Defect to Guild Wars 2! No subscription fee! Fun gameplay! Cat people!VoidWanderer said:
(Disclaimer: MetalMagpie has recently started playing Guild Wars 2 and may be very slightly smitten. Do not trust the above to be a balanced review.)
World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Subscribers in 3 Months
- Thread starter StewShearerOld
- Start date
(Disclaimer: MetalMagpie has recently started playing Guild Wars 2 and may be very slightly smitten. Do not trust the above to be a balanced review.)
There's actually a reason for that. Simply put: Cataclysm and MoP were "keep this baby alive!" stretches...at least as far as the story is concerned. Once Arthas has been killed off, that's the last of the easily recognizeable main baddies in the WC universe. Who came up next? Deathwing? Didn't he die back in Beyond the Dark Portal? Plus I heard his final boss fight was an absolute joke (since I stopped playing after Burning Crusade I wouldn't know from first-hand experience). And what came after Cataclysm? They turned what was once an April Fools joke into the basis of their next expansion. If that doesn't show at least some hints of desperation and stretching then I don't know what would.KeyMaster45 said:
OT: I'm honestly very surprised that WoW has lasted as long as it did. I knew it had a VERY robust fan-base from it's RTS games to get a fantastic start, and I was with it from the beginning until the end of Burning Crusade. At that point I graduated from college and got a job in the real world and no longer had the time necessary to play the game as a functional member of a guild. That and it was becoming harder and harder to justify paying a monthly subscription fee to play fantasy dress-up.
What struck me was the notion that I'm paying a subscription so that each month I can go on 8 to 12 raids. On those raids, there was a slim chance that an item I would need would drop. Should the item I need drop, there was only a chance that I'd get it as I'd be competing with the rest of my class for it. Didn't get anything this time? Well better luck next-week. This caused me to get VERY disillusioned with the game and, having defeated Kil'Jaeden, I thought it was about time to bring a close to my years-long adventure in Azeroth. I've got good memories and had a lot of fun with that game, but ultimately I felt it was time to move on.
Seriously. It's like it's there for the people who still had hope that Blizzard were NOT corporate sell-outs.piinyouri said:
OH BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRNVoidWanderer said:
Meh.
I've gone though the treadmill too many times to pick up WoW again. I remember playing in Burning Crusade, grinding rep, gearing up, leveling my crafting- then Wrath comes along and basically hits the reset button. Then Cataclysm does it again. Now it's kind of hard to see why I should bother spending hundreds of hours grinding on a toon when there's another reset inc next year.
Leveling through the old expansions also kind of sucks now. They were all designed as near-endgame content, all focused around stuff the player was building himself up to do after hitting level cap. Now they're just pass-through areas, and they're pretty weak for it. I remember playing a new character in Cataclysm, and having a ton of fun with the redesigned 1-60, only to hit outlands and see the game become kind of a slog. Cataclysm's leveling content wasn't any better, weirdly, despite being as new as the 1-60. I think the past-60 leveling areas just feel too disconnected from the Azeroth I was playing in, and most of the plots are too far gone down the "EPIC FANTASY STUFF THAT WE KIND OF EXPLAIN, BUT ALSO IT HELPS IF YOU READ THE BOOKS" route to seriously care about.
I've gone though the treadmill too many times to pick up WoW again. I remember playing in Burning Crusade, grinding rep, gearing up, leveling my crafting- then Wrath comes along and basically hits the reset button. Then Cataclysm does it again. Now it's kind of hard to see why I should bother spending hundreds of hours grinding on a toon when there's another reset inc next year.
Leveling through the old expansions also kind of sucks now. They were all designed as near-endgame content, all focused around stuff the player was building himself up to do after hitting level cap. Now they're just pass-through areas, and they're pretty weak for it. I remember playing a new character in Cataclysm, and having a ton of fun with the redesigned 1-60, only to hit outlands and see the game become kind of a slog. Cataclysm's leveling content wasn't any better, weirdly, despite being as new as the 1-60. I think the past-60 leveling areas just feel too disconnected from the Azeroth I was playing in, and most of the plots are too far gone down the "EPIC FANTASY STUFF THAT WE KIND OF EXPLAIN, BUT ALSO IT HELPS IF YOU READ THE BOOKS" route to seriously care about.
Other pay monthly MMOs dont even have 1.5 million subscribers, so its not such a big deal for Blizzard.
The game IS nearly 10 years old now!
The game IS nearly 10 years old now!
It's a cool game. I started playing in the Beta before the launch of the original game and played until I reached the top levels and then got tired of it. I'd rejoin with new expansions but then would quickly get to the top and have nothing more to do on a daily basis than grind daily quests for no good reason for a game I was paying $15/month for in addition to the original expansion price. So we're talking about three/four months of gaming and then being completely done. I imagine a significant number of other players also get bored around the top and give it a rest once they're there and this is about the right time for them to start dropping off after Mists of Pandaria, I guess.
Wow is a good game, you get the money's worth. But it isn't worth spending a year of gaming on just one expansion.
Wow is a good game, you get the money's worth. But it isn't worth spending a year of gaming on just one expansion.
Basically what this man said. People came back to play the xpac, burned through it as people tend to do with WoW content, and then left again. This is the kind of drop I'd expect a few months after an expansion's release.viranimus said:
I haven't played since vanilla WoW. I was thinking of going back to it, then realized that with every expansion the game would cost $100. Maybe it's time for an updated Battle Chest, Blizzard?
They are still running on the good faith Blizzard has accumulated over the years.
When I tell someone playing WoW Activision's running things now they are usually like "Holy crap, that explains everything!"
Props to them for not placing the Activision logo on anything WoW related, that was very well played.
When I tell someone playing WoW Activision's running things now they are usually like "Holy crap, that explains everything!"
Props to them for not placing the Activision logo on anything WoW related, that was very well played.
My experience with WOW is very short (I was playing it on my ex's comp about 4-5 years ago), but I remembered it being pretty good, so I sincerely doubt WOW will be going away anytime soon if it's gone strong for this long. I do, however, see a new game coming in and taking their MMO crown. It's bound to happen at some point.
MMOs that achieve critical mass never die:
(1997) Ultima Online - http://www.uo.com/
(1999) Everquest - https://www.everquest.com/
(2001) Dark Age Of Camelot - http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/
(2001) Anarchy Online - http://www.anarchy-online.com/
All more than 10 years old, all still playable.
The MUD that I played on in college in 1994 (dark castle - http://www.dcastle.org/ ) is still running, more than 20 years after it started.
Barring something like an asteroid strike wiping out civilization I expect WoW to by playable 20 years from now.
(1997) Ultima Online - http://www.uo.com/
(1999) Everquest - https://www.everquest.com/
(2001) Dark Age Of Camelot - http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/
(2001) Anarchy Online - http://www.anarchy-online.com/
All more than 10 years old, all still playable.
The MUD that I played on in college in 1994 (dark castle - http://www.dcastle.org/ ) is still running, more than 20 years after it started.
Barring something like an asteroid strike wiping out civilization I expect WoW to by playable 20 years from now.
Of course it's an expected decline, it's easy to see that the decline is inevitable.
But come on people, the game is almost 10 years old. I know some people on the internet have made hating WoW into a sport (just look at this thread), and the headline should cater to these people, but the headline really should read "WoW is still the market leader and has more than 8 million subscribers", this is the really impressive part.
I stopped playing years ago, I have absolutely no will to come back, but that's because I played it a lot before and had lots of fun going to raids with friends. I still think it's a fine game and that it manages to keep as big an audience as this is amazing.
But come on people, the game is almost 10 years old. I know some people on the internet have made hating WoW into a sport (just look at this thread), and the headline should cater to these people, but the headline really should read "WoW is still the market leader and has more than 8 million subscribers", this is the really impressive part.
I stopped playing years ago, I have absolutely no will to come back, but that's because I played it a lot before and had lots of fun going to raids with friends. I still think it's a fine game and that it manages to keep as big an audience as this is amazing.
WoW has been dying a slow death ever since Wrath of the Lich King, because of an increasingly botched creative direction.Waaghpowa said:
That said, I agree with ActiBlizzard's assesment: There's enough mileage to be had in the property to remain profitable for a while yet - that's the benefit of a game that dies slowly.