Poll: Is it me, or does it seem like WoW is getting desperate?

[Aeshi]

As some people may know from my Guild Wars badge, I hate WoW. I hate WoW, pure and simple.

This is where I need not read any more and just answer no. You are biased and see it as being desperate. However, if the shoe was on the other foot, and Guild Wars was releasing faster expansions due to loss of subs, you'd be defending the hell out of it while everyone else said what you're saying now about WoW.

Couldn't have said it better.

 

[Taunta]

As some people may know from my Guild Wars badge, I hate WoW. I hate WoW, pure and simple.

This is where I need not read any more and just answer no. You are biased and see it as being desperate. However, if the shoe was on the other foot, and Guild Wars was releasing faster expansions due to loss of subs, you'd be defending the hell out of it while everyone else said what you're saying now about WoW.

This.

First off, let me congratulate you, ive been a member of escapist a while but rarely ever post, that you;ve managed to craft such a interesting, mainly baseless and in places hillarious and just plain wrong rant that I feel I cant NOT respond to it.

To get this out of the way at the start I play WoW and have since mid way through TBC. Blizzard takes my money, a hell of a lot of my money, in fact over the years probably enough money to start construction of my doom fortress ive always dreamed of, so if they're is any "Hate" (and really how many times do you need to say it in a scentance?) for WoW, I claim it. As for the changes Cataclysm brought, the major revamp of the first 60 levels was a MAJOR I repeat MAJOR improvement, if only for the fact it was different for a change. The difficulty of heroics and raids has been upped considerably compared to the lolworthy WoTLK raids and heroics, the 500 thousand subscribers that quit were mainly people who didnt like the return of the diffculty curve, how many subscribers do you think rejoined based on the increased curve, who formerly quit because they found end game content too easy?

Saying 500 thousand people have quit is like saying 500 thousand people have died since last month. Not all of those may be attributed to Cataclysm, similarly you dont have numbers for how many people JOINED over the peroid since cata's release.

And on my closing point, you suggest in your poll that before a voter makes a desicion to do his research, I commend that you did yours in finding a nice big number backed up by someones elses research, but dare I say if your going to make such an in depth rant, you at least take the time to learn who "Deathwing" is, its covered on the back of the box for gods sake.

WoW won't die, the mmo market is survival of the fittest, WoW is the top of the food chain with nothing else even managing to come close to knocking it off the top spot.

But thanks for giving me the oppurtunity to counter rant, I might do it more often

And that.



I suggest you do some research before making criticisms of a game you've never played. First of all, by the time you get a flying mount, you've seen most of the world, and it's about convenience.

"From what I hear, Cataclysm screwed over EVERYTHING in the environment, maybe they'll retconn Stormwing(or Doomwing?) and the massive amounts of Hell he brought"

...What? What?!

"But some of you found it was more of the same, only new gear, altered raids with same difficulty, the threat of getting killed by a giant AI, loss of depth in the world, more money to pay a month, etc."

First of all, all of the raids and a lot of the environments are brand spanking new, and the difficulty is by far a step in the right direction after the hand-holding Wrath of the Lich King brought us. Not only that, they've revamped a lot of the quests and as Yahtzee put it, "they've removed a lot of the old piss-taking quests and replaced them with quests that have you ride around in a van and solve mysteries". I'm not sure what "loss of depth" you're referring to, but you seem to have no idea what you're talking about, so I'll stop now.

 

[Emergent System]

Sounds like the OP has an unhealthy obsession with game he supposedly doesn't even play. I played WoW for a while. Stopped because I got bored. It's still by far the best MMO of its kind out there.

 

[Smooth Operator]

You do understand noone will take you seriously when you frontload the hate?

Anyway WoW is just as it was centuries ago, video game addiction at it's finest, and they make more and more money every year.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Blizzard is gonna casualise wow to attract new and stupid gamers until it ends up feeling like a facebook game. it's probably going to crash shortly after. Expect it to live for another 8 years though.

I remember it taking months to get to 60, goddammit. fun times, it's good i quit after BC came out, it went to shit shortly after that.

 

[Hop-along Nussbaum]

When expansions consist largely of changing the appearance of existing content, a few new instances and a couple of races, yeah. It sure seems that way.

Burning Crusade was definitely different, but it was all new. So was the Northrend expansion (I don't remember the name). Cataclysm was disappointing.

And since they've started allowing changes that Blizzard SWORE they'd never allow (i.e. race changes, sex changes, class changes, PvE to PvP server changes) they're giving in to these requests to maintain their customer base. To hold on as long as they can.

I quit two years ago, and I don't miss it either. But I have seen the content and read the reviews. If they're not full-on desperate, they are moving in that direction. But Blizzard ALWAYS has something else up their sleeve. They'll be just fine.

After World of Warcraft has run it's course, think "World of Starcraft", and then "World of Diablo" or something else along those lines.

 

[Phoenixlight]

Could you provide some proof that they're losing subscribers? I haven't heard anything about that.

 

[Emergent System]

And since they've started allowing changes that Blizzard SWORE they'd never allow (i.e. race changes, sex changes, class changes, PvE to PvP server changes) they're giving in to these requests to maintain their customer base. To hold on as long as they can.

Someone who whines about getting more than they were originally promised is blinded by unreason.

I never understood the hate for WoW. Only thing I didn't like was flying mounts, since it killed world PvP, but everything else has been an improvement. Anyone who complains about the game catering to "casuals" has never played it on a high level. 11-12 million players and you still only have a few thousand completing the hardest content when it's contemporary. Yeah, "casual" indeed.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

.... I felt smug at first and than a bit hopeful that maybe it's time has coming, not now but in the next few years(3-6 maybe)

6 years huh. You do realize being HALFWAY through something's life cycle doesn't mean it's "Nearing the end", right?

 

[Auxiliary]

WoW was the first MMO I played and got me absolutely hooked on the genre. I was a total addict for a long time and over the years I kept playing the game actively with occassional breaks of a few months. Sometimes I even quit for half a year only to return during a boring summer week since I wanted to do something.

Every time I returned, the result was the same. I got hooked again and continued to play for several months until my next break. The competition never managed to get me invested enough in their games to do the same.

I bought Guildwars at some point, but it wasn't really a MMO at all. Having 4 - 8 minions do all the bloody work and you just standing idle in fear of getting one-shot by a group of 5 mobs is not what I call exciting gaming. I am currently trying to get into Guildwars to fill up points for my HoM, but it feels more like a chore than a fun experience. The graphics of Guild Wars haven't exactly aged well either, unlike the cartoony style of WoW which I still considder good to look at.

The next generation of MMO's seems to be coming at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. My highest hopes are currently aimed towards Guildwars 2, which is promising a lot of new groundbreaking concepts and looks absolutely gorgeous. Bioware's The Old Republic seems pretty cool as well, but more as a very long singleplayer game with a few multiplayer aspects. I personally plan to buy it, finish most of the content and then never return to it.

I am personally a bit tired of WoW, because in all these years it hasn't changed enough. Cataclysm destroyed the last remaining bits of the original game, but the core of this behemoth hasn't changed at all. The fights are more interesting, challenging, better looking, better designed and fair, but they can't draw the same amount of nostalgia from me that fights such as Mr. Smite can.

The CEO said it quite well, players have gotten so used to the concept of this type of gaming that they devour new content at amazing speed and demand more instantly of they will lose interest. I won't be surprised if the playerbase continues to shrink and shrink over the next couple of years. I however doubt that they will be pulling the plug out of this one for a long time.

 

[Reishadowen]

As some people may know from my Guild Wars badge, I hate WoW. I hate WoW, pure and simple. For it's size, linearity, GRINDING, meat heads, and other pricks and gold farmers(what's the point of gold if you don't work for it?). Cataclysm ALMOST interested me in looking at it, but than I remembered what I was talking about, and the flying mounts.

Ok...so is this an honest opinion/question topic, or just a WoW Hate speech to "rally the true, and strike down the great demon!" ?

I don't exactly play WoW. I've heard it's a black hole and kills your spare time, and I didn't want that. Although I don't blame the people who do play it. All in all, I can't possibly hate it if it brought something like those Leeroy Jenkins videos to Youtube. Pure awesomeness IMO.

Seriously, whoever made the flying mounts must really hate the guys who spent all this time&money making Azeroth because now you just fly over it, it's like taking steroids over working out.

I was under the impression from Yahtzee's review of WoW that you don't actually get flying mounts until you're level 60, and by then you've probably gained an appreciation for it already. Besides, flying mounts add a whole new dimension to what a player can see and experience too, I don't really think it's a bad thing. Again though, I don't play WoW myself, so I wouldn't be 100% certain.

I don't hate the artists at WoW, I'm sure some are bored of it too, but I hate Blizzard itself, and what they do to keep WoW going.

Ok, it's official, this is a hate-rant. Personally, I like Blizzard, and I love their games. Not so much their release schedule, but hey, they do good work. Also, yes, WoW is really big and makes them alot of money. Would it make ANY sense at all, for their CEO to say, "Ok, this big thing that's making us sh*tloads of money? Let's just let it wither and die, not do anything at all to keep it going!" You'd think he'll have gone completely loony, and so would the stockholders.


To the rest of your rant, and your question in general, WoW can only live on for so long. People are going to get bored and move on to something else, and because those servers are maintained by subscriptions, when people get bored and stop, the game stops.

Though from what I've heard about Cataclysm, it seems like an attempt to shake things up and keep them fresh, and keep from people realizing "Man, why have I spent the last ten years of my life grinding the same sh*t on the same game? What am I doing with my life?" any sooner than it inevitably has to happen. I tend to think that this has marked the beginning of a long descending slope for WoW...unless of course it simply evolves and changes into something a bit different. I mean seriously, I personally pegged Pokemon to almost completely die out YEARS ago.

Then again, maybe the 500,000 subs lost has more to do with the economy and players tearfully departing with their accounts due to financial situations, and not due to boredom with the game?

 

[Hectix777]

Could you provide some proof that they're losing subscribers? I haven't heard anything about that.

There have been several articles on Kotaku, Game Informer, and even here on the Escapist about it.

 

[Hectix777]

As some people may know from my Guild Wars badge, I hate WoW. I hate WoW, pure and simple. For it's size, linearity, GRINDING, meat heads, and other pricks and gold farmers(what's the point of gold if you don't work for it?). Cataclysm ALMOST interested me in looking at it, but than I remembered what I was talking about, and the flying mounts. Seriously, whoever made the flying mounts must really hate the guys who spent all this time&money making Azeroth because now you just fly over it, it's like taking steroids over working out. I don't hate the artists at WoW, I'm sure some are bored of it too, but I hate Blizzard itself, and what they do to keep WoW going. But what astounded me was when I heard that after a census of the WoW population was made, 500,000 accounts had quit. Sure, WoW is 12 million strong, but just think about 500,000 that's practically the population of a medium-sized city. This was AFTER Cataclysm was released, I felt smug at first and than a bit hopeful that maybe it's time has coming, not now but in the next few years(3-6 maybe). Once I got through reading about the Cataclysm drop outs, I read that Blizzard is planning on releasing MORE expansions at a faster rate. Some of you do play WoW, some of you will criticize my views on WoW and my taste in MMO's(I'm looking forward to Guild Wars 2 if you wanna flame me for it), BUT, some of you WERE disappointed in the new expansion. From what I hear, Cataclysm screwed over EVERYTHING in the environment, maybe they'll retconn Stormwing(or Doomwing?) and the massive amounts of Hell he brought. But some of you found it was more of the same, only new gear, altered raids with same difficulty, the threat of getting killed by a giant AI, loss of depth in the world, more money to pay a month, etc.

Thus, accounts went down by half a million users. This makes me believe, will they keep their promise for their new expansions? If you ask me, Blizzard's come to take the practice of," If it ain't broke, don't fix it, no matter what people say!" Plus , WoW's population is huge, 500 million is barely a dent, but a noticeable dent! WoW has a formula that basically hypnotizes you into playing forever, gameplay is a huge factor but so is the social aspect of it all, the lore (from what I hear, Warcraft's lore is nothing like WoW's), everything. But they're releasing MORE expansions in smaller time frames. We all know that rushing something, anything, usually ruins the final product, so I'm not too worried about the expansions, or afraid, just sympathetic. It's like,"WoW's still good! WoW's still good! Here's more WoW! PLAY MORE WOW!" Y'know?

What I'm trying to say is that maybe WoW is launching some type of stimulus with new expansions in less time to keep itself going for as long as possible, it really wants to take people's money for as long as it can. If Cataclysm didn't change much of the basic core of WoW, why should the people that play WoW trust Blizzard to make BIG noticeable changes and not new gear and environments. It's getting kinda desperate, am I the only one who thinks that?

I'm a WoW fanatic, or was, so I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum from you. Truthfully a lot of what you consider to be problems with WoW (like flying mounts) are strengths in my opinion. I also really disliked Guild Wars and found it comparably mindless, it's only real strength being no monthly fee, which I think greatly limited it's quality. I'm one of those who consider Guild Wars jokingly the "Ghetto MMO". That said I agree with your overall analysis about where WoW is now.

A lot of people are leaving WoW for other games, while the pattern of tons of people showing up at launch, only for most of them to leave by the end of the first free month (or a month or two afterwads) holds, I think a few more than normal are sticking. None to make any of the new MMOs out there individually a big dog, but enough for it to be noticible, and also for it to have an effect on WoW's player base.


Simply put WoW is getting old, and while a consistant art style can account for a lot, it can't cover a game that is rapidly becoming ancient. Right now the thing that has been keeping WoW alive is it's wealth of content compared to other, more technologically advanced MMORPG games, but even that isn't something that can last forever.

So far no game of sufficient stature to keep an audience of millions has come along, we probably won't see that until "Old Republic Online" launches, and even then it could be a flop.


I've also heard about the 500k user loss for WoW, and truthfully I think it's a bigger deal than you give it credit for. Blizzard definatly seems to be concerned, and is sending out messages trying to get their players to come back. My stepmother got a beg-a-thon e-mail less than a month after letting her account expire for example.

The thing is that Blizzard's user base claims are based on international membership. Blizzard having the advantage of reaching a lot of parts of the world where they are, or have been, the only real AAA MMORPG option in town. There have been plenty of cash shop games in Asia that have held bigger user bases than WoW, it's just that they weren't of the same quality, and were also a lot cheaper for that part of the world. If you followed the Drama about Blizzard's relationship with China and the problems with the client company they worked through there (when they wanted to change who they worked with) there was a lot of interesting information about the international nature of their business, along with factoids like how differant WoW is in other countries, like in China for example where they aren't allowed to have undead due to the laws there, and the "Forsaken" have been replaced by guys who are basically ugly humans, and similar things. Apparently China not being alone in the odd hoops they make WoW and other MMOs jump through, leading to a lot of AAA MMOs never even bothering to penetrate those markets, and of course also explaining why so many people are concerned about being able to get US versions and onto US servers from other countries.

The thing is that from what I've been hearing that 500,000 users is noteworthy because it's from their core user base in the first world. Fluctuations overseas are expected (and their claims are based on their high points for membership), the majority of their cash flow however comes from first world gamers due to the cost of operating in other markets (changes to the game, paying the goverment, etc...). Apparently there are supposed to be about 4 million users through the first world, and a loss of 500k of them is around 12.5% of their core business (assuming I've been hearing right) which is why that is such a big deal, and why they are so concerned about getting people back. That number having gradually arose from the small trickles of people who left WoW and stayed with games like Aion, RIFT, or free to play games like "Dungeons and Dragons Online" which underwent membership booms. The number of MMO gamers apparently grows very slowly, and really you have people grappling over a fairly finite supply of users, one game's gain is by definition a loss coming from somewhere else.

I'll also say that despite the fanboys screaming it's praises, Cataclysm wasn't all that it's been hyped as. The overall storyline is a joke that smacks of filler, and with most of the action taking place at the endgame, updating the general zones didn't have a huge amount of appeal to the players in general. With less endgame content they decided to try and make the heroic dungeons and raids more challenging, so they would take more time to master, but they really just made them annoying for the most part. While it's true that guilds always collapse, usually the people in them reform into new guilds. Before I quit, I noticed a lot of guilds that were collapsing since the people were leaving for other games, and in greater numbers than ever before. When you have fanatics leaving the game that's not a good sign. My guild collapsed (which has a lot to do with why I quit) after being around in one form or another pretty much since launch, and a lot of the people involved wound up leaving as opposed to just forming new guilds. It's a matter of not just seeing it, but being there and watching it happen, as I myself wound up leaving.

I'll also say that I think Blizzard's increasingly towering arrogance over their increasingly aging game hasn't helped matters much either. With Cataclysm came a lot of people saying "hey, if you can do all this with the old content, why haven't you fixed these long term issues that people have been complaining about for years now", only to be met with the infamous "we make games, not promises" attitude. I think that influanced things as well as Cataclysm kind of showed that Blizzard is in it's own little world, and really doesn't much care about what the users want. Forget fixing glaring game balance errors that they even acknowlege exist (they have even said introducing the Arenas was a mistake because it brought a lot of this to a head), they would rather introduce MORE races to the game, and make the game balance even worse. Truthfully it's been a recurring joke about how The Horde has been unbalanced for so long in a competitive game (rolling Alliance being called one of the biggest gips in gaming by Penny Arcade at one point), yet rather than fixing this they decide to add oil to the fire by giving The Horde a race with a haste boost, a racial abillity that can either be a blink (rocket jump) or instant cast DD attack that scales with level, vendor discounts, herbalism benefits, and the abillity to access their bank at any time via a summonable NPC, while giving the alliance a race whose major abillity is pretty much to bend over in the classic anal position (but it's okay, because they are conceptually were wolves which makes everything balanced).... the jokes pretty much write themselves there. I honestly think that this caused a lot of players to quit just going by some of the chatter from retiring players giving their goodbyes. Doing that when you have had people waiting for years for them to balance the game was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.


Me, it's not just one thing. I stayed for my guild and because I liked raiding. Blizzard's attitude was something I endured. I gave up on Blizzard years ago when I was raiding with another guild briefly (complicated situation where my main guild temporarly disbanded and me and osme other members joined another guild to bulk out it's core raid team) and was part of the second Illidan kill on our server (and close to being first). We farmed the guy for a while but due to raid loot rules I never really won any loot, and had pretty much blown off a lot of world quests including the story arc chain for Illidan to focus on raiding and farming to support raiding. My computer died for a while, and when I came back for "Lich King" I found that Blizzard had decided that because I never won any loot or done that quest chain that I was unworthy of having an achievement for my accomplishment. I needless to say made a big stink about that one, but of course Blizzard basically doesn't give a crap about what's important to their player base. I would have quit, but my old guild had reformed (well actually it never entirely dissolved as we were always all playing together anyway... long story) and I jumped in to keep playing with them, whacked Arthas, and then saw everything disband with Cataclysm with the players leaving as opposed to a guild name dissolution. With nothing remaining for me I quit.

The point of the above rant is pretty much that I think I'm far from the only person that was largely sticking with the game due to inertia, and not wanting to let other players down. Inertia can't last forever though, as it eventually ends. Blizzard's attitude has stunk for a long time now, and I think for a lot of people they just kind of reached the end all at once, and realized "why the F@ck am I putting up with this" when they looked at what Cataclysm actually did for the game... which was a whole lot of nothing. For a lot of the old time raiders like me, their "let's make the endgame challenging again" thing was more a matter of "let's make it annoying and say that this amounts to it being challenging".

At any rate, the point is I think your right, and yes, a lot has been said about their player drop off, and I think it's a player drop off from the most meaningful section of their market. It's not been unnoticed that they are begging people to come back a lot more than they used to, as I said my Stepmother got one right on the heels of quitting (she was however a non-raider and not involved in any of the stuff I was).

We'll have to agree to disagree about Guild Wars Vs. WoW though. Right now I'm dabbling with RIFT which is just okay. I'll probably give "Old Republic" a shot, and if it isn't all that it's cracked up to be, honestly I'll probably be done with MMORPGs for the foreseeable future. To get me to go back to WoW would take the kinds of changes and attitude adjustment that Blizzard just won't ever undergo.

Allow me to say thank you for taking the time out to write the post, it was actually very enlightening. I'm sure this took you awhile, but I read every piece of it and I posted a note at the top asking others to read your post for a softer and less jaded POV. While Guild Wars can't beat WoW, it does well enough to not be a target or fall and has amassed a large enough fanbase for a sequel, which I recommend trying it seems to have great looks, gameplay, lore, it's got it all. Again, thank you for this post, it's rare to find someone who not only agrees with me but also take the time to describe it so vividly.

 

[MarsProbe]

Well, I have personally just quit WoW (for the second time (and ideally the last)) after returning to give Cataclysm a stab, which I wouldn't have actually done of my own accord - someone at work managed to persuade me to jump back in again.

It was fun for a while, levelling my 'lock up through the Wrath and Cata content and starting off a Worgen but then a large junk of the people in my guild took their leave, leaving a grand total of three active members in the guild. Not fun. As it stand, myself and above mentioned colleague have since stopped our subscriptions.

Plus I need the time to play all the other games that are coming out this year I want to play, as well as fitting in a "perfect" playthrough of Mass Effect 2 before 3 comes out next year .

 

[Hectix777]

As some people may know from my Guild Wars badge, I hate WoW. I hate WoW, pure and simple.

This is where I need not read any more and just answer no. You are biased and see it as being desperate. However, if the shoe was on the other foot, and Guild Wars was releasing faster expansions due to loss of subs, you'd be defending the hell out of it while everyone else said what you're saying now about WoW.

Touche, and this would be the case for all games and their fans. If Capcom said it was going to end the Megaman franchise, or cancel Megaman Legends 3 (I NEED IT!!!), or sell it someone who will ruin the IP, fans will be in arms and ready to hate or plea with Capcom. Not the right context, but let's look at this from an analytical standpoint, personal opinions aside. Therumancer took the time to produce that 4 million users are from the first world, that's a third of the WoW machine. From that 4 million, 500,000 dropped meaning a player loss of 12.5%. That's pretty recognizable and if this was stock, I'd look at it and go,"This doesn't look like it's doing well," and I'd move on. Yes, I need to fight my biases, especially on the web. But we all got'em. Except regarding Megaman, we all love the Blue Bomber.

 

[Odbarc]

1/4 of a full expansion 4X more frequently at 1/4 the price.

This is a true test. WoW may have finally hit it's peak and Blizzard will now need to struggle to keep it at high as it is/was. Nothing lasts forever. We get to see how Blizzard handles it's eventual fall. As an MMO, it likely had an expiration date counting down as soon as it was released. There's only so much you can add to something before you erase what was. And being contained within lore, there's much less you can add.

On the plus side, Blizzard always brings it's A game, always delivers, and it's greatest failures are cancellations.