Wombat
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,807
- 1,459
The numbers I have seen suggest that barely 20% of players even do Normal raids, with higher difficulties an even smaller percentage, even after 20 years of players self-selecting to play the game via subscriptions. Spending a large percentage of your development time on something the vast majority of players do not engage with is insanity.
As to the 2.0 dilemma, it is the same for all MMOs - if the new product is a significant divergence from the old product, there's no guarantee the existing player base will transfer over, so you risk spending heavily just to lose your existing (paying) customer base. If it is a distinctly different product, launch it as a new IP and try to profit (as a company) from two separate markets, as they did with Overwatch.
As to the 2.0 dilemma, it is the same for all MMOs - if the new product is a significant divergence from the old product, there's no guarantee the existing player base will transfer over, so you risk spending heavily just to lose your existing (paying) customer base. If it is a distinctly different product, launch it as a new IP and try to profit (as a company) from two separate markets, as they did with Overwatch.
