WotLK was just plain fun. Wintersgrasp, heroics and all the side stuff was a fun way to relax after work. then came cat... the fun left and it became work. I already have a job I spend 8 hours on and didnt want a second one. So I quit the second job (wow 2 accounts ) and dont see ever going back.
They lost me and mine. We're a bunch of old-head gamers and we left for lotro because of Blizz's disregard for what we requested be placed in the game to make it more fun. They ignored our suggestions to improve classes, they ignored our suggestions for solo content, they ignored my suggestions to improve engineering. Then they began this police-state practice of how the game should be played by EVERYone in regards to heing forced to do heroics, making items is a thing of the past for blizzard characters and crafting died in wolk. I played their game faithfully for 5 years and they put a Marine Biologist in charge and the game went down the toilet from there. It's just sad that they could have done something more fun with the game but instead they took it in the wrong direction for many people so we left. My roommate left for Rift as well in the same week and my whole household has never been happier. Update after update in LOTRO and the store model for LOTRO has been fantastic, you still earn in game your reputation, armor, end game items, the minor boosts to the game play from items in the store and cosmetics are a great revenue source allowing LOTRO to come out with new updates and important changes to classes for improvement. Not to mention that Rift's class model is the best have ever seen, no more cookie cutter talent trees.
I played wow for over 5 years and happy to say im finally free of it. I now play World of Tanks which is a free online game with great graphics and fast 5 to 10 minute rounds. 15 tanks on both sides. Either kill all the other teams tanks or capture their flag for 100 seconds. Im edicted so say the least. For anyone who was in my situation for the past few years looking for a new game you should check this game out. Their will be no trolls talking bad about this game. My first and all time favorite online game was EQ1 and have tried every game out there over the years. Im sure I will play GW2 when it comes out but have World of Tanks to get me through till then. Nothing better than killing noobs so please join this game : ) 2 million subscribers playing. 640,000 US server and the rest on the European server. Their are 3 countries tanks to choose from Russian, USA and German. It's a russian made game so im betting they are the best tanks but im playing the american tanks since im american. This game came out a few months ago. When you start you have the weakest tanks untill you upgrade them and the game puts you in the game with the same level tanks. You also can talk to the other side which is great. Personally I love reading the guy I just killed crying about me killing his tank. It's not like Eve where you loose the tank forever. You pay for the damage with the points you make during that round so each time you play again (Like Day of Defeat) your tank is ready to go. And the best part is there are no Elves, drawfs, complaining kiddies or monthly fees.
I played wow for over 5 years and happy to say im finally free of it. I now play World of Tanks which is a free online game with great graphics and fast 5 to 10 minute rounds. 15 tanks on both sides. Either kill all the other teams tanks or capture their flag for 100 seconds. Im edicted so say the least. For anyone who was in my situation for the past few years looking for a new game you should check this game out. Their will be no trolls talking bad about this game. My first and all time favorite online game was EQ1 and have tried every game out there over the years. Im sure I will play GW2 when it comes out but have World of Tanks to get me through till then. Nothing better than killing noobs so please join this game : ) 2 million subscribers playing. 640,000 US server and the rest on the European server. Their are 3 countries tanks to choose from Russian, USA and German. It's a russian made game so im betting they are the best tanks but im playing the american tanks since im american. This game came out a few months ago. When you start you have the weakest tanks untill you upgrade them and the game puts you in the game with the same level tanks. You also can talk to the other side which is great. Personally I love reading the guy I just killed crying about me killing his tank. It's not like Eve where you loose the tank forever. You pay for the damage with the points you make during that round so each time you play again (Like Day of Defeat) your tank is ready to go. And the best part is there are no Elves, drawfs, complaining kiddies or monthly fees.
No trolls talking bad about wot, you not read the forums at this site. No trolls on wot site as they get perma banned for saying anything negative.
Calling WOT an mmo, when its a co-op game I have to laugh at you.
You had better pick russian tanks, since the game made by russions we know that the german tanks have inferior armor, its been a complaint, also best not pick any gernam names, they get offended easly.
I laugh at you saying no kids, rofl you not read whats going on in your maps or in the genral chat room, it can be worse that anything I seen in wow barrens chat.
This is fanboys fight... That aside its a fact blizzard did some big changes to game and some people dont like it and left playing wow, if they see they are doing it wrong they will fix it and people will come back, if they continue to fail people will keep leaving so its to early to ask if blizz is losing community we will see that in next few months...
Please do not confuse "community" with "subscribers," there is a very big distinction between the two. As others have mentioned, WoW has never had a real community due to poor design choices by Blizzard. Perhaps the biggest killer was the LFD tool and cross server grouping. There is no sense of character reputation or relationships built with those people you group with. Additionally, a player's reputation means nothing even on their own server due to the simple fact that they can pay a relatively small fee to change their name or server and mostly start over. The list goes on and on.
At any rate, yes, Blizzard is at a very real risk of facing an exodus of subsrcribers. Their tired model has run its course and people are seeing that more and more clearly every day.
Having played MMOs since 1997, I am finding myself at a very uncomfortable crossroads. I am finally taking a real break from the genre until a company manages to manifest an compellion, entertaining, and community driven game. I think GW2 has that potential and I wait patiently for its release.
What really put me personally off from the game was the lack of quality and distractions. I think that many of us who quit the game quit because we became bored of the game. But exactly why we became bored might be something that we don't even notice ourselves. Vanilla WoW for me was interesting in that it was somewhat immersive. Your character had limited interaction with objects in the game such as chairs and books and plaques on statues that had lore written on them. Even inns had their own quirky relaxing music that played whenever you met an inkeeper to set a new home. The game had a LOT detail to the geology of the terrain. I know it seems a bit weird, but I think the most interesting part about WoW for me was how every single monster that I killed was well integrated into his environment. His outpost that he patrolled had supplies such as food and weapons and even furniture all in an effort to craft this image that he actually *existed* there. These to me are all significant details in the game that did not make the jump into the first expansion, much less the rest.
Due to the fact that I was on foot for most of my playtime, the world seemed very large and I in contrast was very insignificant. Every zone had its quirky things and details in it. They crafted an interesting landscape that was not easy to traverse, and within it you had creatures of varying strength (elites and non-elites in the same zone). You were limited by your mobility and individuality as you tried to conquer the world. When flying mounts hit the game, this all went away. The world for many of us became much smaller and I think subconsciously we became aware of how really insignificant our advancement in the game was.
This insignificance also became very much so apparent when months of effort and time dedicated to farming gear was circumvented with a new expansion. Suddenly people's tier gear meant nothing, the evil, difficult monsters that I slew last week paled in comparison with a silly elk some 7+ levels higher than me.
Along that, I also think that a focus on bridging the gap from fantasy to reality also played a part. The game became less of a new fantasy world and more of a social hangout spot where people just simply didn't care about anything game related.
The fact that they retconned/modified/outright destroyed most of the lore they spent 10+ years and 3 RTS games to craft also probably played a factor in this as well. It's interesting how the lore changed in that in Vanilla, as a player you were more or less moving along a journey or a tour of the world. Most the monsters that you killed were minor/weak characters in the game's overall story. This changed as well with the first expansion as players got to kill major storyline characters such as Kael'Thas, Vashj, and Illidan. Illidan much less so since he was weak and old.
I learned wow players sucked as soon as I realized they weren't willing to run around in a forest with some friends swinging tin foil weapons at eachother and casting spells at one another... "Magic missle, magic missle!"
You may not like the WoW community, but it's still there. I'm not a fan of the game anymore, but they are the biggest in the market because they do the one thing most MMO's don't do, spend on advertising. You see WoW adverts on TV and at movie theaters, magazines, social sites etc. They are good at marketing, which i think all other MMO's have failed. So the low down is that they will always get fresh players to replace those that get burned out, and still retain enough of the old playerbase with conent and expansion updates. I don't think there will be any significant growth anymore with this title though.
2. We luv'd PvP in WoW, I know many people loved twinking ( getting the best gear you could , As anyone should!) and playing at a level you found the most fun, they forced us to level n the bg's! wtf? It was widely accepted that this was to stop twinking. which made no sense as the only ones that complained did not PvP to any serious extent!
As far as I know you can lock your level for 10g or am I missing something? ->
Now they made twinking so easy that even with leveling you can twink every level. However this made you burn out much faster on both twinking and PvP'ing as you spend most of your time twinking. which is god aweful boring.
The other choice is to pvp without twinking which means getting owned in every fight.
They also added heirlooms which sank PvP forever, they cannot take them away and getting hierlooms is the ultimate excercise in boredom.
I hate twinking and I hate people who do it. They ruined low level PvP. I respect other people's preferences but this ruins the experience for others around you. New players to the game got raped in battlegrounds because of god damn twinkers. Unfortunately, you can lock your level and thus stay in the bracket you want. If I were Blizzard, I would do everything to remove and discourage twinking. Good riddance if you ask me.
While you were giving the lecture, you should have finished reading or gotten some experience with level locking. Any player that is level locked can only enter BGs with other characters that are level locked. Which, is what true twinking was all about. Not for all, but the true challenge. Yes, some griefers wanted to 1 shot newbies, but not everyone. They could unlock and fight in a normal BG, but they'd level very quickly from the amount of xp they'd get and make that twink worthless for that level. The problem was, not enough people to get games going unless it was organized and at first twinks had to form up on certain realms opposed to each other to get worthy numbers. Not sure if that changed with the open to more servers BGs. I stopped playing before then.
Twinking did not originate in WoW. Not even the name for it did.
If you want to get something stopped, get the people who purposely open a new account without certain expansions so they can twink at 60, 70, or 80 and play in BGs with people who will still level. They are what the griefer twinks have gone too.
You could also try to get the brackets more balanced. Blizzard won't though. Certain classes are horribly overpowered or underpowered at certain levels due to what levels they get certain skills or poor scaling. They are completely destroying 85 pvp as we speak with constant changes and adjusting the core mechanics that were the reasons people rolled certain specs to begin with. They went out of their way to tell us how better Cat pvp would be and how they added "more knobs to twist" to make small changes and more hotfixes to fix balance issues. They are NOT using those knobs for anything but hotfix nerfs. They've changed and flopped more of late than any time I can think of in WoW history. They do not look at the big picture, they knee jerk over what should be tweeking of a few numbers to fix, they offer no feedback or insight to the change or it's ensuing reversal, and honestly they look completely incompetant for it.
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
Richiev says: I play WoW and I definately do not want player housing. As for those that do, I think it is a case of be careful what you ask for. If WoW intoduced player housing it would just mean millions of people sitting in their house waiting for their dungeon que to come up.
Dungeon finder + Player Housing = One big single player MMO.
WoW already has too much of a single player Feel anyway, but at least when you are hanging out in Stormwind it feels like a bustling city. Player housing would kill that last little bit of Multi-player that is left in WoW. (And let's face it, there isn't much of that left)
Have you thought at all what housing could mean to an mmo? How it could make crafting fun? The average person as I have seen it enters MMO's not having an opinion about housing, and then finds decorating thier house the most "FUN" aspect of the game.
I myself went through this with star wars galaxies, which because it was made so early in MMO history had the best take. As MMo's move forward they get worse and worse and worse...
Also you really think waiting in your house would be bad? would make it feel more single player? Waiting anywhere is stupid in an MMO! We SHOULD be playing not waiting for a repeat of what we did before.
Housing -dyes- crafting that is not for the thinking impaired are why people who know better really hate WoW.
While I enjoyed WoW at one point with my kids, there is no doubt, in other words it is a fact that people playing WoW do not realize why people are angry. Which is because they are ignorant to how WoW and others have made the whole MMO market chase money instead of being creative.
They do not get angry there is no housing because they never had it and do not get mad that a game would refuse to implemet it. That crafting being useless is not the way is used to be. That not having something as simple as dyes which would only make people happier is something they should complain about.
If MMO's were music WoW would be Michael Jackson, the king of crap, or pop. whichever.
The masses are always full of the less intelligent and shallow to those of us looking at them. I will take Neil young, Billie Holiday or Zeppelib over Pop today and every day.
I didn't say Player housing was bad; I said the combination of player housing and a dungeon finder would be bad. Those two elements should not be mixed together.
World OF Warcraft was once a great game, but Blizzard Expand the game way too quickly unless you were a hard core 8+ Hour a day farmer maybe even played longer.
I enjoyed wow, I bought wow when the first game was ever released before BC,Lich, or Cata, and I enjoyed it, but once BC came out their game went all down hill for me I mean they threw in stuff that didnt even belong in the WOW Story line like Draeni, and Blood Eleves, finally I was like Okay I will add this to my RP, and Lich king brought a death knight never fit into the story, and then finally Cata with a Wolf race, and Goblins, okay now I am seriously pissed off, Cata Changed every skill set revamp everything not something I was looking for.
Blizzard Listen to so many complainers OMG MAGE if over powered NERF NERF, yet mages are supposed to be able to do more damage than any other class in 1 hit, but no they ruined the mage, gave priests, and Warlocks and hunters more advantage, and then they ruined Twinks, said hey you cant use this Skills and that skill together anymore as a mage, I QUIT wow screw it I will never go back period and they killed the game and the community Blizzard had their chancce.
Now all they have left is Micro Transactions, and I bet they regret ever doing those because now Blizzard goes down hill, and Rift is the new World OF Warcraft and lets just wait and see if they make mistakes or who takes them down.
Wow is not a game of skill, it is a game based on gear and level thats all, and no one really wants to play a game like this, lets just say that in wow Blizzard could have put seperate damages on Spells for PVP, and seperate for PVE, but instead they like just nerfed everything and killed out certain classes and peoples play styles going all the way back to Burning Crusade which is the point where Blizzard really screwed up.
dude, you clearly have no idea of Warcraft lore did you even play WC3 at all? or any Warcraft games? Blood elves and the Dranei are part of the game, Blood evles were high elves. a lot of people i know said that BC wasn't that great but i didn't mind it, same as Wrath, but Cata to me seems like its too easy to get from 80-85. i quit wow because i got bored, been on it for 6years so time to move on i thinks.
World OF Warcraft was once a great game, but Blizzard Expand the game way too quickly unless you were a hard core 8+ Hour a day farmer maybe even played longer.
I enjoyed wow, I bought wow when the first game was ever released before BC,Lich, or Cata, and I enjoyed it, but once BC came out their game went all down hill for me I mean they threw in stuff that didnt even belong in the WOW Story line like Draeni, and Blood Eleves, finally I was like Okay I will add this to my RP, and Lich king brought a death knight never fit into the story, and then finally Cata with a Wolf race, and Goblins, okay now I am seriously pissed off, Cata Changed every skill set revamp everything not something I was looking for.
Blizzard Listen to so many complainers OMG MAGE if over powered NERF NERF, yet mages are supposed to be able to do more damage than any other class in 1 hit, but no they ruined the mage, gave priests, and Warlocks and hunters more advantage, and then they ruined Twinks, said hey you cant use this Skills and that skill together anymore as a mage, I QUIT wow screw it I will never go back period and they killed the game and the community Blizzard had their chancce.
Now all they have left is Micro Transactions, and I bet they regret ever doing those because now Blizzard goes down hill, and Rift is the new World OF Warcraft and lets just wait and see if they make mistakes or who takes them down.
Wow is not a game of skill, it is a game based on gear and level thats all, and no one really wants to play a game like this, lets just say that in wow Blizzard could have put seperate damages on Spells for PVP, and seperate for PVE, but instead they like just nerfed everything and killed out certain classes and peoples play styles going all the way back to Burning Crusade which is the point where Blizzard really screwed up.
wow...do you know anything about Warcraft lore? I can't even explain, to you, how much wrong you are with what you just wrote. With that said...you would make a great politician.
I would say the community is just gone. At least on my realm. 90% of the players can't be bothered to visit the realm's forum.
I have been giving away vials of the sands each week for the past 3 weeks, all they have to do is put a name and a number on my post... The thread struggles to get to 5 pages each week. That is just pathetic. I even post adds in trade about it. People have been trained to think that im just a scammer trying to scam in someway. If it were possible I would like to poll my realm asking something like: Have you even been to the realm forums? Do you know where to look?.
As per my above comment my guess is roughly 90% of the realm's population has never been and do not know how to get there.
"very smart people looking at the growing sentiment coupled with declining subscriptions and noodling through ideas on how to change the tone of the conversation."
What Blizzard has decided to do is start threatening people who complain about their game in forums. I recieved a one week suspension for "trolling" even though I had been very careful how I had expressed my frustrations with the game.
I guess if you can't fix the game fix the customers but I think their tactics will backfire. I for one ebded my subscription.
Comments
This about sums it up. Glad I was able to find a quote within the first page, (the first post actually)
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
WotLK was just plain fun. Wintersgrasp, heroics and all the side stuff was a fun way to relax after work. then came cat... the fun left and it became work. I already have a job I spend 8 hours on and didnt want a second one. So I quit the second job (wow 2 accounts ) and dont see ever going back.
They lost me and mine. We're a bunch of old-head gamers and we left for lotro because of Blizz's disregard for what we requested be placed in the game to make it more fun. They ignored our suggestions to improve classes, they ignored our suggestions for solo content, they ignored my suggestions to improve engineering. Then they began this police-state practice of how the game should be played by EVERYone in regards to heing forced to do heroics, making items is a thing of the past for blizzard characters and crafting died in wolk. I played their game faithfully for 5 years and they put a Marine Biologist in charge and the game went down the toilet from there. It's just sad that they could have done something more fun with the game but instead they took it in the wrong direction for many people so we left. My roommate left for Rift as well in the same week and my whole household has never been happier. Update after update in LOTRO and the store model for LOTRO has been fantastic, you still earn in game your reputation, armor, end game items, the minor boosts to the game play from items in the store and cosmetics are a great revenue source allowing LOTRO to come out with new updates and important changes to classes for improvement. Not to mention that Rift's class model is the best have ever seen, no more cookie cutter talent trees.
I played wow for over 5 years and happy to say im finally free of it. I now play World of Tanks which is a free online game with great graphics and fast 5 to 10 minute rounds. 15 tanks on both sides. Either kill all the other teams tanks or capture their flag for 100 seconds. Im edicted so say the least. For anyone who was in my situation for the past few years looking for a new game you should check this game out. Their will be no trolls talking bad about this game. My first and all time favorite online game was EQ1 and have tried every game out there over the years. Im sure I will play GW2 when it comes out but have World of Tanks to get me through till then. Nothing better than killing noobs so please join this game : ) 2 million subscribers playing. 640,000 US server and the rest on the European server. Their are 3 countries tanks to choose from Russian, USA and German. It's a russian made game so im betting they are the best tanks but im playing the american tanks since im american. This game came out a few months ago. When you start you have the weakest tanks untill you upgrade them and the game puts you in the game with the same level tanks. You also can talk to the other side which is great. Personally I love reading the guy I just killed crying about me killing his tank. It's not like Eve where you loose the tank forever. You pay for the damage with the points you make during that round so each time you play again (Like Day of Defeat) your tank is ready to go. And the best part is there are no Elves, drawfs, complaining kiddies or monthly fees.
No trolls talking bad about wot, you not read the forums at this site. No trolls on wot site as they get perma banned for saying anything negative.
Calling WOT an mmo, when its a co-op game I have to laugh at you.
You had better pick russian tanks, since the game made by russions we know that the german tanks have inferior armor, its been a complaint, also best not pick any gernam names, they get offended easly.
I laugh at you saying no kids, rofl you not read whats going on in your maps or in the genral chat room, it can be worse that anything I seen in wow barrens chat.
This is fanboys fight... That aside its a fact blizzard did some big changes to game and some people dont like it and left playing wow, if they see they are doing it wrong they will fix it and people will come back, if they continue to fail people will keep leaving so its to early to ask if blizz is losing community we will see that in next few months...
Please do not confuse "community" with "subscribers," there is a very big distinction between the two. As others have mentioned, WoW has never had a real community due to poor design choices by Blizzard. Perhaps the biggest killer was the LFD tool and cross server grouping. There is no sense of character reputation or relationships built with those people you group with. Additionally, a player's reputation means nothing even on their own server due to the simple fact that they can pay a relatively small fee to change their name or server and mostly start over. The list goes on and on.
At any rate, yes, Blizzard is at a very real risk of facing an exodus of subsrcribers. Their tired model has run its course and people are seeing that more and more clearly every day.
Having played MMOs since 1997, I am finding myself at a very uncomfortable crossroads. I am finally taking a real break from the genre until a company manages to manifest an compellion, entertaining, and community driven game. I think GW2 has that potential and I wait patiently for its release.
Due to the fact that I was on foot for most of my playtime, the world seemed very large and I in contrast was very insignificant. Every zone had its quirky things and details in it. They crafted an interesting landscape that was not easy to traverse, and within it you had creatures of varying strength (elites and non-elites in the same zone). You were limited by your mobility and individuality as you tried to conquer the world. When flying mounts hit the game, this all went away. The world for many of us became much smaller and I think subconsciously we became aware of how really insignificant our advancement in the game was.
This insignificance also became very much so apparent when months of effort and time dedicated to farming gear was circumvented with a new expansion. Suddenly people's tier gear meant nothing, the evil, difficult monsters that I slew last week paled in comparison with a silly elk some 7+ levels higher than me.
Along that, I also think that a focus on bridging the gap from fantasy to reality also played a part. The game became less of a new fantasy world and more of a social hangout spot where people just simply didn't care about anything game related.
The fact that they retconned/modified/outright destroyed most of the lore they spent 10+ years and 3 RTS games to craft also probably played a factor in this as well. It's interesting how the lore changed in that in Vanilla, as a player you were more or less moving along a journey or a tour of the world. Most the monsters that you killed were minor/weak characters in the game's overall story. This changed as well with the first expansion as players got to kill major storyline characters such as Kael'Thas, Vashj, and Illidan. Illidan much less so since he was weak and old.
/rant
I learned wow players sucked as soon as I realized they weren't willing to run around in a forest with some friends swinging tin foil weapons at eachother and casting spells at one another... "Magic missle, magic missle!"
You may not like the WoW community, but it's still there. I'm not a fan of the game anymore, but they are the biggest in the market because they do the one thing most MMO's don't do, spend on advertising. You see WoW adverts on TV and at movie theaters, magazines, social sites etc. They are good at marketing, which i think all other MMO's have failed. So the low down is that they will always get fresh players to replace those that get burned out, and still retain enough of the old playerbase with conent and expansion updates. I don't think there will be any significant growth anymore with this title though.
Archlinux ftw
While you were giving the lecture, you should have finished reading or gotten some experience with level locking. Any player that is level locked can only enter BGs with other characters that are level locked. Which, is what true twinking was all about. Not for all, but the true challenge. Yes, some griefers wanted to 1 shot newbies, but not everyone. They could unlock and fight in a normal BG, but they'd level very quickly from the amount of xp they'd get and make that twink worthless for that level. The problem was, not enough people to get games going unless it was organized and at first twinks had to form up on certain realms opposed to each other to get worthy numbers. Not sure if that changed with the open to more servers BGs. I stopped playing before then.
Twinking did not originate in WoW. Not even the name for it did.
Adding more:
If you want to get something stopped, get the people who purposely open a new account without certain expansions so they can twink at 60, 70, or 80 and play in BGs with people who will still level. They are what the griefer twinks have gone too.
You could also try to get the brackets more balanced. Blizzard won't though. Certain classes are horribly overpowered or underpowered at certain levels due to what levels they get certain skills or poor scaling. They are completely destroying 85 pvp as we speak with constant changes and adjusting the core mechanics that were the reasons people rolled certain specs to begin with. They went out of their way to tell us how better Cat pvp would be and how they added "more knobs to twist" to make small changes and more hotfixes to fix balance issues. They are NOT using those knobs for anything but hotfix nerfs. They've changed and flopped more of late than any time I can think of in WoW history. They do not look at the big picture, they knee jerk over what should be tweeking of a few numbers to fix, they offer no feedback or insight to the change or it's ensuing reversal, and honestly they look completely incompetant for it.
I didn't say Player housing was bad; I said the combination of player housing and a dungeon finder would be bad. Those two elements should not be mixed together.
WoW is slowly dieing, but it's to be expected. They seem to be preparing for Titan and Diablo 3 anyways.
Of course Wow isn't getting much focus anymore, even with cataclysm..
dude, you clearly have no idea of Warcraft lore
did you even play WC3 at all? or any Warcraft games? Blood elves and the Dranei are part of the game, Blood evles were high elves. a lot of people i know said that BC wasn't that great but i didn't mind it, same as Wrath, but Cata to me seems like its too easy to get from 80-85. i quit wow because i got bored, been on it for 6years so time to move on i thinks.
wow...do you know anything about Warcraft lore? I can't even explain, to you, how much wrong you are with what you just wrote. With that said...you would make a great politician.
I would say the community is just gone. At least on my realm. 90% of the players can't be bothered to visit the realm's forum.
I have been giving away vials of the sands each week for the past 3 weeks, all they have to do is put a name and a number on my post... The thread struggles to get to 5 pages each week. That is just pathetic. I even post adds in trade about it. People have been trained to think that im just a scammer trying to scam in someway. If it were possible I would like to poll my realm asking something like: Have you even been to the realm forums? Do you know where to look?.
As per my above comment my guess is roughly 90% of the realm's population has never been and do not know how to get there.
"very smart people looking at the growing sentiment coupled with declining subscriptions and noodling through ideas on how to change the tone of the conversation."
What Blizzard has decided to do is start threatening people who complain about their game in forums. I recieved a one week suspension for "trolling" even though I had been very careful how I had expressed my frustrations with the game.
I guess if you can't fix the game fix the customers but I think their tactics will backfire. I for one ebded my subscription.