Resons why WoW is "dying"

[MrHappy]

1- The social aspect of the game is gone:

Only if you make it so. Personally I do not see this. I am in an active guild on high pop server and we do bg's rbg's raiding together and sit in vent talking while doing stuff. Spamming in trade "LF Tank for RFK pst" for 2h is not a social aspect nor is "LF 2 heals for 10man ICC pst"

2- The lack of the seems of adventure: Yeah, I know, Pandaria can be a fascinating continent... but the PvE experience there, for casuals, is just ridiculous. Players can basically afk in LFR or just pretend to play during a "heroic" dungeon in order to get gear. There is no fun in doing herocis anymore. I remember back in TBC that heroics required tons of coordination, and CC actually meant something, and you know what? I was FUN!!!

I like a challenge as much as the next guy. I love the warlock green fire quest and I hope we'll see more of them in the future. Reason why they were fun because you played either with people you know or because the people that you spammed for 2h looking were probably there because of few criteria. Cata tried to make dungeons hard. I love them. They required skill and when i was running with guildies it was hella fun. However we all had heroic icc gear. A fresh 80 stepping into Cata and wiping for few hours is not fun. Dungeons are not meant to take 1h to clear...that's what raids are for. Mists introduced challenge modes. While personally I didn't have time to try them out due to time constraints, they are there for the fun aspect you speak of aka the CC the cleaver tactics etc etc. A broad range of difficulties server a much broader audience and people that play wow vs just having either Hard or Near-dam impossible.

3- Empty servers: Players want a solution to empty servers, and want a solution NOW! (No, CRZ is not a solution, it is actually a problem).

actually CRZ IS a solution whether you like it or not. CRZ, LFD/LFR and Real ID solve MOST of the problems low pop realms have. When you go out into the world you see other people...even in low level zones. When you want to do dungeons you don't need to spend 4h in trade looking for people. When you want to see raiding content you don't need to spend 4h in trade looking for people to disband after 1st boss. Only TWO things isn't solved by what i listed. Those are Normal/Heroic raiding for CURRENT tier and the biggest problem that people whine is ...the AH. I am willing to bet you say CRZ is a problem because normally you would be able to go out into the world and farm all nodes/rare spawns you little heart desired...but now...*gasp* other people are here ...FROM DIFFERENT SERVERS!...how DARE they take my things and make me not a special snowflake. sound familiar? If cross-realm AH was implemented then you really would be just like on a high pop server...but I am thinking you would complain that blizz has "ruined" the economy on your server and you can't make tons of gold anymore

4- Dailies: Valor points + countless dailies and reputations... yeah

As opposed to Valore points + justice + dailies + never ending dungeon grinds? If you didn't know a healer or a tank as a dps you have 15-30min queue for dungeons which you had to grind over and over and over for.....Valor points and reputations...*GASP*! Now we have CHOICE you can keep doing what always was or...do few dailies while you wait and get better rewards for it except for gold and rep?...yeah

5- Alts: MoP is a very alt unfriendly expansion, do I need to say more?

I'll give you that one. However consider this....too little things for your main to do = more alts = more people QQ'ing that there isn't enough content. Too much things to do = less alts = more people QQ'ing that there is too much content and I want to have alts now. The problem is striking the balance between one side of QQ to the other. In Cata people relentlessly complained that there isn't enough content...now we complain because we got what wanted?

6- The lore: The lore is not that interesting.

Purely subjective. You are entitled to your opinion. However I do want to point out few things. 1) Sha was foreshadowed in Ulduar. Go to the room before Yogg and look at the stained glass window...look familiar? 2) Mantid was also known to exists because we met only 2/3 "bug races" the AQ and the Nerubs in Northrend. Personally MoP for me has one of the coolest lore ever. The Klaxxi was epic. That room and the phrasing actually made me say "woah" for the first time since WotLK. I love everything about the Shado Pan. Common Ninja Pandas! but that is just my opinion. This expansion is not centered around a villain of WoW it is centered around the War between Horde and Alliance and consequences and the aftermath of doing what ever it takes to win this war. The Dalaran Scenario was awesome and I can't wait for 5.3

7- The gear: Too many tiers of gear, it makes the gamme too complicated and create means to segregate players.

Do you not remember the QQ that was unleashed when 10man was made to have the same ilvl as 25man? There is only ONE tier of gear per raid patch...the coloring and the stats reflect on what difficulty it was done (LFR/Normal/Heroic). What is so complicated? Thunder-forged? Those are off-pieces that drop to slowly buff you so you can get past that wall while raiding. People QQ that there ins't ENOUGH distinctions between those that raid normal/heroic and those that don't.

WoW isn't dying. China lost some subs but who cares. I enjoy the game and I will play it as long as blizzard keeps making expansions.
The problem is that when people critisize one aspect of the game it is like looking through the straw at the night sky. You can't just point at one thing and ask for it to be fixed. Every action has a consequence and you need to consider what would happen if this really was implemented/fixed as you wanted it to be. Yea you would be happy but how many millions of others?

I think people need to stop focusing on sub numbers and enjoy the game. If you don't enjoy it then perhaps it is time to move on. Why pay for something you don't want? Addiction? Sentimental value? Saying wow is dying is as classy as a Jenkins title. imo time to hang up the sub and let other enjoy the game vs try to "fix" what isn't broken.

[loki504]

I find it interesting that, even tho WoW has "only" 8.3m subs, players still blindly defend what Blizzard is doing to the game...

"xxx point is fine, I do it all the time, it's not a problem in game at all!", have you considered that this is not a problem TO YOU, but it is to 1.3m players? I mean, you can defend all you want, but WoW is slowly dying when they lose 1.3m in only 4 months, and those are the most common complaints we saw during MoP, you can agree or pretend everything is fine!

"WoW is dying only because it's an old game!!!" Really? So you are telling me that WoW was a "new" game until 2010, and after that (release of Cataclysm), WoW suddenly became an old game? Really? Almost 4m players left WoW since the release of Cataclysm, because from 2004 to 2010 it was a new and shinny game, but from 2010 to 2013, it became old... yeah. Almost as ridiculous as saying that "people left because of Diablo".

So folks, you can choose to agree that MoP has terrible flaws, or be a fanboy and pretend everything is fine. But the point is, WoW lost 2m players (1/5) in only 6 months.

so it is lowering in sub. most are from the east anyway. and we defend blizzard because people act so stupid by saying oooh wow lost xx subs. so its dying and we should all leave. and we all know wow never was ment to be in asia in the first place. and i would love to see it die there so terible so we will see some real sub numbers. because in asia you BUY gametime. and as long as you got some time left blizzard is seeing as a active account. but probebly after some time they will delete your gametime and frozen your account.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 02:48 PM ----------

Ding ding ding we have a winner.

ding ding ding we don't have a winner. if wow goes f2p i'll probebly leave because so far i have to see a f2p game that has more active players then wow(not counting the east because f2p game are diffrent there)

[Schirmy]

ding ding ding we don't have a winner. if wow goes f2p i'll probebly leave because so far i have to see a f2p game that has more active players then wow(not counting the east because f2p game are diffrent there)

Happy to you know you'll leave, bud. I can go on my day knowing you'll dip from WoW if it's F2P.

[loki504]

Happy to you know you'll leave, bud. I can go on my day knowing you'll dip from WoW if it's F2P.

well then i'm happy to know i'll be leaving before wow goes f2p.

[Kazlofski]

One main reason pretty much: This game is very old, it gets boring after this long, regardless of patches, it's just the same thing. Even an example that people that I know try other MMOs that are kinda like WoW but worse, still it's for the new environment, refreshment from wow to feel something a little different. Nowadays quite many people come back for patches (Hence the 1.3M drop as it says 31/3/13 when 5.2 wasn't out yet, some returned and some returned, tried 5.2 and quit again until next patch or two). People consume content really fast and just come back when new is out that is interesting.

[sarahfireworks]

One main reason pretty much: This game is very old, it gets boring after this long, regardless of patches, it's just the same thing.

I really have to agree with this. I mean the game came out in 2004. They've really done a fantastic job (and I can't say that enough) of keeping WoW so popular this long. It really is nothing short of amazing when you stop to think about it. I mean, the same game for over 8 years, and there are still over 8 million people subscribed to it? That's quite the accomplishment. Big high-five and such.

In that time they've done many things to try and keep the game fresh, keep with the times. New game mechanics, updated world, new graphics and it's done a lot to keep WoW going. Sadly no matter what you do to try and appear younger the wrinkles always win in the end. Wow is just like the rest of us who started playing it all that time ago, parts don't work as well as they should anymore, there's stretch marks, stuff sags, those before-mentioned wrinkles of course, all kinds of unflattering problems. We still love WoW for what it is despite all that, that's not going to change. We just need her to realize she's not so young anymore, and come inside and sit down we the rest of us on the couch. I'll make some tea cookies, well get something spiked to drink, and we can reminisce about all the things we took for granted when we were younger. I bet she has some good stories to tell.

[Deleted]

WoW's graphics are nowadays outdated, but that shouldn't be a reason for it to be dying, since games like EQ and Runescape are still going on with a reasonable playerbase.

Having 8.3 million subscribers left it's still nowhere near to dying and a next major patch or xpac will likely bump it back up again.

[Yoshimiko]

I'm about to say a few reasons why i believe WoW is "dying". I really hope a Blizzard employee is reading this, and I ask you all to debate why the subs are constantly going down.

1- The social aspect of the game is gone: There is a serious lack of player interaction in the game. You don't have to form any bonds within the game in order to succed. Easy LFRs and "Heroics" play a big part in here, since you don't have to communicate anymore in order to come up with a good strategy. Guild perks and rewards also contribue to this situation, right now guilds are a bunch of players groupd in order to increase the guild level and to give players rewards. Guild levels / perks / rewards were a terrible addition to the game, because right now a lot of guilds have no real goals, no real player interaction... they are just a bunch of players looking for guild rewards.

2- The lack of the seems of adventure: Yeah, I know, Pandaria can be a fascinating continent... but the PvE experience there, for casuals, is just ridiculous. Players can basically afk in LFR or just pretend to play during a "heroic" dungeon in order to get gear. There is no fun in doing herocis anymore. I remember back in TBC that heroics required tons of coordination, and CC actually meant something, and you know what? I was FUN!!! I mean, of course there were some very hard heroics, such as Shattred Halls and Shadow labs, but there were "easy" heroics that required a good group effort, such as Hellfire Ramparts. Wipes are part of this game. A ridiculously easy game is a boring game, but a challenging game can last forever!

3- Empty servers: Players want a solution to empty servers, and want a solution NOW! We are tired of "we were talking about solutions" excuses. Servers are falling apart and guilds are closng their doors, it's time to give us a solution instead of promises. (No, CRZ is not a solution, it is actually a problem).

4- Dailies: Valor points + countless dailies and reputations... yeah

5- Alts: MoP is a very alt unfriendly expansion, do I need to say more?

6- The lore: The lore is not that interesting. Look at TBC, we face major characters of WoW's lore, such as illidan, kil'jaeden, kael (twice), Vashj, etc. In WotLK we face the Lich King himself alongside his army (anub arak, kel'thuzad, etc)... But not... we fight some creatures we have never heard of (Mogu, Sha, mantid), waiting to finally kill the warchief that basially noone likes. Another problem is how the alliance lore was poorly developed. I play on the horde side, but I feel pity for all the alliance players who have to put up with that storyline... I mean, where are the Draenei? What about the worgen? and the night elves, what is tyrande doing? And WHY do we have to fight the trolls in the middle of a snowstorm?

7- The gear: Too many tiers of gear, it makes the gamme too complicated and create means to segregate players.

That's all folks! Feel free to talk!

Let me just start with WoW isn't dying. If Bill Gates lost 2 million dollars - would you REALLY say he is now poor? It's down in Chinese subscribers, and players are only playing to clear new content - but they still heave a healthy amount of players at any given time.

Now then, as for your points.
1) This is on you. If you go to a party in real life and choose to not talk to anyone, you can't later say that it wasn't a social event. Social aspects are on YOU. I've met dozens of friends on WoW I still hang out with in other games, chat with, or even go to see if they live locally.

2)wat. Now you're just pulling things out your ass. Challenging games are only fun until you master the challenges. Go play megaman 1, dark souls, Kaizou Mario, etc. Are they hard? Yeah - Are they fun after you beat it once? not really. As for your difficulty comments - go play more difficult stuff? They made challenge modes FOR this. TBC was the WORST case of overgearing content in all of WoW. Our tanks had to actually take off gear just to hold agro(we had one run where our tank was visibly naked lol) and everything died in a split second..there was nothing difficult about it at all once you were geared up in T5 or T6 gear. I never once thought shattered halls was that hard...but I digress.

3) Transfer servers? You're paying for a game, so I know you have excess cash. Alternatively you could just level a character up in a more full server.

4) I don't get it - is this a complaint? a statement? a positive note? I Don't like dailies, but I know a lot of people do.

5) Yes, Yes you do. I found it fairly alt friendly, honestly.

6) Blah blah blah lore. This is not why games perish.

7) Again, wat? The game is dying because there's too much gear? That has to be the worst reasoning I've ever heard for why this game is dying.

[Deleted]

1- The social aspect of the game is gone

I agree that there is basicly zero communication in LFD and LFR, unless you wipe, but guilds in general are still very social and HC raiding still requires a lot of communication.

2- The lack of the seems of adventure

Completely agree with you on HC dungeons, they are just too easy and boring. However, Pandaria itself and the raids more than make up for the crappy dungeons when it comes to sense of adventure imo.

3- Empty servers

I can nothing but agree with you on this.

4- Dailies

I have nothing against the dailies, the first ones were pretty rough, but I really like the Isle of Thunder Dailies, I'd much rather do them instead of sitting on my ass in Orgrimmar. And again, if you don't like them then just leave them be, unless you want the tokens for bonus rolls.

5- Alts

I agree with you on this one, too. I rarely ever touch my alts, it takes way too much time to focus on more than one char in this expansion, but maybe it's just because I don't feel like playing WoW for 12 hours a day.

6- The lore

I highly disagree with you on this subject, the lore in MoP so far has been much stronger than any other expansion imo. Sure we had Illidan, Kael'thas and Kil'jaeden in TBC, but what did they do other than just being bosses waiting inside of their fortresses to get killed off? WotLk suffered even more from terrible development of well known Scourge characters. Kel'thuzad was just a copy pasted boss and did nothing special, Anub'arak was turned into a cartoon villain that did nothing other than being a boss, and the Lich King was pushed around by super sayjan Tirion and acted like Dr. Claw, ''Buhuu, I'll get you next time Tirion''. Oh, and don't even get me started on Deathwing and Thrall in Cata.

If you ask me, Blizzard should just stick to writing new stuff, like they did in MoP, bringing old villains into WoW and have the whole game focusing on them just doesn't work very well for them.

7- The gear

Meh, doesn't really bother me all that much.

[Mawnix]

Ding ding ding we have a winner.

Yet people continue to post reason after reason why the game is "dying", when the answer is right in front of them.

Funny thing is it's not even dying.

The MMO Market simply is, especially for games with the subscription model.

[vindicatorx]

The game is old and the subscription model for MMOs is dying out.

/thread

I agree the age of the game is a large impact on the number of subs. I do not believe the fact there is a subscription cost is a main one though as I would not be playing the game if it was a free to play model.

[Draknalor186]

There are plenty of threads with the same topic, couldn't you post in one of those?

people make new threads to be noticed.. u wouldent give his comment a look if it was in an alrdy started thread

[Celista]

Your points are so bad, it hurts me eyes while I'm reading it. I'm not even going to comment on the first five, because they are explained in so many other threads and blue posts that its so ridiculous that you even mentioned them.

Now to the "lore" point - The Warcraft universe is progressing, it's not fun to be stuck in the past, major characters grow old, some of them die, some of them turn bad, some of them remain good and some of them just aren't interesting atm because there are other characters playing major parts during this progress. Garrosh is in the spottlight, so is Anduin, Wrathion, Varian, Vol'jin, Jaina and Thrall just deal with it for god sake. The lore is good, people who say its dont support any valid arguments to back their opinions up and thus are just haters/fanboys/kids that don't understand how story-telling works especially in fantasy genre.

And gear? The only thing that Im worried about when it comes to gear is that we have only recolors of the same models and I miss the variety, this is partly because of LFR but also because Blizzard created so many features that they have now to deal with that it is impossible for them to make more armor/weapon models - which is sad a bit.

But those are not the reasons WoW lost 1,3m subs and neither are the first five points. People stop playing, because there is so many more MMOs these days and WoW is more than 8 years old now, its only logical we see some downfalls. The next xpac will raise that number and I don't predict WoW ever going under 6 millions players - which is still impressive and WoW should remain the largest MMO on the market. Until they shut it off, it won't "die".

I don't think the average player who only plays the game and doesn't read the books, etc find the storytelling compelling. Some of the storytelling in MoP is okay. Does MoP's storytelling make me emotionally invested in killing a certain character(s) in an expansion, like I was with Illidan and Arthas? No.

Deathwing could have been that character people were excited about killing, but he needed a little more background story explained to players in 81-85 content for the people who started playing in BC and Wrath.

[Apocalypt]

WoW is dying because of it's player base. Reading through some of the threads it's fairly easy to see why. You have opinion posts followed by rage posts about how my opinion is right and makes your opinion wrong. My guess is, roughly, 7.9 millions subscribers need to learn the definition of opinion. I think my favorite threads are people berating other people for having the audacity to share their thoughts in...heaven forbid... A FORUM. How dare you post your thoughts in this holy synagogue of fact!

[IIamaKing]

Because it is old and old things die. Name me another ~10 year old game with 8 million+ players.

[yjmark]

WoW is dying because it's old. People who have been playing it for a long time are starting to get bored of it or cranky because it's the same old game. Blizz is trying a lot of things to make it seem new and interesting. However, there is only so much you can do to battle burn out/age.

Overall though, I wonder if there is another single game that can claim the level of success WoW currently has after being out for so long. I can't think of any.

[BatteredRose]

When it starts getting down to sub numbers that are closer to the minimum it needs to sustain Blizz, then only then will it be dying. Not that I care that the 1.3 million left, considering MoP brought back my enjoyment with a vengeance. Then again, all MMOs die, so it'll be a sad day to see WoW go.

[Tyriss]

Lol another one of these threads..

[randomone05]

2- The lack of the seems of adventure: Yeah, I know, Pandaria can be a fascinating continent... but the PvE experience there, for casuals, is just ridiculous. Players can basically afk in LFR or just pretend to play during a "heroic" dungeon in order to get gear. There is no fun in doing herocis anymore. I remember back in TBC that heroics required tons of coordination, and CC actually meant something, and you know what? I was FUN!!! I mean, of course there were some very hard heroics, such as Shattred Halls and Shadow labs, but there were "easy" heroics that required a good group effort, such as Hellfire Ramparts. Wipes are part of this game. A ridiculously easy game is a boring game, but a challenging game can last forever!

i had similar feelings about heroics when cata launched. back before the through-the-floor nerfs to any dungeon/raid that remotely required a functioning brain to complete. it took my guild quite a while to get everyone through the latter dungeons (stonecore, im looking at you. ozumat really did break us upon his body. over and over.)but, as a result of the unwashed masses busting their virtual nuts cause they couldn't auto walk through the dungeon, you have the difficulty of panderan heroics.

[eillas]

Probably because they are working on "pet battle spectating", and more scenarios.

People play(ed) for the overall atmospheric content which includes the lore, the setting and how your character(hero) affects and conquerors it.

Dungeon crawling, raids and guilds were what drove the content and subscription base.

With the introduction of the LFR/LFD, you lose the guild/friend/server intimacy and are just a class designation.

Pet battles, seriously holy fuck, who ever thought that should be part of wow should be fired and sued for stupidity.

Scenarios, another shitty example of bad game design.

People at this time see their characters as investments, and when you see a company so stupid as to push pet battles, scenarios, and now pet battle spectating, instead of delivering dungeons, great immersive lore and locations, the investors(players) are no longer investing.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 07:07 AM ----------

If WoW stripped out all of the shit fluff game play and returned to it's roots, providing a story worthy of personal investment, where the player felt immersed into the story, and not distracted with all the lame pop culture references, brawlers guild, pet battles, farmville, and really became a dark and bleak landscape where there was actual danger in the world, people would return.

lmao, this guy hasn't been reading that deep into wow lore of mists of pandaria. Shado pan mutilates it's prisoners. Heck 5.3 kor'kron has trolls lined up with a firing squad.

Scenarios pet battles were great additions.