Blizzard Hopes Faster WoW Expansions Will Halt Sliding Subscriptions

[Realitycrash]

Part of the problem, Morhaime said, is that years of experience have made players better at tearing through WoW content, after which they mosey along to other games because there's nothing left to hold their interest

Oh BULLSHIT. It has nothing to do with you guys making it easier and easier to powerlevel, to buy mounts, to do heroic dungeons, etc?
I'm all for more content, but gearing up, etc, is very easy nowdays. It's not that I fully support the endless grind that was Vanilla/BC, but since it took longer to achieve anything, player stayed longer.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I actually think releasing explansions faster will be to their detriment. I played wow since vanilla beta and I just got tired of the cycle of; struggle to gear up beat the bad guy start all over again at 0 in the next xpac.

It's a pain in the ass.

 

[John Funk]

Or..... You know..... You could always just make Warcraft 4... But I know you are too afraid of money and success to do that.

The RTS team is currently finishing StarCraft 2. After they finish SC2P, who knows? Maybe WC4.

 

[Accountfailed]

oh, yes and the sliding number of subscribers has absolutely nothing to do with the sheer amount of cunts that made up 80% of heroic dungeongoers in early cataclysm.

 

[Fledge]

Raids are boring.
They always have been, they always will be - it's just the social element of them that's fun.

PvP's okay, but that's because you're killing other players; that alone makes it more exhilarating.

Bosses are boring.

The game engine is too old to add any new mechanics to makes bosses NOT boring.
Speaking of the engine, it's horribly optimised and even produces ugly graphics in places.

I regret buying Cata.

BLEH.

 

[ionveau]

Or..... You know..... You could always just make Warcraft 4... But I know you are too afraid of money and success to do that.

Massive respect+
why cant they just do this! i think the only reason i played was was because i played warcraft 3 and i thought it would be the same game but in 3rd person and to an extent it was up untill level 60, after 70 and 80 it just got boring same old stats same old dungeons nothing new just new areas to do the same thing.

 

[Vrach]

Blizzard's notoriously long development cycles are balanced by the fact that virtually everything it releases is mind-blowingly awesome

I know a good deal of WoW players who would disagree with ya. And some 600k more that I don't know

WoW hasn't had mind-blowingly awesome stuff since near the end of TBC. WotLK had it's bright spots, but was largely ruined by Blizzard swiftly tweaking those bright spots into puddles of crap to better fit in with the rest of the scenery. Not sure on Cataclysm myself, but from what I've heard from just about everyone that played it, it's just more of the same crap, with some players who hated WotLK actually saying it was more fun. Looking at some of the recent changes like CCs not doing pulls and such, I don't find that hard to believe.

As for this move, I'm not surprised, it's a solid business strategy. Expansions bring them in extra cash and decreasing the time between them just means doing a few more cash ins before the upcoming MMOs take away it's thunder.

 

[Shadesong]

I'm willing to bet my soul that all 600k of those subscribers left because they never got the dances they were promised.

Just sayin'.

 

[Sean951]

Raids are boring.
They always have been, they always will be - it's just the social element of them that's fun.

PvP's okay, but that's because you're killing other players; that alone makes it more exhilarating.

Bosses are boring.

The game engine is too old to add any new mechanics to makes bosses NOT boring.
Speaking of the engine, it's horribly optimised and even produces ugly graphics in places.

I regret buying Cata.

BLEH.

Strongly disagree, raids were pretty much all I did once I was geared in Wrath.

Personally, I just want them to go back to the Wrath model of content difficulty. Make it a little harder to gear up, like it was in 3.0 before the emblems got out of control, and you have a game that would keep me playing. I would be getting epics for heroics, even if they are only marginally better. Entry level raids would be doable by a majority of the population from the get go instead a patch or so behind the top people, who have hardmodes to keep them busy, and put less trash in heroics. Speaking as a tank, I hate trash with such a passion because it is so incredibly boring. At least the bosses can hold my interest for a minute or so.

 

[Keldon888]

WoW has been on life support since Wrath. Late BC is when they were pulling more and more people to go off and do their new MMO. They knew this would start happening, a new class and new races were only thrown in as short stoppers for the tide going out on the game.

What they are really are concerned about is people establishing themselves in other games before their next one comes out. Just like shooters putting out crappy map packs to try and keep you from getting then other half dozen shooters that come out between versions of their game.

Valid business panning, but I just can't bring myself to care.

 

[Aeshi]

Who cares? The people leaving are probably just bandwagon jumpers who have decided that WoW is Hitler Satan and are leaving for "Not-a-WoW-ripoff-honest 2:WoW with Lightsabers" (which will be completely different and original in every way!)

 

[Kellerb]

Ooooh. That does not bode well for World of warcraft players. not at all.

 

[Sean951]

Ooooh. That does not bode well for World of warcraft players. not at all.

How you figure? Blizzard is still the undisputed king of MMO-land with at least 10 times the subscriptions of anyone else. Not to mention, they don't really put out anything that is complete crap. They may put out filler content, but who cares? It increases how much you can do.

 

[Nanaki316]

I have to agree with an above poster or two, I believe WoW's best days are behind it.
I've been playing for 4 years, a couple of months before TBC hit. I've been running a successful, casual, raiding guild for the past 2 and a half years. Cataclysm has killed our guild. Everyone is bored and has taken a break from the game.
A few of us might go back and check out the next patch, but it's still sad to think I don't think Blizzard can do anything to really reignite my love for this game.
It's depressing to think it but true. It has been 4 years of my life, and I've made some of the best friends I have on WoW but there's nothing new they can do now

 

[Macheteswordgun]

How about you just stop making the game crap each patch just makes it worse and worse. You could listen to your player base and fix things instead of doing your own stupid thing like on the PTR so many bugs were found and told about months in advance and they made it live what does that tell you about the state that wows in?

 

[bob1052]

I think there is something important to note here.

Content needs to be coming out fast. Icecrown Citadel was the highest end raid around for more than a year before Cataclysm was released and I know more than a few people who stopped playing and waited for Cataclysm.

I also find it funny that TOR is gonna have this problem tenfold because they have some delusion that voicing every bit of content is a good idea and not just a time waster that will extend their development cycle on content patches.

 

[Eldarion]

Or..... You know..... You could always just make Warcraft 4... But I know you are too afraid of money and success to do that.

With 11 million subs coming in from WoW, how is it not smart to support THAT money and success?

Just saying.

 

[Warrior Irme]

Cata had less content on release for the 90% of the player base that is at the level cap. I am glad that blizz went back and fixed content for the other 10%, but they need to do something quickly to please the majority or they will keep losing subscribers. I don't think having more expansions is going to be a good idea, especially if the content is shrinking with each expansion.

 

[Vaer]

It is an old game, it's to be expected that it will start dying, Cata brought some nice changes to 1-58 and it is better then before, however there isn't enough change, it is at the end of the day the same game no matter how much content you add and obviously people that have played it since the beginning will find it boring, they've done this again and again and again and it gets old eventually, most people that thought cata was great and stuck with it started during wotlk or late TBC.

Besides I've always found it hard to play wow for large periods of time as it gets tedious and boring very fast, WOW kept me for about 3-4 months, then a break and then another 2-3 months, then tbc kept me for about 3 months and another month after a break, wotlk kept me for about 2 weeks and another one month after a looong break just before cata launched and finally Cataclysm only managed to grab my attention for 4 days so ye .. a huge decline ...

It's just more of the same and I found it more like a job then a game, it wasn't fun since I was doing more or less the same thing and it just lost all appeal with time.

 

[Coffinshaker]

ok... no.

See, here's the thing, wowclassic was out for years without an expansion and did great! why? because it had "content upgrades", a set level and clear goals on how to upgrade your character with that limit in place. What I mean is, there weren't expansions to give you the "xpac blues", aka, the waiting time between expansion announcement and actual release... because nobody wants to work hard for gear that will be replaced in a few short beginner quests.

What wowclassic had was character upgrades. Gear. When a new raid/dungeon was released, you had to work your butt off to get that gear. It wasn't exactly casual friendly either, but both had their place. Depending on your realm, a lot of casuals got to experience big raids to fill spots. Now, it's all gone crazy. I think they shifted things into feeling more grindy than fun. I really miss the days of needing 2 cc classes and maybe a hunter to kite, otherwise you'd get chewed up. And heaven forbid you even try to set foot in an instance/raid if you weren't geared properly.

I feel that releasing expansions more frequently will only hurt more than it will help. Releasing CONTENT on the other hand, would be better. I think having a static level cap, for maybe 2 years? should really help. Because it then becomes about designing content that's gear/setup/strategy dependent, and not so much toss a high level in there and wale away at things.

Anyways, that's how I feel about that.