I like to compare WoW to AoL that is if people actually remember what America Online was the most popular Internet Service Provider.
1. AoL was crap, it was always crap, it didn't matter how many people subscribed to their service. It was still crap. Anyone who thinks their service was good at any point in its' history is just being Ingorant.
2. AoL was dumbed down lowest common denominator Internet. It apealed to a lot of people who didn't understand what the Internet was and people who were not ready for real Internet access.
3. AoL was heavily marketed in ways everything from TV ads to other product tie ins to even Randomly sending out AoL CDs through snail mail.
4. At its' height of popularity AoL had 50% of the ISP market. It became a self contained center of cool with people using AoL instant messager like it was the second coming.
5. Eventually AoL users did wise up that the service was just over hyped trash and that there were way better ISPs out there. They left slowly at fist: ten thousand here, hundred thousand there. But then BAM it happened millions woke up and quit the service seamingly overnight. That is because it became "uncool" to use their service. In two short years AoL went from King of the ISPs to completely irrelevent.
Replace AoL with WoW and Internet with MMORPG and you have a good History of where this is going. WoW is on early stages of Step 5. WoW will likely lose 6 to 8 million subs in the next year because the trend is accelerationg it cool factor that gained them all the subs in the first place will now work against them. The #1 reason people will give for quitting will be:
"I quit because my friends quit."
Then some time after that ex WoW player will look back and say "I can't beleive I used to play that horrible game."
that could be applied to any popular game or trend that people play now, COD, Uncharted, Halo, "SEASON PASS", etc....just PLAY THE SAME GAME 6+ HOOURS EVERYDAY FOR MORE THAN 1 YEAR....
Guess what?....you WILL get bored...
just try any P2P, F2P game out there, even DCUO couldn't do better than the run of the mill mmo....why?, Casual play....there will not be any "hardcore" mmo in the future as popular as WoW...
P.S. Read most of the comments here, even in new games most people are expecting a Second Coming of the vanilla WoW feeling....they will be dissappointed, even with GW2 and SWTOR.....we are in the "Casual Era". Hell, Dark Soul's is considered "hardcore".
Battletoads for the NES was "hardcore", try finishing it without cheats....
I suspect this has more to do with the demographics of gaming than anything else, but having dropped in to see cataclysm and have been appalled at how much more unfriendly the game feels with the new guild system. I'm not a terribly social person to begin with but I love the "shared world" feel of MMOs. Unfortunately WoW's approach to "social gaming" is making me feel shut out of the game rather than more interconnected.
I'm a solo player - I love the shared world feel of MMOs, but I don't do groups. WoW's dungeon/raid structure is already hostile to my playstyle, delaying my access to the endings of plotlines by an expansion or two until I can solo them. But now, every time I log in, I run a guantlet of spams randomly inviting me to join quilds (one of the first things I figured out was how to auto-block request windows).
I don't want to join someone else's guild and I don't want to go around spamming for signatures to set up my own private alt-guild. So in the end, the game just feels ... itchy. Even though I don't see as many players logged in in one place, it has developed a sort of unfriendly, trapped-in-too-small-a-room feeling to it rather than a social feel to it.
(1) I'm a little confused by this, you are a solo player but you're complaining that you can't solo group content when its released... Group content and the LFD system shouldn't bother you whatsoever.
(2) The guild spam and invite thing? that isn't a game issue that is a player issue and blizzard gives the tools to stop it. Why is this even a complaint.
(3) Leveling on several servers I still see plenty of players running around..
(4) Sounds like you should stick to single players and pretend the NPC's are PC's.. from my understanding that is the only thing you get out of an mmo. Just knowing you're not alone is enough for you.
(1) Believe it or not, there are actually stories in WoW - but the stories all end at a dungeon or raid. If you are a solo player, you get all the buildup - but you don't get the climax. This isn't a complaint (it's too fundemental to the design of the game), it's just an observation on the experience a solo player has.
(2) It's a broken system - it's designed to make the game more social and interconnected, and I'm pointing out that to some players it has the exact opposite effect, making them feel more disconnected and alienated. This is an issue.
(3) Oh, I don't find it empty - just not quite as packed as it felt on my last visit. This is not a good or bad thing - I just wanted to clarify that the slightly claustraphobic feel I experienced was not due to overcrowding, but rather do the way people were encouraged to interact.
(4) NPCs are not people. People are not NPCs. Single-player RPGs and solo-play MMOs are completely different experiences and no amount of imagination will change that. If this point of view is baffling, I simple ask you accept that I must be a strange and mysterious person who does not fit into your model of the world.
Its bound to happen, its impossible to be number one for so long. WoW had a hell of a run though and im sad to see it go [Btw i play gw now, and have not played wow since wotlk]
I don't sit in while you're running it down; I don't carry a gun... I drive.
I dunno, Diablo 3 and it's Item Mall (basically...) on top of almost requiring you to be in the pressence of a Blizzard employee that's watching over your back on top of only playing online is even more "Come on..."
There's a lot to hate about Diablo 3 when you take out its hype of being Diablo and look at its "features"...
I dunno, Diablo 3 and it's Item Mall (basically...) on top of almost requiring you to be in the pressence of a Blizzard employee that's watching over your back on top of only playing online is even more "Come on..."
There's a lot to hate about Diablo 3 when you take out its hype of being Diablo and look at its "features"...
Doesn't matter, it will sell great anyways, it is a Diablo game.
I don't think it can get as much income as Blizzard gotten from Wow of course, and if they arent careful Diablo 4 will not sell so good but right now Diablo 3 will sell because it is Diablo and many people remember those games foundly including me.
If they mess it up then Torchlight 2 might take over those players instead, but Blizzard will still make a fortune on box sales/Steam downloads.
i was 30 7 years ago WoW was my first mmo and it was good i had fun met some good people that i still talk to and play with today , i also met to many to count bad people who used the game to hate on people , point is we grow as players i for one need a more alive game that helps me to play with poeple and not make it a mmo single player game, for me as soon as i found out about Guild Wars 2 that was it i had to leave WoW, SWTOR will pass the time for now but its is still stuck in the past with the holy trinity thing,
as people have said wow is bleeding but still a old good game but now im old i need new game skills to keep me intrested and the game fresh with hope gw2 will be that game.
Everquest is still going after almost 13 years. I played 1999-2003 ish and have probably played 6 mmo's since then. I miss Everquest and am occasionally tempted to start it again. I keep telling myself to leave it be, it was what it was, yet I get cravings. I don't feel that with WoW or any other game I dedicated hours, months, or years too.
How does a company put a mmo out with the magic of Everquest? That is the keyword: Magic. All the people who played EQ way back when know what I'm talking about when I say Magic. The new generation only know WoW and don't know what it was like to WORK for the level cap.
Imagine in WoW you had to spend hours just to get your corpse and ALL items and equipment back after death. Go through hell levels where it took a weeks to get through a level playing every day, all day. 20 minute boat rides only to get slaughtered upon arrival because of an opposing faction (butcherblock, overthere). A community so tight that you make real life freinds for eternity.
This brings us to 1.7 million subscribers lost in the last 3 quarters. Some things they made note of on the call:
Most of the subscriptions were lost in China.
There is normally an increase in subscriptions around December.
The decreased profit came from all of the games in development and no launches occurring.
There will be at least two major releases next year.
Okay, I'm VERY sure they didn't lose most of those people to China. Gimme a break, we all know that Americans are the most picky when we choose which games to play and when we leave it's due to very good reasons. China my butt. Games about to be released next year don't account for why they are losing subs now. 4.3 isn't even released and they are still using the same old model, they need only look one place as to why they are losing subs and it's not due to future releases, it's due to the devs not keeping up with the times.
Everquest is still going after almost 13 years. I played 1999-2003 ish and have probably played 6 mmo's since then. I miss Everquest and am occasionally tempted to start it again. I keep telling myself to leave it be, it was what it was, yet I get cravings. I don't feel that with WoW or any other game I dedicated hours, months, or years too. How does a company put a mmo out with the magic of Everquest? That is the keyword: Magic. All the people who played EQ way back when know what I'm talking about when I say Magic. The new generation only know WoW and don't know what it was like to WORK for the level cap. Imagine in WoW you had to spend hours just to get your corpse and ALL items and equipment back after death. Go through hell levels where it took a weeks to get through a level playing every day, all day. 20 minute boat rides only to get slaughtered upon arrival because of an opposing faction (butcherblock, overthere). A community so tight that you make real life freinds for eternity. I'm waiting for that challenge again.
I guess equal is your first mmo? we all feel the magic towards the first, for me oyster knights online, that is a grind game, quest is very few and far in between.
wow was fun during vanilla, u don't have mount till lvl 40, class quest that needs to go instances and vs elites, and leveling though not as long, is still harder than now.
so im looking forward to titans, which is being develop by the first batch of devs, hopefully it'll be good.
Wow's population goes up and down all the time, people tend to flock back for the new patches and expansions, but people havent felt the need to go back lately cause the last few patches and Cata havent been really up to spec.
WoW is being overshadowed now by the new MMO's on the market, the content they release is completed far to easily, I dont see this new expansion helping much, uless it makes the game actually hard to play again like it should be.
Wow, a lot of bitching and whining with very few replies mentioning WoW's current subscriber base. Yes it has "lost" a lot of subs, more than most MMO's could handle, but WoW could lose over HALF its player base and still make a profit!
It's what, 7 years old now? I don't think the 10 million plus sub base is none too shabby tbh.
So what if the shareholders worry about a number? Think they have any clue about the actual game?
Also, you do realise that the sub is not one number for each territory don't you? You do not pay the same in say UK or USA as you might in some Asian countries, so a number of subs does not give you an accurate picture of money taken....
And hey, if people think WoW is dead, which it isn't, just wait till this time next year after SWTOR, GW2 and too many others to mention have come out. The number of subs out there WILL of course drop dramatically, but WoW will still have numbers that most MMO's would kill for.
And finally of course, there is the small matter of games such as D3 and Titan on the horizon, Activision will still grasp our money somehow....
I have played WoW on and off since the OB, and although the shine has gone for me, it still holds many fond memories. I can see BOTH sides of the love or hate it arguments (those of a sensible, coherent nature ofc!), but as a player, these numbers would not worry me in the slightest.
By far the funniest thing in this thread is the Blizzard worship going on by the people desperate to defend it.
Why defend Blizzard? firstly it is not even Blizzard anymore right? It was bought by a company that comes across in every way as money sucking.
Saying WoW is crap is not ignorance...we have all played it and thus nobody is ignorant.
If I say it is crap now, and I do then it is indeed crap to me. why would you argue that? It seems obvious to me the WoW haters are the ones that hate what WoW has done to the industry as a whole and to it's own game. Thus they properly relish it's demise.
WoW is a non gamers game. It could have gone in a gamer direction. There is a reason my sister n law plays WoW. She is not a gamer.
Here is the kicker though. To lose that many people in a year ia a wake up call. One has to be blind and refuse to understand business at it's most basic level to claim this is not a tragedy.
It is silly to defend it here. We all know it, we have all played it, if you love it so darn much you should be re learning your class as it has been 24 hours and it must have been needlessly changed by now
Why be here when you also could be having fun with the innovative end game?
I dunno, Diablo 3 and it's Item Mall (basically...) on top of almost requiring you to be in the pressence of a Blizzard employee that's watching over your back on top of only playing online is even more "Come on..."
There's a lot to hate about Diablo 3 when you take out its hype of being Diablo and look at its "features"...
Thought this was a WoW thread..
Though anyways there is no item mall and it isn't even remotely close to one. I don't get your being in the presence of a blizz employee comment.
There is only a lot of hate about Diablo 3 on these forums.. there is some slight bias here.
From who it seems. Biased would imply what? I am one I suppose you would say is biased?
I was looking forward to Diablo3 until they annouced the reasons I wont be buying it. I am biased?
On the other hand you bitch and moan this is not a D3 thread but does not stop you at all?
By far the funniest thing in this thread is the Blizzard worship going on by the people desperate to defend it.
Why defend Blizzard? firstly it is not even Blizzard anymore right? It was bought by a company that comes across in every way as money sucking.
Saying WoW is crap is not ignorance...we have all played it and thus nobody is ignorant.
If I say it is crap now, and I do then it is indeed crap to me. why would you argue that? It seems obvious to me the WoW haters are the ones that hate what WoW has done to the industry as a whole and to it's own game. Thus they properly relish it's demise.
WoW is a non gamers game. It could have gone in a gamer direction. There is a reason my sister n law plays WoW. She is not a gamer.
Here is the kicker though. To lose that many people in a year ia a wake up call. One has to be blind and refuse to understand business at it's most basic level to claim this is not a tragedy.
It is silly to defend it here. We all know it, we have all played it, if you love it so darn much you should be re learning your class as it has been 24 hours and it must have been needlessly changed by now
Why be here when you also could be having fun with the innovative end game?
Ill make your words mine. Played it for almost 4 years, loved it, and the rest is summed up in your words.
WOW lost enough subs this year to triple the population of any of the WOW clones and still has 9 million or more players than any of these said clones. Trust me, I understand as well as anyone that WOW is getting old and I too would like to find an alternative. Ive tried many and none measure up. The haters can and do pray for the destruction of the game. But if it happened, and it wont for years yet to come, what would they have to gain? The same twisted satisfaction that the SWG haters get now that its closing? SWTOR is proof that the "wow clones" are not going away. Just look at the preorder numbers for that game. If WOW died today, tomorrow you would see 10 just like it go into production. The WOW formula makes money and lots of it. Its not going away even if WOW does.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
I dunno, Diablo 3 and it's Item Mall (basically...) on top of almost requiring you to be in the pressence of a Blizzard employee that's watching over your back on top of only playing online is even more "Come on..."
There's a lot to hate about Diablo 3 when you take out its hype of being Diablo and look at its "features"...
Thought this was a WoW thread..
Though anyways there is no item mall and it isn't even remotely close to one. I don't get your being in the presence of a blizz employee comment.
There is only a lot of hate about Diablo 3 on these forums.. there is some slight bias here.
Comments
that could be applied to any popular game or trend that people play now, COD, Uncharted, Halo, "SEASON PASS", etc....just PLAY THE SAME GAME 6+ HOOURS EVERYDAY FOR MORE THAN 1 YEAR....
Guess what?....you WILL get bored...
just try any P2P, F2P game out there, even DCUO couldn't do better than the run of the mill mmo....why?, Casual play....there will not be any "hardcore" mmo in the future as popular as WoW...
P.S. Read most of the comments here, even in new games most people are expecting a Second Coming of the vanilla WoW feeling....they will be dissappointed, even with GW2 and SWTOR.....we are in the "Casual Era". Hell, Dark Soul's is considered "hardcore".
Battletoads for the NES was "hardcore", try finishing it without cheats....
I suspect this has more to do with the demographics of gaming than anything else, but having dropped in to see cataclysm and have been appalled at how much more unfriendly the game feels with the new guild system. I'm not a terribly social person to begin with but I love the "shared world" feel of MMOs. Unfortunately WoW's approach to "social gaming" is making me feel shut out of the game rather than more interconnected.
I'm a solo player - I love the shared world feel of MMOs, but I don't do groups. WoW's dungeon/raid structure is already hostile to my playstyle, delaying my access to the endings of plotlines by an expansion or two until I can solo them. But now, every time I log in, I run a guantlet of spams randomly inviting me to join quilds (one of the first things I figured out was how to auto-block request windows).
I don't want to join someone else's guild and I don't want to go around spamming for signatures to set up my own private alt-guild. So in the end, the game just feels ... itchy. Even though I don't see as many players logged in in one place, it has developed a sort of unfriendly, trapped-in-too-small-a-room feeling to it rather than a social feel to it.
(1) Believe it or not, there are actually stories in WoW - but the stories all end at a dungeon or raid. If you are a solo player, you get all the buildup - but you don't get the climax. This isn't a complaint (it's too fundemental to the design of the game), it's just an observation on the experience a solo player has.
(2) It's a broken system - it's designed to make the game more social and interconnected, and I'm pointing out that to some players it has the exact opposite effect, making them feel more disconnected and alienated. This is an issue.
(3) Oh, I don't find it empty - just not quite as packed as it felt on my last visit. This is not a good or bad thing - I just wanted to clarify that the slightly claustraphobic feel I experienced was not due to overcrowding, but rather do the way people were encouraged to interact.
(4) NPCs are not people. People are not NPCs. Single-player RPGs and solo-play MMOs are completely different experiences and no amount of imagination will change that. If this point of view is baffling, I simple ask you accept that I must be a strange and mysterious person who does not fit into your model of the world.
WoW: Is it over father?
Blizzard: No king rules forever my son.
WoW: I see... only free to play...
Vetran Players: Tell them only that the Lich King died... and that World of Warcraft died with him.
people still care even they left the game..WoW rules..you will be back
Its bound to happen, its impossible to be number one for so long. WoW had a hell of a run though and im sad to see it go
[Btw i play gw now, and have not played wow since wotlk]
I don't sit in while you're running it down; I don't carry a gun... I drive.
I dunno, Diablo 3 and it's Item Mall (basically...) on top of almost requiring you to be in the pressence of a Blizzard employee that's watching over your back on top of only playing online is even more "Come on..."
There's a lot to hate about Diablo 3 when you take out its hype of being Diablo and look at its "features"...
Doesn't matter, it will sell great anyways, it is a Diablo game.
I don't think it can get as much income as Blizzard gotten from Wow of course, and if they arent careful Diablo 4 will not sell so good but right now Diablo 3 will sell because it is Diablo and many people remember those games foundly including me.
If they mess it up then Torchlight 2 might take over those players instead, but Blizzard will still make a fortune on box sales/Steam downloads.
Well, it is a little more complicated since you sell and buy stuff for actual money.
It is kinda a item mall but you both buy and sell stuff in it, like SOEs exchange servers.
Lets agree and say that it isn't a traditional item mall even if you likely can buy most items in the game there for real money.
And it ios kinda on topic, or close at least since many assumes that the players Wow loses will move to D3 instead. Maybe they are right.
would just like to point out that
i was 30 7 years ago WoW was my first mmo and it was good i had fun met some good people that i still talk to and play with today , i also met to many to count bad people who used the game to hate on people , point is we grow as players i for one need a more alive game that helps me to play with poeple and not make it a mmo single player game, for me as soon as i found out about Guild Wars 2 that was it i had to leave WoW, SWTOR will pass the time for now but its is still stuck in the past with the holy trinity thing,
as people have said wow is bleeding but still a old good game but now im old i need new game skills to keep me intrested and the game fresh with hope gw2 will be that game.
Everquest is still going after almost 13 years. I played 1999-2003 ish and have probably played 6 mmo's since then. I miss Everquest and am occasionally tempted to start it again. I keep telling myself to leave it be, it was what it was, yet I get cravings. I don't feel that with WoW or any other game I dedicated hours, months, or years too.
How does a company put a mmo out with the magic of Everquest? That is the keyword: Magic. All the people who played EQ way back when know what I'm talking about when I say Magic. The new generation only know WoW and don't know what it was like to WORK for the level cap.
Imagine in WoW you had to spend hours just to get your corpse and ALL items and equipment back after death. Go through hell levels where it took a weeks to get through a level playing every day, all day. 20 minute boat rides only to get slaughtered upon arrival because of an opposing faction (butcherblock, overthere). A community so tight that you make real life freinds for eternity.
I'm waiting for that challenge again.
Here's the latest report:
This brings us to 1.7 million subscribers lost in the last 3 quarters. Some things they made note of on the call:
Most of the subscriptions were lost in China.
There is normally an increase in subscriptions around December.
The decreased profit came from all of the games in development and no launches occurring.
There will be at least two major releases next year.
Okay, I'm VERY sure they didn't lose most of those people to China. Gimme a break, we all know that Americans are the most picky when we choose which games to play and when we leave it's due to very good reasons. China my butt. Games about to be released next year don't account for why they are losing subs now. 4.3 isn't even released and they are still using the same old model, they need only look one place as to why they are losing subs and it's not due to future releases, it's due to the devs not keeping up with the times.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2546-WoW-Down-to-10.3M-Subscribers-PTR-Build-14966-Class-Balance-Q-A-TCG-Art
I guess equal is your first mmo? we all feel the magic towards the first, for me oyster knights online, that is a grind game, quest is very few and far in between.wow was fun during vanilla, u don't have mount till lvl 40, class quest that needs to go instances and vs elites, and leveling though not as long, is still harder than now.
so im looking forward to titans, which is being develop by the first batch of devs, hopefully it'll be good.
RIP Orc Choppa
Wow's population goes up and down all the time, people tend to flock back for the new patches and expansions, but people havent felt the need to go back lately cause the last few patches and Cata havent been really up to spec.
WoW is being overshadowed now by the new MMO's on the market, the content they release is completed far to easily, I dont see this new expansion helping much, uless it makes the game actually hard to play again like it should be.
Wow, a lot of bitching and whining with very few replies mentioning WoW's current subscriber base. Yes it has "lost" a lot of subs, more than most MMO's could handle, but WoW could lose over HALF its player base and still make a profit!
It's what, 7 years old now? I don't think the 10 million plus sub base is none too shabby tbh.
So what if the shareholders worry about a number? Think they have any clue about the actual game?
Also, you do realise that the sub is not one number for each territory don't you? You do not pay the same in say UK or USA as you might in some Asian countries, so a number of subs does not give you an accurate picture of money taken....
And hey, if people think WoW is dead, which it isn't, just wait till this time next year after SWTOR, GW2 and too many others to mention have come out. The number of subs out there WILL of course drop dramatically, but WoW will still have numbers that most MMO's would kill for.
And finally of course, there is the small matter of games such as D3 and Titan on the horizon, Activision will still grasp our money somehow....
I have played WoW on and off since the OB, and although the shine has gone for me, it still holds many fond memories. I can see BOTH sides of the love or hate it arguments (those of a sensible, coherent nature ofc!), but as a player, these numbers would not worry me in the slightest.
Too many alts!!
By far the funniest thing in this thread is the Blizzard worship going on by the people desperate to defend it.
Why defend Blizzard? firstly it is not even Blizzard anymore right? It was bought by a company that comes across in every way as money sucking.
Saying WoW is crap is not ignorance...we have all played it and thus nobody is ignorant.
If I say it is crap now, and I do then it is indeed crap to me. why would you argue that? It seems obvious to me the WoW haters are the ones that hate what WoW has done to the industry as a whole and to it's own game. Thus they properly relish it's demise.
WoW is a non gamers game. It could have gone in a gamer direction. There is a reason my sister n law plays WoW. She is not a gamer.
Here is the kicker though. To lose that many people in a year ia a wake up call. One has to be blind and refuse to understand business at it's most basic level to claim this is not a tragedy.
It is silly to defend it here. We all know it, we have all played it, if you love it so darn much you should be re learning your class as it has been 24 hours and it must have been needlessly changed by now
Why be here when you also could be having fun with the innovative end game?
From who it seems. Biased would imply what? I am one I suppose you would say is biased?
I was looking forward to Diablo3 until they annouced the reasons I wont be buying it. I am biased?
On the other hand you bitch and moan this is not a D3 thread but does not stop you at all?
Mirror neearby?
Ill make your words mine. Played it for almost 4 years, loved it, and the rest is summed up in your words.
WOW lost enough subs this year to triple the population of any of the WOW clones and still has 9 million or more players than any of these said clones. Trust me, I understand as well as anyone that WOW is getting old and I too would like to find an alternative. Ive tried many and none measure up. The haters can and do pray for the destruction of the game. But if it happened, and it wont for years yet to come, what would they have to gain? The same twisted satisfaction that the SWG haters get now that its closing? SWTOR is proof that the "wow clones" are not going away. Just look at the preorder numbers for that game. If WOW died today, tomorrow you would see 10 just like it go into production. The WOW formula makes money and lots of it. Its not going away even if WOW does.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
Somebody didn't read the article
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH
right over his head.