I agree with many others that greed is the main reason they're losing customers every day. They're always thinking of new ways to get money from players, maybe to compensate for lost subscriptions. And after all these years, WoW is one of the few games that doesn't offer any type of veteran rewards. Maybe they think they don't need to grant anything to players considering their revenue but it would come a long way to show some appreciation of their player base like providing free transfers or free faction/race changes.Last anniversary they didn't even care to give players a new pet companion in the mailbox, only the silly and totally worthless achievement.
But I also think another big reason people are leaving is the game world is totally dead. Sure the game world is huge now, but there is absolutely nothing to do after you hit the level cap. And for those leveling up, it fells like they are playing a solo game most of the time until they reach level cap. A few people will do mining/herbalism runs or maybe level up archaeology or do dailies for the 100000th time, but that is solo stuff too.
So where's everybody then ? Where are the thousands or millions of 85s ?
They are all sitting in the major cities waiting on their queues to do heroics/bgs/arenas for the 1000000th time. Some will be sitting waiting for their guilds to put the next raid together.Now it might be true that at level cap that's what you do if you want to get gear for your toons, but sooner or later people will start asking themselves: Why am I wasting my time like this ? Is this game worth $15 a month ? I finally asked myself these 2 questions and decided I will let my subscription run out and will hit the cancel button on 0608.
Now someone earlier was asking why other games are not growing and/or absorbing the players leaving wow. With so many mmos out there, I doubt everybody would go to a particular game so it might be early to tell how much other games are growing, but Rift seems to be doing ok and since it is somewhat similar to WoW I suspect quite a few went there already. It is likely many others will think every other game out will be just like WoW and will just quit or take a break from gaming waiting for new games to be released like TOR or GW2. In my case, I am playing AoC at the moment and having a good time.
After reading this, i have to agree. The only problem right now is that Blizard and warcraft really do not and have not had a real contending game come out yet. They have virtually all tried to copy warcraft with a couple of added features thrown in which has not really worked.
Untill a game is released that does have alot of differances i sadly think that warcraft will not be toppled, and i also do not see anything comming close to doing this in the next couple of years either. WoW may lose players in that time, but alot will not be moving to another online game when they leave.
Now as for slow at realeasing content, maybe expansions yes, as it is one every 2 yrs, HOWEVER in that time they also release quite alot of free downloadable content (something alot of other companies either throw out as an expansion or charge for it to be downloaded) somthign that has helped kill a number of games off (soe). I do prefer expansions to come out 1.5-2yrs apart and have free content delivered in between (else it wont be long seeing characters over and about lvl 150).
Alot of playres (current and old) do think that WoW is also too cartoony in graphics, but maybe its easier to keep it at a nice eye candy look. Take Vanguard, EQ2, DAoc, they all look extreamly dated to the eye now, yet Warcraft that release (before vanguard) not long after EQ2 and a couple yrs after Daoc, still looks nice to ones eye. Maybe its easier to keep this updated, or maybe they update this side of things all the time.
The only reason WoW has maintained the subscription numbers to date is they have no competition, yet. I am sure Rift has taken a few but if SWTOR or Tera Online live up to half there hype than that is when the mass exodus will begin.
I am surpised to hear this. It seem like since I have been coming to this site, according to many of the people who post here, every six months a new WoW Killer gets released. This game is going to kill WoW, that game is going to Kill WoW. I see it on a pretty regular basis. That sounds like competition to me. It isn't WoW's fault they fail to live up to the hype.
Time is going to Kill WoW, You can't play the same game and not get bored eventually. That is why most people who play WoW have taken breaks now and then. It's why I enjoy checking out the new MMO's. It is why in the long run WoW will slowly dwindle and the player base will move on to new upcoming games...Like Titan.
I think the reason it feels like WoW is losing it's community is the divide they have forged in their communication with their players. It's at almost zero now. There is no more talking to/with players. They only talk at players. Look at the PTR. A place where you expect to see communication between the company and players is now void of it. They make posts to give updates, but no discussion. Remember when GC used to post on the forums? Now everything he says is secluded on a Blog where you can't say anything back. You can take it to the forums, but nothing gets discussed with the people making the decisions.
It's alienating. It's belittling. It's an infallable holier than thou attitude that is thick in every forum. And, it's not because people stopped wanting to discuss things with Blizzard. It's Blizzard not wanting to talk to the players at all. It could be fear. It could be conceited images of power. Whatever it is, it's pushing the sides further apart.
China tried to put laws in place to stop this from happenening, but apparaently it still goes on.
I don't know about you, but it makes me sick knowing that a guy you're playing with could be beaten to death any day.
oh please, as if this only happens with WoW, those gold farming camps may mainly be situated with WoW cause of how many players it has, but you know how every game you play there's gold sellers spamming?....yea thats a clue that these camps probably make people play more than just WoW
I think there was a time when Blizzard would have just been happy to see their community enjoy the products they produced, reveling in the shared jubilation of their talent, imagination, and effort, but--- gradually, with the success of World of Warcraft, the various media tributes and spoofs (South Park, for example), the questionable merger with Activision, the hype over a potential motion picture based on Warcraft, directed by none other than Sam Raimi of "Evil Dead" and "Spiderman" fame, the growing success of BlizzCon ticket sales and DirectTV subscriptions, the center will not hold, the ego has grown beyond the boundaries of a mere game development house grateful for its success, and the paying subscriber can only be counted on to be mocked in public forums, or humiliated during BlizzCon Q&A forums for the entire DirectTV paying world to see.
There is no respect. You are one of millions of subscribers, and you will eat your piece of humiliation pie and LIKE IT. Nevermind that there are other game developers out there hungry for your business, ready and willing to implement those ideas you have been begging Blizzard for for years, but have been steadily refused and ignored (armor dyes, player housing, etc. etc.)
I have been baffled by the steady refusal of Blizzard to budge on the implementation of some of the most basic MMO staples that other MMOs have readily offered players for years. Even RIFT managed to start out with a few of these features right out of the gate.
Blizzard has demonstrated all the worst attributes of being egomaniacal as time has passed, and sadly the raw bits of shoddy community that they have retained are more than eager to pitch in on the forum-trolling wagon to shoot down any dissent, if the negative feedback hasn't already been quashed and deleted by a Blizzard Community Manager.
I think there are still some outstanding principles in artistic design and storytelling going on at Blizzard, but when I recall my experiences at BlizzCon over the past few years, sitting in the lobby of the Anaheim Hilton, watching the Activision marketing team make jerks of themselves as they look down their noses at the teaming masses of PAYING subscribers, or the way some of the various Blizzard dev teams walk through the crowd with their sardonic expressions, noses up in the air, expressing their utter contempt and disdain for the masses of fans that eagerly awaited their arrival after the wrap-up of each night of BlizzCon activites, it's enough to make me sick.
However, let me counter this with the other thing I witnessed; Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen walking through the crowds, sitting down for drinks and/or conversation with various fans, shaking hands, posing for pictures, the guys that were there from the start, the ones that helped build Blizzard from the ground up. The ones that remember what it was like to be a company hungry for your business.
Unfortunately, in their current position of success, most people that currently work for Blizzard probably don't know what it was like to be hungry for subscribers, but at their current pace, and within this economy where less and less people can sit on their rears playing games all day while paying almost 5 bucks a gallon at the gas pumps, those days might return sooner than they think.
I think there was a time when Blizzard would have just been happy to see their community enjoy the products they produced, reveling in the shared jubilation of their talent, imagination, and effort, but--- gradually, with the success of World of Warcraft, the various media tributes and spoofs (South Park, for example), the questionable merger with Activision, the hype over a potential motion picture based on Warcraft, directed by none other than Sam Raimi of "Evil Dead" and "Spiderman" fame, the growing success of BlizzCon ticket sales and DirectTV subscriptions, the center will not hold, the ego has grown beyond the boundaries of a mere game development house grateful for its success, and the paying subscriber can only be counted on to be mocked in public forums, or humiliated during BlizzCon Q&A forums for the entire DirectTV paying world to see.
There is no respect. You are one of millions of subscribers, and you will eat your piece of humiliation pie and LIKE IT. Nevermind that there are other game developers out there hungry for your business, ready and willing to implement those ideas you have been begging Blizzard for for years, but have been steadily refused and ignored (armor dyes, player housing, etc. etc.)
I have been baffled by the steady refusal of Blizzard to budge on the implementation of some of the most basic MMO staples that other MMOs have readily offered players for years. Even RIFT managed to start out with a few of these features right out of the gate.
Blizzard has demonstrated all the worst attributes of being egomaniacal as time has passed, and sadly the raw bits of shoddy community that they have retained are more than eager to pitch in on the forum-trolling wagon to shoot down any dissent, if the negative feedback hasn't already been quashed and deleted by a Blizzard Community Manager.
I think there are still some outstanding principles in artistic design and storytelling going on at Blizzard, but when I recall my experiences at BlizzCon over the past few years, sitting in the lobby of the Anaheim Hilton, watching the Activision marketing team make jerks of themselves as they look down their noses at the teaming masses of PAYING subscribers, or the way some of the various Blizzard dev teams walk through the crowd with their sardonic expressions, noses up in the air, expressing their utter contempt and disdain for the masses of fans that eagerly awaited their arrival after the wrap-up of each night of BlizzCon activites, it's enough to make me sick.
However, let me counter this with the other thing I witnessed; Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen walking through the crowds, sitting down for drinks and/or conversation with various fans, shaking hands, posing for pictures, the guys that were there from the start, the ones that helped build Blizzard from the ground up. The ones that remember what it was like to be a company hungry for your business.
Unfortunately, in their current position of success, most people that currently work for Blizzard probably don't know what it was like to be hungry for subscribers, but at their current pace, and within this economy where less and less people can sit on their rears playing games all day while paying almost 5 bucks a gallon at the gas pumps, those days might return sooner than they think.
Very well told my friend. Really.
Yeah it is sad. Since i was alittle kid, since the days of the VERY first Warcraft. (Remember when you had to go into dos and type " C:/Warcraft" To prompt the game) I've been playing blizzard games and was a big fan.
With WoTLK i quit WoW. In a sense (kinda) it breaks my heart to watch a company with such cool ideas and used to be regular people become what they've become.
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
Oh well. These things are a part of life and i've moved on. Playing fun games now like Warhammer, FFXiV Ect.
Also like Bart said. There are alot of companys out there right now hungry for our buisness and would be more than willing to listen. I think people need to start spreading out into the MMORPG market.
The biggest issue I see WoW facing is that there's not a "Community" there are THREE "Communities":
-The Hardcore "Community" (the number crunchers, theorycrafters, 40+ hour/week raiders)
-The Casual "Community" (people with heavy week schedules who use WoW to relax)
-The Instant Gratification "Community" (Who just play to get the most as soon as possible)
This trichotomy has been the bane of WoW since Wotlk was released, but has acutally been gestating for quite a while (this is from someone who was once "hardcore" back from day 1 in Vanilla to BC, but switched to being more "casual" around Wotlk and through Cata until I stopped playing a few weeks ago).
Back in The Burning Crusade, there was an enormous divide in the playerbase; it boiled down to those who could do everything in "The Raiding Scene" and those who couldn't. The hardcore "community" had all the time in the world to clear the content. The casuals couldn't; it wasn't due to their inability to play the game with any amount of skill, it was almost purely time constraints.
This is where Blizzard's design focused changed; as the game grew, they deemed it prudent to no longer alienate the crowd that couldn't play all day, every day.
This is where the Instant Gratification "Community" began to surface. The Burning Crusade introduced badge gear, which was inevitably followed up in WotLK with complete removal of raid "keying". The allure of "walk in and raid" is what drew in a lot of its subscriber base (IMO).
The biggest issue was that this in turn alienated the hardcore "community"; the challenges of raiding were now being filtered and diluted so that casual players could also play in their pond. To satisfy them, Blizzard introduced "Hardmodes". Now the hardcore "community" had what they wanted --challenge.
The inherent problem that Blizzard has faced now is that everything has been muddied and blurred together. They are being forced to juggle three "communities" with three wildly contrasting views of what's acceptable. The hardcore "community" wants content that is a challenge and has long lasting power. The casual "community" wants content they can jump in and do for an hour or two a night and still feel as if they are accomplishing something. The instant gratification "community" wants to jump in and be able to complete everything as soon as possible, without any sort of blockade slowing their progress.
I'm sure this post comes off pretty heavily against the WoW community, but that is one thing to remember: The community helps shape the game. And with 11 million+ costumers, that "community" is so enormous, so different, that Blizzard's design philosophy will never EVER satisfy them all.
In regards to things like the "premium" services, I remember the "community" being up in arms about the Trading Card Game loot cards and the Blizzard Store selling mounts (That Retarded Horse), and yet week after week I saw new people with those new items. Blizzard sees the added revenue like that and, like any company, says "why not make more". It's up to the community to say "that's enough". This new premium service is where the "community" has finally started to say it. Now if only they have the strength of will to enforce it by not paying for it (gut instinct says "no").
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
Johnie Marz: I play WoW and I definately do not want player housing. As for those that do, I think it is a case of be careful what you ask for. If WoW intoduced player housing it would just mean millions of people sitting in their house waiting for their dungeon que to come up.
Dungeon finder + Player Housing = One big single player MMO.
WoW already has too much of a single player Feel anyway, but at least when you are hanging out in Stormwind it feels like a bustling city. Player housing would kill that last little bit of Multi-player that is left in WoW. (And let's face it, there isn't much of that left)
The game was so boring that I only played for 2 months. I for one don't understand how it has lasted this long but then again I am not very good at understanding the masses.
well... wow is a dying game tbh after absorting every idea that others invented and reproducing it they fail in maintaing the community. tbh wow should be free to play btw.... because most of its content is barren anyway....
Haha! I've had a filter set on my email accounts blocking or deleting anything Blizzard or Warcraft related for a year or more now. Not so much because of them but due to the gold farmers with the fake account warnings bullshit.
Since I won't be going back, I could care less if my account ever does get hacked and somehow I miss a REAL Blizzard email.
Bottom line for us was changes made took our fun away and seem now for no reason.
1. Talents are now so dumb, stupid, foolish It just makes me mad typing it. When they needed more variety to their talent tree They changed it to NO VARIETY AT ALL!
When they needed to get away from tank-healer-dps in its narrow form they made it so narrow as to preset teams with those roles.
2. We luv'd PvP in WoW, I know many people loved twinking ( getting the best gear you could , As anyone should!) and playing at a level you found the most fun, they forced us to level n the bg's! wtf? It was widely accepted that this was to stop twinking. which made no sense as the only ones that complained did not PvP to any serious extent!
Now they made twinking so easy that even with leveling you can twink every level. However this made you burn out much faster on both twinking and PvP'ing as you spend most of your time twinking. which is god aweful boring.
The other choice is to pvp without twinking which means getting owned in every fight.
They also added heirlooms which sank PvP forever, they cannot take them away and getting hierlooms is the ultimate excercise in boredom.
There is more I would like to point to but this post would go on and on, much like WoW does now.
COMMUNITY
How could anyone defend the so called community in WoW? they have 2 really large segments imo and then scattered rebels. Either they fall under the "STFU noob, LTP chuck norris " crowd or...
the "I just dropped my daughter off at soccer and am ready to PvE and get more mounts I do not need because I have no expectations from an MMO" crowd
Will Rift become the new king of MMO's? The Old Republic? TERA? Or even Guild Wars 2? No, I doubt it. They will be good or great in their own rights. Warcraft was good, if not great in its own right years ago. But, it seems corporate greed is now starting to take over. And that profit is winning out over customer satisfaction.
I lol'ed when you assume Anet is a coroporate greed.
If Anet are a coroporate greed, expect grind and monthly fees.
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
Richiev says: I play WoW and I definately do not want player housing. As for those that do, I think it is a case of be careful what you ask for. If WoW intoduced player housing it would just mean millions of people sitting in their house waiting for their dungeon que to come up.
Dungeon finder + Player Housing = One big single player MMO.
WoW already has too much of a single player Feel anyway, but at least when you are hanging out in Stormwind it feels like a bustling city. Player housing would kill that last little bit of Multi-player that is left in WoW. (And let's face it, there isn't much of that left)
Have you thought at all what housing could mean to an mmo? How it could make crafting fun? The average person as I have seen it enters MMO's not having an opinion about housing, and then finds decorating thier house the most "FUN" aspect of the game.
I myself went through this with star wars galaxies, which because it was made so early in MMO history had the best take. As MMo's move forward they get worse and worse and worse...
Also you really think waiting in your house would be bad? would make it feel more single player? Waiting anywhere is stupid in an MMO! We SHOULD be playing not waiting for a repeat of what we did before.
Housing -dyes- crafting that is not for the thinking impaired are why people who know better really hate WoW.
While I enjoyed WoW at one point with my kids, there is no doubt, in other words it is a fact that people playing WoW do not realize why people are angry. Which is because they are ignorant to how WoW and others have made the whole MMO market chase money instead of being creative.
They do not get angry there is no housing because they never had it and do not get mad that a game would refuse to implemet it. That crafting being useless is not the way is used to be. That not having something as simple as dyes which would only make people happier is something they should complain about.
If MMO's were music WoW would be Michael Jackson, the king of crap, or pop. whichever.
The masses are always full of the less intelligent and shallow to those of us looking at them. I will take Neil young, Billie Holiday or Zeppelib over Pop today and every day.
Lastly on the subject I think several people made some really great points in this thread.
However to the few who said WoW is old so OF COURSE IT WILL GET BORING I say no! no no no no no no no no. No way "buzzer sound" wrong buddy.
Because MMO's Should keep going forever if one was ever done right. Okay maybe not forever, but why not close to that?
When MMo's hit they charged our brains with endless creatvity. We thought by now MMO's would be so great that they would be he only thing. That we would be playing single player games IN MMOS!!!!!
A MMO has no reason to get old. It never ends so it should be able to create endlessly to make the game fun. The fact is MMO's are ruined every time by the people running them. Every MMO's I have played for any amount of time as fixed shit not broken.
WoW is the worst IMO because it keeps dumbiong the game down and also it keeps changing the classes in a nebver ending stupidity for balance sake?!?!? WTF
They could just seperate PvP and |PVE instead of making a healing class equal if not better at killing one on one etc...
They could add depth by making crafting useful and fun but they do not. They could add housing giving the game another fun mini game, as many people would choose to roll on a rare housing item over a rare weapon, but they do not.
They instead take away every tiny bit of difference from the factions by making horde paladins and alliance shamans! stupid! They make all gear close to the same so we are all the same even more! stupid, same with talents! and so on and so on.
An MMO should be a world we live in not a game of gear raiding, and when and If a polished game comes out that does this then you will see people happy.
The fact the people see WoW as the biggest reason we dont have that game makes it easy to agree with the chant "death to Warcraft" for me and others.
I don't think it has "lost" the community, but it sure has frayed at the edges. While I understand why they made the level increase only 5 levels for Cata, in order to solve this speed issue they have with getting content out (doesn't seem to have worked, though), they really need to start thinking outside the box and start implementing endgame activities other than raiding and rep grinds. Things like guild housing, player housing, collections, mini games, and alternate advancement mechanics are what is needed to keep the community playing while they then take the time they need to do their content patches. They literally have dug themselves a hole by not persuing these things from day 1.
All you have to do is look at their competition to understand how those "other" games are still afloat. Like EQ2 and Lotro. They offer a more significant alternative to endgame raiding/rep grinding.
Now on the topic of charging players for things like chatting with friends or playing with friends via cross server, yes, that IS a divisive effect on the community, especially when a game like Rift just one upped Blizzard by stating they will have Free Character Transfers. The gauntlet has been thrown and it's time for Blizzard to make some changes and stop being greedy because they've been on the throne for 6 years.
The problem with the way Blizzard has handled its community is by the many bandaids to try to make an unsociable game more sociable. Blizzard never handled grouping properly. In the older MMOs, there was always an incentive to group up. In WoW, even many of the group quests were soloable, especially for well-established players who can twink. One of the bandaids is of course the cross-server lfg tool.
One might think, woah, that's a great idea! But the problem is that on-server grouping died. There is no easy way to lfg just on your own server. You have to still use the lfg tool to be able to see and type in the lfg chat. To try to make new friends is hell. I made my old friends by grouping up and finding out we played well together and had a lot of other things in common back in Vanilla WoW. Now there is no way to do it easily. You have to be lucky i.e. join the right guild, but finding the right guild is not that easy either.
I found LotRO a little less unsociable... but not completely sociable either. In EQ2, there are reasons to group up, so the community is much stronger and vibrant. Rift unfortunately seems much more like LotRO and WoW...
Regardless of subscription numbers, the community aspect of WoW is pretty much dead and has been for a long time (at least several years). What a shame...
Yeah, it started long ago, but they still haven't learned from it. You don't even have to be in game to read how they are actually changing the classes more and more. Mechanics that have been in game for years for a spec are ripped out from under them without any explanation. Knee jerk over nerfing to correct one problem. Do too much damage? We'll lower your dps, take some of your mobility, and why not throw in a dash of taking away a core feature of your spec. Then, when you ask about it, we'll completely ignore you. That's every patch now. It hasn't even leveled off. They are full speed ahead with it. They never look at the big picture and they design PvP and PvE to have different goals for damage and control and are actually surprised when they conflict. Honestly, the need to get knocked off their egos. They need that kick in the rear to ground them again. If it doesn't happen, I don't see them changing. I miss the old Blizzard. Whatever they are now is not even a shadow of what they were in my opinion. That and they all need to take a class on customer service and how to interact with people in a professional manner by looking past the emotion and seeing the point. They need to realize that people that complain do so because they want change. If they didn't care, they wouldn't bother to post.
well... wow is a dying game tbh after absorting every idea that others invented and reproducing it they fail in maintaing the community. tbh wow should be free to play btw.... because most of its content is barren anyway....
i played 4 years ...and i regret it...
blizz mails = spam to me
If WoW was free to play, it would have the gaming industry's largest item mall. They'd charge you for everything in real cash and B.K. would love the whole idea. They would probably put their atonement idea of keys back into game, reinstate the keychain, charge you for each key, and only allow people with a key inside each dungeon from 25man to 5man.
Also, yeah, I unsubscribed to their mailing list as well. I don't even want the emails to get a week of free play. They've lost me for life.
I played cata for 2 months after launch. I barely played during the last week of my sub. I found cata a pretty good expansion. It upgraded the older zones and dungeons. I enjoyed it to just roll a new character and to lvl it through the revamped zones. Lvling was pretty fast so I could try out some classes I never really played before. For me that was the most fun part of cata. I also brought my mains to 85. I did some dungeons and some raids with my dk. But they killed dk's for me. I used to be a frost tank in wotlk, and I found out they made tanking to be a blood spec. I couldn't really get into it, so I went on to take a dps role. But still, the end game wasn't fun, nothing new, It was just the same as in wotlk. Tol Barad was oke, but after a while the daily quest grind got boring. And the community was terrible as usual. I eventually managed to get into a quite mature guild (after trying out manny other guilds). I still miss the old community from vanilla. But that is all gone. Wow is going downhill slowly. Blizz should come out with something new and inovative. They need to think more out of the box. They need to fresh up their concept.
------------------------------------------------------------------- waiting for ... nothing..
Lastly on the subject I think several people made some really great points in this thread.
However to the few who said WoW is old so OF COURSE IT WILL GET BORING I say no! no no no no no no no no. No way "buzzer sound" wrong buddy.
Because MMO's Should keep going forever if one was ever done right. Okay maybe not forever, but why not close to that?
You should start living in the real world. What you are describing is absurd and unrealistic. Endless stream of content is impossible. Of course, you will get bored with a game be it an MMO or a singleplayer/multiplayer game. Thinking that MMOs can have no end is dillusional and naive. Nothing lasts forever. MMOs certainly don't. Not even close to infinity. MMOs can't go on forever. In some people's dreams maybe but not in the real world...
Originally posted by Ramzeppelin
2. We luv'd PvP in WoW, I know many people loved twinking ( getting the best gear you could , As anyone should!) and playing at a level you found the most fun, they forced us to level n the bg's! wtf? It was widely accepted that this was to stop twinking. which made no sense as the only ones that complained did not PvP to any serious extent!
As far as I know you can lock your level for 10g or am I missing something? ->
Now they made twinking so easy that even with leveling you can twink every level. However this made you burn out much faster on both twinking and PvP'ing as you spend most of your time twinking. which is god aweful boring.
The other choice is to pvp without twinking which means getting owned in every fight.
They also added heirlooms which sank PvP forever, they cannot take them away and getting hierlooms is the ultimate excercise in boredom.
I hate twinking and I hate people who do it. They ruined low level PvP. I respect other people's preferences but this ruins the experience for others around you. New players to the game got raped in battlegrounds because of god damn twinkers. Unfortunately, you can lock your level and thus stay in the bracket you want. If I were Blizzard, I would do everything to remove and discourage twinking. Good riddance if you ask me.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Comments
I agree with many others that greed is the main reason they're losing customers every day. They're always thinking of new ways to get money from players, maybe to compensate for lost subscriptions. And after all these years, WoW is one of the few games that doesn't offer any type of veteran rewards. Maybe they think they don't need to grant anything to players considering their revenue but it would come a long way to show some appreciation of their player base like providing free transfers or free faction/race changes.Last anniversary they didn't even care to give players a new pet companion in the mailbox, only the silly and totally worthless achievement.
But I also think another big reason people are leaving is the game world is totally dead. Sure the game world is huge now, but there is absolutely nothing to do after you hit the level cap. And for those leveling up, it fells like they are playing a solo game most of the time until they reach level cap. A few people will do mining/herbalism runs or maybe level up archaeology or do dailies for the 100000th time, but that is solo stuff too.
So where's everybody then ? Where are the thousands or millions of 85s ?
They are all sitting in the major cities waiting on their queues to do heroics/bgs/arenas for the 1000000th time. Some will be sitting waiting for their guilds to put the next raid together.Now it might be true that at level cap that's what you do if you want to get gear for your toons, but sooner or later people will start asking themselves: Why am I wasting my time like this ? Is this game worth $15 a month ? I finally asked myself these 2 questions and decided I will let my subscription run out and will hit the cancel button on 0608.
Now someone earlier was asking why other games are not growing and/or absorbing the players leaving wow. With so many mmos out there, I doubt everybody would go to a particular game so it might be early to tell how much other games are growing, but Rift seems to be doing ok and since it is somewhat similar to WoW I suspect quite a few went there already. It is likely many others will think every other game out will be just like WoW and will just quit or take a break from gaming waiting for new games to be released like TOR or GW2. In my case, I am playing AoC at the moment and having a good time.
Anyway, that is my opinion.
After reading this, i have to agree. The only problem right now is that Blizard and warcraft really do not and have not had a real contending game come out yet. They have virtually all tried to copy warcraft with a couple of added features thrown in which has not really worked.
Untill a game is released that does have alot of differances i sadly think that warcraft will not be toppled, and i also do not see anything comming close to doing this in the next couple of years either. WoW may lose players in that time, but alot will not be moving to another online game when they leave.
Now as for slow at realeasing content, maybe expansions yes, as it is one every 2 yrs, HOWEVER in that time they also release quite alot of free downloadable content (something alot of other companies either throw out as an expansion or charge for it to be downloaded) somthign that has helped kill a number of games off (soe). I do prefer expansions to come out 1.5-2yrs apart and have free content delivered in between (else it wont be long seeing characters over and about lvl 150).
Alot of playres (current and old) do think that WoW is also too cartoony in graphics, but maybe its easier to keep it at a nice eye candy look. Take Vanguard, EQ2, DAoc, they all look extreamly dated to the eye now, yet Warcraft that release (before vanguard) not long after EQ2 and a couple yrs after Daoc, still looks nice to ones eye. Maybe its easier to keep this updated, or maybe they update this side of things all the time.
WoW will be its own killer
It also makes more money then the USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
Thought I would fix that for you.
I am surpised to hear this. It seem like since I have been coming to this site, according to many of the people who post here, every six months a new WoW Killer gets released. This game is going to kill WoW, that game is going to Kill WoW. I see it on a pretty regular basis. That sounds like competition to me. It isn't WoW's fault they fail to live up to the hype.
Time is going to Kill WoW, You can't play the same game and not get bored eventually. That is why most people who play WoW have taken breaks now and then. It's why I enjoy checking out the new MMO's. It is why in the long run WoW will slowly dwindle and the player base will move on to new upcoming games...Like Titan.
It's alienating. It's belittling. It's an infallable holier than thou attitude that is thick in every forum. And, it's not because people stopped wanting to discuss things with Blizzard. It's Blizzard not wanting to talk to the players at all. It could be fear. It could be conceited images of power. Whatever it is, it's pushing the sides further apart.
oh please, as if this only happens with WoW, those gold farming camps may mainly be situated with WoW cause of how many players it has, but you know how every game you play there's gold sellers spamming?....yea thats a clue that these camps probably make people play more than just WoW
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
I think there was a time when Blizzard would have just been happy to see their community enjoy the products they produced, reveling in the shared jubilation of their talent, imagination, and effort, but--- gradually, with the success of World of Warcraft, the various media tributes and spoofs (South Park, for example), the questionable merger with Activision, the hype over a potential motion picture based on Warcraft, directed by none other than Sam Raimi of "Evil Dead" and "Spiderman" fame, the growing success of BlizzCon ticket sales and DirectTV subscriptions, the center will not hold, the ego has grown beyond the boundaries of a mere game development house grateful for its success, and the paying subscriber can only be counted on to be mocked in public forums, or humiliated during BlizzCon Q&A forums for the entire DirectTV paying world to see.
There is no respect. You are one of millions of subscribers, and you will eat your piece of humiliation pie and LIKE IT. Nevermind that there are other game developers out there hungry for your business, ready and willing to implement those ideas you have been begging Blizzard for for years, but have been steadily refused and ignored (armor dyes, player housing, etc. etc.)
I have been baffled by the steady refusal of Blizzard to budge on the implementation of some of the most basic MMO staples that other MMOs have readily offered players for years. Even RIFT managed to start out with a few of these features right out of the gate.
Blizzard has demonstrated all the worst attributes of being egomaniacal as time has passed, and sadly the raw bits of shoddy community that they have retained are more than eager to pitch in on the forum-trolling wagon to shoot down any dissent, if the negative feedback hasn't already been quashed and deleted by a Blizzard Community Manager.
I think there are still some outstanding principles in artistic design and storytelling going on at Blizzard, but when I recall my experiences at BlizzCon over the past few years, sitting in the lobby of the Anaheim Hilton, watching the Activision marketing team make jerks of themselves as they look down their noses at the teaming masses of PAYING subscribers, or the way some of the various Blizzard dev teams walk through the crowd with their sardonic expressions, noses up in the air, expressing their utter contempt and disdain for the masses of fans that eagerly awaited their arrival after the wrap-up of each night of BlizzCon activites, it's enough to make me sick.
However, let me counter this with the other thing I witnessed; Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen walking through the crowds, sitting down for drinks and/or conversation with various fans, shaking hands, posing for pictures, the guys that were there from the start, the ones that helped build Blizzard from the ground up. The ones that remember what it was like to be a company hungry for your business.
Unfortunately, in their current position of success, most people that currently work for Blizzard probably don't know what it was like to be hungry for subscribers, but at their current pace, and within this economy where less and less people can sit on their rears playing games all day while paying almost 5 bucks a gallon at the gas pumps, those days might return sooner than they think.
Very well told my friend. Really.
Yeah it is sad. Since i was alittle kid, since the days of the VERY first Warcraft. (Remember when you had to go into dos and type " C:/Warcraft" To prompt the game) I've been playing blizzard games and was a big fan.
With WoTLK i quit WoW. In a sense (kinda) it breaks my heart to watch a company with such cool ideas and used to be regular people become what they've become.
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
Oh well. These things are a part of life and i've moved on. Playing fun games now like Warhammer, FFXiV Ect.
Also like Bart said. There are alot of companys out there right now hungry for our buisness and would be more than willing to listen. I think people need to start spreading out into the MMORPG market.
Yes this was the only thing that stuck in my head from last blizzcon. Most panels were made up of dicks trying to get cheap laughs. Infuriating.
The biggest issue I see WoW facing is that there's not a "Community" there are THREE "Communities":
-The Hardcore "Community" (the number crunchers, theorycrafters, 40+ hour/week raiders)
-The Casual "Community" (people with heavy week schedules who use WoW to relax)
-The Instant Gratification "Community" (Who just play to get the most as soon as possible)
This trichotomy has been the bane of WoW since Wotlk was released, but has acutally been gestating for quite a while (this is from someone who was once "hardcore" back from day 1 in Vanilla to BC, but switched to being more "casual" around Wotlk and through Cata until I stopped playing a few weeks ago).
Back in The Burning Crusade, there was an enormous divide in the playerbase; it boiled down to those who could do everything in "The Raiding Scene" and those who couldn't. The hardcore "community" had all the time in the world to clear the content. The casuals couldn't; it wasn't due to their inability to play the game with any amount of skill, it was almost purely time constraints.
This is where Blizzard's design focused changed; as the game grew, they deemed it prudent to no longer alienate the crowd that couldn't play all day, every day.
This is where the Instant Gratification "Community" began to surface. The Burning Crusade introduced badge gear, which was inevitably followed up in WotLK with complete removal of raid "keying". The allure of "walk in and raid" is what drew in a lot of its subscriber base (IMO).
The biggest issue was that this in turn alienated the hardcore "community"; the challenges of raiding were now being filtered and diluted so that casual players could also play in their pond. To satisfy them, Blizzard introduced "Hardmodes". Now the hardcore "community" had what they wanted --challenge.
The inherent problem that Blizzard has faced now is that everything has been muddied and blurred together. They are being forced to juggle three "communities" with three wildly contrasting views of what's acceptable. The hardcore "community" wants content that is a challenge and has long lasting power. The casual "community" wants content they can jump in and do for an hour or two a night and still feel as if they are accomplishing something. The instant gratification "community" wants to jump in and be able to complete everything as soon as possible, without any sort of blockade slowing their progress.
I'm sure this post comes off pretty heavily against the WoW community, but that is one thing to remember: The community helps shape the game. And with 11 million+ costumers, that "community" is so enormous, so different, that Blizzard's design philosophy will never EVER satisfy them all.
In regards to things like the "premium" services, I remember the "community" being up in arms about the Trading Card Game loot cards and the Blizzard Store selling mounts (That Retarded Horse), and yet week after week I saw new people with those new items. Blizzard sees the added revenue like that and, like any company, says "why not make more". It's up to the community to say "that's enough". This new premium service is where the "community" has finally started to say it. Now if only they have the strength of will to enforce it by not paying for it (gut instinct says "no").
(sorry, long post is long)
BartdaCat is also right about blizzard not caring what the players want (housing, armor dye. ect) Even though i've seen almost a good 3/4 of the community favor those ideas.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnie Marz: I play WoW and I definately do not want player housing. As for those that do, I think it is a case of be careful what you ask for. If WoW intoduced player housing it would just mean millions of people sitting in their house waiting for their dungeon que to come up.
Dungeon finder + Player Housing = One big single player MMO.
WoW already has too much of a single player Feel anyway, but at least when you are hanging out in Stormwind it feels like a bustling city. Player housing would kill that last little bit of Multi-player that is left in WoW. (And let's face it, there isn't much of that left)
The game was so boring that I only played for 2 months. I for one don't understand how it has lasted this long but then again I am not very good at understanding the masses.
well... wow is a dying game tbh after absorting every idea that others invented and reproducing it they fail in maintaing the community. tbh wow should be free to play btw.... because most of its content is barren anyway....
i played 4 years ...and i regret it...
blizz mails = spam to me
Haha! I've had a filter set on my email accounts blocking or deleting anything Blizzard or Warcraft related for a year or more now. Not so much because of them but due to the gold farmers with the fake account warnings bullshit.
Since I won't be going back, I could care less if my account ever does get hacked and somehow I miss a REAL Blizzard email.
Why "we" Left WoW
Bottom line for us was changes made took our fun away and seem now for no reason.
1. Talents are now so dumb, stupid, foolish It just makes me mad typing it. When they needed more variety to their talent tree They changed it to NO VARIETY AT ALL!
When they needed to get away from tank-healer-dps in its narrow form they made it so narrow as to preset teams with those roles.
2. We luv'd PvP in WoW, I know many people loved twinking ( getting the best gear you could , As anyone should!) and playing at a level you found the most fun, they forced us to level n the bg's! wtf? It was widely accepted that this was to stop twinking. which made no sense as the only ones that complained did not PvP to any serious extent!
Now they made twinking so easy that even with leveling you can twink every level. However this made you burn out much faster on both twinking and PvP'ing as you spend most of your time twinking. which is god aweful boring.
The other choice is to pvp without twinking which means getting owned in every fight.
They also added heirlooms which sank PvP forever, they cannot take them away and getting hierlooms is the ultimate excercise in boredom.
There is more I would like to point to but this post would go on and on, much like WoW does now.
COMMUNITY
How could anyone defend the so called community in WoW? they have 2 really large segments imo and then scattered rebels. Either they fall under the "STFU noob, LTP chuck norris " crowd or...
the "I just dropped my daughter off at soccer and am ready to PvE and get more mounts I do not need because I have no expectations from an MMO" crowd
I lol'ed when you assume Anet is a coroporate greed.
If Anet are a coroporate greed, expect grind and monthly fees.
But they don't have either.
Lastly on the subject I think several people made some really great points in this thread.
However to the few who said WoW is old so OF COURSE IT WILL GET BORING I say no! no no no no no no no no. No way "buzzer sound" wrong buddy.
Because MMO's Should keep going forever if one was ever done right. Okay maybe not forever, but why not close to that?
When MMo's hit they charged our brains with endless creatvity. We thought by now MMO's would be so great that they would be he only thing. That we would be playing single player games IN MMOS!!!!!
A MMO has no reason to get old. It never ends so it should be able to create endlessly to make the game fun. The fact is MMO's are ruined every time by the people running them. Every MMO's I have played for any amount of time as fixed shit not broken.
WoW is the worst IMO because it keeps dumbiong the game down and also it keeps changing the classes in a nebver ending stupidity for balance sake?!?!? WTF
They could just seperate PvP and |PVE instead of making a healing class equal if not better at killing one on one etc...
They could add depth by making crafting useful and fun but they do not. They could add housing giving the game another fun mini game, as many people would choose to roll on a rare housing item over a rare weapon, but they do not.
They instead take away every tiny bit of difference from the factions by making horde paladins and alliance shamans! stupid! They make all gear close to the same so we are all the same even more! stupid, same with talents! and so on and so on.
An MMO should be a world we live in not a game of gear raiding, and when and If a polished game comes out that does this then you will see people happy.
The fact the people see WoW as the biggest reason we dont have that game makes it easy to agree with the chant "death to Warcraft" for me and others.
The problem with the way Blizzard has handled its community is by the many bandaids to try to make an unsociable game more sociable. Blizzard never handled grouping properly. In the older MMOs, there was always an incentive to group up. In WoW, even many of the group quests were soloable, especially for well-established players who can twink. One of the bandaids is of course the cross-server lfg tool.
One might think, woah, that's a great idea! But the problem is that on-server grouping died. There is no easy way to lfg just on your own server. You have to still use the lfg tool to be able to see and type in the lfg chat. To try to make new friends is hell. I made my old friends by grouping up and finding out we played well together and had a lot of other things in common back in Vanilla WoW. Now there is no way to do it easily. You have to be lucky i.e. join the right guild, but finding the right guild is not that easy either.
I found LotRO a little less unsociable... but not completely sociable either. In EQ2, there are reasons to group up, so the community is much stronger and vibrant. Rift unfortunately seems much more like LotRO and WoW...
Regardless of subscription numbers, the community aspect of WoW is pretty much dead and has been for a long time (at least several years). What a shame...
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
If WoW was free to play, it would have the gaming industry's largest item mall. They'd charge you for everything in real cash and B.K. would love the whole idea. They would probably put their atonement idea of keys back into game, reinstate the keychain, charge you for each key, and only allow people with a key inside each dungeon from 25man to 5man.
Also, yeah, I unsubscribed to their mailing list as well. I don't even want the emails to get a week of free play. They've lost me for life.
I played cata for 2 months after launch. I barely played during the last week of my sub. I found cata a pretty good expansion. It upgraded the older zones and dungeons. I enjoyed it to just roll a new character and to lvl it through the revamped zones. Lvling was pretty fast so I could try out some classes I never really played before. For me that was the most fun part of cata. I also brought my mains to 85. I did some dungeons and some raids with my dk. But they killed dk's for me. I used to be a frost tank in wotlk, and I found out they made tanking to be a blood spec. I couldn't really get into it, so I went on to take a dps role. But still, the end game wasn't fun, nothing new, It was just the same as in wotlk. Tol Barad was oke, but after a while the daily quest grind got boring. And the community was terrible as usual. I eventually managed to get into a quite mature guild (after trying out manny other guilds). I still miss the old community from vanilla. But that is all gone. Wow is going downhill slowly. Blizz should come out with something new and inovative. They need to think more out of the box. They need to fresh up their concept.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
waiting for ... nothing..
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.