World of Warcraft is 'dying', but not for the reasons you think.

[Maoli]

I personally think that WoTLK made the game a lot more user friendly. Vanilla and TBC weren't exactly the easiest to deal with if you were alone and didn't have a guild to run dungeons with or raid with. I imagine thats why a lot of people came to WoW back then. The problem is that people are getting tired in general of the game. A game isn't supposed to last forever, they come and ago with time. WoW's doing a pretty good job of holding a lot of people on though. I don't think WoW is dying out though.. I think it's more falling to a lower equilibrium that eventually it'll meet. I think we'll find over the next few expansions that the sub loses will become less and less dramatic and eventually things with bounce from a specific high to a specific low for anything later on.

[Seefer]

I personally think that WoTLK made the game a lot more user friendly. Vanilla and TBC weren't exactly the easiest to deal with if you were alone and didn't have a guild to run dungeons with or raid with. I imagine thats why a lot of people came to WoW back then. The problem is that people are getting tired in general of the game. A game isn't supposed to last forever, they come and ago with time. WoW's doing a pretty good job of holding a lot of people on though. I don't think WoW is dying out though.. I think it's more falling to a lower equilibrium that eventually it'll meet. I think we'll find over the next few expansions that the sub loses will become less and less dramatic and eventually things with bounce from a specific high to a specific low for anything later on.

2 issues with what you are saying

#1 - Back in Vanilla and BC MMOs were about being in a guild and having friends, it wasn't a lobby game with a chat room like it is now, Blizzard brought in people who honestly have no business in an MMO

#2 - There are a lot of games that have last a long long long time, hell people still play regular nintendo games, D&D, Magic the Gathering, Chess etc.

[Deleted]

OK, first you say:

'

I believe if we had a story with the same umph in the story the sub levels would not be dropping as quickly.

Then you say:

Personally I am looking forward to WoD simply for the opportunity to shoehorn in cool characters from old Lore.

Shoehorning in "cool" characters is the most certain way to make sure the STORY has to yield to showcasing the famous names. What is known about WoD's story, and what Blizz have told us about how they came up with the idea, indicate precisely how that story disaster is what we are going to get.

[But I Hate You All]

Cata and mop sucked thats why they lost subs

[Pancaspe]

WOW is dying, and it will take about 20 years for it to finally die.

[But I Hate You All]

WOW is dying, and it will take about 20 years for it to finally die.

right because it hit 20 million subs with mop like you said *snicker*

[Durandro]

right because it hit 20 million subs with mop like you said *snicker*

I don't understand people like you. Why would you want the game to die, delight over every small sub drop, rage when subs don't drop as much as you predicted... unless you hate the game in which case why are you here?

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You were bored with it. It was not a fresh new game for you. It was old.

Which is why people prefer Diablo 3 to Diablo 2! ...oh wait.

Something being 'old' doesn't matter. Being outdated is different, and WoW isn't - its still the core model of the MMORPG and the most successful form of it that's ever been released.

Want to know the real reason less people play WoW these days? Because there's more choice between other games. Its as simple as that.

[Mindark]

Cata and mop sucked thats why they lost subs

Every single expansion has lost subs. Every. Single. One.

The earlier expansions were just getting more subscriptions than they were losing. But they were definitely losing subs as well. Possibly more subs than were lost with cataclysm/MoP. But we don't know actual sub losses, we only know net sub losses.

I'm confident the age of the game is affecting Blizzard's ability to attract new subs. Where's your graph that doesn't just show bullshit? And where's your graph showing what is normal?

edit: and that graph clearly shows that subs peaked during cataclysm. All losses come after the peak. That's what the peak is. I can easily turn around and say "Cataclysm was the best because that's when they had most active subs!" and refer to your graph. It's all making up statistics to support one's own bias.

[But I Hate You All]

I don't understand people like you. Why would you want the game to die, delight over every small sub drop, rage when subs don't drop as much as you predicted... unless you hate the game in which case why are you here?

I do not recall " raging" or being in "delight" or subs. I have a real perceptive on whats wrong. Does that make me hate the game? and want it to die? NO. What I do not understand are people like who who seem to think any criticism or facts is "hating"

[Medjumurac]

WOW is dying, and it will take about 20 years for it to finally die.

Kind of agree with that.

I can't wait to see what'll happen when they make it F2P. That'll probably take years more, but it will be fun to see if we get the biggest spike in re-subscribers in it's history. Also, the expansion where we face Sargares (if it does come) will be huge.

Regardless, WoD should bring back some old players. It certainly brought me back. Word's getting around that the classes are more balanced than they ever were. It's a little more accessible without really going over the deep-end. A lot of features that people have been asking about for years are being implemented.

I'm sure we'll see the inexorable spike in subs. But I have a feeling they'll stick around at least for a little while.

[But I Hate You All]

Every single expansion has lost subs. Every. Single. One.

Cata and mop had a massive drop

I'm confident the age of the game is affecting Blizzard's ability to attract new subs.

Right it was not old in WOTLK or at the start of cata right? or at the start of mop????

Where's your graph that doesn't just show bullshit? And where's your graph showing what is normal?

The graph reflects blizzards sub numbers. Far from bullshit.

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edit: and that graph clearly shows that subs peaked during cataclysm. All losses come after the peak. That's what the peak is. I can easily turn around and say "Cataclysm was the best because that's when they had most active subs!" and refer to your graph. It's all making up statistics to support one's own bias.

Subs did peak in cata at the very start than a mass Exodus started. Something really drove people away in cata. Taking numbers from blizzards own reports is making up statistics now? interesting

[Mindark]

Cata and mop had a massive drop



Right it was not old in WOTLK or at the start of cata right? or at the start of mop????




The graph reflects blizzards sub numbers. Far from bullshit.

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Subs did peak in cata at the very start than a mass Exodus started. Something really drove people away in cata. Taking numbers from blizzards own reports is making up statistics now? interesting

The graph only reflects net subs. That is all. We don't know what the turnover was in any expansion. We don't know how many new subscribers they got in each expansion. All we see is NET subs. We do not see anything that points to a single mass exodus of subs. We only see a dramatic loss of net subs. Until you can see independent graphs of new subscribers vs loss subscribers, all you have is speculation. Maybe 2M people left every month during WotLK but they gained just a little more. That would be a huge exodus, but we will never see that because it is masked by the new subs.

And if you discount gains and only look at losses, then no, you don't have a real perceptive (sic) of what's going on.

example: you have a salary (sub gains). you have bills (sub losses). salary - bills = spending money (net subs). Economy goes to crap, your lose 20% of your salary. bills remain the same. your spending money is now 20% less of your salary. did you get more bills?

[Psychokwak]

It's silly to say WoW is dying because it's easier. But again, it's silly to say the game is dying. I'm wondering how many subscribers would it take to be profitable. I'm betting with 1M subscribers it would still be okay on the balance sheet.

WoW isn't easier than before. I've been playing since Beta. At that time, and after in Vanilla and then BC, the game seemed more difficult, but it simply wasn't. When I think again about dungeons and what we were doing in 40 raids, I am laughing my ass off. Everything was easier, dumber, but just much more time consuming. Just look at the strats in PvE. This plus the illusion of the lost Eden a.k.a. nostalgia provide naysayers with ammunition. We were discovering a game. For many people, it was even the first MMO. Some people did not even have 512k as internet connection! Yeah yeah time travel time! It's strange to say, but with 9 years of WoW, the game as evolved with the internet. How many videos and guide were there for dungeons X or raid y? Streaming, how to, databases... You want to play a harder game don't use the quest helping in WoW, don't go on wowhead and don't use the strategy helping tool ingame or any website on internet. Just go with you weapon and teamspeak and find out mechanics by yourselves. And don't use you flying mount! Feel the land, feel the earth, feel the miles to go from A to B and stop to gaze a trees or monsters. Find a cave that you've never been in. Talk to NPC.

Today the spectrum of activities to do and ways to spend time ingame is much wider. Everything is better-designed. PvP and PvE have never offered so much different colours of difficulties and kinds of content. Of course, things have changed. You may find LFR, Flex or even normal mode stupid if you are in Heroic content guild (then again, in them the spectrum is wide). But if you're boss enough the storm on such content while eating cereals in front of the computer and with one hand in your pants, why bother complaining. Find your own challenge.
Nowadays I play in a 25HC guild that has just down Spoils. For some people I am a demi-god, for others I am little more than a Umpa-Lumpa of PvE. Yes Timeless island was for me entertainment for 1 afternoon, but I've not been spending days spittin on people farming ilvl 496 and 535 gear that was not relevant to me anyway.

when the game was elite, casuals had something to aspire to. They now have nothing to work toward, they afk their 496 and then que for lfr and afk.

The game was less elite before in my opinion. This kind of garbage player was already afking while farming or progressing in Molten Core 8 years ago. ilvl 496 is hardly the end of the journey, so any complaining people having this nonchalant behaviour in the game is not granted any possible authority while talking about the game :O
I'm not attacking the LFR thing, each players plays depending on its time and possible investment in the game. But playing to afk, it's a sign of serious damage in the brain and lack of purpose or motivation. Same thing for people saying 'Yeah, the expansion X SUCKED. Dungeons sucked, and bla bla bla, and everything sucked, and bla bla bla bla, it was awful, and bla bla bla... but hey I played it anyway!! Dayum I'm da bowss".

I am too nostalgic of the past, but not because of the content. Many things sucked balls. Farming was much more silly and time consuming, plus offering absolutely no depth nor real medal or honor other than "yeah, he stood in front of computer X days". There is no way people can possibly praise the way things were done back then compared to today.
I'd be interested in knowing how many people talking about past expansion and especially Vanilla and BC were actually here.

Within people expressing themselves on the forums, there's so many people that probably have a double Ph.D. in complaining. We are missing people that are more objective and simply are enjoying the game. And I am not even daring to mention PvP forums...

So, in a nutshell, because I have a flabbergasting tendency to split from the subject,
No, WoW is not dying. Get your head out of your ass. Not even by a large margin.
And no, if subscribers are decreasing, it's not by a miraculous formula factor "the game is easy". It's not easy. Go clean the PvE content. Go clean the PvP content. Compare the content to old content and be objective. If you've cleaned everything, roll another class. Or find a more difficult game!
People complaint, beacuse people want everything, quick. They don't want easy grinds up or farming, cause it's casual. Paradox. But when something like Shao-Shao rep (which is 10 times easier than Vanilla grind) comes, they cry. They want everything right away, but they want award and honor, and to feel elite. They want epics, but they finds that epics are too easy to have. That's the problem of WoW.

[But I Hate You All]

It's silly to say WoW is dying because it's easier. But again, it's silly to say the game is dying. I'm wondering how many subscribers would it take to be profitable. I'm betting with 1M subscribers it would still be okay on the balance sheet.

Wow has not been gaining subs, in fact its been losing them. it is still profitable for now.

So, in a nutshell, because I have a flabbergasting tendency to split from the subject,
No, WoW is not dying. Get your head out of your ass. Not even by a large margin.
And no, if subscribers are decreasing, it's not by a miraculous formula factor "the game is easy". It's not easy. Go clean the PvE content. Go clean the PvP content. Compare the content to old content and be objective. If you've cleaned everything, roll another class. Or find a more difficult game!

Rofl okay it's not dying it just lost half it's player base in to xpacs. what shall we call it? decline? downsizing? and you tell us to get our head from our ass? you first

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The graph only reflects net subs. That is all. We don't know what the turnover was in any expansion. We don't know how many new subscribers they got in each expansion. All we see is NET subs. We do not see anything that points to a single mass exodus of subs. We only see a dramatic loss of net subs. Until you can see independent graphs of new subscribers vs loss subscribers, all you have is speculation. Maybe 2M people left every month during WotLK but they gained just a little more. That would be a huge exodus, but we will never see that because it is masked by the new subs.

And if you discount gains and only look at losses, then no, you don't have a real perceptive (sic) of what's going on.

example: you have a salary (sub gains). you have bills (sub losses). salary - bills = spending money (net subs). Economy goes to crap, your lose 20% of your salary. bills remain the same. your spending money is now 20% less of your salary. did you get more bills?

Blizzard does not release that information so it can really not be taken in to account. They also do not release information about how many subs per region. So one could speculate how many of the 7 million subs left are Eastern subs vs western, The east has a F2P (pay by the min model) while the west does not. But as I said before that Blizzard does not release that information so it can really not be taken in to account. Cata and mop has drove more subs away that it gained. Infact we are back down to the Pre bc sub numbers

[Tya]

Everyone "knows" why WoW is dying, and yet nobody seems to come up with the same reasons. Funny that.

[But I Hate You All]

Everyone "knows" why WoW is dying, and yet nobody seems to come up with the same reasons. Funny that.

Because the developers have George Lucas syndrome.

[endric]

Firstly, your theory of vanilla being as easy is as the current point in the game is flawed. Vanilla wow was brutal. I personally experienced the affects of "guildkillers", raids that destroyed guilds. Vanilla raids were weeks on bosses not weeks on a raid. At guild #1 for my server it took us 2 months to clear AQ 40 having disbanded and reorganized 3 times. Bosses should not be able to be one shot like many currently are. It destroys the purpose of it being, well, a boss. The feeling of beating C'thun was incredible given the time we spent on it. BC was a great expansion but was kind of where the casual started to be integrated into the raids. Kara was simple and was cleared in 2 weeks for us. Gruul took 2 days but king took about a week. Eye was simple enough that not many guilds had a problem, mechanics were really straight forward for about a 2 week kill. BT was probably the best raid in BC taking us a month to clear but had great depth. Sunwell felt kind of thrown in at the last second but did take us two months due to guild drops. I don't even remember raiding hyjal to be honest. LK raids were neat in theory but classes not being balanced vary well made certain class stacking possible for easy 1-2 weeks clears on all but yogg and LK.

Lastly, Cataclysm and pandaland. Cataclysm was a joke. It was at this point i stopped raiding. BLizzard tried to make the fights difficult with mechanics but it gets to the point where, if you are looking at your screen, you will not die. "don't stand in the 'fire'" was that entire raid, "fire" being don't fucking stand HERE and we will ace it. Cataclysm was such a foggy expansion in my opinion. Added difficulties made it slightly more appealing. but not by much. Why spend a week, literally ONE WEEK (3-4 DAYS) to clear a raid only to unlock a slightly harder difficulty. Make two difficulties. Separated by lockouts but VASTLY different in difficulty with a very different item level.

Last point.
I have only used LFR in pandaland, but as a resto druid, being able to only use wild growth and wild mushroom is astonishing, I get FREE gear for using two spells and barely paying attention to bars.... That you assume this is the same difficulty. You get FREE gear to boost an advantage into normal AND upgrade that item level to boost yet again into the next tier. I want to work for my gear. Not have it handed to me. Timeless isle, is a joke. I have 3 full sets of gear into the 3rd tier ready for alts I havn't even leveled. I don't want to be able to raid gear a toon with shit i got out of a chest. Day one of Isle, my druid went from 512 to 538.... unreal right? Do not even try to compare the difficulty of vanilla to what it is now.

[Saphyron]

Strange eve online is 10 years old and it keeps increasing in overall subs every year. jsut 3 years ago it had almost half of what it has now.

Wow is loosing subs that correct. It is loosing its charm over the charm over the years which is understandble they understand this thus they are going the route many other mmo's is doing faster contet to make more people interested.

To say it is dying is true welll... kidna it is loosing subs but who knows when they will reach a point where subs gained and subs lost is almost equal.
But I don't see wow dying before at least it is below the subs eve online had 3 years which was 350k subs.

[Mindark]

Blizzard does not release that information so it can really not be taken in to account. They also do not release information about how many subs per region. So one could speculate how many of the 7 million subs left are Eastern subs vs western, The east has a F2P (pay by the min model) while the west does not. But as I said before that Blizzard does not release that information so it can really not be taken in to account. Cata and mop has drove more subs away that it gained. Infact we are back down to the Pre bc sub numbers

You cannot discard withheld information to further support your own theories and spin what little information you do have. You have to accept them as unknowns and acknowledge that what you think they are may be incorrect.

[Tya]

Strange eve online is 10 years old and it keeps increasing in overall subs every year. jsut 3 years ago it had almost half of what it has now.

Wow is loosing subs that correct. It is loosing its charm over the charm over the years which is understandble they understand this thus they are going the route many other mmo's is doing faster contet to make more people interested.

To say it is dying is true welll... kidna it is loosing subs but who knows when they will reach a point where subs gained and subs lost is almost equal.
But I don't see wow dying before at least it is below the subs eve online had 3 years which was 350k subs.

There's usually around 1mil players around on battle.net services at any point. I don't know what % of that is WoW players, but I'd wager that it's most of it.

EVE hangs around at 25-50k in-game players, many of whom are multiple accounts played by the same person.

Doesn't really compare.