Where have all the WoW blogs gone?

[Deleted]

Interest in the game has declined in general and taken a downwards spiral more recently since there has been no new content for an age.

Also I think many bloggers have moved over to vlogs on youtube, becuase well thats what people want. Writen Blog or video with interesting personality, supported with game footage and guests. I can see the appeal of the writen word of course but for covering video games a video makes more sense to me.

I don't play wow anymore but still watch 'Mike preach wow' go figure =p

[shise]

All the hardcore players are being driven away from the game. Those are the people righting blogs, guids, contributing to sites like EJ and howtopriest. The casual community is a giant leech - sucking everything from the game and giving nothing back.

his is accurate in fact, none should be offended as that's how it is.

It also dooms the game. I'd rather have a 2-5 million players flow for "ever" than 5-11 million players going in and off, and then dropping to 1 million in a few years because they were all casuals, hence having to "close" the game.

Just my view tho. And of course all numbers are plain made up.

[Deviant]

his is accurate in fact, none should be offended as that's how it is.

It also dooms the game. I'd rather have a 2-5 million players flow for "ever" than 5-11 million players going in and off, and then dropping to 1 million in a few years because they were all casuals, hence having to "close" the game.

Just my view tho. And of course all numbers are plain made up.

Hard cores move to other games as well. I think it more to do with the fact that making streams, videos, and such is just much easy also no new content doesn't help.

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Not just sucking from the game but demanding more rewards and entitlement with putting little to no effort into it themselves. It all started to go down hill in wrath with the "everybody should see content mentality" and cataclysm was the nail in the coffin. WoD isn't going to save anything. For the first time I have willingly unsubbed from the game (back in april) as 7 months of SoO was enough for me and the prospect of having to deal with it and the MoP theme itself for yet another 7-8 months was just to much. 14-15 months of SoO....no thanks.

Not putting my money into something that isn't giving shit in return for over a year. No other MMO does that. The WoW population is declining because of things like destroying server communities, destroying any danger of questing (people can quest with no gear and be successful), and making the same raid on 4 difficulties taking away any type of prestige that the game had. Content for everybody was not the answer and the bleeding of sub losses and the nastiness of the wow community prove that. MMO games should be for people that like MMO's and enjoy the challenge. Not people that cry about inconvenience and not having everything tossed there way for instant gratification.

Not all casuals are entitled. What your describing is entitled players. You can play this game all day and still fall under that definition. Can you show us an mmo that is hardcore and does better then wow? because for all we know the everyone "should see content mentally" is what keeps the game a float. Making the gamer harder didn't work in Cata.. so why would it work now. World first and rank 1 aren't prestiges?

[bbr]

In the end, everyone plays the game as they see fit, some put in more hours than others - and when those who put in less hours get similar rewards to those who put in more hours - obviously they'll be annoyed or jealous. Blizzard's casualization of the game ensure that there's not really any place for "hardcore" play anymore, just people who put in more time than others, but in the end the rewards end up being mostly the same.

Most will say Vanilla and TBC were the better times of the game - I'm inclined to agree because simply put: Hardcore players will complain more than casuals.
The "vocal majority" tends to be those who put in the most time, we call it hardcore, but it's different from that, since even at the higher end of the game there's people who put in more and less time than others on the same level.
Once again, this is where the vocal majority comes in.
People will complain at anything and everyone because they feel they should earn more, get more loot, and put in less effort than the next guy.
For reasons varying from "being a paying customer" to feeling it is justified because they are online 18 hours a day, while the other guy is only 3 hours online during raid time.

To run a successful guild you need a large number of players with equal online times - or levels of dedication.
Otherwise there'll be people complaining about the loot distribution or player X being the reason the guild wipes on raids as much as they do.
The "extra 10 minutes" after the regular raid time, or being unable to start early because X is still having dinner,. etc.
Many factors can lead to a guild's downfall.

[RoKPaNda]

his is accurate in fact, none should be offended as that's how it is.

It also dooms the game. I'd rather have a 2-5 million players flow for "ever" than 5-11 million players going in and off, and then dropping to 1 million in a few years because they were all casuals, hence having to "close" the game.

But that's not how it is. The majority of bloggers were always non-raiders and casuals. Very rarely was a popular blog written by someone in a decent raiding guild.

[bbr]

But that's not how it is. The majority of bloggers were always non-raiders and casuals. Very rarely was a popular blog written by someone in a decent raiding guild.

Hm,. not sure how accurate that claim is.
Some of the more popular blogs I know : big bear butt / manias arcadia / somehunteriforgotwhatname,. were all raiders.
I was a raider myself, and our guild had a lot of server-first kills during TBC.

Obviously that didn't hold out for long, but the claim that the "majority" of bloggers were non raiders and casuals - well, the main reason to that perhaps was that the majority of players were non-raiders? So it'd seem logical to assume the blogs matched the player-base.

I'll agree with shise as well, it's much better for the game to have a stable playerbase than one that fluctuates by a few million every time there's an expansion.
People stopping disrupts raid and guild stability, which leads to more people quitting that would otherwise occur. It's a social game after all.

[Deleted]

Blog about what?! There hasn't been new content for what, almost a year now?! There is only so much you can talk about the same shit over and over. Wait till WoD, the blogs will pickup again.

[Grummgug]

Not just sucking from the game but demanding more rewards and entitlement with putting little to no effort into it themselves. It all started to go down hill in wrath with the "everybody should see content mentality"

I'm STILL waiting for them to allow me to see all the content. I define the content as the ORIGINAL difficulty settings as released and played. Getting to the end game 6 months after it was released only to find a watered-down version that is super easy is not my idea of seeing the content at ALL. I want to see it when it was most difficult!

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Most are on Twitch/YouTube and on Twitter for commentary.
The decline of WoW blogs isn't specific for the game, it's the same for general Internet.. people are posting more video content and having discussions on Twitter, wall-of-text blog era is gone.

In the investing and stock market world, blogging is very much alive. There are tons of sites out there with daily blogging on economic news. Twitch / youtube doesn't even make sense when it comes to investing. You're going to show me a video of...what exactly? Its a lot of numbers and data and blogging is much more suited to it.

You could make an argument however that this is the next step in the internet getting "dumbed down". Posting about numbers and data? On a daily basis? Who does that? Who wants to read that? I want VIDEO YAH!!!

[Littleraven]

They pay a sub cost... which may go towards developing content. They also populate the world and even add items to the auction house. Its entitled player not casuals that ruin the game.

^this guy gets it. dont get me wrong. everyone is entitled to their own playstyle but it is NOT the casual folk that are running this game into the ground. its a mix of age and the "elitists" that think everyone wants to spend forever to get anything of note done. ive played since 2006 so ive seen the game shift MASSIVELY over those years but casuals havent hurt this game nearly as much as the hardcore would have you believe.

it may have gotten ruined for some of the hardcore by "dumbing things down" but WoW was ALWAYS dumbed down compared to other MMOs. if you dont enjoy the game anymore just quit and leave the people who still enjoy it in peace. dont try and justify why you are quitting or not enjoying the game anymore. its almost 10 years old. people get burnt out and thats ok.

[WanderingBreezes]

I'm STILL waiting for them to allow me to see all the content. I define the content as the ORIGINAL difficulty settings as released and played. Getting to the end game 6 months after it was released only to find a watered-down version that is super easy is not my idea of seeing the content at ALL. I want to see it when it was most difficult!

Good news! The current patch 5.4.8 and due to complaints, such as yours, there is no stacking difficulty reduction on Siege of Orgrimmar. If you want to fight him at the correct difficulty in Heroic Mode, the only thing stopping you is yourself.

Have a nice day.

[Grizzelbar]

I have personally witnessed decline of two national communities (different nations, website were basically leading boards among them), not just blogs. But they died off some time around Cata release. Basically players stopped playing, forums got infested with viruses/bots and no host renewal was performed.

People change, people's lives change, WoW changes. There are your reasons.

[bbr]

I have personally witnessed decline of two national communities (different nations, website were basically leading boards among them), not just blogs. But they died off some time around Cata release. Basically players stopped playing, forums got infested with viruses/bots and no host renewal was performed.

People change, people's lives change, WoW changes. There are your reasons.

There'll always be someone with a need to vent though - I love reading those rants about how unfair certain drop rates are.
If one blog like that disappears - 2 more appear.
But now,. I get the idea that either people stopped caring, stopped playing, or the drop rates on the more desirable items actually got changed (which i highly doubt).

[Skragzilla]

All the hardcore players are being driven away from the game. Those are the people righting blogs, guids, contributing to sites like EJ and howtopriest. The casual community is a giant leech - sucking everything from the game and giving nothing back.

God I love coming here to watch the bitter "hardcore community" die off miserably in a pool of it's own tears. Or to put it another way, "And nothing of value was lost."

[Saxtorph]

WoW blogs huh?

Blog by yet another whiner that whines because he didn't get exactly what he wanted the moment he wanted it. He even stoops to insult everyone that might still enjoy the game.

[Kuja]

My blog has been very popular so that's not the reason I stopped updating mine. Still is even though I haven't posted in months. It's just a good idea to have longer pauses from time to time to keep a game interesting! Times like these when you get no new content are an excellent opportunity to have such a pause and try other new games out, or just get a life for a while. Don't see myself stopping my blog completely at any point, so plenty of stuff still to come as long as blizz keeps content coming.

I do miss some other great blogs that have stopped posting.

[bbr]

Anyone used "blog azeroth" as a forum to try to get in contact with some of them?
Eh,. I seem to have lost my account password there - and the owner does not seem to be responding to mail XD

[thilithedruid]

All the hardcore players are being driven away from the game. Those are the people righting blogs, guids, contributing to sites like EJ and howtopriest. The casual community is a giant leech - sucking everything from the game and giving nothing back.

As my 11 year old would say, "You are a giant leech". There, now my comment is as immature as yours.

[Skeleton Jack]

I used to write a blog back in LK at skeletonjack.com (a phishing company owns the URL now, don't go there) for Death Knights. My old website did 4 million unique visitors with 8 million views. But I got burnt out on WoW and quit. Even if you're successful simple game burn out can stop a blog from continuing to exist. Most bloggers that I knew, or read, were casuals or standard raiders (aka not hardcore). It was rare for a hardcore end game raider to blog back then in my experience. Also, the best bloggers didn't just focus on builds and efficiency, but also humor and interesting pieces that kept their readers engaged and coming back for more.

However most bloggers found that after 6 months to a year it became more and more difficult to have original ideas to write about. Also ad revenue from website blogs is fairly low. Then consider website management (themes, SEO, etc...) and all of the variables involved, and compare that to You Tube and Twitch which are far simpler and easier. And if you're successful, easily profitable.

Blogging requires a heavier investment of time and energy. You stop what you're doing (playing the game) to do it. Twitch doesn't take you much out of your gaming at all. For some, once it's set up, pretty much never. And for You Tube, once you get used to editing it's also easier and faster that Blogging (unless you're doing a high production value video). Technology has made it easier to not blog honestly.

Ironically I came here to post that I am blogging again at skeletonjack.tv if anyone is interested. I'm focused on DK's and WoW.