Anyway, the real point of this is simple: WoW works relatively well, I feel, because it does offer content that a casual can enjoy, but it becomes problematic because there is no “conclusion” to the casual content….it’s a gateway to the hardcore elements, and that’s essentially a whole different mind-set and experience. The hardcores shine in this environment. I’d still be playing WoW right now if it was possible to keep playing a level 70 in a casual and meaningful manner that wasn’t laden with redundancy, but unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way, so I’ll just stick with games like Guild Wars, where when I finish a campaign story arc, I feel like I’ve accomplished something, and can ignore the end-game pvp events and heroics if I don’t feel up to it.

Raid content provides something for a player to look to, to aspire to. They see people in full epics and think, ‘that might be me someday.’ It’s interesting and intriguing. Also, if 100% of people could kill Illidan, would it be that epic? It provides a mystique.

They have tons of stuff for the casual- free welfare epics, heroic armor + badge items, etc…

You forget that the majority of people probably don’t even make it to 70. They just made leveling easier and improved all blue low-level gear, which also reduced the impact of twinking.

Oh well, keep crying about people who are better at hotkeying (opposed to you, the clicker) spells than you and don’t turn with their mouse.

Yeah, there’s definitely a completism elder game in WoW. I know two people personally who want every recipe for their craft skills to the point where they’ve gotten Exalted with two opposing factions. So, hm — perhaps the question is what Blizzard’s live team could be doing if they were building as much content as the Sunwell, only in the crafting elder game.

Oh, and the AH game is very important. I just think it’s played by a relatively small segment of the population. More people will kill Illidan than will accumulate 10K gold at one time, say. But the effect the AH players have on the game is much, much bigger than the effect the raiders have on the game.

Sure, but that’s part of the problem here: we’re all speculating. We have to speculate in ways that make sense to our observations and biases. :)

but how many WoW players are in hardcore guilds?

This is the wrong question. The proper question is: how many WoW players have people who do hardcore raiding in their social network? That number is higher, I suspect, and more of a reason why Blizzard considers their playerbase a donut.

Are raiders the only possible center? No. But, they are likely significant enough that they are worthy of the attention they are given. I thin Blizzard also recognizes that there are other possible centers, too, they might not talk about them so that they don’t give away all their knowledge to other developers.

My thoughts,

Anyway! I’d actually argue that there are a number of elder games in WoW that you don’t list (for example, faction and professional completionist-ism) and that the auction house elder game is more important than you imply. Eric argues vociferously with me on these points, so for the moment I’ll set aside the question of what constitutes an elder game. Regardless, I do agree that a lot of the retention on the top end is because of these other elder games, whether Blizzard is exploring them intentionally or not.

I’m not actually sure where AC1 came into it, but I think you’ve taken my point here one step further with your last sentence: “I’d bet real money that monthly content patches do a lot for retention.” More general content updates can give a broader range of mavens and connectors something to get excited about, and to use as hooks to pull in others. You can see this with WoW, even — a patch like 2.3 (with its extensive additions to mid-level content in addition to the new raid zone Zul’Aman) has spiked discussion (and apparently numbers, although solid data is hard to come by) more than, say, 1.11 (which added the raid zone Naxxramas).

So my perspective is that of a fairly casual gamer who’s moved into serious raiding, albeit on an RP server. I am pretty sure that if there wasn’t a raid game in WoW, I wouldn’t be playing any more; I’ve done the RP that’s worth doing for me, I’ve experienced the 1-60 game three times in full and a bunch more times in part, and so on.

I think the assumption you and Cameron are making is that more casual content would provide the same retention rate as does raid content. I’m not sure that’s true; sort of depends on whether your user base is explorers or achievers. I do think Blizzard’s experimenting with this, though. At present, there are four overlapping elder games in WoW — PvP, 25 man raiding, 10 man raiding, and badge collection. (Plus the little-played but economically significant Auction House elder game.) PvP and 25-man provide equivalent degrees of advancement; the other two are one level of gear behind. So it’s not like Blizzard isn’t experimenting.

I’m leery of using AC as a model, btw; the Microsoft -> Turbine move had a significant effect on subscriber numbers which IMHO makes it a bad case study. I’d also note that AC had the further advantage of frequent and regular patches. I’d bet real money that monthly content patches do a lot for retention.