Vanilla WoW started it all off(obviously) and was a lot of fun for both casuals and hardcores.
Burning Crusade was my FAVORITE expansion yet. Arena's were awesome, the raids were super fun. The game got a little more casual, but still let the hardcore have their way. Battlegrounds became awesome too.
WOTLK was still pretty fun, arena's were shot and no longer fun, pvp was allright in general, raiding was super easy. It was still a pretty fun game overall, lots to do.
Cataclysm... I agree with what was said above. Everything just went TOO DARN FAST. They tried to take raiding and dungeons back to a Vanilla/BC style, but that failed within the first few months and its once again easy. Some of the playstyle mechanics are cool, but its just not fun anymore for me.
The comparison with everquest is very valid, it seem to be the same thing happening with wow.
Changes to the game that a large percentage of the community hates, in WoWs case Cataclysm and the cash milking features. If only 5% has left, I think it is just a matter of no serious alternatives - But bite my .. if GW2 isn't going to offer that and then we will really see the escape starting.
Now any change made in a mmorpg is always a big deal to some and even so much they will quit, but it takes a serious "mistake" to make many leave - The Cataclysm turn was that mistake in my opinion.
I was there from almost the start. I'm probably the only person that liked BC when it came out. Although, I hated the two races they put out with it. Where's my pigmen!? Meh, it close sooner or later ... Or probably not since they can still make a profit off it.
The only reason WoW has maintained the subscription numbers to date is they have no competition, yet. I am sure Rift has taken a few but if SWTOR or Tera Online live up to half there hype than that is when the mass exodus will begin.
They will live up to half their hype. And that's the problem. We need a game so mind blowingly good that everyone forgets about World of Warcraft. I don't care if it's Star Wars or Tera Online, or Guild Wars 2, those games aren't enough. They won't be as good as everyone is hoping, and everyone will just stick with World of Warcraft and complain about it.
By the way, maybe it's not Blizzard, but Activision who is causing the issues. When did the issues with World of Warcraft begin? When did Activision buy Blizzard?
..and they act like you should be honored to play their game. Everything they announce is so matter-of-fact...like you should be happy to pay them more and more money. I agree..business is business...but this is getting ridiculous. I just hope they don't become so greedy that ill will builds up and ruins the chances of what could be a new and great mmo...meaning TITAN. Whatever that may be.
BC was the perfect balance between difficulty and content imo. Funnily enough actiivision did come along near the end of bc(ish) with whisperings that they would try and simplify the game to attract the masses (for profit) They got this big market share and profit because there is nothing else on the market as a poster above said. Blizzzard are abusing this luxury and their customer base, which is self evident by the massive profits aka not investing the monthly subscriptions in the game they are getting paid for.
I bet your bottom dollar if a new mmorg was released today that is as good as wow or better and you polled the wow population about how happy they are with wow then the score would be an eye opener. POSITIVE: There is huge latent demand for a new quality mmorg.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
I don't think anyone is disputing that ...subwise and financially..Blizzard is the mmo King. It is just that many would also agree that power has corrupted the King into a Tyrant.
If Blizzard lose 50% of subscribers they will still stay on top in MMO industry. I play now for 6 years and i didnt finish everything in wow. You can write, you can hate, you can spit on wow but he is the King of MMO. New force is comming soon and we will walk on the path of the Dark Side. Give me that Light Sabre!
If a mmorg comes along that is good enough to attract 50%, it will attract 75% in year, if it attracts 75% where do you think all the gold farmers are gonna go not to mention the investment as blizzard panics and releases titan early :P Blizzzard are sucking as much money out of its customer base while it can until the next good mmo comes. Its just a shame they didnt invest even 1/3 of their profits to keep wow fresh and interesting. But if you enjoy wow just now that is good for you, you are getting you moneys worth for me 6 years was enough.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
WoW has always been about maintaing customer volume with high turnover. I don't think Blizzard has had a great community or even very loyal customer in a long time. The company maintains it's market share growth through overall game market growth and international expansion, which appears to be coming to an end. I haven't analyzed the Activision financials, but I would venture to guess organic growth and customer retention at Blizzard is lower now than it was 5-10 years ago.
Also, like Activision, I think Blizzard has become all marketing and lacks any sort of truly innovative thought. It's good business, but good business decisions don't always benefit the consumer.
Personally, I feel like Blizzard caters to the facebook crowd, which is fine. However, catering to the instant gratification, "like" button crowd isn't going to help build strong, long term communities. It just feeds the turnover cycle in that Blizzard needs to keep attracting more short-term customers than they lose to continue their growth. I don't think that's a very sustainable model. I loved Diablo 1 and 2 and Warcraft 2 and 3, but WoW caused a lot of burnout and I don't view Blizzard the same way I did 10 years ago. SC2 and Cataclysm were the first two titles from Blizzard that I didn't purchase and D3 isn't on my buy list for later this year either.
I have played wow on and off since release, why are people wondering why it is losing it's subs, god it's over 6 years old now of course it's going to start to dwindle at some point ( 600,000 of it's 11 million oh crap quick shut the doors on the game ) people get bored and want to see new things it's a fact of life.
It will have it's core fans playing for a long time yet but the major sub base will move on to new things.
While the LFG dungeon finder is a nice convenience feature, it completely ruined the already dying community.
They should have added in Guild leveling and perks/rewards years ago and never added in the LFG dungeon finder. Many people (even me) just use the Guild system as a means to get access to guild perks like +xp% so you can grind dungeons faster to level new toons.
Actually having more fun now questing and only doing a single dungeon every couple of levels.
They should have focused more on releasing a steady stream of new quests/daily quest hubs and kept heroics at BC difficulty, raiding at Vanilla 20/40 levels.
Should have given more, steady content to the solo player in terms of quests/dailies/crafting and left the heroics/raids to the committed.
Arena was a mistake, battlegrounds were a mistake. Should have forced population balances.
Honestly, I could go on and on.
The "iconic" class ability at level 10 and new trees I actually like a lot, more races / classes = always better then less, phasing tech is awesome and re-do of Azeroth well worth the effort.
Honestly, I think both WOTLK and CATA were "let's do WHATEVER we can to bring in more subscribers, throw an occasional bone to the vets and hope they don't bitch TOO loud and scare off our new customers"
I used to complain about the long, painful grind to level in the EQ's and mastering talents in SWG because it seemingly took FOREVER... but in the meantime, you had a house to decorate, a swoop bike to collect mats for, harvesters to drop, socializing to do, guild houses to build, crafting to grind out and master, drinks and dancing at the local cantina.... it was one big, entertaining ball of choices. You could change your mind depending on the night, your mood, your friends activities or whatever.
Now... level level level gear grind gear grind gear grind... pretty linear and pretty unimaginative. Rift copied the WoW cookie cutout and already I'm bored and gear grinding and the game came out in February. There was a time that I didn't believe anyone over the age of 20 could actually GET bored in an MMO. Those days have passed. What used to be an immersive playground of creativity is now a linear, predictable disappointment. It's just OLD, give us something new.
I stopped playing WoW at the end of February and it's the longest I've been away from the game since I beta tested it. I'm sure I'll return to Azeroth eventually to check in and see what has changed but that won't be for a while. It's a marriage that hasn't gone bad... just mundane.
YES. And more they will lose after SWTOR & GW2 will come out............
Ah....and now with Hellgate London & Age of CONAN free to play..........................
They better hurry with that Titan.............. A game doesn´t last forever...............
You're post is so ominous, Blizzard is now officially scared. Yes games don't last forever. They will lose subscribers, it's inevitable. They lost me several months back, got bored. IMO though most WoW players won't even know the games you listed exist, the people that leave will go back to console games or wherever they came from.
World of 45 minute "looking for tank/healer" queues is having problems? Funny, I thought that 45 minute queues were a sure winner back in December. In fact, I cancelled that month just to break away from the constant influx of people that were sure to be having fun. Damn... just when I was going to get "looking for tank/healer" tattooed on my forehead, too...
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
Post Cat I just didn’t find healing fun and normally I love healing - that and the fact that even the mechanics for the revamped 1-60 were all rehashed content (ride a rocket/giant/whatever and throw x or y at something in each zone etc.) made for a very dull levelling experience.
That and the rudeness you got in 85 dungeon groups, just wasn’t fun any more and what is the point of playing something that isn’t fun?
Enjoying healing in Rift again - not sure ill play it more than a year but well 1 year entertainment is good IMHO
Losing.... lost... done.. Wow is garbage and I do put a large part of my leaving to the community. Gotta hold the shitty developers accountible too for cross server dungeon finder. I'd rather wait for tank/healers that I can hold acountible for being piss poor players than have the strangers that pop into a dungeon, ruin your gaming experience, and go on abou their day. Good job ruining an already stagnant game.
Originally posted by Gregross111 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.
That has been fixed since you last posted about it on the official WoW forums in January. I even checked to see if the infamous floating twilight jasmine was still there in game myself (yay for the 7 free days they gave me).
They do fix issues, just they are very slow at it though. There are more bigger issues than floating herbs.
The problem is there is really nothing to do at End Game. Unless you're a hard core raider, the guild rep grind was really discouraging and disheartening for many small guilds.
The new Azeroth content and new races encouraged people to make alts. Yet once they reach Outland or more importantly Northrend (aka icy bland land), they can't stand the sight of the uninspiring old content and quit. Like myself.
Of course there are going to be various other reasons people will quit for, such as raid dungeon nerfs, the new premium services, etc. Some are player's preference and some is Blizzard digging WoW's grave.
I stopped playing WoW at the end of February and it's the longest I've been away from the game since I beta tested it. I'm sure I'll return to Azeroth eventually to check in and see what has changed but that won't be for a while. It's a marriage that hasn't gone bad... just mundane.
I think you've got the seven year itch I've never played an MMO that long so it's new to me too, but I kno whow it feels in a marriage lol. But, I do agree with everything you've said. IMO, who cares if the community is falling apart. By most games standards, Blizzard should be down to four servers aith about 5k subbers after this long.
WoW built its self up largely from word of mouth and momentum of subs, that same force will eventually see them lose those people too. The game felt to me when I last played like some one had discovered "The theory of fun" plugged a bunch of numbers into Excel and then said "This is the formula for fun so this must be fun".
Consant re-imagining of classes, lackluster content, boring level progression dated mechanics and too many tools that remove consiquence of action have killed the community of this game. However the subscriber base will stay strong for a while to come yet.
Actually the hunter focus change did in the Misses and I we were both hunters from the beggining. Blizzard took a class we had played for 5 years and changed it's entire operation into somthing we disliked and told us "tough get use to it" no chance on giving input and if it should be changed or not. many people with hunters mains left after that. IT WAS A DIFFERENT CLASS AFTER THAT. the rude surly behavior of the change was it. we've been in EQ2 for over a year now and we won't be going back our class is gone forever replaced by ranged rodent(...err I mean rogue)
Guild Wars 2 will be another HUGE hit for WoW even tho it's F2P.
Reason is that a lo of people will choose quality AAA title that is F2P and Next Gen over 15$/month game that's growing old and boring. Why pay for something that offers nothing new and when you spend most of your gaming time in another mmo?
I know I wont ever come back to WoW with GW2 on horizon. Limited time I have I'll spend on GW2, not WoW, and I won't need to sub for it meaning plenty of my friends will also play.
WoW IS going downhill. They made game too casual too boring, it lost it's touch. I wish UO was F2P...
WoW became something like Dragon Age 2 - game targeted at wide audience with no specifics meaning it targets everyone but noone in particular so the game has lots of stuff but nothing is superb anymore.
Comments
In my humble opinion...
Vanilla WoW started it all off(obviously) and was a lot of fun for both casuals and hardcores.
Burning Crusade was my FAVORITE expansion yet. Arena's were awesome, the raids were super fun. The game got a little more casual, but still let the hardcore have their way. Battlegrounds became awesome too.
WOTLK was still pretty fun, arena's were shot and no longer fun, pvp was allright in general, raiding was super easy. It was still a pretty fun game overall, lots to do.
Cataclysm... I agree with what was said above. Everything just went TOO DARN FAST. They tried to take raiding and dungeons back to a Vanilla/BC style, but that failed within the first few months and its once again easy. Some of the playstyle mechanics are cool, but its just not fun anymore for me.
I want the Burning Crusade days back!!
Do you know for certain?
The comparison with everquest is very valid, it seem to be the same thing happening with wow.
Changes to the game that a large percentage of the community hates, in WoWs case Cataclysm and the cash milking features. If only 5% has left, I think it is just a matter of no serious alternatives - But bite my .. if GW2 isn't going to offer that and then we will really see the escape starting.
Now any change made in a mmorpg is always a big deal to some and even so much they will quit, but it takes a serious "mistake" to make many leave - The Cataclysm turn was that mistake in my opinion.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I was there from almost the start. I'm probably the only person that liked BC when it came out. Although, I hated the two races they put out with it. Where's my pigmen!? Meh, it close sooner or later ... Or probably not since they can still make a profit off it.
They will live up to half their hype. And that's the problem. We need a game so mind blowingly good that everyone forgets about World of Warcraft. I don't care if it's Star Wars or Tera Online, or Guild Wars 2, those games aren't enough. They won't be as good as everyone is hoping, and everyone will just stick with World of Warcraft and complain about it.
By the way, maybe it's not Blizzard, but Activision who is causing the issues. When did the issues with World of Warcraft begin? When did Activision buy Blizzard?
..and they act like you should be honored to play their game. Everything they announce is so matter-of-fact...like you should be happy to pay them more and more money. I agree..business is business...but this is getting ridiculous. I just hope they don't become so greedy that ill will builds up and ruins the chances of what could be a new and great mmo...meaning TITAN. Whatever that may be.
BC was the perfect balance between difficulty and content imo. Funnily enough actiivision did come along near the end of bc(ish) with whisperings that they would try and simplify the game to attract the masses (for profit) They got this big market share and profit because there is nothing else on the market as a poster above said. Blizzzard are abusing this luxury and their customer base, which is self evident by the massive profits aka not investing the monthly subscriptions in the game they are getting paid for.
I bet your bottom dollar if a new mmorg was released today that is as good as wow or better and you polled the wow population about how happy they are with wow then the score would be an eye opener. POSITIVE: There is huge latent demand for a new quality mmorg.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I don't think anyone is disputing that ...subwise and financially..Blizzard is the mmo King. It is just that many would also agree that power has corrupted the King into a Tyrant.
If a mmorg comes along that is good enough to attract 50%, it will attract 75% in year, if it attracts 75% where do you think all the gold farmers are gonna go
not to mention the investment as blizzard panics and releases titan early :P Blizzzard are sucking as much money out of its customer base while it can until the next good mmo comes. Its just a shame they didnt invest even 1/3 of their profits to keep wow fresh and interesting. But if you enjoy wow just now that is good for you, you are getting you moneys worth 
for me 6 years was enough.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
WoW has always been about maintaing customer volume with high turnover. I don't think Blizzard has had a great community or even very loyal customer in a long time. The company maintains it's market share growth through overall game market growth and international expansion, which appears to be coming to an end. I haven't analyzed the Activision financials, but I would venture to guess organic growth and customer retention at Blizzard is lower now than it was 5-10 years ago.
Also, like Activision, I think Blizzard has become all marketing and lacks any sort of truly innovative thought. It's good business, but good business decisions don't always benefit the consumer.
Personally, I feel like Blizzard caters to the facebook crowd, which is fine. However, catering to the instant gratification, "like" button crowd isn't going to help build strong, long term communities. It just feeds the turnover cycle in that Blizzard needs to keep attracting more short-term customers than they lose to continue their growth. I don't think that's a very sustainable model. I loved Diablo 1 and 2 and Warcraft 2 and 3, but WoW caused a lot of burnout and I don't view Blizzard the same way I did 10 years ago. SC2 and Cataclysm were the first two titles from Blizzard that I didn't purchase and D3 isn't on my buy list for later this year either.
If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.
I have played wow on and off since release, why are people wondering why it is losing it's subs, god it's over 6 years old now of course it's going to start to dwindle at some point ( 600,000 of it's 11 million oh crap quick shut the doors on the game ) people get bored and want to see new things it's a fact of life.
It will have it's core fans playing for a long time yet but the major sub base will move on to new things.
While the LFG dungeon finder is a nice convenience feature, it completely ruined the already dying community.
They should have added in Guild leveling and perks/rewards years ago and never added in the LFG dungeon finder. Many people (even me) just use the Guild system as a means to get access to guild perks like +xp% so you can grind dungeons faster to level new toons.
Actually having more fun now questing and only doing a single dungeon every couple of levels.
They should have focused more on releasing a steady stream of new quests/daily quest hubs and kept heroics at BC difficulty, raiding at Vanilla 20/40 levels.
Should have given more, steady content to the solo player in terms of quests/dailies/crafting and left the heroics/raids to the committed.
Arena was a mistake, battlegrounds were a mistake. Should have forced population balances.
Honestly, I could go on and on.
The "iconic" class ability at level 10 and new trees I actually like a lot, more races / classes = always better then less, phasing tech is awesome and re-do of Azeroth well worth the effort.
Honestly, I think both WOTLK and CATA were "let's do WHATEVER we can to bring in more subscribers, throw an occasional bone to the vets and hope they don't bitch TOO loud and scare off our new customers"
YES. And more they will lose after SWTOR & GW2 will come out............
Ah....and now with Hellgate London & Age of CONAN free to play..........................
They better hurry with that Titan.............. A game doesn´t last forever...............
Just the gear grind. Level, level, level gear grind gear grind gear grind - expansion - Level level level gear grind gear grind - expansion- level level gear grind gear.... gah
I used to complain about the long, painful grind to level in the EQ's and mastering talents in SWG because it seemingly took FOREVER... but in the meantime, you had a house to decorate, a swoop bike to collect mats for, harvesters to drop, socializing to do, guild houses to build, crafting to grind out and master, drinks and dancing at the local cantina.... it was one big, entertaining ball of choices. You could change your mind depending on the night, your mood, your friends activities or whatever.
Now... level level level gear grind gear grind gear grind... pretty linear and pretty unimaginative. Rift copied the WoW cookie cutout and already I'm bored and gear grinding and the game came out in February. There was a time that I didn't believe anyone over the age of 20 could actually GET bored in an MMO. Those days have passed. What used to be an immersive playground of creativity is now a linear, predictable disappointment. It's just OLD, give us something new.
I stopped playing WoW at the end of February and it's the longest I've been away from the game since I beta tested it. I'm sure I'll return to Azeroth eventually to check in and see what has changed but that won't be for a while. It's a marriage that hasn't gone bad... just mundane.
No bitchers.
You're post is so ominous, Blizzard is now officially scared. Yes games don't last forever. They will lose subscribers, it's inevitable. They lost me several months back, got bored. IMO though most WoW players won't even know the games you listed exist, the people that leave will go back to console games or wherever they came from.
World of 45 minute "looking for tank/healer" queues is having problems? Funny, I thought that 45 minute queues were a sure winner back in December. In fact, I cancelled that month just to break away from the constant influx of people that were sure to be having fun. Damn... just when I was going to get "looking for tank/healer" tattooed on my forehead, too...
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
Post Cat I just didn’t find healing fun and normally I love healing - that and the fact that even the mechanics for the revamped 1-60 were all rehashed content (ride a rocket/giant/whatever and throw x or y at something in each zone etc.) made for a very dull levelling experience.
That and the rudeness you got in 85 dungeon groups, just wasn’t fun any more and what is the point of playing something that isn’t fun?
Enjoying healing in Rift again - not sure ill play it more than a year but well 1 year entertainment is good IMHO
Losing.... lost... done.. Wow is garbage and I do put a large part of my leaving to the community. Gotta hold the shitty developers accountible too for cross server dungeon finder. I'd rather wait for tank/healers that I can hold acountible for being piss poor players than have the strangers that pop into a dungeon, ruin your gaming experience, and go on abou their day. Good job ruining an already stagnant game.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
That has been fixed since you last posted about it on the official WoW forums in January. I even checked to see if the infamous floating twilight jasmine was still there in game myself (yay for the 7 free days they gave me).
They do fix issues, just they are very slow at it though. There are more bigger issues than floating herbs.
The problem is there is really nothing to do at End Game. Unless you're a hard core raider, the guild rep grind was really discouraging and disheartening for many small guilds.
The new Azeroth content and new races encouraged people to make alts. Yet once they reach Outland or more importantly Northrend (aka icy bland land), they can't stand the sight of the uninspiring old content and quit. Like myself.
Of course there are going to be various other reasons people will quit for, such as raid dungeon nerfs, the new premium services, etc. Some are player's preference and some is Blizzard digging WoW's grave.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
WoW built its self up largely from word of mouth and momentum of subs, that same force will eventually see them lose those people too. The game felt to me when I last played like some one had discovered "The theory of fun" plugged a bunch of numbers into Excel and then said "This is the formula for fun so this must be fun".
Consant re-imagining of classes, lackluster content, boring level progression dated mechanics and too many tools that remove consiquence of action have killed the community of this game. However the subscriber base will stay strong for a while to come yet.
I will admit WOW is a good game, even though i refuse to play it now. Did you know WOW makes more money per year than the entire nation of samoa?
Actually the hunter focus change did in the Misses and I we were both hunters from the beggining. Blizzard took a class we had played for 5 years and changed it's entire operation into somthing we disliked and told us "tough get use to it" no chance on giving input and if it should be changed or not. many people with hunters mains left after that. IT WAS A DIFFERENT CLASS AFTER THAT. the rude surly behavior of the change was it. we've been in EQ2 for over a year now and we won't be going back our class is gone forever replaced by ranged rodent(...err I mean rogue)
Here is the story about prison labor in China farming for gold:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/228716/chinese_prisoners_allegedly_forced_to_play_world_of_warcraft.html
China tried to put laws in place to stop this from happenening, but apparaently it still goes on.
I don't know about you, but it makes me sick knowing that a guy you're playing with could be beaten to death any day.
Guild Wars 2 will be another HUGE hit for WoW even tho it's F2P.
Reason is that a lo of people will choose quality AAA title that is F2P and Next Gen over 15$/month game that's growing old and boring. Why pay for something that offers nothing new and when you spend most of your gaming time in another mmo?
I know I wont ever come back to WoW with GW2 on horizon. Limited time I have I'll spend on GW2, not WoW, and I won't need to sub for it meaning plenty of my friends will also play.
WoW IS going downhill. They made game too casual too boring, it lost it's touch. I wish UO was F2P...
WoW became something like Dragon Age 2 - game targeted at wide audience with no specifics meaning it targets everyone but noone in particular so the game has lots of stuff but nothing is superb anymore.