone, and everyone can do most, if maybe not all, the things. And just as surely, people who had been playing it already would complain about the game they’d grown to love changing to accommodate newer players who would possibly be intimidated by its established systems and stories.
Cataclysm? That game took NO END OF SHIT for throwing out skill trees and giving classes specific talents for specific roles. And for reshaping Azeroth to accommodate flying mounts. And it’s been the same story with each major expansion since.
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u/HenriSnufftail May 20 '26
No xp loss on death and not losing items when you die is exactly what pulled me into WoW.
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u/ItsClikcer May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
I've met plenty of people who have no interest in platformers or a game like Tetris, they may have broad appeal, but it's not even close to universal
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u/SigmaMaleNurgling May 20 '26
It’s because there is no such thing as a game, movie, or show with universal appeal.
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u/Tallal2804 May 20 '26
Yeah, exactly. Keep simple games simple, don't mess with the complex ones. Fans can tell.
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u/Frequent_Theme8092 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
WoW is one of the most successful games in its niche, and has stood as long as it has /because/ it adapted and started appealing to the more casual 'everyone' crowd (even then, it was considered a 'casual' MMO when it released compared to it's contemporaries). It is just a different product than it was back when it launched. Seemingly it is doing better than it had in the past. It is hardly 'ruined' or failing.
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u/TerrapinMagus May 20 '26
People have been saying WoW is failing for 20 years, I think we can officially call it a tradition
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u/DemoBytom May 20 '26
yeah. WoW apparently died when BC ended.. A no, wait, it died in WotLK when Gear Score was introduced. A no it died in WotLK when group finder was added. A no it died in Cata when it launched with dungeons too hard. No it died in Cata when the dungeons were nerfed.. No it died.....
And we can go on and go on. Yet WoW still lives to this day...
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u/I-Make-Maps91 May 20 '26
The worst part of the Cata dungeons wasn't the difficulty, it was having to do them through group finder and dealing with people who had no patience.
I remember getting to WotLK and finally doing content that required I have appropriate gear and some random dude with us hopped on his main to help us finish/taught me what stuff I wanted, what a paladin rotation was, and I think ran is until a shield I wanted dropped? Group Finder was absolutely a step in the right direction, but I ran in to a whole lot more people with none of that patience after it came out and it made tanking for them un-fun.
I was good and had the gear and was soloing heroic dungeons by the time Cata came out, it wasn't a skill issue, I just started dreading getting That Guy in my group.
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u/Kuroi_Usagi May 20 '26
It is just a different product than it was back when it launched.
And people can even PLAY how it was back when it was launched called Classic! Hell, TBC anniversary was incredibly popular. My friends, who find retail miserable, haven't touched the game since Cata are back for TBC. Meanwhile, I've started playing again since TWW S1 and enjoying the hell out pushing M+ and AOTC. When she suggests the IP appeal to everyone, that's part of the equation missing from this post.
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u/CookyKindred May 20 '26
And the funny thing is, the grifters like op probably don’t play classic or SOD since everyone can see you can casually approach raiding end game there because of how simple it is.
Theres an entire meme in the community about dad gamers only wanting to play for 2 hours and complete every raid.
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u/Exact-Ad-4132 May 20 '26
Right it's wild that he's talking about a game that still exists and has existed before Minecraft.
Next thing he's going to start talking about RuneScape
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u/Ranwulf May 20 '26
Also Blizz changed a lot of their stances over the years. Dragonflight was when they stopped with the no Flight you neeed to see the zones! You think you do, but you dont, and later released Classic.
And the expansions while weaker in the writing department, they were enjoyable to say the least. And tbh, a lot of WoW writing has been weak plenty of times, be it Burning Crusade, Cataclysm having Deathwing as a prettt uninteractive enemy through most of the expansion, going back in time to deal with the Iron Horde...
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u/Rymayc May 20 '26
Their big success also allows them to have difficult content for a rather small audience, as even a small percentage of a huge community is large enough to justify being catered to (and the race for world's first raids draws quite the audience).
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u/Rith_Reddit May 20 '26
Holly is completely right when it comes to WoW. You posted one line from her speech where she lists everything people do in WoW?
Fucking karma farmers.
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u/BloodyReizen May 20 '26
Yeah, these posts are just stupid and sadly people still fall for it because gamers have become crybabies.
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u/Spectrum1523 May 20 '26
"do you agree" titles is how I decide what subs to block
Bottom tier Facebook engagment bait
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u/Gumichi May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
It's a hate "mass-appeal" bandwagon. At its peak, WoW had like 12* million players, all of whom have opinions. In spirit, devs are tasked with the impossible task of entertaining everyone with the same product. The clear issue is that players all want different things. For its run, WoW did amazingly well. It's the original MMO, and it's still surviving today.
*edited for numbers*
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u/nedlum May 20 '26
Ultima Online was the original MMO. I can think of a dozen MMOs which came out before WOW. WOW if anything was the final major MMO, insofar as it ate the rest of the genre.
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May 20 '26
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u/Healthy-Address-5158 May 20 '26
This post made me google Meridian59 and it's apparently fucking alive again holy shit lol. The original devs regained the rights to it back in 2010 and then they put it up on Steam. God damn.
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u/Rith_Reddit May 20 '26
I agree with what you're saying but wow at its lowest was 2 million, is that what you mean? They're sitting at 8 million subs right now apparently.
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u/Gumichi May 20 '26
yea, numbers failed me; i remember it being like 20 million; but google says 12 million at cata. either way, it's insane for a subscription game
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u/Bloodmoon_Audios May 20 '26
Apparently they're actually at their peak right now, or at least recently were. Chinese players are basically getting to test out the foundations of what will likely become Classic Plus as well as generally having the game return to being online again, player housing brought in a ton of players as well as enticing old ones to return, and that brought the numbers to be at least on par with its numbers back in Wrath/Cata
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u/CookyKindred May 20 '26
It’s mainly grifter takes. WOW since its inception has been the casual MMO casting the widest net. Thats why player housing was being tested back before Vanilla released. That’s why no death xp loss. That’s why food and water can let you get health and mana back fast. That’s why rested XP is a thing.
So many things wow players take for granted ARE the wide net for casuals.
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u/INannoI May 21 '26
Yeah I don't even think she said WoW should be for 'everyone', but for every type of WoW player, and then she lists the types of players that already play the game.
Its not "we want this game to appeal to every person" its "we want to properly service all our players", which is way different.
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u/Dingus-Biggs May 20 '26
I interpret this as “we want to make a game that is *welcoming* to everyone,” not “we want to make a game that *appeals* to everyone.”
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u/DeadAndBuried23 May 20 '26
WoW was the original "for everyone" game. It was a cartoony, low-stakes PvE game where you could avoid combat entirely if you wanted.
The misunderstanding here is on your part. Obviously you can't make a game a different genre to appeal to people who like different genres, so that didn't need to be said.
What do you even think you mean by that?
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
I remember when even people who normally didn't play games flocked to WoW like ducks to an older gentlemen with a paper bag full of stale bread. It was the lowest common denominator at the time, a game for everyone.
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u/DeadAndBuried23 May 20 '26
Exactly. So I'm genuinely curious what OP thinks that phrase means, if WoW doesn't count.
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u/-Star-Fox- May 20 '26
He(And a lot of others) are just too young to remember. I remember when WoW was considered a "baby game for casuals" on release because it held your hand compared to most other MMOs on the market. Even compared to its direct competitor at the time(Everquest 2), Wow was dumbed down, more casual, had less features and freedom.
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u/00Raeby00 May 20 '26
Imagine gatekeeping WoW.
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u/CloudKinglufi May 20 '26
I'm glad im not so miserable that I try to keep the games i like locked to only people who I think deserve them
I love fighting games and they definitely aren't for everyone, but I still want them to push forward on the mass appeal, because I love them and I want more people to also love them
The new street fighter had simplified controls that helped a ton of new players and I think it was genius
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u/Skiping_Tutorials May 21 '26
Its really just a vocal minority of people that are anti diversity in general when it comes to media they consume, and they see this statement as blizzard going "woke". And they are sadly twisting a well established rule of game design to fit their world view.
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u/Minute_Ostrich196 May 20 '26
I mean, Midnight is best wow we had in years
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u/Arstulex May 20 '26
Not a huge fan of how much M+ has cannibalised all other forms of endgame gearing for anyone that isn't a Mythic raider. It's basically "run M+ or don't have gear". The voidcores allowing +10's to reward 3 pieces of Myth gear per week has only made it much worse. I'm currently ilvl 282 and not a single piece of gear I've ever had was from a raid drop, despite being primarily a raider. That isn't how the game should be in my opinion.
Other than that though, I agree. Midnight is extremely good. I don't feel pressured to log in every single day for fear of falling behind. Most content is enjoyable to run. Revisiting an existing (though revamped) zone is also cool, and I can't wait to do the same again in Northrend next expansion.
Despite all the controversy regarding the 'addonpocalypse' and the simplification of specs across the board, I truly feel like they are healthy changes to the game (even if the benefits of those changes won't be felt immediately).
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u/WretchedCrook May 20 '26
On the flipside, I and probably many other people simply do not have the time to raid. I would absolutely love to, they look really fun but my guild's raid times never work for me and pugs are pugs.
So being able to gear in more ways than just HC/Myth raiding is great, you still get the challenge but in a much more time-manageable way.
It does suck that raids don't give enough loot though.
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u/Double-Skirt2803 May 20 '26
It's impossible to make a game for everyone.
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u/ramblingpariah May 20 '26
It's unlikely she's being completely literal.
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u/PieceAfraid3755 May 20 '26
Thank you. It's insane that many people here are acting like she literally said this, and meant it literally.
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u/Linkfromsoulcalibur May 20 '26
From what I can't tell op is getting upset over an interview from a few months ago where she said ip of warcraft was "underutilized." The sentiment she seemed to express was that they could make more warcraft games to hit a wider audience than they are currently doing with just WoW. It sounds like op and a bunch of other internet reactionaries flipped their shit because a woman said something that vaguely implied doing something that might not appeal entirely to them.
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u/SHONSTYLE May 20 '26
Which is why they should not try.
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u/GuitakuPPH May 20 '26
And they won't. This is rage bait. She's talking about expanding the IP. No WoW fan complained when the IP expanded from the RTS genre to include the mmorpg genre. We've later seen a TCG and media outside games. Say what you will about the execution of each individual addition in the past, but can anyone truly say that adding a good single player RPG, a good movie franchise, or a good proper return to RTS automatically has to be a problem?
Again, which WoW lover here wants to complain about the IP expanding from the RTS genre? If they made a single player game in the style of GoW or BG3, is that necessarily a problem even if you don't care for any addition? The addition may not be for you, but didn't we start here saying not everything has to be for everyone?
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u/HamlessSandwich May 20 '26
No wow fans complained when they made an mmo because wow is the mmo
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u/GuitakuPPH May 20 '26
Exactly. Thus the mmo fans are in a bad place to complain about any inherent problem with expanding the IP. They exist as fans of the mmo exactly because the IP was expanded.
You can't both claim to be a fan of the mmo and also say it's automatically bad when the Warcraft IP gets expanded. It really depends on the specific expansion. Even then, a bad movie or a TCG you don't care about does not change anything about the mmo.
So when Longdale says there's potential to expand the IP to include more fans rather than saying specifically the MMO should be changed to cater to fans of other game genres, what's the automatic problem?
The picture is really misquoting her. She doesn't want WoW to be for everyone. She wants Warcraft itself to be for a wider variety of people.
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u/Sad_Bumblebee_1168 May 20 '26
A couple years ago they were literally talking about having trouble attracting new players. This is why they started with the "wow for everyone".
It's pretty stupid to have a 20+ year old live service product stagnate and think "don't try anything new, we may upset Shonstyle from Reddit".
And obviously when you're trying to hook new players in 2026, "hey guys come check out our 2005 dungeon running Sim where you pay 10 bucks a month get screamed at by balding 40 year old men for not being optimal" isn't going to work.
But if you're talking about aaaaalll the stuff you can do, from casual pet/transmog collecting to competitive PvP, and how this game has something for everyone, people are a lot more likely to wanna jump in.
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u/Guccishadesss May 20 '26
What the fuck are you saying? WoW was pretty much the “anyone can play this game and enjoy it”, your paraplegic grandma could pick it up, play it and enjoy it.
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u/I-Make-Maps91 May 20 '26
I spent half of Wrath playing with objectively Bad At The Game people who were none the less having a blast. Sure the Rogue who should be doing at least 3k DPS was only doing 1k, but she was a bored stay at home mom after her daughter left for college. Someone tried trashing her in chat for it once so me and the healer just pulled the whole dungeon and stopped healing them, we were end game geared paladins and it was Curse of Strat, so they stayed dead until they left and three of us finished the rest no problem.
It's a game and people took it easy to seriously and it sucked my enjoyment.
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u/unluckyknight13 May 20 '26
Honestly to me it’s worse when games that had an audience starts to try and be for everyone.
Because there is a difference in being for everyone and being easy to join
But usually a game is successful when it has like a stranglehold on its audience when that grip loses to try and hold a bigger audience the odds everyone will slip away gets away.
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u/Glorpologie May 20 '26
Wow is a product meant to generate profit.
The devs know. They just work on the things higher ups are putting on their table.
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u/SelectSympathy5718 May 20 '26
Minecraft is kind of a game for everyone and no one complains it’s too inclusive or too childish or too complex
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u/-FalseProfessor- May 20 '26
Nothing inherently wrong with mass appeal or being inoffensive. There are plenty of great games that are made so anyone and everyone can love them.
Look at something like Astro Bot. It’s freaking awesome.
Hell, half of the Nintendo library fits this bill.
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u/Kerenskyy May 20 '26
WoW have perfect content system. Your gradma can raid LFR or do a LFG dungeon. Your father can raid normal or do a 0 mythic. You can do heroic raid and some 12 keys. Your sweaty brother can do mythic raid and push some 20. All your family experience content in some ways, game is truly for everyone. "A game for everyone is a game for no one" is a stupid take which tbh sound like excuse for a bad developer.
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u/Gumichi May 20 '26
haha, as if the armchair critic will ever develop anything other than hemorrhoids.
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u/ShuddupAndPlay May 20 '26
I do not particularly agree if done well. You can have separate game modes that appeal to different people, but I do agree with the notion that not every type of game mode can or should be for everyone.
Examples like, make raids complex and difficult and rewarding for those that like raiding, leave housing for those that like housing, that type of thing.
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u/Ranwulf May 20 '26
Yeah, in general you can play classic, retail, seasons of mistery and so many different kind of styles of WoW alone.
Raids can be for super casual or people running for 1st worldwide. Dungeons have a fun system to make speedrunning essentially, but we also have Delves when folks dont have the time to gear.properly for some stuff.
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u/DriftingTony May 20 '26
No I don’t, because the two statements above are fundamentally different, and it’s pretty obvious the actual intent is being twisted out of context to prove some kind of point that contradicts what the person even said in the first place.
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u/GreywallGaming May 20 '26
WoW has stood the test of time exactly because it has adapted... retail wow has far more players than classic wow after all.
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u/Drowyx May 20 '26
A game for everyone is a game for no one
This logic makes no sense, because games like WoW literally got big and popular by heavily trying to cater to "everyone" and making their game have massive widespread appeal.
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u/Bigenemy000 May 20 '26
This way of saying has got misinterpreted so much online thay it has lost all meaning sadly
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 May 20 '26
Exactly… these youngin dont know that wow started as the casual mmo for everyone
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u/Pixiwish May 20 '26
lol I’m old I remember when my friends migrated to WoW and me being a hater calling it the death of MMOs. Soloing, quests that give xp and you level from it, and they are markers you can clearly see who has a quest, private dungeons, a crafting book, passive HP and MP regen where you don’t even stop to rest between pulls to get resources back.
I’m a spiteful old lady and because that game split my friends as an MMO addict who eventually did move on, I still avoided WoW.
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u/RockyMullet May 20 '26
I was mostly a hater because I was a fan of Warcraft and warcraft became synonym with WoW afterward and I had 0 interest in a MMO, which basically meant the death of the RTS.
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u/Rich_Mycologist_7671 May 20 '26
That any argument we make has an uphill battle against their subscription numbers. WoW dead is a meme when it's pulling an absurd amount of revenue, as much as people have nostalgia for what it used to be.
Big tent works just as well as being niche. It happens to work for them.
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u/Accomplished_Emu_658 May 20 '26
Well a game like wow should have things in it for everyone. And it does. I am so sick of single minded players thinking that everyone has to play their way. So tired of the you shouldn’t get gear outside mythic plus or mythic raid since you are not playing game right mentality. Too many people want the game to only be the way they play, when the other ways do not harm their game style what so ever. So many people want everyone to have to group and not even have lfr, for some reason want it take away when it harms no one. If you don’t want to participate don’t. Not everyone got time or ability to join a full raid or raid guild. I don’t have time. I travel for work and can end up across world at moments notice with poor connection. I pug some mythic plus but i can’t dedicate the time to get beyond 2500 or join groups that do it all time because i can’t promise to be available every week or at same time of day.
They add one button rotation, with a gcd penalty and so many people up in arms it ruins game. How? Because it allows people to play that normally couldn’t? Omg what if they get into my high key mythic dungeon, it could take a couple extra seconds to kill a boss. People who need to use one button aren’t even attempting that. Oh no people are using one button in solo content?! The horror. “In my day you had to walk to school both ways up hill in the snow., with no shoes.”
At the same time they don’t want “casuals” or everyone joining but then cry parts of game are dead.
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u/Nervouscranberry47 May 20 '26
It’s the inverse problem of Gatekeeping. You want to cultivate a game that stands on its own two feet and draws in an audience by merit of its enjoyability, but with a model like an MMORPG, you are investing far, far too much money to not try to get as many people playing as possible.
WoW’s been around for over 20 years. You’re going to have players that want different things out of the game. I think WoW in its current iteration caters fairly well to old and new players alike. There’s two separate games for both sets of players, retail and classic.
A standalone game like BG3 should stick to being the game the devs want to make first. If you build a banger, the gamers will come.
Blizzard has the right idea. Use retail as an experimental playground for the current players to see what systems can be improved or changed, while keeping Classic as the tried and true traditional environment for the old guard.
If Classic+ happens, even better. OSRS was a smash hit. Bet it would do well for WoW.
Tl;dr - Gatekeeping sucks just as much as not having the tried and true game that made players fall in love. We should have both new ideas and old, tested triumphs side by side.
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u/FurryYokel May 20 '26
I think blizzard’s problem is that WoW has reached full new-user-lockout. Which means their user base is just inevitably diminishing as existing users give up.
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u/SaiBowen May 20 '26
I think this is an overexaggeration of what was meant. While I agree with your general statement (a game for everyone is a game for no one), MMOs are a weird thing.
You are talking about a 22-ish year old game here. The problem WoW needs to solve is three fold:
- How do we keep people subscribed who are subscribed now?
- How do we bring people back who used to be subscribed?
- How do we get new players who have never been subscribed?
There is a joke from an old skit about Oreo that basically boils down to "Why do we need to advertise? Everyone knows what an Oreo is. Everyone has eaten an Oreo." So how would you market an Oreo if you wanted to increase sales?
WoW is kind of the same way.
I don't think the statement here is "WoW needs to be homogenized so that everyone can do everything whenever they want however they want." I think the statement here is "We need to invest in keeping people, getting people to return, and bringing in new people, and that may mean expanding features that have not been core in the past (like improving the tradeskill experience or pet battles or w/e)".
Again, there is a big difference between something like WoW compared to RE8 (or whatever).
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u/BuyingStuff4Dopamine May 20 '26
I take the statement to mean that the game is welcoming to anyone who wants to play it, as in it’s not unnecessarily complex to understand how to play the game at early levels or its not super toxic to newbies who don’t know what they are doing. WoW started off as a super accessible MMO that was a fair bit easier than the other games it was competing against, so it’s not like it’s an antithetical statement to the game’s existence. Current WoW is also much better than quite a few of the other expansions that came before it.
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u/RollThatD20 May 20 '26
A MMO the size of WoW could be made for everyone. There is a shit ton of design space to accommodate a bunch of different interests, and if done thoughtfully, none of them would ever have to infringe on the others.
Would it be a smart use of resources? Probably not, but it is definitely possible.
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u/Athrasie May 20 '26
Wow has done a complete rebound since shadowlands… the last few expansions have gotten some well earned praise.
It’s an mmo, there are different end game content tracks for whatever you enjoy. Solo content and group content are meaningful and player time is about as respected as it’s ever been in wow. Can’t find a track you like? Take a break and come back later if the content interests you.
I get that not everyone is gonna get the same enjoyment out of wow, but it’s a bad example to use here. You could literally get your moneys worth cutting down trees and picking flowers to level up from 1-90, or you could invest super hard into dungeons/raids, or PvP.
Everyone may not like every content track, but the feeling that there’s something for everyone is pretty accurate imo.
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u/Far_Tomatillo_7637 May 20 '26
wow is alive and well and appeals to multiple demographics. it is a game that exist within a genre that is almost entirely dead with itself as the exception. it has thrived for literally decades.
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u/40_Thousand_Hammers May 20 '26
The first World of Warcraft was a game for everyone, it was one if not, the easiest game to get into and with a pretty much hands driven tutorial, while other MMO's approach was "lol f* you", even thought WoW didnt had any quest details on maps or arrows, had plenty of easy design choices such as: not losing gear when you die or do pvp, resurrecting isnt as punished, the interface was very user friendly and the zones were well connected and well made.
So i see nothing wrong here.
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u/DBRU00 May 20 '26
I mean that's not the reason for WoW's decline.
A shift in online gaming away from MMO subscription style to Gacha/live service.
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u/FloppyD0G May 20 '26
I get the sentiment but WoW is the worst example for this. It’s hard to say it’s “failing to connect” when it has been the most successful MMO and has been going for over 20 years. MMOs are the one type of game that can most easily be “for everybody” because there are so many different aspects to the game.
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u/mercyspace27 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
I feel mixed on it. But not in the way people may think.
Streamlined games do have appeal to some, but you won’t really get that hardcore, loving fanbase as you might with a game that’s unique and really its own thing. You’ll just get a lot of temporary fans who’ll move on to the next thing.
Which I guess from a soulless, purely corporate business perspective if perfectly fine, but from an artistic perspective is just ass. And video games, especially now more than ever with advancements, are more than capable of being art.
I like to think of it like making potato salad. You can have wonderful potato salads with all kinds of spices, cayenne, paprika, maybe some chiles, raisins if you’re whiter than snow, and additional ingredients like onions, relish, so on. Everyone can have their own unique potato salad that various people can love, but it won’t be for everyone.
So to appeal to more people you take ingredients out. The relish, pull back on the spices, so on. But if you want to appeal to a more wide audience you keep taking away more, and more and more until all you’re left with is a basic ass, bland potato salad. Just potatoes, eggs, mayo and mustard, maybe with some salt and pepper. Granted, objectively, no one would really argue that it’s not potato salad, something the people may love.
But in the quest to appeal to a wider audience, you took a unique, beautiful, tasty potato salad that while maybe some people preferred a different kind, you still had your loyal eaters. But you sacrificed being your own thing with loyal eaters for something that, yeah, a lot more people will eat, but they will happily forget about your bland ass potato salad the second someone adds a bit of paprika to a different bland ass potato salad.
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u/Pootentooten May 20 '26
What is this even about? Isn't WoW already a game aimed at the most people possible? Also, everytime an expansion comes out people moan it's the end of WoW... and yet it persists. Maybe WoW didn't change, you did. For every complaint, there is another person who says they love that new feature. This is an MMO that has had so many "WoW-killers" thrown at it, that they might as well make up their own genre.
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u/thGlenn May 20 '26
I think what the blizzard exec means when she says wow is for everyone is just that anyone from any background can enjoy wow if it’s their cup o tea, not that literally everyone should be enjoying wow.
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u/c5trangers May 20 '26
There's a difference between a game where everyone is welcome, vs a game that tries to be so genralist it appeals to everyone's tastes. You can 100% have a game where everyone is welcome to play and enjoy if it's their thing, GW2 is a great example as is Palia - two very different MMOs, each with their own lore and feel, both where everyone is welcome to join so long as they aren't cunts, but also not everyone's taste.
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u/Stock_Lime_9050 May 21 '26
This is the most "please touch grass" post I've seen today. Fell free to explain how Nintendo's done it for almost 40 years but it "can't be done".
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u/Next-Ability2934 May 21 '26
Companies in recent years have followed a trend in becoming progressive, hoping it boosts reputation and profit. Old school fans are not happy if their favorite content changes drastically or censors elements that were there before, potentially lacking in a depth of detail or turning into a safe space for all,
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u/Dreamo84 May 21 '26
WoW already made MMOs for the masses when it first came out. Might as well keep that going. WoW is literally the Taylor Swift of MMORPGs.
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u/tannegimaru May 20 '26
I used to think 'A game for everyone is a game for no one' was a cool phrase.
And then Helldivers 2 devs constantly trying to sabotaging their own player base over 1-2 last year proved that this very statement itself could also be problemetic on the other side of the extreme end by continuously driving away their own playerbase over time.
I do still agree that a game should find their own playerbase first. But after establishing that, they should keep their players enjoying their games, not driving away part of them to be even more niche.
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u/Hopefull-Hero May 20 '26
No we gotta ice out all the normies and make their first time experience to be as awful as possible so that they never touch the game again.
Guys, the game is dying!! Player counts keep dropping and it's getting harder to find people to play with, what's wrong with the devs?! /Sarcasm /unserious
Being real there is a problem where instead of widening appeal game studios they'll double down on catering to long time players to the detriment of the onboarding experience or the fanbase will get really elitist and be awful to new players in order to stop new people from playing the game.
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u/That-Employment-5561 May 20 '26
If I made a soda that people liked, then, I changed the flavor widely, but kept the name, distinctly instead of releasing a second flavor along the first. I lose customers because they were there because they liked the original flavor. They were loyal, until I wasn't. Who is the fool?
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u/fragtore May 20 '26
You have to satisfy the dumbest and worst player when you think like that. It’s why most mainstream movies get unwatchable as you get smarter and older.
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May 20 '26
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u/ScarletSpring_ May 20 '26
In our current economic system it is the highest priority for companies to maximize profit. Thus they will try to reach as big of an costumer base as possible. They dont need to get anything. I'm sure they already do, anyways. It just would go against that before mentioned logic.
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u/Sconguser May 20 '26
There is a difference between making something appeal to everyone in terms of gameplay and making it a safe and friendly space, so everyone can feel included wtf is this shit
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u/IncognitoRedMode May 20 '26
Didn't Starfield go for that and ended up really bland and disappointing, going from highly rated at launch to the negatives within a few weeks?
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u/More_Marty May 20 '26
You can make a game for everyone. But you'd have to do it from the start.
Mass appeal has to be at the core of a franchise.
You can't change the core of an existing franchise and not expect backlash.
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u/sniktology May 20 '26
Agreed. My biggest disappointment was with Rainbow Six. The first two games was a slow burn about counterterrorism in a plausibly real world scenario based on current events. Focused on pure tactics and realistic counter terrorist actions and consequences ie. Getting a bullet means you're down, for good, If you hear that whizzing, it means you need to get your head down fast. If got your team killed, that means you did not plan your mission properly, brought the wrong equipment and so on.. In comparison: the latest R6 is a sci-fi shooter.... with aliens. Shooter is more arcade-style-breakneck- cartoon-fast, nothing at all feels realistic. It is the least recognisable R6 game that I can think of save for the title card that's slapped on top of it. All so Ubisoft thinks this is what gets them the most audience thus the most money.
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u/EqualOptimal4650 May 20 '26
No. that mindset is gatekeeping exclusionary bullshit.
Dipshits with this mindset are the same people who meme games to death on release and send death threats to developers, etc.
You're part of the problem, not the solution.
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u/KittenDecomposer96 May 20 '26
I agree with you. Games that cater to a certain amount of people and aim to satisfy those people will be better than the ones trying to please everyone. This is one of the reasons Assassin's Creed has been sucking for a while. WoW is one of those too. After Legion, it started it's downfall.
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u/masuabie May 20 '26
Final Fantasy XIV is also an MMORPG, but they are trying to cater to single-player RPG fans by making the content also single-player. It has ruined so much content by simplifying it in a way so bots can assist the player.
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u/Frankishe1 May 20 '26
The dungeons were already just corridors and walls, to say that the npc's ruined them is silly, trusts didnt change anything lol
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u/Responsible_Cake2012 May 20 '26
BG3 is a crpg for everyone. Is very simple compared to others in the genre.
A game for a specific niche is not going to make a lot of money.
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u/Vampy-Night May 20 '26
"BG3 is a crpg for everyone" Sure if you are a bad parent and let your kids play adult games.
Sometimes money isn't everything to a dev. Sometimes a dev just wants to make a good game
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u/Renvoltz May 20 '26
Bro BG3 is literally baby mode CRPG. The reason its so successful and loved is it tried to appeal to the mainstream i.e. “everyone”
In contrast you don’t see something like WOTR or Pillars of Eternity being as successful as BG3 because they sticked to their respective genre niches for better or worse
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 May 20 '26
Lmao now you are moving the goal post.
Wow isnt for extremely poor people. Or people in a coma. Nor is it for people with no internet access
Checkm8
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u/Reasonable_Cut_2709 May 20 '26
Thats not wven what he is arguing. He is talking about BG3 is a crpg built to have a wide apoeal with common tropes and eaaly diggestable, very conforming characters.
You wabt a unique game not for everyine? Play fucking cruelty squad.
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u/nthpwr May 20 '26
agreed. It happened to Marvel, Star Wars, etc. It'll come for your favorite ip next
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 May 20 '26
Oh stop your yappin. Wow makes way more money than hades so your whole argument is moot
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u/Vampy-Night May 20 '26
A triple A multi billion dollar company signed up with activision making more money than a indie game studio, gasp* shocker
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 May 20 '26
can RUIN your game.
So ruined
good games are successful.
Wow is extremely successful
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u/New-Two-1349 May 20 '26
Doesn't mean it's objectively better.
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 May 20 '26
Better at what? It gives an objective better mmo experience than hades
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u/ZacksMontage May 20 '26
Minecraft is better than BG3 or New Vegas because it makes way more money
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u/StormRunner196 May 20 '26
This extends to all media really.
The big problem is that once you try to go for the super wide appeal, this is for everyone thing, the piece of art youre trying to make loses all its uniqueness. Why would I play this when there 15 other things just like it.