World of Warcraft Subscriptions Continue to Slide

[Kasawd]

The latest Firelands patch was a little disappointing, though, the game still remains as well put together as it ever has. Honestly, part of what turns me off about Cataclysm is the theme. While Deathwing is a name that should strike a little excitement into the minds of older fans, he falls short of being intimidating, even when one is consumed by his flames. Despite seeming more lethal than the Lich King, his presence in the expansion and characterization isn't as well done as the Lich King was in wrath. After all, beating back the demonic burning legion and scourge prior, elementals seem a little tame.

A little lore for the road. Were you aware that the reason behind having no forsaken or undead children is because the original scourge harvested them for parts as they couldn't be used for labour? Most abominations are created by these harvested organs and limbs, including the brain, which is why Abominations seem so stupid. In Naxxramas, there is an abomination named Thaddius, who is made solely from the flesh of women and children. When Thaddius nears his death, if you have the ambience cranked and the sound and music off, you can hear the screams of women and children, which cease when he dies. It's little things like these, I believe, that make WoW so good.

If you visit the WoW forums, you'll see that a lot of people aren't sold on what they don't like about the expansion. It could be burnout, sure, but there is definitely something.

 

[Sofus]

People leave because they make the game incredibly easy. I am ofcourse talking about 5 man heroics and raids. Most of my friends, along with the majority of my guild (myself included) left the game (again) not long after the release of Cataclysm, specefically when they both nerfed the 5 man heroic dungeons aswell as the raid content that we had just started on.

As both a tank and a raid leader, I absolutely hated it when they made the encounters less difficult, which as some might have guessed, also made the very same encounters terribly boring.

I am not sure that I will return for the next expansion, as I doubt that they will leave the difficulty where it belongs.

And no, I am not longing for the return of the 40 man raids, as the only real difficult they provided, was how to deal with the semi-afk guild memebers during raids. No, I simply want them to stop making the encounter so easy that they fade from most peoples memory as soon as they leave the area.

edit

As someone else mentionend, the arch enemy of Cataclysm falls a bit short compared to the Lich King. I did however enjoy most of the new areas, and thought that most of them had a very unique and interesting feel to them.

 

[Fellshadow5]

Personally, I don't think WoW is still alive because "it is a good game" but because of the fanbase. There are so many people that will fight to the death for WoW, and it doesn't matter what Blizzard does to the game.

Also, I don't think as many people as you think care about the "storyline" in WoW. Many people who play have never even played Warcraft (including me).

Another thing that annoys me is dailies and the point system for obtaining gear. All it is, is just a blatantly obvious way of forcing people to play the game longer than they normally would.


Don't get me wrong though, WoW USED to be a good game, but it's very obvious that all they are trying to do now is make money, instead of just trying to make a fun game.

 

[Mike Fang]

I think it's not that surprising that the WoW numbers waiver as time goes on. With as many new MMOs as they've developed in recent years, they have to have come up with things that will appeal to people more than WoW. A lot of MMO players, though, will stick by the one that's stood up to the test of time (so far) but eventually I think WoW's numbers will drop to a certain amount as its competitors develop their own gimmicks to appeal to people, whether it's a storyline they like more than WoW's, different art styles for the visuals, a more appealing gameplay structure or different character classes, just to name a few ways to vary from WoW.

A sequel to Warcraft would be interesting, but the question would be how they would connect one to the other. Would it remain on Azeroth? Would it be a sequel or a prequel to the events of the Warcraft series? If it's a sequel, how far into the future would they jump? Would a big jump result in a change in genre, say, from fantasy to more of a steampunk/gaslight game ('cause finally getting a real steampunk/gaslight mmo would kick ass.) It would take some really hefty writing and backstory to pull it off. Plus, I imagine a lot of players would want some sort of reward for having played so long in WoW (like the heirloom stuff they've been talking about for Guild Wars 2).

 

[McNinja]

WoW subs are slipping because it's boring as all hell. There is no other reason. Some things in the game are sort of fun (like raiding). But having to do 8 quests every day for 20 days in order to unlock something, then another 9 days of quests to unlock something else? It gets old fast. Then you realize that you have to unlock these things on all level 85 characters you have.

And then you go cancel your subscription, because I will be damned if I have to do busy work in a motherf**king videogame.

 

[McNinja]

Good. Even though I highly doubt 11.1 mil players is the real number, its much much lower than that, I am happy to see this PoS game finally start to go the way of the dinosaur.

It had over 12 million right after Cataclysm came out. If WoW loses 300k subscribers every quater, that's 1.2 million a year it'll take a bit more than nine years before WoW has zero subscribers. I think WoW will be profitable for a lot longer than that, because when people start dropping the game, servers will close, which will cut costs. Not to mention that the die-hard fans will still play no matter what.

 

[frasafrase]

Project Titan is going to bring it all back.

 

[Logarithmic Limbo]

...it'll take a bit more than nine years before WoW has zero subscribers...

I would be very suprised if the progression, or rather regression, were to be linear. Looking back at my old guild the regression was more exponential. I held back buying Cata to gauge the reactions first, and the initial report after a few days from guild mates was disheartening. At first there was a trickle of guild mates unsubbing, which in short order turned into a torrent. I myself unsubbed about a month after Cata was released, and I have never looked back. I actually felt a bit of relief, like I had kicked a bad habit.

 

[McNinja]

...it'll take a bit more than nine years before WoW has zero subscribers...

I would be very suprised if the progression, or rather regression, were to be linear. Looking back at my old guild the regression was more exponential. I held back buying Cata to gauge the reactions first, and the initial report after a few days from guild mates was disheartening. At first there was a trickle of guild mates unsubbing, which in short order turned into a torrent. I myself unsubbed about a month after Cata was released, and I have never looked back. I actually felt a bit of relief, like I had kicked a bad habit.

I was done with WoW for a while after Wrath came out, but I picked it up again after Cata released. I do think that when people start leaving, the numbers will increase exponentially, but as I sad I think there will be a devoted fanbase who will keep the game going for a very long time. I will not be one of them, because I am on the cusp of cancelling my account.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Why is everyone talking about how WOW is dying? Can you even imagine 11.1 million people? I can't. It may be on the way down but that's kind of like stating that our Sun is on it's way to burning out.

 

[Nurb]

It's been 7 years, they'll probably have an expansion on the 10th year that will basically "end" the story

 

[Sean951]

The majority of people leaving seems to have been equal to the bump they got when they released Cataclysm. If I remember correctly, Wrath had roughly 11 million subs too.

 

[thirion1850]

I joined up in late Vanilla but actually started playing in late BC upon joining an RP realm, quitting a few months before Cata came out. Didn't know it would turn out that bad, but the community kept on getting worse and worse, hence I was saved from the horribleness.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

It's not just that, WoW is really starting to show it's age, and some of the more poor design choices are coming back to haunt Blizzard.

I recently started to play Rift myself and I've been very impressed with Trion, their mmo doesn't introduce a lot of new concepts but it's got enough uniqueness to not simply be called a WoW clone. That said the next expansion for Rift will be very important, especially with a big name like SWToR coming out soon.

Well, I don't know about old poor design choices, but from what I've been hearing they've been making a few poor design choices recently....

I only played a little of the beta, but from what I saw Rift was pretty much just a WoW clone, I'm not saying it definitely is(not trying to irk fans, just my experience), but from the few days I played it really only seemed to have a few perks that made it much different than WoW.

Also, I really don't think WoW can hold on forever, it's still a great game overall (11.1 million subscribers is nothing to sneeze at) but people just can't stay interested in the same game forever. Stuff happens, other games come out, their lives move on, etc. and I don't think adding another dungeon or two is gonna make much of a difference.

 

[Robjes]

Vanilla still was the best, stopped halfway TBC because 25 man raids didnt do it for me and it was to easy. Instead of cheers all over vent when we downed a boss it was: Meh, we downed him/her onto the next.
Picked up cata for 3 months, came back to see the new changed "old" world, that part was fun though but then i got at raid content, got bored again, left again.
And killing Deathwing? Killed your son and daughter a gazillion times, so no thanks. (nef, ony)
And killing Ragnaros AGAIN? You really dont care anymore do you?

Blizzard has grown to big and fat imo, time to look for another developer willing to push the boundries like Blizzard once did. Safe bets dont make heroes.
Blizzard haven't had new IP for the last 10 years....

 

[Sean951]

Vanilla still was the best, stopped halfway TBC because 25 man raids didnt do it for me and it was to easy. Instead of cheers all over vent when we downed a boss it was: Meh, we downed him/her onto the next.
Picked up cata for 3 months, came back to see the new changed "old" world, that part was fun though but then i got at raid content, got bored again, left again.
And killing Deathwing? Killed your son and daughter a gazillion times, so no thanks. (nef, ony)
And killing Ragnaros AGAIN? You really dont care anymore do you?

Blizzard has grown to big and fat imo, time to look for another developer willing to push the boundries like Blizzard once did. Safe bets dont make heroes.
Blizzard haven't had new IP for the last 10 years....

They have a new IP in the works with "Project Titan." Besides, they just went about 10 years releasing 3 games, Warcraft III, WoW, and Starcraft II, and they are still a very large and relevant game developer.

 

[Littlee300]

Perhaps it's time to create an entirely new MMO, Blizzard.

Where have you been?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Gee if subscriptions going down causes this kind of panic imagine what will happen when WoW actually does really start to die. It may be months, years or decades but all things come to an end and someday WoW will end too. (I wonder what will come next?)

 

[Cid Silverwing]

"No king rules forever, my son."

If you watched the Fall of the Lich King, you know what this means.

Now I relentlessly hate WoW's samey, boring grinding and price (YOUR SOUL) for end-game (a price I refuse to pay), but I still respect the GUI for being THE best I've ever seen in every MMO I've played so far (EverQuest, Global Agenda, Vanguard and many more).

 

[Slenn]

Really Blizzard? More dungeoning and raiding content? The dungeoning has already been ruined because of how formulaic it is to form a group. More dungeons just means more of the same non-talkative, achievement-bashing pick up groups. It's not as social as it once was, when the dungeons actually catered to those groups that had a specific line up of roles (i.e tanks, heals, dps, cc, etc)

The leveling has been made too easy and it was the primary reason for why I left. The graphics itself is starting to show its age and the new user interface just seems like it's pandering to me.