Why World of Warcraft subscriptions are still dropping, according to its lead designer - Sensationalist Headlines

The thing about WoW for me was that it wasn't fun because of how it played, it was fun because of who I played it with. Clearing dungeons was less about "whoa, look how cool and badass we are," and more about "we did that because we work great together as a team." Maybe that's the point of the game, but that was really the selling point for me. Once my friends moved on to other games, it just wasn't the same. We still go back and play it from time to time but nothing like we used to. Nowadays there's also MMOs that have that feeling of cooperation, but are also much more engaging in terms of gameplay. My best example is probably Guild Wars 2, which I just picked up on sale and I find myself playing even when I have nobody to party up with. I feel like MMOs need to move away from a purely number-based system, or at least look and feel like they have, because that's one of my biggest complaints about them right now.

[QUOTE=Sub-Zero;45767509]Blizzard have found that the new players coming into WoW now are often unschooled in conventional control schemes: they have never used WASD before, or are new to mouse-look. What the fuck? It took me 10 minutes to get used to WASD when i was 7 seven years old. New to mouse-look? What the fuck is this bullshit.[/QUOTE] What is this, 1993?

Okay now blizz, I'm going to try to succinctly explain why your numbers are dropping. Perhaps it has something to do with people waiting OVER A YEAR for new content? Someone remind me when Siege of Orgrimmar came out again? Also, the people who DID play your game in the past have grown up and have responsibilities (possibly even families) to look after now.

My brother was a hardcore WoW player and yes, he in fact stopped due to the delay between actual new content being so long. It wasn't always the case, but some F2P games get new content faster than WoW does(despite a majority of the time it actually being "old" content from the Korean/Japanese/etc version). Granted he plans on coming back for whatever the new expansion is though, so there is that.

wow is pretty much dead to me because: pandas (seriously all of mop was the most uninteresting drivel i've ever experienced) pay £35 to boost to level 90 (if you wanted to fix the problem with it taking too long to get to 90 then fucking reduce the amount of experience you need instead of milking us) it's too streamlined, it started with the removal of talents, now we can pick from 3 talents every 15 levels that all do essentially the same thing, great. on top of that every class now does exactly the same thing, there isn't a single class without a self heal for example (and every classes spell rotation is usually 4 or 5 spells + a few cooldowns) cross-realm zones and realm merges, i liked the idea of having separate characters on one realm and having to make a new character if you wanted to play with your mates pandas

WoW died for me at Cata

i think the thing with WoW, was that MMOs before it was originally seen as something of a niche, more like MUDs, WoW stretched the boundaries by being 3D, it's probably different than just static tangents since you could move...eventually they added enchants and more skills, ok. Wrath comes out and everything is collectible, lots of achievements to track to make sense of progress....though by then, MMOs became what FPSes are now. Eventually they attempted to remedy the eventual paywall/community lockout that was caused by 80 levels and 3 Xpacs by introducing Heirloom gear, Cata came out...think eventually Burning Crusade was made part of vanilla due to it's apparent age in comparison to New-Azeroth, Wrath was added to vanilla after Mists. I think it's starting to get stale a little bit, but they're attempting to modernize it to an extent....maybe being slightly console-like with Toyboxes, Collectibles and Pet Battles. I think the majority of newer players right now, probably hasn't witnessed endgame content in their recent form, you get to level 80/85/90, do reputation grinds, then just hope your class is overpowered if in the case you don't know what's what. or maybe other Genres just gotten better and more expanded for PCs, Steam is pretty major and there are games that appears weekly.

WoW is slowly dying out simply because the people who made it what it is, have grown up, and grown out of it. Nothing more than that.

WoW is the most generic MMO on the planet. People are just getting bored.

The problem with WoW in its current form is that it is complex. A guy playing from Vanilla to now can easily adjust to the changes, the addons and the new features that have made the game bloated or complex where it didn't need to be. A new person coming into that? Its horrifying, scary and daunting to a new player.

I think MMOs need less nerd factor and more skillfactor. i.e. You win a battle by being good at blocking directions (have to swing your mouse a certain way) rather than spending 10 hours "grinding" to get a better sword. Just my two cents.

[QUOTE=Crypptic;45781852]I think MMOs need less nerd factor and more skillfactor. i.e. You win a battle by being good at blocking directions (have to swing your mouse a certain way) rather than spending 10 hours "grinding" to get a better sword. Just my two cents.[/QUOTE] I'll throw it out there that having realtime combat in a heavily prone to lag environment isn't exactly great. Too mamy times have I died in Wildstar because of lag at inopportune times.

[QUOTE=Tasm;45768431]The day WoW goes f2p is the day it dies.[/QUOTE] It um is free to play though? I guess that explains why it's dying apparently then huh

[QUOTE=Hanso;45768966]When they still have ~6 million subs they aren't going to go F2P. Besides lack of content, what annoys me is their BS reasons not to include something. Silly shit like using dyes on armor because they would "lose control on how the game looks". Who the hell cares? Wildstar managed to do a pretty good dye system so that it doesn't look like shit.[/QUOTE] Why though? Instead of 6 million they could have 12-15 million. Easy. With the cash shop and expansions, it's possible they'd make more than they do off subscriptions given the right model and I think Blizzard has the business mindset on how to do this correctly. Imagine how big World of Warcraft would get if it were free to play and open to anybody. Even buy2play or whatever with a cosmetic shop.

WoW used to be a fun time sink. Now its more of a casual oriented time sink. Also not as fun as it used to be. I guess what I'm getting here is the game is too easy and Ghostcrawler stuck his penis in this game and fucked it like no other. So yeah, fuck Ghostcrawler and their team of devs after BC.

[QUOTE=DeandreT;45767544]I agree this is bullshit. WoW is dying because there are alternatives. Some of them do what WoW did, but they did it better and without a subscription fee. Hell I'd imagine most of the games people moved onto from WoW aren't even MMOs.[/QUOTE] I can't think of a single MMO that does what WoW does, but better. Especially not one without a subscription fee. Based on your previous posts I'm going to guess you mean Guild Wars 2 which is laughable. [editline]24th August 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Blind Lulu;45784036]All this cross-realms horseshit killed the game for me. Nothing more frustrating than meeting cool people while questing or running a dungeon only to find out you can't friend them because they are actually on a completely different server than you.[/QUOTE] But you can friend them? The cross server shit is amazing. I'm playing with friends on other servers as we speak.

[QUOTE=gk99;45782083]It um is free to play though? I guess that explains why it's dying apparently then huh[/QUOTE] only free to level 20, which doesn't offer a lot of content.

that article is such a load of crock are they saying WoW players are crossing over from consoles or some shit? i wouldn't be surprised with the crap "ability pruning" they've been doing.

Cata killed it for me as well. I used to come back to wow every now and then for nostalgia sakes and play for 3 months to even sometimes a year. Theres so many changes now that when I come back it's hard to find my memories. Opinion, though, new stuff is cool but changing all the old shit was too much.

[QUOTE=Atlascore;45768598]Blizzard has not only accepted WoW's fate, but have decided to milk the game's dwindling userbase dry before it dies, with the release of Warlords of Draenor they're adopting a yearly expansion model, in other words they expect people to pay $50 every year on top of the $15 sub fee ($180 a year) for less content. [URL="http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1576332-Chilton-Kil-Jaeden-not-in-this-expansion-only-two-WoD-Raid-tiers-planned"]Source[/URL][/QUOTE] Blizzard is almost as bad as Valve is at sticking to a scheduled release. They couldn't adopt a yearly schedule if they tried.

[QUOTE=Atlascore;45768598]Blizzard has not only accepted WoW's fate, but have decided to milk the game's dwindling userbase dry before it dies, with the release of Warlords of Draenor they're adopting a yearly expansion model, in other words they expect people to pay $50 every year on top of the $15 sub fee ($180 a year) for less content. [URL="http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1576332-Chilton-Kil-Jaeden-not-in-this-expansion-only-two-WoD-Raid-tiers-planned"]Source[/URL][/QUOTE] Key points: The yearly expansion model is something they have been shooting for for years and is widely requested. This is evident in the subscriber numbers alone where huge drops are seen in the year-long gulf between content updates The next expansion will likely return to $40 since it (presumably) isn't going to come with a boost. It could though but ultimately it's not that much in the long term. Related to the first point, "less content" is a bit misleading since raiding isn't the only thing to do in WoW. Imagine if Heroics could become relevant again because the devs don't need to tune an entire raid set to last more than a year [QUOTE=zerosix;45769978]wow is pretty much dead to me because: pay £35 to boost to level 90 (if you wanted to fix the problem with it taking too long to get to 90 then fucking reduce the amount of experience you need instead of milking us)[/QUOTE] They actually tried this very early in testing. I don't have a source but it was one of the first questions asked to the devs: If leveling is so much of a problem (and it is) why not just lower the XP values? Turns out that it didn't help that much, even dramatically slashing it. The problem was more the idea that someone who picked up the game for the first time see's the number 90 and effectively gives up before they even begin.

[QUOTE=MajorMattem;45767752]Cata killed it for me.[/QUOTE] In all seriousness, WoW went downhill with the release of wotlk when they dropped the raid difficulty to please casual players. When any idiots in pugs can kill the same bosses as seasoned veterans who have years of experience raiding together, the game's fucking dead.

Remember that when you're a kid or kinda young there's no problem learning WASD and mouse look.. My uncle needed more than a month to be able to move his character without problems in wow after I made him try.... He's 60.

More like: Still using subscriptions in 2014 Lots of alternatives MMO not being a very played or wanted genre nowadays Nothing exciting or new in the game, at least from what I see

[QUOTE=Whiplash~;45804748]In all seriousness, WoW went downhill with the release of wotlk when they dropped the raid difficulty to please casual players. When any idiots in pugs can kill the same bosses as seasoned veterans who have years of experience raiding together, the game's fucking dead.[/QUOTE] That's a mith. Bosses always had harder difficulties and players that killed those bosses were rewarded with superior gear. Heck, on the beggining of the expansion, normal and heroic gear even had different models. Saying anyone can down H Sindragosa/Lich King is bullshit.

-One time fee -No subscription -F2P trial can only go to level 20, want more, you pay the one time fee -Optional cash shop, only cosmetics, boosters and things that drop normally as a shortcut More people need to adapt that model. And since Blizzard loves expansion packs, you can still buy them without it feeling like you're getting fucked over.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;45798510] They actually tried this very early in testing. I don't have a source but it was one of the first questions asked to the devs: If leveling is so much of a problem (and it is) why not just lower the XP values? Turns out that it didn't help that much, even dramatically slashing it. The problem was more the idea that someone who picked up the game for the first time see's the number 90 and effectively gives up before they even begin.[/QUOTE] I can totally see how a 90 level cap would scare off someone who has heard horror stories of getting to level 90 from people who play Korean MMOs. The kind where 6 months gets you 1% exp at mid levels. Or someone used to/has heard of Final fantasy 11, where leveling is kind of slow.

I would gladly subscribe to the good 'old' days of either TBC or WOTLK. I wasn't around in vanilla so I dunno about that era, but man TBC rocked. WOTLK was pretty fun too.

[QUOTE=Whiplash~;45804748]In all seriousness, WoW went downhill with the release of wotlk when they dropped the raid difficulty to please casual players. When any idiots in pugs can kill the same bosses as seasoned veterans who have years of experience raiding together, the game's fucking dead.[/QUOTE] WotLK was objectively the peak of WoW, reaching 12 million subs.