To those who no longer subscribe to WoW and who played a long time....

[TDevine]

I just usubbed for the first time in 5 years...I don't have time to log in and do daily's everyday. Not fun for me at all.

I've been a hardcore raider for many years, but recently decided to go casual with the first tier of MoP. The daily grind killed the game for me. It's just NOT fun.

Love wow, don't get me wrong. Just time to give it a rest.

[chadwix]

Dropping the sub fee. This game has way too many restrictions with raid lockouts, weekly valor caps and other junk to be paying for it.

[Firecrest]

I started playing near the end of Vanilla and played 20-40+ hours a week clear through the end of Cata. A month after I started playing, I joined the best guild on my server and have raided with them ever since. MoP killed that guild.

In order for Blizzard to get me back, they would have to bring back my guild. The things that drove away my guildmates are the fairly standard complaints that you see from the serious raiders and can really be broken down into a few distinct categories.

1) Blizzard stopped catering to us and started catering to the casual. This "everyone gets to see everything" view would be fine if it was left to LFR only. However, for some god unknown reason, Blizzard thinks casuals should be able to see HMs too and has fallen into the pattern of nerfing HM content. In order for us to come back, Blizzard would need to create difficult content and then leave it the fuck alone.

2) In the same vein, there is little prestige anymore involved in being the best. Used to be that you could spot a good player by their gear and weapons as they passed you in the AH. That good player used to be us. But now, between the standardization of gear and Transmog, that "Holy shit, look at that guy in full Tier X!" will never happen again. In order for us to come back we would need to be given visual rewards that are exclusive to our effort (the occasional mount and a title that no one ever reads doesn’t cut it).

3) The game has gotten too "cute". Pandas, pokemon, farmville... A person who started playing WoW in Vanilla at the age of 16 is 24 now. Those of us who started at 24 are well into our thirties. For many of us, this shit just doesn’t cut it. We were okay with the occasional fart joke easter egg, but the sheer number of these kinds of references has grown with each expansion to the point where that’s pretty much all there is anymore. WoW went from being a serious game with occasional childishness to a childish game with occasional seriousness. In order for us to come back, we would need to be given a game without the fluffy nonsense and with a significantly scaled back silly factor.

Now, I'm not saying all (or any) of these are good ideas that Blizzard should do. This is just what it would take to bring me and my guild back. Beyond that, there are things that are outside Blizzard's control. We struggled with burnout and recruitment throughout the entirety of Cata. Then MoP came and no one wanted to deal with a game where the above three issues were so pronounced – so we didn’t. Maybe half of our raiding core bought the expansion and only half of those went on to hit 90 and do a raid or two. Maybe three still play.

[theniffrig]

Here is a list of requests people have made in a massive thread from the European WoW forums. I've compiled the list into categories, leaving out the complete nonsensical requests/trolling, after going through 20+ pages of the post:

*REALISTIC*Could & should happen relatively soon:
-Decent anti-bot system
-Reduce the amount of Dailies
-More Social gear/features/Customization
-Address Class abilities/talents. ADD fun ones/Remove boring ones.
-Address Leveling (Speed & Dungeon difficulty). Make the game more Alt Friendly
-Improve existing in-game features such as questing/LFR etc.

*WISHFUL THINKING* Might happen but not soon:
-No more monthly fee
-Merge low population servers
-BOA that works between different realms
-Friends have started playing again.
-Balance all the classes in PVP & PVE
-Update the games Graphics
-Make game changes that encourage the playerbase to work together, such as removing mob targeting
-Adding different ways to progress a character. Similar to the Path of the Titans

*UNREALISTIC* Will probably never happen:
-Roll-back to Vanilla/Tbc/Wrath/Cata
-Remove CRZ
-Requests to remove classes/fundamental features of the existing game, such as flying mounts
-Change fundamental aspects of the game so WoW becomes some sort of Sandbox MMO
-Fire Devs

From going through that entire thread, most of it is just people who really have no grasp on reality when it comes to how to actually get players to return to the game. The actual good ideas that Blizzard could achieve in the short term to boost the population again are actually very few in that thread, however there is definately a continual request for:
-Balancing the game both in PVP & PVE
-fixing the botting problem
-fixing the daily system
-making the game alot more alt-friendly
-making many different sorts of character & social customization.

So perhaps blizzard should start with those 4 for starters.

[Deleted]

Hey Guys,
I started playing in January 2006 so it's around 7 years now (I stopped 2 months ago). I was mainly playing PvP and currently you can see that Blizzard doesnt give a rat's ass about pvp. It just doesnt matter anymore. That's why I am playing on a season 8 Arena Privateserver. Sad thing I didnt know about that b4. To make my friends and me start playing again Blizzard would have to make PvP less retarded and remove rated BG from the game or atleast adapt the points you get from rbg. WoW is completely unplayable atm PvP wise.
Have a nice day

[Al Gorefiend]

Improved character models.
Balanced racials.
Less focus on Human/Orc/Blood Elf storyline, theres way more than 3 races.

[Leonard McCoy]

I came back for MoP and left shortly their after. I've played since Vanilla. Return rep grinding to dungeons. Bring back tabards. Remove the rep requirment from the gear. Overall SPEED UP THE PACE OF GEAR INQUISITION. This isn't 2006 any more.

[Deleted]

1) Blizzard would have to re-earn my trust as a gamer and a potential customer. At present, I think they're deceitful and excessively greedy, and don't care at all about the quality of the games they produce just how much money they can make from them. They need to address the community honestly about stuff like the bot problem and low-pop servers.


Well that's bullshit or else they didn't had 10,000,000 or even 11,000,000 active accounts, Blizzard do care.

10 million sounds impressive and all, but world of warcraft doesn't have 10 million real subscribers.

[Tankitbetter]

To those who no longer subscribe to WoW and who played a long time (but still peruse forums some times), say like 4 years plus, what would need to happen for you to come back to WoW? Real Life responsibilities aside.


So, what would need to happen to come back and where/when did it go bad for you?

My IRL friends would need to be able to raid again.

[darqhur]

I liked the rep and jp/vp system in cataclysm. They took it out in favor of making rep quest only so that people would go out in the world. I use to enjoy lfd every day because it had rewards. Now that it is quest only for rep and jp/vp rewards the model doesn't appeal to me. I don't hate the game, this play style is just not fun for me.

The return to gating everything you possibly can in the game just becomes to tedious for me to schedule time to get all this stuff. Sure it's optional, so is paying a sub. I want to play a game, not pay a fee every month for an unpaid job. I will keep up on the forums because I like the game, it's just not in a state that I feel is worth my money atm.

[gneugen]

To those who no longer subscribe to WoW and who played a long time (but still peruse forums some times), say like 4 years plus, what would need to happen for you to come back to WoW? Real Life responsibilities aside.


So, what would need to happen to come back and where/when did it go bad for you?

It went bad for me with the decline of PvP. I was never hugely into raiding, mostly because of the time scheduling and commitment required to a bunch of people I never met in real life. But PvP kept me going in BC. BGs and arena kept me entertained for the entire expac. That hasn't happened since. I literally couldn't even take one season during WotLK and I never got back into it at all after that. Also, the PvE experience was very fun when the heroics were new. The challenge was fun, and the gearing/attunement process was pretty rewarding. As WotLK came out and everything thereafter, heroics became inconsequential which completely removed my most preferred PvE experience. Anyone who claims heroics were difficult after BC probably thinks Candyland is a very tough board game.

I don't think I could be brought back to WoW permanently. They've just taken a course that I don't think can be corrected unless they lost the worst 90% of their player base.

[Deleted]

If it went F2P.

[Adramalech]

Less focus on Human/Orc/Blood Elf storyline, theres way more than 3 races.

Blood elves haven't had any story developement since TBC, other than a small cameo during the Quel'delar quest line in late Wrath. We had the Sunreavers too, but they didn't really do much other than act as generic quest givers and our Dalaran faction for horde players. We're having a bit now with the new factions in 5.1, and it was about damn time.

[Judson]

Hurricane Sandy flooded my house and we're still staying with the inlaws so I haven't been able to raid at all for MoP. Which is convenient because I haven't wanted to anyway due to the state of 25man raiding. 10s can keep the same loot but they need to, at the very least, separate achievements again.

[crazyman2]

I've been only gone for 3 weeks and my subscription isn't actually up yet but I'm hopefully done.

Main reason is that I finally had the realization everyone else just moved on. Raiding with my old guild in 2007-2008 was one of the best experiences of my life, I met some friends I still talk to today even though we haven't played together in years. I guess playing the last couple years has been like an addiction. Not that I played for hours and hours a day and it took over my life (it didn't, I've been casual), but I was playing only to get the same feelings as I did way back when I used to play with my friends, and of course it never happened.

The direction of the game itself hasn't really bothered me. Even the world of dailycraft business, even though they went overboard (they should have lowered the cap, no removed it!) wasn't the worst thing.

However, the way the community has been going does bother me, since LFD was introduced the playerbase has devolved into a cesspool of extraordinary selfish and ignorant players. Any ****heads who would need roll on everything used to get server blacklisted almost immediately, people wouldn't group with them, and if it was bad enough the bad reputation would spill over onto their guild too, and they would never get in a reputable guild on the server again. I won't say they're doing anything against the rules, but etiquette existed, and you were going to pay for breaking it.

Since LFD and patch 3.3? People started realized you could need on frozen orbs and you would never have to see any of the other players again or have any consequences, and this whole only out for myself attitude just slowly spread through the whole community. I'm not even going to get into LFR, the fact it was common practice to need on items you already had (or better) just to try to trade for the piece you wanted, or you were at a huge disadvantage in trying to gear up speaks for itself.

The selfishness has spread into actual server communities and isn't just between cross realm interaction anymore. This business with people taunting away rare spawns and trying to get them to reset? That never used to happen.

[Deleted]

Never going to happen, but:
- drop CRZ
- enforce the TOU, what is a 3 hour ban now should be a permaban on credit card level
- fire Ghostcrawler, most inept pr tool a multi-billion dollar company could possibly have
- 10 man raiding with lower difficulty than current normals but much harder than LFR
- drop 25 mans, way too much dev time for too few people

edit: played from 2004 till early 2011

[luccadeo]

My account expires in January and I've been playing since vanilla. I still really like the game but I just had a kid and need to concentrate on raising him. I would like to return one day in the future. Maybe one of the upcoming patches or the next xpac.

[But I Hate You All]

-lower the xp need from 85-90
-rep tabards
-less dailies
-Stop handing out forum bans and suspensions for no reason

[romara]

To those who no longer subscribe to WoW and who played a long time (but still peruse forums some times), say like 4 years plus, what would need to happen for you to come back to WoW? Real Life responsibilities aside.


So, what would need to happen to come back and where/when did it go bad for you?

Played for 6 years, started March '05 quit April '11. The game has changed too much to come back. Resetting the game every expansion and sweeping changes killed the game for me. A few other reasons were the "last straw" so to speak, but re-learning the game every xpac isn't something I enjoy doing. If I wanted a new game, I'd buy a new game, so that's what I ended up doing. Still play MMO's, but no intention of relearning WoW.

[Confirm Deny]

After quitting because I felt like it, I'd have to see them deliver content throughout this expansion (Mists) like they've always said they wanted to deliver and not waste time having to re-evaluate everything and slow down like they did in Cataclysm. Cataclysm had good work in it, problem was they didn't get stuff done in a miraculously timely manner so the end game and post-launch content suffered heavily

Kind of similar to the rush to release Diablo 3. -blah blah unrelated garbage-