Blizzard Brings Banhammer Down on 100,000 WoW Accounts

[DugMachine]

snipe

Trust me I get your point but I don't agree with that being the reason they're losing subscribers. The elite that want "challenge" have always been the extreme minority making up anywhere from 1-MAYBE 5% of the population. We're seeing cuts of almost 1 third of the player base so its not the elite that are leaving or people that lack challenge.

No the real reason I believe is that the game just doesn't get new subscribers for whatever reason, the community not being welcoming to new players, it being 10 years old and dated looking in comparison to modern games etc but one thing is for sure. The community that has been around for years just keeps getting better and better and they know the engine backwards and forward. The bosses keep getting harder but players are so much better than they were years ago and they consume the content faster than Blizzard anticipates. Leading to these huge content droughts that nobody likes. And when there's no content why would players stick around and pay $15 a month?

Just with SoO we saw a spike of 3 million subscribers after one of the longest content droughts WoW has had and then they all left and it went back to the same amount towards the end of MoP. This just means players came, consumed the content within 3 months and stopped paying a sub. We'll see the same spike (although not as high) when patch 6.2 and the new raid is out and then decline.

 

[The Goat Tsar]

Ah yes, news of WoW on the Escapist. Spirited shitfests between people who like WoW on one side and on the other, people who can't stand the fact that some people like a game they don't like.

 

[MHR]

If I know anything about the response time and the average number of fucks given by MMO developers about bots, these specific PvP bots have been running for far longer than 6 months without Blizzard doing a damn thing. They only gave a TEMPORARY suspension to a very small percentage of bots in order to placate all the people upset with them. This token crucifixion does not redeem Blizzard for their poor stance concerning the matter. The game is fucked(not just because of this,) I'm glad I didn't buy the new Xpac, and I'm never playing that shit again.

PvP bots are the worst. You can argue that other shitbags botting the game aren't hurting your experience with the game any, so chill the fuck out, but PvP bots really truly do by making your team in a PuG even worse.

In high school I once talked to some skinny dirty-Sanches-faced nerd about WoW, and I didn't have many friends at the time, and we were able to nerd out about WoW. Then he mentioned his bot that he always had running and farming for him while he was at school and how he one time went home and found that it had farmed him up an epic shield that he sold for cash. Felt like punching the little shit in the face, but I wouldn't have had anyone at school to talk to about WoW anymore and I was wondering if I should have burned that bridge. Now reading about how botting has only gotten worse, I should have done it. Pounding someone's face in once might have been better for my social life than knowing that one idiot anyway. Fuck botters.

 

[Aeshi]

Here's the logic you missed.. If there is a constant stream... maybe, just maybe there's something to what they're saying. Or is it that anyone that doesn't share your 'Neutral' stance wrong.

Or is it, just maybe, that the "Appeal to Popularity" Fallacy isn't actually an argument? There's also a constant stream of people saying Blizzard should remove the cross-realm feature (while ignoring the fact that this would basically screw over everyone on a low-pop server.)

Or that Blizzard should spend a load of money on introducing the same "Vanilla WoW" servers that hundreds of Private Servers already provide for free (while giving no argument as to why this would in any way, shape or form be good business sense.)

Should Blizzard oblige their requests too? There's a constant stream of them, so there's clearly something to what they're saying, right?

No you wouldn't. Your style of arguing shows that much at the very least.

Wow, you have the ability to travel to the future/alternate universes and traveled to a time/universe where you beat all of WoW's hardest content and saw that I wasn't any less snide? I would've thought someone with that kinda power would have better things to do than argue with little old me.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Here's the logic you missed.. If there is a constant stream... maybe, just maybe there's something to what they're saying. Or is it that anyone that doesn't share your 'Neutral' stance wrong.

Or is it, just maybe, that the "Appeal to Popularity" Fallacy isn't actually an argument? There's also a constant stream of people saying Blizzard should remove the cross-realm feature (while ignoring the fact that this would basically screw over everyone on a low-pop server.)

The low pop servers are more or less a symptom of the dwindling user base.

Or that Blizzard should spend a load of money on introducing the same "Vanilla WoW" servers that hundreds of Private Servers already provide for free (while giving no argument as to why this would in any way, shape or form be good business sense.)

I'll have to try those servers.

No you wouldn't. Your style of arguing shows that much at the very least.

Wow, you have the ability to travel to the future/alternate universes and traveled to a time/universe where you beat all of WoW's hardest content and saw that I wasn't any less snide? I would've thought someone with that kinda power would have better things to do than argue with little old me.

No , but it would seem you only have 'one-setting' Snide. Besides you miss the point that hard does not equate to challenging. But you'd had to have been reading more to pick that up. Point is. WoW. Linear and unchallenging. Hence beyond a certain point.. people just can't be bothered which is why WOW is slowly bleeding out.

Never mind they kinda shot themselves in the foot by doing everything they can to speed up the leveling process. Which in turn has reduced the amount of tim it takes to rush to endgame content. which of course means the players spend less time in the skinner box and so actually have an easier time of breaking out of it.

 

[Aeshi]

The low pop servers are more or less a symptom of the dwindling user base.

Hardly. Even during the 'peak' 11-12 million subscriber days (or hell, even when WoW was brand new) there were still Servers that had notably lower populations than was the norm. If you were unlucky enough to roll on one of them then get ready to spend hours in Battleground queues and abandon all hope of getting together the 24-39 people needed for a raid. Oh, and I hope you enjoy having to abandon a quest chain because one of the quests requires a group and you can't find anyone to help!

Well, unless you forked out for a Server Transfer, of course.

I'll have to try those servers.

I thought you were going on about how WoW was full of "Skinner Box Brainwashing?" Because if Cataclysm-era WoW is "Skinner Box Brainwashing" then I guess that makes Vanilla-era WoW a "Skinner Box Lobotomy"

Never mind they kinda shot themselves in the foot by doing everything they can to speed up the leveling process

As opposed to...what? Shooting themselves in the other foot by making levelling the same tedious gri-oh right I'm sorry: Skinner Box Lobotomy/Brainwashing that it was in Vanilla? I don't think the modern gamer would tolerate that. Hell I don't think most of the Vanilla-Veterans would let that fly anymore now that said Vets are 10-ish years older (and thus presumably have more responsibilities now.)

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

Back in the day when i played wow, i used auctioneer against the other people using auctioneer, in order to make easy gold and avoid grinding.

Auctioneer scans the whole auction house and catalogues all the results so that in time, you can see what good deals are available, and flip items for a profit.

Realizing this was a very popular practice, i would take some obscure blue items worh almost nothing that nobody would bother trying to sell. I would post this item for whatever. 300g or something for a couple weeks. Then after the auctioneer chumps have all cataloged it at that price, i would undercut myself by a steep margin, maybe 40-50 percent. Without fail some chump would put all their faith in The mod telling them they could make a profit by buying my stupid item

License to print gold, at least it was for me.

Would this be considered cheating? Or unfair play?

 

[JagerBombastic]

100,000 bans hum, just when Valve thought they had bone head business decision of the year award in the field of video games all stitched up; Blizzard just comes right back at them by ban hammering a large portion of it's fan base and with such force they manage to hit the hammer so hard on the accounts and subsequently smash them self's in the foot as well.

 

[Lilani]

Where did they get such a banhammer? I needs it...

 

[Kristoffer]

And yet they're still pissing away money with the subscription while not playing the game. If you find MMO's to be such a chore (which I completely understand) then why bother playing at all? I would be more understanding for a F2P MMO, but it seems like a waste of money if you're going to have a bot do all the work for you in the first place. If you only PvP when you want to, then you're a "casual" by definition...someone not truly dedicated to playing the game. Personally, back in the days when I played WoW, I got my money's worth even if it was involving a lot of grinding. If you're only really going to play a handful of days out of the month, you might as well find a cheaper way to get your PvP kicks.

But hey, I really don't care if people choose to waste their money in this manner. It is, after all, their money.

It's entirely possible to bot when you're not playing.

When I played there were many people who would leave bots on at night or when they were at work.