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[Napalm_Frank]

What I see nowadays is because you can choose if you want to tackle the content at an easy difficulty or at a hard difficulty, everyone chooses the easy version and then complains it's not hard enough.

I want to know how many people that complain about easy raids actually defeated Ra-den.

This is probably just me and I know it's a lot more work for developers but I like the old way much more when there was no difficulty settings. Meeting a new boss was always so exciting and fresh new obstacle for progression. It wasn't really the same when you were like ''oh the next one is HC Nefarion'' or whatever. It made it more gamey instead of kinda more interesting fantasy world. Like if there was easy version of Ragnaros back in the day it wouldn't have felt nearly as great when you got to slay the ''real'' HC version of him.

 

[Gemüsepizza]

Those numbers will continue to decline. I think not having WoW 2 in development is a BIG mistake. Just releasing expansion after expansion will not be able to attract many new players or to reignite the interest of old casual players. And I'm not even sure Blizzard cares about this game that much anymore. They obviously don't want to make any big investments for it, just look at how they are talking about new race models etc.,

 

[Into]

Talent trees were awful since vanilla as there was only usually one path down each tree for the optimal build. Some talents/abilities were just pointless or, while technically interesting, didn't add much to pve or pvp utility. What the new talent design does is get rid of cookie cutter builds and give options, even if it's literally one or two, that are viable no matter which you choose.

Example: as a prot war, while there are technically (and not even really) 2 or 3 must have talents from the 6 tiers, 2 or 3 of them are genuinely up to me to choose. Piercing Howl or Disrupting Shout, Shockwave or Dragon Roar, Safeguard or Vigilance. All of them are actually viable depending on the situation.

True for end game, but during leveling you did not have to be "optimal" you could even chose some PvP centric talents if you were on a PvP server or just wanted to queue up for BGs while you were on your way to end game.

It gave you something to look forward to, now you just automatically get everything and get to make 6 decisions surrounding your talents towards lvl 90.

Its not that talent trees gave you more options, but they gave you the illusion of more options and a way to set your character slightly more apart

Goes with what they did with questing in Cataclysm, they made everything a linear train that you just sit on and things happen in the same order and same way as before. Before you had more choice of which quests you wanted to do, based on which zones you liked the most.

That is the issue with the game from a leveling perspective, if i level 2 frost Mages today they would not only level in the same places most likely, doing the same order as before but my character progression would happen in a very similar manner. I am not saying the game was better back then, hell i think the game is actually better now than in Vanilla, but there were some things i really liked about the talent tree.

 

[-NeoTB1-]

The internet slowly destroyed the mystery WoW had. Back in Vanilla, you had things very few players knew. The world was pretty much a mystery. Veteran players used to tell their experience to newer players etc

Nowadays, everything is leaked even before the newest patch goes live. You can lookup anything with wowhead. You can track anything.

The mystery is gone.

This. This is why I long for the days of Vanilla. It's not just nostalgia speaking. It's because the world (of warcraft) was still full of mystery. At first, I embraced the coming of things like wowhead and mmo-champ. But after a while, it took away all the mystery and surprise of the game. I was left feeling like I'm just going through the motions.

Regardless, it's very impressive how long WoW has held on to such large numbers. Even though I enjoy the game less and less as the years go by, it remains one of my absolute favorite PC games of all-time.

 

[Robin64]

That's a huge problem now. Timeless Isle is coming in patch 5.4, and it's a questless zone full of things to discover, caves to explore, events to take part in, really dynamic. Potentially very mysterious.

Except, of course, everything is datamined and up on mmo-c, wowhead and wow insider.

 

[Vestal]

This. This is why I long for the days of Vanilla. It's not just nostalgia speaking. It's because the world (of warcraft) was still full of mystery. At first, I embraced the coming of things like wowhead and mmo-champ. But after a while, it took away all the mystery and surprise of the game. I was left feeling like I'm just going through the motions.

Regardless, it's very impressive how long WoW has held on to such large numbers. Even though I enjoy the game less and less as the years go by, it remains one of my absolute favorite PC games of all-time.

this is the world we live in now sadly.

I don't think we will ever get the feeling of early eq, uo, daoc or wow ever again.

Not to mention that a lot of the itemization now is done through spreadsheets without some hand crafting. Having items that might be a little op because they were hand crafted is a good thing, but now everything follows a strict leveling curve with 0 deviation.

 

[N2NOther]

.

Every other developer could only dream of having 7.7 million people paying 15 dollars a month for that kind of content. This isn't a big deal at all.

It's a big deal for sure. Sure they are still making money but they are losing subscribers at a noticeable pace.They've lost almost 5 million subscribers in less than 3 years.

 

[fluffydelusions]

It's 10 years old yet still puts other MMO's to shame in terms of amount of users. Blizzard should not be upset at those numbers IMO.

 

[devildog820]

Say what you will about Cataclysm, but it got a lot of things right before 4.3. I played for the guild raids and 5 mans. There were plenty of different grinds. You didn't have to do dailies till your eyes bled, or spend half your LFR time waiting.

 

[BattleMonkey]

In May it was reported that they lost 1.3 million subs. Now another 600k since then have been lost.

That's losing nearly 2 mil subs in less than a year since the expansion. The game was bleeding numbers for some time and the expansion many claimed would save it. It didn't and they are losing numbers faster than ever now. Having 7.7mil is impressive, but the rate of decline is severe.

 

[Aquamarine]

600K subscriber loss at $15 a month is $9,000,000 (trimonthly) potential revenue loss in total, or $3 million loss every month.

$3 million loss every month is $36 million a year in revenue lost. That's quite significant.

 

[syko de4d]

It's 10 years old yet still puts other MMO's to shame in terms of amount of users. Blizzard should not be upset at those numbers IMO.

they should because they dont have any new MMO in pipeline for a minimum of 3 years.

 

[Blinck]

Shouldn't make a difference. Your game should continue to be relevant to newcomers as well as fresh to existing subs.

That's what you have to do in a subscription model.

My phone providers is decades old, but I'm subbed as their current product is relevant to today's world.

You are comparing a phone provider with a game? Really?

There is no game that doesn't eventually get tiresome, just like any other form of entertainment. I'd say that 7 million subs after around 8 years it's fucking impressive.

 

[ZenaxPure]

Is your avatar Illidare/TBC-related in any way? The green + red background reminds me of it...

Nah, it's just a picture of a random poisoned dagger from the tcg.

Assassination Rogue for life!

 

[Not Spaceghost]

If they dropped that monthly fee to 5 bucks a month I bet those numbers would fly right back up.

 

[Interfectum]

It's 10 years old yet still puts other MMO's to shame in terms of amount of users. Blizzard should not be upset at those numbers IMO.

Blizzard lost 600k subs in 3 months with no knowledge of where the floor is. There is reason to be concerned.

 

[V_Arnold]

Blizzard lost 600k subs in 3 months with no knowledge of where the floor is. There is reason to be concerned.

Nah. Aging is not concerning. People eat up content faster than any company could make it (sarcasm time: except for the talented folks at *** who can patch games every week! ). It is obvious that WoW is aging, and that something will replace it sooner or later. All Blizzard has to make sure is that the number keeps going up in new expansions and does not accelerate its shrinking.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Having to beat on mobs to level up weapon skill because you got a new type.
Talent trees that were just right and wrong answers.
Not seeing content because of preferring to play with close friends rather than a large guild.
Yelling in cities to form a pug for a dungeon, then travelling there and finding out nobody has the key.
Grinding for resist gear from low level dungeons to do a raid.
Being a fire mage and thus having no place in Molten Core.
Getting laughed at for being a shaman/paladin/druid that wasn't a healer.

Yeah, I sure "miss" vanilla too.

I played enhancement shaman in vanilla and went along for ragnaros and nefarian (though I went healing spec for the first kill on both since we didn't have enough healers online)

The only dumb things were the weapon skills and the unbelievably shitty lvl 1-40 (no abilities to speak of) leveling for all classes.

Everything else you mentioned created a community, you had to work together.

Cross realm bgs, dungeon finder, no longer relying on crafting in any way or form etc killed off any sense of community the game had.

Wow was always a dinky flawed tedious game but it got the Massive multiplayer part right in vanilla and early tbc.

@not seeing content, who cares? wasn't there enough content for everyone?
Noone cried that they couldn't do the horse men or cthun in vanilla, the game had something for everyone ,including for those who wanted a really big challenge.
I wasn't in a top guild for most of vanilla and always had plenty to do and aspire to.
I remember when most guilds couldn't do Blackrock spire, then could only do half of ZG and took weeks to kill onyxia.
Yet ask any player what their favorite moments were it was those first times they killed those hard bosses.


I never understood the compulsive need to be able to kill every single boss. What's the point if killing new bosses is routine.

 

[JimmyBoy]

I am so glad that after 5 years of playing that game since release I quit it, finally for good. Great memories though, and friends I've kept even after i stopped playing.

I really don't see any game hitting WoW numbers, even Blizzard's new MMOFPS if that's what it really is. Just a one time gargantuan hit that's not able to be reproduced.

 

[Odrion]

WOW was still old as shit with Cataclysm and people stuck with that throughout it's lifecycle significantly more than this time around.

Pandaria is just a unappealing expansion with unappealing changes.

 

[V_Arnold]

@SneakyStephan : please. Was not there enough content for everyone?

Let us look at it for people without raiding guilds in vanilla WoW. Suuuure, if you mean sticking to that 5 instances in lv60, the occasional pug ZG that dissolved past 3 hours of wiping somewhere down the line, farming AD/Timbermaw reputations and/or trying to make gold by crafting rare stuff/hunting chests/etc.

If any MMO would try to give you that as an endgame for more than 3-4 months MAX, it would get slammed, and rightfully so. Vanilla WoW got away with it for long, but times are changing.

WOW was still old as shit with Cataclysm and people stuck with that.

Pandaria is just a unappealing expansion with unappealing changes.

Nope. Without Pandaria, you would look at 5-5.5mill subscribers MAX. Or even less.

 

[kswiston]

I'm curious to see what percentage of these losses are coming from Asia as people in that region move on to other things. MOBAs have exploded in recent years, and there are now a ton of F2P MMOs with high production values (many of which are actually from Asia).

 

[DarkKyo]

With FF14 and Wildstar coming out this year, WoW is only going to get more barren...

 

[Meier]

If they would have dropped the price to $10 a month a few years ago they would have stemmed the tide. I'll say this til I am blue in the face. For me, there's no way I play enough to justify $15 a month.. $9.99 and I would have kept it active for casual play. $15 is in a different bracket though (more like $17 after taxes).

With FF14 and Wildstar coming out this year, WoW is only going to get more barren...

Neither of these games will make a dent. Especially not Wildstar(?).

 

[Nibiru]

It's 10 years old yet still puts other MMO's to shame in terms of amount of users. Blizzard should not be upset at those numbers IMO.

This kind of thing is said after every decline announcement. Despite the large subscriber numbers compared to other mmos it is still in a declining trend and a significant one.

 

[DarkKyo]

Neither of these games will make a dent. Especially not Wildstar(?).

It's going to depend a lot on how Wildstar deals with subs/f2p... Wildstar is looking a lot cooler than WoW at the moment.

 

[SneakyStephan]

@SneakyStephan : please. Was not there enough content for everyone?

Let us look at it for people without raiding guilds in vanilla WoW. Suuuure, if you mean sticking to that 5 instances in lv60, the occasional pug ZG that dissolved past 3 hours of wiping somewhere down the line, farming AD/Timbermaw reputations and/or trying to make gold by crafting rare stuff/hunting chests/etc.

If any MMO would try to give you that as an endgame for more than 3-4 months MAX, it would get slammed, and rightfully so. Vanilla WoW got away with it for long, but times are changing.



Nope. Without Pandaria, you would look at 5-5.5mill subscribers MAX. Or even less.

Pugs?....
Our server had a ton of casual guilds that all did about half of ZG to all but the optional and final boss.
It's an mmo, you're supposed to play together, form a community. Not pug or queue up for matchmaking.

There are other genres for that. Why would you play an mmo if you just want to pug, why can't a genre fill its own niche?

This exact 'the game has to be for EVERYONE' is what drove everyone I know away from the game to begin with.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Wonder what will happen when it goes free2play full force.

Dunno but I'd love to see it. I loved the game and for me WOTLK was the top of the hill for me. After that it really just started going down hill. I subscribed for a month here and there for a bit last being with the beginning of this last expansion but the last time I did I didn't play more then 3 days before being tired of it.

If it went F2P though I'd probably come back and have some fun with it. I just can't justify paying 15 bucks a month anymore on it though.

 

[ferr]

Holy fuck. Sounds like they have another Diablo 3 on their hands.

Seems people forgot that this is standard practice for Blizzard. It's done when it's done. Diablo 3 might be the first Blizzard game that was done before it was done.

 

[SoraanTribal]

WoW Classic - Ulduar was awesome, the Grand Crusader raid was the beginning of the decline

I agree with you there for the most part. I still say Ulduar was the best raid in the game - I loved everything about it. It was also the time in which I played WoW the most and actually focused on the endgame raids.

The Grand Crusader raid was incredibly lazy and silly. Wasn't that much fun. At least it didn't have any trash mobs, though... *shrug*

I did think ICC was pretty good. The problem was just how long it took for the next content patch to release. After raiding ICC for SO long, my guild eventually got bored and a lot of us quit the game since the next expansion was taking too long to release with nothing else to do. I haven't been back since then, and from the sounds of things, I didn't miss much of anything in Cataclysm.

 

[injurai]

A perfect time for Everquest Next to come.

yup, I'm anticipating it. It's been far too long away.

 

[Treemonkeys]

All the content updates for MoP have been really disappointing, this while new stuff is being added to the store makes me just wait for F2P.

 

[Berordn]

All the content updates for MoP have been really disappointing, this while new stuff is being added to the store makes me just wait for F2P.

Wait, what? Nothing will ever top Ulduar, but really disappointing? Everything they've added since 5.0 has been great.

 

[jaxpunk]

WOW was still old as shit with Cataclysm and people stuck with that throughout it's lifecycle significantly more than this time around.

Pandaria is just a unappealing expansion with unappealing changes.

Pandaria was probably the best expansion since Outlands. So nope, you sir are wrong.

 

[V_Arnold]

Pugs?....
Our server had a ton of casual guilds that all did about half of ZG to all but the optional and final boss.
It's an mmo, you're supposed to play together, form a community. Not pug or queue up for matchmaking.

There are other genres for that. Why would you play an mmo if you just want to pug, why can't a genre fill its own niche?

This exact 'the game has to be for EVERYONE' is what drove everyone I know away from the game to begin with.

Please. This attitude does not help to the genre. No one is born to be a raider, he/she becomes one. Do you know how many people had WoW as their first MMO game? Many. I did as well. And guess what? In Vanilla, I did not land in a raiding guild. And since at that time, I got back to home around 9 o'clock every day, I did not exactly had "find a raiding guild so I can raid 3 times a week" a top priority. In WoTLK, I was MT for a lot of things, including hc 10/25 clears, for actual content. (TOTC, Ulduar, half of ICC - retired after the final phase got included).

Many cant see complex patterns of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff we call people, and just go and assume that they want a game dumbed down or something like that. Nah. We change, we have different priorities, and a good game does not totally change but does not give them the middle finger either. WoW Vanilla ALMOST gave the so-called casuals middle finger. Nowadays, it would be considered more than that.*

Edit* : And what is a big irony in all this is that MoP is considered too grind-heavy, content-heavy. You can - and are expected to - farm/grind so many things now...the balance has to be between Vanillla 5-man content and this Imho, both WOTLK/BC got it kinda right.

 

[FLEABttn]

Two mediocre expacs in a row were I don't play anymore. But 7.7 million subs is a money problem I'd like to have.

That said, I wouldn't want to be the guy who has to answer to that number from a design and development standpoint. "Our sub numbers are the lowest they've been since vanilla, why do you keep making stupid game design decisions?"

 

[Hari Seldon]

I played MoP for 3 weeks. Bought it due to peer pressure from friends that lasted 2 months haha. The loot whore MMO genre has been bled dry. Bring on some other type of MMO. Make Eve with swords please (or Eve with Space Sim combat). As an adult I need something more interesting than just acquiring a % boost to my stats. I need an Eve-like meta game for me to get interested in a new MMO.

 

[maniac-kun]

They also have a realy stupid policy regarding the battlegrounds. They could pump these out at a monthly basis. Seeing the same 5 maps over and over is pretty stupid.

 

[Tanolen]

I quit playing right at the end of BC, is there a website that details the in game story up to current events? Something thats easier to follow than wiki page like links for characters?

I always enjoyed the warcraft story, be interesting to see where it has gone.

 

[Robin64]

Scenarios were a misstep for me.

What I was expecting:

About 50 possible locations for them around the world, including the "old" world. Not just Pandaria.

And then a tree system of random events for those locations. So if you get Elwynn Village, it might start with a gnoll raid. That could then lead to Goldshire being set on fire or Hogger attacking. The fire one could then lead to a fire elemental invasion or citizens in need of help. The Hogger path could lead to Hogger's tougher wife turning up or fighting Hogger's ghost.

These could be knocked out really quickly and provide loads of content.

What we actually got:

Really easy mini-dungeons that still take a while to develop.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Nope. Without Pandaria, you would look at 5-5.5mill subscribers MAX. Or even less.

Pandaria only raised their sub number by about 900k. In less than a year since its release they have lost nearly 2 mil subs. Pandas didn't really do much at all to stop the games decline.

 

[Duxxy3]

Hoping to see Warcraft 4 at some point. WoW was dead to me after Arthas.

 

[Interfectum]

They also have a realy stupid policy regarding the battlegrounds. They could pump these out at a monthly basis. Seeing the same 5 maps over and over is pretty stupid.

Last thing I read (and this was years ago mind you) that the development engine they had for creating battlegrounds was incredibly hard to work with. I've read they have streamlined how to make quests so the BG creation process could have been overhauled too... but yeah I agree it's pretty sad. Have they even updated the jpg yet for the WSG/AV/AB loading screens? Still super low res?

 

[secretanchitman]

Any time news of decrease in subscribers for this game comes out, everyone on WoW forums chimes in with their own reasons and they are usually always from their own point of view (naturally). A hardcore raider will tell you its because the game has gotten too easy and casual, a PvPer will tell you that it is because the game is too imbalanced and not enough focus on PvP is the reason, a casual player will tell you it is because the game is too difficult and there arent enough things to do for casuals etc etc.

One of the things that goes beyond game being too easy/too hard/too casual/too hardcore or whatever else players are saying that usually contradicts one another is that World of Warcraft has indoctrinated the players. In the sense that, they can just buy the newest expansion, play for 1-2 months and be done with it, there is no reason to continue playing and working on progression + gear, when a new expansion is coming anyway. Why play right now? Why devote hours to achieve something when in November you will see the next expansion at Blizzcon, making the game right now seem irrelevant. For fun? Well a large fun factor in MMOs is getting better loot and achieving new milestones for yourself, your guild or your arena team. That can be difficult to get motivated for when you know a new expansion is right around the corner.

This happened before in Everquest and many other MMOs before WoW, but for much of the WoW player base it was their first MMO, so it really mattered that you had good gear back then, because people had not witnessed what a *reset* really meant in a MMO. Even if you crave WoW right now, most people would just wait til the next expansion and jump in on the *reset*.

TLDR: There is a diminishing returns in playing WoW (and most MMO's) you get most out of the game just leveling the first month of the expansion and then quitting. Instead of spending months on end farming gear for...no real reason unless you care about raid progression.

This post is exactly how I feel about WoW. My brother told me the same thing - why grind for gear now? By the time you get the best equipment you can for your character, a new expansion will be announced and will render everything you have at the moment useless. Turns out he was right - I was farming WoTLK for such a long time and then Cataclysm came out, making all of that grind feel pointless.

Now it's to the point where I'll play WoW everytime a new expansion comes out and then quit again. I don't mind paying the expansion price (the collector's edition always is nice) but I really don't think WoW has the staying power it once did IMO.

I'm willing to bet that eventually WoW will go F2P and use the micro-transaction model. I'm sure it will pick up not only when new expansions come out but when the dreaded monthly fee goes away and the game goes (for the most part) entirely free.

 

[Rösti]

Here are the presentation slides, btw:

As for the loss of subscribers, I think the decrease of the game's difficulty due to Raid Finder and very easy heroic dungeons is one of the greater reasons. Classic to Wrath of the Lich King made players do some work to get good gear, now it's just a cakewalk. And what is fun about that?

 

[JORMBO]

Mists has kept me around longer then the last 2 expansions, but the game is just getting old now. Community doesn't really exist anymore since you can just queue for everything. I don't think I have really talked to anyone since I came back for Mists. After awhile it just feels like a repetitive and cheap experience.

 

[Berordn]

Classic to Wrath of the Lich King made players do some work to get good gear, now it's just a cakewalk. And what is fun about that?

Wrath heroic dungeons were incredibly easy compared to BC, though. When WoW was at its peak, wiping in them was virtually unheard of.

 

[Rafterman]

Pugs?....
Our server had a ton of casual guilds that all did about half of ZG to all but the optional and final boss.
It's an mmo, you're supposed to play together, form a community. Not pug or queue up for matchmaking.

There are other genres for that. Why would you play an mmo if you just want to pug, why can't a genre fill its own niche?

This exact 'the game has to be for EVERYONE' is what drove everyone I know away from the game to begin with.

PUGs were around well before WoW and they are a staple of the genre. Playing with people not in your guild is still playing together, it's just not playing together the way you want it. So, yeah, let's not pretend you know what an MMO is "supposed" to be when don't even realize that what you are complaining about has been around since the inception of the genre.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Here are the presentation slides, btw:


As for the loss of subscribers, I think the decrease of the game's difficulty due to Raid Finder and very easy heroic dungeons is one of the greater reasons. Classic to Wrath of the Lich King made players do some work to get good gear, now it's just a cakewalk. And what is fun about that?

Disagree. The game is just old. That's all there is to it. The game was always a cakewalk. This easier difficulty from years ago didn't stop 10% of all players to drop from the game within lvl 10. Don't underestimate the horribleness of all the people who are not accustomed to computer games in general. I know a dozen people who where subscribed to this game for eons without playing it. A mix of kids and casuals.

 

[Nibiru]

Wrath heroic dungeons were incredibly easy compared to BC, though. When WoW was at its peak, wiping in them was virtually unheard of.

What he is speaking to is the advent of the raid finder function and gimme a break groups wiped plenty in wotlk.