WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[Marooned]

Well its a really complicated issue even Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company is confused, sometimes they think like Osmeric making things easier, sometimes they see if things are so accessible people are getting bored, its so complicated that even they cannot find the best difficulty spot for normal raids. But I "personally" think they did good job in MoP compared to all expansions.

[mikencarly]

meh still doing good imo

[rhorle]

I don't think you'll gain much credibility in your argument by saying endgame is only 1% of the content. For most, it's like, 95%. I also would not claim that normal mode is "accessible" for the majority, based on the number of sub-10% wipes I have witnessed on your so-called casual-mode version of Garalon, who is not even a final boss. I have not seen a raiding tier tuned so badly since Temple of Ahn'Qiraj.

Then you clearly didn't do SSC where it was literally impossible to beat until Blizzard nerfed the encounter. The last 10% of Normal Garalon is the same as the first 90%. There isn't any tuning difference so it doesn't matter where they wipe. Just because a boss doesn't die because you show up doesn't mean it is poorly tuned. Nor does it mean that a mid instance boss can't be hard.

Garalon is a DPS check fight. They've been used before and weren't an issue. If you can't do garalon you'd have a hard time doing the others as well because they require just as much DPS but have a little more for your raid to do. Besides if you can't do it now just wait until the new tier is out. In MoP old content isn't irrelevant the moment something new comes out.

Raiding while the major focus of the game is still a small portion of the actual content in the game. An even smaller portion does Heroic raids.

[Stellan]

I was thinking about the loss of WOW subs and Blizzard porting D3 to the PS3 and 4. This is probably not an original thought but I wonder if the general decline in Windows based PCs is starting to have an impact on companies like Blizzard. More and more people are going to IOS and Android machines and not using Windows machines at all. It is certainly possible that full blown desk top gamer PCs will start to be just that: dedicated game machines instead of the only computer in the house. And, thus, they will become 'niche' items rather than something everyone has. In that case, consoles like the PS 4 and the new Xbox are going to start looking a lot more attractive to game companies. And, also, this shift may be accounting for the general fall in subscription based games and Windows based PC games in general.

[Sleverine]

I wonder how much the next expension will save this game...

[Tuesday]

Not much, I shouldn't think, Sleverie; Blizz don't appear to have any fresh or innovative ideas anymore and seem to just be thrashing what used to work in the past, perhaps hoping subscribers won't notice.

I had my own personal little funeral for WoW. Now I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Black Desert.