Is LoL going the same way as WoW?
Since the day when sad video of "Rectangular table of Riot's" was released, I still cannot get one thing. What is keeping Riot out from understanding that they damage their own company by such unpopular decisions. I am former WoW gamer (from Vanilla till the release of MOP) and will be looking through the prism of my WOW gaming experiece.
Scenario 1. "We just know what you need better than you". The most unlikely one. Because even due to the data, which Rioters show on their official site --DQ is some kind of holy grail which is supposed to put any premade and soloQ player in equal state of convinience - but numbers show its far away from the equilibrium. Also they forget one point. Premade of good friends, who played together over 100500 games will be dramatically stronger than 1st time guys from "lfg" without any voice communication, even if their solo ratings are equal. For sure, it is their own problem they decided to play in such "premade", but I'm really sorry for solo players who are forced to play with them. Having close to zero influence on the result of game. And this effect cannot be ever moved by any kinds of "premade to solo ELO scalings" - just because premades are always different by quality. Riots cannot not to understand that.
Scenario 2. "We will focus on premade players as on our clientbase in future. Everyone else can go cry on boards" A more probable scenario, something similar we have seen in WoW since the release of Cataclysm. Blizzard did a huge step to make game simplier for casual players. But they also killed the atmosphere of hardcore gaming (f.e. huge raid dungeons where you even couldnt look into, without doing long quest chains or making a real achievment from simply reaching the max XP level of your hero). And this atmosphere was something important not only for nolifers but for a lot of casuals as well. In terms of LoL, that focus on casuality is in attracting more premades. But Riots should understand that: a) the amount of people who came to LoL just for "smack button and play ranked" will ALWAYS be greater b) premades in natural way are going to mostly consist from children (adult people will have less time for cooperation and looking for group) with all the consequences.
If that scenario is correct same with WoW analogy, we will soon see Riots trying to make "commumity friendly steps" (against the background of reducing audience), like Blizzard did in WoD. But I really doubt, they can be successfully accepted by community after all those spits in face.
