The Game Was Better When.....

[Deleted]

[QUOTE=Destil;19618269]

Look at Rift, which was the equivalent.

300 thousand subscribers and that's it.[COLOR="red"]

People still pull RIFT sub numbers out their ass i see?

[Tomana]

People still pull RIFT sub numbers out their ass i see?

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

Yes, this is an old version (which places rift at ~250K subs) but unless you have better statistics, those will have to do.

[Lethey Alexandros]

If you want to improve the community at this point you dont do it by pulling our LFR and LFG. Those are just tools to get gear and get into raids. What you do is create events that require groups that cant be accessed via que, that you have to form your self. Even add some form of incitive for running LFG in a single server group. You cant have a community if you dont encourage its interaction.

[Destruktion]

Sure thing, but what the poster I quoted was saying is that you "just" have to kick all the bad players and the sub numbers would automagically go up. The fact that the whole MMO market is stagnating since 2009-ish, making such a manoeuvre by definition impossible is carefully avoided.

That's the problem with all those "QQ MAKE THE GAME HARD LIEK BC PLXPLX" people - their knowledge of market and economy is very close to absolute zero.

People are mistaken if they think turning WoW into a niche game will cause subs to rise. That said, many would still like to see that happen.

[Adam Jensen]

Totally agree brother. They need to stop handing out epics that took you 5 mins of AFKing in LFR to get. I want:

LFR removed.

LFG removed.

Dungeon/raid attunments back.

Crafting gear from raids costing more and increasing their usefulness.

No more heroic modes! Every boss is hard as it is presented with.

More single boss raids.



Taking away LFR and LFG will really bring the community back I think. Shit I know it will when things become hard again they become cool again. It took you 2 weeks to get that epic? Nice! it now means something.

Have fun playing your shitty elitist MMO with the few thousand fellows who agree with you.

I'll meanwhile continue to enjoy my more casual MMO with the millions who agree with me.

---------- Post added 2013-01-02 at 06:15 PM ----------

That's the problem with all those "QQ MAKE THE GAME HARD LIEK BC PLXPLX" people - their knowledge of market and economy is very close to absolute zero.

Wrath: WAAAAAAAAH! Make the dungeons harder!
Cata: WAAAAAAAAAAAH! Dungeons are too hard! *subs drop*

Cata heroics weren't even as hard as BC heroics, yet their difficulty was the biggest complaint of early Cata.

[googlegirl]

ha think the same

[Divineknight13]

Lets list the useless specs for raiding in Vanilla.

Mages - , Fire in MC and BWL due to resists
Shamans- Elemental,

.

did u even play in vanilla sir?

we had fire mages TOPPING dps in MC against frost mages in better gear ... yes the resist where high but if your damage was retarded what did it matter if 50% of it was resisted ... yes the standard was to run frost but i know some of the best mages from Dethecus that would show u otherwise

oh and elemental shamans where good dps in alot of content in vanilla not to mention the fact they could one shot your ass with a instant crit instant cast chain lightning

[aeluna]

The problem with this game is the emphasis on purples. Blizz thinks that fun in this game = purples. It simply does not. Purples used to be a sense of accomplishment but no longer. I don't care to LFR/LFD because its just a boring grind fest. There is no end game, and by end game I mean greater enjoyment. I am perfectly capable of doing LFR in all blues and greens only all purples would do is make it a bit easier. The ONLY reason I need purples is because of iLVL. Once your in all purples its just roll your face mode.

I think that this MMO is just heading in the wrong direction. Dailies/rep/purple grinding is NOT fun. Some people might find mindless repetition fun but I think its safe to assume the majority don't. PvP has been broken since day1 and will never be balanced. This game is old and the amount of people leaving is expected. There is only so many ways you can recycle the same stuff with a added twist.

The only reason Blizzard is still #1 is because of the amount of time people already have invested and the fact that other companies just can't figure out what goes into making an enjoyable MMO. I think where MMO's need to go is allowing players to customize the world. Buy a plot of land, build you own house, guild castle, what have you. Essentially like Minecraft but more advanced and on a massive scale. Still provide players an unchangeable world but have areas where people can customize, with some restrictions of course. Have a landscape that is effected by weather, droughts, floods, and so forth so areas are never the same. This is my personal opinion on the direction MMO's should go but who knows.

[velde046]

Ghostcrawler has completely lost touch on the playerbase, and I'm sick and tired of him telling me what's fun.

Ask Mages if we like our class. 99 out of 100 will say they're bored/disliking it.

Here's a mage that begs to differ with every point you made really...

[Notos]

we had fire mages TOPPING dps in MC against frost mages in better gear ... yes the resist where high but if your damage was retarded what did it matter if 50% of it was resisted ... yes the standard was to run frost but i know some of the best mages from Dethecus that would show u otherwise

Weren't Rag and Ony both IMMUNE to fire? And Baron too I think. I didn't play mage but I don't think it was just high resists.

[Deleted]

If you want to improve the community at this point you dont do it by pulling our LFR and LFG. Those are just tools to get gear and get into raids. What you do is create events that require groups that cant be accessed via que, that you have to form your self. Even add some form of incitive for running LFG in a single server group. You cant have a community if you dont encourage its interaction.

Indeed. WoW needs to make guild raiding more rewarding. The same gear with a higher item level isn't really enough.

Sadly, Blizz probably won't take the tiered gear out of LFR, so we're screwed. It would be hard for them to make even more unique armor sets as well.

[deathtakes]

So Vanilla WoW.

Where everything was nostalgia and broken to its own degree.

The only thing wrong with WoW is the playerbase that refuses to recognize the game has to change to fit the current MMO-market.

Do you know how many subscribers Vanilla WoW would have if it was still how it was when it launched?

Look at Rift, which was the equivalent.

300 thousand subscribers and that's it.

I agree that nostalgia is a helluva drug and a lot of people suffer from a 'grass was greener' mentality, but comparing Rift subs to WoW subs is completely asinine. WoW was at 8 million subs just before BC release. WoW currently has 10+ million subs.

This is only a guess on my part, but had WoW stuck with a higher difficulty both in game play and acquiring rewards along with a slower content consumption pace, I'd wager they'd still be around the 8 million mark give or take a million subs. At $15 a month per person that is more than enough to continue to push out quality content at a good pace.

The bean counters obviously saw how ludicrously profitable WoW is and wanted more so they made it more accessible. There's nothing wrong with that but you have to find a balance between accessibility and difficulty, which WotLK did pretty well and that's reflected by WoWs subs peaking at 12 million. Coincidentally this is also when Vivendi merged with Activision. Then the suits really went to work in wanting a more accessible product and the players weren't too keen on that idea evidently because subs dropped by 1 million after Cata's lunch and dropped by another 1 million until today. You could argue that that is due to player burnout, but I personally believe it's player boredom.

Source: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/11/..._of_warcra.php

[huth]

did u even play in vanilla sir?

we had fire mages TOPPING dps in MC against frost mages in better gear ... yes the resist where high but if your damage was retarded what did it matter if 50% of it was resisted ... yes the standard was to run frost but i know some of the best mages from Dethecus that would show u otherwise

oh and elemental shamans where good dps in alot of content in vanilla not to mention the fact they could one shot your ass with a instant crit instant cast chain lightning

Baron Geddon and Ragnaros weren't just resistant. They were immune.

[deathtakes]

Even if WoW dropped to 5 million subs it would still have about 2.5 million more subs that the next highest subbed MMO which is Aion. The Problem is Blizzard/Activisions greed because the more subs they lose (for whatever reason) the more pissed off the shareholders get.

The total running cost of WoW for the first 4 years of it's life was estimated to be $200,000,000 which is 4.16M per month. In the same period of time monthly revenue was estimated between 75 - 150M. WoW had an estimated 11 million subs by that 4 year mark which was also just before the release of WotLK FYI.

Now obviously a lot has changed since 2008 obviously, but I would be surprised if running costs increased enough to put a dent in that kind of revenue per month since then.

All I'm saying is that even if you cut that number in half they're still making a massive profit from this game, the problem is they're going for max profit, not max enjoyment.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/09/total-operating/

[Cybran]

Even if WoW dropped to 5 million subs it would still have about 2.5 million more subs that the next highest subbed MMO which is Aion. The Problem is Blizzard/Activisions greed because the more subs they lose (for whatever reason) the more pissed off the shareholders get.

Most of the subscribers of WoW are in Asia and not pay full price. It already is "Under 5 million".

[PrayTheRosary]

When, My friend Irsic played it.

[deathtakes]

Most of the subscribers of WoW are in Asia and not pay full price. It already is "Under 5 million".

Ok, but it looks like the eastern subs sit at about 6 million. I didn't know they don't pay 15$/mo but even if they paid half that it's still 4.5M a month, which is probably close enough to cover running costs, so western subs and box sales are all profit.

My point is there is no denying Blizzard is raking in the dough and could stand to lose some subs if they decided to revert the game back to Vanilla/BC type gameplay. I only bring this up because earlier posts were making it sound like if WoW subs dipped to Vanilla/BC numbers (5-11M) it would cripple the game.

[Lemons]

People are mistaken if they think turning WoW into a niche game will cause subs to rise. That said, many would still like to see that happen.

I think everyone has their own ideal version of WoW. In mine pvp would be a much bigger focus...it would be balanced first and foremost and raids would be like an afterthought. I doubt many people would enjoy that however, so it's never going to happen.

Blizzard is a company...they need to make the big money, so they're going to cater to the biggest audience. This whole line GC feeds us about trying to make the game fun is a crock. It's not fun getting roflstomped by burst in pvp, or meeting a healer that literally impossible to kill, even with help, but those things get ignored because Blizz knows that PvE is its bread and butter so PvP remains an afterthought.

[Nerraw]

Most of the subscribers of WoW are in Asia and not pay full price. It already is "Under 5 million".

I keep hearing this, but where's the source?