RPGCrazied
Member
Heroic raiders shouldn't be complaining. Their ilvl's are much higher, they get shots at exclusive mounts & titles, not to mention achievements lfr people don't get.
World of Warcraft down to 7.7M subscribers (600K decline in 3 months)
- Thread starter maniac-kun
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Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Sorry, you can't say something that is blatantly false and then go "btw it doesn't matter what I just said is false."
heroic and lft loot are different. There is no debate on this.
No shit it is different, and that's why I said that doesn't matter to a new player. They did the same content as you, but slightly easier difficulty. Where's the incentive to get better, and do heroic/normal raids? There is none.
I'm mentioning the current state of the game. Accessibility is the key term that has been always thrown around. The people who never did sunwell, the people who never did Naxx 40. Blizzard wanted to make it so people could experience all the content in the game, but the current LFR system is overboard in terms of accessibility.
theMrCravens
Member
I only played the first 4 months when it came out (Nov '04- March '05).
One of the best online gaming experience I've had, but as soon I reached the hardcore PVE endgame, I knew it was over.
One of the best online gaming experience I've had, but as soon I reached the hardcore PVE endgame, I knew it was over.
Heroic raiders are largely content based on my (admittedly anecdotal) observations. T15 is one of the hardest heroic tiers ever.
It's not slightly easier; they're completely different fights in most cases without any mechanics at all. LFR is a Sunday drive through the raid zones, and sometimes you grab a souvenir while you're there.
RPGCrazied
Member
I just told you in my post on this page.
Exactly. It was unsustainable to have so much development and art creation time focused on a very small minority of players. LFR was a great addition because now everyone benefits from blizzards work, I'd argue it did much more to prolong the game than hurt it. As someone mentioned above, heroics are still ridiculously challenging for those who want that type of experience.
So wiping hundreds of times, accumulating high repair builds, applying to guilds with a possible trial period, learning your class properly, min/maxing your dps, and learning every boss mechanic is an incentive to get mounts and achievements for some new players.
haha.
Anyway, people are missing my point. The new players don't stick around to experience the more difficult versions of fights because they already consumed the content that other players are doing. Difficulty is not even a factor. The people who hardcore raid are the people blizzard keep to an extent. Getting the new players to stay is the problem.
Some people love the challenge and glory involved with that, others don't or simply don't have the time required for that. I'd argue it's almost entirely personality driven.
Yup, LFR has replaced normal mode for a lot of people. The jump from LFR to normal mode is so massive. LFR doesn't even require you to play your class. It's more about showing up once a week, and hit some buttons and get free loot. BR tanks are serviceable in LFR, and that's kind of sad.
Wow is about playing with other people, and talking with them. That's why a lot of people stuck with wow, and why they come back to the game. LFR you play with random people, you don't talk to them. You go in kill some bosses, get some loot, and you leave. That experience is just not there.
There is an experience past LFR, but not many people will see because Blizzard made LFR this strange accessibility option that replaced normal mode raiding. It's not new players fault that they don't know their class. It's blizzards fault for giving them this path that doesn't teach them shit about the game.
I hope flexi raid fixes a lot of these issues.
AdventureMike
Member
I'm definitely in the camp that wishes things like Wowhead and MMO-Champion weren't around. There is no fun or mystery when everything is datamined/plotted out before the patch even hits. We had Allakhazam back in the EQ1 days for spell lists and some quest help, but having everything constantly layed out for you before every piece of content is even experienced is just boring to me.
Also, cross-server dungeon/raid finder murdered server communities. At that point, you didn't care who was on your server anymore. People stopped grouping outside their immediate or real-life friends and then just partied through finders. Most would never even utter a word to each other the entire group. Once that happened, the whole crossed-over community on the whole started to feel toxic. Why bother being pleasant to each other when you are never going to see those people again? That's the attitude I was met with by most :/
Also, cross-server dungeon/raid finder murdered server communities. At that point, you didn't care who was on your server anymore. People stopped grouping outside their immediate or real-life friends and then just partied through finders. Most would never even utter a word to each other the entire group. Once that happened, the whole crossed-over community on the whole started to feel toxic. Why bother being pleasant to each other when you are never going to see those people again? That's the attitude I was met with by most :/
krypt0nian
Banned
Best part of ANY game EVER.
You keep assuming that only reason anyone would ever raid is to see the content. WoW is a loot grind, not unlike Diablo or Borderlands. Yes, there are many people that once they see the content, they are done. They saw what they wanted to see. But for the people that keep playing the game past that initial viewing (7.7 million people is not even remotely a small amount), the loot grind is the drawing factor. Making your character (and you as a player) better to tackle more difficult challenges, whether that's Heroic Raids, Challenge Mode in Dungeons, or Ranked PvP, is a huge draw in MMOs.
You're entirely missing the point. There are plenty of people who want to see raid content, and don't want to learn to play their class. They pay the same subs as hardcore raider, they outnumber hardcore raiders infinity to 1, and they are easier to cater to.
What the hell is wrong with scrubs having fun doing some ultra casual raiding? They get to see this content they never got to before, they get some low ilvl purps and have a blast. How does this diminish anything hardcore raiders do? You're just spouting elitist BS.
Now, as to your point that the LFR are not really social experiences. I completely agree with that. For the most part the other players may as well be NPC AI. I think they need to improve the social aspects of it, but there are many ways to do that other than increasing difficulty.
Nothing is wrong with that. The fact that a lot of new players get sucked into these 10 man normal guilds and can't get past normal horridon is the problem. They get told they are the worst player ever by a guild leader who is a total dickhead. I feel bad for those people the most because wow is not supposed to be about that.
LFR exists to serve the people who don't have proper time to experience current raid content. Those people are great, and have a place in the game. My problem is that there are people who see LFR as some paradise of free loot/proper end game raiding, and say how do you wipe to this fight it's easy, but doesn't even know one thing about the fights.
I'm not trying to be some elitist person, because I hate those guys. I help out new players whenever possible, and even give them advice when asked. I like WoW, and want to see it do better.
Absolutely, and I think WoW is losing a lot of that.
The challenge?
This way, any player who wants the challenge has a progression path open to them; if they do not want a challenge, they can remain in LFR, and I'm completely fine with that; any player whose incentive to progress is motivated solely by gear was never going to be a worthwhile normal/heroic raider.
I don't want to force people who don't want to do normal/heroic raids into doing them.
The bit where I think you do have a point is that the jump from LFR to normals is too high at the moment, and I agree that I'm interested to see what Flex can do on that front.
Hmmm. I'm in a fairly mediocre guild (Above-average, but not heroic-quality), and I'm pretty sure we could carry a player through normal Horridon without too much hassle. That does sound more like the issue is with the difficulty jump, not the content - and I'd hope the *good* guilds do persist with weaker players. I know I do for the most part, only replacing them if I absolutely have to to meet our week's schedule.
Edit: And regarding the post below: For me, it's still very much about the people I raid with. I wouldn't still be playing if it wasn't for them. There are good guilds out there.
th4tguy
Member
It used to be that when I first signed into WOW, you would go to IF and there would be guys just standing on the bridge showing off their elite gear. We would seriously freak out at their progression. If you wanted to get gear like them, you need to get into a guild, make friends, play well.
The gear was the incentive, the experience and community was your reward.
Now because of the changes to difficulty and how they allow anyone to get gear that pretty much looks like whatever awesome gear a top raider may have, there is no incentive. You aren't forced to get into a guild, you aren't forced to make friends, and you aren't forced to learn how to play well. You're reward is actually less than what it was. WOW used to be so hard to quit because you cared about the people you played with and vice-verse. Bliz has accidentally (I can't imagine it was their intention) turned other people into tools to use. By the time Cata hit, I would do random pug heroics everyday. Never were these runs with anyone from my server. Never could I remember a characters name after a run. There was no reason to care about them. They might as well have been AI NPCs. In Vanilla and BC, I had a friends list full of people I knew were good players. People I knew I could count on to run something and run it well. These were the people you could go to if you wanted to get help with your guild or even find another. By the end of Cata, my friends list only had about 5 people on it and they were all real life friends who were busy playing SC2.
WOW is no longer about the people and the experience. It's only about the gear.
The gear was the incentive, the experience and community was your reward.
Now because of the changes to difficulty and how they allow anyone to get gear that pretty much looks like whatever awesome gear a top raider may have, there is no incentive. You aren't forced to get into a guild, you aren't forced to make friends, and you aren't forced to learn how to play well. You're reward is actually less than what it was. WOW used to be so hard to quit because you cared about the people you played with and vice-verse. Bliz has accidentally (I can't imagine it was their intention) turned other people into tools to use. By the time Cata hit, I would do random pug heroics everyday. Never were these runs with anyone from my server. Never could I remember a characters name after a run. There was no reason to care about them. They might as well have been AI NPCs. In Vanilla and BC, I had a friends list full of people I knew were good players. People I knew I could count on to run something and run it well. These were the people you could go to if you wanted to get help with your guild or even find another. By the end of Cata, my friends list only had about 5 people on it and they were all real life friends who were busy playing SC2.
WOW is no longer about the people and the experience. It's only about the gear.
Technically simple, but in terms of making it playable, damn near impossible. It's quite common to have to execute a rotation of keypresses while at the same time moving, and I don't see that being possible through a touch-screen interface.
...but then, that's at the top end of play. You could certainly play more basic content servicably on such a device.
Kinda surprised they still have 7.7mil subscribers actually. I figured they'd be down to the 5mil range by now. Though, I have no idea why I thought that.
Honestly, I'd like WoW to shrink down some more, for a multitude of reasons. Not only to make more room for other MMO's, but because its one of the last MMO's with a hefty monthly sub, and I'd like to see full subs go the way of the dinosaur.
For context, I don't mind subs in theory, but they should be no more than 10USD, and preferably closer to 5USD. If they're going to be there, they should be low enough that players could safely ignore them for a few weeks, without feeling like their wallets being sucker punched.
I suppose that is a different subject though.
Honestly, I'd like WoW to shrink down some more, for a multitude of reasons. Not only to make more room for other MMO's, but because its one of the last MMO's with a hefty monthly sub, and I'd like to see full subs go the way of the dinosaur.
For context, I don't mind subs in theory, but they should be no more than 10USD, and preferably closer to 5USD. If they're going to be there, they should be low enough that players could safely ignore them for a few weeks, without feeling like their wallets being sucker punched.
I suppose that is a different subject though.
Responding to the guy who said vanilla WoW sucked, per my original comment that it was "magical". We all take away a different experience from a game like this, dependent on our playstyle. Mine was full-on hardcore, raiding to the max - until AQ40 broke my spirit, and I felt obliged to step away. The strength of friendships I formed with guildies due to my commitment made WoW magical for me. Take that away, and the game feels hollow by comparison.
I wish I could still play to that level, because there's really nothing else to compare with a good multiplayer game. I wasn't fortunate enough to find any like-minded friends irl, but I imagine it's the same as a sports team achieves, or if your job requires you to work in a group. I'm not surprised the game is bleeding subs; it's old, they can't really reinvent the gameplay, and cross-server everything destroys community. I bet most of the people still enjoying the game are in tight-knit guilds, or play in groups with friends... the social aspect is 99% of the experience.
I wish I could still play to that level, because there's really nothing else to compare with a good multiplayer game. I wasn't fortunate enough to find any like-minded friends irl, but I imagine it's the same as a sports team achieves, or if your job requires you to work in a group. I'm not surprised the game is bleeding subs; it's old, they can't really reinvent the gameplay, and cross-server everything destroys community. I bet most of the people still enjoying the game are in tight-knit guilds, or play in groups with friends... the social aspect is 99% of the experience.
Enosh
Member
I never gave a fuck who was on my server during vanilla and BC either
and fun fact, dungeons run didn't require much more than "hey, you CC red, bye" either
and people jumping ship from normal guilds the first time any other semi valid alternative was announced says a lot more about guilds and normal/hc modes than it does about lfr imho
You aren't including the revenue split with NetEase.
Gentleman Jack
Member
People getting older, starting careers and families probably did more to decimate the Naxx40 levels of raid dedication than LFR did. If you started a vanilla only, level 60 cap server good luck finding another 40 people on a single server willing to do the resist gear crafting, rep farming, attunement chains and roster planning required for weekly full clears.
LFR did not kill the hardcore raiding scene any more than words with friends killed the 100 hour JRPG.
LFR did not kill the hardcore raiding scene any more than words with friends killed the 100 hour JRPG.
Blackage
Member
This is extremely true. A new player coming into WoW does not need a guild or to make any attachment to other people for any real reason. The leveling experience is relatively easy, even without the guild exp bonus. You can dungeon/pvp to max level, again you don't need a guild. You get to max level, you can dungeon finder for groups, don't need a guild, want better gear? LFR, no guild required. If you're brand new to the game, you probably don't have the contacts to get into a decent guild, you're probably not going to get those contacts doing LFR/LFG. Chances are high that you were randomly invited to some guild by some guy that just wants to make that 5% cut from his 500-1000 members. If by some chance you do get into a guild because you're curious about real raiding, you're hit with the normal barrier entry because Blizzard normalized 10/25 difficulty in Cataclysm.
I still feel like Wrath was the social pinnacle of WoW. Dungeon Finder was introduced in 3.3, but heroics were already really easy and they made them a chore that you had to complete anyway, hell it was a nice recruiting tool if you took 4 guildmates in there and got that 1 pug. The barrier to entry on raiding wasn't that bad at all, Naxx was a loot Piñata, all of the 10-mans were extremely puggable, and the content was identical to that in the 25-mans(Save Algalon), this encouraged people on servers to interact with each other and form these 10-man groups and pug. I know alot of hardcore types hated ToC for it just being 5 bosses and no trash, but pugs loved this place, it was quick, easy, in the middle of the major daily hub and not far from the major capital city. The pug was alive and well in WotLK, and pugs would sometimes want more and graduate to real raiding guilds, people in pugs would actually help one another, interact and talk about things, this was good for the game.
Cataclysm destroyed the raiding pug with the normalized 10/25 difficultly, it didn't exist for most of the expansion, and only reappeared in 4.3 after LFR came out and the older content was a bit more trivial. The extreme difficult spike on heroics turned players toxic towards each other for the smallest of mistakes. The biggest problem with LFR going forward is that it killed the raiding pug on a server-to-server basis. That social element that got people interested in not just real raiding, but interacting with their server-mates is gone. In addition, the daily quests in MoP, which used to be more of a side-garde thing you did for optional loot and fun items became a requirement you had to do in order to get valor and valor gear, before you'd have random numbers of people doing different dailies for whatever rep/neat item they wanted at exalted, you now had the entire server doing dailies for gear that's required to progress your character and fighting over the limited resources/spawns.
TLDR: I feel like most of the system changes Blizzard has made since the start of Cata have been toxic for the game, driven down social experiences, and cut off that lifeline to WoW that would make people return again and again, and hook new players that were curious about what made WoW so great.
I don't need to interact with anyone see everything in WoW right now, and once I've seen it all, I don't need to stick around because there's nothing keeping me there, that's a problem.
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Meh, I decided to take a break near the end of last year and my subscription ran out on January 2nd. It was only meant to be for like a month or two but here I am almost seven months later with zero desire to go back to WoW. Drama and general burn out that went to total burn out with MoP and the daily grind. Got a seven day "please come back" thing from Blizzard last month, logged in for about five minutes and logged back out.
Not surprised the numbers keep falling, the game is going on nine years old and there's far too many other gaming alternatives out there and I don't just mean other MMOs.
Not surprised the numbers keep falling, the game is going on nine years old and there's far too many other gaming alternatives out there and I don't just mean other MMOs.
Even though I still play WoW and heroic raiding is still some of the best times I've ever had in a game, I'm not at all surprised.
This is what happens when you bank so heavily on casual gamers. This is a fickle bunch that is not going to stay committed to one game for years nor are they interested in playing a game thats 9 years old.
Outside of high end raiding/pvp this isn't a good MMO and it barely even resembles a game. Everything is mindless boredom. There's no challenge, no reward for doing well, nothing that brings a community of players together.
This is what happens when you bank so heavily on casual gamers. This is a fickle bunch that is not going to stay committed to one game for years nor are they interested in playing a game thats 9 years old.
Outside of high end raiding/pvp this isn't a good MMO and it barely even resembles a game. Everything is mindless boredom. There's no challenge, no reward for doing well, nothing that brings a community of players together.
SUPARSTARX
Member
7.7 million world wide is still a lot compared to all the new games in the past few years trying to break 1 million.
I hope Final Fantasy XIV ARR will come out the gate with strong sustained numbers for the next few months.
I hope Final Fantasy XIV ARR will come out the gate with strong sustained numbers for the next few months.
razoftblend
Member
What do these numbers imply? Are these paying players or are free-to-play players also included in this "decline?" If they're separate, it would explain the current drop.
What we've been seeing the past couple years is that WoW has been attracting a whole new generation of players. This has basically been keeping the game 'topped up' so to say, even though it is still losing subs in big chunks. The big twitch streamers are bringing in kids that have never played before and want to learn because of people like Swifty and Reckful. Hell I'm still subscribed to their facebook updates and all that they have been posting lately are guides for new players.
KojiKnight
Member
WoW still has more people playing it monthly than many new games get sales.... period. For a game that's edging closer to 10 years than naught, it's pretty damn impressive.
Any time Blizzard references subscriber numbers, it's always paying subscribers. In Asia, some people operate on a different payment scheme, like a pay-for-hours.
They never incude the trial accounts.
If WoW went free to play the numbers would shoot up to a silly amount though. The only thing with going F2P is WoW already has a lot of F2P systems in place that people pay extra for + the subscription with charging for pets/various account changes/mounts/custom gear. I would think they would have to add something else like RMAH to make going F2P worth it or lose like 50% of player base that they have now which is not likely to happen.
razoftblend
Member
So basically, their F2P model is just the trial version? I though it was like paying to rise your level cap and such. Thanks for the info.
I played WoW since the beta, and for 2 years since its release. Then i tried every expansion for around 2 months after they came out.
Vanilla WoW was just... amazing, immersion wise. A world that felt so cohesive, vast and full of mistery. Seeing Undercity and Stormwind the first time was just awesome. Exploring the Western and Eastern plaguelands, or places like Stranglethorn Vale, coming from Duskwood and its dark atmosphere and really good quests lines.
I was part of a very good raiding guild when Molten Core was ready, and then Blackwing Lair. It truly felt epic.
But its an old game now, you cant experience the freshness of a new MMO after years, when the community knows every inch of the content, and there have been several expansions making drastic changes. WoW took a lot from EverQuest, but it was the first MMORPG to have a level of polish (for its time), depth and incredible world design to really make people amazed and to stand out from the crowd.
The magic is gone and its not just nostalgia, even if you try the game for the first time today, you will have so many sites and addons that tell you everything about the game. The game world feels different, and so the experience.
I think its normal that people are moving on
Vanilla WoW was just... amazing, immersion wise. A world that felt so cohesive, vast and full of mistery. Seeing Undercity and Stormwind the first time was just awesome. Exploring the Western and Eastern plaguelands, or places like Stranglethorn Vale, coming from Duskwood and its dark atmosphere and really good quests lines.
I was part of a very good raiding guild when Molten Core was ready, and then Blackwing Lair. It truly felt epic.
But its an old game now, you cant experience the freshness of a new MMO after years, when the community knows every inch of the content, and there have been several expansions making drastic changes. WoW took a lot from EverQuest, but it was the first MMORPG to have a level of polish (for its time), depth and incredible world design to really make people amazed and to stand out from the crowd.
The magic is gone and its not just nostalgia, even if you try the game for the first time today, you will have so many sites and addons that tell you everything about the game. The game world feels different, and so the experience.
I think its normal that people are moving on
That...would be amazing.
Ganking in STV was amazing. I felt like a real ninja, stealthing around the jungle and taking people out...good times. Always had to watch your back...made it really fun.
What story? The one they completely mined of all compelling villians without seeding in new ones
That server would never get to AQ40.
Enosh
Member
I really honest to god hope they make a vanilla server one day just so that I can go "told you so"
MMOs are simply more interesting when you have lots of free time to invest in them and the game isn't known inside and out, something that you can't have with a mass market audience. You also can't retain the mass market audience long term, product fatigue sets in. WoW went mass market from day one, compared to shit like EQ1 and FFXI even Vanilla was easy mode. They've just been pushing the boundaries since then.
However they can easily return to more hardcore raiding mechanics to retain a core number of subscribers long term to keep the game chugging along for the foreseeable future. People have so much invested into the game's progression systems that it will be easy to keep a good number of users. Even as the game slowly crawls down to a 500k subscriber base, it will still be profitable.
However they can easily return to more hardcore raiding mechanics to retain a core number of subscribers long term to keep the game chugging along for the foreseeable future. People have so much invested into the game's progression systems that it will be easy to keep a good number of users. Even as the game slowly crawls down to a 500k subscriber base, it will still be profitable.
Well, as stated in the other "How to Improve MMO Genre" thread I really miss the community the game had in Vanilla/TBC/Early Wrath so I'm pretty happy to watch this game slowly bleed out due to the ridiculous homogenization and streamlining that destroyed everything I actually enjoyed about it.