The reason why WoW is dying is because the game is boring and has a huge lack of real content. People are sick of the neverending gear grind RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID. PvP is 100% worthless.
Please tell me something to do besides Raids and PVP. The game has no soul.
I hope MMORPG players are evolving maybe we will have a true 3rd gen MMO.
Blizzard killed their own community, I remember not to long ago when i was reading another article either here or on another site that somone linked a forum post with a player asking for help in pvp, a blizzard rep posted but it wasnt contructive, if i remember correctly it said something like this "L2P noob pvp isnt hard espcially for (class)" It seems that blizzard no longer cares for its fans, While i see people from trion regularly posting on their boards and engaging with the community. Especially during the beta and pre beta phases. In my opinion a MMo cant be great without having a developer who actually cares about the customer not just their wallets. I saw this happen after funcom took a dive from AoCs launch, they fired the head of AoC got a new one and he immediately went to the community asking "what can we do to fix this?" No i know why lotro has such a kind community, they devs care even for it being f2p. TO me Wows community died about half way through wotlk. BC was great i remember Bornakk (think thats his name) and ghostcrawler engaging with the community. Plus Blizzard made there game to much on competition. For a new player even though wow is easy to get into can get put off by how competitive it is. Thats why i casually play mmos now, taking my time leveling, joining a casual raiding guild. Probably ranting now but it just saddens me that what use to be my favorite dev compnay took a nose dive. Its not a coincidence that this happened when Booby Kotick got his goblin hands into blizzard. I blame activision for whats happening mainly.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
The reason why WoW is dying is because the game is boring and has a huge lack of real content. People are sick of the neverending gear grind RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID. PvP is 100% worthless.
Please tell me something to do besides Raids and PVP. The game has no soul.
I hope MMORPG players are evolving maybe we will have a true 3rd gen MMO.
I agree, i got sick of WoW mainly because it wanst fun to raid anymore, the content was dumbed down to lich king being killed the day after his door unlocked, Hopefully SWTOR, TERA, TSW, or hell even GW2 (not a GW fan) Can make mmos a real genre, not something people frown at because of wat wow made it. Swtor really has the chance with its familiar combat but engage the player with story.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
GW1 and GW2 are like night and Day, they're entierly different games.
GW2 is the only truely innovative mmo in DV right now. As much as people want to fool themselves the SW mmo is another rehashed wow with a different setting. It isn't doing anything really innovative or new. It's an anti sandbox mmo on rails, you might as well play an rpg offline.
there are tons of people from gaming websites online who have had a chance to play the Sw mmo in house and none of them paint a particularly impressive, or hell, even good picture of it's current state. It's meant to release the same time as Gw2, at least that has hundreds of people extremly impressed with it's current state. Backed up by tons of gameplay footage on youtube.
If people are really bored of the Wow type mechanics I suggest looking at TERA, a truely action based mmo. Or Gw2.
Name a WoW expansion where the entity known as "the community" hasn't gotten angry, flooded forums with QQ posts, and endlessly claimed that they and everyone they knew were unsubscribing. This happens every time, as no expansion can satisfy everyone, and it is the dissatisfied who feel the need to voice their dissatisfaction, while the content happily go on playing.
Anger is borne from being passionate about something.
Which is why Blizzard should be worried, because the growing trend isn't joy, nor is it anger toward WoW; it's indifference.
To me Cataclysm is a failure. I don't care about 1-60 content because I've done it already. That's where they spent too much time. The 80-85 content is nothing but boring daily quests once you finish all the regular quests. For me it's really hard to pinpoint what I dislike about Cataclysm, but I had fun with Classic, BC, and WotLK all the way up until a few months before the next expansion. I'm already tired of Cataclysm and we probably have to wait a year and a half for the next expansion. And it seems until then, Blizzard are primarily focusing on optional garbage for people to spend money on. I'll pass.
Same for me. Stopped playing @ february myself. I also have a hard time to exactly say why I'm not enjoying the game anymore. Probably Blizz just finally went too far on the simplifcation. I liked vanilla and TBC a lot, WotLK got a bit ridicilous towards the end, but was still ok for the most part. Cataclysm, though... can't imagine when I'd start playing again.
I expected much from Cataclysm, but it's by far the dullest expansion they've made so far. There's no longer true purpose to even leave a capital, you just sit there waiting for some queue to pop.
I actually miss farming stuff for res gear, Silithus raid boss summons, raiding Astranaar, timed Strat runs, etc. Of course a lot of that stuff was so cool, because it was first time doing things like that.
I guess I just miss the sense of new that no longer is there and now that the game is back to Azeroth, there's not even a new continent to use. There's a lot of vets who seem to be feeling the same way now.
Can't complain much though, if a game gives you around 5 years of good times and holds your interest, it obviously has paid its price back in full. I don't even want to imagine how much (more) money I would've spent in beer without WoW.
the more you gain the more you want... blizz or activision (i dont know whick one) has drowned in greed... the more money they make the more money they want... just as any multi millionair company. As refuse 100% to pay for extra services in a sub based mmo (much less if its the biggest million making mmo) which is WoW....
i never played vanilla (started with burning crusade) so idk there. I really love the maps and stuff that came with cataclysm, i just dont like that its too small content to hold players untill next xpac. Also i dont like all the phasing.
why cant blizz focus on the game itself and stop wasting time adding useless extra features and charge players to use them.... and if the want to add those nonsense then at least add them for free....
Blizz, you make just too much money already... fix the game and wether we need them or not, stop charging for extra crap....
Would it be wrong of me to say I hope so as the answer to the subjects question? I just think it might go a long way to prove a couple of philosophies that I have come to believe in these days.
1. There is no such thing as "too big to fail."
2. The only thing that will kill WoW is WoW itself.
I think they're good solid philosophies and while I hate to see anyone lose money or actually fail it would prove them right. We all need something to believe in afterall.
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!!!
The text in red is what I think when I play WoW. Not that the game is not enjoyable anymore, I made a blood elf warrior and I go for achievements which makes me level really really slow, but that's how I get my fun now, I don't care much for raiding since ToC in WOTLK, plus I always liked Final Fantasy better, maybe it's because I started my 2nd mmo life with XI.
I greatly enjoyed Burning Crusade, this for me was World of Warcraft and I never got too far inside the raiding of BC, kara, gruul, a bit of Hyjal and that was it. In WOTLK I saw a decline of everything, that's when guilds started to break since now there was a 10 man progression path. While I had maintained my sub for years in WoW and played daily, even when trying other games, in Lich King I just started going elsewhere and cancelling my account. I spent most of 2010 away from WoW. For Cataclysm I wanted my blood elf warrior for a long time and I did it, even then I spent a couple months away, returning to FFXI but the tsunami in japan made me return to WoW when the servers went down. I been on WoW since then, going for achievements, but yet, my heart is half in it.
I think that things are changing in WOW, not all good either. When Cata came out I was excited to see it all, but I was left feeling like something was missing. I had issues tanking and found the game was aimed at high end raiders (not a casual player), The fact of grinding rep for a guild, and a number of other things left me feeling cold with the new expansion.
Is the community dying, maybe not but I can feel a shift in the type of community that is out there. If you are new to the game and ask a bit of a silly question, you can really get hit with a lot of rude people. I think that could leave a bad taste in a new player and a long term player as well.
Recently I went back to COH and like the feel of that community. I will have to wait and see how things go with my WOW account, but for now ... time to fight evil and have a bit of fun.
I left WOW two weeks after cata came out. I even made the mistake of pre-buying Cata. Grief was I n for severe disappointment. They Nerfed the rogues so bad My 80 rogue couldn't kill anythingand the hunter could barely survive, then they started nerfing others. When someone hit level cap on my server the first day I figured it was the end because then there wasn't enough in the expansion to even make it worth what I paid for it.
Sure wish I had been in on beta for that one.Never would have bought it.
WoW has become the rich, swaggering, arrogant rock star circa 1988. Gained huge fame, now has a fat bank account, and spends his nights spitting beer on his audience at 2-hour shows. While some fans think that's cool, an increasing number of spectators are getting tired of it, and exiting the arena.
I've seen this show before. I ain't buyin' no more tickets.
"I think its just important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of labels, and its even more important, I think, to learn from your mistakes and to fight for the positive choice." - Lindsey Buckingham
Cataclysm was the worst expansion for Blizzard ever. It did everything wrong, it took too long and did not fix the underlying problems with the game. Most people I know gave up on the incessant raiding and took to leveling alts, which gets to be really boring after a while. The new instances are crap because you need significant raid gear to even enter them.
Wow is on a downhill slide and I do not see anything in the near future that will fix it.
I came back to WoW after a two year break because a friend bought me Cata for Christmas. The first thing that I noticed was that the startup areas and major quest hubs were empty. The cities were packed with bored level 85s but the rest of the game world was completely empty. I landed in a guild and quickly found out that no one does dungeons anymore unless they have a high level to run them through. The revamped 1-60 quests, while occasionally interesting, were so pathetically easy that I became bored with them very fast. I somehow managed to make it to 73 before I reached the point where I couldn't even bear to log on anymore (we're talking two weeks of play here, tops). This all leads me to believe that yes, the player base is indeed on the decline.
I don't think it's really fair to judge Cataclysm solely by it's end-game offerings. It was an expansion designed and focused mostly on fixing the problems getting to end cap, not expanding the end game. Leveling was streamlined to not require players to level up on both continents, quest lines were added, lots of voice over was added, more cut-scenes and plot lines in low level areas etc. and graphical improvements that were very welcome were added. Let's not forget they re-coded the entire world of Azeroth to include a 3rd dimension. That was huge.
I believe Blizzard's goal was not to get a ton of new players, but to get players who may have been playing as their level capped characters to make new lowbies and 'live the game again.' Perhaps they didn't add enough end-game content to keep people happy, but I for one give them a ton of credit for all the things they did do right, and I feel as though adding more content can be done at any time. Blizzard has always favored quality over quantity, and the quality they added to the game with Cataclysm is fantastic. And most of the quantity of new content is not experienced in the 80-85 levels, but in the 1-60.
Part of the "5%" decrease in Blizzard subs being lost has absolutely nothing to do with what WoW did. It has to do with what Trion did. For me, RIFT was a huge dissappointment. I pre-ordered the limited edition months before it's release, and played it for about a week before deciding "not being in Azeroth anymore" wasn't a good thing for me. But lets look at how many epic-fail MMO's have been around lately. Champions Online, Fallen Earth, DCU:O, ST:DAC, they were all terrible. RIFT is the first MMO to come along with enough going for it to actually pull some people from WoW. I'm surprised only 5% of WoW players left to be honest, a lot of people have been clamoring for the next big MMO and I think RIFT is it, despite not personally liking it as much.
When Blizzard got acquired by Activision, I thought that would herald the end of WoW as I knew it. Perhaps the new people in charge put some pressure on Blizzard to "fix" their game and not focus so much on simply expanding it. I don't know. I'm very happily leveling new alts in WoW and loving the new experience. I think Blizzard is one of the best companies for customer support and making changes when people ask for them. I think they did plenty in Cataclysm to warrant buying the expansion, and I'm glad they did what they did. I look forward to see what's next.
Although the significantly shorter leveling times, and reduced end-game content did influence my decision to leave, I think there are bigger problems that Blizzard introduced to WoW.
I think one of the biggest problems they have at the moment are the frequent updates they've been doing.
I know that after the first couple months or so, there were quite a few posts on the WoW forums from players who were already sick of relearning how to play each class every couple weeks, or so.
That, coupled with the fact that the fixes they promised would be coming to certain classes that really needed them (Death Knight mostly) only got half finished and then covered up with pointless buffs and whatnot that only made it SEEM like blizzard was doing something, are the really big reasons why WoW is finally dying.
I agree with some of you, WoW really did start dying back in the lich king era, now it looks like WoW will finally be kicking the bucket, as it were.
I haven't felt a sense of community in WoW for years. Blizzard has made too many poor choices in how it treats it's player base that to me is both arrogant and self serving. End of the day we're 'employing' them to entertain us and they're failing.
Cataclysm while I did like the rehab of Azeroth has been in a whole, boring.
My sub runs out in June, and I've barely been able to log in at all since January. The gear grind is old, understandable, but why do BC content when Wrath greens are better, why do Wrath when Cata greens are better - they created wastelands of those expansions.
As someone pointed out at this age of the game, most people have leveled different race/class combos, so do you /delete them and reroll a new one? I actually don't mind leveling, exploring, etc., but again new server or delete the existing ones?
Other games (EQ2, EQ, LoTRO, AOC) all seem much more intune with what their players want and give more variety of things to do in game than end game raid or end game raid. (player housing, alternate advancement, long quest lines, collection quest and much better crafting)
Then there is Trion which has been exceptionally responsive to what their player base wants. No they're not changing things for the QQ more crowd, but they seem to actually care what keeps the majority of players happy. Example the free shard transfers. What a concept! Blizzard between the Battle.net fail and never ending nickel and diming for everything, changing things to the lowest common denominator, it's been pretty awful. WoW has almost become a cash store based game without actually having it in game. Definitely disappointed with the way WoW has been heading since Wrath came out, and more so with Cataclysm.
It's always been said only Blizzard would kill WoW, sounds like they're working on it.
Like it or not you all have matured. You demand new content that is different than the old content. No longer will you be satisfied with hours of endless grinding and harvesting. Will Blizzard be able to make the change or improve? I know they will not improve unless the community demands more from them.
Know what drove me away from WoW. Cataclysm broke the only open world PvP we had - Wintergrasp, and destroyed the rest of PvP for "me" by making "me" have to grind PvE quest(done that too many times all ready and I do not care to do it again). Blizzard continues to neglect the imbalanced servers. They continue to require players to "grind" countless hours of doing the same quest over and over again...
Call me when Blizzard pulls their head out of their arse and creates fun open world PvP again. Better yet, RvR! ANd we don't have to grind PvE to be able to participate in PvP.
All good things must come to an end. No one ever expected WoW to last forever. Maybe it's just burning out.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
IMO wow ruined the Genre , easy buttoned everything , released xpacks way to fast making the content before the newest xpack pointless. Hundreds of raid zones just sit and will never be used again.. Whole cities abandoned for the newest trend. I left wow years ago and im glad i did.
IMO wow ruined the Genre , easy buttoned everything , released xpacks way to fast making the content before the newest xpack pointless. Hundreds of raid zones just sit and will never be used again.. Whole cities abandoned for the newest trend. I left wow years ago and im glad i did.
I agree...go read my blog about Cataclysm. I mention that Blizzard screwd up in so many ways with Cataclysm it makes you wonder what were they thinking. They had all these great cities in the game and in one fell swoop with Cataclysm they become moot. Nobody even uses them any more.
Comments
The reason why WoW is dying is because the game is boring and has a huge lack of real content. People are sick of the neverending gear grind RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID RAID. PvP is 100% worthless.
Please tell me something to do besides Raids and PVP. The game has no soul.
I hope MMORPG players are evolving maybe we will have a true 3rd gen MMO.
bars+girls+no condoms= babies
Blizzard killed their own community, I remember not to long ago when i was reading another article either here or on another site that somone linked a forum post with a player asking for help in pvp, a blizzard rep posted but it wasnt contructive, if i remember correctly it said something like this "L2P noob pvp isnt hard espcially for (class)" It seems that blizzard no longer cares for its fans, While i see people from trion regularly posting on their boards and engaging with the community. Especially during the beta and pre beta phases. In my opinion a MMo cant be great without having a developer who actually cares about the customer not just their wallets. I saw this happen after funcom took a dive from AoCs launch, they fired the head of AoC got a new one and he immediately went to the community asking "what can we do to fix this?" No i know why lotro has such a kind community, they devs care even for it being f2p. TO me Wows community died about half way through wotlk. BC was great i remember Bornakk (think thats his name) and ghostcrawler engaging with the community. Plus Blizzard made there game to much on competition. For a new player even though wow is easy to get into can get put off by how competitive it is. Thats why i casually play mmos now, taking my time leveling, joining a casual raiding guild. Probably ranting now but it just saddens me that what use to be my favorite dev compnay took a nose dive. Its not a coincidence that this happened when Booby Kotick got his goblin hands into blizzard. I blame activision for whats happening mainly.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
I agree, i got sick of WoW mainly because it wanst fun to raid anymore, the content was dumbed down to lich king being killed the day after his door unlocked, Hopefully SWTOR, TERA, TSW, or hell even GW2 (not a GW fan) Can make mmos a real genre, not something people frown at because of wat wow made it. Swtor really has the chance with its familiar combat but engage the player with story.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
GW1 and GW2 are like night and Day, they're entierly different games.
GW2 is the only truely innovative mmo in DV right now. As much as people want to fool themselves the SW mmo is another rehashed wow with a different setting. It isn't doing anything really innovative or new. It's an anti sandbox mmo on rails, you might as well play an rpg offline.
there are tons of people from gaming websites online who have had a chance to play the Sw mmo in house and none of them paint a particularly impressive, or hell, even good picture of it's current state. It's meant to release the same time as Gw2, at least that has hundreds of people extremly impressed with it's current state. Backed up by tons of gameplay footage on youtube.
If people are really bored of the Wow type mechanics I suggest looking at TERA, a truely action based mmo. Or Gw2.
Anger is borne from being passionate about something.
Which is why Blizzard should be worried, because the growing trend isn't joy, nor is it anger toward WoW; it's indifference.
Blizzard promised they'll make quick content releaces (patches and expansions)
Hope they'll do something EPIC raids and things (like Ulduar)
I agree wholeheartedly. Well said.
the more you gain the more you want... blizz or activision (i dont know whick one) has drowned in greed... the more money they make the more money they want... just as any multi millionair company. As refuse 100% to pay for extra services in a sub based mmo (much less if its the biggest million making mmo) which is WoW....
i never played vanilla (started with burning crusade) so idk there. I really love the maps and stuff that came with cataclysm, i just dont like that its too small content to hold players untill next xpac. Also i dont like all the phasing.
why cant blizz focus on the game itself and stop wasting time adding useless extra features and charge players to use them.... and if the want to add those nonsense then at least add them for free....
Blizz, you make just too much money already... fix the game and wether we need them or not, stop charging for extra crap....
Would it be wrong of me to say I hope so as the answer to the subjects question? I just think it might go a long way to prove a couple of philosophies that I have come to believe in these days.
1. There is no such thing as "too big to fail."
2. The only thing that will kill WoW is WoW itself.
I think they're good solid philosophies and while I hate to see anyone lose money or actually fail it would prove them right. We all need something to believe in afterall.
The text in red is what I think when I play WoW. Not that the game is not enjoyable anymore, I made a blood elf warrior and I go for achievements which makes me level really really slow, but that's how I get my fun now, I don't care much for raiding since ToC in WOTLK, plus I always liked Final Fantasy better, maybe it's because I started my 2nd mmo life with XI.
I greatly enjoyed Burning Crusade, this for me was World of Warcraft and I never got too far inside the raiding of BC, kara, gruul, a bit of Hyjal and that was it. In WOTLK I saw a decline of everything, that's when guilds started to break since now there was a 10 man progression path. While I had maintained my sub for years in WoW and played daily, even when trying other games, in Lich King I just started going elsewhere and cancelling my account. I spent most of 2010 away from WoW. For Cataclysm I wanted my blood elf warrior for a long time and I did it, even then I spent a couple months away, returning to FFXI but the tsunami in japan made me return to WoW when the servers went down. I been on WoW since then, going for achievements, but yet, my heart is half in it.
I think that things are changing in WOW, not all good either. When Cata came out I was excited to see it all, but I was left feeling like something was missing. I had issues tanking and found the game was aimed at high end raiders (not a casual player), The fact of grinding rep for a guild, and a number of other things left me feeling cold with the new expansion.
Is the community dying, maybe not but I can feel a shift in the type of community that is out there. If you are new to the game and ask a bit of a silly question, you can really get hit with a lot of rude people. I think that could leave a bad taste in a new player and a long term player as well.
Recently I went back to COH and like the feel of that community. I will have to wait and see how things go with my WOW account, but for now ... time to fight evil and have a bit of fun.
I left WOW two weeks after cata came out. I even made the mistake of pre-buying Cata. Grief was I n for severe disappointment. They Nerfed the rogues so bad My 80 rogue couldn't kill anythingand the hunter could barely survive, then they started nerfing others. When someone hit level cap on my server the first day I figured it was the end because then there wasn't enough in the expansion to even make it worth what I paid for it.
Sure wish I had been in on beta for that one.Never would have bought it.
WoW has become the rich, swaggering, arrogant rock star circa 1988. Gained huge fame, now has a fat bank account, and spends his nights spitting beer on his audience at 2-hour shows. While some fans think that's cool, an increasing number of spectators are getting tired of it, and exiting the arena.
I've seen this show before. I ain't buyin' no more tickets.
"I think its just important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of labels, and its even more important, I think, to learn from your mistakes and to fight for the positive choice." - Lindsey Buckingham
Cataclysm was the worst expansion for Blizzard ever. It did everything wrong, it took too long and did not fix the underlying problems with the game. Most people I know gave up on the incessant raiding and took to leveling alts, which gets to be really boring after a while. The new instances are crap because you need significant raid gear to even enter them.
Wow is on a downhill slide and I do not see anything in the near future that will fix it.
I came back to WoW after a two year break because a friend bought me Cata for Christmas. The first thing that I noticed was that the startup areas and major quest hubs were empty. The cities were packed with bored level 85s but the rest of the game world was completely empty. I landed in a guild and quickly found out that no one does dungeons anymore unless they have a high level to run them through. The revamped 1-60 quests, while occasionally interesting, were so pathetically easy that I became bored with them very fast. I somehow managed to make it to 73 before I reached the point where I couldn't even bear to log on anymore (we're talking two weeks of play here, tops). This all leads me to believe that yes, the player base is indeed on the decline.
People are leaving wow in crowds, there's nothing exiting in there anyway.
Blizz creats shorter content, faster, because it doesnt want to lose the people which are still playing. (forget the other reasons)
Imo wow should be free to play by now. Its too old to be not F2P, no matter what content they add.
I don't think it's really fair to judge Cataclysm solely by it's end-game offerings. It was an expansion designed and focused mostly on fixing the problems getting to end cap, not expanding the end game. Leveling was streamlined to not require players to level up on both continents, quest lines were added, lots of voice over was added, more cut-scenes and plot lines in low level areas etc. and graphical improvements that were very welcome were added. Let's not forget they re-coded the entire world of Azeroth to include a 3rd dimension. That was huge.
I believe Blizzard's goal was not to get a ton of new players, but to get players who may have been playing as their level capped characters to make new lowbies and 'live the game again.' Perhaps they didn't add enough end-game content to keep people happy, but I for one give them a ton of credit for all the things they did do right, and I feel as though adding more content can be done at any time. Blizzard has always favored quality over quantity, and the quality they added to the game with Cataclysm is fantastic. And most of the quantity of new content is not experienced in the 80-85 levels, but in the 1-60.
Part of the "5%" decrease in Blizzard subs being lost has absolutely nothing to do with what WoW did. It has to do with what Trion did. For me, RIFT was a huge dissappointment. I pre-ordered the limited edition months before it's release, and played it for about a week before deciding "not being in Azeroth anymore" wasn't a good thing for me. But lets look at how many epic-fail MMO's have been around lately. Champions Online, Fallen Earth, DCU:O, ST:DAC, they were all terrible. RIFT is the first MMO to come along with enough going for it to actually pull some people from WoW. I'm surprised only 5% of WoW players left to be honest, a lot of people have been clamoring for the next big MMO and I think RIFT is it, despite not personally liking it as much.
When Blizzard got acquired by Activision, I thought that would herald the end of WoW as I knew it. Perhaps the new people in charge put some pressure on Blizzard to "fix" their game and not focus so much on simply expanding it. I don't know. I'm very happily leveling new alts in WoW and loving the new experience. I think Blizzard is one of the best companies for customer support and making changes when people ask for them. I think they did plenty in Cataclysm to warrant buying the expansion, and I'm glad they did what they did. I look forward to see what's next.
Although the significantly shorter leveling times, and reduced end-game content did influence my decision to leave, I think there are bigger problems that Blizzard introduced to WoW.
I think one of the biggest problems they have at the moment are the frequent updates they've been doing.
I know that after the first couple months or so, there were quite a few posts on the WoW forums from players who were already sick of relearning how to play each class every couple weeks, or so.
That, coupled with the fact that the fixes they promised would be coming to certain classes that really needed them (Death Knight mostly) only got half finished and then covered up with pointless buffs and whatnot that only made it SEEM like blizzard was doing something, are the really big reasons why WoW is finally dying.
I agree with some of you, WoW really did start dying back in the lich king era, now it looks like WoW will finally be kicking the bucket, as it were.
I haven't felt a sense of community in WoW for years. Blizzard has made too many poor choices in how it treats it's player base that to me is both arrogant and self serving. End of the day we're 'employing' them to entertain us and they're failing.
Cataclysm while I did like the rehab of Azeroth has been in a whole, boring.
My sub runs out in June, and I've barely been able to log in at all since January. The gear grind is old, understandable, but why do BC content when Wrath greens are better, why do Wrath when Cata greens are better - they created wastelands of those expansions.
As someone pointed out at this age of the game, most people have leveled different race/class combos, so do you /delete them and reroll a new one? I actually don't mind leveling, exploring, etc., but again new server or delete the existing ones?
Other games (EQ2, EQ, LoTRO, AOC) all seem much more intune with what their players want and give more variety of things to do in game than end game raid or end game raid. (player housing, alternate advancement, long quest lines, collection quest and much better crafting)
Then there is Trion which has been exceptionally responsive to what their player base wants. No they're not changing things for the QQ more crowd, but they seem to actually care what keeps the majority of players happy. Example the free shard transfers. What a concept! Blizzard between the Battle.net fail and never ending nickel and diming for everything, changing things to the lowest common denominator, it's been pretty awful. WoW has almost become a cash store based game without actually having it in game. Definitely disappointed with the way WoW has been heading since Wrath came out, and more so with Cataclysm.
It's always been said only Blizzard would kill WoW, sounds like they're working on it.
Proud member of Hammerfist Clan Gaming Community.
Currently playing: RIFT, EQ2, WoW, LoTRO
Retired: Warhammer, AoC, EQ
Waiting: SWToR & GW2
Like it or not you all have matured. You demand new content that is different than the old content. No longer will you be satisfied with hours of endless grinding and harvesting. Will Blizzard be able to make the change or improve? I know they will not improve unless the community demands more from them.
Know what drove me away from WoW. Cataclysm broke the only open world PvP we had - Wintergrasp, and destroyed the rest of PvP for "me" by making "me" have to grind PvE quest(done that too many times all ready and I do not care to do it again). Blizzard continues to neglect the imbalanced servers. They continue to require players to "grind" countless hours of doing the same quest over and over again...
Call me when Blizzard pulls their head out of their arse and creates fun open world PvP again. Better yet, RvR! ANd we don't have to grind PvE to be able to participate in PvP.
All good things must come to an end. No one ever expected WoW to last forever. Maybe it's just burning out.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
IMO wow ruined the Genre , easy buttoned everything , released xpacks way to fast making the content before the newest xpack pointless. Hundreds of raid zones just sit and will never be used again.. Whole cities abandoned for the newest trend. I left wow years ago and im glad i did.
I agree...go read my blog about Cataclysm. I mention that Blizzard screwd up in so many ways with Cataclysm it makes you wonder what were they thinking. They had all these great cities in the game and in one fell swoop with Cataclysm they become moot. Nobody even uses them any more.
Just read here, its in two parts.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Teala/012011/21330_My-Thoughts-on-Cataclysm-Part-1
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Teala/012011/21342_My-Thoughts-on-Cataclysm-Part-2
Want to know just how crappy Cataclysm is.
This is still broken, along with many others. Blizzard does not even take the time to fix something as simple as this.
Bumbling pay-for-features aside, what's really hurt WoW is the loss of its core dev team to Titan.
It shows in everything they do.
Playing: FFXIV, EVE