Originally Posted by
ElDoorO
I'll start off with: I think Zarhym is an arrogant asshole. While I disagree passionately about the direction they are taking while and feel they have forgotten what made them popular, I find it difficult to believe that someone as elevated as Zarhym would be "fired", in the traditional sense, from Blizzard.
At most he might have been let go with a severance package. I might venture a guess that he might have been given "direction" and was given a choice: Fall into the new fold or leave with severance.
Saying WoW is on its death throes is not an unreasonable thing to say. Historically, MMO games tend to say online for quite sometime with no real comeback. UO -> EQ -> WoW -> ??
For those who are too young to remember or joined MMO's late: Before World of Warcraft -- there was Ultima Online, Everquest, and a few others that I can't seem to remember playing. Anyways, pre-WoW games required a serious grind. In comes Vanilla WoW and it's for filthy casuals, who the fuck would play that shit? There was no "buying" wood, you took your shit to a tree and got your skill up for wood to work on your BS which also required mining and a lot of other shit that took a lot of grinding. Through Wrath it got more and more casual, and picking up more and more people. In comes Cata and they mysteriously start losing millions of people when it gets harder for everyone.
My point is: Casuals *subsidize* the game for the hardcore folks. The hardcore folks wanted more content made just for them at the expense of the casuals. What did you think would happen?
There are only a few games that have lived quite a long time -- Counter Strike is one of them. So yes, "stale" games can last quite a long time in a competitive state so long as things are balanced and fair.
I think WoW made the mistake of making raiding too large for Mythic. I understand *why* they did it -- I just think it was a mistake. 20 people is not very flexible for a difficulty that requires *gear* to progress. If, however, they normalized gear on Mythic so anyone that came in was given BiS items, I think things would have been better. Personally I think raiding could be turned into something better if gear wasn't involved and instead xmog, mounts, pets, and public rankings for kills were in place. It would also mean that you can't farm Mythics in the future, leaving items obtained from it only for those that put in the effort. Just my opinion that probably several million will disagree with.
I also think Blizzard lost focus. They forgot that to run current content requires leveling and farming for fresh blood to even *begin* raiding. So, for instance, if I wanted my wife to raid -- I'd have to get her toon to 85 (or 100 now), gear her up through dungeon after dungeon, LFR (once a week), and THEN we can have another healer. In the meantime my group is stuck with a thumb up its ass waiting on RNG to give her gear so we can continue. Now -- imagine she's not my wife and lives alone with cats. How easy would it be to get disenchanted of WoW by looking at all the grind ahead with only a simple promise of this alleged raiding you hear about but have never experienced? Fresh blood is needed. Imagine if Counter Strike did this. New players start with $0 and only a knife. It wouldn't go so well. You HAVE to take into consideration new blood for the game to remain healthy.
Just my $0.02 that no one asked for...