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  1. #1321
    Quote Originally Posted by Santoryu View Post
    WOTLK was when WoW jumped the shark. TOC is one of the worst and laziest raids in the game's history.

    Hardcores don't whine, they just beat the bosses by any means necessary. It's the entitled casual vocal minority that whines for nerfs.
    Wrong , WOTLK was the best expansion yet and TOC was fine. BC was the worst because of the huge mistake at the end called The Sunwell. That instance fostered the elitism we are still dealing with more than any other.
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  2. #1322
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimble View Post
    1) Every single MMO in the fucking world releases new content periodically.

    2) Every single MMO in the fucking world declines after 6 or 7 years at most.

    3) Every single MMO in the fucking world has dipshits who want to tell you that the "real" reason for this decline is because of some stupid imaginary design problem.

    4) These imaginary design problems are never really the same between different games, yet somehow they always magically crop up at around the exact same 6 or 7 year mark every time.

    So let me get this straight, Rick, you're telling me that games don't really age, that the product life-cycle doesn't really exist, and that every MMO developer so far just happened to make awful (yet unique) mistakes at the six year mark by sheer coincidence? That's kind of a fucking extraordinary claim, don't you think? That's the sort of claim that takes a lot more to front than just "DERR SUBS WENT DOWN AND I BLAME THAT THING I DON'T LIKE" from a minority of forum slobs.



    How many potential new WoW players do you think exist? Infinite? How long do you think they all play? Forever? Tell me, oh guru, when do YOU think a game begins to just get old and lose players? Never? Every single game would grow to infinity if only every single MMO designer stopped fucking it up?



    No, they won't. They will sit at their meeting and count their lost subscribers and never give hardcore dipshits crying on the forums a fucking thought because there just aren't enough of them to matter either way.

    Shit, hardcores can't even stink up the forums properly. Every time one of them makes a "remove LFR" post on the WoW General it gets instantly downvoted into oblivion. Yeah woo, way to show the blues that real trendsetting hardcore power.

    1. I don't think every single MMO releases content and addresses issues in the game in the same manner that WoW does. And the game re-invents itself and the playstyle in a way that is dramatically different than other mmo's.

    2. How do you come across this 6 to 7 year number?

    3. Do you agree that every MMO has dipshits that will say the game is declining because it's old?


    Man you really like that six year number, but I don't think there's some sort of guarantee that every MMO will die after six years like you're suggesting, for the reason that, well, it's six years old.

    As for new wow players, we don't know the number but considering that as some people no longer play wow after a few years because of jobs, other games, or a lot of other reasons, the game should be bringing in new players. The problem I think is, the game had many things that would interest a new player originally, but a lot of that stuff has been taken out of the game and replaced with IMO, stuff that won't keep new players around for long (LFR) - in the process I think it's causing new guys to not stay subbed long.


    The Wow forums are over populated by dumb asses, I don't take much of that place seriously lol. It's pretty much guys that are bitter because they never got invited to raids back in vanilla and BC. There are a few decent posters there though. And most of my posts never get downvoted, I bring out those elitists that you probably dislike and they voice their approval of my posts many times over lol.

  3. #1323
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimble View Post
    Shit, hardcores can't even stink up the forums properly. Every time one of them makes a "remove LFR" post on the WoW General it gets instantly downvoted into oblivion. Yeah woo, way to show the blues that real trendsetting hardcore power.
    And those threads on the opposing positioning of that even if there was not an anti-LFR thread all week for meaningless karma points to stroke their ego. Whats the point when the Official General forums is among the shittiest off topic and troll filled official game forums out of the AAA demographic. When someone does come up with a constructive discussion that is counter to many of the posters it just gets derailed and spammed or is actually ignored. The majority of the remove LFR posts are not from the "hardcore" and come from those who sit in the middle or just want to stir things up. If posters could show some reserve instead of bumping threads that they claim they dont want to exist in the first place then the threads would not get popular.

    On the talk of hardcore are the hardcore fans who generally make a lot of fuss particularly in terms of generating negative public PR like those of Cata who took the game very seriously while preaching that they are the casuals and all casuals should think like them. These players felt like they was thrown under the bus. Some of these players came back to MoP thinking that Blizzard listened to them only to now think that Blizzard wasnt catering to them at all and just the hardcore. So which is it, are these players still thrown under the bus and just fooled by their own biased hatred or did Blizzard really cater to those who felt like they was thrown under the bus?
    Last edited by nekobaka; 2013-09-15 at 07:09 PM.

  4. #1324
    Quote Originally Posted by vvilly View Post
    The scrubby casuals did ruin it, yes.
    Well those scrubby casuals are the vast majority of the player base. They will always get the changes that will keep them happy. Elite Pro super skilled players like the 100 people who go for worlds firsts don't matter really. Money talks.

  5. #1325
    Dreadlord Santoryu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dch48 View Post
    Wrong , WOTLK was the best expansion yet and TOC was fine. BC was the worst because of the huge mistake at the end called The Sunwell. That instance fostered the elitism we are still dealing with more than any other.
    TOC's design was lazy and it only had 5 bosses and it got very samy very quickly.

    WOTLK was by no means the best, particularly because it showed everybody unequivocally that if people complain enough, blizzard will cave in. They flat out demonstrated they have no backbone when it comes to their design philosophy. It let people know that they do not need to improve their playing skills in order to overcome a challenge because in time that challenge will simply disappear.

    Quote Originally Posted by UnifiedDivide View Post
    Fixed that for you. Casuals are no more entitled than heroic raiders. It's the bad players, those that simply refuse to learn, that are the entitled folks that want everything for nothing.
    Thanks. Yes, I mean't bad players.

  6. #1326
    I'm from a casual raid guild, it shows, we only downed up to Primordius before 5.4, before 5.2 we only downed wind lord in hof, but shortly after 5.2 we went in to finish the job for hof and terrace on principle. We are not doing the same this time, we are just rolling right into SoO. We've only downed Immerseus on normal, and downed protectors on Flex. I wouldn't say casuals do hold a guild back if they're trying to raid, but it's only a problem if the players who aren't only logging in on raid days have a problem. Did we ask for easier content, not really, but we also have an issue where we are getting flaky pastries for raiders to fill those spots where someone got burnt out and said f this I'm doing murder island only because, kill my own faction, joy in purest form. We keep on playing, enjoy the game at our pace. It works for us, I honestly would like to do better so I push my dps higher and higher any way possible. I was also in a hardcore raid guild in BC, and I got burnt out before Sunwell. So honestly while I want to do more, I don't want to burn out. In a larger guild maybe burnout rate is less, because they shuffle players per boss like a mofo to maximize chances. For a small group where we are stuck with druid warrior tanking, and an under geared healer and a couple pvp geared dps, well, our options don't exist to change that, we can't make them play more to gear up, and we can't replace them on a podunk server. We're also their friends, so who wants to be like, bro, you suck, please gtfo or get better. Give and take. I would say pvp vs pve has killed the game more than casuals. You have this constant battle of balance between how a class does in pvp it affects pve, and vice versa. To cite a small recent example, and this is not a freaking hate post about omg warriors hurt please don't see it that way. Arms warriors had not been really viable in pve as seen by many, so they were buffed this patch. The were recently nerfed for pvp, but now they're back to really destroying everyone even worse, so what, they can be more pve viable especially where cleaves are concerned? There's also the kill everything island, where the xpac was about why do we fight, and well, the answer at the end is "to kill everything that is red to me of course". Is it fun to kill your buddy and then they're like dude wtf and then you're like you were red to me, sorry? I can see why people enjoy it, not my thing though. I honestly see this is experimental, they want to make it fun and accessible to the new player, who doesn't know what to do and might be lucky to have a friend in game to help them. Or you could be friends with the dick that begs you to pay to server xfer and faction change only for them to quit wow the next week. Seen all kinds. Went on sort of a ramble but, the game is what you make it, there's plenty to do, so do it or don't, you have a choice, and being casual doesn't equal being dumb or scrubby or what have you, it just means you're playing the game your way, and at the end of the day, that's what you should do.

  7. #1327
    Dreadlord Santoryu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zellcrs View Post
    I'm from a casual raid guild, it shows, we only downed up to Primordius before 5.4, before 5.2 we only downed wind lord in hof, but shortly after 5.2 we went in to finish the job for hof and terrace on principle. We are not doing the same this time, we are just rolling right into SoO. We've only downed Immerseus on normal, and downed protectors on Flex. I wouldn't say casuals do hold a guild back if they're trying to raid, but it's only a problem if the players who aren't only logging in on raid days have a problem. Did we ask for easier content, not really, but we also have an issue where we are getting flaky pastries for raiders to fill those spots where someone got burnt out and said f this I'm doing murder island only because, kill my own faction, joy in purest form. We keep on playing, enjoy the game at our pace. It works for us, I honestly would like to do better so I push my dps higher and higher any way possible. I was also in a hardcore raid guild in BC, and I got burnt out before Sunwell. So honestly while I want to do more, I don't want to burn out. In a larger guild maybe burnout rate is less, because they shuffle players per boss like a mofo to maximize chances. For a small group where we are stuck with druid warrior tanking, and an under geared healer and a couple pvp geared dps, well, our options don't exist to change that, we can't make them play more to gear up, and we can't replace them on a podunk server. We're also their friends, so who wants to be like, bro, you suck, please gtfo or get better. Give and take. I would say pvp vs pve has killed the game more than casuals. You have this constant battle of balance between how a class does in pvp it affects pve, and vice versa. To cite a small recent example, and this is not a freaking hate post about omg warriors hurt please don't see it that way. Arms warriors had not been really viable in pve as seen by many, so they were buffed this patch. The were recently nerfed for pvp, but now they're back to really destroying everyone even worse, so what, they can be more pve viable especially where cleaves are concerned? There's also the kill everything island, where the xpac was about why do we fight, and well, the answer at the end is "to kill everything that is red to me of course". Is it fun to kill your buddy and then they're like dude wtf and then you're like you were red to me, sorry? I can see why people enjoy it, not my thing though. I honestly see this is experimental, they want to make it fun and accessible to the new player, who doesn't know what to do and might be lucky to have a friend in game to help them. Or you could be friends with the dick that begs you to pay to server xfer and faction change only for them to quit wow the next week. Seen all kinds. Went on sort of a ramble but, the game is what you make it, there's plenty to do, so do it or don't, you have a choice, and being casual doesn't equal being dumb or scrubby or what have you, it just means you're playing the game your way, and at the end of the day, that's what you should do.

    I think people burn out because they're forced into the same dungeon time and time again on a tier by tier basis. TBC did not have this problem to such an extent because each tier, except the last one, had several raids in it and that provided variety. Furthermore, all raids were relevant to a certain point and it was actually OK to be behind, because you knew what lay in store for you after you finished what you were currently doing - more content to enjoy.

    Now the players are like a swarm of locusts, moving from tier to tier, devouring them as they go.

  8. #1328
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    1. I don't think every single MMO releases content and addresses issues in the game in the same manner that WoW does. And the game re-invents itself and the playstyle in a way that is dramatically different than other mmo's
    Yeah man, remember back in Vanilla when WoW was about leveling up through quests and dungeons, and then doing raids and PVP at level cap? Gee that's totally not what it's about now, it's been so dramatically reinvented. Also, get real, EverQuest has had 19 expansions in 14 years, and releases a 20th expansion this month. Content updates aren't some magical thing invented by Blizzard.

    2. How do you come across this 6 to 7 year number?
    Ultima Online, released 1997, peaked in 2003.
    Lineage, released in 1998, peaked in 2004.
    EverQuest, released 1999, peaked in 2005.
    Final Fantasy XI, released in 2002, peaked in 2008.
    World of Warcraft, released in 2004, peaked in 2010.

    Jesus Christ, it's like fucking clockwork. And these are the strong games, the ones that really lasted. The numbers are out there, go look them up if you really give a shit. The only MMO to ever buck this trend has been Eve Online, a spaceship PVP game with zero dungeons, zero raids, and nothing to compare to WoW.

    Man you really like that six year number, but I don't think there's some sort of guarantee that every MMO will die after six years like you're suggesting, for the reason that, well, it's six years old.
    No MMORPG that has ever lead the market has ever died. EverQuest came out in the damn nineties when everyone was on dialup, and their newest expansion comes out this month. I've met actual Ultima Online players who weren't born yet when the game came out. A game that started out as big as World of Warcraft will probably last another 20 years.

    As for new wow players, we don't know the number but considering that as some people no longer play wow after a few years because of jobs, other games, or a lot of other reasons, the game should be bringing in new players. The problem I think is, the game had many things that would interest a new player originally, but a lot of that stuff has been taken out of the game and replaced with IMO, stuff that won't keep new players around for long (LFR) - in the process I think it's causing new guys to not stay subbed long.
    A majority of people who will ever want to play World of Warcraft have played it already. Again you just sort of assume that there are an infinite number of people out there who are willing to play WoW, but who somehow just haven't gotten around to it yet, and that if Blizzard just kissed their ass right then the game would magically grow forever.

    It's complete nonsense. Who are they supposed to be recruiting, except for (you guessed it) more casuals? Is there some magical hidden trove of hardcore gamers out there who would love to be WoW raiders, but they just skipped the first 8 or 9 years of the game for no reason?

    The Wow forums are over populated by dumb asses, I don't take much of that place seriously lol. It's pretty much guys that are bitter because they never got invited to raids back in vanilla and BC. There are a few decent posters there though. And most of my posts never get downvoted, I bring out those elitists that you probably dislike and they voice their approval of my posts many times over lol.
    Every time a blue opens a "Make the game hardcore again!" thread, they see the OP buried and downvoted and followed by 20 pages of people calling them an idiot. You're a tiny, irrelevant, drowned-out minority even on the game's own official forum.

  9. #1329
    I think that if Blizzard implemented Flex Raiding and not LFR in cataclysm, it would have a much more positive effect. There would be alot more pugs around where you could join knowing that this is not normal/HC raid and thus easier. At the same time it would people to communicate more with eachother etc.

    I guess Blizzard will never remove LFR since it's in the game. I wish though. I wish.
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  10. #1330
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimble View Post
    Yeah man, remember back in Vanilla when WoW was about leveling up through quests and dungeons, and then doing raids and PVP at level cap? Gee that's totally not what it's about now, it's been so dramatically reinvented. Also, get real, EverQuest has had 19 expansions in 14 years, and releases a 20th expansion this month. Content updates aren't some magical thing invented by Blizzard.



    Ultima Online, released 1997, peaked in 2003.
    Lineage, released in 1998, peaked in 2004.
    EverQuest, released 1999, peaked in 2005.
    Final Fantasy XI, released in 2002, peaked in 2008.
    World of Warcraft, released in 2004, peaked in 2010.

    Jesus Christ, it's like fucking clockwork. And these are the strong games, the ones that really lasted. The numbers are out there, go look them up if you really give a shit. The only MMO to ever buck this trend has been Eve Online, a spaceship PVP game with zero dungeons, zero raids, and nothing to compare to WoW.



    No MMORPG that has ever lead the market has ever died. EverQuest came out in the damn nineties when everyone was on dialup, and their newest expansion comes out this month. I've met actual Ultima Online players who weren't born yet when the game came out. A game that started out as big as World of Warcraft will probably last another 20 years.



    A majority of people who will ever want to play World of Warcraft have played it already. Again you just sort of assume that there are an infinite number of people out there who are willing to play WoW, but who somehow just haven't gotten around to it yet, and that if Blizzard just kissed their ass right then the game would magically grow forever.

    It's complete nonsense. Who are they supposed to be recruiting, except for (you guessed it) more casuals? Is there some magical hidden trove of hardcore gamers out there who would love to be WoW raiders, but they just skipped the first 8 or 9 years of the game for no reason?



    Every time a blue opens a "Make the game hardcore again!" thread, they see the OP buried and downvoted and followed by 20 pages of people calling them an idiot. You're a tiny, irrelevant, drowned-out minority even on the game's own official forum.

    Let's see massive changes to hybrids, massive talent tree re-vamps almost every expansion, the addition of heroic 5 mans, challenge modes, hard modes, to a lesser extent LFR, flex, arenas, rated battle grounds, there's been a lot of changes since vanilla. Some good, some bad, but anyone that thinks it's the "same game" probably didnt' play it much back then. I could go on with the massive changes but you get the idea.

    As for the "after six years an mmo is no longer good argument".... come on man, that's the strangest one I've seen on this thread and that's saying something. And you're argument that everyone that has ever wanted to play wow is silly, there's always new customers that are just getting into these types of games - it may sound silly hearing that as someone that has played wow for a long time, I know, but ask some of the other pro-casual guys here lol. As for a secret treasure trove of casuals or hardcores, it doesn't matter if they are out there or not, the game doesn't give them anything that would interest them in continuing to play - that's the point myself and others have made many times here.

    And trust me I don't worry much about the WoW forums, most of the time it's a guy saying "I want X, I pay for the game, and blizz should give it to me" with a bunch of people agreeing, just fill in X with gear, not dying in PvP, or not dying in raids. Those forums are at large void of intelligence as most of the smart posters have dipped out, be it on pvp or pve forums. It's kind of like a member of mensa not going to the library if the library is infested with annoying teens that talk about pop music all the time lol. Yes, he can't go to the library anymore, but he probably doesn't miss it much.

  11. #1331
    i know its not the the place to post but can someone send me Scroll of Resurrection inv , i been waiting all day for someone too i will add gametime when i get email sorry for post

  12. #1332
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    Let's see massive changes to hybrids, massive talent tree re-vamps almost every expansion, the addition of heroic 5 mans, challenge modes, hard modes, to a lesser extent LFR, flex, arenas, rated battle grounds, there's been a lot of changes since vanilla. Some good, some bad, but anyone that thinks it's the "same game" probably didnt' play it much back then. I could go on with the massive changes but you get the idea.
    Who gives a shit? Every game fucks around with their spec systems and adds more toys to play with as time goes by. It's still the same basic quest-level-raid game it's always been. Nobody is sitting around going "I've ignored WoW these last 8 years but now I hear they've changed hybrids! WOO LET ME AT IT!" I could list a shitload of WAY more drastic changes that were made to Ultima Online, for example, but they wouldn't mean anything to you since you've never played it. You sure as hell wouldn't suddenly run off to play a 16 year old MMO because of those changes.

    As for the "after six years an mmo is no longer good argument".... come on man, that's the strangest one I've seen on this thread and that's saying something.
    The fact that virtually every successful MMO in history has begun to decline after six or seven years AT MOST isn't a subjective "argument" you can try to weasel out of, it's a god damned objective historical fact. Deal. With. It.

    You don't know anything about the industry, the market, or how these games have performed in the past. You're just butthurt that the game doesn't cater to you anymore, and now that subscriptions have begun to decline (coincidentally at the same point in the product cycle as every other game ever) you're spinning this idiot fantasy that it's all because of your little dipshit demographic, and boy Blizzard sure must be sorry for pissing them off.

    Do you actually expect anyone who isn't a fucking idiot to be swayed by your bullshit? Why should anyone take your opinions on subscriber loss seriously when you don't even know how long it's taken other games to lose subscribers in the past? Why should anyone in charge of WoW, with millions of dollars on the line, listen to you when you don't know a singe thing about the business?

    And you're argument that everyone that has ever wanted to play wow is silly, there's always new customers that are just getting into these types of games
    No there are not. Markets are not infinite. This is 9th grade economics class shit at most, man, and you seriously think a billion dollar company should listen to your bullshit?

  13. #1333
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimble View Post
    Who gives a shit? Every game fucks around with their spec systems and adds more toys to play with as time goes by. It's still the same basic quest-level-raid game it's always been. Nobody is sitting around going "I've ignored WoW these last 8 years but now I hear they've changed hybrids! WOO LET ME AT IT!" I could list a shitload of WAY more drastic changes that were made to Ultima Online, for example, but they wouldn't mean anything to you since you've never played it. You sure as hell wouldn't suddenly run off to play a 16 year old MMO because of those changes.



    The fact that virtually every successful MMO in history has begun to decline after six or seven years AT MOST isn't a subjective "argument" you can try to weasel out of, it's a god damned objective historical fact. Deal. With. It.

    You don't know anything about the industry, the market, or how these games have performed in the past. You're just butthurt that the game doesn't cater to you anymore, and now that subscriptions have begun to decline (coincidentally at the same point in the product cycle as every other game ever) you're spinning this idiot fantasy that it's all because of your little dipshit demographic, and boy Blizzard sure must be sorry for pissing them off.

    Do you actually expect anyone who isn't a fucking idiot to be swayed by your bullshit? Why should anyone take your opinions on subscriber loss seriously when you don't even know how long it's taken other games to lose subscribers in the past? Why should anyone in charge of WoW, with millions of dollars on the line, listen to you when you don't know a singe thing about the business?



    No there are not. Markets are not infinite. This is 9th grade economics class shit at most, man, and you seriously think a billion dollar company should listen to your bullshit?

    If you played in vanilla any class and played them now you'd realize there's been *massive* changes to each one, like it's 2 different games. Are there still raids and do you still kill stuff? Yes, but saying that there haven't been major changes is just silly. And yes, every game has changes, but the point is the whole "well the game is old" thing is a cop out as it hasn't been the same game.


    As far as your 9th grade economics class discussing how every MMO has a downfall after six years, I don't know what your teacher is smoking but I want some lol. But yes, I'm going to apply for blizzard now and tell them "your MMO is weak now because it's six years old", and not mention anything about the direction of the game or the mechanics, and see if I get a job there. Also, typing in bold doesn't make you look any smarter lol.

  14. #1334
    I don't think casuals destroyed WoW. I am a casual. I never raided anything past Kara in BC. And only did some Ulduar in WOTLK. So I am speaking from my personal perspective.

    MMO terrorists though - destroyed WoW. What happened in a nutshell is that frustrated addicted players who wanted everything easier and threatened to un-sub if they didn't get their way - got their way. Blizzard catered to this crowd (falsely called a majority) - and they are paying the price. These players don't understand the depth of their addiction and don't realize that giving them what they want ruins the social aspect and the reward aspect that comes from playing the MMO. That don't understand or care that replacing difficulty means substituting grind in the eyes of the developers. The modern WoW is a game that many people simply don't like very much anymore. Unfortunately in the world of game design listening to your players really isn't always a great thing. It's like dating. Both women and men will claim they want XYZ - but science and personal experience shows us otherwise.

    I read two common 'counter' arguments to this theory that float about the forums (and are alternate explanations for the loss) - and I want to take the time to explain why I reject them.

    The first is the 'easy' argument. It goes essentially like this. WoW was always easier then its competition. (True in some ways). So making it easier is a logical way to 'improve' it - and thus you can't complain. This is where the argument falls apart. If there is one thing I have learned in life is that there is too much. You can worry about someone too much. You can simplify something too much. You can make something too easy. You can make engines that are too powerful for your cars chassis and so on and so forth. With WoW dumbing down 95% of the game such that you can be watching TV and play is actually too much. What happens there is that the feeling of accomplishment you get from achieving anything in the game is diminished. Games are popular because people like the feeling of overcoming even small and easy challenges. You don't need to make the game like Dark Souls - but making it faceroll really doesn't help it sell. Just as Zynga how the whole 'casual' thing worked out for them.

    The second is that the real reason the game is losing subs is that its old. It follows some 'product lifecycle'. This is a more insidious argument and its the kind Obama uses to explain the economy. You think the economy is bad now? If it wasn't for my plans it would be so much worse. In short Blizzard has done the best they possibly could. The problem here is that this leaves Blizzard immune to all criticism. (Which is kind of the point of the argument). But on close examination it doesn't really hold water either.

    #1. The losses are sudden and dramatic. Despite being in a genre where the other competitors suffer a slow drop off - WoW losses have been staggering quick. Basically the losses that WoW is suffering don't fit the general product life cycle curve.

    #2. The game is not actually old. This is the point of the expansions. They are new. This is what people are playing by and large when they play WoW - thus most of the game is new. Is GTA V old - no its a sequel but not old.

    #3. Eve Online has been growing steadily for longer then WoW has existed. Thus despite rumblings to the contrary the 'product lifecycle' seems not to be some magical number that just coincides with Blizzards losses. Many games experience huge population drops right away. While others continue to grow for several years.

    Don't get me wrong - disputing these arguments doesn't meant that MMO terrorism was the only cause of the destruction of WoW. But I think its a large contributing factor. I'd point out that WoW has neglected to invest serious cash back into the game. They haven't updated the engine to industry standards (which would have cost them at most 100 million) nor have they created a suitable amount of interesting dungeons/raids/quests for the players to delve into.. This pennywise pound foolish Bobby Kotick strategy didn't really do them any favours either..

  15. #1335
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    Nah casuals didn't ruin wow, blizzard ruined wow when they started nearly exclusively catering to casuals in the way they set up the game.
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  16. #1336
    Quote Originally Posted by RickJamesLich View Post
    If you played in vanilla any class and played them now you'd realize there's been *massive* changes to each one, like it's 2 different games. Are there still raids and do you still kill stuff? Yes, but saying that there haven't been major changes is just silly. And yes, every game has changes, but the point is the whole "well the game is old" thing is a cop out as it hasn't been the same game.
    In Vanilla I ran around in third-person using WASD and a hotbar to make attacks in the same sort of non-twitch pseudo-turnbased combat that had defined EverQuest. In Pandaria I run around in third person using WASD and a hotbar to make attacks in the same sort of non-twitch pseudo-turnbased combat that had defined EverQuest. Except now it's all a lot more streamlined.

    It's not a radical departure, it's not genre-reinventing, it's just a tried-and-true old system that has been slowly tuned up every few years until it runs really smoothly. It all just looks like some kind of disco fireworks fight to anyone who isn't an experienced player anyway.

    (By the way, that basic model of combat that WoW and EQ and a bunch of other games used? That's all derived from text MUDs. There were false suspicions that EverQuest borrowed actual code from 1990 text game DikuMUD, since they were so similar, and WoW is basically just a really polished EverQuest.)

    As far as your 9th grade economics class discussing how every MMO has a downfall after six years, I don't know what your teacher is smoking but I want some lol. But yes, I'm going to apply for blizzard now and tell them "your MMO is weak now because it's six years old", and not mention anything about the direction of the game or the mechanics, and see if I get a job there. Also, typing in bold doesn't make you look any smarter lol.
    Last year the Avengers movie made like 200 million dollars in its first weekend. It was just a huge success. So why didn't it keep making 200 million dollars every weekend for the rest of the year? Do you think maybe there are only so many people in the world who wanted to see Avengers, and that they weren't going to keep seeing it forever?

    You can't just pull infinite customers out of your ass. The number of people who want to play WoW, but haven't actually played it yet after 8 years, just isn't that big. Basic economics. Blizzard was probably sitting around going "This game will start losing subscribers around 2010" fucking years ago man. Are you kidding me? Half the development team used to work on EQ and there was at least one old UO guy in there. They know how this shit works.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by GuyClinch View Post
    The second is that the real reason the game is losing subs is that its old. It follows some 'product lifecycle'. This is a more insidious argument and its the kind Obama uses to explain the economy. You think the economy is bad now? If it wasn't for my plans it would be so much worse. In short Blizzard has done the best they possibly could. The problem here is that this leaves Blizzard immune to all criticism. (Which is kind of the point of the argument). But on close examination it doesn't really hold water either.

    #1. The losses are sudden and dramatic. Despite being in a genre where the other competitors suffer a slow drop off - WoW losses have been staggering quick. Basically the losses that WoW is suffering don't fit the general product life cycle curve.
    Nope. We're two and a half years out from WoW's peak late in WOTLK, and the rate of loss has been more or less predictable. Using the numbers here, consider:

    WoW at peak: 12m
    2.5 years later: 7.5m
    Retention: 62.5%

    Lineage at peak: 3m
    2.5 years later: 1.5m
    Retention: 50%

    EverQuest at peak: 550k
    2.5 years later: 150k
    Retention: 27%

    Ultima Online at peak: 250k
    2.5 years later: 125k
    Retention: 50%

    Final Fantasy XI stopped reporting numbers in 2010, but only 1.5 years after peaking had already dropped from 500k to 350k for a retention rate of 70%. In actuality, WoW has had a better retention rate than its forebears and competitors.

    #2. The game is not actually old. This is the point of the expansions. They are new. This is what people are playing by and large when they play WoW - thus most of the game is new. Is GTA V old - no its a sequel but not old.
    Expansion packs aren't sequels. WoW is an old game with an old engine.

    #3. Eve Online has been growing steadily for longer then WoW has existed. Thus despite rumblings to the contrary the 'product lifecycle' seems not to be some magical number that just coincides with Blizzards losses. Many games experience huge population drops right away. While others continue to grow for several years.
    Eve Online is a heavy PVP game about spaceships, operating in an uncontested niche market, with no set classes or levels, no dungeons or raids, and almost no design elements in common with WoW beside the basic idea of a persistent online environment. Comparing Eve to WoW is like comparing Flight Simulator to God of War, or comparing Rocky Horror to Star Wars. They have nothing instructive to say to one another.

    And mysteriously, once you trim out that one kooky outlier with the radically different design, what's the longest a really successful MMO tends to go before peaking? Yep, about six or seven years. I don't know WTF you "MMO immortalists" think the world is supposed to look like. Like, is it just the fact that every MMO developer is an idiot that keeps every MMO from growing past six years into infinity?

  17. #1337
    Deleted
    Casuals didn't ruin anything, Activision-Blizzard did. If a company makes a RPG and then changes it into a shooter you cant blame the FPS fans but only the company who made that decision. Same with WoW and the casuals. A game attracts mostly players who its designed to. If its too hard, the casuals just go away to find other games more suited for them or learn and become better.

    The problem with WoW is that it tries to appeal to everyone but fails at it. Even the players who still play, I really doubt many of them think "WoW is the best game ever made!", it's more like "meh.. I've played it for so long and there aren't really many better games on the market right now so might as well keep playing..". It's good for Blizzard I guess. Better to have hordes of semi-content or even unhappy paying customers than less die hard fans who love the game as they still pay the same.

  18. #1338
    Quote Originally Posted by Lizbeth View Post
    Casuals didn't ruin anything, Activision-Blizzard did.
    Barking at the wrong tree there. Blizzard was bought by Vivendi, international media corporation years before WoW launch.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lizbeth View Post
    If a company makes a RPG and then changes it into a shooter you cant blame the FPS fans but only the company who made that decision. Same with WoW and the casuals. A game attracts mostly players who its designed to.
    WoW aim was to be the most casual MMORPG available from day one and that's what they still try to be, so the target audience never changed.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  19. #1339
    Raiders
    Hardcore Raiders
    Casuals

    Really makes no difference the type of player you are. When you come to terms that Blizzard will do what is best to benefit money wise from the player base, is exactly what they will do. So if you are a hard core raider, and think you have superiority over a casual raider, just remember Blizzard thinks of you all the same.

  20. #1340
    Most strategic choices Blizz has made have proved to be the right one. There is still a lot of activity and content coming. If Mr Snowflake had his way, 6.5 million others would have said "fuck this shit" and played something else. I love this game very much, but I can't sacrifice 4 nights each week every month, every year to keep me updated on the content. WoW has never been better except for the community, which is getting less interested and inspired. I don't see how that can be fixed for us veterans, but making the game more hardcore would surely make me cancel my sub.
    Mother pus bucket!

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