You are aware that WoW has lost over 1 million subs over the last year, right?
that's quite a few. but honestly, still not enough, they would need to have so many subs missing that it starts making head lines all over the gaming world. They might of lost 1 million, but I'm sure some of those came back already, or will once the initial rush of Old republic is over - but they may stay *shrug*. Also, Myself included, I was WoW free for some time till I came back a month or two pre Cata and left 2 or 3 months after. Their subs are always in flux, but we'll see if they reaLLy lose any subs soon enough...
You are aware that WoW has lost over 1 million subs over the last year, right?
that's quite a few. but honestly, still not enough, they would need to have so many subs missing that it starts making head lines all over the gaming world. They might of lost 1 million, but I'm sure some of those came back already, or will once the initial rush of Old republic is over - but they may stay *shrug*. Also, Myself included, I was WoW free for some time till I came back a month or two pre Cata and left 2 or 3 months after. Their subs are always in flux, but we'll see if they reaLLy lose any subs soon enough...
well not my sub they wont be having.
A few of my friends are still playing WoW.. One has said "FFS pandas. it's hard enougth to tell your mates what you are doing but at least it sounds like it is fun and competitive but if I tell them I'm pretending to be a panda... It''s too kiddie for me.. going to have to move on.."
Another doesn't mind the pandas but is extremely upset about the upcoming talent changes.
Another 2 have said upset with pandas.. but we are all older people and I am guessing we are no longer blizzards target market segment so I think most of us will move on to a game which is targetting our market segments
The only place I have heard anything positive on this expansion is through forum posts in threads like this one.
Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience...
Could this be a good thing for the genre?
If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?
Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them? Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?
There's always room for new players and the younger, the better. If they are young and it's their first game, they could very well have a loyalty factor that could last for years. WoW had a loyalty factor from veteran players who played other games for years before so it shows it can be done.
Where will the "serious" players go? I hope they go to consoles because games aren't serious and I'm tired of a certain crowd who continually press devs and companies to make games for their little fiefdoms. Games are supposed to be fun, not serious business with required mods, required addons, required gear, required mandatory meetings, etc.
On the one hand you said "younger" players, then on the other you said "mature" players so I assume you mean "old". Age doesn't matter as far as games.. old people like good games just like young people do.
I can't justify forking out money for a new expansion that lacks a central enemy while paying a sub fee. Too many F2P/hybrid options now available that I see myself shifting towards the hybrid pay models. A hat tip to WoW as it was a fun ride, but it is over for me personally.
Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience...
Could this be a good thing for the genre?
If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?
Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them? Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?
There's always room for new players and the younger, the better. If they are young and it's their first game, they could very well have a loyalty factor that could last for years. WoW had a loyalty factor from veteran players who played other games for years before so it shows it can be done.
Where will the "serious" players go? I hope they go to consoles because games aren't serious and I'm tired of a certain crowd who continually press devs and companies to make games for their little fiefdoms. Games are supposed to be fun, not serious business with required mods, required addons, required gear, required mandatory meetings, etc.
On the one hand you said "younger" players, then on the other you said "mature" players so I assume you mean "old". Age doesn't matter as far as games.. old people like good games just like young people do.
You fail to understand our market segment. Many of us are serious and enjoy complicated stuff and mods and can find our way around the PC.. it is unfortunate in many ways IMO that windows came along and dumbed down the whole PC market. I much preferred the awkwardness of tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to get everything working right. That is complicated and where many of us PC lot originated from.
Console games do not appeal to me.. They are as a rule not complicated enougth. I still do pen and paper gamemastering. I like the complexity and the freedom that comes with it. In a set of rules where every conceivable action is covered they are not that complex.
My wife and I yesterday signed up for the one year contract so we can get Diablo 3 free. Were not going anywhere for at least another year. The gloom and doom that follows Wow on this site has not effected us one bit. Were both looking forward to the next expansion and who can't be excited about playing a Monk.
You are aware that WoW has lost over 1 million subs over the last year, right?
that's quite a few. but honestly, still not enough, they would need to have so many subs missing that it starts making head lines all over the gaming world. They might of lost 1 million, but I'm sure some of those came back already, or will once the initial rush of Old republic is over - but they may stay *shrug*. Also, Myself included, I was WoW free for some time till I came back a month or two pre Cata and left 2 or 3 months after. Their subs are always in flux, but we'll see if they reaLLy lose any subs soon enough...
well not my sub they wont be having.
A few of my friends are still playing WoW.. One has said "FFS pandas. it's hard enougth to tell your mates what you are doing but at least it sounds like it is fun and competitive but if I tell them I'm pretending to be a panda... It''s too kiddie for me.. going to have to move on.."
Another doesn't mind the pandas but is extremely upset about the upcoming talent changes.
Another 2 have said upset with pandas.. but we are all older people and I am guessing we are no longer blizzards target market segment so I think most of us will move on to a game which is targetting our market segments
The only place I have heard anything positive on this expansion is through forum posts in threads like this one.
I am obsessed with the idea of panda's, friggen awesome. It sounds to me like your first friend is not a MMO player and part of the whole "I play games that are only badass, but stick to manly things in WoW so I can play with friends". The idea of an D&D / RPG, is a world with ugly monster's and creatures that are pretty. Panda for life
A few of my friends are still playing WoW.. One has said "FFS pandas. it's hard enougth to tell your mates what you are doing but at least it sounds like it is fun and competitive but if I tell them I'm pretending to be a panda... It''s too kiddie for me.. going to have to move on.."
Another doesn't mind the pandas but is extremely upset about the upcoming talent changes.
Another 2 have said upset with pandas.. but we are all older people and I am guessing we are no longer blizzards target market segment so I think most of us will move on to a game which is targetting our market segments
The only place I have heard anything positive on this expansion is through forum posts in threads like this one.
Worrying what your friends will think of you for playing a game that has pandas in it constitutes maturity? Sounds more like high school kids worrying about being cool.
As far as blizzard catering to a younger audience . . . that makes no sense. Pandaren are older than WoW and that would mean the people who were fans of the race are older, not younger. So if the market segment you're talking about is, "insecure 16 year olds" then yes, I don't believe you are their target market. But I hear playing Call of Battlefield makes girls want you!
Blizz gambled with Cata, so they are trying to stop the bleeding with an influx of younger gamers. Nothing wrong with that, but as the WoW base has matured they do yearn for something more.
As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.
Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).
Could this be a good thing for the genre? If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go? Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them? Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?
I am not condoning the play of the mother of all themeparks but lets not be hypebolic over MoP either.
First of all, the stuff you hear on the forums are only from the vocal minority and in no way is an indication of the majority of players. Secondly even if it was true, the indication on any forum other then the official forums are what one should gauge the announcement on, not some serendipitous discovery on an anti-themepark site such as MMORPG.com. The over all vast majority of the responses to MoP on Blizzards official forums are overwhelmingly postitive.
There, your hypothesis has been quashed so go back to hating on WoW in another way.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
as far as a mass exodus? i don't think so. really i clearly hate WOW in it's current form. but after a few days of watching my newphews(5-7 years old) get excited about pandas, i see now blizzard is very smart to market to a younger crowd. it's a good move from a marketing standpoint.
WOW is also a great game to get your teeth cut on MMOs. it has a ton of stuff to do if your a new player.it's not my cup of tea anymore, but i help my newphews when they get stuck.
So all the haters like me need to cool off and grow some i say. the game is almost at the end of it's life span as far as being the top dog in north america.
it will draw little kids to it as well. and i think they need to move to a fully free to play system and maybe add more educational stuff for the younger crowd. plus much of the game is complicated in some areas and mechanics. so make those more simpler.
My hopes for WOW have long past but this could be a great starter MMO for the younger crowd.
You fail to understand our market segment. Define "our". Do you mean WoW players?
Many of us are serious and enjoy complicated stuff and mods and can find our way around the PC.. it is unfortunate in many ways IMO that windows came along and dumbed down the whole PC market. Many are "serious" but many more aren't. Most people just goof around in WoW a bit, leveling when they want, doing side activities and never raiding. Even Blizzard put those numbers out. I think most of those people in that non-serious gamer category probably wouldn't mind messing around with a panda. Apparently Blizzard thinks the same thing.
I much preferred the awkwardness of tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to get everything working right. Again, this is not most people. Most people want plug and play; log in and get going. They don't want to fiddle around with things like this much anymore. This is why gamemakers are going to less complicated games that do this with fewer hotbars and skillsets where you choose only a handful of skills at a time.
That is complicated and where many of us PC lot originated from.I'm sure you do; hence the 'serious' tag.
Console games do not appeal to me.. They are as a rule not complicated enougth. I still do pen and paper gamemastering. I like the complexity and the freedom that comes with it. In a set of rules where every conceivable action is covered they are not that complex. You don't have to play console games, I just said I wish the serious crowd would go there. You can stay in mmos if you like as there will always be another game out there willing to cater to the more 'serious' players. Rift seems to be doing that quite well now with their focus on trying to match WoW's raiding dungeons, addons and mods. So if WoW gets to casual, you can always go to Rift or whatever new game comes out that's more serious. It's not the end of the world.
TLDR: There's always going to be 5:1 or 9:1 more casual players than "serious" players in mmos. It's always been that way.
They aready killed themselves with Cataclysm, WOTLK was bad but fixable. This thing, my god in heaven, this is truly great and terrible, like the face of god great and terrible. All I can do when I look at it was think, how could they let this happen? This expansion is like watching a car wreck in reverse in stop motion.
If there is a major exodus I think it would be great. It would cause Blizzard to stop phoning it in and giving minor incremental additions to the game. The amount of money they put into expansions is clearly a LOT less than they take in. Some of that is for quality control reasons but most of that is for greed. They could crank out a lot more content if they wanted to, they just choose not to.
I'm eager to see how their raid finder goes in 4.3. If they reach a point where I can do semi-pain free raids without scheduling time out of my life that would be enticing. They need to open up raids other than just the current one and give alternative gear progression than heroics. I burnt out on the gear treadmill a long time ago, but the raid finder could be what I'm looking for i I can get gear of the tier lower than the normal version of the raid. I'll wait and see how people resond to 4.3 and MoP beta.
If there is a major exodus I think it would be great. It would cause Blizzard to stop phoning it in and giving minor incremental additions to the game. The amount of money they put into expansions is clearly a LOT less than they take in. Some of that is for quality control reasons but most of that is for greed. They could crank out a lot more content if they wanted to, they just choose not to.
THANK YOU very much for this. This is exactly what i've been saying not only about Blizzard's practices but every other Sub only mmo i've ever seen or played. Sure the could pump out more content but where's the profit in that? if they make you wait exceedingly excruciatingly long for the next content then how will they afford their new yachts or their company cars?
W0W couldn't have released a better "expansion" imo
I'm shocked, thrilled, elated, dismayed. Given that there has been nothing but crap MMO releases for the past 4 years, I am absolutely dumbfounded that they pick THIS as the year to release "pandas".
I bet ArenaNet and Bioware both got together and celebrated the news (after it was confirmed to NOT be a joke).
What's the current number who left WoW by now? More than 1million subs? 2million? 3Million?
So more people have left than the next top 3 MMO populations combined? Also, wouldn't that make it still above 5million subs? Yeah, game is totally dead.
Win China over and you can crush WoW so hard that Blizzard will go into a state of panic like you never have seen. No devs will do this though because there is a common belief that because Blizzard holds so many players in China it represents the gaming genre as a whole in a positive direction. Though I believe GW2 and TOR will make a massive dent in the NA/EU playerbase WoW has.
As much as I liked WC3, I wanted a Diablo MMO much more than a Warcraft MMO. There's no way I'll be subscribing to WOW while I'm enjoying D3. GW2 also doesn't have a subscription and will be a good game to play whenever I feel like it.
Heck D3 is good enough. There is no need to turn it into a full fledge MMO. It has enough MMO features. Essentially it is the LFD feature in WOW, wtih instance dungeons, PvP and auction house/crafting, with Diablo gameplay of course. Many WOW players log in and just do dungeons anyway.
All I've noticed so far is people re-subbing due to all the headline attention wow has received lately. I showed my wife some MoP and she's considering playing, says it looks much more interesting now than before?
I don't know how Blizz does it? Won't be long an they'll be breaking all new sub records.
"Women and Children" will find Mop alot more appealing then grown men, thats not a bad thing but seeing how MMO's in general are like 90% male dominated this might of been a bad move on Blizzards part if they wanted to stay on top.
they might gain a million casual mom's with there preteens children using Panadas as bait but will lose millions of real long term MMO players.
My predictions are that WoW will lose about 3 million subs within the next year due to Swtor and other games combined that are coming out soon.
IMO WoW should of went all out with the Emerald Dream and went hard on the "bad ass factor" instead of the "cute & cuddly"
Its not going to happen, you guys act like Pandas are the only thing in this expansion.
Its no different to when Blood Elves were added, appprantly the game had turned into a DBZ rip off made for Asia.
So the BC was focused and named for Blood Elves? Are the blood elves from a land called blood elfia? Are the blood elves a result of an April Fools joke?
There is a big difference. Pandas aren't a big deal, but the apparent focus of this expansion is pretty lame.
As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.
Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).
Could this be a good thing for the genre? If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go? Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them? Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?
I am ever convinced and increasingly confident that most of those players will be heading to SWToR. Every single day I see more and more people claiming ToR to be the 2nd coming and alot of them are WoW fanboys. If ToR doesnt have 2-3 million subscribers within the first month I would be shocked.
This post bought to you by the letters "B" and "S".
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Comments
that's quite a few. but honestly, still not enough, they would need to have so many subs missing that it starts making head lines all over the gaming world. They might of lost 1 million, but I'm sure some of those came back already, or will once the initial rush of Old republic is over - but they may stay *shrug*. Also, Myself included, I was WoW free for some time till I came back a month or two pre Cata and left 2 or 3 months after. Their subs are always in flux, but we'll see if they reaLLy lose any subs soon enough...
well not my sub they wont be having.
A few of my friends are still playing WoW.. One has said "FFS pandas. it's hard enougth to tell your mates what you are doing but at least it sounds like it is fun and competitive but if I tell them I'm pretending to be a panda... It''s too kiddie for me.. going to have to move on.."
Another doesn't mind the pandas but is extremely upset about the upcoming talent changes.
Another 2 have said upset with pandas.. but we are all older people and I am guessing we are no longer blizzards target market segment so I think most of us will move on to a game which is targetting our market segments
The only place I have heard anything positive on this expansion is through forum posts in threads like this one.
Where will the "serious" players go? I hope they go to consoles because games aren't serious and I'm tired of a certain crowd who continually press devs and companies to make games for their little fiefdoms. Games are supposed to be fun, not serious business with required mods, required addons, required gear, required mandatory meetings, etc.
On the one hand you said "younger" players, then on the other you said "mature" players so I assume you mean "old". Age doesn't matter as far as games.. old people like good games just like young people do.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I can't justify forking out money for a new expansion that lacks a central enemy while paying a sub fee. Too many F2P/hybrid options now available that I see myself shifting towards the hybrid pay models. A hat tip to WoW as it was a fun ride, but it is over for me personally.
You fail to understand our market segment. Many of us are serious and enjoy complicated stuff and mods and can find our way around the PC.. it is unfortunate in many ways IMO that windows came along and dumbed down the whole PC market. I much preferred the awkwardness of tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to get everything working right. That is complicated and where many of us PC lot originated from.
Console games do not appeal to me.. They are as a rule not complicated enougth. I still do pen and paper gamemastering. I like the complexity and the freedom that comes with it. In a set of rules where every conceivable action is covered they are not that complex.
My wife and I yesterday signed up for the one year contract so we can get Diablo 3 free. Were not going anywhere for at least another year. The gloom and doom that follows Wow on this site has not effected us one bit. Were both looking forward to the next expansion and who can't be excited about playing a Monk.
I am obsessed with the idea of panda's, friggen awesome. It sounds to me like your first friend is not a MMO player and part of the whole "I play games that are only badass, but stick to manly things in WoW so I can play with friends". The idea of an D&D / RPG, is a world with ugly monster's and creatures that are pretty. Panda for life
Worrying what your friends will think of you for playing a game that has pandas in it constitutes maturity? Sounds more like high school kids worrying about being cool.
As far as blizzard catering to a younger audience . . . that makes no sense. Pandaren are older than WoW and that would mean the people who were fans of the race are older, not younger. So if the market segment you're talking about is, "insecure 16 year olds" then yes, I don't believe you are their target market. But I hear playing Call of Battlefield makes girls want you!
Blizz gambled with Cata, so they are trying to stop the bleeding with an influx of younger gamers. Nothing wrong with that, but as the WoW base has matured they do yearn for something more.
Good and Bad.
Good in that WoW will not be such a mammoth and that other games will get some of those subs/players etc..
Bad in that other games will get all the douchebags that play WoW ruining their community....
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
I am not condoning the play of the mother of all themeparks but lets not be hypebolic over MoP either.
First of all, the stuff you hear on the forums are only from the vocal minority and in no way is an indication of the majority of players. Secondly even if it was true, the indication on any forum other then the official forums are what one should gauge the announcement on, not some serendipitous discovery on an anti-themepark site such as MMORPG.com. The over all vast majority of the responses to MoP on Blizzards official forums are overwhelmingly postitive.
There, your hypothesis has been quashed so go back to hating on WoW in another way.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
as far as a mass exodus? i don't think so. really i clearly hate WOW in it's current form. but after a few days of watching my newphews(5-7 years old) get excited about pandas, i see now blizzard is very smart to market to a younger crowd. it's a good move from a marketing standpoint.
WOW is also a great game to get your teeth cut on MMOs. it has a ton of stuff to do if your a new player.it's not my cup of tea anymore, but i help my newphews when they get stuck.
So all the haters like me need to cool off and grow some i say. the game is almost at the end of it's life span as far as being the top dog in north america.
it will draw little kids to it as well. and i think they need to move to a fully free to play system and maybe add more educational stuff for the younger crowd. plus much of the game is complicated in some areas and mechanics. so make those more simpler.
My hopes for WOW have long past but this could be a great starter MMO for the younger crowd.
TLDR: There's always going to be 5:1 or 9:1 more casual players than "serious" players in mmos. It's always been that way.
"TO MICHAEL!"
They aready killed themselves with Cataclysm, WOTLK was bad but fixable. This thing, my god in heaven, this is truly great and terrible, like the face of god great and terrible. All I can do when I look at it was think, how could they let this happen? This expansion is like watching a car wreck in reverse in stop motion.
If there is a major exodus I think it would be great. It would cause Blizzard to stop phoning it in and giving minor incremental additions to the game. The amount of money they put into expansions is clearly a LOT less than they take in. Some of that is for quality control reasons but most of that is for greed. They could crank out a lot more content if they wanted to, they just choose not to.
I'm eager to see how their raid finder goes in 4.3. If they reach a point where I can do semi-pain free raids without scheduling time out of my life that would be enticing. They need to open up raids other than just the current one and give alternative gear progression than heroics. I burnt out on the gear treadmill a long time ago, but the raid finder could be what I'm looking for i I can get gear of the tier lower than the normal version of the raid. I'll wait and see how people resond to 4.3 and MoP beta.
THANK YOU very much for this. This is exactly what i've been saying not only about Blizzard's practices but every other Sub only mmo i've ever seen or played. Sure the could pump out more content but where's the profit in that? if they make you wait exceedingly excruciatingly long for the next content then how will they afford their new yachts or their company cars?
W0W couldn't have released a better "expansion" imo
I'm shocked, thrilled, elated, dismayed. Given that there has been nothing but crap MMO releases for the past 4 years, I am absolutely dumbfounded that they pick THIS as the year to release "pandas".
I bet ArenaNet and Bioware both got together and celebrated the news (after it was confirmed to NOT be a joke).
So more people have left than the next top 3 MMO populations combined? Also, wouldn't that make it still above 5million subs? Yeah, game is totally dead.
Win China over and you can crush WoW so hard that Blizzard will go into a state of panic like you never have seen. No devs will do this though because there is a common belief that because Blizzard holds so many players in China it represents the gaming genre as a whole in a positive direction. Though I believe GW2 and TOR will make a massive dent in the NA/EU playerbase WoW has.
Heck D3 is good enough. There is no need to turn it into a full fledge MMO. It has enough MMO features. Essentially it is the LFD feature in WOW, wtih instance dungeons, PvP and auction house/crafting, with Diablo gameplay of course. Many WOW players log in and just do dungeons anyway.
"Women and Children" will find Mop alot more appealing then grown men, thats not a bad thing but seeing how MMO's in general are like 90% male dominated this might of been a bad move on Blizzards part if they wanted to stay on top.
they might gain a million casual mom's with there preteens children using Panadas as bait but will lose millions of real long term MMO players.
My predictions are that WoW will lose about 3 million subs within the next year due to Swtor and other games combined that are coming out soon.
IMO WoW should of went all out with the Emerald Dream and went hard on the "bad ass factor" instead of the "cute & cuddly"
Its not going to happen, you guys act like Pandas are the only thing in this expansion.
Its no different to when Blood Elves were added, appprantly the game had turned into a DBZ rip off made for Asia.
So the BC was focused and named for Blood Elves? Are the blood elves from a land called blood elfia? Are the blood elves a result of an April Fools joke?
There is a big difference. Pandas aren't a big deal, but the apparent focus of this expansion is pretty lame.
Why do you guys like to use the word "exodus" so much? Its like you can't wait for any feather to fall for the chance to whip that word out.
I am ever convinced and increasingly confident that most of those players will be heading to SWToR. Every single day I see more and more people claiming ToR to be the 2nd coming and alot of them are WoW fanboys. If ToR doesnt have 2-3 million subscribers within the first month I would be shocked.
This post bought to you by the letters "B" and "S".
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.