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I think we all accept that WoW has polarised gamers, because they want to make the game more accessible and therefore the hardcore WoW gamer is being driven away in favour of people who have families/jobs/school and can't spend weeks online just to down a raid boss.
People's lives are getting busier and busier with more serious stuff going on - people working harder to earn the same money to pay higher bills etc.
It makes sense for Blizzard to go where the demand now lies.
What I don't get though is people starting and joining endless for/against WoW threads. If someone loves/hates the game, you really are not going to convince them to take the opposite viewpoint, no matter how well you argue it - their decision is made, so let them get on with it.
Comments
So true.. perhaps mmorpg.com should just close down the forums?
You may not like conflict, but it is the life and blood of this place. Let them get on with it.
That doesn't mean its a bad game, its a very good game if you like raiding and dungeons
The only issue with your post OP is that your totally wrong, and numbers do not lie. When Blizzard started listening to the casual players from that point forward their subs have dropped and CAT was the WoW killer not any other game. I played WoW for 6 or 7 years I can't remember but started with Vanilla, BC was good, WOTLK was not so great WoW started turning into easymode and then CAT the worst thing Blizzard ever did to WoW. The dumbing down of the talent trees was bad enough but people were finishing in a week or two, major bosses down in a week, things like that. So everyone waits for 2 years for something new and finished in a few weeks, lame. When i was playing WoW hardcore I had a number of other things going on in my life including what you posted.
I think the main reason people, including myself, post rants about WoW is because is was a great game. It was fun, players were excited, the subs were booming for Blizzard. It wasn't the people posting bad thing that hurt WoW but WoW itself hurt it, that's what made people so mad. Casual players will never hold a game up, hardcore players will.
Even when I played hardcore i never got to see everything or run every raid or down every boss, that was the fun part about it. It was awesome to know that some guild downs a epic boss, but it took them three months to do it, not three days.
If Blizzard opened up a server with nothing more than Vanilla the population would go to heavy in a day.
Peace,
Lascer
Why are you here then, don't you like reading others opinions and adding your own?
I've got news for you, people's lives are no busier today than they were 10 years ago when I started playing MMO's nor busier than mine was back in the mid-80's when I started playing my first single player RPG's on my IBM PC clone.
But it may seem that teh back and forth discussion is pointless, in the end its all just part of forum PVP which people enjoy doing almost endlessly.
And you know what, sometimes peoples viewpoints are changed, I've seen countless people who were fans of one title turn against it eventually, and to a lesser extent, go the other way and start enjoying a title they previously vocalized as being firmly against.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
For some odd reason you assume that the player base has shrunk because the game got easier in the endgame. While most players (Blizzard statistics, trust them or don't, whatever) aren't max level at any given time during an expansion.
The real reason for the decline is most likely the same as it is for the decline we see in THE ENTIRE games industry - people spending less due to tangible effects of the dodgy economy.
Don't just make up stuff because it sort of fits with your view.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm sorry but that's just your opinion.
As any industry analyst will tell you, without batting an eye, the game industry was in substantial decline over the past few years.
Wether you wish to believe it is luckily not a very influential factor.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410940,00.asp
http://news.softpedia.com/news/NPD-Group-Video-Game-Industry-Decline-by-20-Percent-during-February-257648.shtml
I have always loved World of Warcraft. I, like most, have started and stopped, hated one expansion over the other, and been displeased with most of the idiot proofing of the game mechanics.
What I do like though, is this expansion as far as the overall look and feel of the world itself goes. It does have a bit of the old Vanilla feel also. So, if anyone is on the fence about purchasing the expansion I would say get it. Although not as huge, It is as good as The Burning Crusade IMHO.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I personally agree with what mark is saying, but not how he said it.
I would restate it as: "The core MMO demographic's lives are getting busier and busier". Every MMO survey I have seen so far puts the vast majority of MMO players around the 20-25 year old mark. Of course there are outliers- people who have played since the dawn of time itself and people who just started on their 10th birthday last week, but this seems to be the core, or largest, group. Back during the time of ultima and everquest this group was the 12 and 13 year old playerbase everyone so hated =D But time has moved, a decade+ has passed and now this group has started to shuffle out of college and into careers and families.
The MMO generation is getting older, and games seem to be shifting to follow them.
There are people who play games and then there are gamers.
http://alzplz.blogspot.com
WoW was like a perfect storm. It launched the same month as EQ2 in 2004. Nothing had come along in a while, nothing else other than those two was releasing that holiday season. EQ2 failed to gain any traction and by the time it did, WoW was off to the races selling out every available copy the week of release. Like it or not, WoW went on to peak at over 13 million concurrent paid subscribers. That comes out to almost $200 million per MONTH in revenue and to this day maintains around 10 million paid subscribers per month. It is that success that has allowed developers to take on $100+ million projects. I doubt we'll ever see another MMORPG with a paid subscription business model that maintains over 10 million subscribers again. One may not like WoW, but at least respect it because if it wasn't for WoW's success, I don't think most of these games would have been possible.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."