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

[Kraenen]

WOD will bring back old players imo.

All the naysayers will stop their doom and gloom posts and go play the game instead.

i really dont think the nostalgia will overcome the bad story for old/vanilla/tbc players

[Maoli]

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

I played in Vanilla and the first half of TBC with no guild. What does being or not being in a guild have to do with wanting to play and enjoy a game? Do you really think if nothing changed that all the guilds from vanilla would still be around? People get burnt out, raiding in this game takes a lot of commitment regardless of what people seem to say (3 hours a few times a week isn't a big deal right?). Plus, you're still doing the same stuff, killing bosses for gear that will eventually have to become outdated just so you can kill more bosses). Subs would have dropped and guilds would have broken up without all the new people being able to come in and have a game where they have the ability to play it on their own terms.

#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.

Yes, but those are hobbies people do for fun. Amongst a ton of other things. How many people sit down and play D&D 5-6 hours a day every day? Or chess, or magic? AND pay $15/mo. WoW has a pretty amazing grasp on a lot of people. If we were stuck in the days of vanilla most of those people wouldn't even be playing anymore due to life moving on and the content being too time consuming to get into.

[Seefer]

I played in Vanilla and the first half of TBC with no guild. What does being or not being in a guild have to do with wanting to play and enjoy a game? Do you really think if nothing changed that all the guilds from vanilla would still be around? People get burnt out, raiding in this game takes a lot of commitment regardless of what people seem to say (3 hours a few times a week isn't a big deal right?). Plus, you're still doing the same stuff, killing bosses for gear that will eventually have to become outdated just so you can kill more bosses). Subs would have dropped and guilds would have broken up without all the new people being able to come in and have a game where they have the ability to play it on their own terms.



Yes, but those are hobbies people do for fun. Amongst a ton of other things. How many people sit down and play D&D 5-6 hours a day every day? Or chess, or magic? AND pay $15/mo. WoW has a pretty amazing grasp on a lot of people. If we were stuck in the days of vanilla most of those people wouldn't even be playing anymore due to life moving on and the content being too time consuming to get into.

#1 I am sure you made friends though correct?

#2 If you don't think WoW is a hobby that people do for fun you need a new outlook on this game

[Maoli]

#1 I am sure you made friends though correct?

Little to no friends in game until I got into a guild. I had two friends outside the game that got me to start but were on a different server. Point being that solo individuals were and still are the backbone of this game. Talk about guilds all you want but it's the odd guy/girl logging in to play a main or start a new alt that keeps the subs high. In TBC those people were stuck with just leveling alts, in WoTLK they finally got their chance to raids and more people got into it. Now that all those people are able to see/do the content there's less to keep them sticking around. At the same time, if they weren't able to enjoy the content they would be burnt out on leveling alts and have nothing to do.

#2 If you don't think WoW is a hobby that people do for fun you need a new outlook on this game

I would definitely say WoW is in another league of 'hobbyness' compared to some other things. Would you call facebook games a hobby for people who do nothing but play them 24/7? More like mild/severe addiction. Either way, a game this aged still holding on to so many people is pretty impressive.

[Adamas102]

#1 I am sure you made friends though correct?

Why would you be so sure of this? The only friends I made were people who were already in my guild (which I joined because it was the one that my IRL friends were in). I never felt the need to socialize with people in my 5-man groups, even when I needed to spam "LF2M (insert dungeon name)" in order to find them. I certainly don't remember this magical in-game community that was somehow lost along the way.

[Saphyron]

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.

The point was more that if eve online has no trouble staying alive with far less players why should wow not be able and eve is older than wow

[Seefer]

Little to no friends in game until I got into a guild. I had two friends outside the game that got me to start but were on a different server. Point being that solo individuals were and still are the backbone of this game. Talk about guilds all you want but it's the odd guy/girl logging in to play a main or start a new alt that keeps the subs high. In TBC those people were stuck with just leveling alts, in WoTLK they finally got their chance to raids and more people got into it. Now that all those people are able to see/do the content there's less to keep them sticking around. At the same time, if they weren't able to enjoy the content they would be burnt out on leveling alts and have nothing to do.



I would definitely say WoW is in another league of 'hobbyness' compared to some other things. Would you call facebook games a hobby for people who do nothing but play them 24/7? More like mild/severe addiction. Either way, a game this aged still holding on to so many people is pretty impressive.

The solo players were probably the ones who joined and left, solo players are not the backbone of this game I am sorry.

[Quickie]

I don't know if it was already mentioned. I was to lazy to read all 7 pages of post here. But one thing that i find very nice about WoD is the new raid system. Bringing new fresh meat to the game will be hard, and marketed at younger kids, who won't be paying 25 bucks to xfer servers to raid, cause they don't have that kinda cash for a silly game. The redesign for allowing current content to be done xrealm, will benefit the game, and maybe bring people back to raid and play with friends. I know that as a Guildmaster, and a Raid Leader one of my biggest issues was finding raiders, since a lli outnumber us 6:1 on my server and horde is dead. These changes will make my life, and quality of life easier, and give me more tools to keep my group going. instead of being worn out trying to find a freaking DPS replacement every week. Its a old game, but if Blizzard continues to move in the avenue of having less boundaries, i think it will add some time to the game. I have 9 90's on a dying server, and i am def not paying to xfer them, nor will i wasted time and level a new toon. Id rather quit. So these quality of life changes will keep me subbed, for now

[Karnige]

its age and age alone. its a decade old. that simple.

[Seefer]

its age and age alone. its a decade old. that simple.

No it's not that simple, I unsubbed from Cata because I thought it was shit, resubbed and have stayed subbed in MoP and I am terribly excited for WoD, people have lots of reasons for leaving the game and yes age might be one but there are 5 million other reasons people left.

[Adamas102]

No it's not that simple, I unsubbed from Cata because I thought it was shit, resubbed and have stayed subbed in MoP and I am terribly excited for WoD, people have lots of reasons for leaving the game and yes age might be one but there are 5 million other reasons people left.

No one is saying that age is the reason most people unsub. Everyone knows that there are thousands of reasons why people unsub. The main argument seems to be "the game is old so it doesn't attract as many NEW players as it used to". Your experience does not apply since you were a returning player.

[Obtuse]

WoW is going to be around for a long time yet. It is the introduction into the MMO market. If you think it doesn't attract many NEW players, think of all the other MMO's. Their new players are former MMO players looking for something that tastes different (do you want Coke or Pepsi). But no game has more of an ability to grab a random non gamer than Warcraft. We can analyse and surmise until the cow's come home but at the end of the day WoW is like any of us.

We're all dying, it's what we choose to do with our time that matters. The developers have figured it out and if anything, the game is stronger now then it was 3 years ago. The next thread we should start is about how we're dying and time is running short and our friends are unsubbing from our lives.

[WolfHugs]

WoWs not getting any younger, but neither am I!
I love this game.

We'll grow old....together!

[Huehuecoyotl]

The OP is completely right. When Cata was released, I didn't suddenly think "the levelling is terrible, the endgame is rubbish. the changes they have made to the game have made me hate it". what I actually thought was "hey, I have suddenly realised that WoW is 7 years old, and as a result I must be bored of it. Strange that I didn't realise it when it was 6 years old, but what the hey".

There are a multitude of reasons for what has happened over the last few years. There is no one right answer. Neither is there one "simple" solution to fix it, despite what numerous posters seem to think.

WoW may "die", but it won't be due to age. You underestimate peoples ability to get attached to things and remain permanently hooked. There are some people who drink alchohol their entire lives, while others hit a point where they say "I have had enough of this, I will find something else for my life". And alchohol has been around a LOT longer than WoW. You cannot apply standard game rules to something like this. It is WAY beyond a game for many of those that play it.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Your comparison isn't clever. VHS/blu ray are necessary forms of entertainment, it's a bit different. Games are an optional form of entertainment.

Nor do VHS and Blu ray fluctuate in sales based on trends or desire of people, they always sell well (maybe not because of the internet, but leave that out of it). Afaik there's no model that's accurate for every product in the world, afaik there's like 30 different models of those.

Do you see VHS tapes being sold regularly in an average western store anymore? No? VHS is practically dead in terms of revenue unless you go to places in the world where DVDs and Blu Rays aren't common place. Blu Ray will eventually be replaced with something else. It's just a matter of time, which is the point of the product life cycle.

[championknight]

The server I was on, Barthilas, now has no more Alliance raiding guilds and the population has dwindled to near zero. One part no thanks to the 25 man raid changes which caused almost all of the 25 man guilds to disband or downgrade and letting go players. In this perspective the game would be dying for me unless I cough up money to transfer or reroll.

Can't say its the same for everyone else though.

[lolhorribads]

Ok, since ghostcrawler quit this silly idea that wow is dying due to casualisation has come up ALOT in forums and after a while of reading them i've decided to stop repeating myself and just make one thread to house a discussion regarding the 'real' reason WoW is 'dying'.

Right for starters lets count how many years old WoW is: nine.

Thats quite old for a game and to still have so many active players is amazing, yes it's had a few losses these past few expansions, but as much as people think it's not because WoW is becoming casual.

WoW is dying not because everything is 'easy' those are opinions spread by a vocal minority who seem to have this obsession with vanilla, well let me tell you this: WoW is 'easy' because YOU played it back in vanilla, it's easy because YOU chose the casual MMO over something like....everquest lets say.

World of Warcraft has ALWAYS been considered a casual game! Even in vanilla other mmo players would mock wow for its casual ways. 'Can't deal with it ? Go play WoW with all those casual babies lol' is one of the phrases i saw around the time of vanilla.
The thing is...WoW's casualness is why it's so popular and because people played it so much it became more and more apparent to blizzard that the more casual the game was the higher the subs would be, so they made burning crusade, dumbed down content somewhat, added advanced difficulties to try and entertain those who fancied themselves 'hardcore' then they did it again in WotLK, making even heroic dungeons an AoE spam and releasing an incredibly easy raid (Naxx 2.0) as the opening tier.
But despite all of this casualisation, blizzard where right, the subs climbed and climbed and even stablized for ages, only begining to fall when cataclysm was released, with its sparse content and hard dungeons, by this time the most popular characters from warcraft 3 where dead and after a year or so pause without content, people lost interest.

It hit the asian community harder, they had to wait several years for the release of WotLK, they had to put up with burning crusade and no new content for much longer than the western countries and many migrated to other mmo's and never came back.

In closing i belive WoW's hayday is long gone, but i also belive the subs would be even lower if blizzard had stuck to their vanilla model, they needed to move with the times to accomidate and aging and increasingly entitled playerbase whom have less and less time to play as they get jobs, begin families and such.
Their change from 'hardcore' to 'casual' has provided a small buffer to the sub drops, i have no doubt that it will eventually drop to below one million, but i do not belive that will happen until it's 15th birthday atleast.

You might not agree with the changes, hell you might even outright hate them and have quit over them, but WoW isn't about you; It's doing its best to survive as long as possible before it enevitably becomes obsolete.

TL;DR
WoW is dying because it's old, casualisation was and is nececery to keep the sub drops from falling lower than they would have if blizzard stuck to their vanilla model. WoW has always been casual and blizzard is simply accomodating this for new generations.

I disagree completely. WoW WAS casual in Vanilla but it was Casual to the point of being hardcore. The subs dropped because Blizzard has stuck with roflstomp hello kitty content. How many people actually killed C'thun in Vanilla? Few? What about Ragnaros or even The last boss in ZG who's name escapes me? That's because WoW WASN'T casual back then if it was casual back then there would have been higher progression than there is today. SOO is so faceroll I'm surprised there aren't over 1,000 guilds that have cleared full heroic. From what I've been told by Blood Legion is that there was only one boss in the entire raid that was "worth it" and then blizzard went and nerfed it because it was to hard! DAFAQ? It took guilds 5-6 months to achieve full raid progression in vanilla and SOO only took a week and a half for full heroic progression. So WoW HAS gotten dumber.

Look at the subs durring even wotlk and then look at the subs now. There's about a 7 million player gap between there and it's not just because wow has gotten old. It's because WoW has gotten so easy you can play it with your penis. Don't believe me? If mythic raiding lives up to it's hype and is as difficult as WoW or BC content was, I GUARANTEE 5 million players will come back. I would wager a month's paycheck on it. If however they flop it yet again...... we're going to see another sub drop. It's not because it's old it's because blizzard is trying to make a game for retarded 12 year olds and many,many people are fucking sick of it. Don't believe me? Look at Path Of Exile's sub's.

[Frozen Death Knight]

My proof is very simple, just look at other products. Do you still watch VHS videotapes or do you watch a Bluray? All products eventually go in decline because they're old. That's the very basics of business economics. WoW is old and thus it's in decline, it's as simple as that really.



This is the basic model that is correct for ALL products. It's just that some products go through these stages faster than others. WoW has simply took a long time.

As for the reason why the decline took so long, that's because Blizzard did everything right. They attracted the right kind of audience to stretch it out as long as possible. Blizzard does have the right people on the job because otherwise WoW would've died sooner, it's really easy to see that. The fact that WoW still has multiple million subscribers after 9 years says enough to prove that.

Not all products follow this cycle, you know. Still, WoW does follow it, so I do agree with what you're saying.

[Giscoicus]

I disagree completely. WoW WAS casual in Vanilla but it was Casual to the point of being hardcore. The subs dropped because Blizzard has stuck with roflstomp hello kitty content. How many people actually killed C'thun in Vanilla? Few? What about Ragnaros or even The last boss in ZG who's name escapes me? That's because WoW WASN'T casual back then if it was casual back then there would have been higher progression than there is today. SOO is so faceroll I'm surprised there aren't over 1,000 guilds that have cleared full heroic. From what I've been told by Blood Legion is that there was only one boss in the entire raid that was "worth it" and then blizzard went and nerfed it because it was to hard! DAFAQ? It took guilds 5-6 months to achieve full raid progression in vanilla and SOO only took a week and a half for full heroic progression. So WoW HAS gotten dumber.

Look at the subs durring even wotlk and then look at the subs now. There's about a 7 million player gap between there and it's not just because wow has gotten old. It's because WoW has gotten so easy you can play it with your penis. Don't believe me? If mythic raiding lives up to it's hype and is as difficult as WoW or BC content was, I GUARANTEE 5 million players will come back. I would wager a month's paycheck on it. If however they flop it yet again...... we're going to see another sub drop. It's not because it's old it's because blizzard is trying to make a game for retarded 12 year olds and many,many people are fucking sick of it. Don't believe me? Look at Path Of Exile's sub's.

Please dont reference Wrath. Wrath was Blizzards leap in the direction of the Facebook gamers. Also, I havent played with my penis since I was an arcane mage in Cata. However, you are wrong about the raiding in vanilla. Vanilla raiding was 100% gear check or how many warriors you had to tank. The progression was slower because it was gated by shit like broken bosses, rep grind to enter raids or grinding rep to fight bosses. However, I dont disagree that the stuff has become far to easy. Also it took months for heroic siege, because they played on the PTR for months

[therayeffect]

You're selling bullshit here now. Everytime people throw this most basic product life cycle graph around they're selling bullshit. Why? Because it's the simplified theory of only one part of a product's life cycle.

I'm not going to bother to write down an entire essay to explain it, but I'll just give the most basic concept to show you that that graph is bullshit: "Product Life Cycle Interruption".

One of the biggest part of product life cycle theory is the fact that it can be interrupted, that the cycle can be reset and that this is achieved through proper product quality control and management.

So if people want to claim that it's normal that WoW is declining, it's only because Blizzard had inadequate product quality control or management. There's countless examples of other products that did NOT follow the simplified graph repeatedly given in these discussions.

Pretty well put. In order to extrapolate out the idea that Blizzard has inadequately maintained WoW, I'd like to point out that the game hasn't done anything new or revolutionary in a long time with WoD not expanding the game really at all, just copy-pasting old ideas. On top of their fairly bad CS and their inability to adapt their business strategy at all to the current market, I just don't see WoW gaining subs for an extended period as it is now or seems to be in the near future. The game is old sure but being old doesn't mean you can't be loved. Look at some of these actresses that are like 40+ yet they're still hot as hell and I'm sure quite a few men would like to spend some quality time with them. The same can be said for quite a few actors who are 'old' too. If you maintain something, it tends to perform better for much longer. It's fairly obvious based on the numbers that WoW hasn't done a good job. OP saying that casualization isn't the problem isn't completely correct. It is PART of the problem, because during the first tier of Wrath, they for the first time, lost a TON of subs because Naxx 25 was too easy and it was boring. The game has been on an ever continuing slide since then. Could it be worse if they hadn't made LFR and stuff like that? No one knows for certain. However, it's impossible to not at least point to 'casualization' as part of the problem. They made the game too easy and too simple so people could just jump in and jump out. People have mostly stopped jumping in and now only seem to jump out.