WoW Lost 300k Subscribers, Patch 4.3 this year, Blizzcon 2011 Tickets, Blue Posts

Wasn't there gonna be a Caverns of Time raid this expansion for the War of the Ancients? I think that will probably be in 4.3

Originally Posted by sicness

4.2 has been out for 5 weeks now and you expect a 4.3 announcement already? Some of you have seriously flawed expectations of what they should be able to accomplish.

An announcement is an announcement.

Considering how long 4.2 took and how shit 4.2 was I can't really see how you call it 'flawed expectations'. If they can't meet player demands that sucks - for them.

My Hubby is one of those 300,000.. but that's not cause he hates wow or anything, but its cause 1. he had a shitty computer and it wouldn't hold up the game and 2. he's now deployed for the next year =P i didn't play for half a year cause my computer went shitty too =( but now i got a new one and i'm back! hahaha

Originally Posted by Finchel

hubby thinks the new raid content is deathwing....i am on the fence with it but idk....i will continue to push through Firelands like I have been in hopes the next patch doesnt bring too many changes to classes and new raid/dungeon content that will give a little bit more of a challenge

4.3 will NOT be Deathwing considering we are supposed to get a 'War of the Ancients' Raid BEFORE we get to Deathwing.

Originally Posted by Deladeu

You are exactly what is wrong with this game and why it has become increasingly bad since the middle of BC.

Exactly. Blizzard has ruined the game with catering to such people. And now that Diablo will offer stuff for real money, it's only a matter of time before it appears in WoW and that will be the end. I'm just happy i got to play during vanilla and BC. Since i quit in the begining of WotLK, most of the game will still be in good memory for me.

Abyssal maw and War of the Ancients? that's my guess anyways.

Originally Posted by Ranikotar

Then what's the point of raiding? It's nice to have stuff not every other person on the server has. T11 is easily accessible right now you know right? After the nerfs you have to actual try hard to wipe the raid on MOST bosses.

Oh and me having a near full heroic t11 set makes me a hardcore raider? Not really. Oh and why the need for the best raid gear obtainable if all it's used for is doing 5 mans?

the five pieces that compose the tier set still leaves two trinkets, the weapon slot, neck, rings, wrists, back, and feet. There's many, many slots left to fill that don't involve tier; also, as anyone will tell you, a tier set piece is slightly worse than a similar item of that ilevel, since the set bonus is incorporated into its stat weight. So someone wearing 5 pieces of tier from a dungeon would be better off with at least one of them being swapped out for a raid drop.


Finally, I don't need 'the best raid gear' - I never said "HEROIC RAID TIER". I said Tier Set. that's it.

And why? Because it's my goal in the game to collect an armor set. Humor me, what set is there for a casual to complete? You say tier 11? I tell you NOPE, blizzard left the token requirements on, aka Nef or cho. I do not raid; I do not enjoy raids. in WotLK, I could, slowly but surely, obtain the tier set over a long period of time. by the time I was celebrating my last tier piece, the raiders were halfway through heroic modes and had not only better loot in EVERY OTHER SLOT, but they had the same tier suit I did, with some pieces heroic level.

That was what I played for. Each expansion, I looked forward to collecting my tier set. That was what motivated me to play. Locking two pieces? the ONLY TWO PIECES with unique polygons? Yeah, blizz can go fuck off until they fix this. If you want your unique raid loot, go get your Sulfuras, the extinguished hand, or some other awesome drop loot. If you want me to pay for your raids each expansion (admit it, raids get the most budget put into them) then you've got to give me something to work for.

And "why get better gear" WHY PLAY? Wow is an RPG at heart - the game is all about increasing numbers to increase performance so you can increase other numbers. The game only gets easier with better loot. But more to the point; please direct me to the DUNGEON SET I can collect as a dungeon grinder?

WHATS THAT? THERE ISN'T A DUNGEON SET? Gee imagine that. They could put in a dungeon set for people like me to work for. instead they give us hand me down raider gear with half the set locked away behind raid end bosses.

Originally Posted by Fuzzbutt

I swore 4.2 was released in June. You do realize that people said that the next earnings report (the one that was released) would show that people came back after 4.1, right? So now it's 4.2 that'll get a boost and next it'll be 4.3 that'll get a boost. There's no guarantee. 4.2 was an extremely lackluster patch.

Content patches from now on are supposed to be more frequent and smaller. 4.1 was a half patch. 4.2 was a half patch. Based on what we've been told to expect, 4.3 should be a half patch. The only content that 4.2 introduced was a half-raid and the most tedious daily hub to date. Now they're promising 4.3 will be the biggest content patch since Cata launch. So now they're waffling on faster releases. That's a big problem if they expect

4.2 was announced the week after 4.1 to prove that they would be releasing content faster. We're 4 weeks overdue for a 4.3 announcement. We'd have to have an announcement in the next couple of weeks for 4.3 to even be out before Blizzcon.

I'm fairly confident that 4.2 was released Q3, and is confirmed by a mod on this forum. But if I'm wrong by all means please correct me. I also believe that, in regard to people claiming 4.1 would increase numbers, that the 4.1 'expected increase' was when 4.1 was expected to be Firelands as well. I highly doubt people would expect a serious increase after 2 5 man heroics being released.

Why should you expect 4.3 to be half a patch when it's confirmed to be bigger than 4.1 or 4.2? How are they waffling on faster releases if they have yet to prove that? All we know is 4.3 will be bigger than any previous patch of this expansion. For all we know it could be out in 2 months. So they have yet to prove their announcement of faster content patches wrong yet.

You're forgetting the fact that the Firelands raid was being designed while 4.1 was being designed as well. We have yet to find out if that's the case for whatever is in store for 4.3, so we shouldn't just assume that an announcement for it should come so quickly after a major content patch like 4.2. We'll likely get information on it before Blizzcon, with Blizzcon being more focused on Deathwing's raid and the next expansion. Obviously I'm just assuming that.

---------- Post added 2011-08-04 at 01:09 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Ncs

An announcement is an announcement.

Considering how long 4.2 took and how shit 4.2 was I can't really see how you call it 'flawed expectations'. If they can't meet player demands that sucks - for them.

When some player demands are ridiculous they don't have to meet those demands and should flat out ignore them.

"Later this year" - whan GW2 and/or SWtoR is released too?"Biggest patch ever" - Regardless of semantics here, someone really belives it will not be Deathwing one? Never seen War of the Ancients to be sonfirmed anyway.OR... Deathwing raid IS in the same tier as War of the Ancients???

Originally Posted by Beyond2

It makes me happy to see more people leaving the game. As sick and twisted as that sounds, maybe blizzard will wake the fuck up and make tier accessible to non-raiders like it was in WotLK. Or at least give casuals something to do with rewards that aren't recolored rehashed shit, while raiders get all the new shinies. The new quest zone was a joke; I saw the rewards, I saw how little they value their casual players. "Just give em recolored rares, they'll eat it up. toss in a recolored mount too for kicks" No thank you blizzard, my money will go elsewhere. Make your game casual friendly like it was in WotLK and we'll talk about me re-subbing. If it takes another 1,100,000 people to leave to make a round two million, I hope blizzard it will get blizzard to fix their shit. I want to play WoW, but not in an environment where I have no hope for obtaining an armor set unless I'm a hardcore raider.

i'm pretty sure the main reason they're losing subs is that the game is too easy for anyone who can get the same 10 people together one day a week for 3 hours.

i call bullshit on casuals. you're not casual, you're antisocial. you cannot possibly hand out more loots or water down the game any more than it is already.


they give you tier items AND THEN WHAT? sit around and do nothing with it? because you're not raiding, or else you'd already have a way to get the items. you just want a perpetual carrot, you can't stand it that you've gotten worst than the best gear and that's it. so? they add tier pieces as "easy to get" and you're now complaining that you cant get heroic. they give you heroic and you complain that you cant get the optional boss gear.

bottomline is raid itemization should only be accessible to raiders, because thats all its useful for. you opt out of raiding, you beat the game when you finish the last set of daily quests / grind the last rep.


sorry, but everyone i know that quit is because its way too easy to beat the raids and they have no interest in silly grinding to beat heroic versions which are not different / unique enough to matter to them. they are just sick and tired of

1. chasing the carrot
2. gear reset every expansion
3. constant fiddling with balance
4. things STILL out of balance randomly
5. pvp boring / arenas have too much dependence on comps and not enough on skill

etc. etc. i personally enjoy the few hours a week i put into wow and its cheap enough that even if i didn't play i'd keep my sub going.

I am so sick of Blizzard doing all the "talking" and none of the "walking". "Patches will be more frequent in Cataclysm!" I can not say this was a lie, because patches HAVE came more frequently but that's with us comparing Cataclysm's patching to the hell that was WTLK. Sure they are coming more frequently but not as fast as they made us think. Now they are promising "The biggest patch in CATACLYSM" really? I sure as hell hope so considering we did not get a whole hell of a lot with 4.1 or 4.2... I did enjoy the Molten Front Daily quests, they were a nice change. Though, Firelands was rather disappointing in certain aspects. Forgive me, I am tired but that's pretty much what we got in 4.2 was it not? A new Daily quest hub and a rather small raid. I can smell disappointment with 4.3 from a mile away - I do hope I am wrong though. As for the loss in subscriptions, this and SWTOR's release might actually kick Blizzard in the ass to do SOMETHING creative with WoW. New Battleground, new Raid and a few more dungeons will be great for a while. In my opinion they need to take another look at Rated Battlegrounds...

So this follows the lines of what alot of people have been saying. There are a lot of players gone. For good? Probably not, but some of them for sure. My problem is raiding is obsolete. It's an outdated system, a limited numbers of items drop with random chances for each one, with a controlled(via guild) or random(via PUGS) reward system. The time and effort aren't worth it for raiding anymore. I say more open style daily bosses with a fixed reward system. Make solo or 3 man dungeon content, make open world PvP town based objectives(Like capturing Tarren Mill or the Crossroads) award conquest points with a 3 hour down time for recapture. Just some ideas.. WoW has really become lackluster and boring. Though that could be because I had played for 5+ years. I feel like the entire game is under potential, obsolete, and half assed. I doubt I'm alone.

Not surprised about the subs, it's been going down since the start of the game, sorry, but OMG Patch 4.3. And it's not hard to be the biggest content patch since Cataclysm. First major patch was just two re-done instances and a quest, the second was just a raid and new dailies area + an annoying chain quest. This patch will hopefully be a new raid, and a new dungeon, not redone, and maybe a new daily hub (>.>), either Vashir or CoT, or both! I dunno, but I can't wait to see what it is. I'm gonna place bets between November and December, before the holidays.

"The biggest update in content since Cataclysm" conveys to me that they think that this patch will be larger than the expansion, unless they just poorly worded it. I think they later is true, because Cataclysm as an expansion had a lot of content, the most out of any expansion to date.

Originally Posted by Jokerfiend

So this follows the lines of what alot of people have been saying. There are a lot of players gone. For good? Probably not, but some of them for sure. My problem is raiding is obsolete. It's an outdated system, a limited numbers of items drop with random chances for each one, with a controlled(via guild) or random(via PUGS) reward system. The time and effort aren't worth it for raiding anymore. I say more open style daily bosses with a fixed reward system. Make solo or 3 man dungeon content, make open world PvP town based objectives(Like capturing Tarren Mill or the Crossroads) award conquest points with a 3 hour down time for recapture. Just some ideas.. WoW has really become lackluster and boring. Though that could be because I had played for 5+ years. I feel like the entire game is under potential, obsolete, and half assed. I doubt I'm alone.

I agree, they need to do something new.

Originally Posted by Paladin0228

4.3 will NOT be Deathwing considering we are supposed to get a 'War of the Ancients' Raid BEFORE we get to Deathwing.

That was said a while back at Blizzcon, and considering they cut out the Abyssal Maw raid/ dungeon they might also scrap the War of the Ancients

Originally Posted by sicness

When some player demands are ridiculous they don't have to meet those demands and should flat out ignore them.

when they release gimp content that people destroy immediately, they can't seriously think people won't be wondering where the next content is.

4.1 was a non-patch to any raider. No upgrades available = not interested.

I'm so uninterested in it that i don't bother doing even the dailies now to cap valor. who cares? eventually i'll have more valor than i know what to do with, and the worst part is you don't even need full gear to beat the raids. by the time i get to the point that i would have needed it, it'll be nerfed anyway.

they've taken away any requirement for me to worry about flying through content because it is simply so easy to do so. Shrug.

You simply can't hide from the fact that making content more accessible actually loses subscribers faster because there is no prestige or value associated with obtaining items.

when it was *required* that you were 1 out of 40 people in a raid and had to dedicate time to obtaining upgrades, people CARED more. Now they don't, because anyone with any amount of skill can beat the content in last tier's gear. Zzz.

they hand casuals the ability to raid and the casuals ask for "tier loot without raiding."

you can spend less time in firelands than it takes to do a random heroic in a pug and clear a boss or two. on my server they're pugging heroic FL already.



blizz can't win. people whine about content being too inaccessible, so they make it easier and then people whine about there not being enough. Oops, kids clearly have no idea about things like development budgets.

Originally Posted by Beyond2

Finally, I don't need 'the best raid gear' - I never said "HEROIC RAID TIER". I said Tier Set. that's it.

And why? Because it's my goal in the game to collect an armor set. Humor me, what set is there for a casual to complete? You say tier 11? I tell you NOPE, blizzard left the token requirements on, aka Nef or cho. I do not raid; I do not enjoy raids. in WotLK, I could, slowly but surely, obtain the tier set over a long period of time. by the time I was celebrating my last tier piece, the raiders were halfway through heroic modes and had not only better loot in EVERY OTHER SLOT, but they had the same tier suit I did, with some pieces heroic level.

That was what I played for. Each expansion, I looked forward to collecting my tier set. That was what motivated me to play. Locking two pieces? the ONLY TWO PIECES with unique polygons? Yeah, blizz can go fuck off until they fix this. If you want your unique raid loot, go get your Sulfuras, the extinguished hand, or some other awesome drop loot. If you want me to pay for your raids each expansion (admit it, raids get the most budget put into them) then you've got to give me something to work for.

Wait... so you want a raid tier set but you don't like raiding? To bad then because it's a raid tier set that requires you to kill raid bosses to complete the raid tier set. I'm sorry but this is kind of like my original point... you want something that you aren't willing to take the time and effort to get yourself and you're getting upset that you can't get it handed to you.

It's not the content. Its rather their inability to listen to players.
PvP is broken
Class Balance is broke
WPvP is dead

Originally Posted by frott

i'm pretty sure the main reason they're losing subs is that the game is too easy for anyone who can get the same 10 people together one day a week for 3 hours.

i call bullshit on casuals. you're not casual, you're antisocial. you cannot possibly hand out more loots or water down the game any more than it is already.


they give you tier items AND THEN WHAT? sit around and do nothing with it? because you're not raiding, or else you'd already have a way to get the items. you just want a perpetual carrot, you can't stand it that you've gotten worst than the best gear and that's it. so? they add tier pieces as "easy to get" and you're now complaining that you cant get heroic. they give you heroic and you complain that you cant get the optional boss gear.

bottomline is raid itemization should only be accessible to raiders, because thats all its useful for. you opt out of raiding, you beat the game when you finish the last set of daily quests / grind the last rep.


sorry, but everyone i know that quit is because its way too easy to beat the raids and they have no interest in silly grinding to beat heroic versions which are not different / unique enough to matter to them. they are just sick and tired of

1. chasing the carrot
2. gear reset every expansion
3. constant fiddling with balance
4. things STILL out of balance randomly
5. pvp boring / arenas have too much dependence on comps and not enough on skill

etc. etc. i personally enjoy the few hours a week i put into wow and its cheap enough that even if i didn't play i'd keep my sub going.

You make a lot of assumptions. First and foremost, it has nothing to do with "having the best of the worst" - on the contrary, during WotLK I was perfectly satisifed with my base tier-10 loot set. I never once complained about how hard tokens were to get, I never once asked for heroic loot to be passed out to anyone with a pulse. Do you know why that is?

I'll give you a hint. Look at the blues you could get for running heroics when tier 11 was still current content. Take all the plate DPS pieces, or all the plate Tank pieces and put them on at the same time. Looks coherent, right? but utterly dull. It looks like it was something that was made on the lunch break of one of the employees.

Compare that set to ANY TIER SET FROM 11 OR 12. Any one. Any of those sets have coherent everything, and typically have bells and whistles. Glowing eyes on the shoulders. A hood that obscures the face. Some factor that makes them look cool. Some factor that makes YOUR CHARACTER look cool.

At the end of the day, i care about my avatar looking halfway decent. Blizzard has made having a cool avatar something only raiders are allowed to do, and that isn't acceptable if they want my subscription money.

and as for what to do when I have my full tier set? Why, good sir, I start working on my full tier OFF set. Gives me something to do, a reason to play. Being told "oh you can only get 3/5 tier" is like telling me "You have no goal to work for". No goal to work for? No subscription money.

Bear in mind - back in Wrath, which is the model I think worked best, casual dungeon running took far, far, far longer to obtain raid emblems. so it would be months to finish my tier, BUT AT LEAST I COULD. I'd keep playing till the raid after firelands if it meant I could finish the tier.


You'd think they'd have thrown a bone to casuals and at least make the old armor set buyable for points - herp derp NOPE.


Frankly, we can argue back and forth all day. At the end of the day, I spoke with my money, and I hope blizzard keeps losing subs until they fix what they broke. At that point, I'll resub and happily play. Until then, I'm done paying blizzard to develop for raiders when I'm not one.