Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Lineage 1 still has almost 2 million subs(eastern market). It is not a quarter but it is a good number.
America is the only market to a lot of our friends here....
Eastern market > west for MMOs. There there are more "successful" sub based MMOs than here.
The reason is pretty simple, the Eastern market seems to have a way higher tolerance for low content pure grind based games than the Western one.
A successful MMO doesn't need to be a WoW killer nor have WoW-subs. But needs to have a stable number of subs even after the years.
Agreed, I'd just add "a stable and sufficient number of subs". Developers aren't just there to make games, but also to make enough money to feed their families and take care of them.
Easten players are not spoiled as US players that are used to cry due to anything. That is why it is a hard time for MMOs here.
Disagree. See first answer. Most of the Eastern MMOs, the Western player wouldn't touch with a ten foot pool since they are horrible mindless grinds.
If content means doing the same instance over and over, I prefer the old style grind and drama due to guild wars fighting over world resources.
Western MMOs are made to be finished as a single player game withing the 1st week, 1 month for the laziest casuals.
Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Well hey, 9 million of those subs never counted anyway. They're just people in internet cafes in China, not actually subscribers.
So, it's much more likely they have even less subs than that. In its prime, WoW only had 3 million western subs.
Wake up devs, themepark model doesn't work.
Ummm...
Hope this is sarcasm... cause the themepark model works very, very well - depending on the game and the payment model.
Haha, seriously? Didn't work for WAR, or SWTOR, or AoC, or TSW, or Rift, or LotRO, or any of the other recent flops. When a game merges servers and forces itself to go FTP after a month or so, and developers get fired, it did poorly.
I wanted to see the Panda content but I couldnt stomache leveling thru Cata
Cata is not fun
if a game is not fun - why bother?
Man, I remember I was so hyped up for Cata too. I was even here on this website defending the expansion in the months after it was announced from all the haters. I absolutely loved the idea of shaking up Azeroth and changing the entire Vanilla world, totally sounded like a breathe of fresh air and it flipped my love-hate relationship with WoW completely over to one side.
Then as the months went on after Cata's release I realized endgame was the exact same thing that bored me to tears back in Lich King circa 2010. Haven't played since I think November of 2011, just can't really see anything to spark my interest again.
Biggest IP in the world, made by veteran MMO developers (and then scrapped at the last second to make a WoW clone) which only became a modest success, had to get rid of servers, and then was forced to go FTP?
Biggest IP IN THE WORLD, and LotRO was only ever a slow burner.
Well, folks as we all know World of Warcraft has been by far the largest franchise MMORPG for years now. Heck, they are even filming a Hollywood movie based on it now. But, over the past year or so cracks have appeared in the once golden cash cow and its numbers have fallen till now we hit 7.7 million. Is the WoW dream now over?
I played Panda as a Mage levelling from 1-90 and it was fun, but I jumped off the ride at 90 rather than hop onto the gear grind treadmill of endgame again. Why? Well, I feel I have been there and done that as a former hardcore raider of that game. It wasn't offering anything new. But, the 1-90 ride was a good one, but end-game raiding is old hat, really small group dungeons and content is they best way to go now.
So what can Blizz do now. They have an in-game cash shop to bolster revenue, but that is not enough unless they go free-to-play with a buy-to-win cash shop. What is really needed is another overhaul to make the game mechanics more modern and a large fresh expansion with more adult lore.
Peeps. WoW is in trouble now, I think, and only firm and decisive action can reverse its steady decline now.
As always, feel free to comment...
I disagree with your recommendations on possible improvements.
There is a lot they can do.
Player housing and house decoration. Incorporate that to include trophies as decoration from pvp , pve, and raids.
Allow for player created content. Maybe a special area where players can own land to create pve or pvp content.
Add mini games and more custom map options from wc3. They can with their dated graphics include a war zone that is similar to a strategy game but 3d.
Add naval warfare. They could expand on that to turn it semi sand box mechanics with raiding islands and burying treasure, catching pirates and collecting bounties.
Expand on pve content to include dynamic events around the wow landscape.
expand on pvp to include areas that are conquered, and incorporate changes in the the game as a result.
the problem with wow is that it is too bloated with too much of the same. They need to add more long term rewards such player housing and benefits that can be achieved at any level towards long term rewards to encourage alting as well. Also end game should be more than just a gear grind. It could be mini games of card games, open world pvp, or another aspect of naval warfare that does not touch into the gear grind which becomes too much of an investment time wise.
Maybe they can even add a different combat style for fun that is more twitch based as another way to duel for fun.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Lineage 1 still has almost 2 million subs(eastern market). It is not a quarter but it is a good number.
America is the only market to a lot of our friends here....
Eastern market > west for MMOs. There there are more "successful" sub based MMOs than here.
The reason is pretty simple, the Eastern market seems to have a way higher tolerance for low content pure grind based games than the Western one.
A successful MMO doesn't need to be a WoW killer nor have WoW-subs. But needs to have a stable number of subs even after the years.
Agreed, I'd just add "a stable and sufficient number of subs". Developers aren't just there to make games, but also to make enough money to feed their families and take care of them.
Easten players are not spoiled as US players that are used to cry due to anything. That is why it is a hard time for MMOs here.
Disagree. See first answer. Most of the Eastern MMOs, the Western player wouldn't touch with a ten foot pool since they are horrible mindless grinds.
If content means doing the same instance over and over, I prefer the old style grind and drama due to guild wars fighting over world resources.
Western MMOs are made to be finished as a single player game withing the 1st week, 1 month for the laziest casuals.
Preach brother
SOO much irony here.
Eastern MMOs are LITERALLY just grind. Period. This is a known quantity. The content is dry and boring, shallow and easy, and who cares if it takes you years to consume it's only because you have to MINDLESSLY grind forever. That doesn't make it good just makes it time consuming. Seeing as simple proof-reading takes too much time for you I would highly doubt you prefer something that just takes more time to complete for the sake of it.
Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.
Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Lineage 1 still has almost 2 million subs(eastern market). It is not a quarter but it is a good number.
America is the only market to a lot of our friends here....
Eastern market > west for MMOs. There there are more "successful" sub based MMOs than here.
The reason is pretty simple, the Eastern market seems to have a way higher tolerance for low content pure grind based games than the Western one.
A successful MMO doesn't need to be a WoW killer nor have WoW-subs. But needs to have a stable number of subs even after the years.
Agreed, I'd just add "a stable and sufficient number of subs". Developers aren't just there to make games, but also to make enough money to feed their families and take care of them.
Easten players are not spoiled as US players that are used to cry due to anything. That is why it is a hard time for MMOs here.
Disagree. See first answer. Most of the Eastern MMOs, the Western player wouldn't touch with a ten foot pool since they are horrible mindless grinds.
If content means doing the same instance over and over, I prefer the old style grind and drama due to guild wars fighting over world resources.
Western MMOs are made to be finished as a single player game withing the 1st week, 1 month for the laziest casuals.
Preach brother
SOO much irony here.
Eastern MMOs are LITERALLY just grind. Period. This is a known quantity.
Originally posted by IkedaNadia, I agree with you 100%.Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Well hey, 9 million of those subs never counted anyway. They're just people in internet cafes in China, not actually subscribers.So, it's much more likely they have even less subs than that. In its prime, WoW only had 3 million western subs.Wake up devs, themepark model doesn't work.
Ummm...
Hope this is sarcasm... cause the themepark model works very, very well - depending on the game and the payment model.
Bad games fail no matter what themepark/sandbox model they use, and payment models can be successful no matter what the model - if the game is good enough players are willing to spend what the devs are asking for.
I'm a fan of P2P subscription based, but I'm not niave enough to believe F2P doesn't line the pockets of studios that have been successful with that model.
So many products or whatever production are very succesful but for me majority of very succefull are ones i avoid like the plague becouse i think there crap.
For me WoW is total crap a terible product that should die fast.
A succes for me dont mean its by defenition good i know plenty of things in world that are not a succesful, but i think there VERYGOOD and alot better then the very succesful.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
The massive Wow hate is still amazingly funny to hear. People hate what is most popular without reason and this is apparent here clearly.
There are several valid reasons behind the issues with Wow but they are not the following:
1. Modern graphics. There have been updates in this area throughout the game's evolution. Improved water and far greater poly counts on characters. Old race toons are confirmed to be updated too to match the new races. Simple fact is that there are still mmos being put out today with similar or barely superior graphics. Development time is massively impacted by advanced graphics so one picks their poison by thinking advanced graphics makes a better mmo.
2. Modern mechanics. Frankly the UI and even combat systems have changed massively over time. The game is entirely different now than it was 2 years ago. Class mechanics have changed greatly now most classes have not only their original resource mechanic but now 3rd and even 4th additional mechanics. In this regard the classes are now more complex than nearly every clone created after Wow. Also, fps style aiming and reactive defenses are not progression or evolution. Those games are merely different. There will be tab target mmos from here to eternity just like some will have differing combat mechanics. Any game that reduces their buttons is not an evolution. In fact fps style combat cannot handle such complexity and is entirely the reason why the often limit your skill selection. Reactive defenses are actually emulated in classes that have movement abilities anyway to get out of aoe target zones ... same thing as most hybrid games.
3. Amount of content. Sort of an issue with me. One one side of the issue the game does indeed have lots of content. They have added professions and side games like pet combat along with arena which has always been nothing more than a side game (even more so as it will be a pure battle.net queue game soon ... no idea why it is even related to Wow anymore really). The other side of the issue is the MASSIVE vertical progression. This completely makes lower level content irrelevant.
The major issue:
1. Leveling process. The x curve has been greatly reduced. You level quite fast now and you can level in many ways as you get xp even for picking herbs and crafting. You can level entirely through crafting but obviously slower than other methods. The world is empty. Most level through dungeon queuing making the original Wow concept utterly destroyed. The caters to todays ADHD "I want things NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!!" crowd. When you dungeon run it is full of players who won't even let people loot before running off and pulling the next pack of mobs. I've seen tanks pulling in other rooms then dying because the rest of the group hadn't even caught up then blaming everyone else. I've seen healers pulling the next groups because the tanks wasn't fast enough. It isn't an mmo anymore ... it is a grind fest. You could also just pvp your way through leveling. At least they have separated twinks who turn off their xp from those leveling.
That said you can choose to level how you want ... you simply level slower than other options. Play style varies wildly from server to server so community choice is very important.
2. Community. Most servers there simply isn't one. Patience has been coded out of the game and only the few select guilds out there wanting to hold on to the tradition of community and keeping their server alive with events (be it world pvp, rp or general socialization within game) have to be researched otherwise your old server may be a near ghost town with queue-monkey kids only wanting candy and not a full course meal where one enjoys the process of eating and not the finish.
What Wow is is a well made game that tries to cater to every single style of game play out there with solid divisions between each crowd so they don't interfere with each other. This is their greatest failing. You can't create a social mmo when 90+% of your players on each server existing in separate instances from each other and the game world is highly irrelevant. Wow has become so popular that when you talk to Wow players in game they clearly view Wow as how mmos should be and that any other concept beyond it is crazy talk. Blizz makes sure that pvpr's don't interfere with pver's, that gear for pvp, pve trough crafting, raiding and other progressions do not interfere with each other. Even if you aren't in an instance all by your self or with your small group you can still be by yourself through phasing in the main world to further keep players apart.
Wow is well made and very well done on many technical levels but it's whole is made up of separate systems that are so entirely autonomous now that they could be packaged and released as individual games. The reason why so many are leaving is because the mmorpg crowd can no longer consider Wow as an mmorpg. You join Wow and, for the most part, you simply pick a play style and join the nearly single player progression path unless you look long and hard for guilds who strive for actual social gaming.
There have no 2 Wow games ... the original mmo where the game took part within it's actual world and the current game which is a collection of mini-games in a lobby with a 3D interface which is pretty much what the world is now. Wow is a very large version of DDO unless you choose to make the "lobby" relevant which goes against popular play style.
Wow is the perfect example of trying to cater to everyone in a genre that was originally very niche and that polishing a game so much leads to removing it's soul instead of nurturing it's growth. You can only play Wow now knowing what it has become. If you hold onto even a shred of old memories of what it once was and what it could have become you will walk away thoroughly disappointed.
Still, show me a MMO with even a quarter of the WoW subscription base.... Even at this point.
Well hey, 9 million of those subs never counted anyway. They're just people in internet cafes in China, not actually subscribers.
So, it's much more likely they have even less subs than that. In its prime, WoW only had 3 million western subs.
Wake up devs, themepark model doesn't work.
Ummm...
Hope this is sarcasm... cause the themepark model works very, very well - depending on the game and the payment model.
Haha, seriously? Didn't work for WAR, or SWTOR, or AoC, or TSW, or Rift, or LotRO, or any of the other recent flops. When a game merges servers and forces itself to go FTP after a month or so, and developers get fired, it did poorly.
None of those games failed because they are a themepark. WAR was poorly developed and was never able to function the way it was intended. AoC was released too soon and wasn't properly finished. TSW and SWTOR should NEVER have been sold as MMORPGs. Those two games are more like single player online co-op RPGs that pretty much end after very little to do after leveling. Rift wasn't a failure but was dragged down. Rift maintained a sub base for 2 years. Had Defiance and EoN been successful in their own rights, Rift would probably still be P2P. But Trion's other (non-themepark) titles did fail so Trion is now using Rift to re monetize players quickly in order to recoup the company's losses.
Of course we can always debate on the finer details of why each of those games failed, but one thing is certain, they each had their own stories. They did not fail because they were themeparks.
Every single one of those titles was successful out of the gate. GW2 also sold 2M as a Themepark. Each of these games did well at release So players are still buying Themeparks and knowing they are buying themeparks.
Biggest IP in the world, made by veteran MMO developers (and then scrapped at the last second to make a WoW clone) which only became a modest success, had to get rid of servers,
Wrong, they never closed a server. They even kept every single server when they moved the EU servers back to Turbine care, and they added 4 new servers during the move to F2P.
and then was forced to go FTP?
How long after release? You can't compare LOTRO with all the other games you listed, which went FTP shorly after release.
Biggest IP IN THE WORLD, and LotRO was only ever a slow burner.
The main reason LOTRO finally "failed", sort of, is because of bad design decisions from the developers which took the game more and more away from Tolkien lore and closer to a generic fantasy MMO. But it stil took 3+ years, unlike all the other games on your list.
And those bad decisions began in alpha when they scrapped the sandbox design, changed the name from Middle Earth Online to LotRO, and made it a WoW clone. It's certainly more successful than AoC, but for the BIGGEST IP IN THE WORLD, that gave birth to the entire fantasy genre, it was never even close to being a big success. Turbine never expanded. I live next to their offices in RI.
In a time when LotRO had next to no competition, it still didn't do well. And as soon as FTP became a thing, it did it.
Love it or hate it, WoW is pretty much the barometer for the entire genre. These players don't appear to be moving to other traditional MMO's so the big question is what genre / games are they migrating to?
Well, folks as we all know World of Warcraft has been by far the largest franchise MMORPG for years now. Heck, they are even filming a Hollywood movie based on it now. But, over the past year or so cracks have appeared in the once golden cash cow and its numbers have fallen till now we hit 7.7 million. Is the WoW dream now over?
I played Panda as a Mage levelling from 1-90 and it was fun, but I jumped off the ride at 90 rather than hop onto the gear grind treadmill of endgame again. Why? Well, I feel I have been there and done that as a former hardcore raider of that game. It wasn't offering anything new. But, the 1-90 ride was a good one, but end-game raiding is old hat, really small group dungeons and content is they best way to go now.
So what can Blizz do now. They have an in-game cash shop to bolster revenue, but that is not enough unless they go free-to-play with a buy-to-win cash shop. What is really needed is another overhaul to make the game mechanics more modern and a large fresh expansion with more adult lore.
Peeps. WoW is in trouble now, I think, and only firm and decisive action can reverse its steady decline now.
As always, feel free to comment...
Let's do some quick math. 7,700,000 people subscribing at the game for $15 a month. That's ONLY 115 MILLION dollars a month revenue. I make about $2,500 a month revenue. I WISH I could FAIL and still make 115 million dollars...
There are so many ways to really look at all this data. You could say that 8 million is about 7 million more than the average game gets. You could also say they've lost more players in the last 2 years than the vast majority ever see. The game is going to be insanely profitable for many years yet. Even when it finally dips below that line, they can do a F2P conversion and nearly instantly get most of those back. This is the kind of game that will take decades still before any sort of closure is possible.
I do wonder where so many players are going, though. I've seen that question is this thread already, but not enough attention is on that. There isn't a huge influx of players on any other game, though I'm sure at least half of those lost have spread out among the other offerings. 2 million feels right, though I have no data to back that up. It does seem to gel with the sub numbers new MMO's are getting off and on. That does imply 2 million players are just not playing anything. Or haven't changed their current play roster to fill the free time provided by not playing WoW.
To me, that says a great many people aren't leaving from hate but from responsibilities. Kids and marriages and careers are probably starting to get in the way of play time and WoW is getting cut. THAT seems to fit with the changes WoW keeps making. Things like the fast loot they've added and the faster grinds and quicker kills to allow more action in less time to try and fit with a player group that no longer has it. I imagine they have looked over the exit polls and found this to be true.
When the numbers fall below 1 million, then speculate. Until then, what's the point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Hope this is sarcasm... cause the themepark model works very, very well - depending on the game and the payment model.
Haha, seriously? Didn't work for WAR, or SWTOR, or AoC, or TSW, or Rift, or LotRO, or any of the other recent flops. When a game merges servers and forces itself to go FTP after a month or so, and developers get fired, it did poorly.
How many sandbox MMOs are there that prove that model works?
One? EvE? And, by the way, their 500k peak subscribers is still... let's see.... 6 times less than what you say was the peak WoW subscriber count in the west (3 million.)
Don't be ignorant.
No "model" is what makes a game work or not work - it is a LOT more complicated than that.
also, lol@the numbers when EQ Next hits the shelves
People have been saying that the last 8 years.
"lol@the numbers when Vanguard hits the shelves."
"lol@the numbers when Age of Conan hits the shelves."
"lol@the numbers when LOTRO hits the shelves."
"lol@the numbers when hits the shelves."
Great post!
If WoW releases a quality expansion that backs off on some of the simplification and gives long term players what they actually want (and lets the younger players flock back and forth to new titles like Wildstar and ESO etc.)
Those numbers (7.7 million) would actually go back up, like they do for a short while after every expansion.
If the remove the damn gimmicks and simplification and focus on quality content, lots of it, and exceptional gameplay - WoW will continue to do fine, maybe even earn some folks back.
Comments
thats not true - WOW had at least 4.5 western subs
http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/01/22/world-of-warcraft-hits-10-million-subscribers/
Asia 5.5 million players
North America's 2.5 million
Europe 2 million
EQ2 fan sites
Haha, seriously? Didn't work for WAR, or SWTOR, or AoC, or TSW, or Rift, or LotRO, or any of the other recent flops. When a game merges servers and forces itself to go FTP after a month or so, and developers get fired, it did poorly.
When a game reach 500k subs the fanboys yells: Hurray, it's a success!!!
When World of Warcraft have 7-8 million subs they yell: Hurray, it's a failure!!!
Man, I remember I was so hyped up for Cata too. I was even here on this website defending the expansion in the months after it was announced from all the haters. I absolutely loved the idea of shaking up Azeroth and changing the entire Vanilla world, totally sounded like a breathe of fresh air and it flipped my love-hate relationship with WoW completely over to one side.
Then as the months went on after Cata's release I realized endgame was the exact same thing that bored me to tears back in Lich King circa 2010. Haven't played since I think November of 2011, just can't really see anything to spark my interest again.
Biggest IP in the world, made by veteran MMO developers (and then scrapped at the last second to make a WoW clone) which only became a modest success, had to get rid of servers, and then was forced to go FTP?
Biggest IP IN THE WORLD, and LotRO was only ever a slow burner.
I disagree with your recommendations on possible improvements.
There is a lot they can do.
Player housing and house decoration. Incorporate that to include trophies as decoration from pvp , pve, and raids.
Allow for player created content. Maybe a special area where players can own land to create pve or pvp content.
Add mini games and more custom map options from wc3. They can with their dated graphics include a war zone that is similar to a strategy game but 3d.
Add naval warfare. They could expand on that to turn it semi sand box mechanics with raiding islands and burying treasure, catching pirates and collecting bounties.
Expand on pve content to include dynamic events around the wow landscape.
expand on pvp to include areas that are conquered, and incorporate changes in the the game as a result.
the problem with wow is that it is too bloated with too much of the same. They need to add more long term rewards such player housing and benefits that can be achieved at any level towards long term rewards to encourage alting as well. Also end game should be more than just a gear grind. It could be mini games of card games, open world pvp, or another aspect of naval warfare that does not touch into the gear grind which becomes too much of an investment time wise.
Maybe they can even add a different combat style for fun that is more twitch based as another way to duel for fun.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
SOO much irony here.
Eastern MMOs are LITERALLY just grind. Period. This is a known quantity. The content is dry and boring, shallow and easy, and who cares if it takes you years to consume it's only because you have to MINDLESSLY grind forever. That doesn't make it good just makes it time consuming. Seeing as simple proof-reading takes too much time for you I would highly doubt you prefer something that just takes more time to complete for the sake of it.
Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.
7.700.000 x 13 = 100.100.000 € per month
(yea yea i know not everyone is paying in euro... bite me)
anyway, with 100 million bucks you can do quite alot. doubt the server tech + employees etc etc cost that much.
so yea, if that's trouble, i wonder what my financial state is :P
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Thats not what irony is bro.
You're proving his point.
So many products or whatever production are very succesful but for me majority of very succefull are ones i avoid like the plague becouse i think there crap.
For me WoW is total crap a terible product that should die fast.
A succes for me dont mean its by defenition good i know plenty of things in world that are not a succesful, but i think there VERYGOOD and alot better then the very succesful.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
The massive Wow hate is still amazingly funny to hear. People hate what is most popular without reason and this is apparent here clearly.
There are several valid reasons behind the issues with Wow but they are not the following:
1. Modern graphics. There have been updates in this area throughout the game's evolution. Improved water and far greater poly counts on characters. Old race toons are confirmed to be updated too to match the new races. Simple fact is that there are still mmos being put out today with similar or barely superior graphics. Development time is massively impacted by advanced graphics so one picks their poison by thinking advanced graphics makes a better mmo.
2. Modern mechanics. Frankly the UI and even combat systems have changed massively over time. The game is entirely different now than it was 2 years ago. Class mechanics have changed greatly now most classes have not only their original resource mechanic but now 3rd and even 4th additional mechanics. In this regard the classes are now more complex than nearly every clone created after Wow. Also, fps style aiming and reactive defenses are not progression or evolution. Those games are merely different. There will be tab target mmos from here to eternity just like some will have differing combat mechanics. Any game that reduces their buttons is not an evolution. In fact fps style combat cannot handle such complexity and is entirely the reason why the often limit your skill selection. Reactive defenses are actually emulated in classes that have movement abilities anyway to get out of aoe target zones ... same thing as most hybrid games.
3. Amount of content. Sort of an issue with me. One one side of the issue the game does indeed have lots of content. They have added professions and side games like pet combat along with arena which has always been nothing more than a side game (even more so as it will be a pure battle.net queue game soon ... no idea why it is even related to Wow anymore really). The other side of the issue is the MASSIVE vertical progression. This completely makes lower level content irrelevant.
The major issue:
1. Leveling process. The x curve has been greatly reduced. You level quite fast now and you can level in many ways as you get xp even for picking herbs and crafting. You can level entirely through crafting but obviously slower than other methods. The world is empty. Most level through dungeon queuing making the original Wow concept utterly destroyed. The caters to todays ADHD "I want things NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!!" crowd. When you dungeon run it is full of players who won't even let people loot before running off and pulling the next pack of mobs. I've seen tanks pulling in other rooms then dying because the rest of the group hadn't even caught up then blaming everyone else. I've seen healers pulling the next groups because the tanks wasn't fast enough. It isn't an mmo anymore ... it is a grind fest. You could also just pvp your way through leveling. At least they have separated twinks who turn off their xp from those leveling.
That said you can choose to level how you want ... you simply level slower than other options. Play style varies wildly from server to server so community choice is very important.
2. Community. Most servers there simply isn't one. Patience has been coded out of the game and only the few select guilds out there wanting to hold on to the tradition of community and keeping their server alive with events (be it world pvp, rp or general socialization within game) have to be researched otherwise your old server may be a near ghost town with queue-monkey kids only wanting candy and not a full course meal where one enjoys the process of eating and not the finish.
What Wow is is a well made game that tries to cater to every single style of game play out there with solid divisions between each crowd so they don't interfere with each other. This is their greatest failing. You can't create a social mmo when 90+% of your players on each server existing in separate instances from each other and the game world is highly irrelevant. Wow has become so popular that when you talk to Wow players in game they clearly view Wow as how mmos should be and that any other concept beyond it is crazy talk. Blizz makes sure that pvpr's don't interfere with pver's, that gear for pvp, pve trough crafting, raiding and other progressions do not interfere with each other. Even if you aren't in an instance all by your self or with your small group you can still be by yourself through phasing in the main world to further keep players apart.
Wow is well made and very well done on many technical levels but it's whole is made up of separate systems that are so entirely autonomous now that they could be packaged and released as individual games. The reason why so many are leaving is because the mmorpg crowd can no longer consider Wow as an mmorpg. You join Wow and, for the most part, you simply pick a play style and join the nearly single player progression path unless you look long and hard for guilds who strive for actual social gaming.
There have no 2 Wow games ... the original mmo where the game took part within it's actual world and the current game which is a collection of mini-games in a lobby with a 3D interface which is pretty much what the world is now. Wow is a very large version of DDO unless you choose to make the "lobby" relevant which goes against popular play style.
Wow is the perfect example of trying to cater to everyone in a genre that was originally very niche and that polishing a game so much leads to removing it's soul instead of nurturing it's growth. You can only play Wow now knowing what it has become. If you hold onto even a shred of old memories of what it once was and what it could have become you will walk away thoroughly disappointed.
You stay sassy!
None of those games failed because they are a themepark. WAR was poorly developed and was never able to function the way it was intended. AoC was released too soon and wasn't properly finished. TSW and SWTOR should NEVER have been sold as MMORPGs. Those two games are more like single player online co-op RPGs that pretty much end after very little to do after leveling. Rift wasn't a failure but was dragged down. Rift maintained a sub base for 2 years. Had Defiance and EoN been successful in their own rights, Rift would probably still be P2P. But Trion's other (non-themepark) titles did fail so Trion is now using Rift to re monetize players quickly in order to recoup the company's losses.
Of course we can always debate on the finer details of why each of those games failed, but one thing is certain, they each had their own stories. They did not fail because they were themeparks.
Every single one of those titles was successful out of the gate. GW2 also sold 2M as a Themepark. Each of these games did well at release So players are still buying Themeparks and knowing they are buying themeparks.
sweeping generalities generally don't work.
And those bad decisions began in alpha when they scrapped the sandbox design, changed the name from Middle Earth Online to LotRO, and made it a WoW clone. It's certainly more successful than AoC, but for the BIGGEST IP IN THE WORLD, that gave birth to the entire fantasy genre, it was never even close to being a big success. Turbine never expanded. I live next to their offices in RI.
In a time when LotRO had next to no competition, it still didn't do well. And as soon as FTP became a thing, it did it.
Love it or hate it, WoW is pretty much the barometer for the entire genre. These players don't appear to be moving to other traditional MMO's so the big question is what genre / games are they migrating to?
from now on it can only go downwards.
also, lol@the numbers when EQ Next hits the shelves
There are so many ways to really look at all this data. You could say that 8 million is about 7 million more than the average game gets. You could also say they've lost more players in the last 2 years than the vast majority ever see. The game is going to be insanely profitable for many years yet. Even when it finally dips below that line, they can do a F2P conversion and nearly instantly get most of those back. This is the kind of game that will take decades still before any sort of closure is possible.
I do wonder where so many players are going, though. I've seen that question is this thread already, but not enough attention is on that. There isn't a huge influx of players on any other game, though I'm sure at least half of those lost have spread out among the other offerings. 2 million feels right, though I have no data to back that up. It does seem to gel with the sub numbers new MMO's are getting off and on. That does imply 2 million players are just not playing anything. Or haven't changed their current play roster to fill the free time provided by not playing WoW.
To me, that says a great many people aren't leaving from hate but from responsibilities. Kids and marriages and careers are probably starting to get in the way of play time and WoW is getting cut. THAT seems to fit with the changes WoW keeps making. Things like the fast loot they've added and the faster grinds and quicker kills to allow more action in less time to try and fit with a player group that no longer has it. I imagine they have looked over the exit polls and found this to be true.
When the numbers fall below 1 million, then speculate. Until then, what's the point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I love to see the Panda-addon meeting my expectation, which was to fail.
Guess this is what you get from the western players for shoving an asian addon down their throats.
How many sandbox MMOs are there that prove that model works?
One? EvE? And, by the way, their 500k peak subscribers is still... let's see.... 6 times less than what you say was the peak WoW subscriber count in the west (3 million.)
Don't be ignorant.
No "model" is what makes a game work or not work - it is a LOT more complicated than that.
Planet Earth of course, you should visit it some time
Great post!
If WoW releases a quality expansion that backs off on some of the simplification and gives long term players what they actually want (and lets the younger players flock back and forth to new titles like Wildstar and ESO etc.)
Those numbers (7.7 million) would actually go back up, like they do for a short while after every expansion.
If the remove the damn gimmicks and simplification and focus on quality content, lots of it, and exceptional gameplay - WoW will continue to do fine, maybe even earn some folks back.