World of Warcraft Subscriptions Continue to Slide

[Zenn3k]

Nobody wants to level a new toon to 85, its boring.

The PvP elements are completely broken in Cata. Cata was suppose to make fights last longer...they do, but now Pug vs Pug is impossible, as the team with 1 competent healer DOMINATES...if the PUG you got doesn't have that healer, you might as well /afk out of Battlegrounds.

1 Healer can out heal the damage of up to 10 people focusing, thats a bit much...combine damage mitigation via resilience, insane levels of healing, as well as class specific "get out of jail free" cards...and PvP loses a lot of its fun factor. If you aren't playing one of the 1-4 classes that DOMINATE PvP, you simply aren't having any fun.

As well, the WoW community is now fairly crappy. No longer is your server your "home", where you have a reputation. Instead, who cares? You were a useless prick? Buy a server switch! Better yet, just PUG randoms and never see the same person twice! Why bother to be nice to anyone when you never have to answer for your rudeness? (Not saying I do that, but many do).

The community was also hurt badly by catering to the SUPER casual...not just the casual, but the plays twice a month SUPER casual. They have handed out free gear and upgrades for so long that if anyone has to work for more than 1 day at something, everyone explodes all over the forums in rage.

WoW today is not the same WoW I played at release, its terrible now.

 

[Koshok]

the World of Warcraft dreadnought is still chugging along, with a whopping 11.1 million subscribers worldwide. But as impressive as that figure is, it still represents a drop of roughly 300,000 subscribers over the quarter that ended on June 30 and that's enough to have Blizzard scrambling to find ways to turn things around.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact that Blizzard seems to be panicking over a 3% loss in their subscription base? This is the kind of thing that can lead to overreactions and making more people leave, IMO.

 

[Rigs83]

Stopped playing WOW and after just spend fifteen frustrating minutes trying to merge my wow account with a battle.net account I will never play it again

 

[Doc Theta Sigma]

No we left because its too easy , and your making us pay for mounts

1. I wouldn't say it's too easy. Wrath was too easy. Some of the Cataclysm content just seems to want to draw itself out for as long as possible. For example see the absurd amounts of trash mobs in Grim Batol.

2. Making us pay for mounts? Erm... I don't see that happening. The Celestial Steed and Winged Guardian mounts are completely optional purchases. They don't give anyone an advantage or a higher status in game. They're purely aesthetic.

 

[Alrocsmash]

Nobody wants to level a new toon to 85, its boring.

The PvP elements are completely broken in Cata. Cata was suppose to make fights last longer...they do, but now Pug vs Pug is impossible, as the team with 1 competent healer DOMINATES...if the PUG you got doesn't have that healer, you might as well /afk out of Battlegrounds.

1 Healer can out heal the damage of up to 10 people focusing, thats a bit much...combine damage mitigation via resilience, insane levels of healing, as well as class specific "get out of jail free" cards...and PvP loses a lot of its fun factor. If you aren't playing one of the 1-4 classes that DOMINATE PvP, you simply aren't having any fun.

As well, the WoW community is now fairly crappy. No longer is your server your "home", where you have a reputation. Instead, who cares? You were a useless prick? Buy a server switch! Better yet, just PUG randoms and never see the same person twice! Why bother to be nice to anyone when you never have to answer for your rudeness? (Not saying I do that, but many do).

The community was also hurt badly by catering to the SUPER casual...not just the casual, but the plays twice a month SUPER casual. They have handed out free gear and upgrades for so long that if anyone has to work for more than 1 day at something, everyone explodes all over the forums in rage.

WoW today is not the same WoW I played at release, its terrible now.

This man knows what is up. SUPER casuals ruined the game. Leveling with hierlooms is so brainless it is not fun. Your toon is STUPIDLY overpowered at lower levels. I played the game from CLOSED beta, to about 2 months after cata. I raied most content, and hit 2450 in pvp twice. I hope WoW burns in a fiery hell.

 

[LITE992]

WoW stopped being fun when everything became incredibly easy. The Dungeon Finder was nice as finding a willing healer and tank took up to hours only for them to leave after a single wipe. But the gameplay became very easy, especially when Shamans can cast Earth Shield on the tank, which keeps their health up so you can screw around.

I'm not jumping on the WoW hate bandwagon, but there's no challenge to this game anymore, and levelling up is now a chore when before it was fun.

EDIT: Totally agree with the WoW moving towards super-casuals opinion.

 

[Malrock]

I still think very fondly of WoW. I have been playing since release and recently cancelled my subscription.

It's not that I have become disenchanted (no pun intended) with any of Blizzards decisions, or the direction that the game has taken. I no longer subscribe simply because you can only play something for so long before it begins to feel samey.

WoW has done bloody good to keep me entertained for as long as it has. I will always look back on it nostalgically, and while I pray that something will come along that tops it, I very much doubt that for me, anything will be quite as magical and captivating.

 

[FiveSpeedf150]

I loved WoW, playing with my guild through WOTLK was a hell of a lot of fun. I miss a lot of it.

OTOH, I felt like I poured a ton of time into it and I only ever got one 80. Cata came out and I leveled up to 85, but it just didn't draw me in... and the profession grind? Again? Fuuuuuuuuuu....

Yeah I just decided to drop it. Wasn't fun anymore.

 

[Cyrax987]

Maybe if they stop resurrecting old bosses from vanilla WoW for every content update maybe it'd be interesting. So far they brought back ZG, ZF, Ragnaros, Onyxia, Nefarion, Kel' Thuzad. Seriously make new enemies.

 

[Baldr]

Cataclysm unbalanced the character classes, they nerfed/changed the play style of some stable classes making them harder to play while boosting other classes making them way to easy to play.

 

[Baresark]

That is a decline of $4.5 Million per month. Chump change for them, but still an important note.

Economically speaking, the one element more important than general overall wealth, is actual growth. That is why you see developing nations have improved quality of life over time, because there is growth. Stagnation shows bad business, and decline shows worse business. That is why companies worry when stocks drop off. That seems to be only place this economic law is actually paid attention too.

 

[BoogieManFL]

"I think with Cataclysm [players] were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions"

Sure. A small percentage (less than 35% I'd bet) has consumed all the content but your raids are still largely inaccessible to the common player. Sure, maybe the first few bosses in a particular dungeon but not all of them, especially the end bosses which are a significant spike up in difficultly from those that preceded it.

Actually, what is most responsible for your subscriptions declining is purely the age of the game, combined with the drastic and rapid change to gameplay for most classes and healing classes in particular. And competent competition. Namely Rift and the upcoming SWtOR. And to a smaller extent negatively received class changes, and a lack of anything even remotely resembling a new and fresh idea. PvP is inaccessible for those who don't dedicate most of their time to it. And Blizzard's apparent refusal to polish anything already existing, being only concerned with slowly adding new things which are just more of the same.

The community is so fragmented, with the elitist hardcore raiders always running their mouths about how awesome they are, and how much other lesser progressed guilds suck. The list goes on.

 

[Jay Satish]

Not surprised by the decline, WoW is aging. I'm expecting a major WoW revamp move from Blizzard, not any time soon, though.

I'm not really into WoW myself but the majority of the people I have come across in Rift are former WoW players.

 

[The_Emperor]

WoW will never be toppled for the following reasons

1)you can run it on a calculator
2)It's widely available around the world where other mmos are too expensive or not heard of
3)it's a pretty good MMO

me personally I found it too grindy, the lore was uninteresting and silly with space ships and stuff, The classes are pretty boring too.

The world is immensely huge and explorable beyond any other I've played and the creatures are pretty cool but after to first 30 levels for me the quests just got extremely boring.

The races are pretty generic too. The community is a little shady. I preferred WAR even though it was a wow clone.

OT: WOW user base may go down but it will always be profitable because it's by far the most international, simples.

 

[dsawyers9]

I think this is good. I play the game and I have to say I enjoyed it, but it is in the past. Blizzard has dominated the MMO too long and like its predecessor EQ, WOW will die, but it wont be 2011 or 2012, but in 3-4 years. People don't like the development team of Blizzard. People feel that Activision has corrupted Blizzard, but to be truthful, Blizzard started corrupting itself aka by Pay to obtain things before Activision. Blizzard set the bar for MMOs, now the new games such as; Rift, GW2, SWTOR need to find what Blizzard failed to do or failed to try and do it and push that Bar even higher.

 

[Negatempest]

I think this is good. I play the game and I have to say I enjoyed it, but it is in the past. Blizzard has dominated the MMO too long and like its predecessor EQ, WOW will die, but it wont be 2011 or 2012, but in 3-4 years. People don't like the development team of Blizzard. People feel that Activision has corrupted Blizzard, but to be truthful, Blizzard started corrupting itself aka by Pay to obtain things before Activision. Blizzard set the bar for MMOs, now the new games such as; Rift, GW2, SWTOR need to find what Blizzard failed to do or failed to try and do it and push that Bar even higher.

Progress is such a beautiful thing. *Teary eye*

O.T.

I enjoyed Wow 2 years before Burning Legion expansion and cancelled before Lynch King came out. A good game, but as many have said "The age is showing". It has less to do with how the "graphics" look but more on how the game is played. Grinding, auto attack, mods needed for boss fights, boss fights created around mods (****ing bull**** to do), cheap deaths because of a slight mistake on attack or position, short enemy respawns that forces you to literally play the same damn dungeon again...I could go on. It's just a relic that needs to be weened away to allow other great MMO's on the horizon to flourish.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

i know at least eight people, myself included who quit WoW with the firelands update. Cataclysm brought out a lot of content that was cinematic and on a storyline sense was enjoyable but wasn't that substantial.

 

[Zenn3k]

Feels good

Haven't played it in months anyway, no sense paying for something you no longer launch.