Could Blizzards's #1 Dev team save WoW from bleeding?

[Sturmbringe]

oh no, almost 5,000 people choose to play on a wotlk private server. that totally competes to the 8.3 million playing MoP on live.

also, it's illegal for any server to run WoW and profit off of it. namely, subscriptions. I'm not sure about running a private server and accepting "Donations", but requiring a sub fee is definitely illegal.

For your information, there are thousands of WoW private servers in Europe alone. There must be tens of thousands of private WoW servers in Asia.

Now, there are hundreds of thousands of people who play in those private servers. All these people directly translate into lost revenue for Blizzard. We are not talking about five and ten thousand of people here. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of players who are playing on private servers.

[MoanaLisa]

Pessimistic about Titan because of this, will they make things so convenient (teleporting like in GW2) as to lessen the sense of adventure.

Anyone that believes that Titan is going to be some sort of hardcore grindy heaven that takes weeks or months to get anything done is likely to be disappointed.

More to the point of the thread: The whole "A" team and "B" team forum business, while convenient, is pretty misleading and overly simplistic. Rob Pardo has an oversight role on all of it as Creative Director and you can pretty much assume that everyone knows what everyone else is doing and there's discussion about game direction among all of the higher ups.

[Glorious Leader]

Anyone that believes that Titan is going to be some sort of hardcore grindy heaven that takes weeks or months to get anything done is likely to be disappointed.

Yea but why shatter their illusion now? imagine all the forum fun we can have when it falls apart to pieces in front of them

[Tripl]

Honestly, you are wrong.

If people were tired and burnt out of WoW, there wouldn't be thousands of players who choose to play Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK on private servers. Let me break into you the best part: Some of those people ACTUALLY PAY A SUBSCRIPTION to play on the said private servers. Yes, they PAY A SUBSCRIPTION to a private server, and what is more, those subscription-based private servers also maintain a shop where people BUY GEAR with their PAYPAL ACCOUNT.

I don't play on a private server (I play SW:TOR atm) but I make it my business to be well-informed about what goes on in the WoW Private Server scene.

Hows' that, huh?

Some people so dislike Pandas and Pokemon, that they prefer to go pay money to play on someone's private server with all the assorted glitches, bugs, bugged raids, server downtime, rollbacks and other disadvantages that a private server entails.

How about Blizzard -and you- wake up and smell the coffee?

EDIT: Some of those servers are so full with people that there is a queue on prime time of SEVERAL THOUSANDS of players. The longest queue I have seen mentioned was 4596 players on prime-time. Fancy that. Almost five thousand people queue to someone's SUBSCRIPTION BASED WOTLK server.

So let me get this straight... you want "Blizzard" to "wake up and smell the coffee" because a few thousand morons pay real money for illegal servers, which should be a sign that Blizzard is going the wrong way with WoW, while there are still 9.3 million paying subscribers to the real deal?

Yea, Blizzard should so abandon 9.3 million for a few thousand.

For your information, there are thousands of WoW private servers in Europe alone. There must be tens of thousands of private WoW servers in Asia.

Now, there are hundreds of thousands of people who play in those private servers. All these people directly translate into lost revenue for Blizzard. We are not talking about five and ten thousand of people here. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of players who are playing on private servers.

Still not even close to 9.3 million, mate. Also, I would like some hard numbers from you, because this is still the internet, and 96% of all statistics are made up, as far as we know, yours are too.

[LilSaihah]

No, they couldn't. Problems are for the most part outside of the actual game, imo.

They might be able to slow the hemorrhaging but they wouldn't be able to stop it or push the numbers back up.

[spectrefax]

Nothing can save WoW.

They've simply implemented things they can't undo without speeding up the decline of the subscriber base.

1. LFD can never be undone.
2. LFR can never be undone.
3. Heirloom gear can never be removed.

And the list goes on. They've made so many changes that have completely changed the game from its core that it would be impossible to go back to the original core immersion values of true MMORPG gaming.

It's a nice thought, but, in my opinion, this giant's time is done.

[morfraen]

WoW has 4x as many subs add the next biggest subscription based mmo. Expecting a game this old to have the retention rates it used to just isn't realistic.

[Muis]

EDIT: Some of those servers are so full with people that there is a queue on prime time of SEVERAL THOUSANDS of players. The longest queue I have seen mentioned was 4596 players on prime-time. Fancy that. Almost five thousand people queue to someone's SUBSCRIPTION BASED WOTLK server.

You're absolutely right. Blizz should go back to those kind of servers so that they can service and recieve money from 15000 subs instead of those 8 million they have now.

Also, there is no #1 or #2 dev team. There is just 1 dev team. Some people from the "original" team either moved to other companies, other departments or other functions.

Thinking the same team from vanilla is still fully intact or completely moved away from WoW, it just stupid.

[Sturmbringe]

Still not even close to 9.3 million, mate.

Unfortunately, WoW subs are officially down to 8.3 million. The actual number is probably even lower than that. You made a "small" error of 1 million.

And I say "unfortunately" because the loss of subs means that people lost or will lose their jobs like it happened in Ireland with Blizzard's customer support centre. This loss of subs also means disbanded guilds, friends who stop playing, dead servers and a general deterioration of playing experience for paying customers.

Blizzard can still choose to ignore all that and they do. The question is for how much longer.

[Theodon]

Perhaps if they did something more awesome with PvP. It's one part of the game that haven't really changed specifically since they introduced Arenas.

Dedicate some mechanics for PvP and stop with the "we don't want to make PvP and PvE have seperate abilities/mechanics" but end up having to put some in. Just go for it 100% and make it a unique game apart from PvE.

Add more varied types of battlegrounds like having the ToGC arena NPCs running around with each faction, essentially turning it in to a 3 sided fight where the balance of the aggressiveness of the NPCs towards either faction is tied to a specific score or resource amount.

More battlegrounds that focus on attrition types of defeat/victory so that people who enjoy longer matches without set objectives can do something besides AV for 7 years. Add more gear to xmog and gear tuned for specific types of battlegrounds so you can collect specific sets rather than just one PvP set for every BG/arena.

There's likely loads of ideas floating about on various forums for innovative PvP additions that can be made. I think raiding and PvE has just about hit its limit for creativity, judging by the recent patches.

And, of course, BE MORE ACTIVE IN FIXING ISSUES! Don't patch an obvious issue with balance by waiting for an entire season and introducing it with a load of other changes.

[Sturmbringe]

You're absolutely right. Blizz should go back to those kind of servers so that they can service and recieve money from 15000 subs instead of those 8 million they have now.

Either there is something wrong with my English or something wrong with your reading comprehension and/or your math skills. I said there are thousands of private servers in the EU and Russia and probably tens of thousands of private servers in East Asia. I am pretty sure the tally runs up to the hundreds of thousands of players.

[Foto]

On the constant posts about story being bad; I have never really gotten into the story line before, the most I did was in wotlk to follow arthas purely on my own intrigue that this "character" kept popping up everywhere.

Mop is THE FIRST time I have ever cared about where a story is going because they present it in a way that everyone can watch and follow, and you are a part of!! yes these characters are new doesn't mean its bad.
NOT IN WARCRAFT 1/2/3 DOES NOT EQUAL BAD LORE
I'm personally very happy with how this expansion is going, yes wows lost a lot of subs but if we believe Blizzard that a lot of it is from China its because gamers over there sub and resub for content, its the culture over there. Xeno of Paragon did a really good post on their website about this.

I think wow is doing great and will settle at some point in their subs but most players either currently play wow, or have played wow and its hard to keep players interested in the same game for 8 years! But blizzards last ditch to save subs is giving us the burning legion expansion players have been longing for. Following that people will sub and resub for the expansion opener/finisher and the players who like blizzards current direction inregards to content will stay and those who are still longing for a grindfest vanilla/bc style game will go somewhere else

[Muis]

Either there is something wrong with my English or something wrong with your reading comprehension and/or your math skills. I said there are thousands of private servers in the EU and Russia and probably tens of thousands of private servers in East Asia. I am pretty sure the tally runs up to the hundreds of thousands of players.

Which equals 8,3 million or higher, am I right?

[Reyzzz]

Either there is something wrong with my English or something wrong with your reading comprehension and/or your math skills. I said there are thousands of private servers in the EU and Russia and probably tens of thousands of private servers in East Asia. I am pretty sure the tally runs up to the hundreds of thousands of players.

The only reason people play on private servers is that they are free. If people PAY to play on them, well... let's just say aren't the brightest of the bunch.

[Deleted]

Nothing can save WoW.

They've simply implemented things they can't undo without speeding up the decline of the subscriber base.

1. LFD can never be undone.
2. LFR can never be undone.
3. Heirloom gear can never be removed.

And the list goes on. They've made so many changes that have completely changed the game from its core that it would be impossible to go back to the original core immersion values of true MMORPG gaming.

It's a nice thought, but, in my opinion, this giant's time is done.

Very true. No way of getting rid of those features now. I wonder who's responsible for it and why hasn't he been fired yet.

[Sturmbringe]

The only reason people play on private servers is that they are free. If people PAY to play on them, well... let's just say aren't the brightest of the bunch.

Not only people are paying a subscription fee to play on private servers (called "monthly donation" or somt along these lines) but they also pay through paypal to buy gear (raid or PvP gear) for their toons.

Like I said before, I am not playing on a private server but I follow what is going on closely.

Now try to figure out for yourself how much the Blizzard MoP retail model is failing when there are people who'd rather pay a subscription to play on John Doe's WOTLK or TBC or Vanilla server (with all the substantial disadvantages that a private server entails) than play on a retail server. This should be viewed in conjunction with the loss of around 1.5 mil subs in the last quarter.

[Deleted]

Very true. No way of getting rid of those features now. I wonder who's responsible for it and why hasn't he been fired yet.

Because maybe in Blizzards opinion they SAVED WoW?

I am sick to death of people pointing at specific things and going that killed wow or that saved wow.

Does everyone remember just before SW:ToR went F2P there was so much rage on the forums that it was because there was no working LFD, but now of course that WoW losses 1.3 million subs it is because of LFD, come on get a grip.

There is ZERO and I repeat ZERO way of knowing if the feature increased or lossed subs unless you have a time machine and are able to go back and you are able to change what blizzard did, maybe without LFD WoW would have 1 million subs now, how can you know for fact it would not?

One thing is 100% guaranteed though. EVERY SINGLE change blizzard do someone somewhere will hate it and there will be moaning and bitching about it on MMO-C.

I am sick of all you back seat developers who go "OMFG I KNOW HOW TO SAVE WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE BLIZZARD CAN'T SEE IT OMFG".

There are a lot of factors that effect WoW subs.

[Deleted]

Because maybe in Blizzards opinion they SAVED WoW?

I am sick to death of people pointing at specific things and going that killed wow or that saved wow.

Does everyone remember just before SW:ToR went F2P there was so much rage on the forums that it was because there was no working LFD, but now of course that WoW losses 1.3 million subs it is because of LFD, come on get a grip.

There is ZERO and I repeat ZERO way of knowing if the feature increased or lossed subs unless you have a time machine and are able to go back and you are able to change what blizzard did, maybe without LFD WoW would have 1 million subs now, how can you know for fact it would not?

One thing is 100% guaranteed though. EVERY SINGLE change blizzard do someone somewhere will hate it and there will be moaning and bitching about it on MMO-C.

I am sick of all you back seat developers who go "OMFG I KNOW HOW TO SAVE WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE BLIZZARD CAN'T SEE IT OMFG".

There are a lot of factors that effect WoW subs.

You can see how Lfd destroyed server communities. If you don't you're being willingly obtuse. Lack of community is probably the most heard complaint about wow since end wotlk?

I dont get it, you save wow but making it lose subs?

[Glorious Leader]

You can see how Lfd destroyed server communities. If you don't you're being willingly obtuse.

I dont get it, you save wow but making it lose subs?

Saved wow is the wrong word. You grew wow by giving players things not taking them away. You kill wow by taking things like lfd and lfr away.

[Manabomb]

Honestly, you are wrong.

If people were tired and burnt out of WoW, there wouldn't be thousands of players who choose to play Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK on private servers. Let me break into you the best part: Some of those people ACTUALLY PAY A SUBSCRIPTION to play on the said private servers. Yes, they PAY A SUBSCRIPTION to a private server, and what is more, those subscription-based private servers also maintain a shop where people BUY GEAR with their PAYPAL ACCOUNT.

I don't play on a private server (I play SW:TOR atm) but I make it my business to be well-informed about what goes on in the WoW Private Server scene.

Hows' that, huh?

Some people so dislike Pandas and Pokemon, that they prefer to go pay money to play on someone's private server with all the assorted glitches, bugs, bugged raids, server downtime, rollbacks and other disadvantages that a private server entails.

How about Blizzard -and you- wake up and smell the coffee?

EDIT: Some of those servers are so full with people that there is a queue on prime time of SEVERAL THOUSANDS of players. The longest queue I have seen mentioned was 4596 players on prime-time. Fancy that. Almost five thousand people queue to someone's SUBSCRIPTION BASED WOTLK server.

And I believe it's time for you and those "thousands" of other private server goers to open your eyes and realize two things. A) Blizzard, or Activision Blizzard or whatever you'd like to call them is a business first. Their job is to bring a standard of quality whilst reducing costs to a bare minimum to maximize profit. Period. Sure, there are some policies they could implement to milk the cash cow harder, but you can blatantly see them doing it (See the ongoing low-med population realm problems and exoduses to high realms, players spending huge amounts of money for overpriced server transfers just to do things like raid or actively arena, ect.)

And B) The majority demographic of this game changed. It's simple. As stated quite some time ago, WoW has cycled through nearly double its current population in all time subscribers. Meaning those who once loved the game for being the boring grind-fests that were vanilla, tbc and to some extent wotlk have moved on. I'm not going to deny that mop is pretty grindy, but compared to basically playing like a second job just to keep a raiding spot through tbc, it's laughable. It's not even the casuals that rule the game's demographic now. It's the people that need continual justification to spend 15$ on this game a month and continue to play it.