WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[Immitis]

I suppose they do add to the atmosphere of what makes the story relevant.

IMO, they could tweak daily quests to be more like filler episodes on TV shows: add little bits and hints that tie into the overall arc which progresses each day of dailies (at smaller reputation benchmarks than the main story quests).

yeah there is definitely lots of room for improvement

[jbombard]

i ask why do you expect all of your alts to be that geared up? why is it so important that you progress that far with more than one or two characters? you in no way need valor gear in order to do raids, lfr, or dungeons. it only takes about 7 daily quests a day to get the 90 you need a week for the bonus roll that only gives a slight chance at more loot.

Working on alts helps to prevent burnout, but when your main requires 90% of your time just doing repetitive boring tasks to stay current there isn't much time left. It isn't about the gear, it is about progress and when your main isn't getting any drops or making new progress, gearing up an alt can help to give some feeling of progress albeit on another char, also the differences in gameplay can help keep it fresh. At least that is how I see it.

[Immitis]

It isn't that they are forced to do them; it's that blizzard wastes time on building tedious boring tasks, pet battles for example, rather than make the game more interesting by focusing on what makes the game good. No one plays wow to play with pokemon.

there are more people who spend the majority of their time on pet battles than pvp

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 11:56 PM ----------

Working on alts helps to prevent burnout, but when your main requires 90% of your time just doing repetitive boring tasks to stay current there isn't much time left. It isn't about the gear, it is about progress and when your main isn't getting any drops or making new progress, gearing up an alt can help to give some feeling of progress albeit on another char, also the differences in gameplay can help keep it fresh. At least that is how I see it.

it takes me about an hour to do my dailies and my one dungeon to get the valor i need on my main. the only time it feels like work is on tuesdays/wednesdays where i do lfr for valor.

you dont even need dailies to cap valor doing your 4 lfrs plus 1 dungeon a day would be enough.

[Magpai]

I bet dailys killed those subs. It was overkill realy.

Players who are too inept at managing their own time and setting priorities to stop doing dailies wouldn't be smart enough to unsubscribe.



Hardcore raider's reputation needs:

Klaxxi to revered, starting from honored after levelling

Golden Lotus to revered

Shado-Pan to revered, starting from honored after levelling

August Celestials to revered

With reputation gating with Golden Lotus, this requires you to do at most two sets of dailies a day, and anyone who's hardcore enough to feel they are "forced" to get the rep will have finished these reps months ago.

[Haidaes]

i *still* disagree with those D3 stats. annual pass free copies were included. i dont consider that a sale

Even then, they sold a shit ton of the game becaused they hyped it up really well. Out of the 20 people in my guild that played it back then only 1 person still does, and hes a nutjob to be honest. I consider the longevity to be fail not the actual sale,even though I don't think they deserve a record for that. Handing out a million or more copies for almost free isnt exactly selling it.

edit:

Players who are too inept at managing their own time and setting priorities to stop doing dailies wouldn't be smart enough to unsubscribe.



Hardcore raider's reputation needs:

Klaxxi to revered, starting from honored after levelling

Golden Lotus to revered

Shado-Pan to revered, starting from honored after levelling

August Celestials to revered

With reputation gating with Golden Lotus, this requires you to do at most two sets of dailies a day, and anyone who's hardcore enough to feel they are "forced" to get the rep will have finished these reps months ago.

Most raiders actually felt the need to actualy hit exalted with klaxxi and golden lotus to get the free epics during the inital gearing up period. I myself did all the dailies from the first day I could and kept doing them until I hit exalted with every faction. At the end it was only the tillers tedium and august celestials, which were fine I guess. For some factions it was just that the time spend was off by a huge margin. Golden Lotus was just way to many quests at the end for way to little actual gain per quest. Shado Pan had just a couple of quest but a more sensible reward for each quest.

[bigjohnburger]

there are more people who spend the majority of their time on pet battles than pvp.

Really? Where are the stats on that? Although this expansion I could believe it because the pvp is the worst I've ever seen it while I was playing - enhancement and ele shaman neglected for a 3rd expanion. If they lost 400k + subs this early I can't imagine how bad it's going to get. They shoulod hire some elder scrolls devs.

[Magpai]

i *still* disagree with those D3 stats. annual pass free copies were included. i dont consider that a sale

They got the game as part of a financial contract that involved getting paid money. The fact that a one year wow subscription was bundled up with it doesn't change that.

[Celista]

Players who are too inept at managing their own time and setting priorities to stop doing dailies wouldn't be smart enough to unsubscribe.



Hardcore raider's reputation needs:

Klaxxi to revered, starting from honored after levelling

Golden Lotus to revered

Shado-Pan to revered, starting from honored after levelling

August Celestials to revered

And that took 2 hours a day solo. I know because I did it...our guild is server second on a server ranked in the top 50, we're not all that "hardcore". Plus LFR + raid time + all the other crap you need to do to have your toon be raid ready...we were also required to do 2's to cap for conquest upgrades for pve at the beginning of the xpac.

We grouped for dailies occasionally but people were on at odd hours of the day outside of raid time, etc.

Luckily we did LFR as a guild and most of the grind was over two months in or I would have perma-unsubbed, it was pretty much too much for me to handle long term with grad school and normal irl priorities.

[Magpai]

Really? Where are the stats on that? Although this expansion I could believe it because the pvp is the worst I've ever seen it while I was playing - enhancement and ele shaman neglected for a 3rd expanion. If they lost 400k + subs this early I can't imagine how bad it's going to get. They shoulod hire some elder scrolls devs.

How many players does Elder Scrolls have?

[MrSerious]

one thing WoW has which is amazing is its lore, why they don't try harder to bring this into questing, dungeons, raids is beyond me. To bring in panda's was a step in the wrong direction. They should of done more with the legion.

[jbombard]

there are more people who spend the majority of their time on pet battles than pvp

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 11:56 PM ----------



it takes me about an hour to do my dailies and my one dungeon to get the valor i need on my main. the only time it feels like work is on tuesdays/wednesdays where i do lfr for valor.

you dont even need dailies to cap valor doing your 4 lfrs plus 1 dungeon a day would be enough.

With one hour + queues for LFR and more often than not getting an in progress meaning I need to que again, ends up meaning if I can finish 2 LFRs a day I am doing great and that is if I am not doing anything else. If add in doing a daily dungeon, that is 1 LFR a day and 1 dungeon and dailies while queing. All 4 LFRs is 4 days. If you play every single day, then you have what is left over after doing your dungeon for 3 days. Not everyone can play 6 hours a day seven days a week.

[Magpai]

And that took 2 hours a day solo. I know because I did it...our guild is server second on a server ranked in the top 50, we're not all that "hardcore". Plus LFR + raid time + all the other crap you need to do to have your toon be raid ready...we were also required to do 2's to cap for conquest upgrades for pve at the beginning of the xpac.

We grouped for dailies occasionally but people were on at odd hours of the day outside of raid time, etc.

Luckily we did LFR as a guild and most of the grind was over two months in or I would have perma-unsubbed, it was pretty much too much for me to handle long term with grad school and normal irl priorities.

Anyone who is willing to unsub for these reasons but is not willing to change to a less demanding guild is irrational, since you obviously lose out on whatever you feel you're gaining from that guild when you unsub anyway. It's a matter of setting your own goals and limits. It's dumb to blame your* guild since you can leave, but it's far dumber for blaming Blizzard for your own unwillingness to tone your own gameplay down.

*"your" and "you" mean a general you, as in "you can lead a horse to water...", not you specifically

[bigjohnburger]

How many players does Elder Scrolls have?

they're about to have 9.6 with the way things are going.

Also I just though of another reason people are quitting, which ties in to blizzard being greedy and that showing through their products. For instance people on low pop servers who can't play and the only way blizz will allow them the experience is by paying for character transfers when most have all their characters on one server, give me a break. This company sickens me.

[Immitis]

Really? Where are the stats on that? Although this expansion I could believe it because the pvp is the worst I've ever seen it while I was playing - enhancement and ele shaman neglected for a 3rd expanion. If they lost 400k + subs this early I can't imagine how bad it's going to get. They shoulod hire some elder scrolls devs.

does anyone have the exact article from a while back? or was it a tweet? i cant remember. but something like 3 million people who pet battle regularly or something. that would actually be more than all of the raiders to.

so if im remembering correctly that means there are more people that pet battle than raiders *including lfr* and pvpers.

but less than a million people pvp anyways so having more people means nothing in that regard

---------- Post added 2013-02-08 at 12:06 AM ----------

one thing WoW has which is amazing is its lore, why they don't try harder to bring this into questing, dungeons, raids is beyond me. To bring in panda's was a step in the wrong direction. They should of done more with the legion.

chen stormstout is the greatest character in the history of warcraft

[ZazuuPriest]

one thing WoW has which is amazing is its lore, why they don't try harder to bring this into questing, dungeons, raids is beyond me. To bring in panda's was a step in the wrong direction. They should of done more with the legion.

I agree 100% and would add that all these "options" they have given us are really just either do A. Daylies or B. Pvp ... has no one noticed that you are forced to level in 1 zone for pretty much each level from 85 to 90 .. half of jade forest will get you to 86-87 (depending on dungeons) then you really need to go to Karasang for efficient leveling then at 88 theres no other efficient choice besides townlong steppes and then horray 89 lets go to dread wastes. At least in Woltk we had at least 2 zones at 79 and as many as 3-4 zones for each level in between where we could level in a timely manner. hell even in cataclysm we had 2-4 options as to where to level. Theyve made leveling alts an extremely painful process in MOP

[Immitis]

I agree 100% and would add that all these "options" they have given us are really just either do A. Daylies or B. Pvp ... has no one noticed that you are forced to level in 1 zone for pretty much each level from 85 to 90 .. half of jade forest will get you to 86-87 (depending on dungeons) then you really need to go to Karasang for efficient leveling then at 88 theres no other efficient choice besides townlong steppes and then horray 89 lets go to dread wastes. At least in Woltk we had at least 2 zones at 79 and as many as 3-4 zones for each level in between where we could level in a timely manner. hell even in cataclysm we had 2-4 options as to where to level. Theyve made leveling alts an extremely painful process in MOP

that is bullshit. i was at 89 by the end of karasang and i had only done TWO dungeons. i was 90 before i was even halfway through kun lai

[Magpai]

Also I just though of another reason people are quitting, which ties in to blizzard being greedy and that showing through their products. For instance people on low pop servers who can't play and the only way blizz will allow them the experience is by paying for character transfers when most have all their characters on one server, give me a break. This company sickens me.

Where do you get the idea that it's Blizzard's responsibility to provide you with playmates?

[Soeroah]

Nooo! At this rate, WoW's only got a few decades before it runs out of active subscribers! The end is foreseeable!

[Zerdus]

It's quite obvious exactly what happens with this game. Every expansion launch the numbers jump up to 10 million, then a few months later they drop somewhere between 9 and 10 million and hover around there for the rest of the expansion. New expansion -> rinse and repeat.

So it's nothing out of the ordinary. People saying WoW is dying because of this are talking out of their asses; a game with only 500k subscribers is good enough to stay alive and well, so 9.6 million is ridiculously amazing, especially for the way the MMO market has been moving over the past couple of years.

WoW is stronger than strong, it's not going down until it wants to.

[Celista]

Anyone who is willing to unsub for these reasons but is not willing to change to a less demanding guild is irrational, since you obviously lose out on whatever you feel you're gaining from that guild when you unsub anyway. It's a matter of setting your own goals and limits. It's dumb to blame your* guild since you can leave, but it's far dumber for blaming Blizzard for your own unwillingness to tone your own gameplay down.

*"your" and "you" mean a general you, as in "you can lead a horse to water...", not you specifically

Some people can't play this game and not raid because raiding is why they play....I am one of those people. And raiding requires a certain amount of prep work.

I've raided with alts with more casual guilds and it is not satisfying, generally nice people but wiping on mechanics that you mastered in the first week is not enjoyable.

My guild isn't even that demanding, the stuff we expect from our raiders is pretty standard minus the required gold runs, etc that some top guilds require raiders to show up for.