The real reason WoW is losing subs

[Queen of Hamsters]

Wait a second, if you compare Timeless Isle and Tanaan Jungle, then Tanaan Jungle clearly wins. Tanaan Jungle is way bigger and has a lot more things to do and if you really wanna be done with it in terms of everything you can get from there, it will take you weeks to get all reputations to exalted, like it took me when I did the achievement to unlock flying. Timeless Isle was a joke compared to that.

Tanaan is bigger, but it clearly didn't have more things that people found WORTH doing. Timeless Isle held subs far better, part thanks to the content added in patches before 5.4 making it so your time wouldn't ALL be spent in TI.

You say it was a "joke", yet numbers don't lie. 14 months of 5.4 held players pretty damned well.

[Teebone]

Lack of raid content was never the missing piece to the puzzle in WoD.
The people quitting, were those that DIDN'T raid. Quite simple. Timeless Isle in Pandaria worked because there was also the content from 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 to keep the non-raiders busy along with Timeless Isle's world content.

Tanaan Jungle didn't work since you can be more or less done with the content outside of HFC in what, a few days? And then you're straight back to the miniscule content added to WoD before 6.2.

A lack of content giving those that don't raid a reason to come back = WoD's problem. Don't believe it? MoP is there for reference, providing facts. It had LFR, it had LFD, it had casual content with the rest.

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I was around before LFD and LFR, there hasn't been a single action taken to remove the reason to know people. Some just use it as an excuse because you confuse FORCED interaction (LFM Violet Hold need tank) with actual social interaction done for the sake of it and not because you're forced. There's just as many reasons to be social now as then, they just cut out the need to spam in /trade for randoms. The phenomenon of using others for 1 dungeon and then never speaking outside of that situation is NOT new, and it's NOT enforced. It's down to choice.

I'm still social, meeting people in-game and adding people to my friendslist regularly because I WANT to, not because I need them for dungeon content. Have to wonder why it's so hard for others to do the same when they seem SO invested in the social aspect of gaming...it reminds me of people placing the blame for them being fat on McDonald's...

*standing applause*

Been saying that shit for years, but not in such a nice tone. And with more middle fingers.

[Relapses]

Too much accessibility, convenience and catch-up mechanics is outright killing this game. How can you possibly maintain a sub-based playerbase when your content is clearable in a week because all the "artificial gating" is gone? Hell the only real gating left is weekly lockouts.

IMO, more content is a much better solution than slowing down the consumption of available content. WoD shoved players into raiding under the developers' mistaken belief that all players enjoyed it. This was met with negative reception not only from the subscribed player base but also by players who simply quit after they finished what the perceived to be endgame content (in most cases, the LFR). Legion at the very least seems to be providing alternatives to raid content which still increase player power so we may find these systems much more successful at retaining customers than the mechanisms attempted in WoD.

[Tomana]

Too much accessibility, convenience and catch-up mechanics is outright killing this game. How can you possibly maintain a sub-based playerbase when your content is clearable in a week because all the "artificial gating" is gone? Hell the only real gating left is weekly lockouts.

By adding more content with RNG and repeatability. I mean, if you make rep grinds obsolete, you remove stuff to do. If you remove the need for gathering, you remove stuff to do. If your remove dailies... you get the idea. The problem is not the "convenience" but the complete lack of non-raid content offered by WOD.

Also, devs have that annoying habit of always going from one extreme to another. From MOP and a metric crapton of dailies (which could be fixed just by removing the initial golden lotus rep requirement) we go to a craptastic apexis daily and... that's all.

[King of Gaming]

Tanaan is bigger, but it clearly didn't have more things that people found WORTH doing. Timeless Isle held subs far better, part thanks to the content added in patches before 5.4 making it so your time wouldn't ALL be spent in TI.

You say it was a "joke", yet numbers don't lie. 14 months of 5.4 held players pretty damned well.

Timeless Isle had less things to do. How many quests were there, three? How could anyone argue that there was more to do on the Timeless Isle. Everybody laughed about Timeless Isle when it was out.

You say it was a "joke", yet numbers don't lie.

Numbers don't lie smoa joe, and they spell disaster for you at sacrifice.

[Queen of Hamsters]

IMO, more content is a much better solution than slowing down the consumption of available content. WoD shoved players into raiding under the developers' mistaken belief that all players enjoyed it. This was met with negative reception not only from the subscribed player base but also by players who simply quit after they finished what the perceived to be endgame content (in most cases, the LFR). Legion at the very least seems to be providing alternatives to raid content which still increase player power so we may find these systems much more successful at retaining customers than the mechanisms attempted in WoD.

Exactly.

Making SOME content more accessible but also adding MORE content is clearly the recipe that works. MoP in a nutshell. WoD made a 180 and failed. Now imagine if they'd also had slapped the logistics of olden days on top of that. The game would be dead in the ground by now. "I play 16 hours per day and that's before I've even set foot into what little endgame there is!" doesn't really fly today...not even to me, and I'm no-life as fuck. Lots of options that are highly accessible thus allowing people to spend more time doing their content of choice rather than PREPARING for it, is the way to go. Legion seems to follow that principle, but also adding some grinds where those with lots of time will be more progressed.

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Timeless Isle had less things to do. How many quests were there, three? How could anyone argue that there was more to do on the Timeless Isle. Everybody laughed about Timeless Isle when it was out.

"Everybody" laughed, yet the expansion's 14 months of an endgame patch had a retention rate which was pretty strong.

Again, "lots" of content doesn't add up to shit if that content isn't worth doing to the players. You're confusing your personal preference with what everyone else wants.

[MasterHamster]

IMO, more content is a much better solution than slowing down the consumption of available content. WoD shoved players into raiding under the developers' mistaken belief that all players enjoyed it. This was met with negative reception not only from the subscribed player base but also by players who simply quit after they finished what the perceived to be endgame content (in most cases, the LFR). Legion at the very least seems to be providing alternatives to raid content which still increase player power so we may find these systems much more successful at retaining customers than the mechanisms attempted in WoD.

Yes, more content is always nice. But you need to use these systems that "gate" you, be it from RNG drops, gathering a lot of mats, attunements, questlines, or high barriers of entry. Because those are the means to make content last until the next content patch. WoD is the melting pot of MoP feedback from players. When everything that was "slowed down" was bad. All the while Blizzard has to make everything shinier and shinier people expect everything to be available day one. How do you possibly make content that lasts for such a crowd?

WoD would have been fine if they hadn't utterly gutted everything we players tend to view as "boring and tedious" and yet here we are without those systems and wondering what the hell to do. Apexis wasn't worth it, dungeons stopped being relevant after 2 days, I've never bothered with a single Draenor faction because I don't give two shits about the toys or mounts, and my garrisons are generating more prof mats than I can even use. I haven't gotten a single Garrison invasion trigger because I've never had any compelling reason to do things in Draenor that'll actually reward me...

I have an alt with less than 2 days /played at 100 and I feel like I'm "done" with that character, barring legendary ring, unless I want to raid, which I currently don't. That's the state of WoW without these "dull and tedious" systems. They've always been there, they're the reason people have things to continually strive for. That is MMO design. MMOs aren't always fun to play, because it's the rewards from the dull tasks that keeps you going. And that makes finally getting that weapon or trinket or whatever feel worth it when you get it, because you put effort into it...

Have we really forgot that when you don't have to struggle to attain something, you appreciate it less?

But yeah, Legion seems to be taking some steps back to tried-and-true designs. Things in WoW needs to take time again. That serves more purposes than making you pay more sub money.

Also, devs have that annoying habit of always going from one extreme to another. From MOP and a metric crapton of dailies (which could be fixed just by removing the initial golden lotus rep requirement) we go to a craptastic apexis daily and... that's all.

No kidding. Blizzard does these extreme design paradigm shifts for no real reason. Ah okay players felt frustrated doing 20+ dailies every day (which they didn't need to due to Valor cap but whatever) and having pre-raid gear gated behind factions, let's make factions completely irrelevant for character progression. Let's make everything outside of raids optional for progression.
Wait, what do you mean you have nothing to do??

[Osmeric]

TI worked better than Tanaan because it was smaller and more like a playground. It was a much more social experience.

[WowIsDead64]

There is simple rule for me: if I can't complete something - I won't even start doing it. I set my goal - it should be reachable within reasonable amount of time and effort. That's why I don't raid for example. If game would demand too much commitment from me - I won't play it.

[Dartz1979]

The real reason WoW is losing subs is simple.

It's not because the game has gotten old.
It's not because the game has gotten worse.
It's not because the game has gotten easy.

You can have an opinion on all these things. You can think the game is easier now, you can thnk the game was better in Vanilla. That's all a matter of perspective. But these are not the reasons why the game has lost so many subs.

The reason why the game has lost so many subs is because the game has become less demanding. The game has moved away from trying to pin down players and keep them busy for months. The game has moved away from trying to force players into some kind of commitment, like into a guild, where they have to attend raids every week in order to even have a chance at seeing all the content.

Casual playing and accessability are the key words here. Now this might not be news to anyone. But I think it's so obvious that these are the main factors why the game is losing subs. People can now play the game like a singleplayer game. You can start it up, play for a few hours, and if you do that every day, you're gonna have played through the game pretty much after a couple of days. There isn't really much more content in this game for more than a couple of hours anyway.

And it wasn't any different in Vanilla. There was maybe a little bit more content than today, especially if you compare the content we get in patches, but it wasn't that much more to make a huge difference. A little bit more would've kept us busy a little bit longer in recent expansions.

What really made so many more people subscribe for such a longer time in Vanilla compared to today is that the game was designed to be difficult to play while still maintaining a healthy real life outside of the game. It's no secret. Back in the day, tons of people were addicted to WoW, to the point where they needed to go into "rehab". People neglected their real life, their friends, their family. Even their kids. We've all heard of it.

The game demanded you to structure your real life around the game, if you wanted to actually get somewhere in the game. And for many people, that might be what made the game great. People invested time, because they had to. People committed to guilds, because they had to. Not necessarily because they really wanted to.

And the reason less people invest that amount of time and commitment is because the game doesn't demand it of them anymore. If you want to see the content, you can do LFR and LFG. If you are busy with stuff in real life, you can catch up, with things like catch-up raid gear and even level boosts. You don't depend on the community and your guild anymore and you can schedule the game around your real life, instead of the other way around.

Some people might now be thinking that I'm trying to criticize the game for it's casualness and accessability. That I'm trying to say that this is why "the game is dying". But that's actually not what I'm trying to say. I'm actually wondering now if it isn't better this way.

The game never had a justification for us to play it as much as so many of us did back in the day. There weren't that many quests in the zones in Vanilla. Leveling took so long because you had to run and fly back and forth so much. It took so long because the experience gain was tuned in such a way where you had to do all the quests available to you in every zone, plus dungeons and probably plus a little bit of extra grinding. Dungeons could be cleared once rather quickly, but the reason you spent so much time in there was because they gave you reasons to grind them over and over again. You needed to in order to advance to the next kind of content.

Is that really fun? If you think about it, would you like to do that in a singleplayer game? If they told you to play through level 1 ten times before advancing to level 2, would that be fun to you? Or would you think it was a blatantly obvious attempt to stretch game time? They didn't make more content, they just forced you to repeat the same content again. And there are still instances of that in today's WoW, but Vanilla WoW was so much worse when it came to grinding. Because in today's WoW, at least you can see all the content without grinding anything. And I'm starting to think it's better that way. MMOs always relied on pointless grinding way too much anyway.

In response to your post not everyone can be hardcore players.

[Deleted]

I'll tell you the REAL reason WoW is declining in popularity:

Take all the reasons it is 'losing subs', every single one of those reasons and compile it in a big list then that's why, that's the answer.

There is no single one reason, it's a combination of many factors. Different people stop playing for different reasons.

To OP, that's obviously what bugs you the most about the game and if you were to stop playing that would be your biggest reason. But for someone else it might be their guild fell apart and they don't want to start over again after 4 years of raiding with the same team.

[Queen of Hamsters]

No kidding. Blizzard does these extreme design paradigm shifts for no real reason. Ah okay players felt frustrated doing 20+ dailies every day (which they didn't need to due to Valor cap but whatever) and having pre-raid gear gated behind factions, let's make factions completely irrelevant for character progression. Let's make everything outside of raids optional for progression.
Wait, what do you mean you have nothing to do??

Indeed.

The game can be accessible without removing the reason for playing and progressing your character, and there can be massive grinds just fine for those wanting that. I thought they hit the nail on the head with MoP dailies, then with 5.1, then with 5.2 but they must have thought "hmm, Players are enjoying this content a bit too much...let's listen to the whiners on the forums and change EVERYTHING for WoD!!!".

And the forum whiners, kept whining.

[Deleted]

garrisons is the reason. utter shit, the worse thing blizzard have ever put into the game.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

The game is dying mostly do to incompetency Legion is just a poorly designed expansion pack overall.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

garrisons is the reason. utter shit, the worse thing blizzard have ever put into the game.

Garrison is one of the reason, a lack of content, pvp balance, and difficulty are reasons as well.

[ReleaseDay]

It's because Blizzard aren't listening to their fans.

[King of Gaming]

"Everybody" laughed, yet the expansion's 14 months of an endgame patch had a retention rate which was pretty strong.

Subs are gradually declining. We just reached a lower point now than we were at when SoO and Timeless Isle came out. This does not mean Timeless Isle provided more or better content. It didn't. Tanaan Jungle is the biggest zone with the most content they have ever released in a patch. So then I have to ask again, how can it be about "not enough content" when so many people quit right after a new content patch was released. The biggest content patch ever.

Again, "lots" of content doesn't add up to shit if that content isn't worth doing to the players. You're confusing your personal preference with what everyone else wants.

How is Timeless Isle "more worth doing" than Tanaan Jungle? Timeless Isle stuff isn't even content, it's just rare spawns. Tanaan Jungle at least has quests.

[Deleted]

General lack of content would be the main reason. You know, REAL content, not pet battles, achievements and other shit.

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"Everybody" laughed, yet the expansion's 14 months of an endgame patch had a retention rate which was pretty strong.

Again, "lots" of content doesn't add up to shit if that content isn't worth doing to the players. You're confusing your personal preference with what everyone else wants.

Because there is no alternative, the other MMOs are shit even compared to wow in its comatose state.

[King of Gaming]

General lack of content would be the main reason. You know, REAL content, not pet battles, achievements and other shit.

I hate it when people mindlessly repeat stuff that has already been debunked. Again, if it was about not enough content, why did subs drop to 5.6 million right after HFC and Tanaan Jungle released?

[Kyriani]

I stopped raiding with my guild back in MoP due to wanting out of the whole progression wiping/learning boss mechanics. I had enough of that clearing everything from vanilla (my guild at the time was working on 4 horsemen in vanilla naxx when bc dropped and the guild broke apart due to officer drama) up to an including Dragon Soul. When MoP dropped and I realized it was yet another gear reset, and my guild joined the mass mindset of "we must raid the highest difficulty or else we're not really raiding", and that I would yet again be clearing a raid only to do the same raid again only harder and with maybe an extra boss, I knew I wanted out of the hamster wheel. So in MoP lfr was my endgame. And it was decent. I still ended up clearing heroic (now mythic) SoO with my guild cause they needed a body that knew how to play even though my gear was far below theirs. And I helped them get most of their first kills and cleared it even though it wasn't really my intent or goal for MoP. It just kinda happened. I was still able to level alts and gear them relatively well and had lots of things to do outside of raids but the game had lost a great deal of its luster by then.

Then WoD happened. The leveling was interesting and fun... the garrison was... problematic. First and foremost, if the garrison had been account wide rather than per character I think it might have improved my experience. The garrison basically killed the joy I got out of leveling alts and became a chore to manage, eating precious game time. When I realized my game time was predominantly logging in to do garrison missions on all my toons and being so blah about it I logged off to play something actually fun cause there was nothing I wanted to do that was worth doing, and then blizz announced the whole no more flying bullshit, that's when I decided I needed to unsub.

I came back briefly when flying returned, it actually helped to make me engage in some content. I did archaeology again, and pet battles, I did stuff in Tanaan, but quickly I found myself with little to do that I felt was fun and worth doing and back to the micromanagement of garrison missions. Unsubbed and havent been back since. I didnt finish my ring in WoD. Why? Because I didn't want to be a "real raider" and relying on LFR was not worth it. Sitting in queue for an hour just to end up in a fail group that couldn't down a single boss and people start dropping group, and even if a boss did die it dropped ugly gear that was largely inferior to what I had... there was no incentive for me to put up with that just for a legendary ring. The reward just wasn't enough of an incentive for me to put up with that. And without raiding there was nothing worthwhile and rewarding to do. That's the biggy. Add on little stuff like professions getting gutted, crappy but mandatory talents (how I loathe rune of power), ability pruning, the whole trying to remove flying and continuing with the whole holding flight hostage till the end of the xpac thing into Legion, it gives me little hope of returning.

That's what's basically killing WoW for me. Change for the sake of change. Lack of consistency. The dev's inexplicable need to try and reinvent the wheel with every xpac. Sometimes things just work and they don't need to be changed. With that said, there's a ton of good ideas coming in Legion which really makes me sad since there's still enough bad ideas left to keep me from buying it at launch. I have an obligation to myself and as a consumer not to financially justify design decisions I disagree with. I'll wait and see a few months in how Legion actually ends up working out before I even consider purchasing it. And even then I will likely just wait till flying is finally available and the xpac costs 9.99 like WoD dropped to and have several patches of content to play through at a price I feel is worth what I'm getting.