Wow's glorious End

[wibu]

Personally I would have it ending with time collapsing back on itself, essentially retcon-ing everything that has happened since release.

The events of WoW would simply become a far fetched myth in any future Warcraft games.

[Deleted]

I never understood where thoughts like this come from.

Cataclysm was the fastest-selling PC game of all time, and the PC game with the most sales in the first month of all time.
All indications point towards an INCREASE in subscribers to World of Warcraft.

Yet still, the odd person who is displeased with the game seems to think that they, and they alone, are the litmus test for it, and when they grow bored of it, everyone else must be - and when they quit it, everyone else will be following suit.

I hate to burst your bubble, but you aren't that important.

Yeah, people think WOW is in decline because THEY don't like Cataclysm, I mean really stop trying to speak for 12million subscribers, wow is thriving atm and people quit/leave all the time but guess what? Nobody cares.

[Baygon]

Can you show any sort of data beyond personal anecdotes to indicate that people are losing interest at any accelerated rate?
Otherwise, I suggest you focus your keen powers of observation inward, good sir.

can you show me any data that suggests they are actually increasing?

while these following links may not Prove my point exactly, they do prove that What we are told is not what is true..

http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/02/a...ed-part-1.html
http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/02/a...ed-part-2.html

read those, it's in 2 parts... see what you think. the game isn't as big as you'd like to think, and as we were told in ICC, No King Rules forever, why does this not apply to WoW according to so many fanbois, not that i'm accusing you of being such a person of course..

[SuperNick]

Yeah, people think WOW is in decline because THEY don't like Cataclysm, I mean really stop trying to speak for 12million subscribers, wow is thriving atm and people quit/leave all the time but guess what? Nobody cares.

It doesn't take a genius to look around and see people fairly disappointed with the current situation. Tradechat, forums, guilds, your friends dropping off from the game. Arguably this is mostly just a result from the fact that the majority of players are longtimers and are finding everything quite mechanical now.

I don't think anyone can speak of millions of people, but as I posted before, people stay because of lacking competition; not because they are really enthused or excited about the game. I still moderately enjoy WoW, as do most people, which is why we stay. However, I wish there was better competition out there so I could go from "just ok" to "exciting". Currently the alternative is drop WoW's "just ok" status for "snore, log off" status in a game like DC Universe or Rift.

edit: and yes, WoW's "active" subscriptions has always been BS by Blizzard. Their "huge" sub base is also largely attributed to their world availability too. Servers and localisation in pretty much all parts of the world now, no other MMO has really ever gone this route.

[Leyth]

Final boss will probably be onyxia the 8th or 9th time we kill her.

[Atrea]

can you show me any data that suggests they are actually increasing?

while these following links may not Prove my point exactly, they do prove that What we are told is not what is true..

http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/02/a...ed-part-1.html
http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/02/a...ed-part-2.html

read those, it's in 2 parts... see what you think. the game isn't as big as you'd like to think, and as we were told in ICC, No King Rules forever, why does this not apply to WoW according to so many fanbois, not that i'm accusing you of being such a person of course..

I am not claiming they are increasing. On the contrary, I'm not claiming the population is doing anything.
Ergo, I don't need to produce any data. You're engaging in a logical fallacy, by saying that your un-cited claim needs to be disproven.
That's not how it works. It's not my job to prove you wrong. It's your job to prove yourself right.

On the other hand, you ARE claiming they are decreasing, and I'd like to see some data for that.
Once again, it's not my job to prove you wrong - it's your job to prove yourself right.

And all the links you provided as 'source' did, was explain the various ways in which player populations are estimated.
Yes, it's quite clear that each account may not represent a single unique player. This isn't some divine revelation.
Nevertheless, the context in which 'subscribers' is used is used universally in the MMORPG industry, and is not unique to Blizzard.

None of this has anything to do with a decline in WoW's subscriber base, however.
Until there is some hard evidence of this, I will continue to be of the mindset that anyone who maintains this line of thought is just an egomaniac, who thinks what they feel is somehow indicative of how everyone feels.

---------- Post added 2011-03-01 at 12:44 PM ----------

It doesn't take a genius to look around and see people fairly disappointed with the current situation. Tradechat, forums, guilds, your friends dropping off from the game.

Trade and Forums have ALWAYS been chock full of people who were 'fairly disappointed' in the game. I would venture a guess to say that of those who are bitching and moaning, and threatening to quit, only a small amount do. The rest are just hoping for attention.

This is nothing new, and is not unique to World of Warcraft. I have been playing MMORPG games since 1997, with the initial release of Ultima Online, and the one constant that I've seen, in spite of all the technological and philosophical changes in games over those years, is that the playerbase has ALWAYS been whiny, spoiled, and chock full of an undeserved sense of self-entitlement.

Every game 'is dying', according to its forums. Every game 'is garbage', according to the critics in-game.
Yet these same people who make these claims post day in, day out, re-iterating their nonsense.
Clearly, if the game was so bad, they'd stop playing it - but they don't, and therein lies the joke of it all; you have people who, in most other industries (let's take the restaurant industry, for example), would stop patronizing. But in the MMORPG industry, these same people keep coming back for more. It's like they're saying one thing, and doing the complete opposite.

So for this reason, it's very silly and naive to take at face value the things you hear in trade, or on the forums.

As for the whole, 'friends dropping off from the game' statement; I can state that I've actually seen people return 'from the dead' as it were, in the past few months. People who had stopped playing mid-Wrath are now returning, and loving every second of it.
On a personal level, I have had zero friends leave the game over the past few months, for reasons related to the game's quality.
(I had some friends - a married couple - leave the game due to medical issues with their children; some things are more important than WoW!)

So my experience has been the polar opposite of the one you described. And while I'm not calling you a liar, I invite you to consider that your own experience may be limited, and what is happening to you may not be happening to others - and to others still, the exact opposite may be happening.

While I don't purport to speak for everyone, I do feel that the whole situation of 'mass exodus' from WoW is a tad overstated, and I think if you were to actually have access to the numbers, you'd find that the predictions of doom are just a BIT premature.

I'll close in saying that Ultima Online opened in 1997 - before some posters on this forum were even born - and it is STILL up and running.
In fact, it had a new expansion released in August 2009 - nearly twelve years after its release date.
Ultima Online never had the popularity, budget, or exposure that World of Warcraft does.
It's a safe bet to say that WoW isn't dying anytime soon.

[Steelyorc]

I never understood where thoughts like this come from.

Cataclysm was the fastest-selling PC game of all time, and the PC game with the most sales in the first month of all time.
All indications point towards an INCREASE in subscribers to World of Warcraft.

Yet still, the odd person who is displeased with the game seems to think that they, and they alone, are the litmus test for it, and when they grow bored of it, everyone else must be - and when they quit it, everyone else will be following suit.

I hate to burst your bubble, but you aren't that important.

Kudos to you...you made my day...possibly the greatest post......ever

[sdracklryeg]

It will be Hogger and his gang of Gnolls you fools.

[Arganaut]

Gnomes. Gnomes will create a device that makes the world implode. I therefore propose we cleanse all Gnomes beginning with a Tauren punting event.

[personn5]

The alliance should be taking on thrall, garrosh, cairn and sylvannas
And horde taking on their respective enemies.

Please, give us a dead tauren as a raid boss.
Easiest free loot ever.

[SuperNick]

As for the whole, 'friends dropping off from the game' statement; I can state that I've actually seen people return 'from the dead' as it were, in the past few months. People who had stopped playing mid-Wrath are now returning, and loving every second of it.
On a personal level, I have had zero friends leave the game over the past few months, for reasons related to the game's quality.
(I had some friends - a married couple - leave the game due to medical issues with their children; some things are more important than WoW!)

So my experience has been the polar opposite of the one you described. And while I'm not calling you a liar, I invite you to consider that your own experience may be limited, and what is happening to you may not be happening to others - and to others still, the exact opposite may be happening.

Nah, I never suggested the game is dying or will incur some sorta MMO death. I just drew a few statements that my general opinion from forums, friends, my server and so on that people are generally tiring of the game. No one I see seems to find it that exciting. I didn't intend to generalise millions of people, as I said, but i've also played MMOs since Asheron's Call/EQ. (98 or something?) - and if it's one thing i've learned, no matter how strong a game looks one month, when decent competition comes around, it can shift -very- fast. That's not to say good games don't last but don't think for a second WoW can't go from 10 million subs and 300 servers to 2 million and 100 servers inside of a few months, with decreasing numbers. (Arbitrary numbers to draw a point by the way)

The general lifespan of a successful MMO from my experience:
- Great release, mass influx of customers, people are keen
- Subscribers grow, hire on more staff, more content starts coming
- Subscribers reaching good heights, first expansion
- Subs are stable and growing while increasing servers, regions and staff. Second expansion
- Subs are alright, game is nearing critical mass, caps out by end of second expansion, third expansion released.
- Initial buys are great from old accounts or existing, charge a premium on the 3rd expansion for more revenue, game reaches critical mass
- You're around 5-6 years into life now, and new competition is finally making strides ahead of you. Subs start to drop rapidly, servers get reduced, content gets less and expansions generally have no where near the level they once did. Game continues on with reduced support to make sure it still ticks money over.

The only time an MMO is completely shut down is when it is costing the company more money/time than it is worth to keep it running. It was costing Turbine WAY more than they were making to run Asheron's Call 2, hence it suffered a death. However, AC1 storms on with about 4-5 servers and 200k subs because it costs them barely nothing to run it or maintain it. Same for EQ, UO, DAOC and other older MMOs.

This isn't to say playing in a heavily reduced support environment is any fun though. Lord of the Rings Online is a great game in my opinion.. but Turbine choose to leave it in the hands of a very small team meaning content/expansions are neither consistent nor last what they should. Hell they were so late with their last expansion, they had to release half of it and then patch in the rest later. Quit out of boredom.

[Dawon]

Pretty sure that after the 5th expansion, Thrall will suddenly wake up in the shower and everything has been a dream and we're get servers reverted back to Vanilla and lev60. From there we do everything again and getting the expansions every 2nd year as it's been so far, until one day when Thrall suddenly wake up while in the shower...

(1 bonus point if u saw the TV-serie reference, plus you're old! )

[SuperNick]

Aliens invade Azeroth and destroy everything. They convert your subscription to Starcraft Universe MMO.

[pateuvasiliu]

To both the Horde and Alliance, the opposing faction is considered a threat. Garrosh and Varian are pretty solid examples of this point-of-view.

Yea...but come-cata they're in war b/c the world was torn asunder and they need to reconstruct and fight for resources.

When there'll be no need to reconstruct/fight for resources,why would they fight?

[xebtria]

when wow comes to an end, it should be a yet unknown villian. there will be a final maintenance (e.g. taking a week), where all servers will be clumped together. there will be only one server left after that, regardless of region or language. Horde and Alliance will temporarily work together. there will be a world boss who walks over azeroth, northrend and outland and destroys everything (Actually he walks in circles over all continents, because it will have about a zillion hp and no one can predict where he will die, maybe it will take over about 1 week or something). everyone will be portet out of any instances and instances can no longer be entered. everyone in range of 1000y of him will automatically be in combat with him. he does not need to be tanked, just killed, but this is to prevent a health-reset of him. at the end when he dies, there will be a worldwide, not skippable cinematic of his death, a live cut from the last 2 minutes of his "life", depending on where he was at that time then. at the end of the cinematic, the servers will shut down. after that, for some time there will not be a "new" warcraft game anymore, and after that, warcraft 4 will be released and it's story will be based on something like..

"after the great bazillion died, the world needed to rest. horde and alliance went their separate ways again. all was calm for quite a time, until...." - BÄM WARCRAFT 4 LOGO + CINEMATIC.

something like that.

[knubs]

Pretty sure that after the 5th expansion, Thrall will suddenly wake up in the shower and everything has been a dream and we're get servers reverted back to Vanilla and lev60. From there we do everything again and getting the expansions every 2nd year as it's been so far, until one day when Thrall suddenly wake up while in the shower...

(1 bonus point if u saw the TV-serie reference, plus you're old! )

something with Bob Newheart?

[Atrea]

Pretty sure that after the 5th expansion, Thrall will suddenly wake up in the shower and everything has been a dream and we're get servers reverted back to Vanilla and lev60. From there we do everything again and getting the expansions every 2nd year as it's been so far, until one day when Thrall suddenly wake up while in the shower...

(1 bonus point if u saw the TV-serie reference, plus you're old! )

Actually, Jaina would have to die first, and then Thrall would have to wake up to find her in the shower.
Then you'd have to have Garrosh get shot, and an expansion later, find out it was just some minor character, and none of the main characters who would have made more logical suspects.

Did I get the reference well enough?

[Upptagen]

The alliance should be taking on thrall, garrosh, cairn and sylvannas

Cairne is dead.

[Scuravolpe]

Because that's the logical thing to do right? After we kill the last thing threatening to destroy the universe, we then show everyone that we've learned nothing about our petty political rivalry and start murdering each other again.

[Deleted]

With Thrall now "getting religion" and the Taurens not taking to Garrosh that well, could we see the Taurens pulling away from the Horde and aligning with the Alliance?

Garrosh was not to blame but the Grimtotems and after what the alliance did in Camp Taurajo i doubt we cows will be alligning with them any time soon :/