Are players from the original WoW community a minorty in WoW now?

[Deleted]

Most definately. The people I came up with (and myself) have gotten older, have jobs and are close to getting married now. Things change, no matter how much we'd like them to stay the same.

WoW today is very different from WoW 2004, and it will continue to evolve to accommodate the up & coming generation(s).

[Akraen]

Could not have said it better my self.

I imagine this is what an immortal must feel like, to be a relic of an age long gone, to remember your friends and moments from the past and the fun times you had but then to look out at the world around you and see something that shares similarities but is vastly different from the world you grew up in.

kinda exciting in a way and at other times a bit lonely feeling. In the last few guilds I have been a part of, I have been the longest playing player and people even doubt me sometimes.

It does feel that way. It's made me a bit numb, honestly.

I've been a guild leader this entire time too, of the same raiding guild.

I've had dozens of officers come and go. Hundreds of raiders. Thousands of members.

I'm one day going to just turn into a raid boss in moan on and on about how I was ancient when the world was young.

[CptAwesome]

The game has 4x the number of players now than it did at the start, so the maths says "yes".

[Akraen]

I feel like this clam:

http://www.latimes.com/science/scien...#axzz2l7bEz7d6

[Deleted]

That clam looks jaded and world-weary. Like everyone on its friends list no longer logs in. :/

[Sturmbringe]

Most definately. The people I came up with (and myself) have gotten older, have jobs and are close to getting married now. Things change, no matter how much we'd like them to stay the same.

WoW today is very different from WoW 2004, and it will continue to evolve to accommodate the up & coming generation(s).

Tbh I am 38, I have a job, and I still play video games. When I started playing WoW in Dec 2005, I was 30. I didn't quit b/c I have grown older. I quit b/c WoW has become a bad game and it is no longer Warcraft, in the sense that Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK were. The sense of continuity with Warcraft III, a game I loved, has broken and there is almost nothing in common in present-day "WoW" with Warcraft.

Also, the people who were in the original team were pushed aside in favour of newcomers such as Ghostcrawler et al, who in the end molded the game into something different than Warcraft. Think anbout how Tigole and the Afrasiabi brothers were exiled into the basement b/c they ran afoul with GC and some of the people behind him.

I now play Rome II: Total War from SEGA, and there is also a long list of games to test yet:

1. Grand Theft Auto V
2. Bioshock Infinite
3. Metro: Last Light
4. Battlefield III
5. Crysis III
6. Crysis: Warhead
7. Hitman Absolution
8. Grid II
9. Company of Heroes 2

...and more. The point is, it is hard for a childish game basically about Kung Fu Pandas who collect pokemon to hook me up. I suppose it would though If I was 12 or 14.

[Deleted]

I can't speak for the majority of players but in my own personal experience I must say that most of the people i used to play with during Vanilla and BC days don't play anymore these days.

[hrugner]

I can't speak for the majority of players but in my own personal experience I must say that most of the people i used to play with during Vanilla and BC days don't play anymore these days.

Same here, whenever I get a free week or something I pop in and see my full friends list without a single light on. I imagine if I'd made use of the real ID thing this would be slightly different, but who knows.

As to the main topic, I think just from the raw numbers we have to be the minority.

[KCguy]

I don't know how many people still play, but in terms of people I know that used to play during vanilla and BC, they're long gone.

[Feanoro]

I've been at this since 2004, and most of the people I knew quit after Ulduar. Heck, I'm only hanging on out of sheer stubbornness and now the hopes that WoD will reverse a lot of their bad decisions.

The reasons I heard around the ToC/ICC/early Cata period were usually a variant of one on the list below. For a fun game, ask yourselves how many still apply or correctly predicted things.

- ToC was complete crap, and it's pretty obvious they're only going to continue the awful systems it spawned.

- I've had to put up with "ur elitist" crap from people who die in fires, gem strength as clothies, can't CC, can't interrupt, have no idea what LoS is, and generally make no effort to play well. Once the Blues started echoing that same crap, I cancelled. I don't pay to be insulted.

- Most of these fights are just brute force with a little movement. Smash the crap out of your buttons and win. Where's the skill in that?

- There is no way they can balance 10 and 25 man. They'll have to dumb down fights because 10 man has less options. When that happens, people will go 10 man because it's easier to get a group.

- All the fights are the same, tank 1 holds the boss until Bad Thing happens. Tank 2 taunts and holds the boss until Bad Thing happens...*

- Blizzard is clearly putting its blessing in gearscore** and the idea that gear > skill.

- To optimize T9, you had to farm ToC in all four modes. That's rewarding spending lots of time, not spending time wisely.

- All we do now is just AoE between bosses. No CC, no real pulling, the tank just charges in like a moron. It's boring and the bosses aren't much better.

- There's no real healing game anymore. No snap decisions, no saving lives, just overheal and gloat over hps. I never have to choose who to save, whose death would hurt us more.

* For those who don't remember/weren't there, many fights had bosses that couldn't be taunted. Tanks had to actively generate threat (if you don't know this term, you really have no idea what tanking was) and coordinate for any swapping.

** GearScore was an addon that examined a player and assigned a score based on gear. PuGs in ToC and ICC increasingly started using this to determine if someone could join.

[Feanoro]

*usual long-winded monologue from a "blame the players" type fanboy

Isn't it amazing that everyone got bored at the same time? Just look at the subscription data Blizzard has released and you see pronounced growth and then suddenly it peaks and start sharply declining. How strange, you would expect that there would be a rough plateau on the graph if they had simply ceased growth. It's almost like there was a massive shift in design direction at one point. Nah, that can't be it. Must be those damn players all getting bored at the same time, right after the (repeatedly voted) most popular patch in WoW history.


Before I hear "well that data isn't accurate":

Considering that subs data is released as part of their shareholder reports, any falsifying or misleading about it would constitute fraud. If you have proof that the data isn't accurate, the SEC would love to hear it.

[Feanoro]

I actually quit too. The difference is that I understand that the game is still fine, *I* personally just got bored with it. Perhaps there's a certain level of maturity in being able to accept that something just isn't for you anymore, rather than throwing a tantrum at it for suddenly being bad.

You heard it here folks, if you don't like how WoW has changed, you're immature. Masked in pompous phraseology, but that's what's being said.

Over the past few years, people have given multiple well thought out, well written reasons on where they feel there's been change for the worse. But hey, they're immature and throwing a fit, right? Declaring that something is immune to criticism is dooming it to stagnation and decline. Maturity is welcoming and encouraging criticism, with the common sense to disregard the destructive.

Everyone? At the same time? Not exactly. Still plenty of people playing, and still an overall decline in subs happening.

On the odd chance you didn't understand the sarcasm (let alone the entire post), my point is that the data does not support the idea of player boredom. If that was the case, you would have seen plateaus and gentle declines, not a sudden drastic drop that doesn't appreciably slow.

[Airwaves]

"More people have played wow then currently play it"

This is what they said at the peak of Wrath. So that means upwards of 40 million people have played wow. It is only natural that the original wow community is the minority 9 years later.

[Barnabas]

I see maybe 15 or 20 people on that I remember from vanilla wow. Some are still in hardcore guilds and others are casual players.

[Aerofluff]

Tbh I am 38, I have a job, and I still play video games. When I started playing WoW in Dec 2005, I was 30. I didn't quit b/c I have grown older. I quit b/c WoW has become a bad game and it is no longer Warcraft, in the sense that Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK were. The sense of continuity with Warcraft III, a game I loved, has broken and there is almost nothing in common in present-day "WoW" with Warcraft.

Also, the people who were in the original team were pushed aside in favour of newcomers such as Ghostcrawler et al, who in the end molded the game into something different than Warcraft. Think about how Tigole and the Afrasiabi brothers were exiled into the basement b/c they ran afoul with GC and some of the people behind him.
The point is, it is hard for a childish game basically about Kung Fu Pandas who collect pokemon to hook me up. I suppose it would though If I was 12 or 14.

This pretty much fits perfectly for me, as well. I was in the Blizzard Friends & Family closed beta test, months before WoW even launched. I've had a few on and off burnout phases since then (mostly Cata and a large majority of MoP), but I'm still playing (resubbed only for SoO, since orcs/Orgrimmar means less China pandas), mostly in the hopes that they've realized WoW needs to get back to its roots for WoD, and I don't say that with nostalgia-goggles on. Vanilla lacked a lot of features and quality of life improvements, obviously, but I really didn't care for the direction they went with MoP. Cata had some problems, but at least it was still "classic WoW theme."

And before the MoP knights come out and cry foul at me for the whole "Kung Fu panda" thing... Sure, there were some darker stories in MoP, like Suna losing her husband in Townlong, and so on. That's almost the only one I care to remember, because the rest of the expansion was so awful that I like to block it from memory. I could list all the reasons I think the vast majority of it is childish and silly, but it would just be beating a dead horse that plenty of others have already done (but for some reason, you keep trying to claim they're the "ridiculous minority"...)

And whenever somebody blindly asks "Why hate on GC?!", the above quote is pretty much a good (but vague) explanation. He took WoW in the wrong direction, imo.

@Fearnoro: No. ToC was awesome, because there was no trash. Raiding isn't about time wasted killing a wave of stupid mobs, it's about knowing boss mechanics and being quick enough to do what you're supposed to be doing, in coordination with other people. Sure, the scenery didn't change, but it was quite refreshing to be able to go from boss to boss, getting your earned loot without having to waste more time plowing through trash.

[Sarodan]

still play game changed alot thats why alot of us quite and the community just suck atm and if you claim it doesn't that just branned you cata baby and about the toc part if it was that bad you probably got the tribute achi's right ?

[Seefer]

Yes we are, you can tell by the fact that there is a lot more whining and complaining about things being too hard and having to put effort into things (look at all the QQ about flying).

[Gothicshark]

Interesting question.

If you look at the Data, from 2004-2007 (Vanilla) WOW surged with subscriptions

By the end of Vanilla 7~8 million subscriptions.
By the End of TBC 10~11 Million subscriptions.
The peak was half way through Wrath with just over 13 million subscriptions.

Currently WOW has 7 million subscriptions, which is close to the number of subscriptions at the end of Vanilla. Now since people start and leave regularly, the odds are that over 26 million accounts have been made over this period of time. (Blizzard will not say how many accounts have been made, but it is safe to double the total maximum active ever since people do come and go.) This means 13% of the total subscriptions ever made are currently active. This would mean if it is an even distribution of accounts the Older Active accounts from Vanilla WOW would be outliers. (see bell curve diagram) The Majority of players would be from the High point of Wrath, with equal numbers from MoP and Vanilla.




Vanillia WOW: SD +2 (~2%)
TBC: SD +1 (~14%)
Wrath: Median (~68%)
Cat: SD +1 (~14%)
Mop: SD +2 (~2%)

[Zdrasti]

Interesting question.

If you look at the Data, from 2004-2007 (Vanilla) WOW surged with subscriptions

By the end of Vanilla 7~8 million subscriptions.
By the End of TBC 10~11 Million subscriptions.
The peak was half way through Wrath with just over 13 million subscriptions.

Currently WOW has 7 million subscriptions, which is close to the number of subscriptions at the end of Vanilla. Now since people start and leave regularly, the odds are that over 26 million accounts have been made over this period of time. (Blizzard will not say how many accounts have been made, but it is safe to double the total maximum active ever since people do come and go.) This means 13% of the total subscriptions ever made are currently active. This would mean if it is an even distribution of accounts the Older Active accounts from Vanilla WOW would be outliers. (see bell curve diagram) The Majority of players would be from the High point of Wrath, with equal numbers from MoP and Vanilla.




Vanillia WOW: SD +2 (~2%)
TBC: SD +1 (~14%)
Wrath: Median (~68%)
Cat: SD +1 (~14%)
Mop: SD +2 (~2%)

Pure speculation and entirely unclear why you're presenting a normal distribution here.

That being said, there's no real evidence for the retention rates for certain types of players. It is entirely possible that 5m of the original 7-8m vanilla players are still playing and most of your players are vanilla veterans. Granted this is ludicrously unlikely, especially given the culture of the current playerbase. However, my point is that there is no firm evidence to be had here. Any theory will be speculation, and hence mathematical rigor has no place in this discussion.

[Stevegasm]

Most of my friends stuck through the end of TBC. About half of them quit at some point in Wrath. About 25% of them were around at the beginning of Cataclysm, while only a handful stuck out to the end of Cata and still play today. Most of the people that started in Vanilla are in their mid 20s to pushing 30 now. They're often deep into their careers, lives, families, and what not and have no time.