It's startling how fast game activity is falling

[Orange Joe]

Any other feedback is worth very little. Talk is cheap, but actually stopping playing shows you mean it.

Hypothetical situation:

1 million players leave WoW because dungeons are to hard.
4 million stay because they like them.

Who do you listen too? Do you risk losing the other 4mil to please the 1mil?

---------- Post added 2012-12-13 at 09:38 AM ----------

No but if theirs enough of a sub loss due to some they added or removed, then that particular aspect will be looked over agian. Look what your basically saying is theirs no amount of bs they can throw my way that will make me quit because it's still world of warcraft and the game hasn't changed over 7-8 years. It's ABSURD. Of course the game will change and the changes will have impact. I mean otherwise the game is just doomed to lose subs constantly. It's such a defeatist attitude. You may not think it changes the game overall but rest assured the devs disagree with you. The game will go through many changes based on player feedback from those leaving and from those staying to. If enough leave over a particular aspect then the impetus to change that aspect will be greater and a priority will be placed on looking over it. Or the game is doomed. Take your pick.

The game always is and always will be changing so no I'm not sure why you are saying it would be different if more people left.

[Leonard McCoy]

The game always is and always will be changing so no I'm not sure why you are saying it would be different if more people left.

Because if enough people leave and or complain over a feature then they will likely look into that feature. If nobody complained or left over a feature it would likely either be left as is or not be a priority. If you don't think players leaving and their feedback has any impact on design then I'm not sure what to tell you. The game would just be doomed to constant sub loss from the devs ignoring feedback of players leaving.

---------- Post added 2012-12-13 at 02:43 PM ----------

Hypothetical situation:

1 million players leave WoW because dungeons are to hard.
4 million stay because they like them.

Who do you listen too? Do you risk losing the other 4mil to please the 1mil?[COLOR="red"]

Your hypothetical situation is also bunk. If your Blizzard you try to have your cake and eat it to. Meaning you design systems that accomplish both. Iteration is not black and white like the situation you described above. Now Challenge modes are currently under used and weak as hell but that's because the reward associated with them is not very good. Up the reward a bit and you'll see more players use them. Blizzard and GC specifically made it clear they don't want to lose anybody, it was on his twitter somewhere.

[Osmeric]

Hypothetical situation:

1 million players leave WoW because dungeons are to hard.
4 million stay because they like them.

Who do you listen too?

Note that your situation IS hypothetical, since they can also look at usage stats. They don't have 4 million people happily chowing down on hard content, far from it.

[Leonard McCoy]

Note that your situation IS hypothetical, since they can also look at usage stats. They don't have 4 million people happily chowing down on hard content, far from it.

I'd be shocked if even a million had completed a challenge mode dungeon. Why bother? Challenge is good but challenge without reward is so empty.

[Osmeric]

I'd be shocked if even a million had completed a challenge mode dungeon. Why bother? Challenge is good but challenge without reward is so empty.

I don't think they have a million (in NA/EU/KR) even raiding beyond LFR.

[xindralol]

the problem might also be that xfire is garbage and no one uses it anymore

[Leonard McCoy]

I don't think they have a million (in NA/EU/KR) even raiding beyond LFR.

Interesting. If the great mass of players all uses lfr does that mean we'll start to see raid encounters created to cater to LFR and then scaled up for normal and heroic?

[Osmeric]

Interesting. If the great mass of players all uses lfr does that mean we'll start to see raid encounters created to cater to LFR and then scaled up for normal and heroic?

I would have thought that too, but the devs have shown a willingness to invest in raid content all out of proportion to its actual use.

---------- Post added 2012-12-13 at 03:08 PM ----------

the problem might also be that xfire is garbage and no one uses it anymore

Except (1) enough people use it to get interesting numbers, (2) the trends it shows seem to be consistent with what we know from elsewhere on how games are doing, and (3) "garbage" is a wonderfully meaningless dismissive term that doesn't actually say anything.

[Leonard McCoy]

I would have thought that too, but the devs have shown a willingness to invest in raid content all out of proportion to its actual use.

yea it's backwards. For years they complained about how hard and how long it took to develop these raids and only a minority of people saw them so hey heres lfr and now that everyone is using lfr and it's super popular they don't want to tailor content for it. I don't think they anticipated that LFR would draw people away from Normal raiding. My suspicion is that instead of going through the hassle of finding a guild and committing to a raid schedule people who would normally be raiding have just said fuck it and decided to do lfr instead.

[Osmeric]

I don't think they anticipated that LFR would draw people away from Normal raiding. My suspicion is that instead of going through the hassle of finding a guild and committing to a raid schedule people who would normally be raiding have just said fuck it and decided to do lfr instead.

I certainly did that. The tuned up difficulty of normal mode this tier didn't help.

Right now, there are 33431 guilds in NA/EU/KR (as tracked by wowprogress; guildox gives similar numbers) that have downed the first boss of MV on normal mode. The vast majority of those are raiding in 10 man. You do the math.

There's an amusing poll thread on the official forums

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7384088483

Notice what option was left off the list? I wonder why.

[Deleted]

Whoops, looks like that boost didn't last. The latest sunday figure is down to 28,770.

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2012/1...pgs-as_11.html

Warcraftrealms latest update shows activity is down again (1400 player online at peak time on the average server).
Now more than 20% below Cataclysm (1800 online) at the same time after launch of the expansion.

We saw a much stronger decline in the early days of MoP, when compared to Cataclysm, but now it is easing out.
Still it is already significantly below Cataclysm. Around that time Activision Blizzard announced 600 layoffs and the lost subscriber reaching 1.8 Million. Mixed dates up


There's more to cut off than just development quality and quantity.
GM support and supervision can face cuts in quantitiy either or can be outsourced and suffering in quality.
Longer queue times for tickets. More bots in the world and even more in the battlegrounds.
I would not be surprised if the recently growing rampage of bots in battlegrounds is already a result of more staff cuts.

[Osmeric]

Warcraftrealms latest update shows activity is down again. Now more than 20% below Cataclysm at the same time after launch of the expansion.

We saw a much stronger decline in the early days of MoP, when compared to Cataclysm, but now it is easing out. Still it is already significantly below Cataclysm.

But around that time Blizzard announced 600 layoffs and the 1.8 Million lost subscriber.

They announced that somewhat later. At this point in Cataclysm they were still in optimistic mode, at least publicly.

---------- Post added 2012-12-13 at 03:33 PM ----------

Warcraftrealms latest update shows activity is down again (1400 player online at peak time on the average server).
Now more than 20% below Cataclysm (1800 online) at the same time after launch of the expansion.

I'd be leery of doing that kind of direct comparison over such a long time period.

[Deleted]

I'd be leery of doing that kind of direct comparison over such a long time period.

Can not see any reason why, other than seasonal fluctuation.

Results of Cencus scans are not bound to the number of user of the add-on like xfire is.
Of course as mentioned before, a small number of user has to be present to use it at all.
But there have always been much more than enough contributor using the add-on to compensate or correct even errors.

I find no reason to suspect the results would differ even minimal, just because of a longer period,
unless of course the population activity varies, which is all we wanted to know any ways.
Care to explain why you think of this differently?

[Osmeric]

Can not see any reason why, other than seasonal fluctuation.

There could be long term trends in usage of the tool that could contaminate the results. Over short time periods, this would be less of a concern.

Results of Cencus scans are not bound to the number of user of the add-on like xfire is.

But they are, if not as directly. If usage falls low enough players, or even entire servers, can fall through the cracks.

[Lilija]

I'm curious, were you an officer/raid leader? One thing that changed as a raid leader with the addition of server transfers and the removal of progression through tiers that occurred in Wrath was the fact that rosters seemed to become far more volatile. I actually found maintaining a guild roster far more difficult with the later changes simply because people had an easier time jumping ship. I spent far more time replacing people after TBC than I did during Vanilla and TBC.

I was a guild leader. I haven't really notice people jumping ship less in Vanilla/TBC. In fact it's what killed my first server I played during that time. People quitting or changing guilds is a natural process and there isn't really much difference between different eras in WoW. However, filling those holes in your rooster is much easier nowadays. At the end of expantion there is usually less activity around PvE and while in Vanilla and TBC it ment a break from raiding or a guild disband, in WotLK or Cata in worse case you had slower progressiong but you were less likely blocked from raiding completly due to lack of recruits.

Yes, the potential recruitment pool did in theory grow, but the quality of the pool and personal knowledge of the pool seemed to decrease.

It really depends on the quality of content. The worse time for recruits quality was post ToC because that content tought people nothing. Nerfing DS was also an issue because it made people lazy. But apart from those periods of time, the quality of recruits isn't that bad and since there is plenty of them unlike pre WotLK (at least in my experience and I play on a rather small server right now). Nowadays, you actually more often meet people with good raid experience who are coming back after making a break (this process was less smooth pre Wrath and you couldn't just jump into any content after longer break)

And to tie that idea back to the original thread, I think that may be tied to the decreased activity trend. The game has constantly introduced convenience factors that make the game easier for the new or solo player who lacks a support network, but at the expense of the development of said network. It's easy to recruit other people to raid with you, or to move to a new server to raid, but the cost of that is that you place less value where you end up because it's easy to move on again. When the cogs constantly change, the machine gets out of sync. You find that you know less players on your server/in your guild and so you have less attachment to both. That decrease in attachment means that you're less likely to do random activities with them (I'm not a huge pvper, but I'd pvp with guildies I liked if they liked pvping). This will lead to a decrease in activity. Instead of getting yours and then helping your community (however you want to define it) it becomes a completely self based game and thus your activity is tied only to your interests rather than communal interests.

I must admitt I don't really understand this kind of argument. I never felt any attachement to people outside of my guild. I never really felt any personal server reputation - neither duirng Vanilla/TBC nor later on. Guild reputation on the other hand ment a lot but that exists nowadays the same as it did "back in the days". Something like personal reputation or attachement to people can't really exist on a larger scale and something like server community is on the edge of that. For me personally, a server is too big of a group of people for anyone to really care about everyone. You will care about some group of people you've become to know on some occassion and had a chance to create a deeper connection with. Appart from raiding or more organized PvP, this game never really offered much of things that would naturally connect you more to others. Doing a group quest once or twice isn't really a deeper connection ^^ The only WoW friends I have outside of my current guild are people who were my guildies in the past. I don't even remember any other people I have randomly enocuntered while playing WoW - appart from the most negative trolls :P

[Leonard McCoy]

I certainly did that. The tuned up difficulty of normal mode this tier didn't help.

Right now, there are 33431 guilds in NA/EU/KR (as tracked by wowprogress; guildox gives similar numbers) that have downed the first boss of MV on normal mode. The vast majority of those are raiding in 10 man. You do the math.

There's an amusing poll thread on the official forums

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7384088483

Notice what option was left off the list? I wonder why.

oh ho ho ho that's rich. I wonder if this move to lfr will shape future raid tiers.

Part of it is to they've made getting raids together this time around really fucking gay. Like if your struggling to fill 10 spots and you know your spamming lfr for a healer in the past I would simple jump on one of my alt healers or my alt tank. Now with this whole focus on single character progression I really had zero desire to do alt shit and consequently our ability to fill raid rolls and spots was more difficult. Or even build an OS on my warrior for tanking. Since you don't even gear your Main spec at a decent pace why would you spend what limited currency and even more limited time on gearing up on OS? When I hit 90 I realized I made a huge mistake lvilng my warrior. Didn't matter that it was fun or that I enjoyed dps. We didn't have a spot for him and we needed healers.

[ringpriest]

I must admitt I don't really understand this kind of argument. I never felt any attachement to people outside of my guild. I never really felt any personal server reputation - neither duirng Vanilla/TBC nor later on. Guild reputation on the other hand ment a lot but that exists nowadays the same as it did "back in the days". Something like personal reputation or attachement to people can't really exist on a larger scale and something like server community is on the edge of that. For me personally, a server is too big of a group of people for anyone to really care about everyone. You will care about some group of people you've become to know on some occassion and had a chance to create a deeper connection with. Appart from raiding or more organized PvP, this game never really offered much of things that would naturally connect you more to others. Doing a group quest once or twice isn't really a deeper connection ^^ The only WoW friends I have outside of my current guild are people who were my guildies in the past. I don't even remember any other people I have randomly enocuntered while playing WoW - appart from the most negative trolls :P

I had a different experience. My guild was for raiding, and while I had a number of online friends in the guild (who I still hang out with in different games online occassionally), I had lots of friends outside it as well. Back in BC I had over a dozen co-workers, and meatspace friends (some of whom lived on other continents) who I regularly hung out with online. Those people have all quit, many of them back at the end of Wrath. As guilds grew and died over the years, I stayed in touch with a number of people on my server who I considered friends. During Cata, many of them just logged on less and less, even those with the Annual Pass. Eventually I became one of those who didn't log on anymore. One of the prime factors in my letting my sub lapse was realizing that I only really knew three people on my server still playing who weren't in my guild, where once there had been a full screen of friends every time I logged on.

[Galaddriel]

I don't think they have a million (in NA/EU/KR) even raiding beyond LFR.

Not even close according to Wowprogress.

33456 guilds total have killed one boss.
32919 x 10m = 329,190
2695 x 25m = 35,614

That makes a grand total of 364,804. Of course that does not account for backup raiders or alt toons.

[Osmeric]

That makes a grand total of 364,804. Of course that does not account for backup raiders or alt toons.

Or guilds that have more than one 10 man team. But yeah.

[hyphnos]

I'm still waiting to hear what would change if subs drop by 50%


You all say things will change, but can anyone say what will change and how it will effect the average player.

Here's a simple for instance for you.

Expansion is released with lots of hard insta-death mechanics in dungeons. Lead designer writes post effectively saying "deal with it".

1 million subs lost later, Blizzard's official line is "we want dungeons more in line with Wrath".

There were people who liked Cata heroics at release. Players quit and the design changed. Some of those same players are probably not happy with heroics now.

If subs drop by 50%, whatever thing the players cite as the reason they are leaving WILL get changed. It may or may not affect your playstyle, but Blizzard will respond unless players are just plain quitting for no consistent reason. If 50% of people leave all at once right after an expansion is released that fundamentally changes play, then the likely cause is the changes and Blizzard will revise what it "thinks it thinks" about whatever catchphrase they are going on about at the time to try to get players back it should never have lost in the first place.