It's startling how fast game activity is falling

[Blueeagle]

I see nothing wrong with a 50% drop in playtime. Honestly, the expansion comes out and a lot of people will rush to level, then rush to gear for raids (PvE environment). Once you have most of the gear your playtime will dwindle down to the daily things that you want/feel you should do.

[isadorr]

Also, to quote this verbal diarrhea once more, they day people stop assuming raiders "don't work" or don't have "normal lives" with everything that our society labels as "normal", is the day i'll stop assuming being a casual is an excuse for bad. I work 8-4 40 hours a week and feel free to judge my armory, its tied to my sig picture.

LOL, I have watched friends put in a lot more time than I ever do in this game with less than half of the progression. You can learn everything you need and set up your bars in 15-20 minutes ready to raid the next xpac with completely different talents. You can also raid in lesser gear if you are a good player instead of thinking you need all epic to down the early bosses in the game. We put in a bit of time at first then clear it and then come back to do everything in one night like heroic ds while others will still raid their normal schedule.

[Aurora]

2,820 people... out of 10 million subscribers. Do you honestly think this statistic is in any way relevant?

Unfortunately, your numbers are basically irrelevant. The sample size is far too small. Please try to avoid making sensationalist, misleading threads. It really doesn't create decent discussion.

Annoys me how people say this so frequently when statistics are posted. Do you guys realise how surveys are generally conducted and typical sample sizes? 2,800 people is not a small sample, it is a huge sample that would be the envy of most survey organisers. If you believe 1 in 3333 of the total audience is too small a sample to conclude anything you must believe that 21 million is a small sample size to conclude anything about the human population? Or rather "far too small".

[Orange Joe]

No, but when they were designing MoP they might have thought one of them would.

I'm still waiting for you to answer this.

Why is it the only reason you will accept for a decline in activity to be bad game design?

Why is it not possible for outside influences to effect wow activity?

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Good grief, you must be. I thought Challenge Modes were a great idea, just so Blizzard could see how few people actually wanted to do them.

It's not that there's few people want to do them, but getting a competent group together to do them.

If I can't find such a group just to run heroics on Shandris or arenas...lol...try getting a Challenge group together. They were already yelling at each other last night in trade about what's all that is bad on the server. I mean most of them couldn't even finish DS with the buffs, even.

Would be better if they offered it like LFD and the results put you higher/lower in the challenge making system. Similiar to how arenas work with a decent MMR like ranking system of players. Would love to have it in heroics, so players can be ranked by performance and social skills, not just stupid speed runs.

[Osmeric]

I'm still waiting for you to answer this.

Why is it the only reason you will accept for a decline in activity to be bad game design?

Why is it not possible for outside influences to effect wow activity?

When the changes are so synchronized with major game changes, that suggests endogenous causes.

[isadorr]

The need for carrying is precisely why the game should not have hardcore content. As soon as some content becomes difficult, there is a very strong incentive for the better players to group together and ditch the others.

That is what most games are all about, that is why there is rankings in almost every game there is. The normal mode is lol and that is why they put in heroic mode. If they made normal hard like it was before the wrath babies then the rage and qq tears would drown us all. Of course you are going to drop the bad players, why the heck would you carry bad players? Why gear a bad player? It is a waste of time.

[hyphnos]

I wonder if they made this change as a competitive maneuver, so their players wouldn't have time to also play some competitor (SWTOR? GW2? TESO when it comes out?)

Honestly I think they expect competition and that people will play other games. My personal view is that they went into panic mode when 10 months of Dragon Soul and the impact of D3 cannibalism dropped subs so radically at the end of Cataclysm and took "there's not enough group content" complaints and decided that they could answer them with an abundance of ANY type of content. The called in some gaming psychologists who told them that people who play Angry Birds every day for 5 minutes are 75% more likely to keep playing and decided to design around strongly incentivized daily play under the misguided notion that their demographic is one that HAS time to log on to wow every day.

They confuse diligence with dedication. Dedicated players, whether they play 1-3 days per week or every day are the ones who stay. Diligent players may do what it takes for a while but when the diligence starts pushing the hours of a half-time job, you're going to lose a lot of players out of an adult playerbase when they get worn out.

[Orange Joe]

When the changes are so synchronized with major game changes, that suggests endogenous causes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy

You don't think this could have had any effect on it?

A total of 24 U.S. states were in some way affected by Sandy. The hurricane caused tens of billions of dollars in damage in the United States, destroyed thousands of homes, left millions without electric service,

[isadorr]

It's not that there's few people want to do them, but getting a competent group together to do them.

If I can't find such a group just to run heroics on Shandris or arenas...lol...try getting a Challenge group together. They were already yelling at each other last night in trade about what's all that is bad on the server. I mean most of them couldn't even finish DS with the buffs, even.

Would be better if they offered it like LFD and the results put you higher/lower in the challenge making system. Similiar to how arenas work with a decent MMR like ranking system of players. Would love to have it in heroics, so players can be ranked by performance and social skills, not just stupid speed runs.

I changed servers, the server i was on Aerie Peak has two good guilds and rest are pretty bad. Went to lightbringer a good raiding server and things are much better. That is the only way to really change your surroundings.

[lanerios]

This topic proves exactly why talking about ANY MMO declining is useless, rabid fanboys will defend the game with blind obedience, ignoring facts. And blind haters will make up facts (so will the fanboys) to sound better.

I am neutral, the game is fun. The daily grind stopped being fun. I notice the same in my guilds (more than 1 char, more than 1 guild) across servers. From 8-12 online to maybe 2 or 3.

[Anowyn]

I'll add my personal anecdote... In my experience, based on my guild and friends list, I have noticed the same trend among my guild and friends list.

[Osmeric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy

You don't think this could have had any effect on it?

Not much of one. Only a miniscule fraction of the US population remains without power/connectivity from this event.

[isadorr]

Honestly I think they expect competition and that people will play other games. My personal view is that they went into panic mode when 10 months of Dragon Soul and the impact of D3 cannibalism dropped subs so radically at the end of Cataclysm and took "there's not enough group content" complaints and decided that they could answer them with an abundance of ANY type of content. The called in some gaming psychologists who told them that people who play Angry Birds every day for 5 minutes are 75% more likely to keep playing and decided to design around strongly incentivized daily play under the misguided notion that their demographic is one that HAS time to log on to wow every day.

They confuse diligence with dedication. Dedicated players, whether they play 1-3 days per week or every day are the ones who stay. Diligent players may do what it takes for a while but when the diligence starts pushing the hours of a half-time job, you're going to lose a lot of players out of an adult playerbase when they get worn out.

This is confusing to me. What is it that takes people so much time? I see so much wasted time in another guild i have my alt in and then hear them bitch they dont have time to do all that they want. get on and do what you need then get off. It really doesnt take a lot of time to get on, knock out dailies or buy or farm what you need for the day. Exalted doesnt take long then you could be done with dailies or mess with a alt. The people i see everyday that whine are the ones sitting in vent bitching as they sit in shrine of 7 stars or sit in sw doing nothing.

[Immitis]

ugh do we really have to have threads like this already? its bad enough the trolls get to complain for 1-3 weeks after quarterly reports (if it goes down all the na and eu players left because it isnt bc if it goes up its all chinese people)

go away and come back when blizzard tells us what the subs are

[hyphnos]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy

You don't think this could have had any effect on it?

Given that the likelihood that any or all of these tracking services get their data from players all over the US and all over the EU and elsewhere, any one geographic region having a dislocation isn't going to strongly effect the data.

There is nothing in the outside world that will prove to be more strongly correlated with WoW playtime than changes to WoW itself over the timespan in question.

Was there a worldwide economic collapse, a major war killing millions. No there was a monthlong disruption in the NE US from a hurricane. Unless you believe a huge proportion of the data collected relied on players from the NE US then, Sandy has nothing to do with a decline that's been going on since before it happeend and now that it's impact is receding.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Also, to quote this verbal diarrhea once more, the day people stop assuming raiders "don't work" or don't have "normal lives" with everything that our society labels as "normal", is the day i'll stop assuming being a casual is an excuse for bad. I work 8-4 40 hours a week and feel free to judge my armory, its tied to my sig picture.

You're also playing WoW. The carebear MMO of them all.

Back in the day if you were a hardcore raider you actually did raid for 15hrs, wipe after wipe after wipe. Men would even bring in piss bottles to not be AFK, as the screaming RL will be sure to kick your ass out if you did (why too many of them are on drugs, too). Knew a hardcore raiding Swashie from EQ2 who worked a 40hrs a week as a contractor, and came back home to raid 6 to 8hrs a night. He finally realized with a wife and kid dedicating another 40hrs a week he should be paid for it, and he quit the avatar scene. His family thanked him for it, too (as I knew his wife).

WoW hardcore is nothing like that. Might as well call it softcore, as a typical WoW raider raids 2hrs 2x a week. Being called "bad" in WoW is like 2 year-old crying on the playground in comparison.

[Kissme]

I would welcome the challenge of a top 5 guild and usually the top guilds have much better rosters across the board. Like us in 25 man, we carry quite a few that arent good or bad but are at the bottom of the meters at the end of the night. A top 5 guild has great numbers across the board and you can also use WOL or Epeen bot to see where you ranked according to all of the players that use a public log. To rank in the top 200 is rewarding for me and i gauge myself against the best to see how i am doing,fire mage ftw lol. To me there is a good player and a bad player, numbers make that very obvious. The fact that blizzard is throwing gear out there is there attempt to nerf content without nerfing content lol.

I didn't say you wouldn't enjoy the challenge or that top guilds aren't better across the board. I had world ranks consistently in WotLK and a few in early Cata despite my guild going super casual in Cata. We were a high end casual guild with decent players, nothing special though.

Gear has always been an enabler to allow the less skilled to conquer the content later on in progression. The problem I see right now is that Blizzard is that instead of letting gear progression naturally lead to progression, they're also adding on buffs/debuffs and significant fight changes at a rapid rate. This results in a forced progression ideal that causes even the low end of the raid scale to progress through content much faster than they should. And the problem is once they've given this boost, they can't take it away. They've always nerfed content at certain points in expansions, but the current pacing of those nerfs is a problem.

Also, numbers alone don't make a player good or bad. A lot of the top healing parses are the result of the raid being bad or other healers being bad. A lot of top dps parses come from "gaming" the system to buff one player ridiculously. Numbers are important, but they aren't the be all and end all.

I think we can agree that WoW is definitely not the game it used to be and is no longer aimed at the same players it used to be.

[Orange Joe]

Not much of one. Only a miniscule fraction of the US population remains without power/connectivity from this event.

Ok I'm not gonna bother with you anymore. You just keep on hating wow.

[lanerios]

thank you Kevyne, that's my point as well on hardcore raiding in WoW. FFXI was way more hardcore as well.

@Slozon, please prove to me that Hurricane Sandy had a huge impact on subscribers, I mean, apparently according to you it hit worldwide suddenly.