I don't know how much of that has any correlation to the state of the game rather than long time players just quitting. Every one of the people I saw quit did so because all their friends were starting to quit and so a domino effect happened, saw an entire guild literally die because of this.
Yeah I mean where I don't play my alts because of their bullshit reputation-gated VP gear. I do in fact mean that, yes. I have one level 90 alt that doesn't run dailies ever. I have 8 other level 85 characters. Well. Two of them are 88 but I've stopped playing them.
Getting my one alt geared enough to run all the LFRs was hard, took me several weeks since I didn't have the rep to buy the VP gear for it. It was the opposite of fun. Running dailies for rep is not fun. I play this game to have fun. Weird, I know.
I hate to be "that guy" that always comes along to pat his own back with how great a player he is. But....
Seriously. I am a very casual player and I still have 4 level 90'ies 3 of which can run the ToES. Getting to 460 ilevel to get into the first LFR is very easy indeed. Buy some 450 crafted gear. Spend an evening chaining heroics and you will get very close to 460 if not way over. In case you are missing just that little bit of ilevel then buy som 476 crafted gear. Quite cheap and easy to come by. With regards to rep you can be at least revered with klaxxi before hitting level 90 and getting honored with the other factions really doesn't take very long.
Saying that it is hard to get gear for running LFR's is just plain wrong.
A 9 year old game losing small amounts of subscribers over the years. Shocking!
For all of those attacking each other, shut up. It's an ancient game, people move on, it's to be expected. This isn't a huge revelation to anyone with half a brain.
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500,000 people don't like the current game model. 9.6 Million do. People quit for thousands of reasons, so I am certain that dailies are in there, but there could also be simple ones, such as work, money issues, bored because they've been playing to long, and many more.
Being rational and looking at the statistic for what they really show, is not being a fan boy. 9.6 Million active subscribers is a large number. World of Warcraft could drop down to 5 Million and still be the best game. Many of the people on these forums are critical of Blizzard, so I fail to see how we can be fan boys.
As someone who has quit a couple months back, I can see why 500k would be lost.
1) Game doesn't seem as fun, or at least the focus shifting to dailies overload didn't make it fun for me.
2) People are getting older and having less time for MMOs (Or grinding dailies)
One upside, Wow is so much a singleplayer game now, that you won't notice less people playing.
9.6 is a decline, not a death, but I do agree the trend will continue unless they address certain issues the seem to ignore/be blind too. Regardless however, the game doesn't need X Millions players to be fun.
My whole argument against the daily flaw (which Blizzard seem blind too) is that dailies aren't fun... they're a chore. Yes, they don't want us to receive all the rewards in one week, I get that, but guess what happens when you've finished all the rep grinds? Shock horror, it's Cata again and there's nothing to do. What's worse, is the dailies have left you feeling disgruntled like you're working a boring 9-5 job you hate, but tolerate simply to pay the bills.
We can only hope that one day, Blizzard will introduce dynamic content/events to keep is interested. If not that, then perhaps a PvP system that's balanced and isn't so heavily based around what gear you have that more people participate. BG's have so much potential to keep us entertained in the lul between patches, but for most they fall short of the mark.
Doesn't really surprise me, people are bored of the same game year after year. It's just natural progression, no game lasts forever.
I logged in on one of my alts on a different realm from my main the other day, I was 1/150 online and not one character in the guild was above 85, like some kinda ghost town.
Doing a lot better than I expected.
Assumed by now it would only be 8 mil, MoP must not be as bad as people say it is.
Lots of doomsayers in the thread I see
I don't care if its losing subs, i don't care if the playerbase is slowly getting smaller, it could go down to 5 million and I wouldn't care... that would still be double any other MMO
I love all the people shouting "WOW is over! its golden age is past! its all downhill from here!" Why do you think people care?
And then anyone who argues against you is labelled a fanboy lol. Get over yourselves...
I don't agree with you.
First of all, there is nothing preventing you from playing the way you want to.
You do not need to farm the reputation gear, and you don't need Elder Charms.
You do not need to grind for valor/justice points.
You are perfectly capable of gearing up purely by running heroics and raids. It's not even like the charms were a thing before, they're something completely new that was implemented as a way to reward dungeoneers/raiders for optionally doing daily quests.
The fact is, their current setup is far closer to the way things worked in Burning Crusade, where you geared up in dungeons and raids but could spend tokens to fill in slots, unlike in Wrath and Cataclysm where earning points became the primary ways to gear up, to such an extent that you could obtain an almost complete set of tier gear without ever stepping into a raid.
More importantly, you're basically just asking for more rewards for doing the content you are already getting rewards from.
Let me twist your basic argument around to suit me: I like doing dailies, but I don't really like raiding, and I prefer only to do dungeons once or twice so I can experience the story. However, they have really cool gear in raids that I can't get from doing the content I enjoy the most. I don't need the gear, since I can handle the content I enjoy with the gear I have, but boy, I really wish Blizzard would let me play the way I want to play. They should totally let me get tier gear from daily quests.
Probably sounds absurd to you, right? Well you want daily quest rewards for doing heroics, which is just as absurd. Why should they cater to your playstyle but not mine?
Even if it takes longer to gear up without the charms or reputation gear, I don't really see where the complaint comes from. You would just need to keep running heroics and raids, which is the part of the game you already admit to enjoying. If anything, it gives you more incentive to keep doing them, not less. If you got fully geared, would you just quit doing heroics or quit raiding? I doubt it.
How come they have 9.6 million when they have sold about 4 milions of MoP?...dont understant this....i think from 9,6m are about 10-15% goldsellers...maybe more