Originally posted by Ceridith The forsaken joined the Horde because they were supposidly being persecuted by the Alliance factions for being undead... But death knights? No problem. Plothole much ?
Then again, the forsaken being allied with the Horde at all is unplausible as well...
Maybe they should make the undead a third faction. Make WotF like it was in beta. Probably too late for that, but that's what your post made me think.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
The forsaken joined the Horde because they were supposidly being persecuted by the Alliance factions for being undead... But death knights? No problem. Plothole much
Maybe they should make the undead a third faction. Make WotF like it was in beta. Probably too late for that, but that's what your post made me think.
A lot of people have suggested that forsaken should be on their own (or other) faction, since WoW was in Beta. Unfortunately it didn't fit into Blizzard's plan for a two faction system, so they just threw forsaken into Horde, and night elves into Alliance.
Personally I think it would have been better to have more player factions, and allow players between to interact, group/work together if they chose... but that likely conflicts with Blizzard's goal to create animosity between factions to promote what is otherwise meaningless PvP.
I think too many people focus on the idea of which SINGLE game will be the wow killer. No one game probably will. But several games could cut the dragon to half its size. As pointed out WoW is moving slowly and people are grumbling. And not just grumbling over one thing. Just about everything blizzard does is causing grumbling. The avalanche doesn't happen just anywhere, it builds up over years. Then the foundation that has supported that snow for years slowly melts away until, whooosh, Avalanche! They also don't always happen as just one movement. Very often something triggers a smaller slide which removes that which was supporting drifts which are even bigger behind it.
I think what we are seeing with blizzard is the beginning. I think Rift has show that there is a problem, that people are looking for something new even if Rift can only pull a fraction of the Blizz player base away. Now wait. People are waiting for content. they will get some but they will go though it fast. They still feel nickled and dimed on premium services. Watch, they will offer free but exclusive pets if you sign up for the service. Then, with a shaky base that is mostly bored out of its mind and 4.2's content long finished. SWTOR will hit later this year. Where Rift might have been a warning, SWTOR will probably hit like a ton of bricks. Put with it TERA hitting also around that time and even those who are not interested in SciFi might start disappearing for at least a while. But even if TERA doesn't hit as hard as SWTOR it will be hitting Blizz at the worst possible time. Rift will still be working hard pushing small content updates but will be doing it at fast regular intervals and then when all the dust seems to settle, early in 2012 GW2 will come along and do it all again.
No one game is going to take down WoW, but several games coming in rapid succession like a perfect storm will probably bring it down to a size nobody thought possible. No, wow wont die, even if it lost 3/4 of its base in the next year which is very very unlikely anyway. WoW will go on, but it may not be the mmo world's lone superpower after this next hear.
To be fair Wows community went out the door with the dugneon finder. With no need to talk to anyone, no interaction on a regular basis with a larger number of server members the comuity turns into a pupulation and nothing more; save for pocket cimmunities in the server.
But yes it is losing its players because the king has gotten old. Big dog has lost a good deal of teeth but can still be dangerous.
Maybe the newer MMOs won't KILL the king but the king will die on his own; and the presence of a sucessor dosen't mean he beat the king.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
wow I didnt know all that was going on with blizzard and warcraft in general. I dont have a interest in it really but I will say this, if they dont get a handle on this with swtor, gw2 and tsw coming out they are gonna lose alot more subs than what they have already lost.
I would take this topic seriously if it wasnt the 1000th one about wow losing its community.
Yes they lose people, only for those people to come back after a month or two, its happened me a few times already, the game just gets it claws into you, but for good reason, its the only MMO that you can easily pick back up and go do end game.
I beat my own record on Cataclysm though, finished its content and got bored very fast, i stop in every couple of weeks only to actually get bored after 5 mins of playing.
Guess its just because ive been playing a long time, i can see myself going back to wow full time in the future.
If Blizzard would state 'hey, you know what, we saw all your reactions and it made us rethink the whole pay-for-cross-server grouping with friends: this option will now become available for free when you activate 3-month subscriptions or longer term', I bet they would alleviate a lot of all that anger and even generate a happy buzz around.
Problem with that response honestly (according to the counter arguments against the service in general) is that it isn't "FREE" it was paid for with the subscription in the first place.
Damage to their reputation for alot of people is already done.
I have no problem paying for a service. I have no problem with them making money hand over fist for being extremely good at xxx insert whatever floats your boat..
What I have a problem with is that it feels like blizzard USED to be passionate about making games that were fun to play and addictive fun at that. Now it feels like they are passionate about making money. The game now is just a means to that end. And unfortunatly for them Catacylsm in general just feels like they didn't give a shit making it.
PS And no redoing 1-60 azeroth is not giving a shit. MS painting over the landscape and categorizing the old quest then shunting them into a string from a-b is not an expansion. It a new player grab bussiness descision. Tortage anyone?
As a player of WOW for 5+ years, I've been just getting tired and exhausted from the game. I have had the best MMO experiences with WOW and EVE out of the past 7 years of playing MMO's. I want something fresh and there's a few games that plan on doing just that.
A few MMO's that bring some change that I'm very interested in:
Tera has not targeting option, so you need to be in line of sight of the mob when attacking. = This is a pretty sweet new thing to add into MMO gaming, but I have a feeling that this will be more fustration for ppl then fun. Hopefully i'm wrong and ppl just enbrace it and enjoy the new change.
GW2 Dynamic throughout the game, this to me is really exciting, this is a fresh and new way to do events or what would be quests. Removal of Tanks and Healers...um win...hehe, ppl can rez a downed player, most characters have some type of healing capablities. 60 plus movies of spoken dialog is a plus as well.
Tera and GW2 also bring dodging into the fight which is going to be great, no more you can't move out of the way bulls@it.
SWTOR is bring a fully voiced MMO, this could be a hit and miss with Bioware doing a MMO for the first time and stepping out of there single player comfort zone. I really do hope this comes out to be a solid adventure and the game does well. I am actually excited about doing space combat, even if it's railed, it reminds me of the old X-wing and Tie Fighter shooters back in the days.
These MMO's coming out are bringing fresh idea's and I can see this totally impacting wow.
With Titan coming out in a few years and Diablo 3 soon to be released and the next expansion for SC2. The fans of Blizzard are still going enjoy the franchises, maybe just less of WOW.
I don't know what else Blizzard can do to make WOW more exciting, maybe free character transfers, cross realm dungeon runs with friends from other servers for free via battle.net, Horde vs Alliance huge PVP battle events, improve professions and add more content to them.
Maybe Blizzard will surpise me with something amazing in WOW, I just have to be honest with myself and have doubts though, WOW has been around since 2004 and it's been a pretty solid MMO experience and even if I don't find myself going back to it, I can say I did find great enjoyment from the game.
Wildstar (2013) & Elder Scroll Online (2013)
Playing: Diablo 3, WOW, Far Cry 3 & X-Com.
Enjoyed: WOW 5 1/2 yrs, LOTRO 3yrs, GW 1/2yr, DFO 1yr, EVE Online 3yrs, and Huxley (Beta).
Failed to impress: GW2 3months, Tera Online 6 months (best combat system in any MMO I've played) STO 1/4yr, Aion 1/2yr, AoC 1yr, CO, Fallen Earth, DDO, EQ2 1/2yr, WAR 1/2yr, Lineage 2 and FF XI 1/2yr, FF XIV.
Am I happy with many of Blizzard's new changes to WoW? No. The game was at its best in vanilla and The Burning Crusade, in my opinion.
Have I left World of Warcraft for other games? Yes.
At the same time, I think its important to keep in mind that World of Warcraft is almost seven years old. Subscriptions are bound to decrease at some point, especially as new games hit the market. While I don't think Blizzard is helping their cause as far as maintaing subscription numbers, I also think some of this is natural. The game is getting old, and I think subscriptions are bound to decline at some point. It also doesn't mean the game is bad, it is what it is.
At the same time, I think its important to keep in mind that World of Warcraft is almost seven years old. Subscriptions are bound to decrease at some point, especially as new games hit the market. While I don't think Blizzard is helping their cause as far as maintaing subscription numbers, I also think some of this is natural. The game is getting old, and I think subscriptions are bound to decline at some point. It also doesn't mean the game is bad, it is what it is.
Very true. However it's also worth pointing out, that even if WoW is losing subs, doesn't mean other MMOs are gaining said subs. I know, I know, no one wants WoW players in their game anyway, because every single one is immature and 11 years old, blablabla.
The only game out right now, that benefits from WoW's current state is Rift (new vanilla WoW with new memories to be gained). When TOR and GW2 comes out things change, let's see what WoW has to answer for those.
Pretty much spot on article, although I would use the word playerbase rather than community. WoW lost its community years ago and the way Blizzard set up Cataclysm just magnified that and really put the spotlight on it. If the community was decent, I'd probably still be playing rather than being part of the 600K that left.
Yet despite that, I feel drawn back to good old WoW because... damn... the alternative is what? EVE is fascinating as all hell, but it always end up feeling like a job after a month or two. LOTRO is nice, but it's really just a reskinned WoW with a couple of nice features trying to make up for all of the rest that it doesn't quite do as well as WoW. EQ2 did -not- age well and it's SOE. Aion is tempting, but I just don't dig only being able to be a pretty human with wings. Then there's Rift... I suppose I could try that... seems like the logical next step, but that too suffers from the boring human/elf/dwarf in a WoW reskin.
So yeah, 600K and they might get some of them back for a while with 4.2, but the second there's a viable alternative to WoW, I think they're going to be bleeding subs fast.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Clearly a well-researched article here, stating that 600,000 subscriptions is $100,000,000... except all 600k Subs are not from the United States. This is a dead horse that's been beaten over, and over, and over again. They're not losing $100m a year.
Also, the people who reached level cap in a few hours (before US servers even came up) did it by exploiting. One person tagged a boatload of level 74 mobs in Twilight Highlands out of group while his guildies killed for him, in gigantic packs, netting him hundreds of thousands of xp per hour. In addition, he had other guildies on other servers griefing (on pve) and ganking (on pvp) servers others who were trying to do this to ensure his world first achiev. Kid is an egotistical douchebag, here's his video. Do yourself a favor and stop at 2 minutes.
On to the premium services, I start to agree. I absolutely will not pay extra for ANYTHING in a subscription payment game. Nothing. Not sparkle ponies, not minibosspets, and certainly not RealId (which I don't use anyway) to group. Cataclysm overall has been good, and launched with better raids than all of Wrath's raids combined (excluding Ulduar), and Firelands is looking pretty good. Unfortunately my time in WoW is pretty much log in on raid night, raid, log out. I'm hoping they do something to balance classes, give us something to do, and stop trying to milk us for money. More likely, I'll be letting my sub die in July
I have to say that, as unfortunate as it is. This article strikes a sharp point into Blizzard's side. I have yet to totally figure out in my own mind, how an expansion that gave me so many things from my 'want' list for WoW could turn out to be such a disappointment.
Playable Goblins? Check.
Competitive PvP Gear without having to do Arenas? Check.
Rebuilding the original Azeroth into a more dynamic and interesting world with better scripted quests from 1-60? Check that too.
So what happened? Well for one, the new starting race had me replaying a class I already had a 70+ character of. Same with the new 1-60 content, I was effectively retiring my old character for a nice shiny goblin version. 1-60 content isn't as hepful in keeping subscriptions if most users only plan to play it once (I have 70+ of every class, why play it over and over?)
Also look at Rated Battlegrounds. Why did people dislike Arenas? It wasnt because the game mode wasn't fun, it was because it felt like a chore that you HAD to organize a team and HAD to all play together every time to get anywhere. So you take that problem and compound it by making the rated battleground teams require even MORE people? What about that makes sense?
I really hate to say it but Cataclysm was the nail in the coffin for me. My WoW career is finally over. Here's to hoping SWTOR, GW2 or TSW have some staying power.
There is a lesson here. So many players have their want list and believe the game will be better for it. They are often wrong.
As to the 5% drop in population, that is icing on the cake subs. By that I mean, subs beyond the covering your costs or to say pure profit subs. Those are tough to lose.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I played WoW from launch to 4 months into Cata. The thing I've noticed in all that time was a greater and greater emphasis on raid content, though by making it progressively more accessible to a broader range of people. Old School Raiders of course had their epeens threatened by this and like to imagine themselves as being smarter than everyone else for having memorized battles that took more people. /shrug
The fact is do any one thing repeatedly for a long enough period of time you get tired of it. The range of options for player activity is relatively narrow, you can raid, or you can arena, with everything else being busy work. Nobody likes busywork, and eventually you will burn out on the repeated style of play no matter how many tricks the bosses have up their sleeve. WoW is what it is, a McDonald's hamburger for the gaming masses. It brought MMOs onto the mainstream perhaps, but its going to lose subs and this trend will continue. As one poster said, its not a single game that will erode WoW's sub base, its the collective.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
Actaully, it's not unfounded griping. From start to end, I have seen the de-evolution of the World of Warcraft community. But it's not the main cause of the decline. But it doesn't help either. I hate to say it, Meltdown, but when the community are a bunch of bullies, insulting people asking questions and typing in a language that...frankly is just laziness, yes, the community is crap.
New Player: Can someone explain how mining works?
4 month player: LOL! STFU NOOB! L2P! UR MOM!
*shutters* I think my IQ just dropped 20 points typing that. But that is the general talk in chat in World of Warcraft.
Again, it's not the primary reason for decline. But it is a reason to a lesser extent. It's the money grab that's the bigger part of it and the other reasons explained in this article.
I agree WoWs community is hostile in a way I have only seen in shooters.
Wow is a game which is mainly driven by loot. Acquiring new gear is the reason for most things you do in this game. And in my opinion blizzard is now failing with the loot system. It already started with BC and Woltk but its much worse now then it was before. I did lvl 60 40people raids. When I collected T1 and T2 I knew every piece of my equipment, I remembered when I got it where. A single epic could last 6 month or more, every bit was an achievement. I also remembered most of the things my guild mates got.
But now there is a item hyper inflation. Not only that you can get epics on every corner, you also know that you just have to wait for 1 patch then the points shift and you can easily collect a bunch of new items by doing heroic 5man.
Somehow collecting loot - which is the key to play wow - got absolutley pointless. When I played 40man raids I had the feeling that the time investment is worth something this feeling is gone long ago.
Actaully, it's not unfounded griping. From start to end, I have seen the de-evolution of the World of Warcraft community. But it's not the main cause of the decline. But it doesn't help either. I hate to say it, Meltdown, but when the community are a bunch of bullies, insulting people asking questions and typing in a language that...frankly is just laziness, yes, the community is crap.
New Player: Can someone explain how mining works?
4 month player: LOL! STFU NOOB! L2P! UR MOM!
*shutters* I think my IQ just dropped 20 points typing that. But that is the general talk in chat in World of Warcraft.
Again, it's not the primary reason for decline. But it is a reason to a lesser extent. It's the money grab that's the bigger part of it and the other reasons explained in this article.
I agree WoWs community is hostile in a way I have only seen in shooters.
Wow is a game which is mainly driven by loot. Acquiring new gear is the reason for most things you do in this game. And in my opinion blizzard is now failing with the loot system. It already started with BC and Woltk but its much worse now then it was before. I did lvl 60 40people raids. When I collected T1 and T2 I knew every piece of my equipment, I remembered when I got it where. A single epic could last 6 month or more, every bit was an achievement. I also remembered most of the things my guild mates got.
But now there is a item hyper inflation. Not only that you can get epics on every corner, you also know that you just have to wait for 1 patch then the points shift and you can easily collect a bunch of new items by doing heroic 5man.
Somehow collecting loot - which is the key to play wow - got absolutley pointless. When I played 40man raids I had the feeling that the time investment is worth something this feeling is gone long ago.
In away its your own fault you could have said no when BC came and stop playing but no you millions keep playing, so blizzard got the wrong message and keep simplifying the game and now you complain lol. And im sure in in 2 years time when you can play solo whole game and get epics by doing a instance solo you still play and complain haha.
Soon we get swtor also that will do exactly what blizzard is doing for last 6 years lol.
PS And no redoing 1-60 azeroth is not giving a shit. MS painting over the landscape and categorizing the old quest then shunting them into a string from a-b is not an expansion. It a new player grab bussiness descision. Tortage anyone?
Wow you established this thanks to your extensive experience in graphic design and programming...Ohh wait!
Nope , it is just the way it (key word here)....feels to me"
You know like an opinion.
Remaking something already there is innovative is what you are getting at I am assuming then?
If it feels like it was worth an expansion for "you" great ..keep on subbing. For me .. it doesn't.
The game is gonna go the same way as The sims online/EA hangout or what ever it has called. I quit because every tavern i went to was full of people have cyber X. X can be anything to a hand job to an orgy. The game is sick, and that was a year ago. My friend plays, and i looked what he was doing, he was trying to set a home town to telly to, but everyone kept sending things like "hey sexy" or "do you like my body", the worst was "you wanna ride my shemale d*ck". I say that i won't play it till this stops, Its full of pervs.
Also has said before grind 8 hours a day = great gear/no life or dates......Sorry to tell people, but whatever the highest tier armour is, its not "hot and sexy" its a simbol of no life or being a member for years!
ps the only community its losing is casual gamers, all the people who play hours on are still there, finding a person who has a life in WoW is like those Wheres Waldo books....
But seriously, I think the game mechanics changed long ago that sort of "devolved" the community (as someone else said) as just a bunch of random people playing some game.
They feel very little ties to each other outside of their current guild or circle of friends, and are far to ready to mock and ridicule others who don't measure up to their "standards"
To me it seems like the FPS shooter community has invaded the standard MMO's of today and they're a pretty critical bunch and think nothing of trash talking both their allies as well as their enemies.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
Maybe they should make the undead a third faction. Make WotF like it was in beta. Probably too late for that, but that's what your post made me think.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
A lot of people have suggested that forsaken should be on their own (or other) faction, since WoW was in Beta. Unfortunately it didn't fit into Blizzard's plan for a two faction system, so they just threw forsaken into Horde, and night elves into Alliance.
Personally I think it would have been better to have more player factions, and allow players between to interact, group/work together if they chose... but that likely conflicts with Blizzard's goal to create animosity between factions to promote what is otherwise meaningless PvP.
Sort of like the arena, hehe.
(I don't think it's off topic as it directly relates to the decline of the community, in my opinion.)
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I think too many people focus on the idea of which SINGLE game will be the wow killer. No one game probably will. But several games could cut the dragon to half its size. As pointed out WoW is moving slowly and people are grumbling. And not just grumbling over one thing. Just about everything blizzard does is causing grumbling. The avalanche doesn't happen just anywhere, it builds up over years. Then the foundation that has supported that snow for years slowly melts away until, whooosh, Avalanche! They also don't always happen as just one movement. Very often something triggers a smaller slide which removes that which was supporting drifts which are even bigger behind it.
I think what we are seeing with blizzard is the beginning. I think Rift has show that there is a problem, that people are looking for something new even if Rift can only pull a fraction of the Blizz player base away. Now wait. People are waiting for content. they will get some but they will go though it fast. They still feel nickled and dimed on premium services. Watch, they will offer free but exclusive pets if you sign up for the service. Then, with a shaky base that is mostly bored out of its mind and 4.2's content long finished. SWTOR will hit later this year. Where Rift might have been a warning, SWTOR will probably hit like a ton of bricks. Put with it TERA hitting also around that time and even those who are not interested in SciFi might start disappearing for at least a while. But even if TERA doesn't hit as hard as SWTOR it will be hitting Blizz at the worst possible time. Rift will still be working hard pushing small content updates but will be doing it at fast regular intervals and then when all the dust seems to settle, early in 2012 GW2 will come along and do it all again.
No one game is going to take down WoW, but several games coming in rapid succession like a perfect storm will probably bring it down to a size nobody thought possible. No, wow wont die, even if it lost 3/4 of its base in the next year which is very very unlikely anyway. WoW will go on, but it may not be the mmo world's lone superpower after this next hear.
All die, so die well.
To be fair Wows community went out the door with the dugneon finder. With no need to talk to anyone, no interaction on a regular basis with a larger number of server members the comuity turns into a pupulation and nothing more; save for pocket cimmunities in the server.
But yes it is losing its players because the king has gotten old. Big dog has lost a good deal of teeth but can still be dangerous.
Maybe the newer MMOs won't KILL the king but the king will die on his own; and the presence of a sucessor dosen't mean he beat the king.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
hear -> year
All die, so die well.
wow I didnt know all that was going on with blizzard and warcraft in general. I dont have a interest in it really but I will say this, if they dont get a handle on this with swtor, gw2 and tsw coming out they are gonna lose alot more subs than what they have already lost.
I would take this topic seriously if it wasnt the 1000th one about wow losing its community.
Yes they lose people, only for those people to come back after a month or two, its happened me a few times already, the game just gets it claws into you, but for good reason, its the only MMO that you can easily pick back up and go do end game.
I beat my own record on Cataclysm though, finished its content and got bored very fast, i stop in every couple of weeks only to actually get bored after 5 mins of playing.
Guess its just because ive been playing a long time, i can see myself going back to wow full time in the future.
God dam FFXIV why did you let me down!!!
Problem with that response honestly (according to the counter arguments against the service in general) is that it isn't "FREE" it was paid for with the subscription in the first place.
Damage to their reputation for alot of people is already done.
I have no problem paying for a service. I have no problem with them making money hand over fist for being extremely good at xxx insert whatever floats your boat..
What I have a problem with is that it feels like blizzard USED to be passionate about making games that were fun to play and addictive fun at that. Now it feels like they are passionate about making money. The game now is just a means to that end. And unfortunatly for them Catacylsm in general just feels like they didn't give a shit making it.
PS And no redoing 1-60 azeroth is not giving a shit. MS painting over the landscape and categorizing the old quest then shunting them into a string from a-b is not an expansion. It a new player grab bussiness descision. Tortage anyone?
As a player of WOW for 5+ years, I've been just getting tired and exhausted from the game. I have had the best MMO experiences with WOW and EVE out of the past 7 years of playing MMO's. I want something fresh and there's a few games that plan on doing just that.
A few MMO's that bring some change that I'm very interested in:
Tera has not targeting option, so you need to be in line of sight of the mob when attacking. = This is a pretty sweet new thing to add into MMO gaming, but I have a feeling that this will be more fustration for ppl then fun. Hopefully i'm wrong and ppl just enbrace it and enjoy the new change.
GW2 Dynamic throughout the game, this to me is really exciting, this is a fresh and new way to do events or what would be quests. Removal of Tanks and Healers...um win...hehe, ppl can rez a downed player, most characters have some type of healing capablities. 60 plus movies of spoken dialog is a plus as well.
Tera and GW2 also bring dodging into the fight which is going to be great, no more you can't move out of the way bulls@it.
SWTOR is bring a fully voiced MMO, this could be a hit and miss with Bioware doing a MMO for the first time and stepping out of there single player comfort zone. I really do hope this comes out to be a solid adventure and the game does well. I am actually excited about doing space combat, even if it's railed, it reminds me of the old X-wing and Tie Fighter shooters back in the days.
These MMO's coming out are bringing fresh idea's and I can see this totally impacting wow.
With Titan coming out in a few years and Diablo 3 soon to be released and the next expansion for SC2. The fans of Blizzard are still going enjoy the franchises, maybe just less of WOW.
I don't know what else Blizzard can do to make WOW more exciting, maybe free character transfers, cross realm dungeon runs with friends from other servers for free via battle.net, Horde vs Alliance huge PVP battle events, improve professions and add more content to them.
Maybe Blizzard will surpise me with something amazing in WOW, I just have to be honest with myself and have doubts though, WOW has been around since 2004 and it's been a pretty solid MMO experience and even if I don't find myself going back to it, I can say I did find great enjoyment from the game.
Wildstar (2013) & Elder Scroll Online (2013)
Playing: Diablo 3, WOW, Far Cry 3 & X-Com.
Enjoyed: WOW 5 1/2 yrs, LOTRO 3yrs, GW 1/2yr, DFO 1yr, EVE Online 3yrs, and Huxley (Beta).
Failed to impress: GW2 3months, Tera Online 6 months (best combat system in any MMO I've played) STO 1/4yr, Aion 1/2yr, AoC 1yr, CO, Fallen Earth, DDO, EQ2 1/2yr, WAR 1/2yr, Lineage 2 and FF XI 1/2yr, FF XIV.
Am I happy with many of Blizzard's new changes to WoW? No. The game was at its best in vanilla and The Burning Crusade, in my opinion.
Have I left World of Warcraft for other games? Yes.
At the same time, I think its important to keep in mind that World of Warcraft is almost seven years old. Subscriptions are bound to decrease at some point, especially as new games hit the market. While I don't think Blizzard is helping their cause as far as maintaing subscription numbers, I also think some of this is natural. The game is getting old, and I think subscriptions are bound to decline at some point. It also doesn't mean the game is bad, it is what it is.
Very true. However it's also worth pointing out, that even if WoW is losing subs, doesn't mean other MMOs are gaining said subs. I know, I know, no one wants WoW players in their game anyway, because every single one is immature and 11 years old, blablabla.
The only game out right now, that benefits from WoW's current state is Rift (new vanilla WoW with new memories to be gained). When TOR and GW2 comes out things change, let's see what WoW has to answer for those.
Pretty much spot on article, although I would use the word playerbase rather than community. WoW lost its community years ago and the way Blizzard set up Cataclysm just magnified that and really put the spotlight on it. If the community was decent, I'd probably still be playing rather than being part of the 600K that left.
Yet despite that, I feel drawn back to good old WoW because... damn... the alternative is what? EVE is fascinating as all hell, but it always end up feeling like a job after a month or two. LOTRO is nice, but it's really just a reskinned WoW with a couple of nice features trying to make up for all of the rest that it doesn't quite do as well as WoW. EQ2 did -not- age well and it's SOE. Aion is tempting, but I just don't dig only being able to be a pretty human with wings. Then there's Rift... I suppose I could try that... seems like the logical next step, but that too suffers from the boring human/elf/dwarf in a WoW reskin.
So yeah, 600K and they might get some of them back for a while with 4.2, but the second there's a viable alternative to WoW, I think they're going to be bleeding subs fast.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Clearly a well-researched article here, stating that 600,000 subscriptions is $100,000,000... except all 600k Subs are not from the United States. This is a dead horse that's been beaten over, and over, and over again. They're not losing $100m a year.
Also, the people who reached level cap in a few hours (before US servers even came up) did it by exploiting. One person tagged a boatload of level 74 mobs in Twilight Highlands out of group while his guildies killed for him, in gigantic packs, netting him hundreds of thousands of xp per hour. In addition, he had other guildies on other servers griefing (on pve) and ganking (on pvp) servers others who were trying to do this to ensure his world first achiev. Kid is an egotistical douchebag, here's his video.
Do yourself a favor and stop at 2 minutes.
On to the premium services, I start to agree. I absolutely will not pay extra for ANYTHING in a subscription payment game. Nothing. Not sparkle ponies, not minibosspets, and certainly not RealId (which I don't use anyway) to group. Cataclysm overall has been good, and launched with better raids than all of Wrath's raids combined (excluding Ulduar), and Firelands is looking pretty good. Unfortunately my time in WoW is pretty much log in on raid night, raid, log out. I'm hoping they do something to balance classes, give us something to do, and stop trying to milk us for money. More likely, I'll be letting my sub die in July
There is a lesson here. So many players have their want list and believe the game will be better for it. They are often wrong.
As to the 5% drop in population, that is icing on the cake subs. By that I mean, subs beyond the covering your costs or to say pure profit subs. Those are tough to lose.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I played WoW from launch to 4 months into Cata. The thing I've noticed in all that time was a greater and greater emphasis on raid content, though by making it progressively more accessible to a broader range of people. Old School Raiders of course had their epeens threatened by this and like to imagine themselves as being smarter than everyone else for having memorized battles that took more people. /shrug
The fact is do any one thing repeatedly for a long enough period of time you get tired of it. The range of options for player activity is relatively narrow, you can raid, or you can arena, with everything else being busy work. Nobody likes busywork, and eventually you will burn out on the repeated style of play no matter how many tricks the bosses have up their sleeve. WoW is what it is, a McDonald's hamburger for the gaming masses. It brought MMOs onto the mainstream perhaps, but its going to lose subs and this trend will continue. As one poster said, its not a single game that will erode WoW's sub base, its the collective.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
I agree WoWs community is hostile in a way I have only seen in shooters.
Wow is a game which is mainly driven by loot. Acquiring new gear is the reason for most things you do in this game. And in my opinion blizzard is now failing with the loot system. It already started with BC and Woltk but its much worse now then it was before. I did lvl 60 40people raids. When I collected T1 and T2 I knew every piece of my equipment, I remembered when I got it where. A single epic could last 6 month or more, every bit was an achievement. I also remembered most of the things my guild mates got.
But now there is a item hyper inflation. Not only that you can get epics on every corner, you also know that you just have to wait for 1 patch then the points shift and you can easily collect a bunch of new items by doing heroic 5man.
Somehow collecting loot - which is the key to play wow - got absolutley pointless. When I played 40man raids I had the feeling that the time investment is worth something this feeling is gone long ago.
In away its your own fault you could have said no when BC came and stop playing but no you millions keep playing, so blizzard got the wrong message and keep simplifying the game and now you complain lol. And im sure in in 2 years time when you can play solo whole game and get epics by doing a instance solo you still play and complain haha.
Soon we get swtor also that will do exactly what blizzard is doing for last 6 years lol.
Dont play there games problem solved:)
Nope , it is just the way it (key word here)....feels to me"
You know like an opinion.
Remaking something already there is innovative is what you are getting at I am assuming then?
If it feels like it was worth an expansion for "you" great ..keep on subbing. For me .. it doesn't.
Nope!! Can't lose what you never had.
They've made strides in greatly reducing community interaction, that's for sure.
The game is gonna go the same way as The sims online/EA hangout or what ever it has called. I quit because every tavern i went to was full of people have cyber X. X can be anything to a hand job to an orgy. The game is sick, and that was a year ago. My friend plays, and i looked what he was doing, he was trying to set a home town to telly to, but everyone kept sending things like "hey sexy" or "do you like my body", the worst was "you wanna ride my shemale d*ck". I say that i won't play it till this stops, Its full of pervs.
Also has said before grind 8 hours a day = great gear/no life or dates......Sorry to tell people, but whatever the highest tier armour is, its not "hot and sexy" its a simbol of no life or being a member for years!
ps the only community its losing is casual gamers, all the people who play hours on are still there, finding a person who has a life in WoW is like those Wheres Waldo books....
They've done well in uniting people against them. That's a creation of community in its own way.
WOW has a community? Who knew?
But seriously, I think the game mechanics changed long ago that sort of "devolved" the community (as someone else said) as just a bunch of random people playing some game.
They feel very little ties to each other outside of their current guild or circle of friends, and are far to ready to mock and ridicule others who don't measure up to their "standards"
To me it seems like the FPS shooter community has invaded the standard MMO's of today and they're a pretty critical bunch and think nothing of trash talking both their allies as well as their enemies.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon